Girl Through Glass (24 page)

She peers over Maurice.
He is asleep!
He has never fallen asleep before.

Why has she begun to cry, silent tears that flatten out along her cheeks? Her face is wet, her mouth open with the silent sound.
He is asleep!

Maurice sleeps, his face tilted upward. She bends over, kisses his pale lips lightly, just grazes them. He doesn't stir. It amazes her. His breathing doesn't change. In her tights and leotard, she curls her body next to him and closes her own eyes. Garbage cans rattle in a breeze, sirens wail far away.

Her eyes do not close; she doesn't let them. She imagines her mother passing through the mountains to arrive at the Street of the Warrior. She pictures how her mother looked last time Mira saw her—before the trees lost their leaves. She looked bigger, more solid, in a broad colorful shirt, her hair wound up in a white turban, wearing heavy clanking shell earrings. Mira had not wanted to hug her. Her mother smelled of incense and something like tar, but when Mira hugged her anyway, she embarrassed herself by crying into her mother's many necklaces.

They lie there—the girl and the man—without moving for a long
time. Outside, people whistle for cabs, high heels click on the pavement, horns blare then fade. When the sounds change to slamming
car doors, rushed, barked words, the sudden curls of laughter, and the down-the-street swoosh of taxis dropping people home from parties, some alarm goes off inside her and she moves. She rubs her arms, which have fallen asleep.

She gets up and pulls her pants and her shirt over her ballet clothes. Then she leans over Maurice's sleeping form and says, “It's time.”

He wakes suddenly, as if he just closed his eyes for a second. He opens his eyes and stares at her—startled, fearful. “What did you do to me?”

“Nothing,” she says. “You fell asleep.”

He rubs his eyes, pushes her away. He sits up. Grabs his cane. Takes in her appearance but does not move. “You are beautiful,” he says conclusively. His voice is unkind, full of blame.

“I know,” she says.

Later that night, Maurice drives her uptown—twenty blocks
north—past humming streetlamps. His car after all these years still smells of new leather. She looks at him, maneuvering the lever that allows him to make up for his bad leg, the grim paleness of his face and something new about him, something that reminds her of her mother in her studio when she was much younger, a distracted quality, like he is straining to hear music from a long way off. She reaches over and turns on the radio.

“Mozart?” she says.

“Mendelssohn
.
”

He parks the car across the street from her dad and Judy's place. After she gets out, he rolls down his window and turns to her.

“Bella . . .”

“What?” she says, her heart pounding.

He looks at her, his old face troubled, but says nothing. It's almost spring, and a smell of something blooming wafts into the car.

“I think . . . maybe . . .”

“What?”

He looks out the window. He pauses and gives her a strange look. “Do you enjoy dancing?”

She stares at him. No one has ever asked her this question that she can remember. As a girl, she would have answered
Yes! Yes! Yes!
without thinking about it. But she is not a girl now. She knows that suddenly.

He lowers the volume on the radio but the music still simmers. He hands her some bills.

At first she liked the money because it could be turned into something—jewelry that she chose carefully because she imagined it was from him. It felt like a gift and she accepted it as such. But now it feels different. The money sits in her dresser drawer and collects there. She spends it on cigarettes, nail polish, but can't think of enough things to buy. It makes her heart hurt that she can't think of what to buy with it.

In the narrow strips of gardens along the sidewalk, things are blooming—things that smell.

Is it Mira who wants to cry? Or is it Bella?

Or—is it someone else entirely?

After Maurice leaves, she enters her dad and Judy's building and
nods at Felix, the night doorman. The elevator is too far away. She won't make it, she knows suddenly. Her face crumples like a used dinner napkin. She drops her dance bag and covers her face with a hand.

“Are you okay?” the doorman says nervously.

“I have been lying,” she says. “There are no kids.”

This is Judy's world of nice-but-mean doormen, elevators to views of the city below, well-oiled furniture that feels dry and brittle. It is a world of fakes and phonies.

She wipes her eyes, goes right up to Felix's desk. Imagining that she is her mother, she says, “Do you think I'm pretty?”

He looks at her then. “Sure, you're a pretty girl.”

She smiles. “Would you like to kiss me?”

He stares at her for a long moment. He is maybe fifty years old. His chin is droopy. His eyes have receded into papery folds. His posture is strangely good and he never sits. Now he stands, as stiff as a sharpened pencil, and looks at her, his eyes flash something she can't read. He opens his mouth to say something, then he closes it again.

“I think it is time for you to go upstairs.” He looks at her as a grown-up would a child.

She looks down. She is ashamed. She is not her mother. She will never have her mother's power.

Now she truly begins to cry, babyish, trusting tears that pour out of her as if there is no end. Felix comes out from behind the desk and walks her to the elevator, a careful hand on her elbow as if she is an old woman.

Judy's apartment is filled with heavy shellacked furniture and puffy
couches. This is furniture left behind by a previous life of Judy's that she's replacing slowly, since some of it still has
sentimental value.
Spilling out to the hall from the kitchen is a bright light, her father's deep arguing voice. She pauses in the dark living room, trying to gain control over herself. Her skin burns, her throat is raw; her eyes feel full. The way Maurice looked at her when he called her “beautiful”—like a curse word. He has told her that beauty is the highest thing in the world. (Not the magazine kind, but another kind, a kind only he can see when she dances in the dark for him.) Bella must exist not just for him but also for others. He must have taught her
something
she can use. Slowly, she straightens up and lets her breathing return to normal. She wipes her eyes. She tries out a smile.

Entering the kitchen, she finds Judy and her father standing at the breakfast bar. Her father has his suit jacket over the back of the stool, his tie is loosened. He is holding a rattling cup. Judy wears a long black dress with sparkling things hanging off of it. Her father's cheeks lift up in a smile and Judy gives her a quick birdlike grin behind which lie a thousand questions.

“Mira, your father's judgment is really—” They like to argue but they have little smirks on their faces the whole time.

“Judy, leave her out of this. Hi, darling,” he says going over to Mira and giving her a hug. He is too warm and smells thickly of alcohol. She recalls Maurice's dry, powdery scent and feels an internal bolt of something—fear?—move through her.

“Honey, your hair needs a trim,” says Judy, moving toward her and giving her arm a squeeze. “The ends look tired.”

“She doesn't need anything.” Her father pats Mira awkwardly on the back. “Her hair is beautiful,” says her father. A pie, waiting on the breakfast bar covered by plastic wrap, quivers and molts before her like an oasis. She feels the lurch of her whole body toward it. She allows herself an apple from the fruit bin, which she slices in half carefully on a napkin.

“A
trim,
I said.” Judy snatches up the other half of the apple. “Can I?” she says as she takes it. She puts her hands on her hips and stares at Mira. Tiny beating veins stand out on her temples. “So, Mira. Listen to this. The congressman says, ‘I don't think I can get involved in that discussion.' And your father says ‘Well, that doesn't hold City Hall back from getting involved!' Even if he didn't know that the congressman is backing the mayor's zoning plans—which I don't buy—he could have listened—”

“I didn't have a chance—”

“Oh, come on! You could have
guessed
.”

Her father sighs and turns to face Mira. “How was babysitting?”

“Fine.”

He turns back to Judy. “And you shouldn't be so quick to judge—”

“They are going to come into their own soon,” Mira says.

“Hmm?” her father says.

“The kids. They are going to be coming into their own soon.”

“Oh, honey, they're still little, right?” says Judy.

“They're getting bigger,” says Mira.

“Well, believe me anyway, it takes a long time.” Judy and her father exchange a long look. Mira turns away, her face burns as if it has been slapped. She gets down off the stool, ready to leave.

“It's my birthday,” Mira says.

“Oh, darling!” says Judy. “Of course it is!”

“Right-o,” says her dad. “Happy birthday, honey,” says her dad.

“Happy birthday. Happy birthday,” sings her dad. “Tomorrow we will celebrate.” He gives her another awkward pat.

“We have reservations at Le Cirque for tomorrow night—
our
birthday celebration for you,” says Judy. “Sam is coming.

“Mira, you must be hungry,” says Judy. “Please have some.” Judy whips off the plastic wrap and pushes the whole pie toward Mira. Mira's stomach lurches again and the light-headedness she felt earlier comes back. Judy cuts a piece of the pie and wraps it in tinfoil and shoves it in the oven. She looks at the silver bowl of shellacked-looking lemons on the enormous black-topped stove, at Judy's wrinkled-but-still-pretty frog face, and at her father's starched-white middle straining against his tuxedo shirt. She is about to give in to the desire when Judy says it: “I'd like to know what you think.” That means it is a client's pie.

“No, thanks,” Mira says.

Judy squints her eyes at Mira. “You may be a gorgeous little ballet dancer, and it may be your birthday, but you still need to eat to survive. Have you eaten anything all day?”

“Yes,” Mira says.

“What?” says Judy.

“Things.”

“What things?”

“Things.”
Mira pushes the warm pie away. She could eat it to
satisfy Judy but she doesn't feel like it. She still has a core of roiling energy cycling around, hitting all her organs like a pinball machine on tilt.

“Not hungry. Where's Sam?” Mira says as she turns to go.

“In his room. Not out for once,” says her father. “Get some rest, darling. Tomorrow'll be a good night. We have a lot to celebrate.” It is one of his sloppy, drunken late-night “darlings” that she distrusts because they disappear in the morning.

“Good night, Dad.” She stands in the doorway for a moment.

“You look tired,” Judy says, looking at Mira as if for the first time that night. “Oh, and the Egremonts are coming for dinner next weekend and they want to meet a genuine New York City Ballet dancer.”

“That's the
company
, Judy, and I'm—”

“I know, I know—you're in the school. Close enough.”

Mira turns down the hallway, already leaving the complicated architecture of the kitchen behind. Her own hunger disappears strangely as she turns into the hallway.

Mira has gotten in the habit of stopping outside Sam's room.
Tonight there's a light under his door. Sometimes there is a low thrum of music, but tonight it's quiet. She stares at the sign on his door that reads in bold red letters
IF YOU CAN'T PLAY NICE, PLAY LACROSSE
. The door flings open and Sam stands there.

She screams.

He laughs.

“Idiot,” she says.

His baby face—his brown eyes are Judy's—is flushed, cocky. He wears a robe that hangs open loosely and some kind of athletic pants tied with a drawstring. He has Judy's practical competence—and cruel streak, too. His bare feet are big and bony and soft-looking. He is always bigger than she remembers. Behind him she can see his desk lamp spraying light on a loose-leaf binder.

“Want to come in?” he says. He holds the door wide open. From inside the room comes a warm moist draft, like someone exhaling.

She and Sam get along better now that they live together. He can say
whatever
he wants to Judy. Mira admires that.

“Shut up,” she says, and walks straight in and sits on the floor. Now here, she doesn't know what to do with herself. She notices the tracks worn into the rug where the grain has been pushed down in one direction to his desk, another to his bed, and still another to the spot under his basketball hoop on the wall, where there is a worn circle. Sam pads back to his desk. She considers getting up and leaving—he has left the door partway open—but something holds her to the spot. She tangles her fingers in his beige shag rug.