Girl Through Glass Page 9

  She pulls on her dad’s sleeve, but he doesn’t turn. He’s too involved with telling the lady something. The lady is laughing and he is waving his arms, and he knocks the lady’s hat to the side and she laughs harder. “Best restaurant north of Forty-second Street,” he’s saying.

  “I’m Judy,” the lady says, reaching out a tiny gloved hand to Mira’s dad. Her mother would hate this woman and her ready smile, her sparkly lip gloss, her pink fuzzy hat.

  The boy leans closer. His flushed cheeks are bright with the cold, his eyes are clear and thick-lashed. His dirty blond hair is thick and tousled—also blond, but different from Christopher’s honey-pale hair. Despite the cold air, his jacket is flung open, and his flannel shirt untucked. He looks like an athlete, someone who hits or kicks balls and someone who has lots of friends. She turns away.

  “My mom is hitting on your dad,” he whispers. “It’s so sick.”

  “Mira is a ballet dancer,” she hears her dad say. “She’ll be performing in their school production this winter.”

  “Oh really?” says Judy. “The Nutcracker? I love The Nutcracker. The tree, the party scene, the Dew Drop Fairy. I cry during her solo. I love ballet. It’s so beautiful.” She gives Mira another look. “Does she go to SAB?”

  “The Little Kirov,” says Mira.

  “Sam has some girls at SAB in his class.”

  “They’re snobs,” says the boy.

  “Sam, please, attitude . . .” She rolls her eyes. “My son is très sportif.”

  “What’s your sport of choice, son?” says her father. She’s never heard him call anyone “son” before. The boy looks at her dad. “Lacrosse.”

  This boy is too old, too handsome for her. She doesn’t know what to say. She says nothing. The clown has passed.

  The lady points down the avenue. “Here comes Mickey Mouse!” She looks at Mira and the boy as if they are six years old.

  “Mom, that’s Mighty Mouse.”

  She smiles again. Her voice lowers a notch and she hisses, “Attitude, please.”

  It’s true. Here is Mighty Mouse. His enormous smiling face comes toward them, and then stops. His ochre-colored, prosthetic-looking limbs, too thin for the gourd-shaped body, his giant smile. Now the balloon is right above her. The arms and legs wave and shudder. There are many creases in the fabric. Something is wrong, she knows it. The balloon handlers, men in beige space suits, have stopped. They twirl and spin their spools of string, their eyes raised to the sky.

  “Dad,” she says. “I think it’s going to fall.”

  “No it’s not, honey. It’s just the wind.”

  She sees people high above, their heads out the window, waving handkerchiefs. The balloon lists sharply to the side. Some of the spacemen unwind the string as quickly as they can; others wind it as quickly as they can. People are pulling their heads inside the windows. The crowd around them begins to shuffle.

  “Dad, it’s really going to fall.”

  “It’s okay, honey. They’re just adjusting it.”

  Mira covers her head with her arms.

  “Mira!” says her father.

  The boy is laughing. “Combat zone! That thing is gonna combust!”

  “Sam,” says the lady.

  She peeks out. The smiling moon face is now lurching over to the other side. She looks around: everyone is laughing. The black-haired, electrocuted clown is back again and he is pantomiming the serious spacemen, with their somber engineer’s faces, their longshoreman’s caps over their heads. He is cartwheeling, leaping, tugging on an invisible line, now he is falling. Like border guards that are trained not to see what is in front of them unless it violates the rules, the spacemen do not look at him, they do not blink.

  They right their ship through some effort of physical and mental communication that astounds Mira. And then they are walking again in unison.

  “See. It’s just the way it is. It’s constantly in motion. Don’t you remember this is the way it is? You weren’t scared last year.”

  Mira is amazed. It’s true: the trajectory of the balloon is not straight ahead but side to side down the long avenue. The spacemen are constantly running and spinning and frantically twirling their spools of string, eyes raised on the swollen body above them. She suddenly feels very tired.

  To Sam, she says, “Ha-ha.” Then she turns to her dad. “I’m cold.” Her father hands her the plaid blanket he has been carrying under his arm and she wraps it around herself. For the next two hours, the little children around her—a boy of five or six and his younger sister, both sneaker-clad and moon-faced—jump up and down and squeal. Do all children secretly feel, somewhere, what she does now? Has she always felt like this—and just not known what it was? Was there always this chug under her heart when her dad raises the camera and says “Smile”? Like that cloud of fatigue that descends over her eyes when she hears there’ll be games—oh no, not apple bobbing or sack racing again? What does it mean? She is glad there are no balloons made of The Wounded Prince—of the Flower Princess, of the lame Prince, of the Sorcerer in her fiery red. She intuits that these are creatures of the imagination that would lose their power if blown up into great, unwieldy balloons knocking against the concrete world. She huddles against her father as she watches the floats and balloons going by.

  When the parade is finally over, the pink-hatted lady turns to her dad and says, “All that fun and the cold air has really fired up my appetite. How about some lunch?” Her small eyes get smaller and focus on Mira, and her gloved fingers rest for a moment on Mira’s dad’s arm. She has sparkling diamonds in her ears and one gold ring over a gloved finger.

  CHAPTER 15

  DECEMBER 1977

  The next week, Mira finds Maurice waiting for her after rehearsal. He calls out to her from a parked car. At first she doesn’t know where his voice is coming from. Then she sees—a shiny, maroon Mercedes parked on the corner of Fifty-seventh Street. She pokes her head through the open window. It smells deeply of new leather. The seats are a dusky maroon (a few shades darker than the outside) and the dashboard is black.

  “It’s new,” he says. “My first car. They have all these devices now. It’s amazing.”

  Inside it looks like an old-fashioned carriage, like the kind he took her in that first time. He sits at the wheel on some kind of box covered with sheepskin. There is a lever—he holds it with his hand—connected to the steering column. Attached to the rearview mirror hangs a chain with a tiny glass swan that spirals, its translucence lit by all the lights of passing cars.

  “It’s got a lot of power. It handles divinely. The classic and the modern converge.” He laughs. “Do you like it, Mirabelle?”

  “Why do you call me that?”

  “I like to. Is it okay?”

  “Yes,” she says.

  “Would you like to get in?”

  She’s been warned, of course, against getting into the car with a stranger. But he is hardly a stranger by now, Maurice—her Maurice. She looks at Maurice’s pale hands, his delicate fingers. Gary, who now lives with them, more or less, is a stranger; Maurice, who owns such beautiful things, who cares only about beautiful things, is not. She feels she is learning something about the world.

  She goes around to the street side and gets in. She runs her fingers along the smooth cool leather of the dashboard, the slick, stippled leather of the seat that squeaks softly beneath her. Under the car’s soft skin, she can feel its metal body. She remembers the cool, strange quiet of his apartment, in which all noises of the city subsided and the past sprang up, rich and alive: the dim rooms, the inert smells of luxury, underneath it, an old familiar scent of apples and cinnamon, and beneath even that, something deeper and stranger. She recalls the gallery of black-and-white photos of famous dancers from the past, all of whose names he knew, and then, Pavlova’s frayed tiny shoe. She could almost hear it, the shoe, lit from above, beating in the center. All sounds outside fade.

  She feels a rush of good feeling for this man, Maurice,
her friend.

  A strange spell comes over her; she feels no need to speak. She feels like she and Maurice are in a bubble, present only as watchers. It is powerful. They sit in the dark in the miasma of chemicals and leather without talking for some time. People pass on one side, cars on the other. Being inside the car reminds her of his apartment.

  “I’m scared,” she says finally.

  “Oh!” he says. “Of what?”

  “I don’t know.” She watches the cars. The lights of the cars streak by. On her right, the ceaseless sidewalk parade continues.

  Then the strange, now familiar laugh: a rusty laugh with high and low sounds, like an ancient language shouted in the hall of a mausoleum. She is growing to trust him; he appears, of all the adults in her life, to be the only one who tells her the truth—perhaps the only one who knows it.

  “Let me tell you something. Do you know why my legs are like this?”

  “No.”

  “I had polio. When I was about your age I had polio. I was in an iron lung for eight months. When I got out I couldn’t walk right.”

  “Oh.”

  “Do you know what an iron lung is?”

  She shakes her head. She does not look at him. She does not want reasons. She does not want him to explain anything about himself to her.

  “It’s a giant machine that breathes for you. There were others in my room in their own machines. They often left the lights out, even in the daytime. When I lay in that darkness in that hospital, in that machine, I felt scared at first. I felt panic. I felt like I was dying. I heard the breathing of others around me, but I couldn’t see them. After a while, I realized I wasn’t dying. I was afraid. I was afraid of the dark. After more time, I knew I wasn’t going to die and I began to like the dark. I thought of it as my friend. It gave me cover, the cover of invisibility.

  “You know, sometimes I sit in the dark and watch you dance in my mind’s eye.” He turns on the small overhead light above them. It lights one side of his face. He gives her his stones-on-a-ledge smile. “If you are not afraid of the dark, you will fear nothing and no one. Most people are afraid. You can take cover there. You can speak from it, move from it. They won’t find you there. They won’t even look there,” he says. “Listen.” He turns off the light again. The night envelops them.

  “What?”

  “Shhh.”

  “What?”

  “Shhh.”

  “I can hear it,” he says. “Something’s coming. Something big.”

  She does hear it—a suspension of all noise. In the middle of the tumultuous city—beeps, blares, sirens—all recede. For a few seconds, there is in the midst of Seventh Avenue evening rush hour, a total, profound silence.

  “I’ve felt it since I was your age. Do you hear it?”

  “Yes.”

  And she did.

  “The angels are passing,” he says. He takes down the glittering swan ornament attached to the mirror. “You are going to be wonderful. I am so proud.” He looks at her, feline, glowing. She wants to be held like a bird in his hands, eaten, loved, devoured. She closes her eyes.

  “You will come to see me perform as Flower Princess, right? Are you coming with anyone?”

  “Ah,” he says. “Just my memories and my dreams.” He hands her the heavy glass ornament. “This belonged to my mother. Beat your wings. Fly into the night. The dark will always get us. Make it your friend. Envelop it. Let it envelop you. If the dark is coming, make it your friend.”

  And then, just like that, suddenly, it’s over. The crush of sounds returns: the flux of traffic, the wheezing of buses passing, the clatter of foot traffic. Just then, someone thumps the car’s roof. A man gesturing at something they can’t see. His face is twisted in anger. He shouts, “Move your car, bozo! You’re in a no-standing zone!”

  “Ah, yes,” he says and smiles. “They are never far behind.” He hands her a card that she puts in her pocket. “Keep this,” he says. “It may come in handy.”

  Later, when she takes it out in the garish fluorescent lights of the subway, she’ll read: FOR MY MIRABELLE—MAURICE DUPONT, BALLETOMANE, and a phone number.

  “You must go.” Maurice leans to one side and adjusts the lever that controls the pedal for his bad leg. Reluctantly, Mira climbs out.

  “Mirabelle.” He calls her back over to the window one more time. “You will be wonderful. I can’t wait! A star is only a star because it burns brightly in the dark night. Against the dark night. At home in the dark night.”

  Then he turns the ignition and she steps back. She watches from the well-lit sidewalk as the sleek black car bucks and shoots down Seventh Avenue.

  BLACKOUT

  CHAPTER 16

  PRESENT

  The next morning, I know what I have to do. I find Bernadith in her office, in Birkenstocks, her feet planted firmly on the floor, and a new bobbed haircut. She seems relaxed, pleased to see me. She assumes I’ve come about the Pell, and after she has me sit, she reaffirms that they will not have a decision until after spring break. I decide not to mention Bill and his application.

  “What happened to your hand?” she asks.

  “Just a cut.” I examine my hand. My homemade bandage is already ratty-looking and stained, which gives me a strange satisfaction. “It’s not as bad as it looks,” I say. My voice wants to rise into the squeaky registers. I give her what I hope is a disarming smile.

  “Ah,” she says. I can’t tell if her expression is bemused or concerned. “You have to take care of yourself. None of us are getting any younger.”

  “Yes, I know, Bernadith.” I’m embarrassed to find myself slapping my knees a few times like Bill had done with me, a blunt-edged cudgel for a finesse moment if there ever was one. “Bernadith,” I say. “Unfortunately—there’s been an indiscretion.”

  She looks at me with what I can only say is—this is clear, even without my contacts—alarm. “Are you talking about yourself?”

  I nod. “A student.”

  “How many times?”

  “Once only.”

  She clicks something on her computer. Her face has grown more voluminous and is dangerously close to purple now. Something twitches near her eye. She sits back. “I know how to dig up something if it’s there. There was nothing on your record. Not a smudge—”

  I examine my hand. “I am disappointed in myself—beyond disappointed.” As I say this, I realize how true it is. My hand throbs. Suddenly tears well up behind my glasses.

  “I know this may affect my chances for the Pell—” I add.

  “Forget the Pell. This is bigger than that.” Her face has gone from beet-colored to pale. “I like you, Kate. But I don’t understand you.” Some timer goes off on her computer. She clicks the mouse a few times and waddles over to her window. Her office is on the ground floor and looks out into an underused courtyard. Concrete benches no one ever sits on, patches of sparse grass, and some spidery indistinct-looking bushes around the edges. Birds flit back and forth from bush to barren bush. On one of these bushes by her window some sort of creeping berries, like pox.

  I have to twist around to see her. “I’m sorry,” I say.

  My vision is blurring even more. I take off my glasses. “I really, really want this job,” I say, choking on my words. How could I have fucked up like this? I dab at my eyes with my bandaged hand.

  She turns to me, her back against the window. Her face has resumed its normal color. Somehow I can see it better now, even through my tears. Her mouth softens. It’s not a smile, far from it, but something has loosened. Then the ghost of a true smile emerges. I can’t tell if its source is kindness, bemusement, or irony. This is by far the most intimate time I have ever spent with her. Previously, she had been like pretty much every boss I’ve ever had—friendly and remote in equal degrees—concerned most of all with efficiency and bureaucratic issues.

  “Kate,” she says. “I know the life of a visiting professor is not easy. I know the life of a woman alone is not easy. I know
sometimes it’s all just too much—the loneliness, the work, the keeping up. . . .”

  “I make no excuses for my behavior.”

  “Do you like teaching?” she asks suddenly.

  I remember the time, after I followed him through the streets of New York City, when Maurice asked me if I wanted to be a dancer. I remember the energy of that moment, the knowing that I was at a crossroads. That what I answered meant something. Meant everything. Then the yes had rushed out of me, the force of it surprising myself. I hadn’t known the force of my own desire. Now I know I will say yes again, but I tell myself to wait a beat. I think of walking through a circle of students, their faces on me, pulling ideas out of them, their faces opening at the dawning of their own knowledge. Building castles in the air. I let the “yes” out slowly, almost reluctantly, as if saying this truth will bring some new curse on me.

  Something quizzical and sly comes into her face. She glances over at her office door, which I closed on entering. “You know, there are procedures for these things.” She looks away. “But it’s a tenuous situation. As you know, this is not perhaps the best time to be telling me this—officially.”

  I understand that in the midst of my truth telling, she is giving me a chance to preserve my secret. She is offering me a way out. “Your evaluations are excellent, your scholarship is the kind that I really want to support. . . .” She rubs her hands and claps suddenly. “Will he report it?”

  “She,” I say.

  She gives me a long look. “She then.”

  “She hasn’t been back to class.”

  “Talk to her. You have the chance to—to—make it right.” Now she looks fierce and satisfied. As if we’ve concluded a difficult business meeting.

  I try out a smile, and she returns it. “I’m hoping to go to New York for spring break,” I say. “I’m thinking of doing an article about Bronislava Nijinska.”

  “By all means,” she says, and smiles more brightly. I see that she feels good, condemning me to further attempts at self-mastery.