Various Positions (14 page)

Just then he looked up. There was a millisecond where we stared at each other, before I snapped my head down, focused on my hands. There was no way he could have read my thoughts. He probably figured it was a coincidence, that he’d simply got caught in the line of my absentminded gaze. If this was true, he would be looking elsewhere now, probably back at the newspaper on his lap. Slowly I lifted my head and our gazes collided again. I squirmed in my seat, fixed on the red upholstery beside me, felt like an idiot from head to toe.

He was suspicious now, I was sure of it; it was all beyond my control. But how suspicious was he? It was possible that I’d embarrassed him, that he was avidly avoiding me too. Maybe, if I lifted my head gradually, discreetly, made it seem like I was fixated on something to the right of his head, I could check one last time and get away with it. I lifted my head, found a suitable spot just over his shoulder on which to rest my attention. I hesitated for a second, then did it, moved my eyes sideways, where they instantly hit his. Again, we were staring at each other, but it was the expression on his face this time that made it unbearable. He was smiling at me slyly, telling me I’d been caught.

The subway pulled into the station, my heart thudding. The train stopped with a jolt and the man stood up, moved to the exit beside me. Thank god. He was leaving. As the doors opened, he dropped something, a wrapper, in my lap. I thought he muttered something as he dropped it, but it was so fleeting, the man pausing over me, the doors chiming, closing behind him. I stayed very still, worried that other people might have witnessed this, feeling a morose responsibility for whatever was in my lap. Still I burned with curiosity. I wouldn’t touch it until the next stop. I bounced my foot, tried to keep myself occupied, and instantly gave up. I looked down, grabbed the crumpled scrap of paper, and unfolded it slowly. The name David was written in scratchy blue letters, and below it was a phone number.

I called Isabel on her cell that night. “What are you doing?” I asked.

“Just picked up some groceries. On my way home.” There were sounds in the background, traffic. “What’s up?”

“Do you want to come over?” I heard a car honk. “I haven’t seen you forever.”

“Oh, George. I would … I’ve had the craziest day and I have about a thousand pages to read tonight—”

“Dad’s not home,” I said. “And I need to talk about something.”

“Oh.” She paused. “Sure. Of course. Give me an hour.”

Isabel showed up forty-five minutes later with a Spanish film and a bag of caramel popcorn. She wore a long dark coat that tied at her waist, her wavy hair tumbling onto her shoulders. I wondered whether she ever tied it back when she wanted to look important. I worried she’d get mad at me if I asked.

“We don’t have to watch it.” She gestured at the DVD, placed it on the radiator.

We sat at either end of the sofa in the living room, our legs stretched in opposite directions, me on the inside, her on the out. She turned on the TV and pretended to watch it, but I could tell she was waiting for me to start talking, giving me time to prepare.

“Has Dad been away a lot?” she asked without looking at me.

“Same as usual.”

I could feel the scrap of paper in my jean pocket. It seemed twenty times heavier than it actually was, like a piece of cardboard. I pulled it out and passed it to her without unfolding it.

“What’s this?” She looked at me questioningly, reached forward to take it. I watched her open it, read it. “Who’s David?”

I shrugged. I had wanted her to see it, but now the embarrassment was too much.

“Is he a boy at school?” Isabel smiled.

I shook my head, stared at the cushion beside me. I couldn’t meet her eye.

“Well, who is he?”

“A man.”

“A
man
?”

“On the subway.”

“What?” She moved forward. “A man on the subway gave you his phone number?”

I nodded.

“What do you mean, a
man
? How old was he?”

“Old. Maybe forty.”

“Why did he give you his phone number, Georgia?”

“I don’t know,” I whispered.

“Did he talk to you?”

I shook my head.

“Did he try to do anything?”

I wanted to tell her that I’d been staring at him, that it had been my fault for thinking like a perv.

“It was … I was kind of the one who started it.”

“What?”

“I was looking at him. And then … he caught me.”

“What do you mean you were
looking
at him?”

“Just looking.” The sound of this was mortifying. I wasn’t making sense. “I wanted to see what he was like.”

“You were
looking
at him—okay.” She lifted her hands to say
so what.
“I mean—were you
smiling
at him? Were you … making suggestive faces?”

“No.” I shook my head with force. “We just, we kept making eye contact. It was only half on purpose—no. It wasn’t on purpose, it just started to happen. And then I had to keep checking to see if he was looking at me. Do you know what I mean?”

She got up and paced around the living room. “Ugh!” She shook her head and stopped on a corner of carpet. “If a man ever bothers you on the subway, Georgia, you scream and press the emergency alarm.”

“Isn’t that only for fires?”

“No!” She came over to me, knelt, took me by the shoulders. “Georgia, it’s for your safety. Don’t ever let a man make you feel uncomfortable. You get up and you switch seats. If he follows you, announce loudly that he’s making you uncomfortable and threaten to pull the alarm.”

“But isn’t it a bit my fault for starting it?”

“Nah nah nah nah no!” She shook her head quickly. “You didn’t
start
anything. Women are allowed to let their eyes rest on people without having to worry about their personal safety. What a creep! This stuff drives me crazy.”

*   *   *

I stood on the subway platform the next morning and tried to name the feeling that drilled inward on both temples. There was something sour in my stomach; I was digesting the disorder in my head. Had I been responsible for provoking this forty-year-old David? The thought was largely ridiculous; I knew this in the rational part of my brain. I had done little more, in fact no more, than accidentally meet his eye three times. The guy was a perv. Still, there was something new inside me, a growth like an unsightly wart. Three measly glances and it had been unleashed, this thing my mom had hinted at. All it took to release was my getting involved. The discovery gave me a terrible feeling. My mom had been a little right.

A train pulled into the station. I stepped back from the strip of yellow safety bumps, let the tunneled air storm my face. The train stopped and the doors opened. I moved forward in line, focusing on the clamor in front of me, trying not to step on heels. I crooked my head to the right to look ahead into the car, see if there’d be anywhere to sit, and through the window I locked eyes with a new man. He was tall, grown-up, ordinary. He looked away almost instantly, the way normal people do, but I froze. Why was my heart racing? People were moving around me, entering and exiting the train. Someone shoved into my shoulder and I stumbled to the side. The electronic chimes sounded, one, two, three, a flattened, downhill scale. The subway doors closed and the train left the station.

The platform cleared out quickly and the noise retreated too, but I had a hazy feeling of withdrawal, like half of me was somewhere else. I looked up at the time feed above the middle of the platform. I was an idiot. The next train might not be for another ten minutes and I was going to be late. I moved backward toward a bench, sat on its edge.

When I got to the academy it was 8:57. I changed as quickly as I could, tried to ignore my unsteady stomach. I was halfway up the stairs when I stopped. Something was wrong. I looked down; I had forgotten my slippers. I ran back to the change room, cursing my stupidity with every step. I could see Roderick’s face, the disappointment knitting his eyebrows. He wouldn’t say anything but one eye would squint a little more than usual. I would feel like an idiot for the entire class, maybe the entire day. I remembered my dad lecturing Isabel about being late once. She gave an excuse I believed, something about traffic or having to wait for a ride, but my dad shook his head and said there was no less considerate thing a person could do. His anger had been so profound that he hadn’t raised his voice.

I took my ballet slippers from the pile of everything at the bottom of my locker and ran back up the stairs. I stopped outside the studio door and listened for piano music. I couldn’t hear any, which probably meant the class was between exercises. If there was a good time to interrupt, this was it. I sucked back air to cool my nerves and pulled open the door.

Faces turned toward me from the floor. The girls were clumped together in the center of the studio. They sat with their legs crossed or their knees hugged up to their chests. I turned in the direction they were facing and instead of Roderick saw a man I didn’t recognize. My relief was immediate, like a flicked switch inside my gut.

I found Sixty as soon as I sat down. She was a few bums away from me and she beckoned me with her head. I shifted around the group of bodies, hoisting my weight like a crab. I watched the man as I traveled. He was short, had shiny black hair and huge round glasses that reminded me of petri dishes. He stood next to an easel that displayed a laminated poster of a floating triangle. Above the triangle was the title “Food Groups,” and when I looked more carefully I saw it was divided into four sections.

“It looks like engine oil,” Sixty whispered when I reached her. “Are they worried we’re going to eat engine oil?”

Sixty must’ve been referring to the triangle’s peak, where two canisters of indistinguishable liquids sat next to a candy that twisted into fish tails on both sides.
FATS
was the label beside it. Below that were the usual groups—
PROTEIN, VEGETABLES, DAIRY
, and
CARBOHYDRATES
—with recommended daily servings beside each.

The man rubbed his hands together. “Are there questions?”

There was silence followed by giggling. I looked up. Molly poked Veronica in the ribs. Veronica lifted her hand. I could see three round moles on her arm, even as polka dots.

“Yes?” The man pointed at her.

“But it can’t really matter if you’re just gonna puke it all up afterward.”

Everyone laughed except the short man. He shook his head to demonstrate his disapproval, waited for the giggling to subside. Molly lifted her hand. The man nodded in her direction.

She cleared her throat theatrically. “Do you know anything about the diet patch?”

“I saw that!” Anushka said. “It’s supposed to speed up your metabolism.”

“It doesn’t work,” Veronica said. “I have a friend who tried it and it just gave her a disgusting rash.”

They looked up at the man. “What do you think, Mr. Cohen?” Veronica asked sweetly.

“I’ve never heard of this.” He spoke slowly, deliberately, as though chewing up the letters of each word. “I don’t know what it is.”

“It’s a
patch
,” Molly repeated. “Like a big pink Band-Aid. You wear it here.” She stood up and pointed to her midriff.

“I thought you were supposed to stick it to your butt,” Veronica said.

“No.” Molly made a face. “Well, maybe
your
butt.”

“Hey.” Veronica whacked her lightly on the leg.

“Hey, yourself.” Molly whacked her back. “Butt Patch.”

Veronica, smiling beneath her outrage, turned to the man for support. But he was nervously adjusting the arm of his glasses, eyes cast toward the floor.

The studio door clicked shut. We turned our heads. Roderick was standing in front of it and the laughter stopped immediately. He had a funny look on his face, and I wondered how long he’d been standing there. He lifted his hands to shoulder level and leaned his body backward.

“Don’t stop on my account,” he said.

The man had straightened himself and moved to the easel. “I think we have just about come to the end, actually,” the man said. He looked over the group as though asking a wordless question.

When no one said anything, he took the poster off the easel and began to roll it against his torso. The poster veered in an awkward diagonal so that layers jutted out the side. Chantal got up and held the door for the man.

“Thanks for your presentation, Mr. Cohen,” Roderick said.

“Oh.” The man turned around, surprised. “You’re welcome.”

Roderick continued to stand there, looking at us distrustfully. He seemed to enjoy his suspicion, as if we had just denied something when he had the incriminating evidence hidden behind his back.

“I don’t like to patronize,” he began once Mr. Cohen was out of the room. “I really don’t think that patronizing does justice to anything we’re trying to accomplish here.” He scanned our faces. “Did any of you find that lesson useful?”

I looked down at my stocking feet. My slippers were still bunched under my hand.

“Did anyone find that that was … how should I put this?…” He sighed, looked up at the ceiling rafters. “A fair depiction of some of the food issues you’ve faced, or have maybe seen your peers face?”

Again there was an uncomfortable silence. I heard the dim purr of the studio lights.

“Come on.” His voice was persuasive. “I mean, did you see that thing? That poster predates the car phone. The color scheme alone is enough to kill your appetite.”

There was a tentative laugh around the room and I felt it in my own throat too. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Sixty. She leaned back a little, loosened her grip on the knees she’d pulled to her chest.

“It’s a School Board thing. The food talk. We have to arrange it every year.” He started walking farther into the studio, using the barre like a banister. “And we have to hand it to them a little bit. Their hearts are in the right place. They see ballet students as being particularly vulnerable to issues about weight and body image and they’re just trying to protect you. Trying to do what’s best.”