The Art of Falling (25 page)

Three months later. Ten minutes before curtain. The premiere of Real People Dance would soon begin, at a venue right on Philadelphia’s Avenue of the Arts. For safety’s sake, I pushed against the large prop we’d secured to the floor behind the first wing. It felt sturdy.

The union stage manager waved me over. “Listen to this,” he said, removing his headset.

“You deal with it,” I snapped. “That’s why I hired you.”

He reached over and plopped the headset over my ears.

“Penny? Is that you? I don’t know if she’s there, I don’t know how to use this thing.”

I heard tapping. “Marty? Where are you?”

“Oh good, it’s Penny. I’m in the lighting booth.”

This is the type of problem you have when working with volunteers. He was supposed to be manning the
ticket
booth.

I couldn’t fault his enthusiasm, though. He may have known nothing about putting on a performance, but he had been selling program ads for us at recent Chamber of Commerce meetings, throwing in a free raisin brioche for each business that took out a $50 ad in our program.

I fiddled with the headset. Marty was having trouble hearing me, so I spoke more loudly into the mouthpiece. “If you’re in the lighting booth, who’s manning the ticket window?”

“That’s what I wanted to tell you, Penny. We’re sold out.”

I had to take a deep breath and hold it—my makeup job was at stake. As recently as noon the day before, I’d panicked when hearing we were less than half sold. What kind of philanthropic foundation would cut us a check if the theater ended up half empty? We would look like idiots.

“Do you hear the coughing?” he said.

I was inured to the muffled sounds of coughing and throat clearing on the other side of the curtain as people took their seats. Audiences always do that, knowing that soon the lights will go down and they must be silent. But now that he mentioned it, there was more coughing than one might expect.

“I sent a letter to Dara Reed, who forwarded it to a colleague at Children’s. I didn’t want to mention it in case nothing came of it. But he looped his e-mail with it or something and contacted people with CF. In my letter, I told them about the piece you did for Angela and quite a few have responded. I’m looking down on an audience dotted with portable oxygen tanks as we speak.”

In light of such wonderful news, I dared to ask. “Did any critics show up?”

“Only one, Penny. I’m sorry.”

“Which one?”

“Margaret MacArthur is sitting in L-101. She wants you to know she brought her sister—it’s the first performance Laura has agreed to attend in thirty years. I’m sorry we didn’t get more critics. Maybe next time.”

I let out the breath I was holding. “No problem. How about our other guests?” I had reserved two half-rows for representatives of the organizations Stella had approached for funding.

“Of course I gave up their seats to paying customers.”

“Kandelbaum—”

“Just kidding. All present—your friend Bebe ushered them in herself. Dance well, Penny.”

• • •

Two minutes to curtain. I began to climb the prop—a tall stepladder.

Choreographing material for the show had been the most fun I’d ever had. I created four pieces, two for each half. Jeannie, Gayle, and I had a blast putting together
Triplets
. Who would have thought somebody as depressed as I’d been in the past year might have a flair for comedy? Only an audience would be able to tell us whether it was really funny, but we cracked ourselves up. We had played with the physics of our partnering so I could lift Gayle, Gayle could lift Jeannie, and little Jeannie could lift me. The unison sections, with women of such different sizes, intrigued us.

The larger work took longer to come together, but it ended up being such a good introduction to the individual attributes of the full company that I placed it first on the program. We had been generating movement material on a couple of different themes—balance, risk-taking, and stepping into the unknown—but it wasn’t until it came together that I became aware of its autobiographical elements.

It would start with a splash—a spectacular mosh pit dive from the top of this ladder. The audience wouldn’t see me until I fell through the proscenium frame and into the arms of my dancers onstage, who would not visibly prepare to receive me. A dramatic, carefully orchestrated, yet random-seeming event that, if pulled off without a hitch, should have people talking for some time to come.

I reached the top and tested my balance. The dancers worked off their jitters by marking the opening pattern one more time. The overhead lights cut out, leaving only a work light that bounced off their body parts while they moved. Disembodied curves and angles skidded through the space. Beautiful, gold-tinged night spirits.

My perception shifted. I no longer stood on a ladder, but on the balcony at the Independence Suites. The darkness toyed with my vision, and instead of the stage, eight feet below, I faced a distant street as I had just over a year before. I remembered feeling nothing when I looked down through the blackness.

Yes. I remembered.

I watched as one of my hands turned off the lights in the apartment I’d shared with Dmitri, and the other shut the sliding glass door that would separate me from the double bed I could no longer bear to use.

Something dug into my thigh—the aluminum straps on the balcony’s lone redwood chair where I sat, long ago stripped for winter. I found this increasingly satisfying as my nose and chin grew numb. Beside me, the breeze rattled an empty drying rack.

The sky pressed down with the threat of snow. Clouds blew in overhead, but I couldn’t see them; it was too dark. The stars simply went out, one by one.

A rustle. The breeze scooted a piece of paper across the balcony’s floor and slapped it against the wall. I picked it up. I knew from its texture it was a handbill from my last performance with Dance DeLaval, less than two months earlier.

I couldn’t see—it was too dark—but I knew Dmitri was pictured on it. I ran my hand over it, searching for him, but felt only the gloss of its cold surface. I tried to call up the exhilaration of working beside him, and could not. I tried to remember the way my pores would tighten when he’d move his hand across my skin, but could not. The storehouse of images I relied upon to sustain me as a performing artist was empty. Love, hate, anger, betrayal—they were simple accumulations of letters now, as devoid of meaning as my life.

I had relinquished too much, and when Dmitri left the country, he had taken with him whatever was left of me.

I stood and looked down. A half-block away was the Avenue of the Arts. The backbone of my life. Most of its theaters were dark that Monday. The frigid streets looked vacant.

And then—my breath caught when I remembered this—I sat on the wall and swung my legs to the other side. I told myself not to look down, and when I did, a wave of dizziness threatened. I was awed by the height and afraid to feel anything, especially the dizziness, so I shifted my focus to a narrow ledge below me. I almost lost my grip when I eased my body toward it—my sweater rode up, and the way I’d rolled down the waist of my knit pants caused them to catch on the balcony’s concrete lip. My elbow smacked into the wall and I had to struggle to hang on. I did struggle to hang on.

I reached the ledge and planted my feet upon it, perfectly turned out. I fit icy fingers over the top of the wall behind me, arched forward, and awaited one last chance for…something.

One by one my knuckles gave way, and when the first snowflakes drifted from the sky, so did I.

There was no jump. I didn’t fall. I just let go.

And then, the miracle: instead of a downward rush, I felt a force push upward against me. As if the space itself partnered me and slowed my descent. I no longer felt afraid. I felt loved.

The stage manager snapped me back into the moment when he knocked three times at the bottom of my ladder and held up all his fingers.

• • •

Ten seconds to curtain.

I once told Angela I’d never be able to climb up high again, but here I was, boldly perched a whole level higher than the warning sticker that said “Danger: Do not stand on or above this step—you can lose your balance.” I pictured her on the ladder at our apartment, painting the sky.

I looked down at the dancers as they took their places. They were the heart of what I wanted to say and the distinctive arms and legs capable of its expression. They looked up, now, and awaited my cue. I raised my arm to set them in motion.

The audience hushed, the curtain rose. My musical director was seated at the piano. With a nod from me, my mother began to play. The dancers swarmed beneath me; I felt the tension as they forced themselves not to catch my eye. They were counting on me to make this happen, and I desperately wanted to. I wanted to make good dances. I wanted to move people. I wanted to inspire Margaret MacArthur to leap from her seat and rush to the
Sentinel
to write about it. I wanted to touch that place, deep within Laura MacArthur, where movement begins. I wanted the philanthropists to consider us a worthy investment. I wanted to inspire the CF kids to lead full, productive lives. I wanted to prove to myself, in Dmitri’s absence, that my creativity was sacred and worth protecting.

All that wanting. I started to shake, deep down in my center of gravity. But my hips created a solid foundation that would not crumble. My thighs were strong and would not collapse.

I took a breath so deep that the air tickled my lungs. I let it out on a slow count—Angela. Mom. Dad. Bebe. Marty. My dancers. Dmitri. Yes, even Dmitri, dancing right now for a different audience in another country, who for all his faults, once told me that I was more than just another body. My heart filled and pounded, my soul hungered for life.

Invoking the god within all of them to sustain me, I jumped.

1.
Do you think a person could survive a fourteen-story fall? Discuss cases covered by the media about miraculous survival. How do you think such a thing would affect your own life?

2.
What is your perception of Penny as a dancer? Do you think she has what it takes to make it in a performance career? Why or why not?

3.
Evelyn clearly believed in her daughter from a young age and provided Penny with the special training she needed to succeed in her field. What other endeavors require a similar focus? Compare and contrast the risks of focused training and generalized education in today’s society.

4.
After Angela’s previous roommate dies, she tells Penny that the woman “just couldn’t hold on any longer.” How much power do you believe we can have over our own deaths? Discuss experiences you might have with dying people who may have seemed to “let go.”

5.
Penny thinks she has walked a safe line between “low calorie” and “nutritionally healthy.” Do you think Penny has an eating disorder? Why or why not? How would you define “eating disorder”?

6.
Penny says, “Restricting was the closest feeling I’d ever had to self-love.” What do you think she meant by that? How is restricting also like self-hate?

7.
Each of the novel’s characters has a different notion about the relationship between eating and body image. In this regard, compare and contrast Penny, Bebe, Evelyn, Margaret MacArthur, Angela, and Kandelbaum. As you became more aware of the limitations of your body, with which of these characters did your thoughts and/or influences align? Did those thoughts help or hinder you? Have your thoughts changed as an adult?

8.
Discuss the influence on Penny’s developing body image provided by her mother, her father, Miss Judith, and Bebe.

9.
Laura MacArthur was told outright that she had to lose weight to be in the company. In Penny’s case, was the pressure to be thin from the dance world, or from within Penny? In what way does our society at large send signals to all women about the ideal body image? Have you ever felt pressure—at work, at school, or at home—to have a body that was different in a significant way than yours? How did you deal with it?

10.
Penny describes the scale as “my partner in crime, my lover, and my nemesis.” What does this mean? Do you have a relationship with the scale? If yes, what is it, and does it influence your day-to-day lifestyle?

11.
Angela and Kandelbaum are Penny’s first friends outside the dance world. Why is this significant? What drew the three of them into such a fast friendship? What were they able to give to one another?

12.
Discuss the structure of the novel. How did the author use the opening situation to raise the two questions that drive the novel’s interweaving storylines? Was the technique effective in drawing the novel to a satisfactory conclusion?

13.
While reading, when did you first suspect Penny might have tried to kill herself? Now that you’ve finished the book, do you still think Penny tried to commit suicide? Why or why not?

14.
In the psych ward, Penny says, “Just because I suffered traumatic memory loss didn’t mean I was out of my mind. If anything, I was out of my body.” What do you think she means by this?

15.
Is Dmitri a villain? In what ways did he support Penny’s dream, and in what ways did he hinder her? And when he put his own interests first—was that a bad thing? Whose fault was it that she had to part ways with the company?

16.
Penny says, “My passion for dance and my passion for Dmitri could no longer be separated; I didn’t know where one ended and the other began.” Explain what that means and how this issue is related to her relationships with her mother and her own body.

17.
Discuss the role that muscle memory plays in Penny’s healing. Have you ever experienced a time when your muscles seemingly remembered something your brain had forgotten?

18.
Discuss the concept of space as a dancer’s partner. What role does “space” play in other arts: Visual? Architecture? Music? Literature?

19.
How was Evelyn’s weight a metaphor in her relationship with Penny? Why was their relationship so strained, and when did it start to heal?

20.
Compare and contrast Kandelbaum and Penny where it concerns faith and other kinds of support. Do you think Kandelbaum would have considered suicide if he was left on his own after losing Angela? Was Penny able to set a foundation of faith that she could rely upon in the future?

21.
Penny and Angela discuss a wrestling match between body and soul at death’s doorstep. Compare Angela’s death with what Penny remembers of her actions before the fall. Are body and soul separate entities, or are they inextricably interwoven?

22.
Compare the Penelope Sparrow who moved to New York to start auditioning to the same character at the end. How has she changed? Name a few of the major turning points that stick out to you.

23.
What is Penny hoping to accomplish with Real People Dance? Do you think the world will accept them? In what ways is America’s tolerance for individual body differences and intolerance for unhealthy lifestyles becoming more apparent?

24.
Were you surprised that Penny hires her mother as musical director for the new company? Do you think they’ll be able to work together? What has changed about their relationship?

25.
What do you think Penny’s life will be like after the close of the book? In what ways will it be different from the career she envisioned as a child, and in what ways will it differ from her experience with Dance DeLaval? If she and Dmitri meet again, what do you think that would be like?