Sari Wilson - Girl Through Glass

The more she excels at SAB, the more her own powers expand, the more she understands, in some deeper way, his physical weakness and limitations. She has a feeling of careful ownership of him.

Their relationship, this young girl and this man, is one based on infirmities. Together they worry about the popping sound in her hip joint when she does adagio extensions. He found a trainer who worked with her on hip placement. Like many teenage dancers with grueling schedules, she experiences the ailments of the middle-aged. He knows best the medications: Tylenol for tendonitis, aspirin for shin splints, Excedrin for joint pain. Epsom salts, valerian, and vitamin B.

So of course she wonders — the normal girl in her wonders — what it would be like to be kissed, not measured or judged, just kissed. Since Gary, she has had no physical contact with any man other than Maurice.

She wonders how it would feel to have a boy’s hand creeping up her shirt and, not finding much there, prying at the waistband of her pants, at her zipper. She is sure that there would be something of interest for him, something even ballet had not touched. Sometimes at night, the song in her body stops long enough that she can hear, not her bright strong limbs, but other parts of her body — her stomach with hunger, and other, deeper parts. Then she grabs her pillow between her legs and squeezes hard and bites its corners, gnashing her teeth like a wild animal.

In his apartment, she dances for him. She strips out of her street clothes, down to her leotard and tights. She does the combination from Danilova’s class. The one with the three pirouettes. And wouldn’t you know it — she does all three pirouettes out into the arabesque perfectly. There, across from her, he sits on his wraparound leather couch in the furrows of light carved by the Third Avenue streetlamps (he doesn’t turn the lights on).

She stops and stands there in the dark, listening to his shallow, even breaths. She has gone through the whole thing — once, then twice — hearing the sounds of the accompanist, hearing Danilova’s high, warbly entreaties and commands— yes dharlinks, dharlinks, this, not this, yes this but not this —and then she has moved through a thin layer of sweat in the stuffy room. She feels strangely light-headed, probably from not eating enough. In the end, she ate almost nothing at dinner.

She peers over Maurice. He is asleep! He has never fallen asleep before.

Why has she begun to cry, silent tears that flatten out along her cheeks? Her face is wet, her mouth open with the silent sound. He is asleep!

Maurice sleeps, his face tilted upward. She bends over, kisses his pale lips lightly, just grazes them. He doesn’t stir. It amazes her. His breathing doesn’t change. In her tights and leotard, she curls her body next to him and closes her own eyes. Garbage cans rattle in a breeze, sirens wail far away.

Her eyes do not close; she doesn’t let them. She imagines her mother passing through the mountains to arrive at the Street of the Warrior. She pictures how her mother looked last time Mira saw her — before the trees lost their leaves. She looked bigger, more solid, in a broad colorful shirt, her hair wound up in a white turban, wearing heavy clanking shell earrings. Mira had not wanted to hug her. Her mother smelled of incense and something like tar, but when Mira hugged her anyway, she embarrassed herself by crying into her mother’s many necklaces.

They lie there — the girl and the man — without moving for a long time. Outside, people whistle for cabs, high heels click on the pavement, horns blare then fade. When the sounds change to slamming car doors, rushed, barked words, the sudden curls of laughter, and the down-the-street swoosh of taxis dropping people home from parties, some alarm goes off inside her and she moves. She rubs her arms, which have fallen asleep.

She gets up and pulls her pants and her shirt over her ballet clothes. Then she leans over Maurice’s sleeping form and says, “It’s time.”

He wakes suddenly, as if he just closed his eyes for a second. He opens his eyes and stares at her — startled, fearful. “What did you do to me?”

“Nothing,” she says. “You fell asleep.”

He rubs his eyes, pushes her away. He sits up. Grabs his cane. Takes in her appearance but does not move. “You are beautiful,” he says conclusively. His voice is unkind, full of blame.

“I know,” she says.

Later that night, Maurice drives her uptown — twenty blocks north — past humming streetlamps. His car after all these years still smells of new leather. She looks at him, maneuvering the lever that allows him to make up for his bad leg, the grim paleness of his face and something new about him, something that reminds her of her mother in her studio when she was much younger, a distracted quality, like he is straining to hear music from a long way off. She reaches over and turns on the radio.

“Mozart?” she says.

“Mendelssohn.”

He parks the car across the street from her dad and Judy’s place. After she gets out, he rolls down his window and turns to her.

“Bella. .”

“What?” she says, her heart pounding.

He looks at her, his old face troubled, but says nothing. It’s almost spring, and a smell of something blooming wafts into the car.

“I think. . maybe. .”

“What?”

He looks out the window. He pauses and gives her a strange look. “Do you enjoy dancing?”

She stares at him. No one has ever asked her this question that she can remember. As a girl, she would have answered Yes! Yes! Yes! without thinking about it. But she is not a girl now. She knows that suddenly.

He lowers the volume on the radio but the music still simmers. He hands her some bills.

At first she liked the money because it could be turned into something — jewelry that she chose carefully because she imagined it was from him. It felt like a gift and she accepted it as such. But now it feels different. The money sits in her dresser drawer and collects there. She spends it on cigarettes, nail polish, but can’t think of enough things to buy. It makes her heart hurt that she can’t think of what to buy with it.

In the narrow strips of gardens along the sidewalk, things are blooming — things that smell.

Is it Mira who wants to cry? Or is it Bella?

Or — is it someone else entirely?

After Maurice leaves, she enters her dad and Judy’s building and nods at Felix, the night doorman. The elevator is too far away. She won’t make it, she knows suddenly. Her face crumples like a used dinner napkin. She drops her dance bag and covers her face with a hand.

“Are you okay?” the doorman says nervously.

“I have been lying,” she says. “There are no kids.”

This is Judy’s world of nice-but-mean doormen, elevators to views of the city below, well-oiled furniture that feels dry and brittle. It is a world of fakes and phonies.

She wipes her eyes, goes right up to Felix’s desk. Imagining that she is her mother, she says, “Do you think I’m pretty?”

He looks at her then. “Sure, you’re a pretty girl.”

She smiles. “Would you like to kiss me?”

He stares at her for a long moment. He is maybe fifty years old. His chin is droopy. His eyes have receded into papery folds. His posture is strangely good and he never sits. Now he stands, as stiff as a sharpened pencil, and looks at her, his eyes flash something she can’t read. He opens his mouth to say something, then he closes it again.

“I think it is time for you to go upstairs.” He looks at her as a grown-up would a child.

She looks down. She is ashamed. She is not her mother. She will never have her mother’s power.