Private Lies (4 page)

"I'm sure there'll be many more," Mrs. Stein
responded.

"So you were turned on to ballet at an early
age," Ken said, his eyes shifting to the picture on an end table.

"Before that," Mrs. Stein said. "You should
have seen her. I think she danced when she was still in my womb. I swear I felt
it."

"Mama," Carol snapped, looking at Ken for
sympathy.

"I'm embarrassing her, I guess," Mrs. Stein said.

"It's my interview, Mama, please." Then, move
gently, Carol added, "She's not really a stage mother."

"Actually, I spend more time telling her to stop.
Believe me, she doesn't need pushing. You should see her, Mr. Kramer. A dream.
An absolute dream."

"I'd love to," Ken said.

The story was coming together now. The obsessed daughter
and the sacrificing family. He was getting a handle on it, writing the lead in
his head. He needed some facts to flesh things out and pressed Carol for more
background. Years of lessons, constant effort, perpetual coaching. He wrote it
all down.

"Where do you think it comes from?"

Carol seemed to worry over the question for a long time.
Then her mother spoke.

"I took her to see Tchaikovsky's
Swan
Lake
when she was three. She sat there hypnotized. I'll never forget..."

"That was part of it," Carol interrupted.
"The exposure. Something happened." She shook her head. "It's
hard to explain it. But that's all I ever wanted. It's my fantasy."

"So where do you go from here?" he asked.

"Manhattan. The New York City Ballet School. As Mama says, hopefully the Corps."

"Not hopefully," her mother interjected.
"Definitely."

"That's obvious. You want to be a professional
ballerina," Ken said.

"A prima ballerina, Mr. Kramer," Mrs. Stein said,
exchanging glances with her daughter. "Nothing less."

"Mama, please," Carol said, blushing. "I
don't want to even think about that. Just to do my best. That's all I want to
focus on." She turned toward Ken. "The title 'ballerina' isn't to be
taken lightly, Mr. Kramer. Not many really earn the title until they're in
their late twenties, and then they have to work to keep it. As for 'prima
ballerina,' that's like a dream."

"I suppose it's enormously competitive. Girls coming
from everywhere with the same burning ambition."

Carol shrugged, then said, "That's why you can't be
unrealistic about your expectations."

The sudden flash of doubt seemed jarring.

"She's superstitious," Mrs. Stein said. "She
thinks that if she's too confident and optimistic it would be a jinx."

"Well, it must work. She did win a first prize,"
Ken reflected. The idea of all that competition struck home. Wasn't he faced
with the same situation? Working toward the same level of expectation?

"Fact is she wants to be the best in the world,"
Mrs. Stein said. Carol shot her mother a rebuking glance and frowned.

"A champion," Ken said, thinking, God, for your
sake I hope so. He felt it emanate from the girl's aura, from every symbolic
pore, this drive to be the best. And the doubts.

"I plan to work very hard, which is no guarantee of
success," Carol said. "I'll give it my best."

"Tell Mr. Kramer what that means, darling," Mrs.
Stein said. Then she filled the pause with her own explanation. "Eight to
ten hours of practice a day. Practice and discipline. The body is the
instrument. A careful diet. Early to bed. No social life. It's not a hobby.
It's a life."

"You find it hard?" Ken asked Carol.

"Hard?" Mrs. Stein began.

"I need the quote from Carol, Mrs. Stein," Ken
said, throwing a wink at Carol, who flashed approval with her eyes. Ken waited
through the long silence.

"A dancer dances," Carol said serenely.
"I've made this my priority. It's everything to me. I hope I have a good
career. That's what I'm shooting for."

"I like that," Ken said.

"Is that a special person?" Mrs. Stein
interjected. He ignored her.

"So your life is your dancing?" Ken asked, as if
her mother no longer existed. "To the exclusion of everything else?"

"Yes, it is," Carol said firmly.

"Not even boyfriends?" he asked. Despite the
ulterior motive, it was a good journalistic question.

"No," Carol said. He looked into her eyes for
something tentative about the answer, and found none. He hid his
disappointment.

"There's no time for boys," the mother said.

Carol's eyes smiled.

"You don't think that will make you ... well ...
socially backward," Ken asked slyly.

"We'll see. It's just not important at the
moment," Carol said. Her mother nodded approval.

"So art is all," Ken said.

"In a way, I suppose. But I don't think about
it," Carol said, her eyes greener now as the lowering sun threw more light
into the room. "My plan is to take it one day at a time. And give it every
ounce I have."

There it was. Well, he knew what that was all about.

Ken wrote what he thought was a good story. Holmes, who
edited it, agreed.

"Think she'll make it?" he asked.

"Well, I'm rooting for her," Ken said.

"That sure comes through, kiddo."

The girl had made an impression on him. The story ran,
complete with picture, with a headline that read: LOCAL GIRL PIROUETTES TO PRIZE. There was a shot of Carol in a frilly tutu in mid-spin.

The day the story ran, Ken brought the paper over to her
house, then watched her as she read it. Thankfully, her mother was out. She had
been practicing at the bar and her face was moist with perspiration. He noted
how perfect her body looked in a leotard. Nor could he deny to himself the
erotic pull of her.

"I'm embarrassed," she said after she had read
his story.

"I told the truth," he told her.

"You seem so sure I'll make it."

"I have no doubts at all."

"Well, I do. Lots of them."

"I can tell a winner when I see one," he said.

Then he asked her out for a cup of coffee, asking in such a
businesslike way that she would not think of it as a kind of date. What he
feared most now was that she was deadly serious about having no distractions in
her life. The fact was that he wanted to distract her, wanted to be with her.
And more.

There was a coffee shop a couple of blocks away, and when
they had settled in and the waiter had taken their order, Ken spoke:

"I feel slightly guilty, taking you away from your
work."

"Don't be silly. I have to take a break
sometime."

"We all do," he said, laughing." And that's
kind of you to say after all that talk of focus."

He noted that her fingers were thin and delicate and that
her neck was long and graceful. Yet for all her attractiveness, there was
something so obviously natural, even naïve, about her. He sensed a
vulnerability, which somehow made his own thoughts predatory. It was clear that
she had no experience with the opposite sex. Not that he was an expert on the
subject, but he had acquired a lot more knowledge in that department than she
had. He wondered if she had the slightest inkling that this coffee klatch was
really an exercise in flirtation. Even in his thoughts, he dared not use the
word
seduction
, but the fact was that he did want to interest her in
himself. It was more daunting than he had expected.

"Well, you've told me your story. Now, if you're
interested, I'll tell you mine."

She nodded. "Yes, I'm interested."

She had ordered coffee and was sipping it lightly, but
mostly her fingertips played with the rim of her cup. Despite her politeness,
he had the sense that the time she had allowed him was limited.

"I ... I understood what you meant about, you know, making
it. You see, I want to be a writer..."

"You are a writer."

"I mean a creative writer. In a way it's like dancing.
A dancer dances. A writer writes."

"Absolutely," she said, nodding to emphasize her
understanding.

"'Up in Michigan' was my
Swan Lake
," he
said. She looked puzzled and he explained. "You saw
Swan
Lake
and knew you wanted to be a ballet dancer. I read Ernest Hemingway's 'Up in Michigan' and knew I wanted to be a writer. People like us are the luckiest people
alive," he added. "We know what we want."

Then he laid out his own goals as if she were the
journalist and he the subject of the interview.

"To be published by twenty-five. That's my goal,"
he told her. "I feel the pull of it, that I have things to express, that
there is an important voice in me."

"Yes, I see," Carol said.

She didn't ask what exactly it was he was being urged to
express, but he was certain she understood it.

"Like ballet, also a form of expression."

"Except that you're especially lucky," she told
him. "A writer has got longer possibilities, an extended career life. Not
like a dancer. You don't have to depend on the body as much as I do." He
looked at her thin, delicate wrists, the narrow watch strapped around the small
bones. And yet she did not seem frail at all.

"Your mother called you paranoid about time," he
said, as if seeing the watch on her wrist had reminded him.

"It's an occupational hazard," she said. "A
dancer is always racing with time."

"At seventeen?"

"I've been racing with it since I was three," she
said.

"You're so intense," he said.

"You have to be."

He looked at her for a long moment, studying her face, but
mostly stalling to find some way into her confidence. Above all, he knew what
he was seeking. A relationship with her. Perhaps, intimacy. Flirt back, he
begged her in his heart.

"I ... I have to say this. I really think you're ...
well, beautiful. Very beautiful."

"You do?" She seemed surprised. "Then I
thank you very much."

"Kind sir."

"What?" She seemed confused.

"I thought you might say, 'Thank you very much, kind
sir.' The 'kind sir' would be like ... well, a saucy response, a flirty thing
to say."

"I guess I don't know too much about those
things," she said, blushing. Her eyelids fluttered with a brief
nervousness.

He was suddenly tempted to reach out and touch her hand. He
didn't. Instead, he shook his head.

"Do you ever think about anything else but
ballet?"

She paused and smiled. "Everything relates to
ballet," she said.

"Never about boys."

"Not usually," she said, giving him a tiny
opening.

"So we must seek the unusual," he said boldly.

She laughed, but she offered no repartee.

"So what happens next?" Ken asked.

She had an answer, one not quite expected.

What happened next, she told him, was that she would begin
studying in Manhattan next month. Because of the transportation time factor she
had taken a tiny apartment in the Village.

"I just found you and off you go," he said. He
meant it literally. Her impact on him had inspired yearning. Perhaps pain. Is
this what was meant by falling in love?

"I'm sure we'll meet again," she said politely,
but without conviction, deepening his disappointment.

He groped for something more to say. Something that would
stimulate a reaction. Did she feel anything, any reaction at all to him? He
doubted it and it was discouraging.

"Does your mother object?" he asked instead,
deliberately choosing the banal. "To your being in Manhattan."

"Object? Not at all. Anything that makes it easier for
me is okay with them. This will cut out the commute, give me more time for work
and study. My parents subsidize everything. Of course, the scholarship helps
immensely."

"Can I see you dance someday?" he asked.

"I hope so." She paused. "And you'll give me
things of yours to read. You know ... the real stuff."

A tiny something, he thought. She had struck a personal
note. Not quite a breakthrough. Was he making headway? He looked up at her and
she lowered her eyes.

"Can we keep in touch?" Ken asked. "I really
would like to know you better."

"That would be nice."

"Will I be able to get your number?"

"My mother will have it."

"And will she give it to me?" He stumbled for a
moment, trying to come up with the right tone. "I mean, I don't want her
to think I mean to be a boyfriend. More like a friend friend."

Carol smiled. "I'll tell her."

Did she mean it? He wished he could convince himself that
despite all the caveats, the discipline, the avoidance, a powerful inexorable
force was working its will between them. It was, of course, but he didn't know
it then.

"Until next time," she told him as they parted,
shaking his hand, showing strength in the grip. Nothing frail in that package,
he thought then as he watched her walk away.

Next time? He doubted there would be a next time.

Not long after that meeting with Carol, he caught the first
icy breeze of literary rejection. The story he had sent off to the magazine,
"The Other People," had come back refused, but with a scribbled
comment on the printed rejection slip: "Find your own voice, Kramer.
Hemingway hated poor imitators."

Rejection, Ken told himself, was the fate of all great
writers until their moment came. His would come.

After graduation from City College he took a job as a copy
boy at the
Daily News
, the four-to-midnight shift, which gave him hours
in the daytime to write, and he would not be damaging his style by writing
free-lance drivel for two cents a word.

He lived in a studio apartment on Houston Street in Greenwich Village, one square room really, with a tiny fridge and gas stove on a shelf in
one corner of the room and a bed in another. Against one wall was a table,
which served also as Ken's writing desk, and a single wooden chair. It was a
dark basement apartment with wrought-iron bars on the window. The atmosphere
was damp and dingy but all he could afford. Nevertheless, he had his electric
Smith-Corona and sheaves of stolen copy paper from the
News
. What more
did he need to create immortal prose?