The Four Temperaments (24 page)

OSCAR

R
uth was
gone. Try as he might, Oscar could not digest this information. If she hadn't left him when she first found out about Ginny, why had she left him now? And even more bewildering was the fact that she had taken Isobel with her. How could she have done that to Gabriel? Hadn't he lost enough already?

Earlier in the day, when he and Gabriel had returned to the empty apartment, Oscar was puzzled but not unduly alarmed. Maybe she had forgotten to ask him to buy a melon or a pint of cherry tomatoes, and she had stopped to get these things herself. But as the day wore on into evening, he finally had to accept the fact that Ruth was not shopping, not at the playground, not taking Isobel for a walk. Ruth was gone.

He heard Gabriel talking to Ben and to William, both of whom planned to be in Connecticut for Penelope's funeral. There were more calls from Caroline, calls from friends and from colleagues, and Gabriel dealt with those as well. Oscar just sat in the white armchair across from the white sofa, watching the sky from the windows of the apartment. Every time the phone rang, which it did with some frequency, he expected it to be Ruth, but every time he was disappointed. Finally, when the dark had settled all around the city and filled the windows with its blackness, Gabriel knelt before him and took his hand. “Are you okay, Dad?” he asked. “Can I get you something to drink?” Oscar just shook his head. Ruth is gone was the refrain that played over and over in his mind, gone, gone, Ruth is gone.

More time passed and Gabriel was at his elbow again, urging him to get up and go into the bedroom. “Why don't we both try to get some sleep?” he said.

“Do you think we should call the police?” The act of standing up had galvanized him into speech.

“No, not the police.” Oscar could see the pain that contorted his handsome face. Even in his fog, he could understand that Gabriel had had enough of the police for the time being. And didn't a person have to be missing for at least twenty-four hours before the police would get involved?

Oscar shuffled into the bedroom, where he closed the door and took off his clothes. The suitcase was missing. The things that were in it were now stacked neatly on a chair. A piece of paper was wedged between his shirts. A note. He pulled it out and read it quickly.

Dear Oscar,

I know it will seem crazy to you but I felt I couldn't bear another minute of this. I can't believe the selfishness of our son. It fills me with despair. Though right now, everything fills me with despair. I took Isobel because I couldn't stand to leave her. I'm not sure where we're going. Or for how long. Please don't try to find us. I'll be in touch when I can.

Ruth

Oscar read this note over several times, as if it might have contained some clue he had missed on an earlier reading. He knew he must show it to Gabriel, but it would have to wait. He couldn't face his son now. Oscar climbed into the bed, pulled the white comforter up around his chin. He could not bear to extinguish the light above the bed, to feel the darkness without Ruth there next to him. So he left the light on, and after a while, marginally calmed by its steady, ambient glow, he drifted off into an uneasy sleep. He woke several times during the night, though, and when he did, he could hear Gabriel moving around in the apartment.

The next morning, Oscar remembered that he, Ruth, Gabriel and Isobel were scheduled to take an early flight back to New York. If they didn't start getting ready to leave, they would miss the plane.

“What are we going to do?” asked Oscar. “Are we going to leave without them?” He stared at his son's face, which revealed nothing.

“I'll call Caroline,” Gabriel said finally. “Then I'm calling the police.”

“Before you do that, you should read this.” Oscar handed Gabriel the note, which was creased from having spent the night under Oscar's pillow. Gabriel's eyes scanned it quickly.

“So
I'm
selfish.” He gave the note back to his father. “But it didn't give her the right to take Isobel. That's kidnapping.”

“She wouldn't think of it that way.”

“Why are you defending her? She left you. She took my daughter. Goddamn her!” He pressed his hands against his face and closed his eyes. When he opened them, he reached for the phone.

“What are you doing?” Oscar asked.

“I told you. I'm calling Caroline. To see if she'll postpone the funeral.”

“And if she won't?”

“It will have to take place without me. I'm not going east until I find them.”

“Your mother said not to do that.”

“Dad,” Gabriel said impatiently, “I don't have to take orders from her, remember? I'm a grown-up.” Why didn't you think of that before you went off with Ginny that night? Oscar thought. But he didn't say it. After all, who was he to throw stones?

Oscar listened as Gabriel spent the next hour on the telephone. He talked to Caroline, who agreed to postpone the funeral until Ruth and Isobel had been found. How she reacted to this latest bit of grief Oscar didn't know and didn't have the strength to ask. He thought he would leave the room when Gabriel phoned the police; he didn't think he could stand to hear his wife described as a kidnapper. But Gabriel surprised him by calling the credit card company instead. He was finding out if Ruth had used her card and, if so, where. If he knew that, it wouldn't be so hard to follow her. At first, the person who took Gabriel's call wouldn't give out the information, so Oscar had to get on the phone. The card was in his name. Then they learned it would take at least twenty-four hours for the information to be posted. Maybe even forty-eight.

“Shit,” Gabriel said when he heard that. “Shit, shit, shit!”

The next
day, Oscar watched as his son hastily packed a bag. “Do you want to come with me?” he kept asking. “Are you sure you'll be all right here alone?” Oscar was very sure he didn't want to join Gabriel in going after Ruth; he felt he had no right to. But he was less sure about how he would manage on his own. “Maybe you want to go back to New York and wait there?” That alternative seemed even worse. Ruth's imprint, Oscar knew, would be everywhere, from the comfortable furniture—swathed in the beige-and-cream-checked slipcovers she put on every summer—to the simply framed botanical prints on the walls and the big blue-and-white bowl she had kept on their dining room table for as long as he could remember. He would feel her all around him, like a scent in the air or the muted hum of music from another room.

Gabriel was worried about leaving him even as he got ready to go. They had come to no clear resolution, when an answer of sorts presented itself in the soft chiming of the doorbell.

“Mrs. Erikson,” Gabriel said to the small, tanned woman who stood in the doorway. “I'd like you to meet my father, Oscar Kornblatt.” Oscar stepped forward to shake her hand. She had short, gray-brown hair and tiny gold hoops in her ears. Although she was about his age or even older, Oscar still saw something elfin in her appearance. “Mrs. Erikson is the neighbor I told you about.”

“Ah,” was all Oscar could say to that.

“I don't mean to disturb you,” Mrs. Erikson said to Gabriel. “I've been feeling so bad about—” she paused and looked down at the floor—“about Penelope. I wanted to see if there was anything I could do. To help with the baby, that is.”

“Isobel isn't here,” Gabriel said, looking from his father to Mrs. Erikson. “But there is something you could do. Something we'd all appreciate very much.”

If Mrs.
Erikson thought it bizarre that Ruth had left with Isobel and Gabriel had gone in pursuit of them, she didn't say so. Instead, she looked in on Oscar a couple of times a day, each time bringing a tray of food with her. She didn't invite him to her apartment, which relieved him. This was the last place where he had seen Ruth and this was where he wanted to stay. On a couple of occasions, Mrs. Erikson sat with him while he ate. It was during one of these times that she told him about losing her husband of three decades to throat cancer two years earlier.

“It was like something in me had been amputated,” she said.

“Amputated,” Oscar repeated. That was an accurate description.

But mostly she left him alone, in this white world, where he sat, trying to read and picking at the food she brought, waiting for the phone bulletins from Gabriel. “Ruth is gone,” he told the couch, the chairs, the cushions. “Ruth is gone.”

GINNY

G
inny never
thought she would feel so happy to be back in New York. Even though it was the end of the summer and the whole city smelled like ripe garbage, she didn't care. After everything that had happened in San Francisco, she was glad to kiss that town good-bye. The company had a little break before the fall season started, but Ginny was staying put. No more traveling for a while.

She was still feeling shaken by Penelope's death. Gabriel didn't dwell on the details, so Ginny's imagination tried to supply them. And then there was Gabriel himself. Ginny could still feel his eyes boring into her when she was getting ready to leave the motel room. He had called her once to say that he was still on the West Coast, that he was looking for his mother and his daughter. That was a pretty alarming phone call, but she hadn't heard from him since.

Then Althea told her—strictly in confidence—that Erik was going to cast her as one of the leads in
Concerto Barocco.
That drove everything else—Gabriel, Penelope, Oscar—right out of Ginny's head.
Concerto Barocco
had become one of her favorite ballets. It was one of the great ones, the ones that people talked about for years, and there wasn't a lot she wouldn't do to get a leading role in it. And here Erik was going to offer it to her, just like that. Or at least that was what Althea said.

“Have you ever danced it?” Ginny asked Althea after class, when they were both standing by the barre, toweling off the sweat from their necks.

“A long time ago.” Althea was rubbing the towel hard, this way and that.

“Will you coach me?” Ginny asked. “Please?”

“Well, it's not official yet,” she said. The towel hung limp in her hands.

“I don't care,” Ginny told her. “I want to learn it anyway.”

Althea finally agreed and they started working together. Since Althea didn't want anyone to know, they had to be discreet. Instead of finding an empty studio right after class, when lots of people would have still been around, they waited until later in the day, when the building was just about empty.

Even though Ginny had been in the studio scores of times before, it looked different. Maybe it was the way the late-afternoon sun poured in through the long, long windows, lighting up all the lazy little dust motes that slowly drifted around and settled to the floor. The chunks of resin in their wooden box were like bits of gold in this light. When Ginny crunched them into sparkling powder under the tips of her shoes, she was startled by the sound. She was not usually so hypersensitive. Maybe it was just the thrill of learning a new role, and this new role in particular, that made all her senses so alert.

Concerto Barocco
was one of Balanchine's plotless ballets, which was not to say that it didn't have a story. It was a kind of love story, only not one with obvious characters or a script. No, it was more about the way the movement lit up the music, and the music, the movement. Coming together and then moving apart, the way lovers do.

Ginny thought Althea was a great coach, and she imagined how it might have been when the older woman danced the role. Ginny wanted to be all that Althea was, and more. As the light lowered, they remained in the studio, going over the intricate patterns again and again. There was the mirror, sometimes Ginny's friend, sometimes not, and Bach's music, in the form of a portable CD player that Althea brought with her. And there were their two bodies straining to overcome their stubborn connection to the ground, the boundaries of what was mortal.

Ginny and Althea often had dinner together after practice was over. And on one of those nights, when Ginny had had some wine, she told Althea the story of Gabriel. Or at least some of it, since she decided not to mention the part about Oscar's being his father. Ginny was sure that Oscar and Althea knew each other, at least by sight, and she felt an urge to protect Oscar. So she didn't name names, she just sketched in some of the more essential details, like the ones about the wife, the baby and the accident. Althea sat there staring, her long, dark fingers wrapped tightly around the stem of her wineglass, not saying a word.

“Pretty intense, isn't it?” There was still a little wine in Ginny's glass and she drained the last of it.

“‘Intense' is not the word. I'd steer clear of the whole thing if I were you.”

“Because . . .?”

“Because this guy is like a bomb, just waiting to detonate. He's going to be wallowing in guilt over his wife's death. No, not wallowing. Drowning. You don't need that kind of guy in your life, believe me. Not if you want to dance
Barocco
or anything else Erik just happens to hand you on a silver platter.”

“You think I don't deserve the role?”

“Deserve? Girl, you were born for it. So don't waste your time with this guy and his motherless baby.” Althea lifted the glass to her lips.

“But dancers can be in love, can't they?”

Ginny knew she sounded testy but didn't care. So Gabriel scared her the last time they were together. That didn't mean she should give him up. Did it?

“Maybe that boy was in love with you to start. But now . . .” Althea paused, trying to find the right words.

“Now what?” Ginny prompted.

“Now you're his reason to live.” The waiter appeared with a dessert menu. Ginny wanted a slice of cherry cheesecake, but, all of a sudden, she felt as if her dinner was about to come right back up.

“Excuse me,” she said, dropping the menu on the floor in her haste to reach the ladies' room. She vomited easily enough, though afterward she felt shaky and drained. She was rinsing her mouth out with water when Althea came in.

“I thought you didn't do that vomiting thing,” she said.

“I don't.”

“Then why the rush?”

“I felt sick, that's all.”

“Sick? With what?” Althea seemed suspicious.

“I don't know. Flu. Stomach poisoning. I promise I won't give it to you if that's what you're worried about.”

“I'm not worried about that. I'm worried about you.” Althea wet a paper towel and waited while Ginny ran it over her face. They left the ladies' room together and said good night in the street. “See you in class tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” Ginny echoed. Then she turned away.

But the
next morning, she was no better. By now she felt completely gutted inside, with nothing left to regurgitate; still her stomach clenched and heaved. How was she going to make it through company class today? And through a rehearsal after that? She looked at the pink tights she held in her hand—pink and black were required for company class—and put them down. Years ago, when she ran a fever of 103, she had tried sneaking out of the house to go to ballet class. But in her present condition, the thought of holding on to the barre, melting into the first pliés, seemed intolerable. She went back to bed and slept.

When she awoke, she felt like herself again: ravenous and ready to dance. Since she found only a desiccated lemon and some flat root beer in her refrigerator, she bought two carrot muffins and a large container of freshly squeezed orange juice from the corner deli and consumed everything on her way to the rehearsal. When she ran into Althea, she explained why she had missed class that morning.

“You're feeling better now?”

“One hundred percent.”

“Tomorrow then. Company class is at ten.”

The next
day, however, Ginny repeated the same cycle: she woke feeling nauseated, threw up and then had to go back to bed to sleep it off. This time, she was awakened by the ringing of the telephone.

“I thought you said you were better,” Althea said.

“I was. Then I wasn't.” Ginny stretched her legs wide and pointed her feet. Her stomach growled. “And here's the strangest thing. Now I feel fine again. What kind of nutty virus is this?”

“Maybe it's not a virus.” It took a minute before Althea's meaning sank in.

“That's not possible. I've been on the Pill forever.” Though maybe she
had
missed a couple of days back in San Francisco, right after Penelope died. Days when she had seen Gabriel.

“Anything is possible. Look at the Virgin Mary.”

Ginny said nothing. She was trying to absorb the idea that Althea might be right, that she might actually be pregnant.

“Why don't you go to the drugstore and buy the test?” Althea suggested. “Call me when you've done it.”

The early pregnancy detection kit cost $13.99 at the drugstore. As she handed the cashier the money, Ginny was sure she felt the woman's eyes moving to the fourth finger of her left hand, looking for a ring. Back in her apartment, she scanned the directions and went into the bathroom. It didn't take a minute for the stick to turn a clear, deep blue. Ginny stared at it. She had promised to call Althea with the results. But she needed to think for a while, to let this startling information travel through her blood and her body. She needed to dance.

Ginny dressed, packed her bag and began walking downtown. She had missed company class, but she knew she could find an empty studio now; rehearsals weren't scheduled to start until later in the day. When she found one, she put down her bag and sat on the floor to change her shoes. Instead of the pointe shoes that she usually wore, she had brought her soft leather ballet slippers. Wes had liked the girls to sew satin ribbons on their leather slippers as well as their pointe shoes; he said it made them look more professional. Ginny had never lost the habit, and as she secured the pink ribbons around her ankle, she thought about the blue stick.

Standing up, she examined her profile in the mirror. No swelling yet; her stomach was as flat as ever. It was hard for her to believe she was pregnant. Ginny was used to commanding her body and having it obey. Now her body was a rebel, beyond her command or control.

With only the music that she heard in her mind, she began the exercises. First the pliés, elastic and supple; then the unwavering geometry of the tendus and the ronds des jambes. Unlike the classes taught by Erik or Althea, which tended to be showy and filled with bravura flourishes—changement en tournant to switch sides, the relevés all done on pointe—Ginny's own barre was elementary and unadorned, the sort of barre given in a beginners' class. But she applied herself to it with the concentration and fervor that she would have given to an actual performance. The repetition of the movements that she had been doing for most of her life took on an unprecedented urgency.
Show me the way,
said her pointed foot as it struck the studio floor in a battement frappé;
tell me the answer,
asked her arms as they moved through the simple ports de bras.

After the développés and the grands battements—which she did as if she were a novice, facing the barre and clasping it with both hands—she was through. Her face and neck were coated in sweat; she felt completely cleansed and calmed. When she called Althea from a pay phone on the street, she asked not for advice or consolation, but for the name of a doctor who would do what she needed to be done.

The gynecologist
was on East Ninety-fourth Street; Althea assured her that the woman could perform a first-trimester abortion in her office. Ginny and Althea sat in the waiting room, flipping through magazines and not saying anything. Earlier, Althea had asked, “Are you positive you want to do this? Don't you even want to tell him?”

“Yes. And no.” Ginny thought of her mother having had to make the same choice. Rita had said no to the first question. The second one hadn't been an option. Ginny supposed that there was some small progress in this: at least she knew who had gotten her pregnant. But what point would there be in telling him? She knew what she was going to do.

“Ms. Valentine?” said the white-clad receptionist. “Dr. Singh will see you now.”

“I'll wait.” Althea put her copy of
People
back on the glass-topped table. She squeezed Ginny's hand.

Dr. Singh wore a patterned sari under her white lab coat. There was a small red dot in the center of her forehead.

“You've never been pregnant before?” She consulted the form Ginny had filled out in the waiting room.

“Never.” Ginny picked up the paper gown and began to unfasten its cellophane wrapping.

“And you were on the Pill?”

Ginny nodded. “I think I skipped a couple of days, though.”

“If you skip a couple of days, it doesn't work.” Dr. Singh's lips compressed, as if in exasperation.

“I know. It was the first time.” Ginny felt as if she was speaking words her mother could have spoken twenty-two years ago. That had been the first time too.

“I'll be back when you've changed.” Her tone had softened.

Ginny's eyes went to the tray of instruments that had been laid out near the table.

“I'll make it as painless as possible,” Dr. Singh added.

“I've got a high pain threshold,” Ginny said. She didn't explain that she had looked at the instruments simply as a way of gauging the potential pain: it was never as bad if you knew its borders, had a grasp of its shape. The gown felt flimsy in her hands. She shook it out and the folds opened, accordion-like. When Dr. Singh returned, she was already on the table. She thought of her mother, she thought of Wes, she thought of the barre she had given herself. She didn't think of Gabriel, because she didn't let herself.