The Cost of All Things (4 page)

Everyone kept telling me how much I loved Win. Aunt Jess, Diana. Even myself: there was the note I found under my pillow. Sometimes I thought I would start feeling it. As if one day I’d wake up and be sad again. As if grief was a virus and my vaccine was only temporary.

The note. At least I’d thought to write the note.

I woke up Friday morning—the first Friday in June, just after school let out—with my wrist pounding, partially the old side effect and partially because I’d slept with my arm under my pillow, a piece of paper clutched in my hand. I read the note again and again. It had been torn out of a bound journal and had a ragged edge. I recognized the handwriting—mine—and if I focused very hard I could remember writing the words. But it was a strange type of memory, more like watching a movie than recalling something from the inside. I could remember moving my pen across the page, but I couldn’t remember what I was thinking as I was doing it.

Win. Win Tillman. Win, Win, Win . . .

I could not put a face to the name.

I remembered, in that same movie-watching way, going to the hekamist’s house behind the school and paying for a spell from the money I’d found in my closet. I could see myself doing it. I looked so sad. But again, the memory wasn’t something I’d experienced. The only thing that felt true and real was the moment when she’d told me about her daughter, and I’d thought of my mom. That exchange bloomed into three dimensions.

I couldn’t remember anyone named Win. As far as I could recall, I’d never had a boyfriend at all. I’d made out with my pas de deux partner at the Summer Institute last year, but that was perfunctory, nothing serious.

I must’ve been so sad. I remembered wanting to cry and feeling like I might break in two. But I didn’t remember why.

I wasn’t sad anymore. Just confused.

So I called Diana. She answered right away, her voice strangely low and serious. “How are you doing?”

“Um. Fine.”

“You want me to come over?”

“No, that’s okay.”

“Funeral’s tomorrow.”

“Oh? Oh yeah. Of course.”

“Do you know what you’re going to say?”

“I . . . uh . . .”

Diana didn’t seem to mind that I couldn’t find any words. “Every day I wake up and I still can’t believe he’s gone. I just . . . I can’t believe it. I mean, we don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. In fact, let’s not. I’m sorry I brought it up. But I don’t want you to think I’m ignoring it. Because I’m thinking about it. God. I can’t even . . . I can’t believe it.”

I looked at the note and then out the window, flexing my wrist absently. I obviously hadn’t told Diana about the spell. Should I? The note didn’t say. The way my head felt—full of starts and stops, black holes and fuzzy edges—I couldn’t seem to make a decision. Diana and I did everything together, told each other everything. Didn’t we?

Outside, the sun was bright and the grass green. A beautiful day. I had ballet class in half an hour, and I wanted to go. At least in class, I wouldn’t have to talk.

I could tell Diana what I’d done later.

“Neither can I,” I said.

“Kay’s been calling nonstop. Wants to bake you casseroles.”

“Nice of her.”

“Yeah. If I want to come over, she’ll probably have to drive.” Diana’s car had been breaking down a lot, which meant begging a ride from Kay.

“Maybe don’t come over.”

“God, Ari. I don’t know what to do.”

“Yeah. Me neither.”

“You don’t have to do anything. I mean you can do what you want.”

“I want to go to class,” I said.

There was a pause on the other end of the line. “You should take it easy for a while. Not push yourself.”

“Ballet is all I really want right now.”

It was Friday. The last time I remembered dancing was over a week ago. I could recall the combination we were working on, the music, every step. I remembered how my body felt. I felt like . . . one muscle. My arm and my ankle and my hip and my eyelid—all one, strung together taut and ready.

Everything would be okay if I could only get to dance.

I said goodbye to Diana and threw on my dance clothes as fast as I could. Something felt strange right away. Nothing I could point my finger at, but an allover oddness. I figured I was sore, but nothing actually hurt, apart from the pain in my wrist.

A feeling unfurled in my stomach. Something worse than nervousness, but maybe not quite panic. Not yet. I held my sore wrist close to my chest as if to protect it.

Aunt Jess seemed startled when I stumbled down the stairs, twisting my hair into a bun.

“You’re going?” she said.

Her eyes were red. I touched the skin around my eyes: puffy, tender. I’d been crying, too.

She wore the same work pants and plaid button-down
short-sleeved shirt as always, but for the first time, she looked old to me. She was only fifteen years older than me, but her sadness brought out the lines in her face, and I could swear she had more gray hairs than the last time I’d looked. Someday soon someone at her coffee shop would call her a “tough old broad” and they’d be right.

“I thought we could talk,” she said. “Spend some time together. I took off work.”

“That’s nice of you. Thank you.”

“Of course I’d take off work.” She seemed offended that I thanked her.

It was clear I had not told Jess I was getting the spell, either. She thought I was grieving, still, like her. I had to tell her.

My legs started shaking.

Later.

Dance first. Dance, and then I would come clean.

“I really want to dance,” I said. “It’s . . . all I want to do.”

Jess stared at me with her no-shit-taking stare that usually came with flexed biceps to show off her tattoos, and then she softened, deflated, and nodded. “Come right back afterward.”

“I will.”

I hugged her, and she clutched me tightly. In our miniature family of two, we weren’t much for hugging. But it wasn’t only my lack of experience making me feel awkward. That feeling I’d had in my room—the strangeness, the not-rightness—ran down my arms like goose bumps.

“I love you,” she said.

“I love you, too,” I said, and hurried for the door. “See you soon.”

The worried feeling in my stomach only grew.

The other dancers stared at me when I stepped into the changing room.

“I’msosorryforyourloss,” one of them said, then the rest all mumbled something similar. Then they looked down at their pink shoes and tried not to catch my eye.

Rowena, a former prima ballerina at the Royal Ballet and my teacher for the past nine years, hugged me when I came in (just as awkward and just as well-meaning as Jess’s), but she didn’t seem surprised to see me. Perhaps going to dance was the right thing to do after all. I belonged here, in this wood-floor practice room, with its three walls of mirrors and one of windows. The ancient piano player noodled gently in the corner as always, and as always the room smelled like sweat and talcum.

I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate on dance, on getting my body ready to move. But my mind wouldn’t settle. I could think of nothing in particular: my thoughts cast about in a large white room, nothing to land on, nowhere to rest. I tried checking in with my muscles and joints, but could only feel the insistent, pulsing pain in my wrist. Usually I could ignore that—I’d had years of practice—but this time I couldn’t quite block it out.

By the time we started warming up, my breathing had gotten shallow. I didn’t know what it was, yet, but something was wrong.

The piano music. There. That was vivid in my head; the same
chords, same melodies, same movements as always. It existed complete in my mind, elegant, precise.

I began to move.

First position. Second. Fourth. To the front. To the right. To the back. And then the left side.

I kept my eyes closed and concentrated on the steps.

I needed to relax. To get into the steps.

In the middle of a plié, I felt a pressure on my bad wrist—Rowena’s hand—and I opened my eyes.

“Watch the mirror, please,” Rowena said.

I nodded, keeping my face stoic, even though that was a request she made when someone was screwing up so badly they’d lost all perspective on their body.

In the mirror, I watched myself go through the warm-up again. It took several measures to sink in, since I was so used to seeing myself the way I usually moved. The smooth mental image needed time to be wiped away and replaced with what I saw: a jumble of elbows, jerky knees, awkward arms, wrists off-kilter. The harder I tried to force my body in line, the worse it got. Actually, as far as my brain could tell, I
was
doing it beautifully. But somewhere in between my mind and my body, the signals sputtered out and were lost.

When the warm-up ended, I couldn’t move. The other girls scurried around me for the next part of class. I looked at myself in the mirror.

No. That wasn’t me. It couldn’t be. I was out of practice. It would come back. I had to push through.

We cleared the barre and lined up to cross the floor for a simple combination. Rowena made small gestures with her hands and called out what she wanted (“Tombé, pirouette, relevé and extend, pas de bourrée, and balancé, balancé . . .”), and I counted off, waiting for my turn.

As soon as I started across the floor, I knew I was not simply out of practice.

I knew why it had felt odd to get dressed for dance.

I knew that I had done something terrible.

In my head, I could see the steps, could feel the way they would work together. With eyes closed, it felt almost like it always had.

But with my eyes open and a wall of mirrors right in front of me, I could see what my body actually looked like.

Stiff. Jerky. No smoothness, no graceful transitions. Angles all wrong. Arms over-rotating. Legs pigeon-toed. If it hadn’t been so terrifying, it would’ve been funny, like a scene in a movie where a romantic heroine who bluffed that she could dance was being proved grotesquely wrong.

I focused and tried harder. But the me in the mirror looked as out of joint as before. I could not make corrections when I had no way to calibrate them; I could not fix what already felt like perfection.

When I pushed even harder, ignoring the signals my body was giving me and relying purely on the mirror, I managed to hit myself in the face with a hand, and I lost my balance, falling right in the middle of the floor.

The smack of the floor on my hip—
that
I felt. The humiliation—those synapses were working fine.

The piano stopped. The other girls looked down at me, still lying on the floor, their faces full of pity and also disgust. Who
falls
in the middle of a simple combination?

Not me. I was going to be in the Manhattan Ballet junior corps. I was going to get out of here and make everyone proud.

I didn’t trust myself to stand. Rowena appeared next to me. She took hold of my elbow and hoisted me to my feet, making it look as much as possible like she was only offering support. But without her I’d have stayed on the ground flailing like a turtle on its back.

In the hall, she didn’t let go, even when I sat on the changing bench. Her fingers were daggers in my skin. “I’m okay,” I said. She still didn’t let go. “I’m
fine
.”

Cautiously, she released my arm. “You should take as long as you need, Ariadne.”

“I don’t want to take any time.”

Rowena shook her head. “Sometimes the body knows what the mind does not.”

That sounded like one of those solemn dancerisms that could explain anything from a stiff hip to a nervous breakdown, but still I wondered if she was right. The pulse of my bad wrist felt like it was spreading through my whole body, and I could barely feel anything else. Not even shame.

“This is the thing you can never plan for,” she said. “One of life’s tragedies.”

“Yes, but . . . New York.”

“When are you leaving?”

“August first.”

“Two months. Plenty of time to prepare.”

“Jess and I—we’ve been planning for years. It’s my chance. I
have
to be ready.”

“Then you will,” she said simply. “And I have to go back to class. Stay, and we’ll talk more?”

I nodded, but as soon as she left the changing room I pushed myself to my feet and ran, awkwardly, out the door.

My body didn’t feel like one muscle anymore, and it didn’t feel like twenty muscles. It felt like thousands. The parts of me that weren’t working weren’t out of practice—they were out of my control completely.

I had traded in my ability to dance for some stupid boy. A boy I probably would’ve broken up with anyway when I moved away to New York. That boy somehow was worth nine years of effort, practicing five hours a day, auditions and competitions and pain, everything I always thought I would be, the only thing I’ve ever been any good at. In order to forget my past, I’d obliterated my future.

The me of yesterday had been a selfish, foolish bitch.