Audition (10 page)

At the far end of the hall,
Remington works late

 

 

With some company dancers
Or Jane
Or alone
With an old CD player
He stops and restarts,
Measure after measure.
Stepping, standing, writing stuff down,
Scribbling it out,
His hulking hands gesture and smash.

 

 

Waiting for Señor, I watch
The shapes and patterns of making dances
Different
From just dancing them.

So I will go home for the weekend,
Get back late Sunday,
Take an extra ballet class Monday
In preparation for the audition on Tuesday.

 

 

Dad meets me at the studio.
I skip Friday night’s partnering class
So he won’t have to drive through the city
After dark.

 

 

Ignore Yevgeny’s sneer,
Accusing me of lack of dedication.

 

 

All I want is to sleep in my own bed,
A dinner without jalapeños,
The smoky heat of a woodstove,
A bright bouquet of rosy apples
Softening in the clay fruit bowl,
Filling the kitchen with their gentle scent
Of ripening off the vine.

And most of the time is lost to sleep.

 

 

Otherwise I wear a sturdy smile,
My armor against the questions
Mom pelts from every direction, topic, side,
Spreading thick butter on homemade bread,
Sprinkling cheese onto soup.

 

 

Have you gotten taller?
Did I tell you Mrs. Allegra is having another baby?
We had a bumper crop of Jonah Golds.
Bess wants to know if you’re coming to her Christmas party.

 

 

Are you happy?

 

 

Decline Ms. Alice’s invitation
To join the Saturday class
In her friendly basement.

 

 

Turn down Bess’s offers
Of riding to a party at Kari’s
With her and Stephen.

 

 

I don’t think I can bear

Sitting in the back of a car behind a boy and a girl
The way I do each day in Jersey, pretending
That I don’t ache all the time,
That I’m not lonely,
That such tenderness exists for me
Outside my dreams.

 

 

Do the minimal homework.
What’s the point of trying too hard
To compete against the Upton kids
With their fancy cars and private tutors?

 

 

Good enough.

 

 

Do I feel that way about ballet, too?
What’s the point of staying in Jersey all weekend
For one lousy Saturday class
Where Lisette will show us all up
With her unbeatable arches
And endless energy?
Of pushing away Mom’s apple pie
When I can maybe just suck in my gut a little harder?

 

 

I fend off tears the whole ride back.

“No, you go ahead.
I should get some rest.
Don’t want you to get stuck
Driving in the dark.”

 

 

Watch the gray Volvo
Wend cautiously away.

 

 

My parents always buy Volvos,
Safe, sturdy, crash-protected cars.
They have plenty of life insurance,
A generator in case the power goes out,
Shelves of bottled water in the garage.
They take vitamins, buy organic foods,
And their only daughter,
Who takes the vitamins along with them and still
Wants a night-light in her bedroom?
Her they drop
Three hundred miles away
On the doorstep of a stranger
To chase a dream
That exists completely
Outside

Steel car frames
Venerable insurance companies
Apples uncoated by a layer
Of shiny protection
Made from the shells
Of toxic beetles.

Guitar in hand,
Sneering
At me
Or at practice
Or at life in general.

 

 

He plays a melancholy scale.

 

 

The twanging metal strings
Reverberate up my spine.

 

 

I take my bag of clean laundry upstairs.
Glance at the math textbook—

 

 

I should have read chapter four last week—

 

 

Leave it unopened on the cheap dresser.
Crawl under the slippery nylon quilt.

Maybe still in their fancy vacation houses
In the Poconos
Or on the Jersey shore.

 

 

I hit the snooze three times before
Señora’s less-than-gentle tapping on my door
Reminds me I am living in someone else’s house
On someone else’s schedule.

 

 

Later, at the studio,
Yevgeny grabs my foot
Extended in développé a la seconde,
Squeezes my toes down hard
Toward my heel.
“Like that,” he snaps,
Almost satisfied.

 

 

My glow at his attention
Darkens to a blush of inferiority.
Without his hand to force my toes,
My pointed foot reflected in the mirror
Looks weak,
Hopeless.

I hold up my chin until the end of class,
Uncertain whether I can stop it wobbling
Until Señor is ready to go home.

 

 

In the dressing room,
Bonnie drops beside me on the bench.
Rummages through her bag.
Removes an enormous pair of scissors.
“Give me your pointe shoes.”

 

 

“My shoes?”

 

 

She holds out her hand.
“Last year Yevgeny said the same thing to me.”

 

 

I try to forget
Mom’s anxious face crunching
The long string of Upton tuition numbers,
The cost of gas to and from Jersey,
Room and board, despite the ballet scholarship,
As Bonnie rips the shank
Of my eighty-dollar pointe shoe
Away from its satin sole.

 

 

With surprising strength

Her long, thin fingers
Hack the rigid material of one sole
Across its middle,
Then tackle the other.

 

 

“Here, put them on.”

 

 

I relevé.
Unencumbered by the stiff, full shank,
My mediocre arches
Bend impressively
Over the pointe shoe boxes.
In arabesque, it is easier
To mimic Yevgeny’s demanding squeeze.

 

 

Bonnie giggles at my smile.

 

 

“Does everyone do this?”

 

 

“Not Lisette, of course.”
Bonnie rearranges
The strand of white silk flowers
Around her bun.

 

 

I relevé in fifth, piqué,

Admire my feet in the dressing-room mirror,
Pink, curved, showy,
My silhouette more like a beach house in a grand location
Than a solid, Vermont saltbox
With its stoic lack
Of shank-bending trickery.