Fort Morgan (16 page)

“
But they caught him,”
Sissy said. “The guy is in prison!”

“
No, you cannot go.” Ivan
shook his head at her. “Get your stuff. We are late.”

“
Noelle and I were invited
to an art opening and to a real-live play on Broadway!” Sissy said.
“Everyone from my year is going to be there! Everyone!”

“
No,” Ivan said. “No,
let’s go! Do you want to be late for class?”

“
Why no?” Sissy’s voice
rose with frustration.

“
You are young,” Ivan
said. “You have no idea how these men work. This man, this horrible
man, is responsible for much pain and suffering. He has much money,
many connections. All he has to do is find you, find Noelle, find
Charlie, and his problems go away.”

Ivan snapped his fingers.

“
How is he going to find
us?” Sissy asked. “We’re just going to an art opening and a play.
You’ll be there the entire time!”

“
No,” Ivan said. “I am in
charge, and I say no.”

“
Why are you in charge?”
Sissy asked. “Who made you God?”

Sissy’s words were so sassy that she gasped
at herself. She covered her mouth with her hands.

“
You do what I say,” Ivan
said. “That is our arrangement.”

“
But. . .”

“
You do what I say and you
stay alive,” Ivan said.

“
But. . .”

“
You want to go to movie,
to play, to restaurant, to see art,” Ivan said. “I know this
feeling. You are young and in a big city from little Denver. You
want to look around, see everything, have fun.”

“
Be free!” Sissy nodded in
agreement to his words. She was sick of him treating her like a
child. “I’m not little baby anymore, Ivan!”

“
You have many, many years
for much freedom,” Ivan said. “Many decades to see every play,
laugh at every joke, eat at every restaurant, see art all over the
world. But. . .”

Ivan swallowed hard.

“
But what?” Sissy
asked.

“
But you have to survive
this time to get there,” Ivan said. “You go to play tonight, you
might not live. Is it so important to risk seeing this play now
when you have so much time later?”

Sissy scowled at his words. She hated
fighting with Ivan because he was always right. He gave her a curt
nod and turned to leave the room.

“
I heard you had to work
for the KGB so they wouldn’t hurt your brother,” Sissy
said.

Ivan stopped walking. His back stiffened,
indicating that he was upset.

“
Sister,” Ivan said.
“Little sister.”

“
Is that how you know
about all of this?” Sissy asked.

“
Yes,” Ivan
said.

“
What happened to your
sister?” Sissy asked. Ivan turned around to look at her. “I never
met her in Denver. Is she okay now? Is she still in Russia? Is she
a dancer too?”

“
No, she’s not in Denver,”
Ivan said.

“
Then what?” Sissy asked
in an impatient voice. “You can tell me. I’m not a
child!”

The moment she said the words she regretted
it. Ivan’s face pinched tight with pain. He reached forward and put
his hand under her chin. His thumb stroked her cheek. He made a
kind of snort or maybe a sad laugh before he spun in place and left
the room. Sissy was so stunned that she stood gawking at the space
he’d been in.

The space was empty for only a few moments
before Ivan appeared again.

“
You want to know about my
sister?” Ivan asked. His voice came in fast puffs of angry words.
“Since you are so grown up, I will tell you. They took me, took
her, told me I could save her — just do what we say and she’ll be
protected. But she wasn’t okay. My sister, she was very beautiful.
They took her and made her sell herself to many, many important
men. They gave her drugs and told her they would kill me if she
didn’t do what they said. She was trying to save me! She didn’t
complain or protest, so that I could have a career in ballet. She
gave up her self so that I could be a solo performer, a
famous
danceur
.
She did everything they asked so that I could have my
dream.

“
And I. . . I
snuck around like a filthy hyena, whispered secrets, betrayed
inside details thinking that my beautiful sister was safe. I did it
so that she could go to school to be surgical nurse. I would spy,
and she could have the dream she so deserved, my beautiful baby
sister. What did I care? I had what I wanted. She deserved as much
joy, if not more, than me. I. . .”

Ivan had been talking so fast that he was
breathing hard. He sucked in air.

“
You want to know where my
sister is?” Ivan asked. “My sister is dead, thrown into the ground,
forgotten by all like stinking garbage. Her death killed my mother.
She had a heart attack when she received the news. You see, like I,
she had been deceived. We thought my sister was surgical nurse in
big hospital in Moscow. But no, my sister was. . . And my
father drank himself to death. And I, the great
danceur
, I. . .
She. . .”

Ivan scowled at her and stopped talking. For
a moment, they stared at each other. He gave her a curt nod and
stalked out of the room. He was halfway down the hallway when he
yelled, “Time to leave!”

Sissy let out a tiny sob. She heard Ivan say
something in Russian to Bestat and Bestat respond in kind. Noelle
came down the hall.

“
Now, Sissy!” Ivan
yelled.

Sissy began to cry for Ivan and his poor
sister. She grabbed her bag and marched down the hall. She turned
the corner and ran into Bestat.

“
He loves you,” Bestat
said.

Sissy was so surprised that she stopped
short. Bestat raised her eyebrows and nodded.

“
I see,” Bestat said. She
gave Sissy a soft smile. “You love him too. I wonder if he knows
that.”

“
Knows what?”

“
That you were made for
each other. The only question is in what capacity will you
love?”

“
We are leaving!” Ivan
yelled from the stairwell. “You will have to take ‘the gross cab,’”
he said the last words in an imitation of her voice.

Sissy pulled on her heavy coat, hat, and
scarf. She grabbed her bag and ran out of the apartment. She was on
the sidewalk before she realized what Bestat had said. She shook
her head at Bestat’s words and stepped into the limousine. She sat
down next to Noelle. MJ was sitting next to the driver in the front
seat. He pointed to Sissy’s seat belt, which she put on.

“
Ballerinas never
cry. . .” Ivan gestured to her face.

“
They get even,” Sissy and
Noelle said together.

Ivan laughed. He gave Sissy a tissue, which
she used to wipe her face. Noelle threaded her arm through
Sissy’s.

“
Are we going to the show
tonight?” Noelle asked.

Ivan opened his mouth to respond, but Sissy
beat him to it.

“
I don’t think so,” Sissy
said. “I’m so tired. I can’t imagine it.”

“
Okay,” Noelle grinned at
Sissy. “If we stay home, we get to talk to Sandy tonight. She said
we might be able to meet Heather’s new baby boy.”

“
The boy with no name,” MJ
said from the front seat. “I have no idea how that’s going to
work.”

“
I think it’s sweet,”
Noelle said. “They’re waiting to name him until Blane comes
home.”

Noelle continued talking. Sissy nodded at
the appropriate times, but she was too emotionally shocked to
follow what Noelle was saying. Instead, Sissy’s mind filled with
the horrors experienced by Ivan’s sister. She glanced up to see
Ivan looking at her.

“
Ms. Behur says she can
show me where my sister is buried,” Ivan said when Noelle took a
breath.

“
That seems really good,”
Sissy said.

“
I will go on summer
break,” Ivan said.

“
So soon?” Sissy’s voice
rose with either surprise or happiness for him. She wasn’t sure
which. “I’ll be in Denver.”

Ivan gave a curt nod.

“
I’m glad,” Sissy said.
“I’ll ask Seth if he will help so you can bring her
home.”

Ivan’s eyebrows moved as he seemed to work
out what she was saying. He nodded again and went back to staring
out the window. Sissy closed her eyes for a moment, and Bestat’s
words, “In what capacity will you love?” came into her mind.

She’d always thought of Ivan as just Ivan,
just old-Ivan. She knew that he loved her, and that she loved him.
That was a given — like the sun or the moon or the sky. But hearing
Ms. Behur say the words, she realized that loving him meant
something, something bigger.

She opened her eyes to look at him. He’d
always seemed desperately old and definitely bossy. At this very
moment, she realized that he was almost too handsome. His hair was
thick and still naturally dark with some flecks of grey. He had a
sharp nose that would dominate someone else’s face. His high and
wide cheekbones normalized his nose. His full lips eased the
transition to his sharp chin. When she’d met him, his teeth were
broken in places. Over the years, braces and caps had given him a
mouth full of gleaming teeth. His eyes were piercing brown or dark
blue depending on what he was wearing. He mostly kept his eyes
hidden behind sunglasses or glasses. His eyebrows were thick.

He was lean and fit from a
lifetime of dance. He was a beautiful
danceur
. Even now, he could still
dance an entire ballet plus warm-ups. Last week, he stepped in to
perform in the place of a
danceur
whose wife was giving birth. And everyone said he
was a great teacher.

All of the girls in her year were in love
with Ivan. They flirted mercilessly with him and whispered about
him in the bathrooms. She’d had girls who danced in the Esprit de
Corps ask her about Ivan. She’d seen a couple of the real
ballerinas slip Ivan their phone numbers. Sissy had just thought it
was because he was new. She saw now that it was because he looked
like a model.

She wasn’t sure why, but the idea made her
heart beat a little faster. She looked down at the floor of the
limousine and smiled. She leaned over to touch Ivan’s arm. He
looked at her.

“
Thanks,” Sissy
said.

“
For?” Ivan scowled his
fiercest scowl. “Telling you horrible stories that make you
cry?”

“
Dealing with me when I’m
a pain,” Sissy said.

Ivan gave her a curt nod. Just before
turning to look out the window, she saw that he gave her a soft
smile. She smiled back at him.

“
What do you want to do
this weekend?” Noelle asked.

“
I don’t know,” Sissy
said.

“
Well. . .”
Noelle launched into a long list of their possibilities. Noelle had
a gift for filling the silence with happy chatter. By the time they
reached Sissy’s school, they had both agreed that they wanted to
sleep in and watch movies. She and Ivan got out of the limousine
and started into school.

“
You will practice this
weekend,” Ivan said. “This is a new school. You have much to
learn.”

“
But. . .” Sissy
started.

Ivan raised an eyebrow at her, and she
nodded. He turned into the administration office. Staring at the
floor in glum silence, she started down the hallway to the locker
room. She almost immediately ran into a soloist ballerina.

“
Sorry,” Sissy mumbled. “I
didn’t see you.”

“
No, I ran into you,” the
soloist said. “On purpose.”

Sissy looked up at the beautiful woman. She
was everything Sissy wanted to become. She was tall, beautiful,
confident, and very talented. She carried herself with an unnatural
grace brought about by decades of perfectionistic practice. Sissy
felt a wave of admiration infused with envy.

“
I wanted to ask
you. . .” the soloist said. “I mean, everyone said that
you would know. . .”

“
Know what?” Sissy
asked.

“
Um, gosh, this is
embarrassing,” the soloist said with a touch of false modesty and a
bat of her long eyelashes. “But I wanted to know about Ivan. Is he
your. . .uncle?”

“
Teacher,” Sissy said.
“Since I was four.”

“
Oh?” the soloist seemed
relieved. “So you and he. . .”

Sissy shook her head.

“
And he’s not
married?”

Sissy shook her head.

“
Dating?”

Sissy shook her head. The woman smiled.

“
And you’re sure about you
and him?” the woman asked. “You seem really close.”

“
We are.” Sissy
nodded.

She was about to tell the woman that Ivan
didn’t date ballerinas — it was one of his rules — when the woman
gave Sissy a confident smile. She raised her eyebrows in the same
way Charlie and Nash did when they said, “Game on.” Sissy
blushed.

“
Thanks,” the woman said.
She looked down at Sissy. “You’re a life saver.”

Sissy watched her glide down the hallway. As
if by magic, she ran into Ivan when he left administration. Sissy
watched the woman flutter like a gorgeous butterfly. Sissy felt a
ball of angry confusion burn in her stomach. She must have been
staring because Ivan felt her eyes. He raised an eyebrow at her and
pointed in the direction of the locker room. She turned in place
and trotted down the hallway.