Sari Wilson - Girl Through Glass

In Johnson, I climb the creaking stairs to the overheated turret. Up past the college’s alumni offices. Buttressed by a cup of coffee — black, no sugar — and the sweet smell of illicit cigarette smoke coming up from Dr. James’s (emeritus professor in classics) office below me, I’ll make it through office hours. Outside of the classroom, I’m not so easy with the students.

The office on the other side of the hall belongs to the other visiting professor in performance studies, Bill Krasdale. He’ll be in later for office hours and then there will be a line of students waiting for him. That’s Bill, the vulnerable, the well-loved by students — more shaman than teacher. I may have a few groupies, but he inspires love.

Sioban sits outside my office door. “Hola. Bonjour,” I say. I fumble with the keys in the lock.

Inside my musty-smelling office, she flops into the metal folding chair. I squeeze by her, catching my dress on the edge of her chair, stuff myself behind my desk, and settle in. Behind me the ferns I brought up from seedlings have grown so thick they tickle my hair. They have flourished in the dim rafters here.

Still wide-eyed from her ideas, she hikes one leg over the other and bounces a green neon sneaker on her knee. She wears only workout clothes — pants so tight that they grip every muscle or so loose you can barely see her form.

“I just love your class so much, as you know.” She gives me a wicked smile that makes her long face look fuller. She begins picking at a Buzz Lightyear Band-Aid on her finger.

I take in her nervous energy, her bitten nails half-stripped of their red nail polish, and it occurs to me that Sioban’s headlong rush into academia is simply the animal’s response to totally new terrain — fight or flight. It reminds me of myself in my twenties, when I was dancing modern in San Francisco, both fearful and willing to try anything. She is choosing to advance, to fight. I smile at her, a real smile.

I take a slug of my coffee. “I’m enjoying having you in this class. Your perspective”—I look out the window. It’s started to rain lightly—“is invaluable.”

“Thanks,” she says too brightly. I wonder if I’ve betrayed something.

“So what can I help you with now?” I manage a warm, professional tone. To give myself something to do, I pull out my pile of mail and start sorting.

She pulls out the syllabus. “For our next research paper? On early modernist choreographers? I was just wondering — Can I do Nijinsky? I know we already did him in class, but I just don’t feel as strongly about any of the others?”

Her eyes really are translucent. “I’d like you to do someone else, at least as a — a—comparison.”

I’ve come across a single white envelope with my name on it. Something about the letter gives me pause. It’s a plain envelope with my address in meticulous handwriting. I realize what’s strange about it: there’s no return address. I weigh the letter in my hand. It’s extremely lightweight; I wonder whether anything is in it at all. I slip a finger in and rip it open. Inside the envelope is a folded sheet of Florentine-style parchment paper that falls open in my hand. I recognize the tight, cursive handwriting — from another era. My eyes hit the initial at the bottom: M. I snap it shut.

My head feels like it is buzzing with light; a crushing weight has landed in the back of my skull. Through all of this, I am apparently talking to Sioban about Nijinsky’s sister, Bronislava Nijinska. I’m trying to convince her to write a paper on Nijinska using Nijinska’s own memoirs, which is a terrible idea. “Bronislava was faithful to his modernist project. She wrote a memoir that’s very illuminating. It tells the story of their youth in the Russian imperial ballet, it may shed new light on things. It’s not authoritative but it gives insight—” I’m babbling. This tome will be hard to wade through. My fingers brush the shelves behind me and pull out the heavy book. I’ve actually been planning to read it through myself to see if there’s anything there I can build an essay on. And this — my own possible scholar’s find — I offer blithely to this girl for a term paper. She inspires a white streak of rashness in me.

Sioban is leaning over my desk, letting loose a smell of patchouli and sweat. “Thanks,” she says taking the book. Her hand, the one with the Band-Aid, closes around my wrist. She’s trembling slightly. I register the trembling hand. The tattered cartoon Band-Aid. Her strange, gentle touch. I register the fact that she’s just violated the force field between professor and student. The door is open. I jerk my hand away. It’s ridiculously bold what she’s done. I’ve underestimated her. I shouldn’t have picked her side today in class. She slips her folder back in her bag and smiles at me in a shy, mischievous way. Her wide excited eyes and long face, the bloom of the acne scars, dark red now, her cheekbones. She thinks she’s onstage. She lives her life as if she’s onstage.

I smooth my Ann Taylor sweater dress over my leggings, ignoring the snag that formed on her chair. She gives me another smile, this one coy and bright, maddening in its narcissism. She knows her power. I know that suddenly for certain. Despite everything, this makes me smile.

The most violent emotion comes over me — I have to look away. Now a draft comes rattling through the lead-paned windows, turning my coffee certifiably cold.

I stuff the folded Florentine paper back into the envelope and shove it under a stack of unclaimed student papers.

At that moment, Bill pokes his head in. “Hi — how’s it going?” He’s wearing a Russian winter hat, black and puffy, and his face beneath it shines. He’s still handsome, but his opaque face is a toughened version of its younger self.

Sioban zips up her jacket. “I’m psyched to read the book,” she says, her eyes gleaming. She thinks she has won. She thinks it’s a game. Oh god. God help me. She makes her way to the doorway, squeezes past Bill.

Bill and I knew each other years ago when we overlapped at Berkeley. My last year of my PhD and in comes Bill the wunderkind first-year MA grad student, all loose-limbed from clown school in Europe. Over the course of that year, he sloughed off his clown exterior and studied his Laban and started focusing on illusion and a practice. He concentrated in theater arts instead of dance like me. I heard later that he started dating a hippie girl, Berkeley born and bred, who was troubled . This girl, Madeline, now his wife of thirteen years, and with whom he has two girls.

Bill steps into my office. “Kate,” he says. “There’s something I have to tell you.” He takes his hat off. Some water drips from it. “I ended up putting in my application for the Pell.” I stare at him. “Madeline’s been happier — she’s been working at the new co-op here and — I haven’t been having much luck. The West Coast is all locked up.”

The vibrations of Sioban leaving the room are still there. I stare at Bill, unable to speak. His face looks terribly smug. I’ve said nothing. He lowers his eyes. “I’m sorry, Kate. I know you were counting on this gig.” He sighs and I know it’s meant to evoke Madeline, his albatross.

With a mammoth effort, I ask, “Is she okay?”

He sighs. “She’s been better.”

“When did you put in your application?” I say finally.

“Last week.”

“They took your application last week ?” This is a bad sign. It means that it was probably an invitation. A buzz starts in my head. A crush of fatigue crawls over me, which makes it easier to speak. “Thanks for letting me know, Bill.” It comes out icier than I intended.