Rules for 50/50 Chances (10 page)

She didn't make the Zephyr or the Trans-Siberian. Actually, she didn't make any of them. I wanted Mom to go to Russia and see the flat, white expanse of Siberia stretching out into eternity. I wanted to go with her, pack her up and ride all those trains as far as they would take us. But first there was the expense—trains aren't cheap—and then there was her health. Her symptoms progressed slowly at first, but still too quickly to plan a decade or two of international travel. I guess at some point, she just resigned herself to the fantasy of it.

Hence the mess of papers currently burying the dining room table. She prints them out and sticks them in these scrapbooks, and keeps telling and retelling the same made-up stories about what all the journeys would be like. Frankly, these days I'm not sure if she's repeating them on purpose or if it's the disease eating her short-term memory.

As I head to my bedroom, I pass by Mom's office. I still think of it as her office, anyway, even though she certainly doesn't do any work anymore. My mother stopped being an architect when she lost the ability to hold a pencil steady. She used to draw the most intricate, precise plans at the slanted desk by the window in this room, and she'd hang her plans on the wall so she could step back and look at them from afar. Now on the wall where those plans used to be, Dad's taped the huge map that documents all of Mom's train routes. She's stuck pictures to the map like a psychopath plotting a murder and then an elaborate escape route. Glancing at the map, I notice that the Hiram Bingham Orient Express isn't marked out. There aren't any red lines across South America at all. It must be a new one for her list.

In my bedroom, I fire up my laptop and quickly Google it. “Hiram Bingham Orient Express” brings up a bunch of hits from rail Web sites and blogs. “This Pullman train follows Peru's Urubamba River past lush countryside and mist-soaked mountains, winding towards Machu Picchu, the ancient Inca citadel.”

I print out the route and take it back to Mom's study. Locating her red Sharpie on the desk, I add the Hiram Bingham to the map.

Eight

For the Ballet of the Pacific Coast master class, I show up at the studio wearing the least faded of my black leotards and a new pair of pale pink tights I picked up yesterday, after I realized that all of my hundreds of pink tights had some kind of run or hole in them, or looked otherwise abused. I don't want the BPC people thinking I don't take this seriously. When I get into the room, I notice that the rest of the girls look similarly polished for this occasion. Eloise is wearing what looks like almost full show makeup.

“All right, girls, let's do this,” says the lead BPC dancer, Felix. “Ready to show us what you're made of?”

Felix warms us up with
pli
é
s
and
tendus
, but the class quickly accelerates into a mix of exercises that make our regular classes feel like relaxing in front of the television. The BPC is famous not only for their gorgeous productions of the classical ballets, but also for being one of the most demanding companies in the business. Felix's class is a crazy-rigorous workout, and it's using muscle groups I didn't even know I had. Midway through the class, my obliques are pulsating and my quads burn.

Felix and his partner, a dancer named Nell with long, blond hair twisted high on her head, take us through a couple of combinations. Finally they announce that they're going to teach us the opening movement to
Ampersand
, the BPC's signature original ballet.

I throw a quick look at Eloise, who grins at me. We watch the BPC perform more or less every year when they come to town. I can practically see the
Ampersand
choreography in my head, but I've never had the chance to dance it. Even though I'm pretty sure I can handle it, I get a swell of nerves in my stomach as Felix starts placing us in a cluster in the center of the room, and gives us our counts for the opening sequence.

I'm practically dying by the end of class. My muscles are quivering, and I'm 99 percent sure I won't be able to walk tomorrow. We give Felix and Nell a round of applause, and Miss Julia passes a clipboard around for us to sign up for seven-dollar tickets to their shows this weekend. I put a one in the quantity box next to my name and am about to pass it to Eloise, but then I hesitate. I cross out the one and replace it with a two. Lena will come with me, I'm sure—but I'm not sure she'll be the first person I offer the extra ticket to.

 

 

At home, I soak in a bath with Epsom salts, hoping it'll offset some of the muscular agony I'm going to be in tomorrow morning. I'm not really a bath person, honestly, but sometimes, like tonight, I leave class knowing that I'll be punished if I don't give myself a good soak.

I lean back against the edge of the tub and try to relax, stretching my legs as far as they'll go in the near-scalding water. I'm flipping through the magazine I brought in with me—
The Atlantic,
not very exciting—when there's a knock at the bathroom door.

“What?”

“Rose, someone's ringing you.” It's Gram. I forgot to bring my cell phone in with me.

“It's fine, Gram,” I call through the door. “I'm in the tub. I'll call whoever it is back.”

“Want me to pass the phone to you?” she calls back. “It's someone called Caleb.”

I know she's just trying to be helpful, but really, I'd prefer it if she'd just leave my phone where it is when she hears it ringing. Does she really have to go into my room, pick it up off my bed, and look to see who it is?

I try not to sound irritated. “It's okay, Gram,” I say. “Thanks!”

Ten minutes is all I can stand before I start feeling nauseated in the humidity of the bathroom, and I haul myself out of the tub and stretch. Everything cracks—my neck, back, wrists, ankles. Seriously, my whole body is going to be wrecked long before Huntington's gets to it, at this rate.

On my way back to my bedroom, Gram pokes her head out from her room.

“Who's Caleb?”

“No one. He's just a guy I know.” Caleb and I have been in some kind of contact almost every day since last week—text, IM, a phone call—but it still makes my heart race with nerves to think about it.

“An interesting guy?” she asks.

“He's just a friend,” I say. Gram's trying to ask the questions Mom won't know to ask anymore, but I don't feel like opening up to her about Caleb.

In my room, with the door closed, I take a deep breath to steady my voice before hitting his number to call him back. If I ask him to come see the BPC with me, will he think it's a date? Will he think
I
think it's a date? As much contact as we've had, we haven't made another plan to hang out.

I shake my head, as if the physical act will somehow rid me of all the questions. It doesn't, but I call him anyway. And he answers.

“How do you feel about ballet?” I ask.

“Is that how you normally greet people when you call them?”

I laugh. “Yes. Just a quick interrogation.”

“Okay,” he says. “Well, I told you. My little sisters are dance freaks. You're a dance freak. So I guess I have a lot of dance freaks in my life.”

My hands are actually sweating. I wipe them one at a time on the bedspread. “So, would you like to come see some ballet with me? I have an extra ticket.” I listen to the words hang in the air. “It's not a big deal, or anything.”

“Of course I'll come see some ballet with you, HD. Obviously.”

There's that word again.

 

 

As I suspected, we're all the way up in the nosebleed section of the Citi Center, row XX or something ridiculous like that. It's the actual last row. I rest my head against the back wall and look down to the tiny half moon of a stage below us. The ceiling of the theater, which, at this height, I could almost reach out and touch, is painted with intricate cherubs and clouds and ornate gold molding. I can see dust in the air, hovering in the beams of light.

“So this is the famous Ballet of the Pacific Coast, is it?” Caleb asks, flipping through the Playbill before the curtain goes up.

“The one and only,” I reply.

“Your future employer, right?”

I squirm in my seat, wishing I hadn't mentioned to Caleb that the BPC was my dream company. It had been such an offhand comment—I didn't imagine he'd even remember. Go figure.

“So how come I haven't heard of them if they're so good?” he asks.

I scoff. “Trust me, dude, you don't know from good until you've seen these guys. They're insane. They're just based on the West Coast, so they're not in town that often.”

“Okay,
dude
,” Caleb says, flashing a grin at me. He glances around the theater, then leans in conspiratorially. “Also, I'm pretty sure I'm the only black person in this very large room.”

I can hear the mischievousness in his voice, but his comment makes me blush anyway. It's true that the theater is packed with a lot of white people. Mostly old white people, in fact—the typical ballet demographic. It's not that I haven't noticed this little truism about ballet, but I guess I haven't ever
noticed
noticed. I'm relieved when the house lights dim before I can respond and the moment is cut mercifully short.

 

 

The first act is called “Classic BPC,” a series of three beautiful pieces from their classical repertoire, and then after the intermission, there's new original ballet called
Depths
, choreographed by the BPC's artistic director. It looks like a love letter to the ocean, with a
pas de deux
midway through between a man and woman, both dressed in leotards with swirls of different shades of blue. As they dance together, they look like they're floating, treading water, reaching for each other. Their bodies separate, then come together again, barely distinguishable from each other as their limbs intertwine. I lean forward in my seat, my heart pounding, goose bumps rising on my arms. It's stunning.

When the whole company is onstage for the final movement, I spot Felix—even from this distance, I recognize the way he holds himself, how every inch of him responds to movements that start in his core: When he lifts an arm, his fingertips are alive. There's never a piece of him that isn't dancing. Nell, in the corps with so many other women designed to look identical, is harder to spot. At one point I think I recognize her, but then they all turn and I'm not sure again. That's the thing about ballet that I love so much, but that also frustrates me: the unison and precision of it. There's not a lot of room to be yourself.

 

 

“Well,” says Caleb, as we emerge onto Tremont Street after the show, “you were right. That was pretty good.”

“Not bad, right?”

“I mean, it's not like I couldn't do most of the stuff those dudes were doing—those leaps and turns didn't look
that
hard.”

I jab him in the ribs. The act of touching him, even momentarily, sends a jolt of electricity up my spine, not unlike the time I touched an electric fence at a farm when I was five and got a brief but potent shock.

Outside the theater, we're caught up in the throng of audience members swarming around the stage door, hoping to get an autograph as the dancers try to escape. Pressing through the crowd on our way to the Green Line, we pass an older white woman, her blond hair flecked with gray, her arm wrapped around the waist of a stout black man with a shaved head and a silvery beard. They're smiling broadly and exclaiming over the performance, just like we are. They look like they've been that way for years, going gray and laughing together.

See, I want to say to Caleb—there was at least
one
other black person in the theater. As they go by, the man nods at Caleb, who nods back in a silent greeting.

When we've passed out of earshot, I lean into Caleb. “Did you know that guy?”

He laughs. “I don't know him. Code of black men.”

“The ‘code of black men'?” I ask, incredulous. “Is that a thing?”

“Oh, trust me, it's a thing.”

“You greet every black man you pass on the street like that? Seriously?” There is definitely no code of white women. Or if there is, no one has filled me in on it.

“Not
every
black man,” Caleb explains, chuckling. “But yeah. You've gotta give the nod. Be cool. Give the nod.”

Now I'm the one nodding—slowly. “Okay. Whatever you say. I've just never noticed black men nodding at each other all over the place before.”

“Don't worry,” he says, smiling. “You're not meant to.”

It feels vaguely condescending, but I let it go. I'm not sure Caleb and I are really at the point in our relationship to be talking about race, and it's come up twice tonight. Not that we have a
relationship
, per se. But then he presses against my shoulder, giving me a little nudge, and I get another of those shocks to my spine.

We walk the rest of the way to the subway in silence, but then as we get on the Green Line, Caleb clears his throat.

“So, I have a kind of weird request.”

“Um, okay?”

“Can I draw you at some point this week?”

At first, I'm not even sure what he means. As in, draw a picture of me?

“You want to draw me?” I ask, really not wanting to embarrass myself by misunderstanding the request.

“Yeah, I want to draw you. For my art class. We're doing portraits this month.”

Hearing that it's for his art class is both disappointing—he doesn't just want to sketch me in some romantic-Leo-and-Kate-in-
Titantic
-like way; he actually has an assignment—and also reassuring. It's
not
romantic. Or not too romantic, anyway. I can handle that.