#merry fates

That made him smile, and he gave me a sly, sideways look. “As dogs go, they’re uncommonly behaved. And Thatchman doesn’t mind. We’re old friends and he owes me a long list of favors.” The pronouncement was less remarkable than you’d think. I didn’t know much about favors, but it was an open secret that in his early days, Joe Thatchman had been a bag man, cozier than cats with Don Vito and Tony Bender and the Genoveses.  It was a dirty business, but business was good, although no one knew for sure just how much money had changed hands or how much goodwill it had bought him. Those days were long gone though. Thatchman had moved down to Florida a year ago and was easily in his seventies. I poured the man his coffee and went back to marking up my book. “La Terreur,” the man said after a while, glancing out at the rain and then smiling his sly smile. “Il pleut, il pleut, bergère, rentre tes blancs moutons.” His French was bad, but he spoke it with a lack of hesitation that proved he knew the words, if not the finer points. “I’m not a shepherdess,” I said, closing the book. I’d been underlining dates in an account of the execution of Fabre d’Églantine, who had gone to the guillotine singing verses from his own songs and distributing handwritten poems to the crowd. Singing the one about the shepherdess and the rain, but the man at the counter was sitting with his head bowed and I was holding the book so its spine faced him. He couldn’t have known. He sipped his coffee, then made a steeple with his fingers. “And what would you rather be in this sorry life? A shepherdess, or a sheep.” The question stung, though perhaps he didn’t mean it to. There were no shepherds, no one to tend the flocks, and I was beginning to lose faith in idealism, just like everybody else.

But still, a small, bright truth beat deep in my heart—that I would do it if I could. If I thought the act of doing it would matter. I didn’t answer, but he kept smiling, like he knew what I was thinking. “What’s your name, shepherdess?” “Claudette,” I said, and was startled to recognize that up until that moment, I’d been planning to lie, to say Marjorie or Carol or Betty. But his eyes were a dark, thunderous gray and I told him the truth.

After that, he came almost every morning, sweeping off his hat and bowing. He always said the same thing: “And how is the lovely Claudette today?” And every time, I expected him to say My. How is my Claudette? But he only took off his hat and snapped his fingers and made the dogs sit obediently at his feet. Out in the streets, the city still hummed and flickered, but the sense of passion—of power—was fading. Things were slowing. I could feel the energy draining away, bleeding out with every faltering beat. The man with the dogs was constant, though. Through all the aimless noise and the indifference, he never changed. We talked together over the counter, drinking coffee. I read him Manon Lescaut, and the letters of Saint Augustine.  He told me about the Middle East and the Congo, but he never told me his line of work. I liked it better that way. The child’s fantasy that his place in the world could still be something good. “I was in the war,” he told me once, leaning on his elbows. His eyes were paler than usual and I looked into them a long time, trying to see the villages burning, or the bodies, but there was nothing. His irises were strangely flat, without the splintered interruptions of filaments or striations. I didn’t ask which war. His mouth was close to mine, and he smelled like burned metal and oily smoke. I wanted to taste it, to lick it off his skin, but I just turned to the back counter and poured the coffee. I had never been in love. At fourteen, I’d blushed giddily over Peter McCourdry who lived down the street. He was five years older, and when his mother got a telegram saying he’d been killed in Hue, I cried with the rest of the girls from my block, because it was a sad and ugly thing, but I didn’t feel the raw pain of heartbreak. I was crying because he was dead, not because I’d loved him.

He came in one day—my man with the dogs—smiling and whistling like always, but his eyes were sober.

“I’m not long for this city,” he said. “Autumn is come. My contract is up.” “Let me send you off right,” I said before I could stop myself. “Come over and I’ll make you dinner.” He shook his head, and in that moment, he suddenly looked so grave. “We could meet at Alexander’s for a drink,” I said, horribly aware that I was starting to sound desperate. “It wouldn’t have to go anywhere. It wouldn’t have to be serious.” He reached across the counter and took my hand. “Do you know what a brimstone dog is?” In his eyes, I saw the bodies then. Not only the grisly casualties of land mines and napalm, but others. There were so many. I saw machetes. Axes, bayonets, hoes and rakes and sickles. I saw revolutions, howling mobs, all the things they tell you in history classes, but which never take on the staggering proportions of fact. I shook my head and let him brush the back of my wrist with his thumb. His touch was warm, and I closed my eyes. “A brimstone dog doesn’t rise above his station. He doesn’t own anything, he doesn’t want anything. His job is not to desire or to covet or to ask questions. He always does exactly as he’s told. Now look at me.” His voice was harsh and I did it. He leaned over the counter. His eyes were dark now, almost black, and I thought that he would kiss me, but he only bent his head to whisper in my ear. “A brimstone dog is no shepherd. His business is destruction, and he destroys the things he touches. But girls like the lovely Claudette have glorious years ahead. They have steadfast hearts and ferocious souls and true callings, and if they wish it, they have the inalienable right to try and save the world.” And I nodded, knowing that this was the end. Without him, I would not be young, useless Claudette, always waiting. Righteous in only the stubbornest, most childish sense. Naive.

Knowing that in another greater way, it was the beginning. He left with his dogs trailing after him, and I cried in the storeroom, harder than I had ever cried for anything. It was months before the jangle of the bell stopped sending my heart soaring frantically, cruelly, every time I heard it.

I thought I saw him once, years later. I was guest lecturing at NYU that spring, and had become all the things he’d talked about; activist, scholar, humanitarian—called to the proverbial carpet, in the thick of it, heart and soul. My hair was gray by then, and short. I saw him across the intersection of Sixth Avenue and Bleeker, standing on a crowded corner with his dogs.  The light changed and I stopped to watch as the rest of the city plunged on around me. He did not look one second older than he had on the day he had promised me my future. He did not look like a man at all. His face was the calm, impassive face of some terrible storm. An engine of destruction, but in his way, he had created me. The dogs of war were side by side, padding after him. It was raining.

Story originally posted September 14, 2009

Photo by roujo

The secret is that it wasn’t really my heart.  Her slim gigolo boyfriend took me out to the Presidio, where the salt wind blew in off the sea.  He touched my face and breathed licorice and aftershave on me, which made me want to scream.  Then, he bought a pound of lamb’s heart from a butcher in Greek Town and took it home to her.  He told her he loved her.  He told her that the dense, membranous muscle belonged to me.

Okay, that last part was a lie.  Can you tell that I’m lying?  My stepmother doesn’t have a boyfriend.  But if she did, he’d be young, with wavy hair and bad shoes.  He’d be the kind of guy who knows where to buy organ meat in primarily-ethnic neighborhoods.

This is more like it: my obscenely vain stepmother put on her fifty-dollar Dior eyeshadow and her Manolo Blahnik pumps and reached for her Gaultier clutch.  She cut her own heart out and dipped it in lead or mercury—one of those metals that poisons you and makes you go crazy. She fed it to me in sly, careful moments, in pieces, so that I would be like her.

I sat in my room with the shades pulled down and the venom of her heart moved like poison, getting under my skin and making me all drowsy.  She spent hours by the country club pool, trying to look younger, but washed-up socialites never do.

I lay with the blankets over me, so heavy I couldn’t move my head.   My dye-job was starting to grow out and the roots were showing.  I stayed so long, it felt like I was turning into stone.

Then one night, she came to my room like a silent film-star, slightly crazed, smelling like gin, and yanked me out of bed.  She sat me in front of the ruffled vanity, studying me with bleary eyes.

“I just want you to like me,” she said.  “I just want us to do things together.  Why don’t you like me?”

The whole time, she kept touching me in that clumsy, drunk way, tugging at my hair.  I watched her reflection so I wouldn’t have to watch my own—the crumpled way her mouth seemed to just collapse.  Her eyelids were dark and greasy-looking, like she’d bruised them.

She took me by the shoulders and shook me hard, suddenly.  “Why are you doing this to yourself?  Why do you insist on looking like a freak? Are you determined to embarrass me?”

She brandished a handkerchief—white, petal-soft—and began to scrub my face.  She scrubbed hard and fierce, until my mouth got pink and so did my cheeks.  She wiped my makeup off like she was scrubbing me back to life.

“Answer me,” she kept saying, but her voice sounded weird and shrill, and the words had stopped making sense.

When I opened my mouth, it felt like a tiny version of a black hole, where light disappeared and nothing could come out.  She shook me and my head rocked back and forth.  I couldn’t stop nodding.

She swept from the room without warning and came back with the scissors. I closed my eyes.  The blades made a whispering noise, snick, snick.  I felt lighter.

When she dropped the shears on the carpet, I didn’t know how to feel.  It was the worst thing anyone had ever done to me.  I had a sudden thought that no one had ever really done anything to me.  It was glorious and shocking.  I didn’t feel like myself, but for the first time in years, I didn’t feel like I was trying to be someone else.

In the mirror, my hair was brutally short.  It stuck up everywhere, patchy-black in places, but most of it was blond.  My mouth and cheeks were hectic, and my eyes looked wild.  My blood felt like electricity.  Like I could do anything.

We sat in front of the mirror, staring at my reflection.  She was crying now, sloppy and horrifying, asking me to forgive her.

I wanted to tell her not to cry.  That I forgave her for her smallness, for so many reasons.

I was something breathtaking and rare now, while she would never be beautiful again.

Story originally posted August 25, 2008

In the ground-floor suite, the ceiling seems lower and the walls don’t look right.  When the light gets blue, Rose can see marks around the air conditioning vent, long rents in the wallpaper, like something has been trying to claw its way out.  

The fuses go and so does the cable.  Calls drop.  Things go missing. Invoices and bills sit on the counter by the register, then disappear.

In the mornings, the sun is high and savage, bleaching the beige stucco of the hotel to golden-white.

Rose makes the rounds with her cart of fresh towels and her bottles of disinfectant and detergent.  She wipes down the mirrors.  In the sunlight, the world looks friendly, far from secretive.

But when the fog is in, Rose never cleans the glass.  There is always the possibility that when she looks at her reflection, she will see someone else looking back.

The girl is Rose as she would rather be, ethereal, silver.

The other Rose has fine, pale hair that sticks to her shoulders and the outsides of her arms with weblike resolve.  Her skin is translucent and perfectly smooth, unmarked by sunburn or freckles.  Her eyes are not blue, but a pure, ringing gray.  When she smiles, she exposes teeth of an uncommon whiteness, a moon-white.  This would be pleasant and reassuring, except that Rose is not smiling back.

This second Rose appears with startling regularity, materializing into existence at the sound of the horn.  She is calm and definite. She knows things.  She loves the hotel and she loves the fog.

If she can catch Rose’s eye, even for a second, she will want to talk, to have a conversation.  She says, “Come over here.”

She says, “Give me your hand, and I’ll do the floors for you.”

Rose scours sinks and tubs and pretends not to listen.  Her sense of self, like the fog, is tenuous.  A transparent creature, called into being and then interrupted before it could become substantial.  She wants her resolve to be steadfast, but in the end, she always reaches back.  Like the thing in the ground-floor suite, she puts her hands against the glass and considers clawing her way out.

The silver girl is there, pulling her the last few inches.  It feels like hitting the surface and then going under, falling into a slow murky dream.  Rose opens her eyes and finds herself looking out at a twilight-blue room and a silver girl.

The fog is in now, swallowing up the coastline, making it a different hotel and a different world.

Things change.

The silver girl gets out the spray cleaner and scrubs at the handprints on the mirror.  There are always so many.

Rose leans against the glass and waits for the sun to come back.

Story originally posted July 27, 2009

Mrs. Kersh only smiled up at me, a doddering, oblivious smile, and exclaimed that I must be a very clever boy, although it had been years since I’d seen the near side of thirty.  I gave her a week’s rent on the spot.

There is no structure more satisfying than a well-kept Victorian.   From the first, I enjoyed my life in Mrs. Kersh’s house.  The floors creaked in a companionable way, and the quality of light was always a buttery yellow.

Mrs. Kersh liked to cook.  She made peanut bars and banana bread for school fundraisers and rummage sales.  She made hard candy so delicate and brittle you could cut your hand taking it out of the tray if you weren’t careful.  She mixed seafoam and fudge and divinity with a touch so light and deft that the sugar never burned and the thermometer was barely even a formality.  In her own way, she was every bit the chemist I claimed to be.

We of the rented second floor were a motley trio, pursuing our own interests in our own inimitable fashions.

Valerie Shaw was a seductress.  She liked to get her claws into rich, lonely business men, and bleed them slowly.  She was an expert at taking them for their money and their adoration and their dignity, and sometimes their warm, literal blood.  I’m given to understand that a handful of successful men crave that sort of thing.  However, I’m inclined to think most of Valerie’s gentlemen did not, and the revelation of her blood-lust must have been shocking to say the least.   She kept a porcelain cup by the sink in the bathroom, in which she soaked a set of eight steel cat’s claws in alcohol to take the smell off.

Carl Burton liked to start fires.  The proof of this was evident in his blank, piggy eyes and burned fingers, and in the distinctive odor that pervaded his clothes—kerosene, smoke, sulphur.  His favored implement was the strike-anywhere match.

We lived in relative peace for two months, before a pair of moon-faced detectives came for Valerie.  In a shocking turn of events, they charged her not only with fraud and infliction of emotional distress, but with the perverse and horrifying crime of bleeding several local children and leaving their bodies in a nearby wetland.  Valerie was led away in tears and handcuffs, hurling denials at the sky.

I watched from the veranda until the squad car had driven off down the street and turned the corner.  Then I went back inside.

Mrs. Kersh was in the kitchen, patting out a round of shortbread dough.  “We will have to put in another ad,” she said, reaching for the flour canister.  “Perhaps on Monday.”

“For a lodger?”

“Oh, yes,” she said, dusting a sheet of waxed paper with fingers dipped in confectioner’s sugar.  “This house is just too big for the three of us, and I do think it looks rather improper, an old widow lady living with two bachelor men.  And the impression one gives is so important.”

“Aren’t you at all surprised about Valerie?” I said.  “I mean, this really doesn’t seem like something she’d do—murdering children.  Other things, yes, but not that.”

“Oh, I don’t know.  I expect they’ll convict her just the same.  You see, dear, Valerie is a very difficult woman to believe.  At this stage in her life, lying has become second nature.  Only a fool would believe her now.  And she did have such a very particular proclivity for sadism.  Deviant to an almost obvious degree.  Would you like to help me cut out these butter cookies?”

The dough was dense and oddly fragrant. I leaned closer to the countertop and breathed deeply.  The smell roared up, luscious and familiar, making my head swim.  It was the distinctive bitter almond smell of prussic acid.

“That’s poison,” I said in the lightheaded rush that followed, trying to sort my addled thoughts.  “You can’t hand out those cookies.  The sugar—I think the sugar has cyanide in it.”

Mrs. Kersh smiled and nodded.  “I don’t care for children,” she said, sorting through a tin box of cookie cutters.  “No, I don’t care for them at all.  On that account at least, it is so nice to have a chemist in the house.”

Story originally posted December 1, 2008

Three weeks ago, when I came around the corner of the auxiliary gym and found Troy methodically keying cars in the teachers’ parking lot, I would have told you that there was no hope for him.  

That maybe there was a place in the Villain Hall of Fame for those crafty brutes who exhibit an exceptionally creative sadistic streak or a particular genius for psychological torture, but Troy would always be totally and unequivocally a flunky—one of those slow-moving goons who are only there to make the hero look good by comparison.  The ones who never even get a name tag.

I stood by the double doors to the gym and watched him.  His graffiti was mostly two-word imperatives and childish-but-obscene drawings, but the way he scratched out the shapes and letters was thoughtful and kind of meticulous.

He labored over each line, and it was his very dullness that made me stop and watch.  His commitment to mindless destruction spoke of untold possibilities. Call it inspiration.

“Hey,” I said, as he moved along the nearest row of cars, toward Principal Leonard’s Honda.

When he glanced around and saw me standing against the side of the gym, his eyes narrowed to angry slits.  “You want to keep your mouth shut about this.”

It was a remarkably inelegant statement, and only made me more determined to try my hand.

“Oh, I’m not going to say anything,” I told him.  When I stepped away from the wall and crossed the blacktop to him, his gaze was wary, but not truly concerned.  He moved forward to meet me when he should have backed away.

“Why are you doing this, Troy? I mean, what’s the point of vandalizing cars?”

Troy studied the key in his hand, like it might have the answer, then turned, gesturing at the long row of sedans. “They’re all a bunch of tools anyway.”

I could only assume that he meant the teachers, not the cars.

“But what’s the point?  So, you defaced some property—so what?  It’s not power when no one knows it’s you.”

Which is pretty much the biggest lie of all.

I smiled confidentially and moved closer.  “Look, if you really want to stick it to the administration, you need to be a little more sophisticated. I mean, you already have all the necessary resources and you’re not even taking full advantage of them. How come you’re not already in charge of student council? You practically run the school anyway, and everybody loves you.”

Troy’s expression was dully hopeful, and I understood that on some unconscious level, even he could see the falseness in what I was telling him, but sometimes the wish is enough to float you over every obstacle and complication.  It can be so much stronger than the lie.  “They love me?”

“Of course they do,” I said, and smiled my biggest, brightest smile. “What’s not to love?”

The Brewster presidential campaign was about what you’d expect—short and loud.

If you’d told me at the beginning of the year that Troy Brewster would become deeply obsessed with student government to the point that a school election would dominate his every waking moment—that it would break his heart—I would have denied the very possibility. (Then, quite naturally, I would have dedicated myself to finding a way to make it happen.)

By the time the final assembly rolled around, Troy was in top form, shouting over the other candidates, demanding that people stand up and perform the school football cheer in the middle of the dress-code debate.  He was amazing, and I said as much after it was over.  

“Troy,” I said with an elation that was wholly unfeigned, “you were incredible! You were magnificent.”

The presidential defeat of Troy Brewster was a strategic masterpiece. An early birthday present to myself. When the votes were tallied and the results were announced, the winners declared, I could almost see the disillusionment rise up inside him and shine bleakly out his eyes.

He watched Ainsely Hammond prance up to the podium with her ponytail swinging and her cheeks radiating pinkness, ready to give her acceptance speech.

The election was a landslide, of course.  They always are.

When I came back into the auditorium, Troy was sitting on the edge of the stage, looking like someone had just clipped him with a lacrosse stick.

“On your feet, tiger,” I said, clapping my hands like a washed-up football coach.

“You said they liked me.”

And I nodded, smiling placidly, so reassuring.  In his eyes, geometric shards of rage were beginning to crystalize.  Longstanding aimlessness made suddenly vengeful. And it was beautiful.

“This is just a speed bump,” I said, smoothing the air with my hands. “A minor setback. It’s just what you need.  But now, it’s time to go out there and make it very clear to them who owns this school.  And Troy? You’re going to be amazing.”

The lie came out like a silk ribbon, the way I always tell them, bright and good, shimmering with  possibility. So real and soft you can almost touch it.

Because sometimes, a lie is not a lie.

Sometimes it’s just the hidden door to what happens next.

Story originally posted February 6, 2012

I nod and pinch the bridge of my nose, opening the refrigerator and muttering, “Or maybe, I just like it because I like it.  Ever think of that?”

He whirls on me, and in one awful moment, I’ve ruined the tenuous peace between us, shattered it with backtalk and disagreement.

“Dad, I’m sorry.  I mean that I like it because you do.  That’s why.  That’s what I meant.”

He doesn’t answer, just turns and walks out of the kitchen. I smile reassuringly at Addy, who smiles back and waves the doll at me.  When its head flops forward, it looks like it’s nodding.

I barely have time to pour a bowl of cereal, before there’s the clatter of footsteps on the stairs and he’s back, carrying a huge armful of my clothes.  He crosses the kitchen and yanks open the back door.

“Hey, hey!  What are you doing?”

My sweater hits the ground like a buck-shot bird—flapping through the air for a breathless moment, soaring, then bang.  It tumbles out of the sky.

“Get out,” he says.  “Get out, get out, get out.”

I keep a phone number taped under my bed, because I know he won’t look there.  The contact information is encrypted and I know that even he can’t break it without the key.  The number is for a social worker.   There are other places I’d need to call, too.  But the social worker is the one who will list them all.  Who will tell me what to do.

“Dad,” I say, reaching for his arm.  I’m used to this, the tantrums and the accusations.  I’m used to this, but I can’t say that it doesn’t hurt anyway.  My clothes are everywhere and I’ll be a good long time picking them up off the lawn.

“You’re a liar,” he says, tossing away a faded T-shirt.  “You don’t fool me. You know the truth, you know!  You know it because you’re—just—like—me!”

The pronouncement stuns, wounds, hits me in the chest like a bowling ball, but I close my eyes and bite down on nothing, clenching me teeth so the abject horror won’t get out.

For a second, I think I’ve succeeded, made my expression blank as a dinner plate.

Then he plunges at me, putting his face close to mine.  “What did you say?  Don’t you mumble at me, missy!”

“I didn’t say anything.”

He rifles through the pile and there goes my plaid Christmas dress.  “Don’t you go whispering at me!”

I retreat from the kitchen with Addy scampering after me, and leave him chucking my things out into the yard.

In the living room, my older sister, Meg, is sitting on the couch with her ankles crossed, resolutely ignoring him.  She has the TV turned up obstinately loud.

“We need to call,” I say, hearing fear and then resentment come spilling out in my voice.

Meg and Addy just stare at me.  Meg’s hands look small, oddly delicate next to the ungainly bulk of her body.  Addy sits on the carpet at her feet, petting that mangy doll, over and over.  Rubbing its hair right off.

“Well, I’m calling,” I say.

Neither of them move.  Their answer is in the fact that they don’t try to stop me.

The social worker is tiny, an olive-skinned woman with a storm of curly black hair.

“I’m glad you made the choice to ask for help,” she says in a low, soothing voice.

We’re sitting out on the porch, drinking tap-water lemonade that I mixed from a packet.

I study my glass.  “What’s going to happen to us?”

“Well, I’ll be doing my best to keep you together.  I want you to know that, but it is harder with big girls.  Doesn’t mean it’s not worth a try, though.”

“No, I mean, what’s going to happen to us?  Are we going to wind up like him?”

“Oh honey, let’s not borrow trouble.  You don’t want to talk about this right now.”

But I can’t shake the raw intensity of his voice, his face too close, his eyes looking startlingly like mine.  “Yes, I do want to talk about it.”

“Well,” she says, with her gaze drifting off over my head, “statistically speaking, there is a chance that one of you could exhibit . . . symptoms at some point in your life.  But this is really something to talk about with a psychologist.”

Addy comes creeping up behind me in that way she has, not touching me, but hovering beside my chair.  She slumps forward and leans her chin on my shoulder.

She whispers, “One bright day in the middle of the night, two dead boys got up to fight.” Her voice is sweet and dopey, and even on good days, she doesn’t make an awful lot of sense.

I watch the social worker, whose hands are working at the hem of her blouse, but whose eyes have never left my face.  “I’m worried about her.”

“Worried about who?”

I jerk my head to the side and feel traitorous when I whisper it.  “Addy.”

“And who’s Addy, honey?”

The weight of Addy’s chin digs into the side of my neck.  “Here’s how much I love you,” she whispers, tickling my ear with the busted-up doll.

“My sister.”

“I thought your sister’s name was Meg.”

“My other sister.  My little one.”

“Oh.”  The social worker blinks and shakes her head. “Oh, I’m sorry. Somehow, I thought there were only the two of you.  And where is Addy now?”

With her chin on my shoulder and her arms tight around my neck, breathing in my ear.

The social worker is watching me, hands tugging harder at her blouse.

“Don’t,” I say, feeling the panic well up in my lungs.  “Don’t mess with me.” Although I know in my darkest heart of hearts that she wouldn’t.

She’s looking at me with wide, nervous eyes.  With doubt, and it’s the doubt, more than anything, that makes me go cold.

“You’re a bad girl,” says Addy.  “Now say you’re sorry for what you did to Daddy.  Say sorry, and I’ll give you a kiss.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, shaking my head at the social worker.  “I’m not making much sense.  It’s been a long day.  I’m sorry.”

Addy’s mouth is warm against my cheek, the sticky, fumbling kiss of something too strong to pull away from. Rooted in my brain, my dark, uncharted blood.

Too close to family.

Story originally posted December 7, 2009

Four is the count, the steady rhythm repeating on the floor.  It’s the plodding song of the metronome.  We bend and grow to it, stretching and swaying—up, down, over.  We fold and crouch, silent.  Low. They treat me like their queen, but that’s a lie.  It’s Madame who reigns over us.  We are all prostrate before her.

Five nights a week, the company rehearses.  And spends those rehearsals wishing it was one of our days off. I’m the girl who never murmurs or complains. The others take my silence as indifference. They make assumptions that I’m cutthroat and hungry. That I take all the good things for myself, but that’s only an illusion.  I’m just as caught, as tangled-up as the rest of them.

Six times, the Madame has made an example of someone, calling them to stand apart and take their punishment. Six times, I’ve stood silently in the crowd and wished that it was me.  Sometimes, if you have to watch, the humiliation is too much.  It’s better to bow your head and take the blame.  If you can just save all the scorn and the reproach for yourself, sometimes it means that everyone else is spared.

Seven is the number of pounds that Marianne Porter has to lose if she wants to keep her spot.  When Madam de Sevigne told her that, in front of everyone, the rest of the swans turned and angled their faces to the floor while I stood apart, with my back straight and my head up.   Marianne didn’t argue or protest.  She stared greedily at me, the body that Madame holds sacred.  The one they’re all supposed to covet, aspire to and emulate.  Later, I found Marianne alone in the dressing room, drawing X’s on her stomach and thighs with a marker. I could see her spine through the taut, uncomplaining veil of her skin.

Eight is when we stop for the evening, if the Madame is pleased and the rehearsal goes well and the stars align.  We never stop at eight.

Nine is the number of circles Madame draws in her black choreography notebook before turning the page.  I’ve seen her backstage, or else sitting stiffly behind the desk in her office, drawing her vicious little circles, making her little notes.  She doesn’t glance up or look around, lost in the magic of her book.  I think it’s where she keeps our souls.

Ten is the number of toes I have. It’s an ordinary number, but every night, I wonder.  I slide them out of my pointe shoes, and it always seems for a moment that the shank and the toe box have molded them together like the gnarled feet of a bird. The other dancers gasp and wince.  They cry noiseless tears until the ache stops and the numbness creeps back in.  They bend their heads to hide the pain, until their whole bodies look pale and distorted, like fairytale creatures.  I think that she’s bewitched them into swans but left me half a princess—a feathered girl made of skin, muscle, bone.

Eleven is when we stop for the evening, since we never stop at eight.  The lights flick out and the music trails off.  Everything has to stop sometime.

Twelve o’clock is soft and full of shadows.  The building is empty, echoing.  Still.

The only one left now is Madame, sitting grimly behind her desk.  

She didn’t take my voice.  My silence is legendary, but she’s not the reason I don’t speak.  The other dancers stare around, craven and wide-eyed like she’s fixed their mouths, filled them up with feathers.  

My own voice is still right where it belongs.

The door is cracked, and when I push my way into the office, she doesn’t look surprised.  When she asks what I want, I tell her that the corps is frightened of her, that more might leave if she doesn’t start using some compassion, or at least some tact.

“Thank you for bringing it to my attention,” she says. “I appreciate your input, but really, the state of the corps is not your concern.  If you’d like something to worry over, you ought to be thinking about your arabesques.”

She says is briskly, like the words are prerecorded, before going back to her nasty little book, listing off our flaws and weaknesses and our faults, recipes for destruction. All the perfect, constant circles.

Alone in the hall, I understand that my visit hasn’t made a difference.  I didn’t expect it to.

The swans are useless, mute, and I can’t make them into real girls.   They might wish for protection, for rescue, but they don’t love me. They’d burn me like a witch if they could, and maybe the secret to being the best is that you don’t mind too much when your feet hurt or other people want to burn you.

The cavernous space behind the stage is cluttered, all ropes and wires and dangling sandbags.  There’s ancient wood paneling peeling up from the floor, water dripping from places the maintenance crew were supposed to patch.  I wind my way through the boxes and the pulleys, carrying one of the cygnet’s tutus from the dressing room. The feathers are scratchy and coarse against my arms, much coarser than they look.

This is the one elemental truth of a swan princess. The truth of Madame.

Without ceremony, I toss the skirt over the rickety fuse box, and trip the breaker.

Story originally posted January 2, 2012