All Dressed Up (19 page)

Sarah knew
that this whole afternoon was much more about building a friendship
than about fixing Emma’s dress. The dress was the excuse, the glue,
the mascot. She thought Lainie knew it, too. Lainie was trying to
reach Emma through Sarah, not suspecting the extent of the
difficulties in the sister relationship. Sarah was playing the
proxy daughter-in-law, getting close to Lainie so she could somehow
transfer that closeness to Emma, if Emma needed the closeness later
on. Or else it was simpler than that and they just liked each
other.

“I think Carol
is right. I think they’ll get back together,” Lainie blurted
out.

“I do, too,
but there’s no evidence, it’s pure starry-eyed faith.”

“Listen to
us!” Lainie said.

“Although I’m
not sure I want to be there when it happens. Have you… heard from
him at all this week, Lainie?”

“I’ve called
twice, but once I got his machine. I’m not good at knowing what’s
appropriate. I don’t want to be one of those mothers who, you know,
makes a nuisance of herself.”

“How did he
sound, to you?”

“Tired. I know
he went back to work out of anger and so he wouldn’t have to think.
He likes proving his own strength, sometimes, with those heroic
forty-eight hour on-calls.”

“How can we
get him back up here?”

“Are we doing
that? Are we messing with this?”

They looked at
each other and didn’t know.

Lainie’s phone
rang in her purse. She picked it up and began to say, “Sure,” and
“Of course,” and, “No problem, I totally understand,” and then put
it back in her purse and explained, with an apologetic look on her
face. It was her potential buyers. “They’re not feeling confident
about my directions. They want me to pick them up at their motel at
four-fifteen, and it’s ten after, now. I’m not sure how I’m going
to get you home.”

“Where’s the
listing?”

“Well, it’s
right near you, actually.”

Ballet camp.
Lainie’s listing was ballet camp.

“It’s a
couple, that I’m showing it to. Mr and Mrs Farr. They’re looking at
it for a Christian kids’ retreat.”

“Bring me with
you?” Sarah blurted out.

“Would you
mind?”

“I’d be, um,
interested. I went there, years ago, three summers in a row.” She
kept her voice neutral and damped down the stirring of messed-up
feelings inside her.

The place
hadn’t changed, she thought at first. Lainie drove in through the
trees and rounded the final curve. The pines opened up and all at
once you could see the sparkle of the lake, the slope of green
lawn, a pale glimpse of the theater and the log cabin style front
office with its flower beds out front in colorful welcome.

Except that
no-one had re-planted the beds this summer so they were filled with
dandelions and rogue day lilies and messy weeds. There was very
little breeze, as they climbed out of the car, and nothing stirred
in the bright, hot sun.

“Well, we’ll
start here, shall we?” Lainie spoke cheerfully, cutting through the
silence.

Ballet camp
had never been so quiet in Sarah’s experience. Pointe shoes had
always tocked softly on wooden floors. Laughter had spilled up from
the lake. There was whispering in the cabins at night, rehearsal
music and barre class music repeating over and over, and the
constant sing of Sarah’s own confidence and sense of belonging,
expressed in giggling and talking and frothy exaggeration. She had
loved it so much here and her love was rewarded – she never had a
moment’s doubt of her destiny at twelve and thirteen. She was a
dancer.

I can’t do
this. It hit her like a kick in the stomach. She could not take a
pleasant afternoon tour of the last place where ballet had made her
happy. Why had she thought it would be okay to come? As milestones
went, the Bergdorf Goodman dress seemed much easier, right now. “I
might sit this out for a bit,” she told Lainie in an aside.

Lainie gave
her a look of reproach. Don’t leave me alone with these people,
said her face. Mr and Mrs Farr seemed unpleasant, not exactly what
you wanted in your Christian kids’ camp organizers. Mrs Farr’s face
was pinched and weak, and Mr Farr obviously believed a little too
forcefully that the husband was head of the wife the way Christ was
head of the church. He showed it in every nuance of his
conversation, and yanked his wife along at his side like a whipped
dog on a short chain. Sarah wasn’t convinced Christ would have
treated His church that way.

Understanding
that if she didn’t help Lainie out with showing the Farrs around,
she would have to explain the leaden, explosive feelings in her
heart, Sarah nodded okay and turned away from the car.

It was stupid.
For the past eight summers she’d swum and played with Billy in the
lake right across from ballet camp, less than a mile in a straight
line. She’d handled it. She’d kept her mental distance from the
place with considerable success, from when Billy first toddled into
the water after they came back from London, through the times she
held him while he was learning to swim and his busy, wriggling legs
kept kicking her painfully beneath the water, to last summer when
he’d been allowed to swim on his own as far as the rocks a hundred
yards from shore.

It shouldn’t
be this hard to actually be here.

How much was
Emma right about Billy, she wondered again. Had Billy’s little life
been her safe hiding place?

Lainie opened
the office, where they found outmoded computer equipment, a
disconnected phone, and stacks of papers abandoned part way through
sorting. There was a notice board with photos of happy kids
splashing in the lake, painting theater sets, making supper treats
on a campfire, rehearsing arabesques and dancing in full
costume.

Sarah knew she
could probably find her own name and face in here without looking
too hard, because just a quick glance at the papers showed old
Giselle and Coppelia programs and other records going back years.
“Who is the seller?” she had to ask, mumbling the question to
Lainie while the Farrs poked around the back office.

“Oh gosh,
don’t let them know I’ve forgotten,” she whispered. “This isn’t
really my listing, it’s with someone else in the agency, but she’s
away this weekend. Townsend? Towns?”

Townley.
Frances Townley.

Ancient, odd
little Miss Frances owned ballet camp now.

During Sarah’s
three summers here, Miss Frances had been the wardrobe mistress as
well as the flamboyant Madame Tarantovie’s poorly-paid slave.
Madame must have died. She would have been well into her fifties
twelve years ago, and she’d smoked so much to keep her weight down
that her voice was like churning cement. She’d had the body of an
ex-dancer, bony as a bird. Exquisite skin that never saw the sun.
Yellow-brown nicotine patches between her smoking fingers. She was
tireless and charming, sometimes a bully. She’d never married, and
she must have bequeathed her ballet camp to sweet, funny old Miss
Frances in her will.

“We’d like to
see the rest,” announced Mr Farr.

Lainie ushered
them out of the office, and Sarah’s stomach kicked again. Her
memories of Miss Frances and Madame felt so fresh and real. Their
ghosts hung around like ballet costumes in a closet. Maybe Miss
Frances had died, too. “Is it an estate sale?” Why did she have to
keep asking Lainie this stuff?

“I don’t think
so. Looks to me like the place just wasn’t paying its way.”

It must have
started to run down for several years before it closed. The dock
had begun to rot, the dining shelter and practice rooms were worn
and in need of paint. The recreation equipment was piled in sheds
that smelled thick with damp.

In one shed, a
row of white swan costumes receded back into the shadows like the
corps de ballet awaiting its entrance in the wings. Sarah lifted
one by its hanger and brought it into the light.

Old sweat
stains made half moons and butterflies on the white silk. Mildew
had attacked the sweat, mottling it with black and pink and green,
and some kind of silk-eating moth had made holes everywhere. Or
maybe that was mice, seeking soft linings for their nests. There
were hardened droppings on the floor, when you took a good look,
like grains of black rice. She put the costume back, nauseated,
thinking of her swan costume in London and the butter-cream
Bergdorf Goodman dress and Emma’s wedding gown. Ghosts, all of
them. Too many dresses to care about. “Do you think it could pay
its way again?” she asked Lainie.

“If it had
some capital, and the right management. Maybe it needs horse-back
riding and more general arts and activities, not so much classical
ballet. There are some pretty successful camps around here.”

“There’s a
horse-riding camp right next door, on the back boundary.”

The theater
was in good shape. It was the one piece of infrastructure that had
been renovated since Sarah’s final summer. Floodlighting in the
shrubbery out front illuminated the freshly painted Southern
plantation style façade of the building. Plush crimson seats curved
to face the stage. A matching swathe of heavy velvet curtains swept
across the wide, deep polished floor, and ornate gilt fittings and
chandeliers sparkled with faceted white diamond light. Musty from
disuse, it was still a showpiece.

In the theater
lobby, there was a montage of production photos with full stage
lighting. Swans in chorus, toy tin soldiers, Russian peasants,
pairs of fresh-faced teens poised in graceful adagio. And of course
Sarah was there. She saw herself before Lainie did. Not knowing her
full name, the Farrs didn’t see her at all.

She’d danced
Swanilda in Coppelia the summer before the family moved to London,
and there she posed, over and over, in powder blue and white,
ribbons and satin and lace and tulle, thinner of course, much
flatter in the chest, up en pointe, gorgeous line down her leg
right to the toe, arms pale and curved, fingers perfectly placed,
leg high and tight, face lit up, every muscle schooled. She had so
much determination, so much self-belief. You could see the energy
and the talent and the joy, right there in every photo. She looked
as if she had invisible wings.

“This sale is
supposed to include a substantial amount of equipment,” Mr Farr
said.

“Well, you’ve
seen the canoes…” Lainie sounded lame. Then she turned to look for
Sarah’s allegiance and found her on the wall instead.

One of our
brightest young students, Sarah Dean, performs Swanilda.

Beneath the
series of photos was a photocopied newspaper clipping from London.
Had Mom sent it? It was only from a local London newspaper, showing
Sarah’s ballet school’s Christmas production the first year she was
there, but someone had labeled it Sarah Dean dances Aurora in
London as if she’d embarked upon an illustrious professional career
and was soon to become a household name.

“Theater
lighting,” Mr Farr listed. “Saleable sets and costumes.” He spoke
as though he’d already been cheated by their absence.

“Sarah, this
is you,” Lainie whispered.

“Different
Sarah Dean,” she answered, almost meaning it. “No relation.”

Lainie
frowned, not understanding.

“Joke.” She
wished she hadn’t tried to be clever. “I came here for a few
summers, didn’t I say?”

“Yes, but… You
were good! Well… I don’t know. You look good to me.”

“But my figure
didn’t cooperate, later on.” She made a tray shape with her hands
beneath the rounded shelf of her breasts and the Farr man caught
the gesture and considered her a whore.

He wanted
Lainie’s attention. “We’d like to see some utility bills, and take
some photos to show our committee. We’d want a substantial
reduction in price to recognize the fact that so much work is
needed.”

“What will you
do with the theater?” Sarah asked him.

“Prayer
meetings and choir. It’s a pity this is where the money was spent.”
His glance disdained the plush fittings.

“Right,
thanks, yes,” Sarah said. She muttered to Lainie, “Is someone going
to archive any of this?” She waved at the photos. “I mean, not that
it’s important, but – ”

“I’ll have to
find out for you, honey.” Honey. “I’m sorry, is this why you wanted
to stay in the car?” She touched Sarah’s arm.

“There are a
few issues,” Sarah admitted. “When we started out I just… I thought
it would be good for me to see it. But now I really, really don’t
want these buyers to have my camp. Which is stupid, but I can’t
help it.”

Taking in
Sarah’s tight expression, Lainie told her, “We don’t get to pick
and choose the buyers. But I know what you mean.”

Lainie didn’t
like the Farrs, either. She’d been almost enjoying this fact for
the past hour, looking for fresh evidence, observing how tight and
joyless they were, adding it all up with a degree of pleasure –
like finding your purse had more money than you thought – because
of how powerfully the Farrs’ parsimonious, authoritarian
Christianity showed Mac’s version in so much of a better light.

And God.

Somehow it
showed God in a much better light, too, because Lainie felt quite
sure that God would not like these people either, and it felt good
to discover this thing she and God had in common, not liking the
Farrs, when she’d felt so at odds with Him over the years.

But now she
saw the Farrs from Sarah’s point of view. She added things up in a
different way and, knowing about the tennis money from Terri via
Emma and Charlie, blurted out, “You’re a teacher and you have the
dance experience, you’re a bright girl and your dad knows a lot
about business, you could buy this place yourself.”

Sarah looked
at her in horror.

Chapter
Nine