Sari Wilson - Girl Through Glass

“He told me to walk like a waiter at the Russian Tea Room.”

He stares at her, then laughs.

She laughs too. Her laughter sounds strange to her own ears.

“If only my father could see this. .,” he says. His eyes are half closed.

She moves closer. Then she takes another step toward him. They are nose to nose, about the same size. When did that happen? Did he shrink? Did she grow?

“Can I see it?” She points to his bad leg.

He bends down and shimmies his pants up his leg. The leg is withered, skin over bone held in by the crisscrossing leather straps of a giant metal brace. The skin is like a baby’s — raw, pink, unused but dented in furrows where the leather has cut into it.

“A ballerina’s leg, it is said, is skin over steel. Mine is steel over skin.”

“I want to touch it.” She reaches out, feels tenderness — and what she calls that feeling is love .

Suddenly, he grabs her hand with one of his. Stops it in midair.

“You are beautiful. This ”—he hits his leg savagely—“is ugly.”

He lets go of her arm, bends over, and rolls down his pants.

He is backlit and she can see only his eyes gleam yellow in the glow of the streetlamp. He grips her shoulders. “Who invented the pointe shoe?” he whispers hoarsely.

“Master Taglioni,” she says. “He invented it for his daughter.” She can smell the sweet-apples and sour-cinnamon smell.

She can see him smile, even in the dimness, his white teeth lined up, rocks on the ledge.

She relaxes. She can play this game. He has told her this story already a few times. It is so important to him. “Premier of La Sylphide ,” she says.

“Paris Opera House in 1832. He whispers in his daughter’s ear, ‘If you make a noise, I will kill you.’”

“She does it. She dances silently,” she says.

“The audience gasps! How?”

“The pointe shoe,” she says.

“Yes, and the Romantic ballerina was born.”

“Whoa. Are you okay, professor?” Felicia opens the door, an orange feather duster in hand, a novelty item that she holds without any evidence of a joke. She’s wearing sweats and a workout shirt.

I can no longer help it, can no longer help anything. I can’t hold it in any longer. “Something has happened, Felicia,” I say.

She leads me to the living room and sits me down on the couch. There’s no sign of Alain now. I take the envelope out and put it on the coffee table.

She sits across from me and lays the duster on the floor.

She looks at me quizzically. I let it all spill out. “He wrote to me. I didn’t know if he was alive — didn’t want to know. . I tried to forget. But I couldn’t. Then this—” I push the envelope toward her.

“Hold on,” she says. She crosses her legs. “Who wrote to you? Please explain.”

I take a deep breath. “Someone I knew a long time ago. When we were kids. At SAB. It was so long ago. But—”

“Wait — oh my god — was it that weird guy with the limp? He used to wait for you after class, by the fountain?”

“What?”

She laughs. “Oh, Kate. We all knew about him. Sometimes we called him ‘the creepy guy.’ Bryce called you two Beauty and the Beast. He was a bizarre character.” She’s smiling now, not at me but with a secret that she’s preoccupied with. Something more in my chest drops away, and I’m overcome with tears. The room looks momentarily brighter and bigger. Felicia’s pale face glints through this new light. She has no lipstick on today.

“Can I tell you a secret?” I take a deep breath. “It’s like this. Imagine if you’ve lived all these years thinking you were someone, but now you see you were wrong.”

“Well, we all have lots of different selves.”

“No, not like that . It’s like — you’re still a child and everyone else is a grown-up .”

“But you’re a professor .”

Attempts to describe an inner life, always doomed to fail. She wants to help, I see. I’m struck by the fact that somewhere, against the odds, she’s learned kindness. My focus splits and I see both this Felicia, this adult of the mysterious jobs and fluttering hands and crystalline skin, and also at the same time the girl whose earnest, pleading eyes and careful ringlets I admired so much until I understood the effort involved in creating them. I remember her mother, the strange quiet of their sequestered life.

But these — I catch myself — are childish thoughts, childish categories of being: good, bad. Smart, stupid. But I can’t help it, I can no longer help anything. I am becoming that child again.

It’s clear, I am out of the habit of trust. As an adult, my friendships have been practical, mutable, and not lasting. There were some grad student friends, others who were popping pills to stay up all night and show off their cerebral gymnastics. We traded tips on academic journals submissions policies and grants, and then retreated to our studio apartments where we tripped over our decades-long research projects and, in lieu of camaraderie, ferociously updated our blogs. But I was drawn mostly to the troubled or crazy ones who ended up dropping out. The others were competition, and the ambiguous childhood state that allows for friendship with natural enemies had dissolved by then.

Felicia pours me a gin and tonic. A green lime that sparkles in the strange distilled light. I close my eyes. I take a sip of the drink. It’s sweet and bitter at the same time. I can taste both flavors. They bloom side by side in my mouth.

When I open my eyes again, I ask her, “Do you believe in fate?”

She looks out her large windows. The sky is brushed white, cloudless, and sullen. From where we sit, you can see just the tops and sides of buildings.

Felicia examines her manicure. “I’ve wanted lots of things in my life — to be a dancer — a singer — an actor. I’ve wanted them with what I thought is the strength of desire that would deliver those things. But wanting something doesn’t make it real.” She says this cleanly, without self-pity. “I never thought I would be — whatever I am.”

She stirs her drink, as if she’ll unearth something at the bottom. “I don’t know what you think you’ve done wrong, but it can’t be that bad. You walked in here with that grim professor face and that chilly voice. But now I see that you’re just like the rest of us. You’re human. Hu-man. That means — fucked-up.”

By the time we finish our drinks, I’m completely exhausted. I tell Felicia I’m heading to sleep early. As I get ready for bed, I try to go over what I learned from Rob. Maurice is alive — probably. Armonk. Westchester. He is — could be — close. So close.

I listen to the water run in the pipes in the walls. Felicia, flushing the toilet, or taking a shower? My face fills with blood at overhearing someone else’s habits, this small intimacy,

Maurice’s face drifts back to me. I want to smash it, to pulverize it, this face that has stayed with me. He is, apparently, still alive and has kept changing. This is perhaps what I am most angry about: that he has gone on changing.

As I am climbing in bed, I see there’s a new voice mail on my cell. It’s from this afternoon, and it’s Sioban, who I gave my number to, in a moment of stupidity (or, possibly, compassion, it’s hard to know which). I listen with trepidation. Her voice is low, and soft. There is none of the anger from the last time I saw her. It’s hard to make out what she’s saying — her voice is garbled and there are long pauses between her words — but I catch “can’t stop thinking about you,” “please call,” “I’m scared,” and, finally, “I’m sorry.” The “I’m sorry” sends a cold shiver through me. Then the line goes dead. I turn it off. Anger I can handle, but sadness really scares me.