Up to This Pointe (6 page)

“Nineteen isn't old!” Mom sniffs.

The Nutcracker
overture plinks from my phone. Thank God.

“That's us!” I say. “Classes to teach, choreography to perfect!” I toss back the rest of my water while Kate grabs our bags and puts her plate and my bowl in the sink.

“You have to go?” Luke whimpers.

“Don't be a baby,” I say close to his ear.

“Thanks for breakfast, Dad,” Kate says. She hugs him and Mom and holds the back door open for me while I refill our water bottles at the sink.

“Leave everything. I'll do the dishes when I get back,” I tell Dad, who will rinse and stack everything even though it's my turn.

“Bye, Kate,” Luke says, well-rehearsed casual.

“Later, Luke. Nice meeting you, Owen!” Kate calls, leaning also way too casually, but still gorgeously, in the doorway.

“You too.” Owen smiles.

“Oh, Harp, wait!” Dad says, jumping up and running to the freezer. “Here.” He tosses me a bag of ice. “Put that on your butt!”

I shove the ice in my bag, turn Kate, and steer her out the door.

“Nice to meet you, Harper!” Owen calls.

Humiliation: complete.

We drink water and walk through the fog, hips turned out, arms strong, necks stretched, long strides up and down the house- and tree-lined streets, to the steps of Simone's West Portal Ballet. Our second home. I love this studio more than any place on Earth; floor-to-ceiling windows look out over West Portal Avenue and the houses and hills beyond. The floor is gorgeous, spring-loaded wood, and polished monthly. Barres line the side and window walls; an upright piano sits in the corner. Fog rolls past the windows and reflects in the opposite wall of mirrors, which Simone covers with sheets when she feels like we're “gazing at ourselves too much.”

On the top step, I give Kate my bag and sit on the porch to stretch. “I'm waiting here….Want to watch my class?”

“Not today.” She yawns. “Think I'll nap in the dressing room and dream about my husband.”

“Cool. And who would this be?”

“My breakfast boyfriend!
I am in love.
Luke needs to bring friends home more often. Wake me for class?” She lugs both our bags through the door.

“Hey!” I call.

“Yeah?”

“Addendum thirteen.”

She grins, her beautiful face lit up, and disappears into the studio.

We're so close. I will drag her across the finish line if I have to. No matter how cute that guy is.

I try a few battements and pliés at the porch rail. The bruise is huge, hip still sore, but functioning.

At last, who I'm waiting for comes racing down the sidewalk, chased by her mother. A little dark-haired tornado in a pink leotard that used to be mine bounds up the steps.

“Harp!”

“Willster!” My Willa throws her six-year-old arms around my legs, grabs her elbows, and squeezes me tight, presses her face against my hip.

“I feel your bones,” she whispers.

“Yeah,” I say. “Well, I feel yours, too.” And I tickle her elbows till she screams.

“Willa!” her mother, Hannah, pants. “Take your sweater!”

Hannah is mom's teaching and research assistant. She also waits tables at the Beach Chalet, our favorite restaurant in Golden Gate Park, near the ruins of the Sutro Baths, right on Ocean Beach, which means tons of good takeout and also that Willa needs a lot of babysitting. Pointe shoe money for me.

“Harp!” Hannah calls up the steps. “Thank you! Late, late, late as always. Baby, give Mama a kiss. See you tonight!”

Willa blows her a kiss, and Hannah's off to catch her Muni train.

“Whoosh!” Willa says.

“Whoosh,” I agree.

She hugs me again, pressing the bruise.

“Ack,” I say. “You got my big bruise.”

“Oh no, what happened?”

“Slipped at rehearsal. On the
snow
!”

“Ohhh, is it pretty?”

“You'll love it. Wait till you see. Ready for class?”

“How do I look?” she asks, as she does every time.

“Like Margot Fonteyn. Let's hit it.”

Simone gave the babies and little kids to me three years ago, entrusted me with introducing the music, the posture, the lessons of “Everybody needs to stop talking now and put your arms here. Got it? Hands
above
your head, not down your tights…” My teaching began as a favor to her, as her patience for the little kids had stretched to ribbons. But now it is a favor for me. Because ballet is expensive, prohibitively so. Teaching the baby classes makes my classes possible. Simone and I barter my tuition.

And last year, after months of watching Willa watch me teach Saturday class, one day the music started and I had my ducklings all set for warm-ups, and Simone walked Willa in wordlessly. She moved some kids out of the way, put Willa's hand on the barre, and left. Willa was ecstatic. So was Hannah; she never could have afforded even one class, and Willa loves it so much.

I toss Willa's bag in the dressing room beside Kate, already asleep on the sofa, and Willa and I shout hello to Simone up the stairwell that leads to her private residence. Willa admires herself in the mirrors, and I see that, despite washing my hair, I've still got snow in it. Snow and glitter are the herpes of the ballet world—we may never get rid of it. Willa plucks out the bigger pieces, and I give her a little preclass barre.

“Miss Harper!” my kindies scream at the tops of their tiny but powerful lungs as the herd comes galloping up the inside studio steps. They wrestle themselves free from their mothers and dads and nannies and grandmas and run to me, crash into my legs, and grab me around my knees, but I am prepared, holding on to the barre for dear life. Three years and still every single class begins this way. Only someone with a tiny black heart could resist, could not love this. Love them.

“All right!” I yell above the din, dragging them off my limbs. “We are
ladies.
Get to the barre, port de bras.
Dépêchez-vous!
Now!” And they scatter to their assigned places. The parents and grandparents and nannies smile and wave and take off for forty-five minutes of Starbucks or jogging or wrangling their other kids.

The little kids get only one performance dance each year, and it's in
The Nutcracker.
They are angels, wearing white tutus and silver garland halos and real feather wings left over from 1972, when some friend of Simone's donated them from his company's costume stash. They were old then and they're ancient now, but they are soft and real and lovely, even if yellowed and dripping feathers.

My kindies love the costumes and the candles and the tree, even though half of them are Jewish and one is Muslim, which I keep telling Simone is kind of a good reason to maybe look into doing a show not so blatantly…well, Christmasy. Like, we could do a solstice-themed concert of variations—Vivaldi's “Winter,” stuff like that. Simone just laughs.

“
The Nutcracker
brings in half my yearly revenue. As soon as there's a beloved, traditional Hanukkah ballet people clamor to buy tickets for, I'm all ears. Maccabees in tiaras, bloodshed on the snow…No thank you. Now, climb up into the attic for me and bring down my plastic reindeer!”

So I work my little angels. I urge them to strive for as much perfection as they can muster. Today's class is especially game. They put their all into it, arms strong, feet mostly pointed, determined little faces, and by the end, they are breathing hard. They bow and flop on the floor, flushed and worn out. The parents and nannies will be thrilled—a guaranteed early bedtime.

They hug and kiss me goodbye, and when they're gone the stillness is delicious. I'm kind of pooped myself. Twenty minutes till rehearsal.

Seriously, have I mentioned that I cannot wait for graduation?

“Harper.” Simone is in the doorway.

“Did you see? They're ready, right, Willa?” Willa nods. “Monday and Wednesday better bring it, because these are some ferocious Saturday angels.”

Simone frowns. “I don't want them
ferocious.
”

“You know what I mean. They're on it! We got through the whole thing twice without stopping.”

“I saw.”

“Aren't they great?”

“Very nice. May I see you in my office?” She turns and walks.

My stomach flips.

“Are you in
trouble
?” Willa whispers.

“I don't know,” I moan.

I duck into Simone's tiny office beside the dressing room—a glorified closet, tutus of a million colors hanging from the rafters above her desk, candy-colored fruit ripening on low branches, sparkling sequins and glitter.

I decide to make a preemptive strike, and also I'm so nervous I can't keep my mouth shut.

“I was concentrating,” I say. “It's just the snow is really, really slippery, but I know that now and I won't fall again, ever. I swear. Okay?”

She frowns. “What?”

“
What
what?”

“I was going to say your dance with the babies—it is a beautiful picture. They love you. That is why they try so hard.”

“Oh.”

“You get work out of them I never could. So now, when they are older, they will not drive me half so crazy as you and your snow friends.”

I nod.

“You were made for this,” she says. “Born to it. Tell me about summer. Have you given it more thought?”

I mess with the strap of my leotard.

“Because they need to know by the end of the year,” she says. “The twentieth. To be registered for spring.”

“Madame, I don't—”

“Just think. Some more.”

“I have, so much, and I—”

“For me,” Simone says.

Ugh, cripes. She pulls that one out only when she's truly desperate. Which is nearly never. I sigh.

“Okay.”

“You understand.”

“Yes.”

“Think.
Hard,
” Simone says.

“Yes.”

Kate pokes her rumpled head in. “Hey! You were supposed to wake me up! Time for class!” she grumbles, and stomps off to the studio.

Thank God.

Simone folds her hands.

“What's your father putting in the scones this week?”

“Um. Pear?”

“In a
scone
?”

“It's wintry.”

She shakes her head. “Americans.”

Dad brings her a baker's dozen of whatever she likes every Saturday on his way home, I think out of gratitude for letting me teach for tuition.

She rolls her eyes. “All right,” she says. “Half dozen, a few plain croissant.”

“Got it.”

I turn back to the dressing room, and she calls, “Harper.”

“Yep?”

“It is a rare opportunity.”

“I know.” I duck out to the dressing room to set Willa up with coloring books and her blanket, then back to the barre beside Kate.

“She still at it?” Kate whispers.

“Still at what?” Lindsay, two years younger, our Nutcracker for three years running because she's so tall and we currently have no boys in the entire school, whispers—loud.

“Lindsay,
God
!” Kate hisses. “You don't have to shout!”

Lindsay's eyes widen.

“Nothing,” I tell her. “It's nothing.”

“Simone's on her to go to England,” Kate blabs. “She wants Harp to do the teacher training this summer.”

“Royal Academy?”

I nod.

“Wow!”

“No, not
wow.
It's completely insulting.”

“How is it insulting?”

“Because it
is
! She's essentially saying, ‘Hey, give up the one chance you have to audition for companies to be a dancer, ever, and spend a year in London learning how to teach other people to dance instead.' I'm a dancer. I'm
not
a teacher.”

“Okay,” Lindsay says. “But are you also a lover, not a fighter?”

“Leave me alone.”

“Why is it one or the other? You
do
teach—”

“Babies! For tuition!”

“They worship you! You don't like it?”

“Yes, I do. I love
them,
but that's not—”

“How much would it cost?”

“Nothing,” Kate says, her spine curved over her legs, forehead touching her knees. “Simone's sending her. A year in London, full-time training to be a Royal Academy teacher. For
free.
”

“Harp.” Lindsay frowns. “Really?”

I nod.

Her mouth is agape. “Why
not
?”

“I think she may even get a stipend, right?” Kate says. “Didn't Simone say living expenses?”

I take my leg off the barre. “What are you doing?”

“What?”

“What's with pushing the Simone agenda?”

“I'm not!”

“Kate.”

She looks down. Reties her shoes.

“Kate.”

“What?”

“I would never do that. You know I would never ditch you….Come on! The Plan! I could give a crap about London; we are dancing for San Francisco in January. Got it?”

“It's just…I mean, an entire career, all that training, England—for
free
?”

“Kate. I'm with
you.
I'm not leaving you. January third. You and me. Right?”

She nods.

“I wish Simone wanted
me
to teach,” Lindsay sighs.

Simone sweeps into the room. “Left hands on the barre, port de bras!”

“I've already said it to her a hundred times,” I whisper to Kate.
“I'm a dancer. No thanks.”

Kate smiles.

Sort of.

When class ends, I pull Kate back. “Once?”

“Yeah.”

I run to the crowded dressing room for my iPod and Willa, so she can watch. Lindsay sits on the floor and lets Willa lounge in her lap. I start the music.