The Cranes Dance (26 page)

But Marius has resisted this trend. So our individual donors have to be content with the usual perks: a private bar at the theater, the best seats, meet-the-dancers dinners, invitations to rehearsals, etc., etc. There’s a whole tiered system of Friendship with the company. As in life, some friendships are more meaningful than others.

And some of them are real friendships. I spotted Wendy Griston Hedges sitting in the third row, wearing what looked like a brown cloche hat. I waved. She waved. I hadn’t seen her in a while, we’d missed a couple of our first-Monday teas. In January she was away, visiting her sister, and in February we were just getting back from tour, and this month …

That’s when I realized that the first Monday of this month was … yesterday. Did she send me an invitation? Yes, she did. I remember looking at it. Did I even open it? No. No, that was the day I found the numbers under Gwen’s bed. I couldn’t remember what I did with Wendy’s letter.

Class hadn’t started yet, so I quickly ran down the steps by
the side of the orchestra pit and over to Wendy, smiling and waving in a general way to other donors.

Wendy is extremely shy, and not very physically demonstrative, so we never hug or kiss cheeks or anything like that. She was sitting at the end of a row, and I sat down on my heels in the aisle, holding on to the armrest.

“Hello,” Wendy said.

Once I was next to her, I saw that it wasn’t a brown cloche hat.

“Wendy, your haircut is fabulous!” I told her. I’d gotten used to the cranberry frizz, and our relationship is such that I would never have suggested anything different to her, but it was an incredible improvement. Even her skin, normally quite dry and chalk-ish, was shining with a pearly glow.

Wendy patted her hair self-consciously.

“Oh,” she said, with an almost girlish giggle. “Oh, well, thank you.”

She turned to the woman next to her, a beautiful black woman, ageless except for the gray in her dreadlocks.

“Kate, this is my friend Karine,” she said.

I reached across Wendy and shook hands with Karine. My hand disappeared into her giant one. Karine had a West Indian accent. Wendy watched us, alert, smiling nervously. The hallmarks of someone introducing a loved one.

Wendy in love? There definitely was something … almost bridal about her.

“Wendy, I feel terrible,” I said in a rush. “Monday. It’s been … I got injured and this season has been and I … I moved. My boyfriend and I—”

“You’re injured?” she interrupted. “Are you okay?”

“Oh fine, yes fine. But listen, Monday. I’m so sorry. Can we do this coming Monday?” I was almost pleading, as it suddenly did seem very important that I see Wendy.

Wendy turned a questioning face to Karine.

“Monday?” Wendy asked. “Is that … do we …?” She put her hand on top of Karine’s. Despite Wendy’s general glow and fetching new do, her hands looked very old and crabbed. I was glad that she was with someone who didn’t mind, if that’s what was going on.

“Or … whenever, really,” I said. “I mean … we can pick another time or …”

“Monday will be just fine,” Karine said to me. “Not too early though, I think.”

“Oh good.” Wendy beamed. “That will be lovely.”

“Oh good!” I said, although I was a little concerned now about the relationship. Had Wendy fallen prey to some sort of lesbian heiress hunter? “Good!”

“We’ll talk then,” Wendy said.

“Yes. Okay. It’s so good to see you.”

“It’s good to see
you
, Kate.”

I vaulted back up the stairs and took my place at the barre. Marius strode onto the stage and welcomed our guests charmingly. We applauded them. Class started. My Vicodin kicked in and I gulped water in between combinations like mad, trying to get rid of the dry-gum feeling. The mood of the company was good, Marius was making his little jokes, people were smiling, showing off a bit. Everyone was doing a stage version of themselves, including me. This is the public version of our lives. Yes, it’s incredibly hard, taxing, draining. Yes, we are super dedicated.
But we love what we do. We wouldn’t be here otherwise. And we support one another. It’s a family. And you, lovely well-dressed people in the front rows, you are our generous aunts and uncles, our doting grandparents. You love us. We love you. Especially when you watch. You are our mirrors, reflecting magnificence.

I think the Vicodin I got from Stefan yesterday is stronger than what Gwen had. I felt a little too high. It was almost fun.

“Snazzy,” I said to Roger, as we waited to go across on the diagonal.

“What?”

“I feel snazzy.” I snapped my fingers. “You know. My mojo. I feel it.”

“Right on,” said Roger. “Or whatever.”

I zip-zip-zipped across the stage, confident, a little daring, sparkling like a Venetian glass vegetable. I can’t believe I’ve been performing on this shit. It’s a miracle I haven’t tipped off the stage and into the woodwinds. Impaled myself on a bassoon.

After class, I went to Wardrobe, and Fiona pulled my
Leaves
costume off the rack.

“While I have you here,” she said. “Let’s see where we are with the
Look At Me
dress.” She disappeared into the racks and I stripped off all my junk and stood in my tights and pointe shoes, trying to work a little saliva into my gums. My neck was starting to throb a little. People filtered in and out, grabbing costumes, chattering. I closed my eyes.

“Hey.” It was Mara, prodding me on my shoulder.

“Oh hey. Hey!”

Mara had her
Symphony in Three Movements
costume on. Well, it’s not really much of a costume,
Symphony in Three
Movements
being prototypical Balanchine modernism so the dancers just wear pale tights and leotards with a little belt around the waist. Mara’s leotard is white.

“You don’t have a straightening iron, do you?” Mara asked. “The one in the Hair Room is broken and we’re supposed to have high ponytails. It looks like I’ve got a sheep on my head.” She pointed to her curls.

“There was a character in one of the
Oz
books,” I told her, “who was like, an evil princess. And she wore the same thing every day. But she had a whole room full of different heads. She collected them. And so when she wanted to look different, she just changed her head.”

Mara stared at me. I guess I did look a little crazed, standing there naked holding on to my boobs, pouring sweat and gabbling away.

“Tamara does, I think,” I said. “Have a straightening iron. Check my dressing room.”

Fiona emerged with a red cocktail-style dress, glittering with beading, and shook it at me.

“It’s not done,” she said, grabbing pins.

I watched Mara leave. She seemed a little less friendly than normal. I’ve been neglecting her too. I stepped into the dress and Fiona started fussing with the fit.

“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.”