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Ballerina
A Novel
By Edward Stewart OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA
Copyright © 1979 Edward Stewart
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4804-7056-9
CHAPTER 1
Anna Lang fidgeted in her eighth-row-center seat. She squinted at her watch. In two minutes and thirty seconds the curtain would go up on Act One of The Sleeping Beauty. In eight minutes her little girl would be an international star.
Tonight was the answer to all Anna Lang's prayers. Tonight was the reward for all her struggles.
And Anna Lang was scared stiff.
The last bell sounded. Stragglers came drifting back to their seats. At two hundred and fifty dollars a ticket, you didn't hurry. The theater was packed with society, ballet potentates, celebrities. Conversation buzzed like a hive of excited hornets.
The house lights dimmed. Anna pulled in her knees to let people squeeze past. A jeweled dowager glanced at her curiously, probably wondering why she was alone, why she'd spent intermission in her seat.
I'll tell you why, Mrs. Whoever-you-are: because it's taken me a lifetime to get this far, and I'm not taking any chances on slippery stairs or falling chandeliers. This is the moment I've lived my life for, and I'm damned well going to stay alive for it.
The Prologue had gone smoothly. The whispers in Anna's vicinity had been approving.
"Stunning production."
"Never saw them dance so well."
These people hadn't seen anything yet. They hadn't seen Stephanie Lang.
Anna peered again at her watch. She frowned. Either her watch had suddenly speeded up or Act One was late. She peered at the orchestra pit. Tips of bassoons, the curved necks and upper pegs of double basses, a golden sweep of harp jutted into visibility.
The musicians were ready.
The audience was ready.
What was holding up Act One?
The curtain fanned out and seemed to part slightly. Anna braced her feet against the floor, preparing herself for the announcement of some backstage disaster. The curtain dropped back, like lips that had been on the verge of whispering a secret and then lapsed again into silence.
Her dowager neighbor was still staring. Anna wondered if her hair was out of place or if she was sweating through her makeup. The dowager leaned across her escort and touched Anna's hand. Anna smelled Joy.
"Excuse me, aren't you Anna Barlow?"
Anna stared back. The woman was wearing two thousand dollars' worth of Dior and five of Cartier, easily. She had a Palm Beach tan and a Beacon Hill accent and she probably had a Rolls-Royce waiting to take her home. And she remembered Anna Barlow.
"I used to be," Anna said, smiling.
"And didn't you dance with ...?" The woman threw a nod toward the stage, toward the curtain that still hadn't budged.
"I used to dance with them, yes. Long time ago."
The couple introduced themselves, somebody-or-other Dickerson. They said they'd been balletomanes for years and asked what Anna thought of tonight's gala.
"I'm biting my nails, waiting for my little girl to come on."
"Your little girl?" Mrs. Dickerson said, fascinated.
"Stephanie Lang. She's dancing Aurora. You'll see her in this act." If they ever get that damned curtain up, Anna thought.
She squinted again at her watch. Three minutes late.
Someone in the third ring began clapping and someone shushed, but the clapping broke through the shush barrier. In fifteen seconds the gala audience had turned into a carnival mob. The theater vibrated like a prison on the brink of rebellion. Every nerve in Anna's body screamed: Get that curtain up!
Suddenly, mercifully, the house lights dimmed down. A follow spot picked out the conductor's white-fringed head and tracked him to the podium. The clapping became generous, forgiving.
Anna tried to relax.
She sat through the orchestral prelude. The curtain hissed up and she sat through the scene with the three crones and their spinning wheels. She sat through the dance of the peasant girls and she wondered how the hell Tchaikovsky could have crammed so many repeats into one little waltz.
A spot clicked on, stage right, and Anna's hands readied to applaud Aurora's entrance. There was absolute silence in the theater and absolute stillness on the stage. And one empty spot Anna's throat tightened.
Aurora stepped onstage. The audience burst into applause.
Anna did not applaud. She sat frozen in a rush of shock. It's the light, she thought. I'm crazy.
But she wasn't crazy. What she saw on that stage was a million times worse than any empty spotlight. She shot to her feet, pushed her way past jutting knees and surprised faces. She ran up the aisle, stumbled. She picked herself up off the carpet, ignored the stares, kept running.
"What's the fastest way backstage from here?"
The speechless usherette managed to point.
Anna plunged down the deserted corridor. Her heart was pounding and the walls rippled past like water. It was happening exactly as it had happened twenty years ago. She was drowning, drowning all over again, and she knew from what she'd just seen on that stage that this time nothing could save her.
CHAPTER 2
It was five years ago that Anna had brought Steph to New York.
The doorman was one of those Fifth Avenue snots, didn't want to let them wait. Anna said they were friends of Mrs. Amidon's, which she was, and they were expected, which they weren't, and she marched Steph over to the bench and sat her down.
The doorman kept watching as though they'd try to steal the potted palm.
They waited a half hour. Steph kept pressing her feet against the floor, second position, first position, fifth. Anna began to wonder if she should have phoned. No. On the phone Dorcas would have turned her down.
A woman came into the lobby leading a white terrier on a leash. Dorcas Amidon—still crisp, still brisk, still young. She didn't so much as glance at Anna and Steph. She pushed the elevator button and frowned at the gold sliver of a watch on her wrist.
Suddenly Anna felt scared. Her dress was a J. C. Penney pattern. She'd made it herself on the Singer. Did she dare talk to this woman in tailored silk?
She had to. For Steph.
"Dorcas! Hi!"
Anna waved and sprang to her feet.
Dorcas stared, blank and astonished. The terrier growled and pawed tile.
"I'm sorry," Dorcas said, "you must be mistaken."
"It's me. Anna. Anna Lang."
Still no reaction.
"Anna Barlow Lang."
Dorcas gasped. Her teeth were tiny and perfectly even and every one of them looked real. "Anna—darling! You've changed—"
They hugged.
"Well, I'm a little older," Anna said. "And I can tell you, I've had my ups and downs. But you're looking just great. I love your hair."
The hair was softly waved chestnut; not a fleck of gray. The skin was pale and unlined. Boy, the things you could do with money nowadays. Dorcas Amidon didn't look a day older than when Anna had walked out of NBT.
"Why, thank you." Dorcas' eyes shifted a degree. "And who's this young lady?"
"This is my daughter Stephanie."
Anna gave Steph a little nudge forward. Steph's dress was store-bought, manufacturer's close-out from Lerner's. It was pale green, simple, but it looked expensive on her. Everything looked expensive on Steph. She had a dancer's posture.
"Marty's little girl?" Dorcas cried.
"Marty's and mine."
Dorcas fluttered out a hand. Anna counted a diamond and two rubies. "How do you do, Stephanie? I knew your father." She hesitated. "Do you two have a moment to come upstairs?"
"We have a moment," Anna said. "Sure."
They rode up in the oak-paneled elevator. Some building. Even the elevator man had air conditioning. Dorcas sifted through the mail in a cloisonné bowl on the foyer table. She unleashed the dog and handed the leash to the maid. They went into the living room.
The dove-gray walls were like a backdrop for one of Dorcas' dance galas, setting off ripe plum chairs and sofas, mahogany tables dotted with crystal and silver and cut flowers. There were carved glass fishes on the marble mantelpiece. A pyramid of birch logs had been laid across brass andirons. You could have parked a car in that fireplace.
"Wow," Anna said.
"Coffee?" Dorcas offered.
"Terrific," Anna said. She could stretch a cup of coffee to ten minutes' discussion or better.
Steph was looking around the enormous room. Her little nose crinkled. "It's beautiful here," she said quietly.
"Thank you," Dorcas said. "But I don't know about that rug."
The rug looked fine to Anna: a few thousand dollars fine. The maid brought coffee. They sat, and Dorcas poured.
"Are you visiting New York?" she asked.
"Visiting?" Anna laughed. "This nuthouse? No, we moved here. Yesterday."
Dorcas handed Anna her coffee. The white china cup seemed dangerously thin, like the top of a newborn baby's skull.
"Why?" Dorcas said. "Did you get tired of Cincinnati?"
"Cincinnati was seventeen years ago. Don't ask the cities we've been—Wichita, Sioux City—would you believe Butte, Montana? Mining town. One breath and there's soot on your nose."
"But why New York?" Dorcas said.
"There's nowhere else. Not for dance."
"You're still—dancing?"
"Me? Relax. I'm teaching exercise at Arden's. Starting Monday. Stephanie's the dancer in the family now."
Dorcas stretched smoothly to hand Steph a cup. Anna couldn't see an ounce of flab on the upper arm. A few sun freckles, but those would fade in the fall.
"You dance, Stephanie? Where?"
"That depends," Anna said. "We're keeping our fingers crossed. She auditions tomorrow."
"Is that so."
"We're staking a lot on that audition," Anna said.
"Is that wise?"
"You tell us. You're judging, aren't you?"
"Stephanie's auditioning for us?" Dorcas sipped.
"Frankly, we're hoping she'll get a scholarship. The tuition's murder at New York Ballet School. I couldn't swing it on my own. No way." Anna shuddered.
"There aren't many scholarships these days. Funding is very tight."
"Maybe you could put in a good word. We'd appreciate it." After all, Dorcas was on the boards of the school and of NBT. It wasn't any skin off her knuckles.
Dorcas stirred her coffee. "I'm afraid my word doesn't carry much weight. I'm only one vote out of four."
"I thought you ran those auditions."
"It's gotten a little large for one woman to handle. Patricia McBride and Jean-Pierre Bonnefous will be helping at the finals."
"And who's the fourth judge?"
"Marius."
Anna jerked forward. "Volmar? But how can he? Isn't he busy running NBT?"
Dorcas looked down at her hands, smooth and narrow and peaceful in the pale blue folds of her skirt. "He's running a great many things. You must know he advises the President's council for the arts. He's a powerful man."
Anna considered the implications of Volmar's judging her daughter. "He's not doing so well with the critics. That Chabrier Symphony thing got creamed."
"He didn't choreograph the Chabrier, Mom," Steph said softly. "He only staged it."
"It still got creamed. So how is Volmar? Does he still hate me?"
Dorcas tipped her head to the side. Chestnut waves spilled. "I can't imagine anyone's hating you, Anna. Especially with such a lovely daughter."
Anna was worried now but she managed to smile. She felt proud of the little girl sitting so straight and pretty and calm in the big maroon armchair.
"Now you've got me thinking, Dorcas. Maybe Steph should change her name for that audition. Volmar might not like the sound of 'Lang.'"
"Don't be silly. Marius loved Marty. We all did."
Anna took a swallow. The coffee was much too strong. Maybe it was her nerves.
"I still remember Marty's Albrecht," Dorcas was saying. "Those lifts in the Act Two adagio. He made Hildie soar."
"If anyone could make her soar, Marty could. He had muscle."
Dorcas angled toward Steph. "Did you ever see your father dance, dear?"
"I wish I had."
Anna looked at her daughter and suddenly it struck her that Steph's spoon was in her saucer. Dorcas' spoon was in her saucer. Anna's spoon was not. She took it out of her cup. It was a tiny silver spoon with a twisting thread of a handle. She laid it in the saucer, softly so it didn't clink.
"Steph's father died when she was eleven months old," Anna said. "She can't even remember him. To her he's just a name and some photographs."
Steph's eyes seemed to retract suddenly, to examine distant objects one by one—the long black Steinway piano, the mysteriously lit shelves of pearl-colored vases built into the wall, two sofas, deep and silken and curving, placed near the terrace doors. For no reason at all Anna felt sad. She realized she would never be able to give her little girl anything as pretty as even an ash tray in this apartment.
"It's a pity," Dorcas said. "So many of our American danseurs nobles cut down in their prime. Now we have to import them all from Russia. You've seen Rudy Nureyev?"
"Once," Anna said. "Must have been one of his off nights."
You'd have thought Nureyev was a personal friend from the way Dorcas jaw hung open. It was Steph who broke the silence.
"Mother likes Edward Villella. We saw him in Prodigal Son."
"Now he's a dancer," Anna said. "Not just a show-off."
"You danced the Siren for us, didn't you?" Dorcas asked Anna. As if she didn't know.
"A lot of walking if you ask me." Anna shrugged. Coffee spilled. Damn. She moved the saucer to her lap to cover the spot "I wish I could have done that one with Villella."
"It would have been stunning," Dorcas said. "Eddy's such a considerate partner. And you, Stephanie—whom do you like?"
"If you mean men," Anna said, "she doesn't know they exist."
Small spots of color flared up in Steph's cheeks.
"Whom do you prefer of the current male dancers, Stephanie?" Dorcas asked.
"There are so many good ones," Steph said.
"Such as?" In two minutes Dorcas got more opinions out of the girl than Anna had in two years. Nureyev was stunning, but who except Fonteyn could stand up to him? D'Amboise was god. Erik Bruhn was fantastic but on toe Steph was an inch too tall for him. Delibes didn't score for male dancers as well as female. Anna had never thought of it that way. Then they were talking about Balanchine's Stravinsky ballets, why Mr. B. hadn't ever touched Sacre or Petrouchka.
Anna felt by-passed, left out. She sneaked a peek under the saucer, daubed at the stain with her napkin. She sat listening through another cup of coffee. Then Dorcas apologized and said she had to meet a woman from Texas for lunch—a terrible bore, but NBT was hoping she'd give sets for the gala.
Anna realized she hadn't straightened out the question of the scholarship. She began to bring it up again, but Steph gave her an odd look and she stopped.
Dorcas bustled them into the foyer. Steph asked where the bathroom was. Now was Anna's chance to settle that scholarship, but Dorcas kept talking and didn't give her an opening.
"What a perfect little lady. Did you send her to school?"
"Dance class since she was seven."
"But did you send her away?"
"Why would I send her away? She's a wonderful kid—never gives me any trouble."
"You never remarried?"
"Are you kidding? Once around that dog track was enough for me. Anyway, I had my hands full."
"How I admire you, Anna. How I admire you both."
"Wait till you see her audition. That'll really give you something to admire."
Dorcas took Anna's hands. "Darling—whatever happens—we're friends now, aren't we?"
"Of course we're friends. Didn't you get my Christmas cards?"
"I loved your Christmas cards."
"Well, yours were nice too."
Steph was standing there. Dorcas wished her good luck and kissed her.
Going down in the elevator, Anna thought about Volmar and her stomach made a fist. "Get some sleep tonight, honey. Tomorrow you're going to knock those idiots dead."
Steph's eyes worried Anna. Those studios had tall windows, natural light, and nothing made a face look more washed out. Anna sat Steph down in the hotel room and tried a few strokes of water-insoluble brown liner.
Steph pulled away. "It's an audition, I'm not supposed to wear stage makeup."
"This isn't stage make-up. It's just so they'll notice you a little better. Hold still."
"Mom, it's not a performance."
"You got four hundred kids going against you for ten scholarships. Today's a performance. You remember your variation?"
Steph nodded. Anna had made her prepare a short solo with a gorgeous backward hop in arabesque. Maybe she'd need it, maybe she wouldn't. Better safe than sorry.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Ballerina by Edward Stewart. Copyright © 1979 Edward Stewart. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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