The Art of Falling (2 page)

“Tomorrow. Who is Mr. DeLaval?”

“He is…he was…the choreographer I worked for.”

“Can you tell me how you got to the hospital?”

“Ambulance?”

“You remember?”

“I’m guessing.”

He studied my face like a juror seeking signs of guilt. “Do you have a history of depression or suicidal thoughts?”

This brought our little quiz show to a dead halt. “Movement is everything to me.”

He typed a note in his laptop and clapped it shut. “Your brain is working well. But the trauma you went through wiped your memory of it clean. That can be a self-protective mechanism, but it may be temporary. When you start to remember, you’re going to need support.”

• • •

Nurses, interns, blood work, bedpans. During a quiet moment later that second day, I asked Angela what was wrong with her. The simplicity of her response surprised me: she had fallen, too.

“But all it took to break my arm was tripping on the curb,” she said. “I fell all of two feet. I’ve been embarrassed to say it, with all you’ve been through.”

A volunteer arrived with dinner trays. Angela dug into her meal as if she hadn’t eaten in weeks. Sometimes I wished I could eat with that kind of abandon. Happiness is so accessible for some people; it’s as close as their next mouthful of food.

I readied myself for the challenge of picking up the fork. Bend elbow, flex digits, and…yes, yes, I could even raise my arm. I finessed a puckered lima bean toward my mouth.

“Yikes. Please tell me those are tattoos,” Angela said.

I twisted my good arm as best I could. Like Angela’s side of the room, my bruised skin sported sunset hues—although my purples, reds, and blues approached the edge of darkness. I’d never seen anything like it. “Can’t imagine anyone doing that on purpose.”

My roommate pulled open her bedside drawer and dipped into some sort of private pharmacy. Her willowy right arm delivered pill after pill to her mouth. I’d seen dancers take pills before eating, but never that many. If those were diet pills, she’d never sleep. If they were painkillers, she’d never wake. No kind of math allows “healthy eating” plus “exercise” to add up to her kind of slim. I’d known dancers who would fill their lungs with smoke, their veins with amphetamines, or the sink with the meal they’d just swallowed rather than gain a pound. They were never honest about what they’d done.

“You get all that for a broken arm?” I said.

“They’re enzymes. This hospital doesn’t have them on its formulary, so I can self-administer. I need them to digest my food.”

That sounded way too technical to be a lie. “This food isn’t worth the effort.”

She laughed breathily, melodically, before dissolving into coughing. She lifted a tissue to her mouth.

“Sorry to do that during your meal. It’s the CF. That’s why I’ve kept the curtain closed—my last roommate asked for a transfer.” She chucked the crumpled tissue into the trash.

“Cystic fibrosis?”

“That’s one translation. One of my hospital friends used to say it meant Chronically Fucked.”

I couldn’t imagine a life with hospital friendships. I poked my fork through the salad, then put it down, working up the nerve to ask the question I’d been curious about since the first time I heard her cough; a question I knew better than to ask any woman; a question that if asked of me I’d certainly answer with a lie born of denial. “So how old are you?”

“Five months past the expiration date stamped on my butt.” She looked at me with a mischievous smile. “I’m twenty-eight.”

Her punch line sobered me: we were the same age. I wouldn’t tell her I’d first assumed she was an old woman; there was too much truth in it to laugh about. With what I knew of CF, Angela could be near the end of her life.

She nodded toward the bakery box on my table. “The fastnachts still in there?”

“Dancers and doughnuts don’t mix. Knock yourself out.” I tried to reach for the box.

“I’ll get them,” she said. Matchstick legs swung from under her covers. She snatched the tubing from her nose and wielded the IV pole like Mick Jagger’s microphone stand.

“Should you do that? Don’t croak for a fastnacht.”

“I don’t need oxygen all the time. And what they don’t know won’t hurt them.” She kicked our door shut, planted herself on the end of my bed, and bit into a doughnut. “So, your boyfriend’s kind of cute.”

“You know Dmitri?”

“I’m talking about the baker. Marty.” She winked.

“He’s old enough to be my father.”

“He’s sweet. And that newspaper lady—how famous are you?”

Dmitri had been the one to attract attention, not me. “Let’s put it this way: no one’s ever asked for my autograph.”

“Ooh—can I have it?”

I thought she was joking, but she fetched a marker and held it out to me. “Shall I sign your cast?” I asked.

“No, hot pink’s my favorite color. Here, sign this.” She ripped off the top of the bakery box.

If only she were holding a program from my choreographic debut instead. But I coaxed my stiff fingers to perform and signed it anyway.

She held up the stained cardboard, admiring my signature. “I’ve met a few famous people, but this is the first autograph I’ve ever had that wasn’t on a medical chart.”

“I’m sorry it wasn’t under better circumstances.”

“Why be sorry? These
are
the circumstances. Life is life.”

She lifted the doughnut again, reconsidered, then hopped off the bed and dumped the box into the trash.

“So were you cranky with the critic because you can’t move yet, or did she write bad reviews about you?”

I took a moment to boil down a truthful answer. “The purpose of that woman’s life is to judge mine. I can’t bear to look at her.” My voice cracked, damn it. I slapped away my tray table, satisfied that my palm could feel the sting. “I guess I’m Chronically Fucked, too.”

She crossed over to her bedside drawer. “If you want something with more flavor, I’ll split this.” She unwrapped a Snickers bar, broke it in two, and tossed me half. It landed on my lap, rich chocolate on sterile white cotton.

“I don’t eat candy.”

“Your body won’t heal without nutrients. Snickers have nuts. Protein.”

I bit in. Chocolate and caramel bathed my taste buds in a sweetness I had denied myself my whole adult life. I shoved the rest into my mouth when I heard a knock at the door.

Kandelbaum walked into the room, holding a shiny red apple. He apologized for the fastnachts. “This is a better treat for a dancer, right?” he said.

Cheeks full, I looked over at Angela. She politely turned her giggle into a distracting cough. I forced the rest of the candy down. “You came back,” I said.

“Given the extraordinary way we met, can you blame me?” Kandelbaum said. “And business has been crazy since Ms. MacArthur’s story came out. It’s been in all the papers—”

“MacArthur wrote about me, even though I didn’t answer her questions yesterday?”

Angela spoke quietly. “It was in the
Sentinel
this morning. Front page. But it was already on their website last night.” She held up her smartphone. “Marty and I read it online while you had your second surgery.”

“It was also in
USA
Today
and the
New
York
Times
,” Kandelbaum said.

“It made
national
news?”

“It’s a miracle you’re alive,” Kandelbaum said. “People celebrate miracles.”

“Dmitri DeLaval—did they interview him?” The words flew straight from my heart before my head considered whether I wanted the answer.

He paused. “No. But there were photos of you both.”

I closed my eyes to hide threatening tears. It had been almost three weeks since Dmitri stole the dance from my life. No longer able to bear the loneliness, I’d been rambling around our suite Monday night with the minimal movements of the almost-dead, winter biting my face. I shivered, agitating the muscles in my back.

“You’re cold. Shall I ask for a heated blanket, Penelope?” I heard Kandelbaum’s voice as if from a distance.

“No—I
was
cold. That night.” My body told me—I’d been outside.

Kandelbaum returned to my side. “Yes?”

“I was standing on the balcony. There were only a few stars. And it was so dark down on the street.”

“You were looking down?” Kandelbaum said. “Why?”

The memory rose from my gut. Its theaters may have been dark at that hour, but the Avenue of the Arts, a half block away, thrummed with the irresistible energy of a siren song. Bustling from studio to performance venue, it had been the beating heart of my world. But alone on that balcony, with fourteen stories of perspective, I’d finally seen how small my artistic footprint had been.

My pride plummeted. “Dr. Tom said I fell…”

Kandelbaum placed his hand on the elbow of my injured arm—supporting it, as if he would usher me across the bridge of memory. Angela got out of bed and grasped the other hand.

Once again they waited for my memory to kick in. Even though their discretion tried my patience, I was in no rush to remember. Once this accident sprang to life in full detail, I’d have to deal with it. But how? If I couldn’t move, how would I ever deal with anything ever again?

The harsh truth: without movement, I didn’t know who I was.

If I didn’t find out soon, I’d lose my nerve. I blurted, “Tell me now or I’ll get a volunteer to read me the damned newspaper.”

They looked at each other, eyebrows raised.

“There were no eyewitnesses,” Angela began.

Kandelbaum said, “But you landed on my car.”

A woman arrived to clear our dinner trays. Kandelbaum paced. When she left, he closed the door behind her.

“What I can contribute starts around two a.m.,” he began. “I had gotten to work early, because of Fastnacht Day, and I parked in the alley. I never park in the alley—it’s a no parking zone—but I would only be a minute, so I chanced it.”

“I love that part,” Angela said.

Kandelbaum smiled at her. How touching—they had already bonded over my misery.

“I cleared my counters of the fastnachts I’d boxed the day before and carried them out to the car. I set the tray on the roof and—”

“And?” I said.

“Bam! You landed right on top.”

“Mind-boggling,” Angela said.

This man had no reason to lie to me. And my body had obviously suffered severe trauma. Still, I couldn’t believe I would star in such an outlandish tale without knowing it.

“I was afraid you were dead. But once I recovered from the shock—it was probably only a few seconds—I called 911. You were so still. But when the ambulance crew climbed on top of my car, you moaned. A paramedic called out, ‘She’s alive!’” Kandelbaum paused before adding, “I…I choke up now to think of it. Alive, Penelope! You scared me half to death when you spoke, though.”

“What did I say?”

He tilted his chin slightly upward. “I am Penelope Sparrow.”

He said each word distinctly; I tried to make sense of this implied drama. “I don’t remember any of this.”

“The photograph in the paper showed the dented roof of my car, along with some squashed fastnachts. You can see the sign on my window behind it.”

“And MacArthur assumes I fell fourteen stories?” I said.

“Her article stuck to what facts she knew,” Kandelbaum said.

Angela added, “She called it ‘Fall of a Sparrow.’”

Fourteen stories. Unbelievable as that was, it had to be so—I didn’t know anyone else in the building. What was my body made of, to survive that kind of fall? My fortitude impressed me. Kandelbaum seemed so emotional that I couldn’t bear to tell him that if I could never move again, this miracle was wasted.

“Thanks,” I said. “For telling me. And for getting me to the hospital.”

“Meeting you has been a blessing for me. Today I sold more baked goods than any other day in the twenty-one-year history of my shop. If God wills it, maybe I can be a blessing for you.”

For a minute he got me wondering. While this late-night drama played out on the great stage of life, had some unknown force indeed positioned Kandelbaum’s car to save me? I couldn’t buy it—in my experience, such machinations were the work of well-paid union stagehands, and no one would spend that kind of money on me. Anyway, a god with that much power could have put me on a European stage, dancing. With Dmitri. Far away from that fateful balcony.

Yet how else could I explain my survival?

• • •

Moments later, Margaret MacArthur again breezed into the room. Her diminutive size and pointy features made me think of a mosquito, and her attention was just as welcome. As Kandelbaum and Angela backed away from my bed, I whisked away the emotions Kandelbaum’s revelation must have left on my face. The shock. The horror. The not knowing. If I stuffed much more inside my skin I’d explode.

“May I speak to you alone?” MacArthur said to me.

“This isn’t a good time.”

MacArthur pulled a chair to my bed. “You caught my attention the first time I saw Dance DeLaval. You stood out.”

How sweet of her to remind me I’d never really fit in. MacArthur lowered her voice. “Trust me. I’m no investigative journalist, but I fought hard for this story. Now that we have national interest—”

“We? It would seem you don’t need my input at all. I hear your article made quite the splash.”

“We both know there’s more to what happened here.” She lowered her voice. “With your help, my exposé will make a difference. I’m the one to write it. I just need some facts.”

“What exposé would this be?”

She glanced up—Kandelbaum did not try to hide the fact that he was monitoring the conversation. She leaned even closer. “You aren’t the first dancer who’s been pushed to the brink of despair over body type.”

I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t speak. Kandelbaum stepped forward. “You promised if I shared what I knew you wouldn’t needle her.”

MacArthur kept her eyes on me. “My readers want to know why this happened. Forgive me if this causes discomfort, Penelope, but you were dancing less—why would Dmitri cut your stage time?”

Discomfort?
I felt like she’d slapped every one of my bruises. And if she knew anything about dancers at all, wouldn’t she sense how deeply I ached for the movement the others in the company still enjoyed? We’d functioned as such a unit that I still couldn’t imagine them replacing me. I imagined Dmitri’s body inhabiting my former space on the stage, then slipping beneath my skin to engulf my inner space as well. I tried to harness his muscles to move my limbs—but Dmitri was never one to share his power. I remained motionless but for the quiver of my lip.

MacArthur added, “Sometimes talking about our problems helps.”

“Talking to a therapist or a friend, maybe, but not the media,” Kandelbaum said.

“Is it true you have no comment whatsoever, Penelope? When speaking out might help others? Please. This is personal.”

“Damn right,” I whispered.

MacArthur stood. Grabbed her handbag. Clapped her hand to my bedrail and gripped it until her knuckles turned white. And all I could think about was how she took all of those small movements for granted.

“Why are you dancers so stubborn? Women need to know what can happen when they turn on their own bodies.”

I shot Kandelbaum a pleading look, and he took MacArthur’s arm. “It’s time for you to go.”

MacArthur took a deep breath. When she spoke again, her voice was saccharine. “I’ve been trying to locate Dmitri for comment. Do you know how to reach him?”

I managed only two words: “Get out.”

“So you are angry with him?”

“Get out!”

MacArthur moved toward the door but stepped aside when a volunteer walked in, her face hidden behind a flower arrangement.

“Wow,” Angela said. “Someone knows how to cheer a girl up.”

The bouquet cut a fragrant path through the bleach, rubbing alcohol, and anxiety in the air. My skin tingled at the thought that the flowers might be from Dmitri. But wait—what did he think—or know—of what happened? I feared his words. I asked Kandelbaum to read me the card.

He plucked the envelope from the bouquet and opened it. “It says, ‘From your friends at Dance DeLaval.’”

Friends?

I turned on the closest known irritant. “That woman in the doorway is from the media,” I said to the volunteer. “Her name is Margaret MacArthur. I want her barred from my room.”

• • •

Later that evening, a ringing phone woke me. Angela spoke through the pulled curtain. “Do you need me to get that for you?”

“I can do it.” I labored through each painful twist and flexion until I got the handset to my ear.

“Penny, is that you? Penny?”

Despite the hysterics and the intervening years, I recognized my greatest cheerleader and harshest critic. “Mom?”

She picked up as if we’d left off yesterday. “Thank god—what a runaround. They didn’t want to put me through. They said I
couldn’t
be Penelope Sparrow’s mother because their
computer
says her parents are deceased. I asked them, do I sound dead?”

“Sorry.” It had seemed easier, when I was so out of it yesterday, to lie about those next-of-kin questions.

“Then they tried to make me leave a message. Why didn’t they call me, I want to know?” I pictured her pacing the kitchen floor, strangling her fingers with the twisted phone cord. “I shouldn’t have to find out something like this by reading the paper.”

“Okay, calm down.”

When she spoke again, her voice had lost its bluster. “Are you okay, honey?”

“That’s what they say.”

“Your beautiful body…I’ll be right down.”

“Maybe wait a bit.”

“If I had thought for a moment you weren’t happy…” Her voice sharpened. “I’ll take off work tomorrow and be down first thing.”

After I hung up, Angela spoke through the curtain. “That’s cool that she’s coming. My mom works in Maryland and can’t always break away when I’m in the hospital. A fact of my life—I’m here a lot.”

“I’ve got to be well enough to walk out of here by morning,” I said.

“Don’t push yourself. Your mother will understand. These things take time.”

“It will kill her to see me like this.”

“Point of protocol: they don’t let you leave while you’re still using a bedpan.”

• • •

I slept little that night, disturbed by images of my mother scraping my broken body from the sidewalk. She didn’t know what to do with the pieces.

Near morning, I tried to summon the energy to rise. Motion denied.

You
look
like
you’re dead!
I heard Bebe Browning’s fingers snap to gain my attention, and recalled her voice as clearly as if I were fourteen and incurring her wrath in the dance studio. She fluttered over with caftan and frizzy hair billowing.
You
are
pausing
as
a
courtesy, for the audience to appreciate your shape, but you can’t stop dancing while you’re doing it.

Miss Browning, as I called her then, taught me of the power hidden within stillness. Could I harness that now?

I heard a door latch click—Angela had gone into the bathroom. When she was done, I’d take my turn.

I had to stop thinking of my body as a mannequin. Hadn’t it already suggested I had movement yet to recover? I closed my eyes. Even across the dark backdrop of my eyelids, small particles knocked around in a crazed dance. I sent my awareness deep within my unresponsive muscles. It only took a few moments for my perspective to change: everywhere I looked I saw motion. Blood lazed through arteries. Fluids meant to push through membranes swirled, waiting instead for an invitation. Faint electrical charges pulsed a spastic rhythm. My body was functioning like a dance company on break; it was time to marshal efforts. I imagined again the snap of Miss Browning’s fingers and urged everyone back to work. My physiology may have been pausing as a courtesy, so my traumatized anatomy could rest, but now it was time to move.

Leaning hard on the pain, I rolled to my side. Then, summoning every muscle that still had the grace to report for duty, I fought to sit up.

Such effort for this small reward.

My legs dangled over the edge of the bed. The floor may have only been an inch away, but its distance was dizzying. Fear of falling might have stopped me if my body hadn’t already been slipping over the edge.

I transferred my weight slowly, tentatively, onto my feet. My quads quivered and complained, but at long last, I stood.

I inched forward, my sights fixed on the bathroom door. A trickle of sweat crept like a spider between my breasts.

The bathroom door opened. “Penelope!” The sudden light and Angela’s startled cry dislodged my equilibrium. I started to fall, but Angela rushed toward me. We stood propped against one another until I regained my balance. “You okay now?” came her muffled voice. “I can’t breathe.”

“Move away slowly.”

It was a trip to the bathroom, not a debut at the Met, but I wore the sheen of sweat on my brow like a crown of triumph. My pain took its rightful place on the extreme end of a familiar spectrum. I no longer feared my brokenness. If I could move, I could heal. If I could heal, I could dance. I would probably remember, too, which scared me a little, but I could handle anything if I could dance.

When I emerged, Angela applauded, bless her, but the redheaded nurse didn’t join in. He had the overhead lights on and was placing my clothes in a plastic bag. “Well, look at you,” he said.

“So the doctors think I’m ready to leave?” I tried to look casual as I coaxed my trunklike limbs to life.

“Not leave. Move,” the nurse said. “You can have a seat right here.”

I stood before the wheelchair he held, but my legs refused to bend. “I can’t.”

Angela whipped back the curtain. She wore brightly striped socks and held scissors and construction paper. Behind her, on the wall among the handcrafted roses and tulips, hung the cardboard with my autograph.

I swayed with dizziness.

The nurse slipped his beefy arms around my rib cage. “Release your knees. I’ve got you.”

“Where are you taking her?” Angela said.

“Psych.”

Why did they think I needed psych now, when for the first time, I was starting to sense the power within me? I had fallen fourteen stories, rested a few days, and then walked to the bathroom! I didn’t need psych any more than I needed to be shut out of our company’s European tour. I needed to move.

“Then I’ll sign myself out,” I said. “I don’t want treatment.”

The nurse wheeled me toward the door smoothly, inexorably.

“Rest up while you can, Angela. You don’t want a setback,” he said. “We’re transferring you to the CF Center at Presbyterian tomorrow. As for you, Penelope, this is not optional.”

Angela grabbed her IV pole, peeled something from the wall, and crossed the room to lay it in my hand. A construction-paper tulip. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

“I’ll come see you,” Angela said. The nurse placed the huge flower arrangement from Dance DeLaval on my lap.

“Nope. Only family,” he said. “And psych is locked.”

Out in the cold, uncaring corridor, I shrank into anonymity, unable to find one sliver of identity to which I might cling.

Voices clashed at the nurse’s station ahead. The arguing grew louder. I peeked between the flowers and saw the broad backside of the woman causing the ruckus. “Just try to stop me,” she shouted.

Hundreds of pounds stormed in my direction. No one stopped her; I wouldn’t have wanted to try, either. I ducked my head, wincing at the pain this caused my shoulder, and told the nurse to take me away.