Page 44 of Just Say Christmas
“No,” she’d told him when he’d asked. “The core work is my entire life. The core work goes down practically to the cellular level, and so does the flexibility. I’ve been training for all of it since I was six. Ballet dancers and jockeys, pound for pound, are the strongest athletes in the world.” She’d smiled, all tease, put a finger under his chin, risen to her toes, and pressed her lips to his, all that wickedness in her elf’s eyes, and whispered, “Sorry to make it a . . . competition.”
He’d realized two things in that moment. First—just how much of her light had been hidden under a bushel when she’d put performing to one side, and how strong she’d been to be able to make that sacrifice without showing it. And second—how well he’d seen through her reserve to the woman beneath, just as she somehow tapped into the man he was under the cheerful surface. Now, everybody could see it, because her light was shining, and it was blinding.
When she stepped on Michael’s foot, and lifted the other leg into what she called a “Six o’clock,” her head laid against her own ankle, her other foot doing its best to touch the ceiling? And then, with Michael’s hands around her two wrists, his legs apart, knees bent to support her, held that oversplit all the way down, her head tucked against her knee, her foot still on his foot, until both legs were nearly on the floor, and finally, on his releasing one hand, flipped into the splits, her arms rising into the air, her head high, and still never lost an iota of that grace? The audience began to murmur, and then, softly, to applaud.
The music twined around them, and Chloe wound around her partner, now perched over his shoulder, balanced on her hipbones in a lift called “The Bird,” which she’d taught Kevin to do as well, just as he’d learned how to put his hands around her waist, walking down the street, and set her suddenly onto his shoulder. Which he absolutely loved to do. And again, held over Michael’s head, she pulled her leg to her nose with both hands and ended up in those splits again, while Michael turned her in a slow circle with one hand, placed against her lower belly like a waiter balancing a tray. Or, actually, she’d told Kevin, placed against her pubic bone, because that was the balance point. Sometimes, it bruised her there, but as she said—ballet was pain.
“How can you do that?” he’d asked her after that first mesmerizing rehearsal. “How can you trust him not to drop you?”
“That’s why I told you I had to do it,” she’d said, wiping her face with her ratty gray practice shirt—the more elite the dancer, the worse the rehearsal clothes—and laughing with a job well done, with energy released, with the elation of a partnership paying off. “When you have the right partner, the one you’re perfectly in sync with, you breathe together. You have to take off for every lift with perfect timing, both of you preparing for it, then launching at the exact same instant. It looks like he’s doing all the work when I’m over his head, but I’m holding myself absolutely straight, which is why hecando it. If I’m not a stick of uncooked spaghetti, if I lose the tension even for a split second, it doesn’t work. To make it look easy, to make it work at all, you have to be absolutelytogether.”
“It’s more than that, though,” Kevin had tried to explain. “How are you that flexible? How is he?”
“We just are.” She’d smiled again, all of her lit up from within, a physical being finally given the opportunity to express everything inside her and determined not to waste the chance. “It’s our gift. It’s our calling.”
“You don’t choose ballet,” Michael said, coming up beside her, toweling off his hair, and putting an arm around her shoulder, pulling her in. “It chooses you.” The way he held Chloe might have bothered Kevin, if dancers weren’t as unconcerned with expressing their physicality as any rugby player. Also, possibly, if Michael hadn’t been gay.
“I’ve heard that one before,” Kevin said.
In twenty minutes or so, after a few more of the special dances, a couple of them exciting and some of them, frankly, a chance to catch up on your napping, the balletomanes would be jumping out of their seats, applauding Chloe with shouts of “Brava!” when she danced the Sugar Plum Fairy. She’d be all lightness and precision then, turning and spinning and stepping like the tiny, perfect pink ballerina inside a musical jewelry box. Kevin, though, would be amongst the Philistines. Cirque du Soleil or not, he liked this one best. And so did Zavy, applauding enthusiastically beside him as the piece ended with Michael holding Chloe with one hand straight overhead, on her bum, her own arm holding herself taut against his shoulder like that piece of uncooked spaghetti, except that her entire body was curved, from her arched back to the impossibly pointed feet, into a backwardsC.She stayed there, upside down, suspended in space, for seconds, as if it were easy.
“That’s my favorite dance,” he heard his son saying to the coach’s daughter, Casey, beside him, when Chloe was on the ground again, then running off stage, every footfall as light as a fairy’s. “Because it’s my Mummy, and she’s very beautiful and very strong.”
Chloe said, every time he played, that he made her proud. He didn’t see how she could be as proud as he was right now, when she’d used all her discipline and skill, all her spectacular talent, and every bit of her grace and grit to give this kind of performance for her audience, for his team, and, he knew, for him. When he could think,That’s my wife.When she was that beautiful and that strong, body and soul. All the way to the cellular level.
Just not possible.
24
Just Like Life
CHLOE
She knew he was out there. She always knew. She’d have said she always gave her best, except that when Kevin was in the audience, she gave a little more. And not only that. He’d brought his team, and she’d wanted to make him proud.
It was a long time until the evening performance was over.Nutcrackerwas a short ballet, this version barely topping seventy-five minutes, but it was still a long time, because shehadgiven that extra effort, and itwasdancing two roles. Also because, by Sunday night, you were feeling those two extra weekend performances.
Never mind. Tomorrow was her day off, when she’d stay in her most comfy clothes all day, would let Kevin take Zavy to kindy while she slept a little longer, and then would consider whether she wanted to bestir herself to go to the beach and have a swim with him, then go out to lunch and eat like she’d never get another meal. She turned her car into the driveway at ten o’clock, and the security light flipped on. Out of the car, then, pulling out her dance bag, slinging it over her shoulder one more time, heading toward the front door with the dancer’s gait, feet turned out the way hours of daily practice took them. You could change that for normal walking in the regular world if you focused, but she was tired.
She had her key out, but the door swung open as she approached, and he was there. Dressed in an NBA singlet and rugby shorts, all arms and chest, taking her bag from her at the door, kissing her lightly on the mouth, and saying, “Got your bath started.”
“Boy,” she said with a sigh, “you read my mind. Come talk to me in there? Five minutes?”
“Make sure you don’t fall asleep, more like,” he said. “Yeh.”
He hadn’t just started her bath. He’d put bubbles in, scented with freesia, her favorite smell in the world. She let the water run, because it took a while. He’d surprised her, when she and Zavy had moved in with him a year and a half earlier, with a new soaking tub.Withjets. It had been the sweetest thing anyone had ever done for her.
She took her hair out of its skinned-back ballerina bun, then skewered it loosely up on top of her head, shucked off her track pants and jersey, climbed into the fragrant bubbles, took a breath, and let it out. Kevin had made it hot, the way she liked it. She pressed the button for the jets, sank to her chin, and closed her eyes.
He knocked twice on the door, and she said, “Yep,” not able to muster more than that.
He came in and took up his familiar spot. Sitting on the lid of the loo. She smiled at him, sleepy and slow, and said, “We’re not very flash. Should get you a chair in here. Stool. Something.”
“Nah,” he said. “I don’t need flash. Loo’s good.”
She let herself soak a minute more, and he said, “Zavy went to bed early tonight. Worn out from the excitement, I reckon, seeing all the big kids. They did some running around in Aotea Square after the performance, letting off steam. Noelle read him his story.”
“Mmm,” she said. “That’s good. The girls are so good.”
