Sari Wilson - Girl Through Glass

My eyes are still blinking too rapidly. The gatekeeper puts on her glasses and looks at me, this time taking me in in a different way. Finally, she whispers back, “What years?”

“Umm. . 1978 to 1981.”

“Wait, I was here then too.”

“Are you— Bryce Harrington?”

“Yes,” she says. “And you?”

“I’m. . I was. . Mira Able.”

“Mira Able?” She pulls off her glasses and tosses them on the desk with a clatter. She stands. “What the hell?” I recognize the flashing eyes, the quick, stabbing words of my old classmate. “What the hell happened to you? You just left and. . after that day. Everyone was talking about it. You just disappeared. No one could find you. I always thought you’d call me, or write me, or something, you know.” She leans back on her heels and crosses her arms. “We were friends, right?”

I’m on the other side of something now. My breath comes more regularly. This is a stroke of luck. I smile a genuine smile. “We were enemies.”

Bryce smiles big and wide. “We were frenemies !” Her eyes sparkle. I can see a cap on her front tooth.

“Yes, we were!” I say. “We were the best in the class!”

With Bryce’s glasses off, her eyes look smaller, her face softer. She’s speaking loudly now as another group, this one older, slides by us, with curious stares. “Remember how Tumkovsky would yell—‘Catch your breasts! Catch your breasts!’ And how Danilova would”—she begins to warble like her—“‘not so fast. You do not take train, take stagecoach, take horse.’”

A girl runs up to Bryce and says, “I have a new maker. My feet are much better!”

“Who is it?” Bryce says.

“It’s Castle Maker!”

“That’s great, hon,” Bryce says. “They say he’s excellent for narrow feet.”

As the girl runs off down the hallway, I say, “Her maker ?” In our day, only professionals had makers. Individual makers of pointe shoes — craftsmen who still handcraft pointe shoes.

Bryce says to me, “They all have their own makers now. They even have a Web site for the makers, so the girls can ‘meet’ them.”

“Wow, even at their age?”

“Yep.”

“With pictures of their makers?”

“Yep.”

Through this barrage of words and images from my past, through my rapid blinks and sweaty palms, I bring myself back. I refocus: I have to. I am here for one reason only. Who sent the letter? Is he alive? “Yes,” I say. “We were totally frenemies. But. .” I pause. “Listen, Bryce.” I lower my voice. “We really need to catch up, but I’m here for a specific reason today and. . I need your help.”

“My help?”

I take a deep breath. Don’t think. Do. “I need to find out about a donor to SAB.”

“Who?”

“Someone who I knew a long time ago.”

She stares at me. Her mouth purses. “That creepy guy?”

I laugh. “Beauty and the Beast,” I say. “Felicia told me.”

“Felicia?” She wipes her mouth with the back of her veined hand. “What is she doing now?”

“She’s — ah, between things.”

She nods. “Yes,” she says. “It’s our age.” She waves her arms at something invisible. “But what’re you, like a private eye?”

“Actually, I’m a dance historian. But this is something — extracurricular,” I say. “Apparently, he donated a lot to SAB over the years. I’m trying to find out — if he is still alive. I thought, well, you might have access to that information.” I pause. “It’s important.”

Bryce shakes her head and grins. She places a hand on my shoulder. She is all verve and no-consequence now. She asks a woman walking by with a blinking Bluetooth to watch the desk and leads me down several long hallways. She waves to people as we pass. She lowers her voice. “It’s been much too tame around here. It’s like a factory now — everything is a factory now. But I love good gossip, and I can smell some here.” She is full of a brisk, youthful energy. Bryce pulls me into an office, and shuts the door.

It’s a small room with a few empty workstations. Bryce leads me to one, and says, “I have access to the donor database. I have even managed it. . ” I hear the old pride in her voice. She jiggles a mouse on the keyboard and a monitor lights up.

I look over Bryce’s shoulder. I can smell her soap — lavender? — and something bitter and straw-like, coffee or loofah. I remember her in a sweat-drenched leotard. We never smelled then, I don’t think. Our sweat was pure, stainless, the sweat of angels, of demons.

“I want to hear the backstory sometime. Okay, Sherlock?”

He took my childhood. He stole from me what was most precious. He gave me a gift I could not keep.

“Deal,” I say.

“Now give me the name.”

“Maurice. Maurice Dupont.”

She bangs away at the keyboard.

“Yes, here it is. Right here.”

Blinking on the screen is his name.

“Every year he gave in the thousand-dollar range, starting in 1980. Twenty thousand dollars in all. Considerable. Not Inner Circle. But solid Dress Circle.”

I look at her.

“Those are our names for it.” She squints at the screen. “But then, he stopped about ten years ago. Nothing.”

“From Dress Circle to nothing?”

“Wait! But then, a year ago, he gave a million dollars!”

“A million? That’s Inner Circle, right?”

“Sure is.”

“Is there anything else?”

“There’s a name, the name of a lawyer, Kevin Fox, and an address on Park Avenue.” Now it’s my turn to squint at the screen. I pull out Felicia’s pad — the one with Latinate lettering at the top — and scribble down the name and address. I notice, for some reason it’s clear now, that the lettering reads Carpe Diem .

In early November, Mira stands in front of the hallway bulletin board. Her eyes rest on a single sheet of white paper, the typed cast list for The Nutcracker . At first, she doesn’t see her name anywhere on the list. Her heart beats too fast. Then she sees, yes, it is there.

Party Scene

Angels

Hot Chocolate

Candy Canes

Polichinelles

Hoop Girls

At the very bottom, Marie. And next to Marie —Mira Able!

When she tells Maurice, his glittering smile falls into place, like it was he who had gotten the part. He says, “Of course.”

She doesn’t see Mr. B again until a Friday afternoon Nutcracker rehearsal . Mr. B is there, wearing a cowboy shirt and a string tie. His turtle face looks handsome. He’s whispering with the New York City Ballet children’s ballet master, who is scarier to her than anyone. He’s legendary for his yelling and berating, his blow-dried hair. When they put the Nutcracker doll in her hand, it’s lighter than she could have imagined, and she pantomimes the steps she knows by heart now. As she cradles the doll, gazing at its big Easter Island face, she imagines Maurice. She imagines dancing for Maurice, the silence and the splendor of that.

Mr. B walks forward, stops the pianist. “I know this one,” he says. Then he’s beside her, playing Drosselmeyer. He swings a pretend cape, takes out the doll, offers it to her. He smells of straw and coffee. “This Marie,” he says, “has the energy of my Tanny.”

Tanny, he called her Tanny! the girls in the dressing room will whisper with envy. Tanny — short for Tanaquil — Mr. B’s fifth wife. An exceedingly beautiful girl with an incredible extension, tragically crippled by polio in the prime of her career. Mr. B nursed her for years. The other girls’ whispers will be loud with envy and hate, but they are also far away and can’t reach her.