The Art of Falling (15 page)

The preparations were complete. The only way it could have been more perfect would have been if Angela’s mother had come, but it was no big surprise when she’d told me she couldn’t leave work.

“Excuse me, coming through.” The crowd parted, and Joey backed into the room. He and one of the male instructors, biceps bulging, were carrying Joey’s leather lounger into the room. Angela’s box of cards rode along on the seat. Taped to the back of the chair was a handmade sign: “Angela Reed: Queen for the Day.”

“I never thought I’d see the day when that chair left Joey’s office,” said Suzie. “He’s never even let
me
sit in it.”

An hour later, though, that was exactly where Joey’s wife was sitting. People checked their watches and said they’d have to get back to work. I’d called Angela fifteen minutes earlier, and when no one was home, I assumed she was on her way. Before everyone left, I ran up to the front desk to get the report from Kandelbaum. He had no report. The phone rang. In the absence of other staff, I answered.

“Fitness Evolution, may I help you?”

“Woohoo, first try. That is you, Penny, right?”

“Angela?” She sounded—well, drunk. I waved Kandelbaum to my side and held the receiver so we both could hear. “I was getting worried. Where are you?”

“Presby. I doubled over with pain on the way to the cab you sent and had to hijack it. It could be another abdominal blockage. They need to run some tests.” In the background, I heard horns and laughter and someone calling out Angela’s name.

“It sounds like a bar.”

“They’re giving me a party! They must have scrambled around like crazy because they have balloons tied to the beds, and cupcakes, soda…”

I wanted to tell her about our balloons and our food and all of the people waiting down in the gym, and about the tightly wound man sharing the receiver with me who had taken the day off work to set up a small feast for her, but I couldn’t bring myself to burden her with it. “You sound happy.”

“Pain meds! I’m higher than a kite. And my mom said she’d drive up to see me tonight. Listen. I owe you an apology.”

“Why?”

“I was foolish to let myself get so down this morning. I’d forgotten all the sordid biological details of my life are constantly on view here. Someone remembered my birthday after all!”

“Sure did.” She’d know soon enough how very many people had remembered, when I dropped off the box with all of our cards. I pushed the receiver toward Kandelbaum, but he pulled back and waved me off. I elbowed him in the ribs and got back on. “Okay, I’ll see you later. Have a good time.”

Partygoers drifted away. Kandelbaum left to get the uneaten food back under refrigeration. I was glad. I could no longer put up with his hopeless lovesickness.

“Why don’t you go over to Presby and tell her how you feel?” I said.

“I can’t.”

“It would cheer her up.”

“She’d think I said it out of pity. I have to tell her when she feels strong enough to believe me.”

I wanted to argue, but he had a point. His declaration of love would have to wait.

“Penelope Sparrow!” On Monday morning, a new dawn aerobics participant took a half step back and looked me up and down. “It never occurred to me—in a gym!—but then of course I thought you were still in Allentown. How are you? You look well.” Margaret MacArthur pumped my hand. “Oh dear, that wasn’t your broken arm, was it?”

I almost didn’t recognize her in a tracksuit and sneakers. For fun, I pictured her wearing the little pillbox hat as well.

“How did you track me down?” I asked.

“You give me too much credit. One of your gym members works at the
Sentinel
and mentioned she’d discovered a love for movement through this class. I thought it would make a good story—and here you are at the center of it.” A photographer joined her and she directed him to set up in the corner of the room.

“I can’t let you photograph—”

“I have approval from the owner,” she said. She started taking down names of the ladies coming into the gym.

Joey might be on board, but I wasn’t. Things were finally going well with Karen and Haley, and the last thing I needed was to draw more attention to myself. Anyway, I thought I’d put an end to the notion of a MacArthur interview months ago.

MacArthur circumnavigated the room and made her way back to me, notebook in hand. “You’re a little overqualified for this sort of thing, aren’t you?”

“I could say the same of you.”

A voice sang out through the doorway. “Penny, hold up, I’ll only be a second.”

Good god. I’d asked her to check in now and then, but what the hell was my mother doing here at five-thirty in the morning? She would have had to leave home by four. She bypassed the locker room convention and dropped her handbag and coat at the edge of the room before giving me a hug. She looked drawn. I hoped she wasn’t ill. MacArthur joined us after stripping down to a tight tee shirt and stretchy black pants that revealed a boyish figure. She had no intention of watching the class—she was taking it. My mother stood right next to her. The professional and personal lives I’d carefully compartmentalized were about to collide. And if my mother should trip on those triple-X workout pants she was wearing, she would squish MacArthur like a bug.

My mother made the first move. “Hello, I’m Evelyn Sparrow.”

“Sparrow? So you would be—”

I cranked up the stereo with a Trans-Siberian Orchestra version of Beethoven’s Fifth.

After class, MacArthur asked if we could talk. I said I had another appointment. I pulled my mother over to an office area separated from the rest of the room by a half wall and a sheet of glass. I handed her a towel and a water bottle from my private stash. “Are you all right?”

“Of course I’m all right. Didn’t you see me dancing?”

I put my hand to her cheek. Her skin was moist, flushed but not flaming, and she was able to speak without panting. I asked, “What are you doing here?”

“I’m here to treat myself to that warm, fuzzy feeling you get when you surprise someone.”

“Sorry, I’m on edge. Angela is having surgery today.”

“I’m sorry, honey.”

“You look different.”

“It’s been so long since you’ve seen me, your eyes probably changed.”

“You’re not sick, are you?”

“Oh stop.” She wiped a towel across her face. “Hey, did you see that movement I added with my arms?” She showed me again, holding her arms above her head and letting each inscribe its own conical shape. “Like you did in
Puma
.”

I looked around to make sure MacArthur was nowhere in sight. “How do you know what I did in
Puma
?”

My mother couldn’t possibly know that choreography. I hadn’t spoken with her about that performance since we premiered the piece. And I’d only performed
Puma
once—in Washington.

“You didn’t think I’d miss your Kennedy Center premiere, did you?”

“How did you know about it?”

“
Dance
Magazine
. I followed Dance DeLaval in the listings.”

“You went down to Washington to see me?”

“Twelfth row. You were a lot better than Tina in that role.”

But Karly had finished out the Washington run. Tina had only performed it—“You saw it in Philadelphia, too?”

“It was a public event.”

“Of course.”

“Sweetheart. I went to all your Philadelphia performances. Anyway, your movement didn’t look right on Tina’s little body. Your long limbs slice through the space. She just pokes at it.”

My mind swirled. She’d called it
my
movement. Dmitri had never credited me, and I was sure the fact I’d been feeding him ideas hadn’t been in
Dance
Magazine
. “How did you know it was my movement?”

“I’ve been watching you dance since you were old enough to walk. I know how your body moves. That dance had your thumbprint all over it.”

I struggled to take in what she was telling me. My mother had been with me, performance after performance, step after step? “You never came backstage.”

“I did, once. I got close enough to see you through the stage door. You and the other dancers were hugging. When I saw how happy you were, I knew that’s all I ever wanted.”

For a long, confusing moment I tried to find the hidden subtext. The implied comparison to some famous dancer who’d given up at the height of her career. But I sensed no snap to her tone, no rush to judgment. She didn’t meet my eyes, but looked down and away. Sad. Wounded, like a mother whose unconditional love for her child went unrequited. I didn’t know this woman, or how to relate to her, and I sure as hell hadn’t meant to create her. We stood for a moment in awkward silence, my guilt thickening the air.

“But now that we’re talking about it, I’ve been dying to ask about the Kennedy Center. You shined in the first half, but toward the end you looked a little off.”

“I broke my toe.”

“Oh.”

We started to laugh. I threw my arms around her, turning my head to hide my tears from the ladies on the other side of the window who had stopped midexercise to gawk. With her shoulder a soft pillow against my cheek, I remembered a source of comfort I had denied myself during the darkest moments of my life. “I am so sorry, Mom.”

“That’s okay, baby,” she whispered in my ear. “You’ll tell me all about it when you’re ready.”

But I had already said more than I ever intended to on the subject—that day in her kitchen, when I called her fat.

She pulled away and offered the box of tissues from the counter. She acknowledged the onlookers with a nod of her head. “You’ve always done your best work on a stage, you know.”

I turned away to dab at my tears and heard my mother say, “You’re listening anyway, Ms. MacArthur, so you might as well hear this clearly.”

I whipped around to see MacArthur slip into the room, notebook and pen already in hand. “I actually owe some of the weight loss I’ve achieved to you,” my mother continued. “Every time I want a doughnut, I think of this article I once read: ‘Fall of a Sparrow.’ I picture my daughter’s broken body on the dented roof of a car, with flattened fastnachts all around her. Then I think of how brave she was to put her life back together, even while you waged a continual assault on her privacy.” She reached for my hand and gave it a squeeze. “Somehow, after that, doughnuts lost their appeal.” My mother turned to me. “I’ll see you later, Penny. And Ms. MacArthur? I have a witness—that comment was off the record.”

• • •

My mother left the office and MacArthur brazenly flipped open her notebook.

“She said it was off the record.”

“So she did. How is it that you came to work here?”

“You can just switch gears after what my mother said? Are you made of flesh and blood?”

She lowered her notepad. “Of course I am. But she wasn’t attacking my flesh and blood. She didn’t care for my work, which is understandable in this case. I’m a critic, Penelope. People don’t always see things as I do. That doesn’t change my beliefs or my interest in carrying on.” She raised the notepad again. “Now—about how you got this job?”

“It was an accident.” I excused myself—a woman on the other side of the room was doing squats with form so poor it made my own knees hurt. I went to help her.

MacArthur followed along. “I’ve never seen floor pattern work in an aerobics class before.”

“It decreases boredom.”

“Theirs, or yours?”

I had to think. “Both.”

“Hmm. You have the soul of a choreographer, you know. Like Dmitri.”

I turned on her—like
Dmitri
? She was so small I could blow on her and knock her down, but her bullying hit its mark. I inhaled, raised, flared.

“You think you know what was going on inside Dance DeLaval, but you don’t. Dmitri is not the cute little baby in a
couche-culotte
you may remember—”

“I’ve heard you suffer from an eating disorder. Is this true?”

I froze. Thoughts scrambled, sought new order. What did she know? What had she seen? My private struggle, so carelessly exposed, burrowed deeper within me. Filled my stomach until it ached. I had to wait before forming words; even my soul stuttered.

When I recovered enough to move, I grabbed her arm and pulled her deeper into the room. “Where would you hear something like that?”

“So you’re not denying it.”

“Who’s gossiping about me?”

“I don’t reveal my sources. Is it anorexia?”

Had she trumpeted that final word? I looked around, but no one seemed to be staring at us. Did she not know how important public perception was in the life of a performer? Between health and danger lay a tightrope I’d been walking my entire adult life. I’d perfected my skills. If I’d left that line behind, everyone would know it—there was no safety net. I lowered my voice. “I will not honor that with a response.”

“Then tell me why Dmitri left for Europe without you.”

“Why should I?”

“Because I need your input for my article. It’s important that women with unconventional bodies—”

“Enough with that. Can’t you allow me the smallest bit of happiness?”

“Don’t tell me you’re happy here. Doing”—she waved her hand around—“this.”

“This is all the dance I can handle right now.”

She actually had the gall to laugh. “This is hardly dance.”

“I was injured, you know.” I pictured myself the way my mother had: lying on a dented car roof. Falling so far…with no safety net.

Had I finally screwed up? Pushed the line too far? MacArthur babbled on but the cold, dark balcony of the Independence Suites once again claimed me. What if I had fainted that night? Loss of consciousness would explain my memory loss. I couldn’t believe it—refused to believe it, I’d always been so careful—but my own dark potential rattled me so badly I had to sit.

MacArthur stepped closer and looked expectantly into my face, as if she’d asked a question.

“What?”

“I said your shoulder has mended, yet still you don’t dance.” She closed her notebook and slipped it into her back pocket. “Perhaps it’s your spirit that’s still broken.”

Perhaps so, but an interview with MacArthur was not going to heal it. And I couldn’t unburden myself to my mother. How could I tell the woman whose arteries gave me life about the black vein of self-hate that had damned thighs sturdy enough to survive a fourteen-story fall, and stilled the joyous sway of hips made to mambo?

This was the sort of thing I could only share with a best friend. Now that I had one, I hoped it wasn’t too late.