Avalanche Dance (12 page)

Automatically Gwen reached for her cane. She gripped it in both hands. “It’s not
when
. It’s
if.”

“What do you mean?” Carley asked.

“My leg still hurts. It’s not getting any better.”

“But we heard you were okay.” Susie looked puzzled. “Not hurt at all.”

“That’s what the doctor said. What the X-rays and MRI showed. No injury. Nothing.”

“Well, if nothing showed up, it can’t be that bad, right?” Carley said.

Gwen didn’t answer.

Susie gave her a sympathetic look. “Whatever it is, it’ll probably get better soon.”

Gwen shook her head. “I can’t dance on this leg.” She forced herself to go on. “I don’t know if I can dance anymore.”

There was a stunned silence. In the quiet, Gwen realized that she didn’t hear the rake. In the next moment, the scratching
resumed, and Carley blurted, “But Gwen! You can’t stop dancing! That would be so terrible!”

“Carley!” Susie scolded, glancing at Gwen.

Carley’s face turned red. “Sorry, Gwen, I didn’t mean –”

“It’s probably just a muscle tear,” Janelle interrupted. “I remember when I tore my hamstring – I was doing the splits and went too far. Aah, that hurt! I had to do icing and physio and stretching for months, and it took forever to get better. But it finally did. And it’s fine now.” She wagged her finger. “But you can’t just sit around, Gwen. That’s the worst thing. Then you get scar tissue, and then it might really not get better –”

Gwen’s eyes filled.

“Janelle!” Susie snapped. “Can’t you see you’re making her feel worse?”

“Sorry,” Janelle muttered. “I was just trying to help.”

Susie got up and, leaning over, hugged Gwen. Gwen could feel the press of Susie’s shoulder against her face, could smell chocolate and a fruity shampoo. She sat rigid, wishing Susie would let go.

Finally she did. She walked over to the coffee table and held up the tray. “Another brownie, anybody? There’s loads. Janelle? Gwen, you haven’t even eaten yours.”

Gwen looked guiltily at her half-eaten brownie. “I will, Susie. Really. And you could leave some for Percy. He’d love that.”

“Okay,” Susie said, and went off to the kitchen to clean up. Carley and Janelle cleared the plates and glasses.

Soon after, the three girls came back into the living room to say good-bye. Giving Gwen another hug, Susie whispered, “You’ll be fine, Gwen. You’ll see. Everything’s going to be fine.”

No, it won’t!
Gwen wanted to shout.
You don’t know anything about it, so why don’t you just shut up?

Immediately she felt ashamed. Susie was just trying to be kind. They all were. It was just – it was just that she couldn’t stand it. What was wrong with her, that she couldn’t let her friends be nice? That she couldn’t wait until they left?

She forced herself to say, “I know. Thanks.”

As soon as they were gone, she turned her chair back to face the window. She fell into it, letting her gaze drift to the far, flat horizon. Letting her mind go blank.

I hang up the rake in the toolshed. Then I push the wheelbarrow to one of the piles of leaves and twigs and dead grass. I load in the debris and dump it on the compost pile near the edge of the property.

As I head back to the house to pick up the next pile, Susie, Carley, and Janelle come out. My first thought is to hide. I hear Janelle’s words in my head.
Not enough punishment … I feel sorry for you, having to have her around
. I imagine the self-righteous look she probably had on her pointy little face when she said that.

Forget hiding.

“Hey, girls.” I flutter my fingers in greeting.

They turn. Their faces turn red. Especially Janelle’s.

“Just doing my punishment here,” I say cheerfully.

Janelle looks mortified. Good.

“Uh … hi, Molly, how’s it going?” Carley asks. At least she has the decency to talk to me.

“Just great, thanks.”

I roll past them to the next pile. I don’t know what I’m trying to prove. They think I’m shameful, just like everybody else in Thor Falls. Showing them up isn’t going to change that. But it makes me feel better, letting them know I heard. Keeps things real.

I tune out their nervous whispers. I don’t even turn around as they walk away.

Then I think about what else I heard.

I don’t know if I can dance anymore
.

What the hell is that about? Gwen doesn’t look hurt that bad to me. Granted, I haven’t gotten close enough to her to really see, and she
is
using a cane. But I can’t believe she’s injured so badly that she’d have to stop dancing.

And that idiot, Susie, telling her everything was going be okay. What kind of bullshit is that? If Gwen had to give up dancing, nothing would be okay ever again.

Gwen stop dancing
. The thought sends a chill down my back. She couldn’t. She’d die.

I know it’s none of my business, but I go inside anyway, into the living room. Gwen is sitting in her usual position, staring
out the window. She doesn’t turn, but I know she knows I’m there. I wait.

Finally she turns. “What?”

“Did you mean it?”

“Did I mean what?”

“That you couldn’t dance?”

She turns pale. “What do you care?”

“I don’t know, I just –”

“Butt out, Molly.”

“But Gwen –”

“Butt. Out.”

I don’t need to be told again. I go outside. I scoop up the rest of the piles and cart them away, slamming the wheelbarrow into the wooden boards framing the compost pile.

I
t had been two weeks since the avalanche. Gwen knew because, although she tried to block out the memory, a calendar in her head marked off the days. Two weeks since her father had been hurt. Two weeks since she had spoken to him. Two weeks of using a cane and trying not to think about Dancemakers.

Today it was raining. Gwen sat in her chair and watched it come down. It wasn’t one of those dramatic storms but rather a steady, unrelenting rain, the stream of drops so fine that you couldn’t be sure it was raining at all – except for the trickles of water rolling off the shiny salal leaves.

She heard a car roll up on the gravel, a car door slam, then a tap on the kitchen door. Her mother was in there – she had returned from Vancouver the day before; Gwen’s father had had his spleen out; the doctors were still doing tests to see if he was going to have to lose a kidney as well – so Gwen let her answer it. There was the murmur of voices. Gwen couldn’t make out who it was. Probably another neighbor with a pot of soup.

A moment later a familiar voice called out, “Gwen?”

She turned. “Mrs. Truman!” Heat flooded into her cheeks. This was the visit she’d been dreading.

Mrs. Truman hurried over. She gathered Gwen in her arms. “Oh, Gwen, my dear!”

Gwen resisted for a moment, but then gave herself over to the hug.

“How I’ve missed you!” Mrs. Truman said.

Not as much as I’ve missed you
, Gwen thought, tears stinging her eyes.

Mrs. Truman helped Gwen turn her chair, then pulled up a chair to face hers. As they moved the easy chair, the cane clattered to the floor.

Mrs. Truman handed it to her. “So you’re still using that?”

Gwen nodded.

“Is your leg any better?”

“Not really.”

Mrs. Truman leaned forward. “What is it, Gwen? Do you know what the matter is?”

Gwen shook her head. “No one knows. It doesn’t show up on any tests. It just hurts.”

“Do you mind if I have a look?”

When Gwen shook her head, Mrs. Truman knelt beside her. Gwen pulled up her pant leg, and her teacher started gently feeling her leg, beginning at the ankle and working up.

Gwen looked down at the top of Mrs. Truman’s head, at her
frizzy black hair escaping from the ponytail, and marveled, as she always did, at her carriage. There was something so solid, so strong, in the way Mrs. Truman held herself. Even now, in this awkward position, kneeling on the floor and twisting her head to look up at Gwen, down at her leg, up and down, her back was straight, her neck long.

A strong core, dancers called it. Yet Mrs. Truman was graceful, too, and limber, and she danced with such passion that it made Gwen want to climb inside her body and be carried along.

Twice a week she saw Mrs. Truman dance in class as she demonstrated movements and combinations, taught choreography, or showed her students the quality she wanted: an elastic fluidity, one movement bouncing into the next; or a strong jazz hand with fingers spread; or the surrender of a head giving in to gravity and pulling the torso into a downward swing.

And she had a lovely, evocative way of using vocal sounds to convey what she wanted, too. “Unh!” she’d say, going into a contraction. Or “ba-da-da-laaaa
…”
to show the quality of a quick
pas de bourrée
followed by a wide lunge to second position.

Carley always laughed at these funny sounds, and Janelle rolled her eyes as if it was mortifying to have a dance teacher who spoke gibberish. But Gwen knew exactly what Mrs. Truman meant. “Unh”
was
a contraction. “Ba-da-da”
was
the rhythm of a
pas de bourrée
. She loved the imaginativeness of the language Mrs. Truman used, the way she nailed the feeling she wanted with both body and voice.

But all of these – the short bursts when Mrs. Truman demonstrated dance moves to the class, accompanied by her made-up sounds – were only snippets. Gwen had wanted to see her
dance
. She’d gotten her wish the year before.

Mrs. Truman had invited several friends to perform with her at the arts center in Norse River. They came from Vancouver, Seattle, Banff. They had all done their graduate school training together, and they revived some of the dances they’d learned there.

The other dancers – three women and two men – were gifted, but it was Mrs. Truman whom Gwen couldn’t take her eyes from. Of course she danced beautifully, finishing her pirouettes in exactly the right spot, landing her leaps with barely a sound, but it was more than that. With every stretched arm, the movement seemed to go on beyond her fingertips. Every contraction was a complete rounding of her back, a hollowing out of her front. Every rise was suspended … suspended … until, at the last possible moment, it fell into the next movement. She gave herself over completely to the dance. She
was
the dance.

Gwen remembered being transfixed. She remembered thinking,
That’s exactly how I want to dance
.

But now …

Mrs. Truman completed her examination and stood up. “I’m mystified, Gwen. I don’t see or feel anything. Will you try a few things with me?”

“Sure.” She pushed herself up.

Mrs. Truman nodded. “Do a plié.”

Gwen stood in first position and bent her knees. “Ow.”

“That hurts?”

“Yeah.”

“How about in parallel?”

Gwen turned her feet in and repeated the movement. “That too.”

Mrs. Truman shook her head. “Try a
relevé.”

Gwen rose onto her toes. She wobbled and fell toward the left. Mrs. Truman caught her.

“Whoa! It hurts just to rise? Are you sure?”

“Yes!”

“Just on the right?”

“Yes.”

“How about
tendu?
Do it with me. And out, two, three, four –”

Gwen started extending her right foot forward along the floor. She stopped partway. “I can’t.”

“Come on, Gwen, it’s just a little
tendu.”

“I can’t! It hurts! Why doesn’t anybody believe me?”

She threw herself back in her chair and covered her face with her hands. There was a silence. She felt Mrs. Truman’s hand on her knee. Gwen lowered her hands.

“I’m sorry, Gwen. I do believe you. It’s just that it’s so strange. There’s no explanation.”

Gwen shrugged.

“It must be so frustrating,” Mrs. Truman said.

“It is.”

“So, what have you tried? Ice? Heat?”

Gwen shook her head.

“Physio? Massage?”

Another shake.

“Nothing? But Gwen, you can’t just sit around. You must try something. I can recommend a good physiotherapist. She’s done wonders for me, and I’m sure –”

“It won’t help,” Gwen said in a low voice.

“Nonsense. There’s plenty you can do to help yourself heal. And we’ve got to get you back. The year-end recital is coming up, the Dancemakers deadline is only a few weeks away –”

“I’m not applying.”

“What!”

Tears stung. “Mrs. Truman, I can’t dance.”

Mrs. Truman gave her a piercing look. “This isn’t like you, Gwen. You – of all people – to just sit there and say ‘I can’t’! The Gwen I know would be working like the devil to get better, not giving up.”

Gwen pounded her fists on her thighs. “I don’t care. I can’t dance! I’m weak. I fall over – you saw! Whatever I do, it hurts. It’s no use!”

There was a silence. Mrs. Truman looked at her for a long moment. Then she said gently, “Gwen … your mom told me what the doctor said … about stress …”

“I’m not making it up!”

“I didn’t say you were. But I can see that you’re down. Maybe it would be good for you to talk to someone.”

“No!”

“But you could get help –”

Gwen shook her head.

“Counseling, support –”

“No.”

Mrs. Truman regarded her. She seemed about to say something else, but checked herself. Instead she leaned forward and kissed Gwen on the cheek. “All right, then. Feel better, sweetheart.”

She left.

Gwen turned back to the window, hooked the cane over the arm of her chair, settled back into the cushion. She heard the murmur of Mrs. Truman and her mother talking, no doubt discussing what a mess she was, trying to figure out what to do about her. She heard the door open and close, the car start up and drive away.

It was still raining.

A
few days after Gwen told me to butt out, I show up for my work stint. I’m still pissed off. I just won’t talk to her, that’s all. She’ll bloody well get her wish.

Today is another of Cal’s checkup days. When he arrives, we go into the kitchen. Bridget shows him the form, line after line filled out, hour after hour piling up. I realize with surprise that I’m almost done.