* * *
*
The house stirred with past moments like these, good and bad, dark and fulsome.
The house was a living, breathing, saggy, and gasping thing.
They would never sell it. They would never leave it. And Marie should not have taken the money. Marie should not have left.
* * *
*
Late into the night, Dara woke to find Charlie had slipped from bed.
It turned out he couldn’t sleep and had spent the night downstairs, on the pullout sofa that was ruinous for his back, the pullout sofa he slept on when he first came to live with them, all those years ago.
In the morning, she saw the tumbler stained with wine on the kitchen table.
“I don’t understand,” he said when she walked past him on her way to the car. “What’s happening to us?”
Dara stopped and put her hand on his shoulder.
“We were all so happy here,” he said, voice foggy and lost.
* * *
*
The studio felt heavy with worry.
The first full dress rehearsal at the Ballenger was only days away, so Saturday brought no rest, no birthday parties, no family activities, no playdates. Instead, the studio was open and everyone was expected, even the Grayson sisters, whose baby brother was being baptized four blocks away.
It was Saturday and they had nothing inconvenient like school to get in the way.
They could work all day until they all burned from it.
“Is that really necessary?” Marie asked after Dara announced that they should expect to be here all day, no complaints, no excuses.
Dara didn’t say anything, pushing past her sister. If Marie wanted to spend the day lolling around in filthy sheets with the contractor, that wasn’t her problem.
The girls were fidgety, nervous. Several lost their footing, one fell. One of the twelve-year-olds accused another of kicking the backs of her legs and the two began shouting, one of them slapping the other in the face with such high drama that one of Marie’s six-year-olds watching from the doorway began to cry.
“Pas de larmes. Dry your eyes,” Dara said, snapping her fingers. It was the only way with the little ones. “Regal. Untouchable.”
The six-year-old clung to Marie’s legs and cried more, her face pink and unbearable. “I hate it,” she whispered, hysterical. “I hate it.”
“Don’t worry,” Marie said, hand cupping the girl’s russet head, “it’ll all be over soon.”
* * *
*
Dara tried to stay in her own studio, away from Marie. It would be bad enough that evening, when they had to go to the Ballenger to work with the stage manager on all the cues. It would take hours.
And Marie was now avoiding Dara too. There were no stealth smokes on the fire escape, or anything that might mean she had to pass through Dara’s studio.
Late in the day, Dara ducked her head in Studio A, but Marie wouldn’t look up from the Polichinelles, the four-and five-year-olds playing the cartwheeling clowns that emerge from Mother Ginger’s enormous hoop skirt in Act II.
They bounded past her and Marie swiveled and turned and only once gave a glance Dara’s way. That face, foxlike. Sly.
* * *
*
And then there was the problem of Bailey Bloom. Every time Dara looked at her, she thought of the girl’s mother. Mrs. Bloom, the choke of her voice. The fear in it.
Mrs. Bloom was entirely missing her daughter’s drama. The curse of Clara upon her, Bailey had arrived that morning in a Shamrock cab, her tights grimy from the seat. It seemed she was no longer welcome in the carpool by her peers, though Gracie Hent claimed there was simply no room in her mother’s hatchback for another girl.
“Plus,” Dara heard Gracie say under her breath, “she sheds.”
Dara walked over, hands on her hips.
“What was that?”
“She sheds,” Gracie repeated, more hesitantly now, her head dipping.
The true terrorism of girls is the accuracy of their aim. Bailey’s hair had become so thin and spare it slipped forever from her meager bun. The day before Dara had found her in the changing room staring at her paddle brush, tufted with a mound of stray hair.
“Mademoiselle Hent,” Dara said sternly, “move to the back row. You’re no longer needed up front.”
Gracie Hent’s look of surprise was gratifying, even as Bailey looked stricken, even as Dara knew it would get worse before it got better.
* * *
*
Back in the office, the phone was ringing and Dara answered it without thinking.
“Ms. Durant?”
“Yes,” Dara said, her chest tightening, the woman’s official tone, something.