Audition (22 page)

I loll on the yellow couch,
Eyeing the plate of crackers,
The cup of tea
Left for me
On the black lacquer coffee table.
Wish for a down comforter,
Homemade toast with cinnamon sugar.

 

 

But I allow Señora to pass a wet cloth across my face,
To ply me with sweet tea,
To look concerned
As I watch the clock count hour after hour
That I lie still without dancing,
And talk on my cell
To my real mother.

To the studio.

 

 

Four days in bed
And I am better.
Rested.
Fed.

 

 

Rem is on fire
With dancing, ideas.

 

 

I doubt that he would like me to tell him
About the tortured journey
Of
Paradise Lost
As much as he likes
To ride the shallow slope
Of my naked behind.

In Variations class.
It’s as though I never left.

 

 

He looks up and down
At me, through me, trying to read
Something I have not printed in my face,
Because I do not know it,
Cannot give him an answer
To a question I don’t even understand.

 

 

Only knowing I want always
To be the girl in front.

 

 

Instead I stand behind beaming Bonnie,

 

 

A faceless head
In the second row
Of the corps ballerinas,
Ladies-in-waiting
For her precise, twiglike Aurora.

 

 

Watching from behind
Sliding bobby pins,
Fingers furtively tugging

Down
Leotard leg holes,
Fixing, adjusting
What cannot be seen
On the facade
Where the smile is wide,
The hair slicked back,
Neck long, chin high,
Everything forward,
Yearning
Toward the teacher,
The mirror,
The hope that lives
Beyond the glass.

 

 

The back row
Stinks of despair,
Surreptitious farts,
The breath of disappointed curses.

 

 

Is truth here
In the ugly unseemliness?
The graceless moments
Before and after

Eyes are watching?
In the unballerina,
The unperformed?

 

 

In the dressing room
I forget to be embarrassed
As I write down this other question,
Sweating through my half-off leotard,
Smeared mascara soiling my cheek.

 

 

In my mind Professor O’Malley’s brogue
Singsongs a perfect
Three-word refrain:

 

 

“You write well.”

 

 

For a moment,
More beautiful than Tchaikovsky’s music,
More powerful than being Rem’s girl.

Because Mom has come.
She and Dad sit across from me
In a darkened booth
At Denardio’s.

 

 

A snapshot
Of my first kiss with Rem
Here at this table
Sears my mind’s eye.

 

 

I worry they can read past the heat of my cheeks
To the confession
That pumps my heart.

is on my glorious PSAT scores
And the letter from Upton
That says I will be
A National Merit semifinalist.

 

 

This has led my mother,
Crisp in her navy-blue suit,
Lacy under-blouse,
A failed attempt at femininity
(She could use a lesson from Señora Medrano
And her tight silks),
To swoop down to Jersey
With a stack of brochures
From colleges I have never heard mentioned before.

 

 

“But I thought you wanted me to be a dancer.”
The words escape my lips before
The thought reaches my brain.

To avoid sleeping in their sexless hotel room.
Sneak away to Remington’s,
Where I am still a ballerina.

 

 

He sits on the tie-dyed couch,
Eyes closed,
Bach cantata playing over and over.
Tries to find the steps
That will meet the music.

 

 

I wait,
Ineffectually reading
Professor O’Malley’s next reading assignment,
Saint Joan
by George Bernard Shaw.
Though saints and martyrdom
Do not feel at all connected
To my confused existence.

 

 

I know that, sooner or later,
Rem will tire of his tortured artist solo,
Remember the magic of his muse,
His dick,
The bed.
Blush to think of my parents

Imagining me here.
Ponder whether Señor Medrano, Yevgeny
Know,
Even suspect
What Remington does with me
After the studio is dark and
The other ballerinas have gone home.

 

 

Am I the great actress of innocence,
The pure Aurora, despite Bonnie’s better musicality?
Is it worth their averted gazes
For the dances that Rem makes?

 

 

Should I shout (as if I ever could),
“This is wrong!”
Is it wrong?

 

 

Sometimes you can smooth a fumbled balance
Into another step;
Cover a weak arabesque
With a flourishing port de bras;
Keep your smile so bright, head so high,
They overlook the weakness of your feet.

Feints of the body not unlike
A magician’s sleight of hand.

 

 

When he introduced
Saint Joan
, the author
Told readers there were no villains in his play—
That crime was not nearly so interesting
As what men and women do
With good intentions, or believe they have to do
In spite of what they feel.

 

 

“Hey, thoughtful.”
Rem slides a playful hand across my stomach.
“Ready to dance?”

Letting your stage parents
Push you around,” Rem says
After I describe our conversation.
He yawns and stretches,
Circling the white stem of my waist
With a possessive arm.

 

 

“They are not stage parents,”
I snap.
But I am glad he doesn’t like them,
Enjoy the battle
Between king-and-queen
And knight in Lycra armor.

 

 

They want to take me
To an orthopedic surgeon
To help resolve
The pain in my shins.

 

 

Rem says they are looking for a way
To stop me from dancing
Now that they have decided
I am a genius.

I do not believe him
Until later, over coffee,

 

 

Mom suggests
We take a trip to visit colleges
And that I can easily miss
A week of ballet class.

 

 

Her eyes flutter to some invisible thing
In the corner of the room.
Her fingers roll the brown, raw sugar packet
Into a determined cylinder.

 

 

Dad watches her hands—
The brown roll cigarette-like,
Tempting—
Eyes down.