Girl Through Glass Page 6

  She looks down.

  “Can I ask you something, Mira? Do you want to be a ballerina?”

  She blushes. “I take ballet.”

  “Hah!” he says. “And how long have you been doing that?”

  “Five years.”

  “How many days a week?”

  “Every day but Wednesday and Sunday.”

  He smiles. “And why do you do this?”

  She doesn’t have an answer.

  “To become a dancer. You have to say what you want.” She looks up. There are lines on the side of his mouth that she hasn’t noticed before. They make him look even more puppetlike.

  “Yes,” she says, for suddenly she does know what she wants: to dance with the Russians. To dance with Baryshnikov as her partner. To dance with giant spotlight-like-eyes on her. She is giddy with anticipation. All the attention she will get, each piece given to her, each unwrapped to reveal a pair of eyes like his.

  “I want to show you something, Mira,” he says.

  He raises his arm and a horse and carriage stops. She climbs in underneath the rain shield.

  She isn’t afraid. He’s nothing like the “perverts” she’s heard about—dirty men in trench coats who stalk playgrounds. She likes his neatness: his folded handkerchief, his trimmed mustache. She likes his gaze, which assesses her with some kind of special knowledge. He knows about dance—she can see it in his eyes, the way he looks at her. Christopher himself had said he was connected to David Howard’s studio, and everyone knew David Howard’s is like an annex to ABT. His gaze brings her closer to the city’s glittering center of professional ballet.

  The inside of the carriage smells like wet metal. As they ride through the park, she looks through the rain-splattered plastic at blurry forms—trees with dripping foliage and boulders in the shape of mythic animals. The carriage lets them out up by the museum with the dinosaurs, the polar bears, and the space rocks. Here the little man hails a yellow cab. They pass restaurants, shoe repair shops, a pet store. They are in another neighborhood now, one that she doesn’t recognize. There are some big apartment buildings, but there are also smaller buildings with gloomy entryways. They get out in the middle of a block, in front of a squat brick apartment building. She follows him into the lobby, past a doorman’s desk, which is vacant, and into an ammonia-smelling elevator.

  Inside his apartment, he tosses his gloves on a side table and, without removing his coat, says, “This way, please.” His apartment smells of old-lady perfume and the inside of a new car. As she walks through the dim rooms, the city recedes and is replaced with the soft clicks of invisible clocks and the eerie glances of tropical fish from a large tank in one of the room’s corners. He leads her into yet another room and stops in front of a tiny, shriveled pinkish thing hovering inside a cube of glass.

  “There,” he says. At first Mira thinks it’s someone’s cut-off ear. She’s heard about serial killers. Those who cut off body parts after they kill you. For the first time since she decided to follow him, she is afraid.

  Then she sees that it is a shoe. A pointe shoe.

  “Pavlova’s,” he says.

  Pavlova. The tiny, beloved dancer who famously bled through her shoes. “Pavlova’s, from her final performance. Do you see the blood?” He taps on the glass. “I saved it from them. There are some who would have cooked and eaten it! They would make soup out of it! Barbarians!”

  He is staring at her in that way again. “She was the last of the great classical ballerinas. Trained by Petipa. She lived to see everything—the dissolution of it all—war, revolution, the birth of modern dance. The dear had such weak ankles. Her feet were disastrously arched. The agonies she suffered!”

  “I know,” says Mira. She did not know any of this.

  She stares at the shoe hovering in space. The cracked flank, its ripped toe box, the flushed skin, the brownish bloodstains. An organ removed from a body.

  Then he raises the lights and she can see it rests on a glass pedestal. Some almost-invisible strings hold the tiny, battered shoe in place. Beyond the shoe, she sees the far wall is covered with photos of dancers. A few are autographed studio portraits of ballerinas she recognizes: Patricia McBride squints her cat eyes. Gelsey Kirkland’s doll-like face looks surprised. Merrill Ashley’s strong jaw commands the room. Kay Mazzo’s gamine gaze charms. But the majority of the pictures are black-and-white and faded. It is these that Mira finds herself drawn to. She wanders past this gallery of unknown ballerinas from times past. Strange unreadable writing is printed in the corners of some of the pictures.

  “Where are these from?”

  “All over the world. There’s a rare one of Michel Fokine in Harlequin.” He waves his hand at a picture of a muscular man dressed like a court jester. “Alicia Markova in a revival of Pas de Quatre. Here’s Nureyev as Drosselmeyer. Pierina Legnani as Odette and Odile. My father saw Legnani dance once. He said it was like wind blowing around on a stormy day. She was pre-Pavlova—squat, muscular. And, here, Olga Spessivtseva in Diaghilev’s Sleeping Princess.”

  More than anyplace Mira knows—more than her crumbling, fried-food-smelling school, or her cold room at home, with its walls still half-flayed of paper, more even than The Little Kirov studios—she has the feeling of belonging in this room.

  He points out a photo that shows a lady with a little helmet-like hat and red lips, holding a swan on her lap. The bird’s tiny face is nestled in her neck. “Here’s Pavlova with her pet swan.” Then he gestures to a photo right next to it of a woman on the ground in a white tutu bent over an extended leg.

  “When she was dying, she said, ‘Bring me my swan!’ She died with her costume in her arms.” He smiles, somehow satisfied.

  “Come on,” he says. She follows him back through the rooms. He stops in the living room, turns on the lights, and motions for her to sit on a couch that folds around the room. She perches on its edge. The walls are pastel green, the drapes yellow-gold. A portrait of a blond lady in a green dress hangs over the couch. Mira touches the cool leather of the couch. She loves the feeling of something so sleek and unmarked. So different from her own house’s dusty throw pillows, chipped wood furniture, scratched mirrors. She realizes that she is still in her parka and that it smells like French fries.

  She hears a clatter of dishes. Now he’s back in the doorway holding a plate of cookies. He’s taken off his coat, and as he makes his way across the room, she can see for the first time how thin and stooped he is. A complicated set of maneuvers precedes each step he takes. One of his shoes’ soles is several inches higher than the other. The laces are thick. Shoes for a cripple! She feels something wild and green grow in her. Fear. Fear of a different sort.

  At that moment, she thinks of her mother. She’s never wanted her mother so much: the feel of a certain scratchy purple dress her mother used to wear often. She imagines her mother opening a can of Chef Boyardee. The meat paste at the center. The sweet, watery tomato sauce. She feels her Brooklyn self rushing back—the clatter of her Shrinky Dink necklaces, the pilled bottom of her two-year-old bunny slippers; the stack of dusty records on her bottom bookshelf.

  She sees from the clock that it is six thirty. She is usually home by now.

  “Can I go now?”

  He pauses in front of her with his mouth twitching. “Of course you can go, Mira.”

  He goes to the phone on the wall, dials, and speaks into it. He is calling her a cab. Then he walks her to the front door. He pauses with his hand on the doorknob. Before he opens it, he turns to her. “It’s a secret, you know. Don’t tell anyone I let you see it. The shoe.”

  She is walking into the bright hallway when he says, “Wait—”

  She turns. He stands half in the brightness of the hall, half in the gloom of his apartment. She can barely hear him when he speaks again. “Can I have something—to remember you by?”

  A cab is waiting for her downstairs. She is on her way home; it’s okay. She reaches in the pocket of her parka and pulls ou
t a crumpled old hairnet with a bobby pin stuck in it and hands it to him. He takes the tangle of nylon and metal. Propping the door with his body, he examines it. He smiles. “Thank you,” he says.

  On her way home in the cab, Mira anticipates her arrival: her mother will be on the phone with Mira’s father talking in low worried voices. The lights will be on, and the old TV in the corner of the living room will be blaring the evening news as her mother listens, in case there are reports about a child having been killed. When she finally walks in the door, her mother will grab her in her arms and say “I was so worried!” and Mira will allow herself to say “Mom.”

  But when the cab pulls up, her house is dark. The whole downstairs is quiet. When she reaches the third floor and sees a light underneath the door of the junk room, her heart sinks. Every instinct flares up in her body and she knows what she’s not supposed to do. She does it anyway: she throws open the door.

  Someone growls. Someone else shrieks.

  Amid the chipped porcelain dishes and dusty piles of books, Gary is kissing her mother. Her mother’s body on an old weathered table pushed up against the wall. The fabric of her mother’s kimono spills around her and Gary is pressed up against her, his hand inside her robe.

  Mira’s stomach rises to meet her mouth, so she is surprised words can get through. Apparently, she is shouting at them. Something that sounds like “You! You! You!” Gary jumps off her mother; her mother pulls her robe around her, too slow to hide the pale, flushed skin. The rage Mira feels is immediate, swift, fortifying.

  “I hate you.” She doesn’t know which of the two she is saying this to.

  “Mira!” says her mother. “Oh, Mira. What are you doing in here?”

  “You didn’t even know I was gone!”

  Her mother clutches her robe more tightly and stands up. “I—you were at rehearsal.”

  Gary is pulling his shirt back on. His thick man-arms are yellow and bruised-looking. “Weren’t you even worried?”

  “I have faith in you,” says her mother. “I trust you.”

  Everything is moving too fast for her. Her mother’s quivering floral smell and some other thing: like warm metal bleeding out into the air. Mira touches her lips, her nose. Her nose is bleeding. “Why? Why do you trust me?”

  “Gary, go get some tissues,” says her mother.

  While Gary is gone, her mother puts her head down to Mira’s. She says, “Your father called. He wants to see you.”

  Gary returns with a handful of toilet paper. As Mira cups the paper to her nose, she thinks of Maurice, the little crippled man who likes to watch her dance, whose quiet apartment is filled with pictures of dancers and Pavlova’s tattered pointe shoe. She decides then and there that she will never tell her mother—or her father—about him. She’ll never tell anyone about Maurice. He is hers. And she has the sense that this is another genuine secret, one that gives her power.

  FLOWER

  PRINCESS

  CHAPTER 11

  PRESENT

  Sioban leads me to a ramshackle off-campus house, up some rickety wooden back stairs, whispering that she shares the house with five—or maybe six—others. She opens a back door that squeaks mightily in the cold. Then we are in her room. “My own entrance,” she says in her rushed voice, energetic and sheepish at once. I stand in the doorway. She turns on the light: a mattress on the floor, covers askew, a chest with the lid propped open from which stream all sorts of fabrics, blank walls lit with nails from which hang beaded necklaces and earrings, none of which I’ve ever seen her wear. There’s a lamp on the floor and a heavy antique brocaded mirror, the only thing that looks to be of value, propped against the wall. The effect is of a medieval chamber, an idea of comfort and beauty from a more primitive civilization.

  She takes me by the hand. This is my moment to back out, to say no, to defend my future against the present—but I do not.

  Her hand is long-fingered and moist. “Come,” she says. “Don’t be scared.” She takes off my coat and her own. The cheek with the acne scar is scarlet, from the cold or excitement, I don’t know. Her eyes hum like oil behind glass. She sinks onto the bed. I sink down next to her, and in a second she is naked, and her flesh is so perfect. She moves in her long-muscled limbs, all clavicles and hip and knee, and in her long sheath of that skin that now looks like dusky ash still glowing from a fire. Small breasts, dark nipples, no bra. She stretches out, full of confidence in her nakedness, and pulls me to her. I am overcome with a deep desire for her and, god forgive me, I kiss her breasts. She raises her hips up to meet me. She has not asked me to undress and I have not offered. We acknowledge her body is enough for both of us. Then I do something I never have before—not in those few times I have fallen into bed with a woman. In my twenties, my modern dancer days, gender mattered less than whose bed I could crash in that night. I put my tongue inside of her. She moves against me and I feel her whole body open up. She tastes of salt and ripe flowers. She squeezes my face with her thighs and shudders. When I raise my head, I catch sight of a crumpled sock on the floor next to the bed—a purple sock with red hearts. I stare at it, this fearsome thing, lying there with its careless vanity, then at the young woman before me in her medieval chamber, her body still possessing those long ballerina’s muscles.

  I pull away. “I have to go,” I say.

  Her face is surprised, even frightened. “No,” she says. “Stay,” she says. “It’s okay. Really, it’s okay.”

  The ridiculousness of her confidence sickens and exhilarates me. I am for the first time deeply afraid for myself and what I have done.

  Back at my house, I shower and change out of my dance clothes, and call my mother. I catch her at work. “Mom?” I say. “Sorry to bother you.”

  “That’s okay. What’s up?” Her voice is generous. Something is going well.

  She’s an office manager at a nonprofit in SoMa and often works reception too. I picture her red hair, white roots, flat against her skull, still-attractive face knotted against the phones and computer screen. We talk every few weeks, but this call is off schedule. What do I want from her? I want to tell her about this girl, the terrible kiss, and what followed, and even more—the letter from Maurice. I want to tell her everything. Life has me by the throat, I want to say. I am choking. What if I could tell my mother my secrets? What if I could have told my mother my secrets? But our relationship has always been built on signals and codes sent from neighboring countries.

  I take a deep breath. She says, “Hey, did you hear anything?”

  “About the Pell?” I say. “Not yet. Bernie is saying after the break. But—” I’m about to tell her about Bill, but stop myself. “I won’t keep you,” I say. “Just tell me—what are you reading?”

  Listening to her talk about her latest obsession has always, somehow, helped me, though I know it’s maybe not in the healthiest ways. I can relax into gratitude for not being captive to the same endless desire to search.

  “Jung,” my mother says. “Hang on, that’s the other line. It might be my boss.” There’s a click and the line goes hollow. She’s gone and when she’s back, she says, “Sorry—”

  “Jung—still?” I say.

  “Again. He says that the soul is mostly outside the body. Isn’t that strange?” Her voice has the same tensile quality I’m so used to, a wire passing overhead, between herself and something or someplace else invisible to me.

  No, it makes sense. I take a deep breath. “I don’t know,” I say at last. “I’ve often felt that the inside of me is hollow, waiting to be filled up with what the day brings to me. As if it’s something outside of me that gives birth to whatever’s inside of me. I’ve often been afraid that I’m nothing without these things, totally hollow. I wouldn’t exist.”

  There’s such a long pause on the other end that I say, “Hello?” and then she says, “Really? I never knew that. That’s so odd and interesting.”

  Then it feels like there is nothing to say. The landline has that porous qu
ality again, and none of the abrupt static of a cell line that could cut us off any minute. Suddenly I am desperate. “Hello? Hello? Mom?”

  “I’m still here,” she says.

  CHAPTER 12

  NOVEMBER 1977

  In early November, Mira’s father appears again. He says he’s been staying with friends while he “figures things out.” But he wants to see Mira. So the Sunday morning after Mira follows Maurice home, her father comes to pick her up. He wears a new long, stylish coat with a fur collar, and his cheeks are freshly shaved and raw-looking. His eyes are rimmed with red.

  She climbs in his car—a new silver Toyota. Inside, it smells of leather and air freshener. It strikes Mira that her father is a very neat man. She had not known this about him, exactly, or had not thought it in those terms: my father is a neat man. How has she not known this about him? For how long has he been living in her mother’s messy, upside-down world?

  They drive through the silent early-morning Brooklyn streets. The city has slid into a cold late fall. Dead leaves clog the gutters, and the dog shit on the sidewalk has started to freeze into hockey pucks that the boys at school will kick at the girls. The air has finally shed the burned smell. Now it slaps your face and freezes your lungs. The plastic bags in the trees whip in the wind like banners on ghost ships. She watches as a newspaper blows down the street, catching a man in the face.

  Her dad asks Mira if she has eaten. She shakes her head. She imagines that he will take her to a restaurant—maybe in Manhattan—where they will eat things she has never eaten before. Maybe quail eggs. Or snails.

  Instead, only a few blocks away, on Court Street, he parks the car in front of a storefront restaurant sandwiched between two gated jewelry stores displaying giant gold earrings, necklaces, and bracelets. A battered blue-lettered sign reads: D UT PAV LION. Despite living ten blocks or so from this stretch of commerce, Mira has never noticed the Donut Pavilion, much less been inside of it.