Audition (13 page)

With Stephen, who has been her boyfriend
For a record-breaking three months.

 

 

I don’t tell her about Barry and the Fall Formal,
Or ask who Billy Allegra is taking,
Or for her advice on stolen kisses from an older boy,
A man.

 

 

Text back,
“Too many rehearsals.
Have 2 skip Upton fall dance.”

 

 

Just a safe, painless,
Nine-word
Lie
I try to believe myself.

As I push through ronds de jambe
That circle endlessly back to front,
Reminding me my stomach
Has nothing to ponder.
My leg has nowhere to go
But back where it started.

 

 

Rond de jambe
Muddles me.
Don’t see a way
To make it beautiful,
Much less perfect
Or even finished.

 

 

Upton, ballet
Billy, Barry
Rem, Rem
Remington

 

 

Round and round
And round and
Round.

As in its essential counterpart,
Music,
In dance means fast,
Movements quick, precise.

 

 

Rehearsal life is all allegro, rushing
From studio to studio,
From practicing the tour lecture – demo and story ballet
To learning the opening steps for
The Nutcracker
Snowflakes
And then back to classes.

 

 

In Variations, we are learning to dance
Aurora’s Act III solo,
Where the cursed Sleeping Beauty
Awakens to

 

 

A handsome prince,
A perfect marriage
And, despite her century of sleep,
Performs a virtuosic dance

 

 

That I can only stumble through, regular sleep cycle
notwithstanding.

Mama Bear wears a costume, padded fat.
I do not even wear pointe shoes.
They are the province of everyone’s favorite,
Lisette.

 

 

I plié and pas de basque,
Gambol and fake stumble
While Goldilocks Lisette
Pirouettes and flutters
In her charming pas de deux
With Fernando
The woodsman
(Not in the original tale).

 

 

But in the bus
On the way to the auditoriums,
Janeless Rem sits with me in the back.
Tells me about making dances
Or tucks an earbud into my ear to share
Some new, strange piece of music I imagine
Bess would understand.

 

 

And sometimes,
On the long rides home,
I fall asleep
With my head on his shoulder.

Which is complicated,
But not so much for me
As for Lisette and Bonnie,
Whose bones nearly poke through their skin,
Whose periods never come.

 

 

I am naturally thin enough,
Too lonely and bored
For fasting.

 

 

My diets are more distraction
Than discipline.
I’ll try any fad—
Boiled eggs,
Lemon water,
Lettuce and tuna—
For the chance to talk about it
With the other girls,
To belong,
If only in my abstinence
From food.

 

 

Dad is driving me home the day before
Thanksgiving
And back Thanksgiving night.
Too many rehearsals for more.

 

 

I will go north,

 

 

Stuff myself with apples with onions,
Mom’s cautiously overcooked turkey,

 

 

Sleep restlessly with the knowledge that Rem
Is going to Jane’s uncle’s house
In Pennsylvania.

From my brief escapes to the country,
Where I try to remember the dreams
That stole me away
From my cozy four-poster,
Pastel-colored quilt,
Couches peppered with contented cats.

 

 

Try to forgive

 

 

My friends at home
For their prom dates and sleepovers and regular lives,

 

 

Myself
For my troubling ambitions in a distant city,

 

 

My parents
For letting me go.

 

 

At Upton, Katia shows me pictures:

 

 

The Fall Formal,
The gym draped in gauzy Arabian scarves,
Barry in a ridiculous blue tux.
I tell myself I am glad

To have missed standing beside that clown.
I am an artist
Untroubled
By childish high school affairs.

 

 

I do not say to Katia
That Barry kind of asked me first,
Because I do not want to tell myself
About another kind of rejection.

Where I am a famous ballerina
And my picture
Is displayed on the cover
Of a thousand magazines.

 

 

All the coolest kids at Upton regret
Not noticing the shadowy ballerina
Dancing through their halls.
Try to be my friends.

 

 

Remington confesses his true love.
Swears he only stayed a little with Jane
Because I was so young.
He was waiting for me.

 

 

In my fantasy I never
Actually
Dance.

Sitting with a cluster
Of company ballerinas.

 

 

Marie, whose legs cross and uncross,
Tipping her cigarette ash
Into a soda can
With ethereal grace.

 

 

Galina, with her romance novel
Title in gold letters,
Volume fatter
Than her waist.

 

 

I think of my tattered copy
Of
The Thorn Birds
,
Stolen from my grandmother’s hall bath
Last summer.
The way those chapters
Make my breath come fast—
Make me want
Some unspeakable thing.

 

 

Do such books
Agitate

These queens of the ballet,
Make them come undone inside
The way that one does me?
But it can’t be so,
The way they flick that ash without a quiver.
Or is it just that their training,
The great, technical control
They have over their bodies
Protects them even
From wanting?