The Cranes Dance (30 page)

“How are you … how, I mean … what …” I couldn’t sit in
the chair. I stood up and leaned against the metal bed rails, but Wendy shrank back a little into her pillow.

“I am not contagious,” she said, as if I were the one recoiling from contact. “It’s ovarian cancer. Or it began that way. It’s spread, so now I suppose it is everything cancer. Like everything bagels, you know? Sesame, onion, poppy seed, cinnamon-raisin. I never liked those. Did you like them? You never ate anything when you lived here. I did notice that. You probably think I never noticed anything.”

The sharp, distracted way she said this was so unlike Wendy’s usual shy professorial manner of speaking that it took me a minute to understand what was going on. Wendy tapped out a staccato rhythm with her ring finger against the bed frame.

“You should sit down,” she said.

Obediently, I sat on the edge of the yellow silk chair. Karine came in with an armful of sofa cushions.

“Maybe you should bring a phone book,” Wendy ghost-giggled. “Poor Kate.”

“I start the kettle for tea now,” said Karine, peacefully. “I’ll bring some nice tea for you and your friend.”

“Oh, wonderful. Thank you, dear. I think when it comes we should go out on the terrace. Don’t you think that would be nice?” Wendy asked me.

“Yes,” I said. “Yes. Um. If you feel up to it?”

“It’s actually very tiring, being in bed. It makes you feel as if you should be rested, and you’re not, so that is fatiguing.”

We watched Karine leave and then turned back to each other, nervously. Wendy tapped her ring against the bed again. I adjusted the slippery pillows underneath me.

“How long have you known?” I asked. This came out in the adult woman talking about issues voice, and I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t stand that I too was buzzing on pharmaceuticals and couldn’t focus, take in the moment properly. Time zigzagged.

“December,” Wendy said. “I didn’t go to my sister’s in January, like I told you. I was here. Being excavated, as it were. I apologize for the subterfuge. But it was already stage four, so you see they do things, but it’s only because they have to do something. It seems almost disproportionate, the things they do, but you’re meant to let them do it all. And one does sort of hope. Well.”

“Wendy.” I tried to find my normal voice. “I am so sorry.”

Wendy looked down at her lap, as if someone had just placed an amusing and slightly inappropriate gift there.

“I don’t have very long,” she said. “I’m sorry to say that to you. I wish there were another way of saying it, without saying it, if you know what I mean. I keep thinking of phrases.
Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris
. ‘I sing of arms and a man, who first from the shores of Troy …’ But of course that doesn’t relate to my situation.”

“Are you in pain?” I asked. “What can I do for you?”

Wendy brushed away the ribbons of the invisible gift in her lap and looked at me. Yes, I thought, recognizing it. Yes, you are in pain.

“That’s a very ridiculous chair, isn’t it,” said Wendy. “I have to make arrangements for things, where everything should go. But they’ll sell all of this together. You don’t want that chair, do you?”

I looked down at the yellow silk arms of the chair which I did seem to be clutching with some force.

“We’ll talk about that another time,” said Wendy. “There’s a little bit of time. I will see you again.”

“Of course,” I said. “I’ll come, I’ll come every day if you like.”

“Oh, no, dear. Not every day. You have so much to dance. And you said you were injured too.”

“It’s nothing,” I said quickly. The extent of its nothingness was shameful. What right had I to be doping myself to the gills? Detaching myself from what? From what?

“I don’t think I’ll be able to come and see you dance
Dream
.” Wendy sat up a little straighter. “I wish I could. I wish I could see you dance so many things.”

“It’s okay.” I leaned forward on my cushions, almost pulling the chair up with me. “No, no. It’s okay.”

“When I was a little girl,” Wendy said, closing her eyes, “my father used to go into his study and listen to the baseball games on the radio. He would draw a grid on a piece of paper and he taught me how to keep score. I would mark it all down. K, for strikeout. F8 was a fly ball to center field. P6, a pop-up to the shortstop. I haven’t thought of that in years. Oh, how I loved doing it.”

For a second I saw in her face, which didn’t look ill at all, a ghost of her childhood. Of a whole life, a whole person, about to go forever. I couldn’t speak.

“I’ll be thinking of you dancing,” she said. “I’ll be imagining how lovely you are.”

She looked at me, with something like a plea on her face. I swallowed.

“It’s too bad,” I said, “that they don’t air ballets on the radio. That way, you could follow along and keep score.”
I switched into a sportscaster voice. “Titania successfully dances the first solo. A little wobbly on the pique turns, but nice tight fifth position on the bourrées. She makes it into the downstage left wing safely and now … it’s Oberon, who’s been having a rough season so far, let’s see what he does tonight!”

“Yes, that’s just what I mean!” Wendy said. “You understood me perfectly.”

But I didn’t understand. I don’t understand anything.

Karine came in, not with Wendy’s cumbersome silver tea service but with two mugs, tea bags hanging off the sides. I wanted to tell her that’s not how we do it, Wendy hates teabags, but I was cowed by her air of competent authority. I could never do that. I could never pull back the covers and scoop a dying woman out of bed, set her gently on her feet, fold her arm under mine to help her walk.

“Oh, I’ve got my energy back,” said Wendy, patting Karine on the arm. She walked by herself, upright and stately as she rarely was in … in what? In life?

Wendy made it to the terrace, stood in the sunshine. Her face, when she turned to look at me, was radiant and smooth, not the face of the woman I have known for the past ten years. It was the face of a woman I have never known.

Will never know, apparently.

When I left Wendy’s I walked across the park. The path I took when I was a student, when none of what has happened had happened.

The other night I thought I wouldn’t want to go back, but
now it’s all I want to do. Or stay forever now, with things only as bad as they are, not worse. Not gone.

I can’t imagine a Gwen returned who I could live with. And yet I also can’t think of how she will ever be gone enough.

And Andrew. Of course Andrew left me for someone else. I gave him nothing. I gave him the shell. Now I can’t even remember why it seemed so important to not need him.

Wendy said she is not gone yet. But she is evacuating, I could feel it. And she is afraid, I could feel that too.

I wanted to sit down on the grass. For what? To say to myself, I am sitting on the grass and grieving for my friend? I don’t have the right to sit down. Not with all the time that I’ve wasted standing.

I went to the theater. Tonight I danced
Leaves Are Fading
for the first time. There is a synopsis of the ballet in the program, although in this case it’s not necessary. It’s simple. A woman walks on the stage and looks thoughtful. Men and women appear and dance, in groups, in pairs. The lights dim and the woman comes on again and walks across the stage, satisfied. The dances have been her memories, and they have been good, they have been filled with love.

In my dressing room I told myself that I would dedicate my performance to Wendy. I would offer it up to her as a gift, I would send her grace for wherever it is she is going next. Let her exit gently across the stage, satisfied.

But I couldn’t hold on to that. Things kept getting in the way. I was fussing about my shoes, which felt a little too soft, so I changed them for a harder pair and those were a little too hard. I hadn’t taken any Vicodin, so I was worried about seizing up with pain in the middle. I could tell in the opening that our
timing wasn’t as good as it had been in dress, people were rushing, Marius would have a fit. And, at a certain point, my desire to dance well was just simply my desire to dance well. I could say that it was a desire to dance well for Wendy, but it wasn’t that. What I was thinking, in that strange way you can think without words while you are dancing, think in glyphs, think in numbers, was how stupid it is that any of us are here, living. What an absurd game we play with ourselves, as if it mattered. We are all mad, all insane, all deluded. It is all for nothing, really, in the end.

The woman, at the end of
Leaves
, she shouldn’t walk serenely across the stage. That’s sentimental drivel. She should run. She should get off as quickly as she can, and not look back.

I took Gareth’s class today. As I was going to take Gareth’s class I said to myself, over and over,
I am going to take Gareth’s class
.
Sentences are trenches you can take cover in. They are not wildly comfortable. They are not bulletproof. But they can give you the illusion of safety.

I am going to take Gareth’s class today and here I am at the place where Gareth’s class can be taken.

There were a group of girls in the changing room. Teenagers, maybe fourteen, fifteen years old. One had her fingernails painted yellow with blue daisies. A little Thai girl with plump shoulders was chomping hard on a wad of strawberry gum. The blonde had an angry dash of acne across both cheeks. A thick-calved brunette dabbed the wrong shade of pink lipstick on her lips.

The girls chatted, which meant I could listen to them and stop repeating,
I am going to take Gareth’s class
.

“Oh my
gah
, it took me like, forty-five minutes to get my hair up today.”

“I love your hair.”

“Elle’s always like, I love your hair, I love your hair, and I’m like, please, it’s a hot mess.”

“I need Starbucks.”

“I totally need Starbucks.”

“I want that maple scone thing they have.”

“Oh my
gah
, I was totally thinking the
same
thing. Like,
right
as you said it.”

In the hallway outside of class, more students clustered in little groups on the floor or benches. I spotted two in the corner who, indignities of adolescence aside, had the imprint of serious dancers. Sleek hair, perfect bodies, the self-absorption of hungry animals. One of them pulled an elastic band out of her bag and stretched out her Achilles tendon. The other worked a pointe shoe between her hands, softening the box, flexing the sole. Achilles Tendon Girl looked up, saw me, tapped Pointe Shoe Girl with the side of her foot. They widened their eyes at each other, and one of them smiled tentatively at me.

“Hi,” I said. Somewhat aggressively.

They looked a little startled.

The class before Gareth’s finished and I took my spot by the window, trying not to gag on the haze of sweat. I looked out the window at Broadway. See how it all goes on, I said to myself. See how it all goes on. See how it. See how it. See how it all goes on.

Gareth tapped me on the shoulder.

“Darling,” he said, giving me a kiss on the cheek.

He is a kind man. His T-shirt smelled like Tide.

“So, I’ve a friend in town from Stuttgart and he got tickets to opening night of
Dream
,” Gareth explained. “But I want to see your Titania too. So I’ll come back.”

“Oh!” I said. “Oh, gosh. You don’t have to. I mean, it’s no big deal, really.”

“This is your season,” Gareth said.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Well, by default, maybe.”

Gareth put his hands around my throat and pantomimed strangling me.

“I got standing room for
Look At Me
. You broke my heart. And
Leaves
the other night? I’ve never seen you give more onstage.”

Gareth looked at me expectantly. What would Kate say? Oh, yes.

“You should have been there opening night,” Kate jokes to Gareth. “I think I actually gave birth.”

“That’s my girl.” Gareth laughs. “Diffidence does not become you, darling. You’re not going to turn into one of these head-case dancers, are you? That would be too tragic.”

“Not me,” I said, as if in horror. Tragic? I don’t get to be tragic.

Gareth nodded. Over his shoulder I saw Klaus and Maya entering class, and, right behind them, David, who spotted me and pointed to the space at the barre next to mine, claiming it.

“See, we’re all needing your class today,” I told Gareth.

“Only by default,” he mocked, over his shoulder. “People must have overslept Wendell’s class.”

A few more members of the company filed in. Rochelle, Gillian, Tyler. People probably had slept in.

Except for me. I just couldn’t get out of bed. Mostly because I was repeating the phrase “I can’t get out of bed” over and over. This is pretty much how I’ve been doing everything for the past week. First I say, “I can’t do this class/rehearsal/performance,” over and over until it’s time to do it and then I somehow do it. A second performance of
Leaves
. A second performance of
Look At Me
. I didn’t think I could do them until I was onstage, and then they were over too quickly.

Before I left Wendy’s apartment, I gave Karine my cell phone number and asked her to call me, anytime, if there was any news. Yesterday she called to tell me that Wendy was in the hospital, but should only be there for a day or two. She suggested that I visit once Wendy is back home. There was not, she told me, so very much time.

“Is she in pain?” I asked.

“I can give her morphine for this pain,” Karine said. “I tell her that she does not have to be strong, now. She must be easy.”

“What about her family?” Wendy has a sister, she has nieces and nephews. She has a couple of cousins.

Karine sighed.

“They are asking her if they should come, but of course she says no. She does not want to trouble nobody. This is how it is, for some people. But her friend, from Greece, she does not ask. She just comes. She will be here tomorrow. I will call you. Maybe Friday? This is the time to just come. Not to ask.”