We’ll do it together, he said.
And Marie.
Of course, he said. We three. We means three.
* * *
*
It was the three of them. Always the three of them. Until it wasn’t. And that was when everything went wrong. Starting with the fire. Or before.
THE HAMMER
Is it time? Those were the words humming in her head that morning.
Their mother’s kitchen clock, its aluminum yellowed with grease, read six forty-five.
She took a breath, long and wheezing, her body tight and heavy from sleep.
Still, Dara couldn’t quite move from her seat, her palms resting on the drop-leaf table, the walnut whorls she’d known since childhood.
That morning, she’d woken fast from a dream about the Fire Eater their father took them to see at the spring carnival when they were very small. The way the woman gripped the bluing torch, how the flames seemed to draw up her throat, her long face, her startled eyes.
The dream was still in her, more or less, still fluttering her eyes, and when she rose from the table to turn off the gas burner, she waited three, four, five seconds to see the blue flame flicker and disappear.
Marie, she thought suddenly. All these months later and she still expected to turn and see Marie, face pleated with sleep, stumbling toward her, empty mug outstretched.
Tea in hand, Dara lowered herself back into her chair, then stretched her torso forward, arms out, her head dropping lower and lower, her arms reaching down her calves, grabbing her ankles, all the blood joining. All the nerves radiating.
We have a different relationship to pain, their mother used to say. It’s our friend, our lover.
When you wake up and the pain is gone, do you know what that means?
What, they’d ask every time.
You’re no longer a dancer.
* * *
*
Dara,” Charlie called from upstairs, from their mother’s claw-footed tub, “aren’t you late?”
“No,” Dara replied. Never, she wanted to add, reaching to fill her thermos, tea splashing, her joints aching as ever, the only way, some mornings, she knew she was alive.
* * *
*
Madame Durant!” called out a boy’s voice, just breaking. “Is it going to be today?”
It was Saturday and not even seven thirty. The front door of the Durant School of Dance wouldn’t open for another half hour, but the parking lot was already beginning to fill when Dara arrived, legs vibrating, face burning deliriously from her bracing walk to work.
“Madame Durant!” the voice came again.
Dara turned as the car approached, a porpoise-gray sedan with tinted windows.
Inside, nestled beside his father, was earnest, sloe-eyed, fourteen-year-old Corbin Lesterio, his hair still shower-wet, slicked back like a silent movie actor, or a gangster. “Madame Durant, is it going to be today? The cast announcement?”
“Yes,” Dara said, moving past the car, hiding a faint smile at his earnestness, so raw and plain. She picked up her pace, feeling their eyes on her. Corbin, one of the six boys to the one hundred twenty-two girls in the school, didn’t know it yet, but they’d chosen him as this year’s Nutcracker Prince. Or, rather, Dara had. Charlie hadn’t been feeling well and left auditions early, and Marie never interfered in casting, left it always to Dara, who knew it could only be Corbin, with his impossibly long arms and long, lovely neck.
“Madame Durant! Madame!” came other voices, from other idling cars, heaters churning and windows fogging, of eager parents, a dozen mothers, their early morning hair scraped up into clips, their daughters’ buns bobbing beside them, their energy high and frantic. “Madame! Madame!” Their excitement as exhausting as their desperation.
The energy—the constant buzzing of anxiety and distress, of hunger and self-critique—was always high at the Durant School, but today it was much higher.
It was inevitable. It happened every year at this time, the chill in the air, the twinkle in all the girls’ eyes, their arms high in fifth position.
It was Nutcracker season.
* * *
*
A necessary evil, The Nutcracker was.
It took over everything. Eight weeks of auditions, in-class rehearsals, on-site rehearsals, costume fittings, and final dress rehearsals with their partner, the Mes Filles Ballet Company led by Madame Sylvie—all leading up to sixteen live performances over two weeks at the Francis J. Ballenger Performing Arts Center, a steel-and-glass eyesore that transformed magically on December nights into a glowing gift box wrapped in dozens of yards of red-velvet ribbon.
Eight weeks of stress headaches and fainting and nervous stomachs. Eight weeks of injuries and near injuries, jumper’s knee and growth spurts, bloody blisters and heel spurs.