Various Positions (25 page)

He squeezed my waist. He was so much bigger than me and his hands could feel so much, everything from my hips to my rib cage and most of my stomach too. If he moved his hand up just a few inches, he’d land on my boob. I could feel sweat trickle down my lower back. I
pliéd
and turned again.

“Better. That was better.” He walked back to where he’d left the remote and stopped the music. “You know what’s great about you, Georgia? You know how to take directions.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Are you tired? You look a little tired.”

I tried to tell him that I wasn’t but he kept talking.

“Why don’t we call it quits for the night. I’ll draw up a rehearsal schedule tomorrow so that we don’t lose momentum with this. It’s looking good,” he added as he made his way to the door. “And again, really sorry about the other night. And the night before that too.” He held my gaze significantly for an extra second, then looked at his watch. “You know what?” He squinted a little, poked the air with his index finger. “Let me drive you home.”

“Oh.” My stomach buoyed. “Why?”

“Well, if you don’t want a ride—”

“No, it’s just … are you sure it’s not too out of your way?”

He chuckled, shook his head. “I think I owe you a detour to Montreal at this point, young lady.”

*   *   *

We walked down the front steps of the academy together. The night felt hushed yet untamed, the sky static but powerful as a magnet. It was too much to think about, the enormity of this happening, so I just sucked back the air’s sweetness, let it shatter in my lungs. A memory knocked—me, the night before, drowning in the sadness of waiting. It seemed like a distant dream.

“I’m parked down here.”

We walked down the sidewalk. We were alone, the echo of Yonge Street, car engines, and dinner crowds behind us. I was conscious of each step, of my shoulder in line with his upper arm. He carried a briefcase in the hand closest to me and I could smell the leather in the thawing air. The handle squeaked every third step or so and I thought of this as one and the same, smell and sound, the meaty odor and the yelp of metal.

“This is me.” He stopped in front of a red car.

I wasn’t sure why, but it wasn’t what I had expected. There was a prominent dent along the side, vaguely the shape of a fish, and the car seemed smaller and rounder than the kind I imagined he’d own. He took keys out of the front pocket of his briefcase and unlocked the passenger door. I slipped inside. When he shut the door, I took advantage of the private moment to look around. The interior was tidy. I was impressed with the cleanness of the carpet in particular, a thin fur of synthetic gray, as though people wiped their feet before they got inside, with none of the wrappers, papers, and parking stubs that were all over the floor of my mom’s car. On the backseat was a neatly folded newspaper.

Roderick ducked into the driver’s side.

“So what distant suburb of the Greater Toronto Area will I have the pleasure of visiting tonight?” He turned to me and grinned. “Ajax? Oakville?”

I laughed and told him the address.

“Well, I’ll hardly atone for anything then.” He fit the key into the ignition. “I just might have to drive you home a second time.”

He turned the ignition and brassy classical music came storming from the car speakers. His fingers slipped over the volume dial, turned it to the left.

“Do you like Mahler?”

I fiddled with my seat belt so that it sat right between my breasts. “Yeah.”

He pulled out of the parking spot, tackling the steering wheel with a flat hand, making two smooth circles. I sat up straighter in my seat. If something was going to happen, it would happen here, in this car. Again it was too much to think about. I needed to talk.

“Where do you live?” I asked.

“Me?” We pulled out onto the street. “Not too far from school. Close enough to walk, really, but—”

“Yeah.” I nodded as though walking was somehow ridiculous. “On what street?”

“Just on Richmond. A building past Spadina.”

“Oh.” I looked out the window, tried to make it seem like I was casually interested. “What number?”

He paused and I felt his eyes on me. I was asking the stupidest questions. I should make up some kind of excuse, pretend I had a friend who lived on the street and that I wondered whether he knew her, but then he started to smile.

“Eighty-three. Why, do you know the area?”

“Yeah. Well, a bit.”

He looked at me and smiled more. “I’m lucky I have one friend at the academy, Georgia.”

I hummed as if this were only of minor interest.

“Yes.” He sighed theatrically. “I’m lucky I have you. Things are … well, they aren’t going so well for me these days.”

“I know.” I looked down at my lap. “I’m sorry.”

He made a clicking sound with his mouth. “Yeah, well, so it goes, I suppose. What can we do?”

I tried to smile reassuringly, but his eyes were focused on the road again. He was confiding in me. Would this lead to something else?

“It seems that I’m a bully,” he said finally. “A bully.” He shook his head. “Did you know that, Georgia? That I bully young women?”

“I don’t think you do that.” There had been a meanness in the question, but I knew it wasn’t directed at me.

“No? Well, I wasn’t aware of it either. I thought we were in the business of graduating more professional dancers than any other school across the country. But no, news brief, that’s actually immaterial.” Roderick whacked the steering wheel with the back of his hand. “What matters is that sometimes, occasionally, I forget to mince my words. That instead of censoring my thoughts and undermining you girls as artists, I actually treat you with respect. Apparently, the School Board doesn’t like that too much, me treating you with respect.”

I nodded solemnly.

“Do you like it?”

“What?”

“My treating you with respect. Like an artist. Like an intelligent human being?”

“Of course.” I looked at him so that he’d feel the weight of my sincerity. “Of course I do.”

I could see the ligaments in his neck tighten. Sometimes in ballet class, if he felt a student was dancing with extraneous tension, he would flutter his fingers gently from her shoulders to the nape of her neck, encourage her to let go. I wanted to do that to him, to reach out and dip my fingers under the collar of his shirt.

“And that’s the worst part, the most ironic part. I’m accused of bullying while they, they put words in your mouths!” He knocked the steering wheel again. “You girls feel manipulated. You have no self-esteem. You’re suffering psychologically—I’m not kidding you. The School Board claims to know it all.” We stopped at a red light. “I can’t imagine what that feels like. To be a trumpet for someone else’s cause.” His voice was quieter now, troubled but curious. “Tell me what it feels like.”

“I, uh, I don’t know exactly.”

“It must—I mean, it must just infuriate you.”

“Yes. It does.”

He seemed to like this answer. “You know, some people would even see
this
as inappropriate. Me driving you home like this.”

“Oh. Really?”

“Amazing, isn’t it? That someone could distort something so innocent?”

“Yeah,” I said quietly. “Amazing.”

We pulled up in front of my house and I thanked him for the ride.

“We’ll start regular rehearsals next week.” He rubbed the back of his neck, his fingers inside his collar at exactly the spot I’d been yearning to touch. “Providing I don’t get sued in the meantime for … god, who knows, inciting starvation.”

“Can they do that?”

“They can try to do anything. But they have no case. Don’t worry. Beatrice—I mean Mrs. Turnbull—is rallied behind me and we’re getting very good advice.”

“Oh, good. That’s essential.”

“Yes. It’s essential.” He looked at me, his face unreadable. “And you will be beautiful as Manon. I’ll invite all the right people.”

I lifted my knapsack off my feet. It was coming, something was coming now.

“There are some exquisite extensions in that
pas de deux
. We’ll showcase those gorgeous legs of yours.”

My cheeks burned. I couldn’t stop them.

“You’re blushing.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to blush.”

“I—I know that,” I stammered.

“Ballet isn’t about that.”

“Okay.” I nodded hard.

“Don’t ever be embarrassed about your physical beauty. It will ruin your presence onstage.”

I focused on the folded cuff of my jeans.

“Tell me you won’t be embarrassed.”

“I won’t be,” I said quietly.

He laughed. “Look me in the eye and say it properly.”

I raised my head. His eyes were dark. “I won’t be embarrassed.”

“Good.” He wore a private smile now as though I’d done him a favor. “I care about your career. I really do. I don’t want you to fall victim to these idiots who try to regulate everything and make ballet as banal as their own lives.”

“Oh.” What else should I say? “Thank you,” I added.

“Good night, Georgia.”

I thanked him once more and said goodbye. If he was going to put the moves on me, this was his last chance. I walked up the path to my front door, moving slowly. He could get out of the car and come up behind me, grab me by the waist. I took another step and imagined him ogling me from the driver’s seat, staring at my bum through my jeans, his fingers tapping the steering wheel in indecision. Should he come after me or should he resist? I moved as slowly as possible to give him time. He was probably kicking himself for not trying something earlier. It would be trickier now, the logistics of it. My parents could be in the living room and if he startled me I might scream. He’d have to tiptoe up behind me, maybe cover my mouth with his hand. I’d struggle silently, flail my arms as much as I could, but he was so much bigger. He’d pin my arms to my sides, drag me backward. Before I’d know it, we’d be back in the car.

I took my house key out of the front pocket of my knapsack, brought it up to the keyhole. I turned around to see what he was doing. But he was pulling into the opposite driveway to turn the car around.

*   *   *

There was a note on the fridge from my mom.
Headache—bed—pad thai.
I opened the fridge and took out the brown paper delivery bag, still stapled closed, a bill splotched with see-through grease on its front. I heated the pad thai in the microwave and tried to eat. But my stomach felt lined with raw nerves. I put my plate in the fridge and went upstairs. My mom’s bedroom door floated over a sliver of light. I hesitated for a second and then knocked.

“Yeah?” she said.

I opened the door. She was sitting up in bed, reading. Only the lamp on her bedside table was on and it cast a long shadow across her face and neck so that she looked like a gloomy photograph. Her expression enhanced the effect, eyes sinking under two apples of darkness. I realized it was the expression she usually had these days, as though something inside her had shriveled up.

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

She managed a nod. “Okay.”

“Do you want me to get you an aspirin?”

“I took some already.”

I leaned into the doorway. She was wearing a tank top with silky straps and I saw her again in Isabel’s clothing. I needed to know what had happened, the truth of what my dad had done. But how could I ask? She rested her book on her lap and adjusted the pillow behind her shoulders. Her sadness looked different tonight. It worried me now and I could feel it more clearly, like a pebble pressing into my toe.

“Mom?”

“Yeah?”

I ground the ball of my foot into the carpet. I was afraid of my own questions. I knew what men were capable of now, the way their lust set the rules for everything. Girls could feel it even when nothing was said. I had accepted this. I had seen it in Roderick and accepted it and maybe this was something my mom had never done. And then she let the unfairness make her miserable.

“Is something up?” she asked.

“No,” I whispered. “Good night, Mom.”

“Good night,” she said, and looked back down at her book.

A few hours later, I was trying to sleep and not succeeding. I closed my eyes and looked for a cool, quiet place inside my head to curl up, but my mind felt humid and overcrowded. The word
gorgeous
made an amorphous cloud of sound, everywhere and nowhere, whining like mosquitoes by my ears.
Gorgeous
was not a ballet word. Roderick had chosen it deliberately.

I tried to picture Roderick’s naked body. I focused on one part at a time. I made out two wide shoulders and the undulation of chest beneath, pectorals like flattened mounds of dough, chocolate chips of nipple. There would be hair somewhere, but here the image got confusing. Would it be curly or straight and how much would it cover? Color compounded the problem, not so much of the hair, which I imagined must vaguely match that on his head, but of his skin. What was the color of male skin? It couldn’t have any of the pinkness of mine, none of the pale softness of girl flesh that snuggled beneath T-shirts. I aged him across his ribs, painted crystalline formations of sun damage, bluish shadows of veins. But when I spliced his head on top, the picture wouldn’t stick together. Head and neck didn’t match, like one of those kids’ games where everyone draws a different body part.

Why had Roderick driven me home? I flipped onto my back violently, let the mattress suck me in. The ceiling was truth and I stared at it. He had pretended the ride was a spur-of-the-moment apology, but we both knew this wasn’t true. The act was big, too big, outweighed the size of the offense. Roderick had wanted me in his car. He had wanted to do
something
. Normal teachers didn’t drive students home anymore; there were probably even statutes against it. I flashed back to the feel of sitting there, the worn upholstery under my legs. There’d been a smell, wires and car dust—I could almost get it back.
Some people would even see
this
as inappropriate.
What had he been trying to say?

I was back on my side, curling into the memory. At the time, I’d seen it as a statement, but now, replaying it, it didn’t sound like a statement at all.
Some people would even see
this
as inappropriate.
Roderick had been asking me a question. Possibly several questions at the same time. Did I see it as inappropriate and was inappropriate okay? The statement had been a test, a test any child could identify, but one that had stupidly, unforgivably eluded me.