The Turnout(78)

“Well, it’s the world we live in,” he said, his voice echoing through the lobby as Dara turned and began walking away. “Sick, sick.”



* * *



*

Back in the cool dark of the theater, she tried to settle into the work, watching Corbin onstage donning the Nutcracker Prince mask, lurid and startling under the lights. The tufts of white hair on either side. The grin manic, the teeth two perfect lines.

While the lighting engineer made adjustments, bringing up the blue, Dara called Charlie, but there was no answer.

“Just checking in,” she said into the voicemail. “Call me.”

Behind her, she heard a voice, Marie. One row back, leaning close to Dara’s ear.

“Is he coming here?” she asked. “Charlie?”

“No,” Dara said. “But we should talk.”

“Okay,” Marie said.

The stage was flooded violet, Corbin adjusting the mask on his head.

Behind her, Dara could hear Marie breathing. Fast, then more slowly. Slower still.



* * *



*

It doesn’t mean anything,” she told Marie as her sister read the article, her fingers smudging.

They were in a dressing room, backstage. A half-dozen mouse heads perched on stands, the room smelling of glue, rubbing alcohol, cold cream, vomit.

“It’s okay,” Marie said, twisting her thumbnail between her teeth. “I’m okay.”

“They do them for everyone. Autopsies,” Dara said, even as she knew they didn’t.

Marie held out the newspaper, offering it back to Dara, her grip tentative, like it was a carton of eggs, or a box of firecrackers.

“I keep thinking of his face,” she said. “At the end. How surprised he looked.”

“Why are you doing this?” Dara said, letting the newspaper fall to the vanity. “We said we weren’t ever going to talk about this.”

Marie looked into one of the cloudy mirrors. “On the stairs. He looked so surprised.”

In that instant, Dara wondered if she’d looked surprised, too, watching Marie and Charlie on those stairs, their strange faces. She knew she had. It was the same.

“Surprised like he didn’t recognize us,” Marie said, eyes on the mirror. She and Dara twinned there. Dara was cool, but Marie was hot. Dara was dark, but Marie was light.

“Like we were these alien things.”



* * *



*

    It was nearly seven. Everyone was tired. All the excitement eaten away by the rigors of the day, its small victories and humiliations.

The stage was bare except for Bailey Bloom, an unlit taper candle in her hand, gazing into the darkness. Though no one else was in costume that day, Bailey was wearing her Clara nightgown for the lighting crew. For the important moment Clara leaves her bed in the blue-black night to retrieve the Nutcracker, her longing for him so immense.

From her seat, Dara watched as Bailey, her pale tights glowing, bounded across the stage over and over again as they adjusted the fly rigs.

“Slow and big, Mademoiselle Bloom,” Dara called out. “The audience needs to be able to feel everything.”

Nightgown ballooning, Bailey streaked across the stage, scooped the abandoned Nutcracker into her arms. Sleeves like white wings, she hoisted it into the air like a totem, a godhead, then lifted herself into an elegant arabesque, her neck so long and her leg so high in the way you can when you’re fourteen, fifteen, your body both feather-light and molten, and everything is forever and nothing ever changes.

Dara felt her eyes fill. No longer thinking of articles, or autopsies, or Charlie, or even Marie, she was giving herself over to Bailey, who’d earned it, who needed it. As their mother so often gave herself over to her students. The gaze, hot and relentless, felt like love. It was love.

Bailey onstage, so small amid the darkness, her body whirling antically, seeking her Nutcracker, braving the unknown.

It was so beautiful, like the grainy production they used to watch on their mother’s portable black-and-white set. Their favorite Clara, a big-eyed waif, petal thin but impossibly strong. It was years before Dara realized they were watching their mother, recorded on videotape twenty years before.

“Bravo!” Madame Sylvie called out.

Onstage, her arms in a perfect port de bras, cradling the Nutcracker between them, Bailey looked out into the dark theater, her face blue in the spotlight. Her eyes wide and face open, with all Clara’s fear and wonder.

That’s it, Dara thought. That’s Clara.

“Shall we move on?” called out Madame Sylvie from the back of the house. Wanting to go home.

Dara looked up at Bailey, her chest still heaving, her collarbones pulsing.

“Not yet, please,” she said, her voice surprisingly strong.

Bailey, who hadn’t left the stage in hours, was lathered with sweat, the sweat of a longshoreman, the heels of her pointe shoes flecked with blood.

Bailey who said, “Once more, please?”

Dara nodded.

You had to let them keep going. Bailey knew to stop if she needed to. She knew to ask for first aid, to ask for Anbesol to numb her toes, to say she needed to rest.

But Bailey didn’t want to rest—I don’t have it yet. Please, one more time—and she kept going again and again, her face blazing under the lights, strands slipping from her immaculate bun. Chasséing across the stage again, one foot chasing the other, feet skimming the floor.