I unpack the box marked “tea” and plug in the electric kettle, filling it with bottled water, hoping it will relax me. I open up my new glass-lidded tea box—a gift from Jayhe—and pull out a small satchel of chamomile and lavender that he prepped for me. “It’ll help you chill,” he always tells me. As if anything could really help with that tonight.
“Careful with the kettle,” Cassie announces. “Fire hazard and all.”
“I’ve had it for years and nothing so far.”
I don’t realize I’ve said it aloud until she whips around and comes right up in my face. “I don’t want any attitude from you.” She stares down at me, her skin pulled taut over her skull, like Charlie, our bio class skeleton. I wasn’t exactly nice to her when she first came to ABC. When I flinch, she laughs. “Mr. K pretty much promised me the Sugar Plum Fairy, and that basically guarantees one of the apprentice spots. So you better not mess with me.”
My heart sinks into the depths of my stomach, where it’s sloshing along with the bits of grilled chicken I ate off my sandwich. It all threatens to come up again, right then and there. I rush to our private bathroom, locking the door behind me.
Cassie’s put down a bubblegum-pink mat that’s enough to get me nauseated. I run the tap, waiting until I hear the room door close with a thud. She’s gone. Thank God.
There’s a scale in the corner. The last time I checked my weight was during summer session. Mom doesn’t keep scales around the house. I try to focus on breathing and my face in the mirror. But I can see it out of the corner of my eye.
I can’t resist. I need to know. The numbers quickly shift from 0 to 80 to 90 to 100 and then 110, 112, 115. I shift my weight a little and they scramble again, settling, finally, at 108. That’s heavier than I’ve ever been. By far.
I swallow down the sob that’s rising in my throat. I hear Cassie’s nasty words in my head again. Seconds later, I’m cradling the toilet, the tile floor cold and hard under my hands and knees, the familiar scent of lemon disinfectant triggering that same response instantly. With it comes relief, a sense of control. I tell myself it’s just the bile and burning that’s causing the tears. No matter what Cassie says, I’ll be the Sugar Plum Fairy when that cast list goes up, just like I’m supposed to be. My performance in Giselle last year made that happen.
This is my year. This is my turn. I’ll be the lead soloist. I’ll be chosen for the company. I’ll do whatever it takes.
4.
Bette
I’M SITTING ACROSS FROM MY father in his favorite steak house downtown. The restaurant, with its high ceilings and marble floor, echoes with snippets of stuffy conversations and the clink of wineglasses being set on white-clothed tables. Ours overlooks the Hudson, and while he chews, I watch a boat sail up the edge of Manhattan, headed north. You can forget this place is an island when you live close to the large expanse of Central Park cutting right through the middle.
He’s grown his beard in. White hairs poke through the blond. He lives about eight blocks from our house on the Upper East Side, but I haven’t seen him in months. My mother insisted on having it that way, ever since I was twelve and he bailed on Adele and me for a Christmas brunch, jetting off to the Turks and Caicos with his latest assistant girlfriend instead. But before that, he was around, sometimes, randomly, cooking breakfast in the kitchen on a Sunday morning or spending the afternoon reading the Times.
The Times Magazine pokes out of his bag under the table. I peep at it, wondering if it’s a sign that things will go back to normal. I used to love reading it with him while Adele was busy in the basement, getting in extra rehearsals with the latest Russian expat ballet mistress my mother had hired. He’d tell me about the state of the world, explain it to me like I was a grown-up, like it should all make sense. And it did, the way he said things. I would fish those old magazines out of the trash to save in stacks under my bed.
Blood seeps out of his rare steak, and I watch it ooze out into the fluffy mounds of mashed potatoes. I push my salad around my plate, my appetite disappearing.
“I guess Adele isn’t coming,” he says after finishing his bite. Even though we’ve been sharing this awkward silence for forty minutes. Even though we both already knew that and ordered without her. Even though he’s halfway through his steak. Even though she hasn’t spoken to him in years. She won’t even talk to me about it.
“She has rehearsals,” I lie, not sure what she has planned this evening.
“What role is she dancing? What ballet are they performing again?”
He doesn’t even realize that casting hasn’t happened for the winter season yet.
“I don’t want to talk about ballet.” Our gazes finally meet, and it’s like looking into my own eyes. Ice-blue and cold. Adele says I crinkle my nose like he does when I’m upset or I’ve said something rude.
“What do you want to talk about?” He motions for the waiter to bring him another Scotch and soda. I want to give him a list of off-limits topics: my mother, Adele, ballet, school, what I plan to do with my life, what actually happened last year, the reasons he’s been away so long, why he left us, his latest girlfriend. Which means that we really can’t talk about anything aside from the weather, which is relatively cold for a Sunday in the middle of September.
“Your tutor? How’s that going?” There he goes again, with the interrogation. “The private ballet lessons? Your friends? Have you seen any of them?”
I don’t answer. What is there to say? Nothing’s changed, least of all him.
“The point of having dinner is to talk to each other,” he says. “How’s Alec?”
“I don’t want to talk about that either.” I fill my mouth with slimy lettuce tossed with too much low-fat salad dressing. I wish that I didn’t still eat like a ballerina. I’m in the real world and not in the third-floor café at the American Ballet Conservatory. I could eat like a normal person—whatever that is—if I wanted to. But I have to stay in shape for when I get back to school.
My dad raised an eyebrow when I ordered salad—just salad—for dinner. He hasn’t gotten used to the difference, still. We haven’t had that many meals together since he left, and he still expects the little Bette that would order a kiddie burger or chicken nuggets when he’d pick me up from the conservatory for a visit.
Plates come and go before us, even a palate cleanser of mint leaves. I escape to the bathroom and open up my locket. I swallow a pill and I wait for some kind of focused calm to emerge after it hits my system. I wait for the warm flicker of relaxation. But it doesn’t come. I want to wretch or scream or call Adele and cry, which would be the worst thing of all. I dread the I-told-you-so on the other end of that call.
She warned me about going to dinner with him. She told me I would end up disappointed. But she’s always been my mother’s girl, and I was always sort of his, until he left.
When I return to the table it’s been cleared.
“Are we ordering dessert? They have a panna cotta I was thinking about trying.” He thumbs the dessert menu.
“I shouldn’t eat dessert, Robert.” I test out using his first name to see how it will land on him. “I’m a ballerina.”