The Turnout(31)

She dreamt she finally reached Studio B, where, inexplicably, her classes were now to be held. The plastic curtain still hung across the threshold and she was excited to look.

Blood rushing through her, she watched, pressing her face against the plastic, her nose poking it. She tried to see. She squinted and tried to see.

She felt her heart beating, a dampness between her legs.

But instead of bodies, instead of secrets, something lurched forward, a dark blur and a pair of eyes looking straight back at her. Looking at her as if excited and appalled.





UP THE SPIRAL STEPS


It’ll pass,” Charlie said over soft-boiled eggs the following morning. “It’s a fling.”

Dara didn’t say anything.

She’d come home late after drinking with Marie and crawled into bed, pushing herself against him, her head hot. She tried to wake him, her hands gently roving, but he didn’t move, the thick brume of his meds. So she made herself so small, curling into a ball, feeling—under the crinkly duvet—like a fetus, lima-bean size.

He was sleeping. He was sleeping and didn’t care to talk about it. It’s Marie’s business. She’s a grown woman.

After a fashion, Dara had thought.

And now they were eating soft-boiled eggs in their mother’s chipped porcelain egg cups. The ones their father used to make fun of, holding them with one pinkie perched. Your mother thinks she’s a grand lady, he’d say. Some kind of aristocrat kidnapped by a piggish pauper.

The eggs that morning smelled funny. A puff of sulfur when she cracked the shell.

“It’ll run its course,” Charlie said again, resting his head on his hand. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

Dara still didn’t say anything, just let him go on, the sulfur thick between them.

“He has to finish that renovation sometime,” Charlie was saying now. “The floor is gone.”

The floor is gone, Dara thought.



* * *



*

She’s already got one family member keeping close watch,” he said as they stepped outside, the late October air sharp, stinging. “She doesn’t need another.”



* * *



*

When they arrived at the studio, the stairwell was choked, Benny and Gaspar heaving enormous sprung floor panels up the steps, great maple hardwood bands to be woven together like a basket.

Dara lowered her head and moved quickly, bracing herself to see him, to have to pass through Studio B, a temporary path made of narrow mats strewn over the old subfloor.

But Derek, it turned out, was nowhere to be found and her sister was hungover, sprawled on the floor of Studio A, drinking coconut water from a box, squeezing it until nothing was left.

“What’s wrong?” Dara asked, because it was so clear Marie was dying to be asked, nearly reaching for Dara’s ankle as she walked past.

“I called him all night,” she said. “He never called me back.”

“Did you try his beeper?” Dara said. “Or his other beeper?” Charlie gave her a scolding look and continued on into the back office.

Marie looked up and Dara saw her eyes were pink, swollen, like wet buds.

Pathetic, Dara thought, a coldness settling in her. This was all too much to ask. Too much. Why did everything Marie do have to be so big, so all-consuming? Look at me! Look at me!

As if on cue, the grumble of a truck came from outside.

Marie jumped to her feet, tossing the coconut water into the trash. Smoothing her hair back. Heading for the window like an excitable bird. Like a desperate thing.

“It’s not . . .” she said, peering out the window, her fingers pressed on the cloudy glass. “It’s just the delivery man.”

“You’re humiliating yourself,” Dara said, moving toward the back office, seeing Charlie there, giving her another look.

“I don’t care.”

“You’re humiliating us.”

But Marie didn’t say anything, her head down. Her thoughts remote, mysterious.



* * *



*

Dara couldn’t help finding a sneaking pleasure in it. In Derek standing her up, abandoning her. Missing a late-night rendezvous with a very drunk Marie, her bruises ready for re-bruising. Aching for it.

Maybe he had other girlfriends. No wedding band, but that didn’t mean there weren’t girlfriends. Maybe a live-in one, or even a common-law wife, who knew. Men like that, who knew.

And when Derek eventually showed up for work, hours later, mirrored sunglasses on, like a cop, and looking distracted, it was even more satisfying to see him stroll right to Benny and Gaspar, to never make it to Studio A at all, to Marie, who stood in the doorway, her five-year-olds clustered behind her like a pile of downy dandelion heads.

Maybe, Dara thought, Charlie was right, after all.

Maybe it will pass.



* * *



*

Clatter, clatter, the silver-sprayed swords unsheathed for the mice.

In Studio C, Dara was walking students through The Nutcracker’s fight scene, Clara’s battle with the Mouse King and his furry legion.

But the thud-thud-thudding from Studio B didn’t stop, and three times the lights flickered, the circuits strained from all the power tools.