to doâthe big companies they only want paper dolls who have never had a period in their livesâam I right, Louise?â
She rolled her eyesâanother of her big assetsâbrown and dark, arched eyebrows. She was the kind of woman that made you say, If only I were straight ⦠âYou see? We do need another male.â
âWe need a good male.â Bertrand slammed his hand on the table.
ââeâs jealous.â
âOf whom?â
âYouâre jealous of Jean-Marc, Madameâs pet,â she shouted back at him, as if jealous of his jealousy. She turned to me. âMadame would do anything for Jean-Marc.â
Jean-Marc, the other male dancer, was their bone of contention. Bertrand obsessed about Jean-Marc. And Louise was miffed by Bertrandâs obsession.
âWe need another male for our New York tour.â
âNew York?â Music to my ears. Daniel would see.
Madame brought the rest of her little company to Montreal to see Le Ballet Naçional de Cuba at Place des Arts. The hall was filled with Montreal dancers from the Conservatoire, Eddie Toussaint, Les Ballets Jazz and any students who could afford it. I shared the row with Bertrand, Louise, Madame and the Quebec dancers. We waited for Alicia Alonso, the blind legend, to perform with lean, brown-skinned men who swirled around her, doubling as seeing-eye dogs. I closed my eyes, pretending to be meditating. Instead saw my young self in the audience one snowy Edmonton night.
Big old carsâCadillacs, Impalas, Buicksâskid toward a downtown theatre. There I am, peering over the windowâs ledge into a continuous stream of snowflakes flying by the car. Bored voices from the front seat drop in and out of my little window-world, blankly telling me I am on my way to see something great, that I would probably never see again.
Ballet.
Itâs your father, (she calls him) who said, âI donât know why we had to bring him along, he wonât remember.â
Your mother, (he calls her) said, âItâs easier than getting a sitter.â
Bringing me along turned unlucky for him. I could have clung to her but, no, I hung on his jacket sleeves, and the curses he muttered under his breath. The theatre was velvety and everything swirled upward. The seats were soft enough to fart silently, unlike the harsh wood pews at Bellamy Baptist. In that world of gilt and gold and plush fabric, the smells were thick, too. A womanâs powdery perfume drifted down her Dippity-do waves of hair, tumbling over the fur collar spread across the seatback, suffocating me, my throat collapsing involuntarily. And as the fur collar inched toward my little flannelled knees, I wondered if I would ever be a grown-up.
âDonât touch,â Father scolded.
âLet him touch it, heâs not bothering anybody. Besides,â she whispered loudly, âitâs only muskrat.â
They never found out about the sticky mint I glued under that muskrat collar, in the dark, or the giant gumdrop I stuck to the back of some womanâs ermine resting on the radiator. But that was when I didnât appreciate the price of fur.
People laugh and whisper, lips touch ears, heads tip toward me with that isnât-he-cute nod and wink, until the sounds fade with the lights and the heavy blood red curtains obey the jab of the conductorâs baton and magically fold toward the corners of the proscenium.
And who gave a damn about the dancing back then? Anyone could do itâtwirls and twiddles. I was more interested in the ballerinas looking like they had been dipped in icing sugar, and the feathers on their costumes that tickled the menâs noses and clung to their sweaty foreheads when they all danced together. I wished, in that silent world, that someone would sneeze. But real swans were much more graceful, I told mother, and they had longer necks, and didnât clomp on tippytoe.
All those cotton candy
Dick;Felix Francis Francis