Up to This Pointe (8 page)

“This is what happens to hot water in thirty-degree-below-zero air. Watch….” He unlocks the window, shoves it open, and tosses the water out into the orange street-lit air.

A sparkling cloud of ice explodes from the cup. Powdery shards of frozen water float and dissipate. Aiden smiles, probably just as amazed as he was the first time he saw it happen.

“Wow,” I breathe. A person cannot deny that magic. Or Aiden's sincere reverence for it.

“I'm off work,” he says. “Are you?”

“Yes.”

“What're you up to now?”

“Bed,” I say, arms crossed, still mortified.

“No! It's not even eight-thirty. Really?”

“I'm so tired….”

“Want to go to movie night? Just started.”

“No thanks.”

“Really?”

“Next time, for sure.”

“Coffee house? No smoking, no booze.”

“I don't know….” Seriously, the whole front of me is soaked. Can he not tell I'm squirming? Maybe not because, to his credit, his eyes never leave my face.

“Library? It's right by the laundry and the weight room. Lots of…books? Or…oh, we could make stuff. You hungry?”

I don't think I've ever not been hungry.

I feel so bad. This poor guy—three teenagers on the entire continent, and he's the only one not currently sulking in his room or humiliated by accidental participation in a wet T-shirt contest. “Honestly, I really will be more fun soon. I'm just still sleepy. Not caught up.”

“Ohhh,” he says. “Right. California?”

“San Francisco.” Dad is forever quoting Sartre, this French playwright who was always clarifying that he was, in fact, not French; he was
Parisian. We are not Californians,
Dad says.
We are San Franciscans.
Makes it sound like we're monks, but I know what he means.

“San Francisco! I've been there, on holiday. Lovely. Want to go take a walk? Outside?”

“Outside in the dark? Where it is so painfully cold, as you have just demonstrated, water instantly freezes?”

“It's beautiful out! There's a moon, not a single cloud, and no telling how many nights like this we'll have before the sun's gone. We're here! Let's
be
here! Where's your friend?”

“Who?”

“Vivian. I saw her this morning. What's she like?”

“Um. Not sure.”

I make my way back through the dining room, and he follows.

“Harper!”

“Yes.”

“You've left my night open, so I'm making alternate plans. There's a radio in your room?”

Is there?
“I don't know.”

“Look in the drawers and such. I've heard people leave things behind to lighten their loads. Turn it on in half an hour. Station 104.5.”

“I will,” I say from the stairwell. “I promise.”

“Good night!” he calls. Relentlessly cheerful.

I take a hot shower and wash my hair, ten full minutes until I think of the Adélies and turn it off, guilty. No one else is anywhere around the bathrooms or in the hall. They're all at the bars, I guess. Silence. It is beautiful.

In my room I put on my flannel pajamas, comb my wet hair, and lie down. Out the window, McMurdo's lights make the sky hard to see. I get up and pull open the desk drawers, careful to ignore the letter.

Aiden was right. A small radio is in a bottom drawer, along with three strings of Christmas twinkle lights all connected, not even tangled. There are some stray tacks in the walls.

I plug the radio in and tune it to 104.5 and Kurt Cobain is singing
Heart-Shaped Box.
I climb all over both beds and the chair to string the twinkle lights along the perimeter of the narrow room, where the walls meet the ceiling. I plug in the lights, turn off the desk lamp—heaven. Just enough to take away the shadows and warm the blue-gray color, still dark enough to sleep. I unwrap the foil package.

Cinnamon roll.

I put the radio on the chair beside my pillow, crawl back into the millions-of-kittens bed, and pull the blankets to my chin.

“Well, good evening, McMurdo. Aiden Irish Spring Magically Delicious Kelly with you on a beautiful Friday night on The Ice.
(Okay. Mystery solved. Not Scottish.)
Here to remind you that climbing Observation Hill while drunk is not only illegal, but also stupid. So let's not have any repeat performances like those of last week involving two people whose names I won't mention, but they rhyme with Dave Connor and Jack Dolan. You two nearly got all our Ob Hill night-hike privileges revoked, which would have really pissed me off, as I'm trying to convince a certain lady to embark on said journey before winter's here for real. So don't screw it up for the rest of us.
(How is he so familiar with people already?)
All right. That's business done. Now to some music for your moonlit Friday night. This one's for the aforementioned lady. Welcome to McMurdo; welcome all of us fingys to The Ice; welcome to the rest of our lives. It will never be the same, now we're here. And to the lady: I'm especially glad you're here.”

A song begins.

“Some Flogging Molly for you. This is a ballad called ‘Drunken Lullabies.' ”

It is not a ballad. It's a hard, fast Irish rock song.

There were no emails waiting for me when I wrote Mom and Dad tonight. Nothing from Kate or Luke. Or Owen. No one.

I'm okay. It's okay.

I fall asleep beneath the twinkle lights, radio on.

Might as well follow the sun.

“Let's go,” I tell Aiden the next morning over the silver bins of toast and blueberries. He's back in the galley kitchen, whisking eggs to scramble.

“Where?”

“The mountain,” I say.

“It's a hill.”

“Yes. Let's go.”

“You found a radio.”

“Maybe.”

“I'm…Can you wait a couple of hours till I'm on break?”

I look around. Hardly anyone in the dining hall. “Okay. Meet me at nine. Sharp. I'm ready.”

“Nine o'clock, yes. Okay. At the desk.”

“Yes.” I drink a glass of iced tea, fill a bowl with oatmeal, and sit alone to eat. I don't read. I don't listen to music. I just eat. By myself. It's something I'm not used to doing, and I think it's a good skill to learn.

“Screw it,” Aiden says, striding toward me, pulling off his apron. “Everyone's hungover. No one's coming to breakfast. Let's go.”

Awesome.

He runs to his room for his cold-weather gear while I zip my own parka and wrestle into the mittens. Ben is at the desk, leaning on his elbows.

“Going somewhere?” He yawns.

“Observation Hill.”

“Not alone, you're not.”

“No, I'll be with her,” Aiden calls as he rushes toward us, pulling on his own huge parka.

Ben rolls his eyes. “You've got to get supervisor permission. Kids.”

“Yep,” Aiden says, and produces two legal-length printed documents, both signed in pen. “Found Charlotte in the lab; she's cool with it,” he tells me. Sure enough, he's got her signature there on my permission slip. I didn't even know there was such a thing. I really should read the employee manual.

Ben stamps and shoves both papers in a file.

“Ready?” Aiden smiles. He pushes the door and holds it open, and a blast of cloudy light and that freezing wind hit me directly in my forehead. But I've taken a few preemptive Advil. So the cold can screw off.

“Okay?” Aiden asks over the wind.

“Yes.” At the fire station we collect our radios and tell them where we're going, and we're off.

I follow Aiden's footsteps on a path of muddy tire tracks, past black and red flags, through the buildings of McMurdo, and finally beyond, to the base of Observation Hill.

“At the summit we'll be at seven hundred fifty elevation.”

“Okay.”

“We're at seventy-nine now.”

“Oh.”

“Just might give some people a headache, I mean.” Perfect. Piggyback headaches are the best. We start the gradual ascent. “Do you do a lot of hiking in San Francisco?”

I'm already huffing a little just keeping up with him. “No,” I breathe. “Not really.”

The Advil I took is no match for this wind. He can tell.

“Did you know the Vikings' image of hell wasn't fire at all? It was ice. Hel with one
L.
”

I stand and breathe the pure, sharp air.

“Hey,” I pant, “haven't you only been here, like, a week longer than me?”

“About that.”

“How do you know so much?”

“I've been trying to get here for a really long while. Been reading up. Winter Over blogs. Books. Like that.”

Standing still makes breathing easier, but invites the cold so quickly. The Vikings were onto something.

“I'll tell you a secret,” he says. “Hiking? It's just
walking.
”

And so we walk. Up the hill. There's no actual climbing beyond the elevation. It's just a trail; it switchbacks and rises pretty quickly, and I keep my head down, one foot in front of the other, for nearly half an hour, so that I do not see where we're going until we're there.

And then we are.

The wind whips cold and McMurdo lies below the mountain, a Lego town with Matchbox vehicles. But beyond the station…if I had breath left, it would be taken away.

The Ross Sea, cobalt blue today and choppy, the sweeping curves of ice and snow, a dome of endless white-blue sky. Skuas, penguin egg–stealing brown birds, float on the current of the icy air over the water. All the world is white and blue and gray, still, so strange and resplendent that I'm getting the Adélie feeling once more, the ache of overwhelming beauty I've only ever felt while standing backstage in the dark, watching my little kids, watching Kate, myself ready in the wings—until, at last, the music starts. Gradually, quietly swelling and then the cue, the one note signaling movement, into the light,
now, go, turn
…

“You're not a scientist.”

A statement, not a question, loud over the wind. “No.”

“But you're a Scott.”

“Yes.”

“You here for school?”

I shake my head.

“Didn't think so.”

“You're astronomy,” I say.

“The winter skies here are supposed to be insane,” he says. “But I wanted to come even before I cared about that. I think most people have lives that keep them, more or less…anchored. And some others don't. But the world's spinning, and anchorless people tend to fall to the bottom…here.”

“You have no
anchor
? What are you, a world-weary sea captain? You're seventeen! What about your family? School?”

“Life's too big to stay in one place forever. After university, I can see being here every winter, spending the rest of the year seeing the world. I mean, the
whole planet.
All of it.”

Charlotte's voice is in my head.
Peter Pan living for himself with no responsibilities.

“Come see this!” Aiden says. He is up on the highest ledge, rocks and sand in the snow, standing beside a tall wooden cross.

Mom's got a framed photo of this cross on her bedroom wall; it is featured in the final chapter of every book ever written about Scott. It is the nine-foot-tall memorial the search party erected when they found him frozen with his last three men. It is engraved, I know, with their names, and with the last words of Lord Alfred Tennyson's “Ulysses”:
TO STRIVE, TO SEEK, TO FIND, AND NOT TO YIELD
.

Aut moriere percipietis conantur.

Months after Scott and his three remaining men succumbed to The Ice, the expedition crew who found the frozen bodies could tell, based on the positions the men were lying in, that Scott had been the last to die. The search crew built a cairn of snow over the tent, made a cross of rough wood to place on its top, and let the Ross ice shelf be their grave.

After a century of storms and snow on the ever-moving shelf, the bodies now lie beneath maybe seventy-five feet of ice, thirty miles from where they died. It is thought that in two hundred years, Scott and his men will reach the Ross Sea and float away, suspended in an iceberg.

I think of their dark, sleeping forms, maybe holding each other for warmth. Or comfort. Perfectly preserved in clear, aqua-blue-and-white ice, forever floating in the freezing blue-black sea.

“Aiden,” I say into the icy wind. “Do you want to go to the pole?”

“Absolutely. The minute I'm legal next year, I'm coming back to be there the second the sun's up.”

My heart sinks.
Next year.
“Okay,” I say. “But what if you wanted to go
this
year?”

He turns to me. His face hidden in a balaclava, all I see are his green eyes. “I'm sure you've got a sight more sway than most.
Scott.
You keep your head down, put in your hours, be helpful every moment someone needs you. Charlotte can help, and I'll talk to my guy. Let the sun rise, and you'll see.”

With my mittened hand, I trace the names of the men, of my ancestor still suspended in ice, somewhere beneath the years of snow, of shifting white and water, waiting to drift forever alone in the endless ocean.

“I
need
to get there.”

“Then you will.”

It is nearly impossible not to believe him.

I breathe in the sea, the birds and the sky and the ice and snow, and exhale.

“Angels, I need you all to pee right now. I don't care if you don't have to. Think about nice, cascading waterfalls, and let's go!” I gather my angels before anyone puts on tights. Opening night, my Saturday kindies are performing, and I'm more nervous for them than for myself.

“Harper?” Willa says. “Do I have to go? Because I went before we left.”

“Yes,” I call over the din of preshow backstage chatter and music. “Everyone pees!”

I get all eight kids rotated through three stalls in record time.

“Okay, we've all peed, right? Everyone?”

“Yes!” they screech.

We wash our hands, laugh at the crazy Dyson hand dryers, and hustle back to the dressing room. Simone strolls into the chaos as I'm tugging tights over the first set of dimpled knees, and she kneels on the floor to help.

“Are we ready?” she asks the angels, who nod shyly. I don't blame them. Simone is scary/striking in a sparkly silk skirt and blouse, silver hair pulled slickly up in a perpetual ballet bun. “They've used the restroom first, correct?”

I nod, struggle with a snug waistband on one angel and hitch up sagging ankles on another. Years of this and still she checks up on me—did we use the restroom first? What the hell! She's dealing with a professional kid wrangler here.

“Harper.” Willa is at my ear, tights on, tutu fluffed, halo on, white feathers in her bun.

“Yes, babe?” I whisper back.

“I have to pee.” She blinks at the floor, hands tucked behind her wings.

I sit back on my heels. “Willa, are you freaking
kidding
me?”

“Sorry.”

Simone shoots me a sidelong
look.

“We just got back from the bathroom; she's nervous!”

I grab her hand, heave the heavy dressing room door open, and nearly clock Kate, hurrying back in. Brow furrowed.

“You okay?”

“My dad never picked up his tickets. Not coming.”

“Oh, Kat. Maybe he's just running late?”

She shakes her head and shrugs. Smiles brightly. “Good news. Didn't want to see him anyway.” She looks down at Willa. “Potty?”

Willa nods.

“Kate—”

“It's all right,” she says. “I don't care. See you in a minute….Go. Hurry.”

The whole bathroom routine, part two, with my heart clenched tight for Kate—I hate her stupid dad. I rush Willa through the Dyson, and we're back in two minutes.

“Okay, ladies,” I tell the angels. “I've got to get myself ready.” I run to my bag and pull out the giant comforter Mom lends me for shows. Coloring books, crayons, paper dolls. I spread the blanket in a corner and corral the angels onto it. “No one moves off this spot until I come get you, right?”

Finally, at forever last, the music starts. They pipe it to speakers mounted over the makeup mirrors, and we all shut up. Kate squeezes both my hands, which are freezing, my fingertips blue. Kate rubs them vigorously, kisses my knuckles, dashes back to the mirror to put some last-second glitter in her hair, straightens her tiara. I make sure my eyelashes aren't going anywhere and line my angels up once more—they open the second act. I lead Willa, who in turn leads the wobbly-whispery line snaking around the dark backstage, maneuvering around props and stage crew, and I put my finger to my lips. They all nod. Fluff their feathers. I send them out and hold my breath. They blink in the lights. Turn to me in the wings.

“Plié,” I whisper. “Arms up, second and straight and point…”

They wake up. They dance. Oh, they remember! All of it! My face hurts; I'm counting silently through the smile that's nearly breaking my face. They are
so good
; my chest aches, they're trying so hard, and in what feels like ten seconds, they bow. It is over. They run quietly to me, and I hug them all, each one, and send them off with the stage manager because
snow—it is time for snow
….Oh God, I am terrified.

We wait in shafts of light in the wings, holding sweaty hands before our entrance, watching Kate soar and turn and be beautiful in her spotlight. Ballet is a petri dish crammed full of the jealousy-inducing bacteria of physical appearance requirements with incredibly narrow parameters, and competition for very, very few employment opportunities. But even the most jealous heart could not deny the truth executing a perfect triple piqué turn into a beautiful tour jeté right in front of us. Kate is what we aspire to. She is perfection.

A hand rests on my shoulder, which scares the crap out of me. Lindsay.

“Harp,” she whispers, “two piqués and a sauté or three and two?”

“Two and a fouette,” I whisper back.

“Oh God…”

“Don't think,” I insist. “Just dance. No hesitating. Right?” She nods but looks ill.

The music floats and swells, our cue. We run lightly to our places.

Lindsay catches my eye. I cross mine at her. She is pale. But she smiles.

We dance.

The stage crew is really going for it. The blizzard falls, sheets of white, and though we're sweating in the boiling lights, this snow is magical. An icy chill sweeps my bare shoulders. Simone's choreography is a well-matched union of the traditional Balanchine and her own; it uses the entire stage and does not let up. We turn and leap and balance all our weight on the strength of our feet, our toes, every muscle in our legs. Our backs and cores are lifted, engaged, and the audience is silent as years—thousands of hours—of training for these eight minutes and forty seconds go by. The music is urgent; it fills my head and heart, and I turn out from my hips, the snow falls, and The Plan, school, any worry or thought of anything in the world—
everything
else—disappear.

Kate and I change backstage, grab Willa, and meet everyone at the Beach Chalet. Kate hands the cabdriver a wad of bills, and the three of us climb out beside Ocean Beach, sea spray salty on our lips, and the wind whips Willa's hair around her face. Kate's and my rhinestone-studded performance buns are still intact, and she is ethereal in a filmy silver slip dress and fishnet stockings. Even Willa's got a dress on, one of mine from the childhood stash. “I can't believe you're in
jeans,
” Willa says. “This is a fancy night!”

“I've got my fancy silky!” I shout into the wind, turning to model the pale blue satin blouse I found brand-new at Goodwill. “And I'm bejeweled!” Faux emerald-cut aquamarines shine at my throat. Willa shakes her head.

“Hold hands!” Kate laughs and pulls us across Great Highway through a break in the steady stream of Friday night traffic. We run from the sandy sidewalk beside the ocean to the edge of Golden Gate Park, and finally up the steps of what was once the Sutro Baths but is now the Beach Chalet.

From the cold mist into the warmth of the lobby, I stop and pull Willa near me to stand and marvel. In 1925 this was where Ocean Beach swimmers changed into and out of bathing suits. Willa fogs up the glass case that houses a miniature replica of Golden Gate Park. Tall windows face the sea, and the walls are alive with bright murals of San Francisco.

“Harp,” Willa whispers. “Can we go?”

“She's doing her thing, babe.” Kate smiles. “Harp, if you love San Francisco so much, why don't you marry it?”

“Maybe I will.”

“Fantastic. We're starving. See you up there,” she says, scooting Willa up the steps two at a time.

The stair rails are sea creatures carved from magnolia wood and worn smooth beneath thousands of visitors' hands. Arched doorways open to Golden Gate Park and to the mosaic-tiled stairway leading to the dining room.

But my very favorite part of this room are the words painted carefully in lovely script, looping around images of seagulls in flight curving above one archway,
Fair City of my love and my desire.
A love poem to San Francisco.

“What are we looking at?” a voice beside me asks.

“The words, it's poems…”

Owen.

Owen?

“What are you—are you eating here?” I stammer.

“Yes!”

“Oh, we're here, too. Luke's upstairs, and my parents—”

“Yeah,” he says. “I came with.”

“With who?”

He frowns. “Luke. To the show.”

“What show?”

“Um.
The Nutcracker
? He asked if I wanted to, and I did. I was just parking the car.”

My throat is suddenly dry. Luke pisses me off sometimes. This is a family thing—what the hell!

“I have to tell you. I've never been to a ballet before, ever, and—”

“It's just a school show. A recital.”

“Oh. Well, I was all set to be bored. No offense.”

“Sure.”

“But then you're there dancing and—it wasn't…
pretty
? Not the way I thought it would be.”

“Okay…thanks?”

“I just mean…
ballet
. Tutus and tiaras and all that, but we were sitting so close, two rows back, and all of you were…
sweating.
I could hear you breathing, and your
legs
…” He drifts off, looks at the floor.

But I like this. What he's saying. What I think he's getting at. “Our legs what?”

He shakes his head. “Muscles.”

“We're not supposed to be breathing that loud.”

“No, it wasn't like panting, just—you were
working.
I'm so glad I got to see it.”

“Well, that's…I'm glad you liked it.”

What is happening? He saw the show and he's wearing a jacket? A jacket! A nice tweed jacket and jeans! Not in a hipster way—in a really good way! And his hair is out of his eyes again….Oh God…

“It was really beautiful,” he says. “You were amazing.”

I nod. “I know. We all watch her, even when we're onstage together. She's our guru.”

He frowns. “Sorry—who is?”

“Kate.”

“No, you—I said
you. You
were. So good.”

My hands are sweaty. “You didn't see me.”

“I didn't?”

“I'm in the chorus.”

“Yeah.”

“We're all wearing the same costume. You can't see anyone
but
Kate. It's okay. That's how it's supposed to be.”

He looks up again at the words on the wall. “I've been here so many times, and I've never read any of these. Poems, really?”

“Parts of them. This ‘Fair City' one is Ina Coolbrith. She was California's first poet laureate. People say she had a torrid affair with Mark Twain.” The second the words are out of my mouth, my face burns pink.
Torrid affair?
I'm the worst!

But Owen nods. “Hot,” he says. “Poet sex hijinks.”

I smile against the back of my hand—
I think I might pass out; seriously what is going on?
—and he walks across the tile floor and stands at the archway to the park, beneath my favorite words of all. George Sterling's:

At the end of our streets is sunrise;

At the end of our streets are spars;

At the end of our streets is sunset;

At the end of our streets the stars.

Only the last two lines are painted here, and if I were to ever get a tattoo (ballet sacrilege!), it would be those words.

At the end of our streets the stars.

I love this poem. I love this beautiful city on its hill surrounded by the sea. Our streets do end in the ocean, in stars.

We stand together, reading.

And then Owen says, “You entered from the right. Your right, audience left. You stayed mostly on that side, but then after the circle thing, you were down toward the audience on the left corner, and then you were stuck in the back for some of the jumpy part, then to the right for all the toe stuff. And those turns—you're kind of amazing at turns.”

Luke is forgiven.