Bunheads (8 page)

At this point I can wear the shoes, but I still have to break in the demi-pointe. When I hear the glue crunching, I know I’m getting close. And as the water dries on the satin, the shoes mold to my feet. The goal is to feel as if the shoe is just an extension of your foot.

“I’ve got a dozen pairs,” I tell Marco, “and Daisy has…”

“Twenty,” she says. To me she whispers, “I feel so greedy!”

Marco writes this information down in his ledger and smiles. “Good luck tonight,” he says.

We thank him, and then I hurry upstairs to the Green Room to put on Lottie’s costume. Helga, who is the meanest of the Green Room dressers, is practically seething as she grips Lottie’s tutu in her hand.

“You should have come in earlier,” she says in her thick Long Island accent. “You’re on in two minutes.”

This isn’t even close to true. Helga always exaggerates—she seems to want to instill panic in us, as if we weren’t already high-strung enough.

“Jesus, Hannah. I can barely close this!” she mutters as she struggles to fasten the hooks on the bodice. “Ech! How many more performances left? I think we’ll have to take this out.”

Lottie has a second-degree ankle sprain, so the part is mine for the last few performances of the season. “I asked Maria to take it out last week,” I say, looking worriedly at myself in the mirror. My breasts are squashed inside the bodice.

Laura—another dresser and a friend of mine—puts a hand on my shoulder. “You look beautiful, Hannah,” she says, smiling at me. “I can sew some elastic into it. I think that would make it more comfortable for you.”

I smile back gratefully and then leave the room with Lottie’s costume hugging my every curve. I know that a female dancer should have the body of an adolescent male: long, lean limbs; narrow hips; a flat chest. And I know that the way we look is considered a reflection of our work ethic and our devotion to our craft. But there’s nothing I can do about it tonight.

I hurry backstage, where burly stagehands are carrying ladders, adjusting lighting equipment, and checking the rigging on the scrims while Christine goes over the spot sequence on her headset. There are dancers here and there—slouching on tall stools, leaning on steel ballet barres, or rolling out their muscles on Styrofoam cylinders or tennis balls on the floor. Like mine, their faces are caked with thick makeup, and their hair is pulled back tight and shellacked with hair spray.

I warm up at the barre until my muscles burn and sweat beads on my forehead. I pause to sew my ribbons and then step into the rosin box. I breathe deeply and concentrate on the choreography to come. I
love
dancing Lottie’s part. I love having the chance to show Otto what I’m capable of, and not just as a part of a swirling mass of corps dancers.

I want to feel calm, but my heart flutters lightly and quickly in my chest. I’m not nervous, I tell myself; I’m just excited.

I relish the moment before the curtain rises, when the audience is waiting. In that moment, time seems to slow down, and it’s as if the whole world is hushed. I stand alone in the wing and feel the soft velvet of the curtain against my skin. I imagine the conductor raising his baton on the other side, and as his arms come down, the bassoons begin to play, followed by the strings.

I wave at Sam from across the stage, and on my count, I dash out into the light. We meet at center stage, and he grabs me by the waist as we begin the pas de deux. I imagine that beams of light are coming out of my fingertips and my toes. I can’t see Bea and Daisy and Zoe, but I know they are watching intently from the wings: Bea looking thrilled, Daisy half-awed and half-jealous, and Zoe sour, as if she just ate a lemon. And I’m pretty sure Otto and Annabelle are somewhere in the audience, too, watching intently. But I put that out of my mind and dance just for myself, as if Sam and I are alone in an empty theater.

There are moments onstage when everything else falls away, and I think of these as the magic times. In the magic times, I feel completely in control of my body; my limbs do everything that
is asked of them, and I feel as if gravity has no hold on me. Tonight, dancing Lottie’s part feels just like that.

During Sam’s solo, I catch my breath in the wing before I reenter. I adjust my costume and try to slow my breath. I’m intensely focused on the performance, and I wait for my entrance like a cat with ears perked.

Then I run onstage to meet Sam for the finale. As I do the final turn sequence and run and leap into the wings, I nearly land on Harry, who’s tucked in behind the curtain.

“I got you!” He laughs and grabs me so I don’t fall.

“Sorry!” I say breathlessly. “Didn’t see you there.” My chest is heaving from the exertion, and my legs feel like jelly.

“Naw, it was my fault, hiding out here to watch you,” he says, dropping his hands now that I’m stable. “You were magnificent.”

By now Harry is usually up in the flies, which is the towering system of ropes, counterweights, pulleys, and scaffolding that allows the stagehands to part curtains, move lights, and rotate set pieces onstage. I wonder if he came down to the stage level to watch me. He normally doesn’t even do that for the principals, so this would be a rare compliment. “Really? You think I was okay?” I ask.

He nods. “Absolutely.”

My face flushes with pleasure. Unlike anyone else I can think of, Harry has no ulterior motive for praising me. And since he’s been watching ballet for twenty-some years, he can be an exceptionally harsh critic. “Now get out there and take your bow,” he says, and gives me a playful shove.

Then Matilda pokes her head out from behind one of Harry’s massive legs. “You were beautiful,” she gasps.

“Thanks!” I say. I reach out to ruffle her hair, and then I run onstage to receive my applause.

I’m back in the dressing room, peeling off my sweat-soaked tights, when Bea comes racing in with a copy of the
New York Times.
She’s still in her stage makeup, and her face is dewy with sweat. “Han, look!” she says, jabbing her finger at the paper. “I stole this from the Green Room—the review mentions you!”

I rush over and snatch the newspaper from her. “Gimme,” I say, “
please
.” I begin reading, my heart in my throat. I skim past the mentions of the principals and soloists, of the ballets I wasn’t in, searching for my name. And then I find it, in the fourth paragraph:

Hannah Ward, a late-season fill-in for Lottie Harlow, has marvelous focus in
Division at Dusk,
Otto Klein’s latest ballet. She dances with a pleasing mixture of innocence and impulsiveness, and her energy is contagious. While her phrasing is calculated, her dancing seems spontaneous and youthful; her legs and feet are brilliantly precise.

I look up with tears in my eyes. I can’t believe those words are about me. Quickly I read the sentences again.

Bea is beaming at me. “Isn’t it amazing?” she whispers.

“What?” says Leni. She comes in from the bathroom with a towel wrapped around her head. Leni has long, sandy-blond hair and wide blue eyes; she looks a little like Brigitte Bardot, but her voice is low and mannish, with a thick German accent.

Bea turns to her and chirps, “Hannah got a write-up in the
Times
, and it’s totally incredible.”

Leni shifts her gaze to me as she dries her hair. “Wow, that’s great, Hannah,” she says. She bends over, rubs the towel vigorously over her head, and then stands up again. “Maybe now you’ll be moving up in the world, little
Balletttänzerin
.”

In my mind, I see Otto nodding in approval when I finish my performances; I see my name featured prominently on casting lists; I imagine learning solo roles and practicing them on a silent, empty stage. I imagine Otto telling me that I’ve been promoted. How I’d scream and cry and call my mom, and then she’d start crying, too.

Zoe and Daisy come in from their ballet. Daisy nearly trips over the old carpet that curls up at the edges of the room. “Ow!” she yells. “Do they want me to break an ankle or something?” Then she turns to me. “I heard about your write-up,” she says. “That’s so great! Maybe I should add you to my autograph collection.”

“Very funny,” I say. Daisy’s been collecting the autographs of famous dancers since she was six years old. It was her mother’s idea; it was supposed to motivate Daisy in her own dancing.

Sarcasm aside, I think Daisy’s probably happy for me. And she’s certainly being nicer than Zoe, who says nothing at all. She’s been in a terrible mood ever since I got thrown on. She can’t believe she missed out on an opportunity purely by chance; had she been in the wings, she could have danced Lottie’s part instead.

If I were Zoe, I’d be jealous, too.

“And I bet this leads to other parts,” Bea says confidently as she scrubs off her makeup.

At this, Zoe turns around so quickly she almost knocks over a chair. She storms out the door.

I look at Zoe’s empty seat, and for a moment I indulge in the guilty feeling of triumph. The fact that she feels so threatened is a sign that my star is ascending. We’ve been neck and neck for years. And yes, it
was
sheer luck that I was in the wings, instead of Zoe—but it wasn’t luck that I danced well and got written up in the
Times
.

Beside me Bea finishes removing her stage makeup and throws on her coat; Daisy crams a hat over her bun and waves.

“See you later,” they call, and head out into the chilly November night.

Alone in the room, I look at myself in the mirror. My blond hair is in a messy ponytail. My cheeks are still pink from my performance, and my legs are aching. I stand up and inspect my body. So the
Times
reviewer thinks I was “brilliantly precise,” which is amazing. But was Helga right? Am I just a little bit
softer
than I used to be?

With my hair pulled tightly away from my face, I look lean and determined. But is it
enough
? Will they ever tell me it’s enough?

As I walk down the hallway after rehearsal, a little girl in a pale pink leotard runs by. She stops in front of the vending machine and stands on her tippy-toes to reach for the coin slot.

Thanks to
The Nutcracker
, which we’ve just begun to perform, the backstage hallways are filled with eight-and nine-year-old dancers. They stare at us and mimic our stretching; they bug us for signed pointe shoes and autographs. They think we’re the greatest, which can be cute or annoying, depending on your mood.

The ballets we dance in our regular repertory seasons are contemporary and generally plotless, and we rotate through them as the weeks pass. But when Thanksgiving comes (which Bea and I celebrated this year with Korean takeout and a
Mad Men
marathon), it’s time to perform
The Nutcracker
. Once
Nutcracker
starts, we dance the same parts and listen to the same
score night after night, for fifty consecutive performances, until New Year’s Eve. It’s kind of like eating SPAM after a plate of filet mignon.

“Do you need a hand?” I ask the girl.

She freezes, and her eyes go wide. I can practically hear what she’s thinking:
Oh my God, it’s
a real ballerina!
The little girl nods slowly, too awed, apparently, to smile.

I pick her up by the waist and align her with the coin slot. She slips her quarters in, and a few seconds later a Diet Sprite clunks down.

“Is that what you wanted?” I ask. I think she must have pressed the wrong button. She’s a kid—she should have Fanta or something.

“Oh yes,” she says. “Diet Coke’s my favorite, but the machine never has that.” She retrieves the soda and grasps it tightly in her little hands. “Thank you,” she says, and offers me a little curtsy.

“No problem,” I mutter.

I pick up the phone and dial Jacob’s number. “They’ve got eight-year-olds on diets,” I say when he picks up the phone. “They’re, like, total baby bunheads.”

“Huh?” he says. His voice sounds low and sleepy.

“Were you napping?”

He clears his throat. “Who, me? What? No.”

I can tell he’s lying, but I decide not to tease him about it. “Well, I just called to tell you that I kind of hate
The Nutcracker
,” I say.

He laughs. “Wait, I thought everyone loved
The Nutcracker
.”

I groan. “Yeah, maybe if you’re sitting in the audience,
and you’re, like, ten years old.” I grip the phone as I stride down the hall to the dressing room. “After about the fifteenth performance, it begins to feel completely soulless. We do it every season, so you’d think people would be bored of it by now. But we sell out every single show. And tickets are, like, eighty bucks.”

“Sounds rough,” Jacob says. I can hear him running water and then taking a sip. “But I bet you look nice in your Sugarplum costume.”

“If only,” I say. “Sugarplum is a principal role. I’m a lowly Flower and a Snowflake.”

“Well, I’m sure you make a gorgeous Snowflake. But what does this have to do with eight-year-olds on diets?” he asks.

I push open the dressing room door and flop down onto my chair. “Oh, I don’t know. One of the kids in the show—there are all these parts for little kids—had me get her a Diet Sprite just now. I mean, it’s one thing if you’re
hired
to be a graceful waif, but a little girl? That’s sick.”