That morning, she’d woken fast from a dream about the Fire Eater their father took them to see at the spring carnival when they were very small. The way the woman gripped the bluing torch, how the flames seemed to draw up her throat, her long face, her startled eyes.
The dream was still in her, more or less, still fluttering her eyes, and when she rose from the table to turn off the gas burner, she waited three, four, five seconds to see the blue flame flicker and disappear.
Marie, she thought suddenly. All these months later and she still expected to turn and see Marie, face pleated with sleep, stumbling toward her, empty mug outstretched.
Tea in hand, Dara lowered herself back into her chair, then stretched her torso forward, arms out, her head dropping lower and lower, her arms reaching down her calves, grabbing her ankles, all the blood joining. All the nerves radiating.
We have a different relationship to pain, their mother used to say. It’s our friend, our lover.
When you wake up and the pain is gone, do you know what that means?
What, they’d ask every time.
You’re no longer a dancer.
* * *
*
Dara,” Charlie called from upstairs, from their mother’s claw-footed tub, “aren’t you late?”
“No,” Dara replied. Never, she wanted to add, reaching to fill her thermos, tea splashing, her joints aching as ever, the only way, some mornings, she knew she was alive.
* * *
*
Madame Durant!” called out a boy’s voice, just breaking. “Is it going to be today?”
It was Saturday and not even seven thirty. The front door of the Durant School of Dance wouldn’t open for another half hour, but the parking lot was already beginning to fill when Dara arrived, legs vibrating, face burning deliriously from her bracing walk to work.
“Madame Durant!” the voice came again.
Dara turned as the car approached, a porpoise-gray sedan with tinted windows.
Inside, nestled beside his father, was earnest, sloe-eyed, fourteen-year-old Corbin Lesterio, his hair still shower-wet, slicked back like a silent movie actor, or a gangster. “Madame Durant, is it going to be today? The cast announcement?”
“Yes,” Dara said, moving past the car, hiding a faint smile at his earnestness, so raw and plain. She picked up her pace, feeling their eyes on her. Corbin, one of the six boys to the one hundred twenty-two girls in the school, didn’t know it yet, but they’d chosen him as this year’s Nutcracker Prince. Or, rather, Dara had. Charlie hadn’t been feeling well and left auditions early, and Marie never interfered in casting, left it always to Dara, who knew it could only be Corbin, with his impossibly long arms and long, lovely neck.
“Madame Durant! Madame!” came other voices, from other idling cars, heaters churning and windows fogging, of eager parents, a dozen mothers, their early morning hair scraped up into clips, their daughters’ buns bobbing beside them, their energy high and frantic. “Madame! Madame!” Their excitement as exhausting as their desperation.
The energy—the constant buzzing of anxiety and distress, of hunger and self-critique—was always high at the Durant School, but today it was much higher.
It was inevitable. It happened every year at this time, the chill in the air, the twinkle in all the girls’ eyes, their arms high in fifth position.
It was Nutcracker season.
* * *
*
A necessary evil, The Nutcracker was.
It took over everything. Eight weeks of auditions, in-class rehearsals, on-site rehearsals, costume fittings, and final dress rehearsals with their partner, the Mes Filles Ballet Company led by Madame Sylvie—all leading up to sixteen live performances over two weeks at the Francis J. Ballenger Performing Arts Center, a steel-and-glass eyesore that transformed magically on December nights into a glowing gift box wrapped in dozens of yards of red-velvet ribbon.
Eight weeks of stress headaches and fainting and nervous stomachs. Eight weeks of injuries and near injuries, jumper’s knee and growth spurts, bloody blisters and heel spurs.
All of it hidden behind the glitter and cheap satin, the ruffles and netting and tulle, the three dozen wigs, powdered, sprayed, gilded, the backstage pinboard of faux mustaches for the toy soldiers, the wall cubby of caved-in rodent heads for the battle against the Mouse King. And all of it hidden again beneath thirty pounds of flame-retardant paper snow recycled every performance or, in the old days, shredded plastic-bag snow that got stuck in your eyelashes, that flew in your mouth, and at the end of every night, the crew rolled big magnets across the stage to pull out the fallen hairpins.
Most of all, it was eight weeks of tears.
The Nutcracker. The story was so simple, a child’s story, but full of mystery and pain. At her family’s holiday party, a young girl named Clara finds herself transfixed by her dark and charismatic godfather, Drosselmeier. He gives her a miniature man, a Nutcracker doll she sneaks into bed with her, dreaming him into a young man, a fantasy lover who ushers her into a dream world of unimaginable splendor. And, at ballet’s end, she rides off with him on a sleigh into the deep, distant forest. The end of girlhood and the furtive entry into the dark beyond.
All the girls wanted to be Clara, of course. Clara was the star. There were crying jags and stiff upper lips and silent sobs among the dozens forced to play one of many Party Girls, Angels, Candy Canes. They wanted to wear Clara’s stiff white party dress, her flowing white nightgown. They wanted to hold the grinning Nutcracker doll like a scepter.
This yearning, so deep among the young girls, was like money in the bank.
Every year, their fall enrollment increased twenty percent because of all these girls wanting to be Clara. Soon after, their winter enrollment increased another ten percent from girls in the audience who fell in love with the tutus and magic.
Never, their mother used to say, that vaguely French frisson in her voice as she collected the fees, do I feel more American.
Privately, their mother confided she never cared much for Clara. She never does anything, a little dormouse of a thing. And she would read to them the original story, which was much darker, the little girl so much more interesting, intense. And her name in the story was not Clara, which means bright and clear, their mother explained, but Marie, which means rebellious.
That’s me! Marie used to say every time their mother turned to the first page.
Dara’s name, alas, had no such story. Their mother could never remember how she picked it, only that it sounded right.
The irony, their mother told Dara once, is you’re the Marie.
* * *
*
Madame Durant!” squeaked a voice, one of the nine-year-olds, as Dara moved past them all and in the front door of the building. “Madame Durant, who will be Clara? Who?”
Because today was not only one of those nerve-shredding Nutcracker season days but, short of opening night, it was the day. The cast announcements when everyone would find out what Dara had decided the night before. Who would be their Clara, their Prince, their mechanical dolls, their harlequins, their itty-bitty bonbons and wispy little snowflakes.
“I can barely stand it!” Chlo? Lin lisped, clutching at one of her leg warmers, sliding down her shin as she ran. “If I have to wait any longer I’ll die!”
The door shutting behind her, Dara took a breath.
But each step Dara took up the staircase throbbed with that same feeling, that jittery energy.
Or, as it turned out, it throbbed with Marie.
* * *
*
BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!
The Durant School of Dance was full of noise, a sharp, focused banging that felt like a nail gun at Dara’s temple.
BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!
It was a sound Dara knew well. She’d heard it thousands of times, ever since her sister was ten years old and their mother first raised her up on her preternaturally tapered toes. You, my dear, were made for en pointe.
“Sister, dear sister,” Dara called out.
And there she was, Marie, face flushed, legs spread on the floor of Studio A, taking their father’s rust-red claw hammer to a new pair of pointe shoes.