by Meg Howrey
“Don’t you dare lose a pound between now and opening. Oh, and James said we should use these.” She handed me two flesh-colored gelatinous half circles.
“What the hell are these?”
“They’re called cutlets,” Fiona said, raising her eyebrows.
“What do we do with them?”
“For your cleavage.” Fiona pointed at my naked chest.
“Huh.”
“Broadway, darling. Those girls have boobies.”
Mara was waiting for me in my dressing room. Holding the bottle Stefan gave me in her hand.
“You find the iron?”
“What are these?” Mara shook the bottle.
“Vicodin,” I said. “For my neck.”
“How many are you taking a day?”
“Jesus, Mara.” I rooted around in Tamara’s stuff until I found the iron. I pretended to be a little annoyed, but really I was relieved if all Mara was mad at me for was my becoming a drug addict.
“Here.” I handed her the iron and held out my hand for the bottle. After a moment, she gave it to me.
“Kate.”
“Look at what I got,” I said, shaking the cutlets at her. “Fake boobs.”
“Kate.”
“Try them on. They’re fabulous.”
Mara looked for a minute like she was going to throttle me, then rolled her eyes. I took the iron from her and plugged it into my outlet. She fitted the cutlets into her leotard.
“Nice, right? You look hot.”
“Oh my god. Take a picture of me so I can send it to Mike?”
And we spent the next fifteen minutes posing her around my dressing room, and I gave her a smooth and swinging ponytail, and when she wasn’t looking I shut the bottle in a drawer, because what your friends can’t see can’t hurt them.
• • •
On our dinner break a couple of us went to the salad place. I asked Klaus if he wanted to join and I could tell he was a little psyched to get an invitation to the cool kids’ table.
The waiter brought us huge glasses of water with straws in them and we all laughed at the fact that we were too tired to actually pick up our glasses and instead just leaned forward and sucked on our straws like little kids. Roger instigated a game of trying to look sexy while sucking on a straw. During this, my phone rang, and I saw that it was my parents’ home number. I jumped up and walked outside the café onto Broadway.
“Mom!”
“Oh! Hello! I thought I was going to get your voicemail.”
“No, no, I’m here. What’s going on?”
“Well, I just wanted to give you the latest news.”
I struggled past some skyward-gazing tourists and turned down Seventieth Street, phone jammed hard against my ear as taxis blared at each other. A ubiquitous clipboard-holding activist on the corner lurched toward me and then hastily backed away as I glared at her.
“Yes, yes. I’m here. Go ahead.”
“Where are you? Should I call back when you’re home?”
“It’ll be late then. No. Tell me. How’s … how’s Gwen. What’s happening?”
“Gwen is doing much better. She’s in this … well, she’s in a program, I guess you’d call it. She goes five times a week to a therapy situation.”
“A therapy situation?” I stepped over some trash and plugged my free ear with my palm.
“I guess just therapy, you would call it. For the next eight weeks, and then they’ll … I guess … reevaluate.”
“What does her doctor say? I mean, do they have a diagnosis?”
“Your father knows more about all the medical terms and he’s consulting with everyone. Hey,” Mom chirped happily, “did you know that one in every four adults has a psychotic episode?”
“Um, no.”
“It’s not an uncommon thing, is what I’ve learned. It’s very common. Especially for people with stressful jobs.”
“So like, what.” I wandered up a few steps of someone’s brownstone. “We’re saying that’s it, it was a one-time thing, and she’s actually totally normal?”
“What do you mean? She had to take a test.”
“What kind of test?”
“That’s one of the little evaluationals.”
“Evaluationals?”
“How they evaluate. All these questions. So they could know whether they needed to admit her or she could be an outpatient.”
“Okay, is this a legitimate thing? It sounds like a Cosmo quiz. Where is all this happening?”
“Kate.” My mother’s voice lost its cheerful getting-all-our-ducks-in-a-row reportage and became quite crisp and formal. “It’s happening at Two Rivers Psychiatric Clinic and your father and I are making sure that she’s getting the best treatment possible. I really don’t appreciate … I’m not sure you have the right to criticize.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She sighed heavily. “Here we go again.”
“She still won’t talk to me, answer my calls, texts, nothing. And I mean … it’s not just one flip-out, okay? What if she’s really messed up? What if she’s got schizophrenia? Is anybody checking that?” Someone was coming out of the brownstone, so I retreated, hunching my shoulders up to try to get some privacy.
“I don’t think we should rush to put a label on it,” Mom said firmly. “And I know you’re upset that she hasn’t talked to you, but you have to understand, sweetie, that she was angry with you for calling your father and forcing her to … that’s part of her depression. I think there is a sense of some betrayals. Some hurts.”
“JESUS FUCK,” I yelled into my phone. “Can you stop talking in that fucking stupid kiddie voice? She didn’t just all of a sudden get sad. And she was going to kill herself! I was there!”
The line went quiet. I had managed to get “JESUS FUCK” out about the same time that a Mommy and Me–style Mommy was passing with a stroller. The woman, now halfway down the block, was still scowling at me over her shoulder.
It’s amazing how quickly all emotions just hurtle through me. I can’t hold on to anything. Immediately, I felt horrendous. The conversation was ruined.
“Kate?” It was my dad’s voice now. Mom had apparently abdicated.
“Hi, Dad.”
“Kate, why are you yelling at your mother?” It’s probably been about fifteen years since I last heard that tone from my father. Although the disappointed timbre sounded remarkably like Marius’s voice when he told me how hard it was to watch me diminish myself.
“She just … she just …” God, I was sweating like a maniac inside my hoodie.
“She has been working very hard to stay positive in what has been an extremely stressful situation.”
“I know … I’m … she’s just …” I started to cry. It wasn’t tears, exactly, but all the rest of the crying activity.
“Kate,” my father said firmly. “Kate. I know you are upset, but this is not the way to handle it.”
“She’s my sister,” I choked. A couple passed me, arm in arm. Their eyes flickered at me and then snapped back to each other. I turned my back on them, huddling next to some garbage cans.
“And she is our daughter,” Dad said. “And we are making sure she is getting the best care possible. We are doing everything we can. Gwen is working very hard. And what she needs most right now is space and privacy and to not have additional emotional demands placed on her.”
Gwen doesn’t need emotional demands placed on her? Gwen doesn’t need? I swallowed hard.
“Kate?”
“Yes. I’m here.”
“Do you understand me?”
I nodded silently.
“Yes.”
“I love you, Katie. I want you to be strong.”
“I love you too. Okay.”
“I’m going to give the phone back to your mother now. Are you able to speak calmly to her?”
“Yeah. Yes. I’m sorry.”
“We’ll talk to you soon.”
“Okay. Bye, Daddy. I�
�m sorry.”
“Bye, sweetheart.”
The line went quiet again, and I scrubbed my cheeks with one hand and took a deep shaky breath. I’m such a bad breather.
“It’s me.” My mom’s voice, sounding tentative. I could picture her: a canary-yellow polo shirt, maybe with a sleeveless fleece over it. She gets her hair cut at a Supercuts and colors it herself with L’Oréal. She wears a visor when she plays tennis. Gwen and I always give her a hard time about her visor. We have a jingle that we sing at odd moments—“VI-sor JU-deeee!”—meant to convey in four syllables the totality of steel-jawed perky obliviousness that is the birthright of the Midwestern Mom.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” I said. “I didn’t mean to shout at you.”
“Oh, it’s okay, honey. I know you’re worried. Where are you?”
“I’m on the street. We’re at dinner break.”
“Are you with your friends? Is Mara there?”
“Roger. Bunch of other people. Not right now. They’re in the café.”
“Well, I think you better go back and get some food in you!”
“Uh-huh.”
“It’s going to be just fine, honey. Take deep breaths.”
“I am.”
“We’re all just taking deep breaths. And you know your sister loves you. She just needs a little more time.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay,” I repeated, trying to sound like I meant it. I made the gesture for calm, which helped slightly.
“Guess what your daddy and I did today?” she asked—or rather, begged.
“Uh-huh. What did you do?”
“We went to yoga! We got a free pass in the mail for some new place that opened and I said, ‘Bill, I think we should check this out.’ And your father did very well! He didn’t think he would like it but he did.”
“That’s … that’s great!” My exclamation point was faint, but I got it in there.
“Did you talk to your brother?”
We spent a few minutes regaling each other with the same information we both had about Keith, who had won the final in Morocco in straight sets and was now headed to Italy. By the time this was done, we were speaking normally to each other, and my nose was no longer running, although I could feel the cakiness under my eyes where mascara had pooled and dried. We said good-bye and I checked out my reflection in the window of a dry cleaner’s, licking my fingertips and repairing the damage. My phone beeped. A text from Roger:
Food here. Where U?
When I got back to the café, I was informed that Klaus had figured out a way to suck on a straw while still looking sexy. He demonstrated this for me and I laughed along with everyone else.
“You better hit that,” Roger whispered to me, nodding at Klaus.
“Ha-ha,” I said. “Ha-ha.”
Back at the theater, dress rehearsal dragged on. Our sponsors had departed, and free from adult supervision, Marius grabbed a microphone and commenced shouting with something less than the afternoon’s geniality. My brain felt hot and uncomfortable, like the way you feel bulky and irritable inside your winter coat when you’re slogging through a department store in January. I swallowed another Vicodin, more for my guilt than for my neck, and it did bring me a certain amount of mental ventilation. In the wings before my first entrance for Leaves I was champing at the bit, so badly did I want to get onstage and just dance. Every time Marius stopped us to correct the lighting, or confer with the orchestra director, or yell about our spacing, I wanted to scream.
Marius announced that we were running the whole ballet again from the beginning. Everyone nodded obediently and bitched in the wings. “Are we in overtime?” “He doesn’t expect us to do it full out, does he?” There were many complaints about our costumes for this ballet, which is an old one from our repertoire, and it must be admitted that there is a faint reek of mildew coming off the chiffon.
“I think the last guy who wore this is dead now,” Roger said to me. “I’m wearing a dead man’s blouse.”
“That’s very poetic,” I told him. He nodded.
“Sweat lingers on
In a dead man’s costume
Don’t order the brisket!”
Roger said.
I laughed, and it felt like the sound broke something free in my head.
It’s not my problem anymore, I told myself.
It’s not my problem.
It’s just me now.
When you exhaust every possible emotion, you make space for the unexpected. For the rest of the hour I loved everything. I loved standing in the wings and looking upward into the fathoms of the theater: the flies, the iron catwalk, the lighting grids and scrims. I loved that the sound of Dvorak was so comprehensible to my muscles that the phrases seemed to be emitting from my own bloodstream. I loved the drama of running into the wings and dashing around the narrow crossover backstage that is set up for us with glow tape. I loved that I’m able to turn on one foot, run, run, run, glissade, and then jump into the air, half turning, so that Adam is able to lean down and catch me, one arm circling my legs, and I loved knowing in a hundred tiny indescribable ways that it was done perfectly and that Adam was glad that I have a good jump and make it easy for him. I loved the sight of my own hand in front of my face. I lifted my arms and felt the muscles undulating down my back, and this too I loved.
And then it was over and Marius said, “Better. Thank you, company. Go home. Get some sleep.” And we all filed offstage and Fiona shouted out a reminder for everyone to please hang up their costumes in the dressing rooms, do not leave them on the floor, and people crowded into the elevator or pulled themselves up the stairs, and I told myself that this night would be fine.
This night I would end the evening perfectly, ride the subway home quietly, put my things away neatly when I got back to the apartment. Not smoke or watch something stupid on TV, or stare bleakly at Gwen’s masking-tape Xs on the walls and construct grim fantasies in my head to work out all my resentments. I would perform nightly ablutions methodically and peacefully and perhaps spend an hour reading Peter Holland’s essay on A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I would do this all for me, and not for the benefit of an invisible audience.
But back in my dressing room I was afraid. I was afraid that with the removal of each layer I would slowly be reduced, like a series of glittering, mildewed, sweat-stained Russian nesting dolls, until there was just one tiny feeble me, so easy to knock over, so easy to lose.
19.
I told Mara I would meet her at the Russian Baths downtown this morning. Two Vicodin and my iPod meant I could get on the subway and down to lower Manhattan with artificially induced cheer. I wanted to cancel on Mara. Usually I love having a good long sweat in the steam room, but I was afraid that under intense heat the backlog of Vicodin in my pores was going to waft out in a noxious cloud, and I wanted it in me. I have this idea that my toxins are acting as a kind of force field.
The Russian Baths are coed, so you wear bathing suits. The saunas are mostly populated by extremely large Central European men who watch us impassively and speak to each other in thick wooden-block sentences. From time to time an attendant, wearing a special peaked cap that seems to serve no purpose other than the ludicrous and ceremonial, will appear and offer to whack you with special branches. There are buckets in the corners and chests with ice water. You can also step outside the sauna and stand in a shower cubicle while the peaked-cap guy throws buckets of ice water at you. I never do that though, because I hate the feeling of cold water.
Mara and I arrived at the baths at the same time, changed into suits, and took our usual benches in the sauna. It was early enough that it wasn’t too crowded. Most of the dancers in town come to this place, even though there’s a fancier one in the East Village where the attendants don’t scowl at you. Eventually we’ll all switch over to that one, I suppose. When there’s a signal from the herd.
Mara and I spent a few minutes gossiping about the week. Mara seemed dis
tracted, which suited me just fine. I wasn’t up for any big talk. I asked her about Mike.
“Yes, so, actually, kind of big news,” she said. “Mike surprised me last night. We’ve been talking about doing a little trip, after the season is over, but I was thinking maybe a long weekend at a B and B in Vermont or something. He’s got all this vacation accrued. Anyway, last night I came home and the kitchen table was covered in this red-and-white-checked tablecloth and he had music playing, and a bottle of red wine, and cheese and prosciutto and this whole itinerary printed out. A week in Venice!”
“Ohhhh,” I said, squeezing her sweaty knee. “Mara, that’s fantastic. How sweet. He set it all up for you?”
“Can you believe it?”
“With prosciutto and everything waiting?”
“Uh-huh.”
“He’s the best,” I said. “And you deserve the best, but I mean … when do we get what we deserve? So it’s even more the best that he’s the best.”
“He is the best.”
“It’s just what you need,” I said. “And Mike too. I love that he’s so romantic.”
“So I got a little carried away.” Mara bent over her legs and looked up at me sheepishly. “Because later, in bed, I asked him what he thought about us trying to get pregnant.”
“Wow.” I laughed. “That must have been some cheese.”
“Sort of starting in Venice, because it’s better if you’re off the pill for a cycle or two before you start trying. So I thought, well, I could go off the pill now, and then we could start when we’re on vacation. To make it even more special.”
“Oh my gosh. You’re serious?”
“We were both sort of crying and laughing too. I mean he was laughing at me for having this whole logistical plan, but he was also really, really excited. He said that he’s been thinking about having a baby a lot lately, but he didn’t want to say anything and make me feel pressured, and he thought we were still a few years away from me wanting to do that.”
“Right, right.” I tried to breathe shallowly because the heat was hitting me faster than it usually does, and I was dehydrating rapidly. “I thought you were too. You said something about it, a few weeks ago, but also you were talking about taking some classes, so I just assumed it was all very hypothetical and—”