Free The Art of Falling by Kathryn Craft Page A

endorse my mother’s nutritional sensibilities. I’d rejected her practices in my teens, knowing they would destroy my health and career options. It was Bebe who taught me how to optimize nutrition within minimal calorie guidelines, and Bebe who introduced me to that slight euphoria that undereating, just a little, could produce—and I loved her for it. By taking me from this home of excesses and into her studio and its apartment, where austerity was a way of life as well as a diet, I could create the body I sought. She made me believe that with religious adherence to the right program of exercise and nutrition, I could capitalize on my father’s half of my gene pool and fend off obesity.
    Despite the crumbs on his shirt, Kandelbaum and Angela did look cute sitting across the coffee table from me, their cheeks rosy from the March cold and eyes twinkling like snowflakes in a streetlight. From a cold ladder-back, I watched as their arms and hips touched in a comfortable familiarity that full-body pain, if not life itself, seemed determined to deny me.
    Angela said, “Would you play for us, Mrs. Sparrow?”
    “I haven’t played much since Penny left home…”
    “Please?” Angela said.
    “I’m really rusty.”
    “Go ahead, Mom,” I said. “It would be nice.”
    She played one song, then another, then another, her fingers loosening and finding their way. Through grace notes, arpeggios, and thunderous chords, the spirit of music moved through us, reminding me of a time when camaraderie and human touch were part of my daily existence.
    • • •
    The music ended, and the debut of Dance DeLaval was behind us. Applause still reverberated through our bodies. The six of us awaited the early morning review in the Philadelphia Sentinel while piled on Dmitri’s couches at his Independence Suites apartment. My hands, Mitch’s head, Karly’s feet, Tina’s torso—these body parts were the instruments with which we had built the performance, and we valued them in a spirit of joint ownership. We fell asleep against one another, stage makeup still on, well before the Sentinel ’s review hit the stands.
    The next morning, Dmitri ran out to get the paper while the rest of us took turns in the shower. Lars cooked breakfast; Dmitri scanned the review. The others ate ravenously. I dissected my eggs, whisking the yolks away and laying the whites on top of dry toast, taking small bites to make it last. I listened for the critic’s judgment with keen interest. It had been two months since I joined the company, and I still hadn’t worked up the nerve to tell my mother. She wanted my success so badly—I couldn’t let her down again. And I couldn’t bear to hear her say I’d made the wrong decision in casting my fate with the untried Dance DeLaval.
    Dmitri tried to read aloud to us, but his English was so choppy Karly yanked the paper from his hands and took over.
    “First of all, Dmitri, you have to start with the headline. ‘Dance DeLaval refreshing addition to Philly dance scene.’ How about that?”
    We whooped and clapped.
    “Get on with it,” Lars said. His Scandinavian lilt always sounded boozy, even when he was sober.
    “Okay, here we go: ‘In a city the size of Philadelphia, dance companies come and go with some regularity. Making predictions about such a changeable scene can be foolish. But I will venture a guess that when Dance DeLaval leaves Philadelphia at the end of its three-year residency at the University of the Arts, our audiences will not want to see the company go.’”
    “You can’t ask for much better,” Tina said.
    Karly scanned down the page. “Then she goes on to give Dmitri’s background…looks like it’s straight from the program notes…then it jumps to an inside page.”
    “Just read the underlined parts. The good stuff,” Dmitri said.
    Karly opened the paper and refolded it to the right spot. “I can’t believe it—you did underline, you control freak.”
    “This is how you do