All of it hidden behind the glitter and cheap satin, the ruffles and netting and tulle, the three dozen wigs, powdered, sprayed, gilded, the backstage pinboard of faux mustaches for the toy soldiers, the wall cubby of caved-in rodent heads for the battle against the Mouse King. And all of it hidden again beneath thirty pounds of flame-retardant paper snow recycled every performance or, in the old days, shredded plastic-bag snow that got stuck in your eyelashes, that flew in your mouth, and at the end of every night, the crew rolled big magnets across the stage to pull out the fallen hairpins.
Most of all, it was eight weeks of tears.
The Nutcracker. The story was so simple, a child’s story, but full of mystery and pain. At her family’s holiday party, a young girl named Clara finds herself transfixed by her dark and charismatic godfather, Drosselmeier. He gives her a miniature man, a Nutcracker doll she sneaks into bed with her, dreaming him into a young man, a fantasy lover who ushers her into a dream world of unimaginable splendor. And, at ballet’s end, she rides off with him on a sleigh into the deep, distant forest. The end of girlhood and the furtive entry into the dark beyond.
All the girls wanted to be Clara, of course. Clara was the star. There were crying jags and stiff upper lips and silent sobs among the dozens forced to play one of many Party Girls, Angels, Candy Canes. They wanted to wear Clara’s stiff white party dress, her flowing white nightgown. They wanted to hold the grinning Nutcracker doll like a scepter.
This yearning, so deep among the young girls, was like money in the bank.
Every year, their fall enrollment increased twenty percent because of all these girls wanting to be Clara. Soon after, their winter enrollment increased another ten percent from girls in the audience who fell in love with the tutus and magic.
Never, their mother used to say, that vaguely French frisson in her voice as she collected the fees, do I feel more American.
Privately, their mother confided she never cared much for Clara. She never does anything, a little dormouse of a thing. And she would read to them the original story, which was much darker, the little girl so much more interesting, intense. And her name in the story was not Clara, which means bright and clear, their mother explained, but Marie, which means rebellious.
That’s me! Marie used to say every time their mother turned to the first page.
Dara’s name, alas, had no such story. Their mother could never remember how she picked it, only that it sounded right.
The irony, their mother told Dara once, is you’re the Marie.
* * *
*
Madame Durant!” squeaked a voice, one of the nine-year-olds, as Dara moved past them all and in the front door of the building. “Madame Durant, who will be Clara? Who?”
Because today was not only one of those nerve-shredding Nutcracker season days but, short of opening night, it was the day. The cast announcements when everyone would find out what Dara had decided the night before. Who would be their Clara, their Prince, their mechanical dolls, their harlequins, their itty-bitty bonbons and wispy little snowflakes.
“I can barely stand it!” Chlo? Lin lisped, clutching at one of her leg warmers, sliding down her shin as she ran. “If I have to wait any longer I’ll die!”
The door shutting behind her, Dara took a breath.
But each step Dara took up the staircase throbbed with that same feeling, that jittery energy.
Or, as it turned out, it throbbed with Marie.
* * *
*
BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!
The Durant School of Dance was full of noise, a sharp, focused banging that felt like a nail gun at Dara’s temple.
BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!
It was a sound Dara knew well. She’d heard it thousands of times, ever since her sister was ten years old and their mother first raised her up on her preternaturally tapered toes. You, my dear, were made for en pointe.
“Sister, dear sister,” Dara called out.
And there she was, Marie, face flushed, legs spread on the floor of Studio A, taking their father’s rust-red claw hammer to a new pair of pointe shoes.
“The claw returns,” Dara said, lifting an eyebrow.
“It’s the only thing that works,” said Marie, holding out the shoe for Dara to see, its pinkness split open, its soft center exposed.
Even when, as young dancers, they went through three pairs a week, their mother forbid the hammer. It was too rough, too brutal. It was lazy. Instead, one should stick the shoe in the hinge of a door, closing it slowly, softening its hardness, breaking it down. Marie never had the patience.
“Look,” Marie said, showing off her handiwork, settling her finger inside the shank, poking it, stroking it. “Look.”