A Lily in the Light(42)
The orchestra tuned strings and chords. The splashes of noise were comforting. The whole theater was charged in a way Esme couldn’t have imagined from the videos she’d watched at home. The dancers wore plain white leotards and long white tutus. The simplicity of it wasn’t as exciting as the sparkles and glittery fabrics her mother had made for her. No one wore those things anywhere but onstage, which made it more special to wear a costume at all.
“Places.” Someone clapped. Esme searched the theater for the voice and found it in a tall, balding man dressed in a fitted black T-shirt and pants.
“That’s Paul,” Amelia whispered. He walked with his shoulders squared, ready to lift someone at any moment. His face was all angles, sharp cheekbones, and a once-broken nose. He reminded Esme of the Brawny paper towel man. His voice was so soft Esme couldn’t hear the instructions he gave his dancers, but she wouldn’t be nervous if he was judging her audition. If anything, he felt safe.
Dancers found their places, whispering last-minute instructions to each other. The lights dimmed. The corps formed two perfect diamonds, touching at the center. As the music started in long, slow strings, their right arms lifted toward stage right, where the lights were brightest. Esme wanted to shield her eyes like they did, brushing a palm against her temple gently, carrying that beautiful light to her face and letting it rest there like a kiss.
Esme mimicked the first few movements, imperceptibly repositioning her fingers as dancers moved on-and offstage. Soloists traced patterns between Balanchine’s lines, every movement light and quick as air with Tchaikovsky’s strings. Each dancer blended into the next in a blur of blue-lit tulle. She was spying on a secret world of women, not swans or mythical things, just beautiful women. The Waltz Girl was light and quick, impossible not to watch as she flitted between groups onstage, sharing a secret with Esme. Every off-centered geometric pattern, every movement was tracing a message for her on the stage floor. You’re one of us. This is where you belong.
The men walked lightly, every muscle a ropy knot beneath their tights. These men wouldn’t scream at the TV on Sunday during football season or sprawl on the couch, a mess of limbs and baggy clothes, blasting the Beastie Boys. These men accentuated everything the women did, stretching their legs longer and lending extra balance without any eye rolling or teasing, but it still felt like they’d intruded somehow, like they didn’t belong with all those beautiful women.
And then the Waltz Girl fell over and over again. She fell until she couldn’t get up, and her lover was led away with covered eyes. The men carried her away into the blinding light. The Waltz Girl leaned back, arms stretched above her head, reaching away from the light, but it found her anyway. Everyone followed behind like at a funeral, but there was one dancer in the back, head bowed, arms outstretched before her, who made something stop in Esme. She was the left-behind one, following like a rag doll, the Waltz Girl’s only friend.
The stage and dancers were now a black spot. The music that was supposed to echo in her bones was gone. She pressed her eyes closed. Where were the flashes of white tulle turned blue, flowing and sweeping behind a trail of gracefulness? It was just over. The show was over, but worse than that, all the dancers would go home. The orchestra and Paul would go home. The message they’d been trying to spell out for her onstage would be wiped away before she knew what it meant.
Amelia watched her carefully. She could feel it in the darkness. It was hard to breathe. What had they said, those women in the trailer, about bloodhounds catching the scent of kids being carried off? It haunted her now. The Waltz Girl so willingly falling and being picked up, carried off to nowhere.
“What did you think?” Amelia asked. Her perfume was suddenly nauseating. Backstage the Waltz Girl was changing and laughing and doing whatever she did after a show, and it all felt false. That wasn’t how it worked.
“Hey?” Amelia leaned closer, bringing that stinky perfume with her. “Are you all right?”
“I’m gonna be sick.” Esme ran, her legs suddenly alive. She wanted to outrun Amelia’s sweater. The borrowed belt cut into her waist and made it hard to breathe. She found a bathroom and forced her way in, ignoring the men’s sign on the door, vaguely aware of footsteps behind her. She retched. The air around her was sour. Old air. Someone opened a window, and new air flooded in. Her eyes watered. There was no tree house or red tree or prisms in the window. That was all make-believe, just like the show.
Someone knocked on the bathroom stall. She hadn’t locked it. It swung open, but Amelia stayed outside.
Esme wiped her eyes with Amelia’s sweater. She choked back a sob. “What does it mean?”
“The show?”
“Were they supposed to be some kind of angels carrying her away?”
Outside the door, Amelia sighed. The lines between the tiles were cracked and gray. There was nothing pretty about it, but it held the floor together.
Esme wrapped her arms around herself. What held her together? “That’s why the light is all blue, isn’t it? Because they carried her into the sky. But why did they pick her? Why did it have to be her?”
“Oh, Esme . . .” Amelia paused, choosing words carefully. “That’s the whole thing about Balanchine. His choreography isn’t supposed to have meaning. He said once that Serenade was just ‘a dance in the moonlight’ and nothing more.”