Girl Through Glass Page 19

  “It was 1947. I was eleven. My father was home from one of his maritime adventures. And he had managed to get tickets to see Toumanova dance at the Paris Opera. Dancers were coming back from all over. Balanchine was in France again. Toumanova! Toumanova—she was no longer so young, it didn’t matter. We loved her anyway. The baby Russians were now grown up. We’d seen them before the war as girls—now they were women. We loved them, too. And there were new ones. Ulanova. We could only hear stories of her. It wasn’t for ten more years that we would see her. Still, she was all the rage.

  “My father took me even though there was a polio outbreak in Europe then. People were sleeping on roofs, avoiding public places. But Toumanova was dancing, so my father was going. And he took me.” Now he is grinning at her, his eyes are moist and soft.

  “About half of my father’s comrades from the Balletomane Society were there, though they sat far apart. Some of them wore face masks to protect themselves. Not my father, though. And not me. I remember you could hear sounds reverberating off the empty boxes.

  “I don’t know why my mother let me go. She was very protective of me. I was not allowed to swim in public pools, for instance.” He gets up and hobbles to a shelf and pulls off a little tin box, brings it over. He opens it to show some ash. “But, at intermission, Father gave me a cigar at the café. The only cigar I ever smoked. He said to me, ‘Son, you may never go to war. The only other thing that teaches the same is ballet. When I watch the dancers, I see my fallen comrades. I see blood and bullets. I get the same feeling as right before a battle. That weird quiet—like angels passing. Someone will die in a few minutes, I would think. I never thought it would be me. Isn’t that strange?’

  “As we traveled home through the wet, cold streets, all I could think of was Toumanova as she did her port de bras and arabesques. She was so brave and clever, so beautiful! My mother had me soak in peroxide, put me to bed, and gave me onion soup for a week. But it didn’t matter. At the end of the week, I got sick.”

  There is something new and self-mocking about his smile. “My father disappeared after that. He couldn’t deal with me, an invalid son.”

  Mira has begun to tremble. Her face is sore.

  “Well, that is all in the past. But you see—I cannot escape your Mr. Balanchine—it was he who choreographed the piece for Toumanova I saw that night, Palais de Cristal.” He looks at her. His face clouds over again. Now he looks strange, sad. “I am a pale shadow of him. I am a shadow of my father.”

  Mira is standing right in front of him. They are so close. She can smell him. His pale face hovers before her. “No, you’re not.” She looks down, then up again. “You’re not—a shadow.”

  She reaches up and kisses him. His lips are dry. He does not stop her. Later on, she will wonder if she imagined it, but at the time she knows it is true: he responds. His lips move.

  He pulls away and wipes his mouth, looks up at the ceiling. In a different voice, he says, “The wise child.” Who is he speaking to? He is speaking to the ceiling? Then she knows—his father.

  “I don’t regret it,” he says as she draws back, the strange feel of his dusty mouth on hers. “He only had two tickets. But, at intermission, Father gave me a cigar at the café. The only cigar I ever smoked. I got to go with him.”

  They stand in the room, not talking, just breathing. What has happened? Something has changed, some line crossed. But he is quiet now. He seems calmer.

  He waves his hand and smiles his little stones-on-a-ledge smile. “Do you still have that swan I gave you?” Afraid to speak, she nods. The heavy glass thing lolls about on her bedside table—it once got chewing gum on it, which left a sticky residue. It sits next to her other trophies: a fully-autographed SAB company catalog, Maurice’s calling card.

  “Good,” he says. He pulls her, now more gently, through the kitchen—a clean, yellow-tiled room that smells of old oranges—into a back room that smells of the perfumed flowers she noticed when she first came into the apartment. He flicks on the lights. A bed with a white crocheted cover, a tightly shorn wool rug of jade green, and Chinese porcelain lamps on the two bedside tables, also painted with delicate flowers: the room of a lady who worked at being a lady. He flings open a mahogany box on one of the bedside tables and pulls out a string of beads. He holds them in his papery hands, an offering.

  She stares at them. He shoves the string of pearls into her hand, closes her hand. “These pearls were my mother’s.” He sits on the bed. It groans. “They’re real. They’re for you.”

  “They’re yellow.”

  He laughs. “Each one was once a grain of sand. The oyster grinds the sand, grinds and grinds. The fake ones are white. Your Mr. B understands that.” He looks toward the window.

  “Don’t worry,” she says, clasping the pearls hard in her fist. “It’ll be okay.”

  He looks at her hopefully, then down again. Then more pointedly. “Really, Bella. Will it?”

  Outside there are sounds: people whistle for cabs, ladies’ heels click on the pavement, horns blare then fade.

  Lying in bed that night, she thinks about what has happened with Maurice. There are no words for it. Something has happened between them that can never be forgotten. She gets up and looks out her window. A tall woman in a long white coat walks her dog. The trees along the sidewalk rustle in the breeze. She stares outside for a long time.

  CHAPTER 31

  PRESENT

  I wake, cloudy headed, to a sweet, pungent odor. Someone has put some flowers at my bedside—lilies, harbingers of spring—mixed in with baby’s breath. Indeed Felicia has learned kindness. How to thank her?

  I let the layers of consciousness come to me: they press on me—one by one: it’s Friday, the end of a work week. I need to be back by next Wednesday, so I have to make this day count. Sioban’s voice on my phone last night, austere in her sadness. I listen to her message again, noticing the way she stops and pauses between her words. The pauses make it seem like she’s creating—or at least managing—her emotional output. She lives her life as if she’s onstage. I will need to respond today, but what can I say? What can I possibly say?

  I’m out of the apartment by ten thirty. There’s no sign of Felicia. I leave her a hastily scrawled note on a notepad in her kitchen. It has silver bells in the corner and Latinate lettering across the top. I rip off the sheet of paper, and write Thanks for the flowers, underlining thanks. Then add a fragment—beautiful. I leave the note on her immaculate kitchen counter, and tuck the pad into my purse. Leaving my backpack, I grab my coat and rush out, closing the door softly behind me.

  Outside, it’s still unseasonably warm. The sky the same blinding white, the breeze as balmy as yesterday afternoon. A spooky gentleness to the air. Like after a catastrophe. I duck into a diner on Ninth Avenue and order a giant breakfast of eggs, toast, home fries, and coffee. I eat the whole thing, even the pile of blackened home fries. I sip my coffee, wait for the check. The bill arrives, I pay up.

  I’m going back to Lincoln Center. It’s my only option. Rob told me that Maurice gave money to SAB. He was giving me a clue. Maybe he wants me to find something? As I retrace my steps from yesterday, I try to order my thoughts. Rob also told me that there was a young man, someone who Maurice introduced as his son, who was a lawyer. I just want to know if Maurice is living or dead and if he sent that letter or not. I am here for information and information only, I remind myself. The past, while critical, is also just incidental.

  If he wrote it but did not send it, that would be one thing. If he wrote it and sent it, that would be more worrisome. He would then want something from me. But what can he want? I gave him everything a long time ago. What I have managed to salvage for myself—my career, my students, my ideas—suddenly seem like nothing more than crumbs. It seems on this trip all roads lead back to Lincoln Center, that citadel of my childhood. Is it guarded as fiercely now as it was then? Will they give me a donor’s contact info? I know some institutions are on a more secretive rel
ationship than others when it comes to the source of their funding.

  I need a plan, I think as I walk across Columbus Circle and turn up Broadway.

  The SAB studios are on the fifth floor of the new Juilliard building, a spacious glass and steel building just to the north of the plaza. I take the skybridge, cross the gray stone plaza, and join a group entering the lobby. The lobby, long and narrow, of a golden tomblike marble, is divided by a line of turnstiles. Against the back wall, a line of security guards sits behind what look like old-fashioned bank teller windows. The group ahead of me files through the turnstiles and heads to the security guard windows. They are being asked to show their IDs. To the left of us, through a little gate, passes a steady stream of long-necked girls with their hair coiled up on their heads—ballet girls. We inch forward toward the guards. I watch the river of girls flow through.

  Now it’s my turn. I slide my ID under the grate and tell the tired-looking guard that I am here to pick up my daughter. “Where’s your family pass?” she says without looking up. She’s making notes. “I’m sorry, I left it at home,” I say. “Shoot. But if I go back and get it, I’ll miss her. She’s waiting for me.” My heart is pounding. The guard raises her eyes and gives me her full attention, then nods. “Don’t forget it next time.” I thank her and follow the bunheads to the elevators before anyone can stop me.

  When I get off the elevator, I’m overwhelmed by the diffuse light and by the minimalist, corporate chic of the decor. The entrance to the school is filled with a white marble boat of a desk flanked by bronze busts of Balanchine and Kirstein. Gone are the glass doors to the School of American Ballet of my era. Gone are the architectural prints on the walls. Gone are the studious faces of musicians you would pass in the hallways outside the dance studios.

  Then the busts of Balanchine and Kirstein pull me back in. They watch me warily, like heads of Cerberus. I must know the password. I have forgotten the password.

  Just being here makes my palms sweat. I rub them on my pants. An odd, dizzy feeling—of unreality—moves to my knees. I am blinking too much.

  I approach the desk. I smile.

  “What can I do for you?” says the woman behind the desk. She is a thin and heavily lipsticked woman of indeterminate age. She has an air of intense politeness that promises nothing. My eyes snap into focus. Desperation makes me bold.

  “I’m here because of my . . . daughter,” I say. “I’m visiting from Ohio and . . . well, it’s her dream, really. To study here.”

  She gives me a professional smile. “Our Web site has everything,” she says. “We really don’t accept general queries like this. We do offer occasional tours. They should have stopped you downstairs. . . .”

  “Oh, I am sorry,” I say. “Yes, they were kind enough to let me upstairs. I’m just in town for a few days—”

  A small smile appears on the gatekeeper’s mouth. “Oh, heck,” she says. “How old is she?”

  “She’s eight.”

  “We start at six.”

  “Oh! How does it work?” A woman wearing ponderous shoes and a thick utility belt—a security guard?—has appeared behind me, by the elevators. I’d better hurry. Into my mind springs an image of the girl I’ve been speaking of—this pretend child—a girl with dark hair and sparkling eyes, braids with ribbons in her hair. Cute, energetic, boyish. No hips, high instep, long flexible legs that shoot up and take a long time coming down. She would—I judge the apparition through the receptionist’s eyes—get in.

  The gatekeeper goes back to paper clipping what appear to be letters. “Well, as you must know, we are extremely selective. Admission to any of our courses is only by audition. There are separate auditions for winter term and summer course. Students may audition specifically for winter term in September. Auditions for summer course are held in April and May.”

  I slow my breathing, wipe my palms on my skirt again. “I know that many, many girls want to come here.”

  The receptionist puts aside the stack of papers and takes off her glasses. She leans forward, as if to tell me a secret. I bend over the partition to catch whatever she will tell me.

  “We accept only one in a hundred.” A smile cracks open her face. She’s older than she first appeared, this gatekeeper. “But perhaps your daughter is that one in a hundred?”

  At that moment I see something. Her ramrod-straight posture, her tight smile, her too-red lipstick, her overly sinewed neck and big-knuckled, short-nailed hands, which she articulates with unusual care; she’s a former dancer. Of course. A bunhead! They live on after their dance careers are over.

  I nod. A phalanx of chattering girls enters. Their bodies are just on the cusp of change—long legs and tiny torsos filling out ever so slightly. They look about the same age I was when I started coming here. Bunheads here haven’t changed much. They still wear buns high on their heads, they walk like ducks, carry themselves like little queens—with a grim regalness that still startles.

  A woman with a short, stylish haircut stops at the desk. I step back to make room for her.

  “Excuse me, Ms. Harrington,” she says to the gatekeeper. “We’ll have our form in on Monday.” A genteel southern accent. So the mothers still come with their girls, making the pilgrimage, setting up house close to the citadel of beauty, biding their time, training their sights. Where are the fathers in all of this? Hasn’t that changed either?

  Harrington? This might be the bit of luck I need. When the hubbub passes, I lean over the counter. The security guard stalks the lobby behind me. “Please. I’m sorry.” I lean farther in and whisper, “Can I tell you something? I used to dance here. I was a student here, back in the day, you know? Oh, of course it was ages ago. But you know you never forget being a student here.”

  My eyes are still blinking too rapidly. The gatekeeper puts on her glasses and looks at me, this time taking me in in a different way. Finally, she whispers back, “What years?”

  “Umm . . . 1978 to 1981.”

  “Wait, I was here then too.”

  “Are you—Bryce Harrington?”

  “Yes,” she says. “And you?”

  “I’m . . . I was . . . Mira Able.”

  “Mira Able?” She pulls off her glasses and tosses them on the desk with a clatter. She stands. “What the hell?” I recognize the flashing eyes, the quick, stabbing words of my old classmate. “What the hell happened to you? You just left and . . . after that day. Everyone was talking about it. You just disappeared. No one could find you. I always thought you’d call me, or write me, or something, you know.” She leans back on her heels and crosses her arms. “We were friends, right?”

  I’m on the other side of something now. My breath comes more regularly. This is a stroke of luck. I smile a genuine smile. “We were enemies.”

  Bryce smiles big and wide. “We were frenemies!” Her eyes sparkle. I can see a cap on her front tooth.

  “Yes, we were!” I say. “We were the best in the class!”

  With Bryce’s glasses off, her eyes look smaller, her face softer. She’s speaking loudly now as another group, this one older, slides by us, with curious stares. “Remember how Tumkovsky would yell—‘Catch your breasts! Catch your breasts!’ And how Danilova would”—she begins to warble like her—“‘not so fast. You do not take train, take stagecoach, take horse.’”

  A girl runs up to Bryce and says, “I have a new maker. My feet are much better!”

  “Who is it?” Bryce says.

  “It’s Castle Maker!”

  “That’s great, hon,” Bryce says. “They say he’s excellent for narrow feet.”

  As the girl runs off down the hallway, I say, “Her maker?” In our day, only professionals had makers. Individual makers of pointe shoes—craftsmen who still handcraft pointe shoes.

  Bryce says to me, “They all have their own makers now. They even have a Web site for the makers, so the girls can ‘meet’ them.”

  “Wow, even at their age?”

  “Yep.”

&n
bsp; “With pictures of their makers?”

  “Yep.”

  Through this barrage of words and images from my past, through my rapid blinks and sweaty palms, I bring myself back. I refocus: I have to. I am here for one reason only. Who sent the letter? Is he alive? “Yes,” I say. “We were totally frenemies. But . . .” I pause. “Listen, Bryce.” I lower my voice. “We really need to catch up, but I’m here for a specific reason today and . . . I need your help.”

  “My help?”

  I take a deep breath. Don’t think. Do. “I need to find out about a donor to SAB.”

  “Who?”

  “Someone who I knew a long time ago.”

  She stares at me. Her mouth purses. “That creepy guy?”

  I laugh. “Beauty and the Beast,” I say. “Felicia told me.”

  “Felicia?” She wipes her mouth with the back of her veined hand. “What is she doing now?”

  “She’s—ah, between things.”

  She nods. “Yes,” she says. “It’s our age.” She waves her arms at something invisible. “But what’re you, like a private eye?”

  “Actually, I’m a dance historian. But this is something—extracurricular,” I say. “Apparently, he donated a lot to SAB over the years. I’m trying to find out—if he is still alive. I thought, well, you might have access to that information.” I pause. “It’s important.”

  Bryce shakes her head and grins. She places a hand on my shoulder. She is all verve and no-consequence now. She asks a woman walking by with a blinking Bluetooth to watch the desk and leads me down several long hallways. She waves to people as we pass. She lowers her voice. “It’s been much too tame around here. It’s like a factory now—everything is a factory now. But I love good gossip, and I can smell some here.” She is full of a brisk, youthful energy. Bryce pulls me into an office, and shuts the door.

  It’s a small room with a few empty workstations. Bryce leads me to one, and says, “I have access to the donor database. I have even managed it. . . .” I hear the old pride in her voice. She jiggles a mouse on the keyboard and a monitor lights up.