“About what?” Dara said, playing distracted, focusing instead on a group of the Level IVs trying to hide in a lobby alcove, bent over a plastic tub of contraband rainbow cookies. Come try one, Bailey, someone was saying. They’re so good.
“This article. The picture.” He shook his head. “Aren’t you concerned?”
“It has nothing to do with us,” Dara said, feeling her face grow hot, avoiding his heavy gaze, watching as Madame Sylvie scolded the girls for their cookies. Do you think I don’t see, mes anges? I see everything.
“But it does,” Dr. Weston insisted, moving closer toward her.
Jesus, Dara thought. What could he know?
“I don’t see how . . .” she started.
Then, leaning even closer, he lowered his voice, pointing at the paper, “I mean, they haven’t even given us coverage for The Nutcracker yet. What kind of crap is that?”
Dara felt a hard smack of relief. The Nutcracker, what else was there?
“I have to get back,” she said abruptly, backing farther away.
“Well, it’s the world we live in,” he said, his voice echoing through the lobby as Dara turned and began walking away. “Sick, sick.”
* * *
*
Back in the cool dark of the theater, she tried to settle into the work, watching Corbin onstage donning the Nutcracker Prince mask, lurid and startling under the lights. The tufts of white hair on either side. The grin manic, the teeth two perfect lines.
While the lighting engineer made adjustments, bringing up the blue, Dara called Charlie, but there was no answer.
“Just checking in,” she said into the voicemail. “Call me.”
Behind her, she heard a voice, Marie. One row back, leaning close to Dara’s ear.
“Is he coming here?” she asked. “Charlie?”
“No,” Dara said. “But we should talk.”
“Okay,” Marie said.
The stage was flooded violet, Corbin adjusting the mask on his head.
Behind her, Dara could hear Marie breathing. Fast, then more slowly. Slower still.
* * *
*
It doesn’t mean anything,” she told Marie as her sister read the article, her fingers smudging.
They were in a dressing room, backstage. A half-dozen mouse heads perched on stands, the room smelling of glue, rubbing alcohol, cold cream, vomit.
“It’s okay,” Marie said, twisting her thumbnail between her teeth. “I’m okay.”
“They do them for everyone. Autopsies,” Dara said, even as she knew they didn’t.
Marie held out the newspaper, offering it back to Dara, her grip tentative, like it was a carton of eggs, or a box of firecrackers.
“I keep thinking of his face,” she said. “At the end. How surprised he looked.”
“Why are you doing this?” Dara said, letting the newspaper fall to the vanity. “We said we weren’t ever going to talk about this.”
Marie looked into one of the cloudy mirrors. “On the stairs. He looked so surprised.”
In that instant, Dara wondered if she’d looked surprised, too, watching Marie and Charlie on those stairs, their strange faces. She knew she had. It was the same.
“Surprised like he didn’t recognize us,” Marie said, eyes on the mirror. She and Dara twinned there. Dara was cool, but Marie was hot. Dara was dark, but Marie was light.
“Like we were these alien things.”
* * *
*
It was nearly seven. Everyone was tired. All the excitement eaten away by the rigors of the day, its small victories and humiliations.
The stage was bare except for Bailey Bloom, an unlit taper candle in her hand, gazing into the darkness. Though no one else was in costume that day, Bailey was wearing her Clara nightgown for the lighting crew. For the important moment Clara leaves her bed in the blue-black night to retrieve the Nutcracker, her longing for him so immense.
From her seat, Dara watched as Bailey, her pale tights glowing, bounded across the stage over and over again as they adjusted the fly rigs.
“Slow and big, Mademoiselle Bloom,” Dara called out. “The audience needs to be able to feel everything.”
Nightgown ballooning, Bailey streaked across the stage, scooped the abandoned Nutcracker into her arms. Sleeves like white wings, she hoisted it into the air like a totem, a godhead, then lifted herself into an elegant arabesque, her neck so long and her leg so high in the way you can when you’re fourteen, fifteen, your body both feather-light and molten, and everything is forever and nothing ever changes.
Dara felt her eyes fill. No longer thinking of articles, or autopsies, or Charlie, or even Marie, she was giving herself over to Bailey, who’d earned it, who needed it. As their mother so often gave herself over to her students. The gaze, hot and relentless, felt like love. It was love.