CHARLEY – 2007
How it worked: we were bait. We wore platform heels. We had our hair down. We were high from performing, and some of us wanted wine and some of us coke and some a bucket of ice water for our calves. What we didn’t want was dinner
on steaming platters beneath heat lamps behind the curtain marked Staff, though we did want éclairs, profiteroles, opera cake, anything from the dessert trays put out for the patrons with coffee and
brandy. Sugar we loved. Ballerinas are sugar fiends.
We weren’t exactly ballerinas. I should make that clear. We weren’t ballet dancers, though all of us had that cool hum of robot technique drilled into us, the requisite childhood classes at the suburban school, the teenage years of renunciation, the trouble with food. The calamity of puberty experienced chiefly as a betrayal of physics. Oh yes, we’d all been with that cold mistress, ballet, and some of us even still went to class, there was that love of ritual in us, the comfort of barre and obedience, but we were feminists, too; we made fun of bunheads with their duck walks, their love of “beauty,” their tragic lack of irony.
We were the ones who didn’t fit in, who grew too tall, who got hips and breasts; we were never going to make it. We had big bones, we couldn’t do triple pirouettes, we had good but not great extension, great but not perfect arches, torsos a little too long, heads a little too big. We rolled on the floor instead. We studied Graham and Cunningham technique. We took barre on our backs. We learned to share our weight. We learned it was good to have weight. We read the history of Judson Church and St. Mark’s. We sat in dark rooms studying grainy footage of Trisha Brown walking up walls. We sat in Union Square watching boys breaking, ladies with pigeons, chess players setting up their boards. We got it all in our bodies. We said “movement qua movement” a lot. We introduced our bodies to our brains.
That night I remember thinking that when I couldn’t dance anymore, I’d probably die. I was standing nearly six feet in my red jumpsuit and pale platform sandals, sipping a glass of silky cab, humming Look at me, Look at me while I drank up the milky softness of a woman’s bare back. There’s nothing like skin, there’s nothing like bodies, and there’s nothing like money.
Money people do like dancers, but dancers don’t like money. We didn’t know enough about it, we weren’t responsible for it. We were around it all the time, true, but we didn’t ask for it. That was admin, management, fundraising: that was what we’d do when our bodies gave out. For now, we were bait. An event like this, meet the dancers, mingle with the dancers, was designed to make it rain. Everywhere, I got eyeballed. Go ahead and look, I thought: go ahead and admit we are the jouissance, the it, the X around which everyone circles.
The women came in two costumes: leather pants, big blazers, red eyeglasses, broad shoulders and spiky white hair (these were the professors, the intellectuals, the critics) or tulle gowns, brocade jackets, black satin, sculpted cheeks and frozen brows (the donors, the housewives, the—God help us—former dancers themselves). The husbands made tentative eye contact, shy as prom dates; the queer men kissed my cheek and giggled. They were in on the joke, they knew this was a trashy hysterical carnival, and I giggled back, a little hysterical, too.
A man at my elbow. His dark shape, silent. Did he want to talk to me? The column of his body was motionless. Soon I became flustered.
He looked like somebody I was supposed to mingle with; he looked like a somebody, I knew I knew him from somewhere, but I couldn’t place him, and that flustered me further. I should have been enjoying this moment: people kept coming up to shake my hand and tell me they loved me, they loved my dancing, they thought I was great, and still he lingered, hanging at my vision’s edge. Urgency became annoyance. If this man, this somebody, wanted to talk, he should be more aggressive.
Finally, in a lull, I turned. Black curls, blue eyes. Some hint of Russia, pogroms, a historical melancholy as subtle and pervasive as perfume. Massively tall, but standing with the economy of a dancer.
I bet no one has thought to feed you. Pardon?
I’m told I can be frosty, which I regret, but I need a defense against the hundreds of men who hear dancer and sidle up.
No one has thought to feed you.
From his sulky confidence I guessed he had been with many women. Out came his paw, an old-fashioned gesture. Old fashioned, too, how he said his name, and it rang a distant bell. A patron. Something about family money. Real estate? A lightness turned his sentences airy like clouds. Yet though the party roared around us, I could hear him perfectly.
I’m going to get you a plate.
God help me, I blushed. Coolly, he watched. Then he drained his champagne flute, plunked it on a passing server’s tray, and disappeared.
———————————
That night the dancing began the way it begins everywhere: with one guy determinedly bobbing, and a pair of giggling girls grasping each other’s hands. The explorers, the cosmonauts. It worked: people drifted onto the floor. The married Afro-Futurists took over the playlist. The music got turned up, and turned up again, too loud for talking, too loud for shouting, too loud for dessert. Everyone packed in, and soon the crowd was a sweaty heave of grinding.
After some minutes, or maybe an hour—time was funny by then—I sensed behind me the man. He smelled like soil after rain. For half a song we touched, my back shivering against his chest. Then I spun and shouted, Where’s the food? You said food. Nodding, he melted into the crowd.
For a while I danced with Simon and then Inez in her black tulip dress entered the fray, and as everyone pulled back to grant the director her space, I found myself beside the man again. The great bear. My arm brushed his.
I’m going to go. He enunciated every word. Would you like to walk me out?
When I nodded yes, he slipped to the door, not looking back. I got it: discretion. The dance world is small. No goodbyes, then. Three minutes later I followed.
He was waiting for me around the corner, and when he saw me, he put his hands in his pockets and started walking west.
I liked you right away, he said, speaking from the side of his mouth.
A girl who knows how to eat up space. A girl as tall as a man.
Stepping into the street, he raised his hand. A cab was already curving toward us. He took both my hands. Enjoy the rest of the party.
What the—?
By now the taxi had swerved over, and he was holding open the door. Oh, are you leaving, too? Please, take the cab.
We’re not—you dragged me out of the party to say goodbye?
He looked concerned, his face soft like dough. I wanted to talk to you.
What the fuck. You think I left the party to make small talk with a stranger?
I was landing solos, accepting tours, turning away choreographers who came begging. I was hot shit, and I didn’t need this ponderous artsy man with his old-fashioned ideas about chivalry. Don’t put me in a fucking cab, I told him. Not after that dancing.
Charley. The first time he said my name. I was going to sleep with you, you idiot.
The clatter clop of my heels was music on the cement. Power surged from my cunt to my heart. Fool, I told myself, clop clopping down the sidewalk. Fucking fool. I was grinning. I was going to eat him alive.
TESS – 2013
Lenny’s Place: a dingy square with a drop ceiling, low fluorescents, and a dance floor. The best bar on the island. The only bar on the island. When we arrived, Lenny was pouring doubles like a dream and the room shook with shouting and eighties rock, the clack and spatter of pool balls. Sophie and I ordered the house white and posted up in a booth. Damn, she said, surveying some bridesmaids and fishermen, the guys in red chinos and ladies in floral. Damn, this is how you grew up? I hadn’t wanted to come. I had wanted to stay home, work late, finish chapter nine. But then Sophie appeared on the afternoon ferry—she’d always thought it was exotic I was raised on an island and threatened to come see it—and after I grilled burgers and we sat on the porch spitting watermelon seeds, after we reminisced about SUNY and filled each other in on our love lives (hers, Byzantine; mine, nonexistent), she’d said, But what do people do here? They’ve got to do something after dark.
It was the summer Mom left. Took the truck, no warning, no note. I had moved back to Cup, though for my dad’s sake I pretended it was to finish my novel, not keep an eye on him. Summer meant summer people, and so Dad was pretty busy, anyway. Every morning he set off, grooved deep into himself, ladder rattling atop the van, and every night he’d come home, drink three beers, and never say her name.
I did want to finish my novel. That wasn’t a complete lie. In the fall, I’d begin a job at a university press, but in my mind, it was provisional; I hoped that before October I’d finish my book, that by New Year’s I’d sell it and launch myself into something like literary stardom. I was antsy. On the precipice of thirty-five, I felt the tightening of life’s possibilities. Nothing constricted me yet, but I was aware, as a horse must be aware, of the bit in my mouth, that soon I would be pulled up short before my own dreams. So I worked. I wrote and went to bed early, but just this once, I let Cup Island cast its summer spell; I told myself I was making good progress and followed Sophie into the black soft night.
Now the bar roared around us. The fishermen were going out again at dawn. The bridesmaids were drinking margaritas from a mix. The regatta was next week. That modernist dump had finally sold. And there, in the corner, was Johnny Fitcher. Son of the richest man on Cup. Apparently, the dancer he’d married had run away.
He held his Stella loosely by the neck, as if he might drop it. Even from across the room I spotted a stain on his sweater.
You see that guy? I nodded with my chin. He lives in the biggest house on the island. My father takes care of it.
Looks like a real prick. Sophie’s breath was cheap chardonnay in my face.
He’s just sad. His wife joined a convent. Shut the fuck up.
Won’t talk to anybody. Vow of silence, the whole deal. Sophie snorted. Get thee to a nunnery, huh? Oh, shit.
For he was lumbering in our direction. We both braced, but he heaved past—his grief a sack he was humping across the bar—and began talking to Duke.
Sophie, seeing me look, pulled me toward the dance floor.
Lenny had suffered a lot of ridicule when he had installed the sunken pit, but it turned out summer people liked to dance. That night, he had put on Prince, and the bridesmaids and fishermen were packed in, everyone grinding and pumping their arms, bathed in cheap colored lights.
Around this pit there was a railing, where the men too dignified to dance gathered. Leaning on the wood, they told jokes and did shots and pretended they weren’t looking at the women. Now, as Sophie and I bobbed around each other, swinging our shoulders, I kept glancing their way. Men for whom my father had worked, men restless with sickly sweet smiles. They sucked their beers and touched their jeans and pretended they didn’t recognize me, the handyman’s daughter, all grown up. Off the island, men didn’t notice me. Here they stared, and I liked it.
Sophie went to get more drinks. She’d been gone awhile when I sensed behind me a great animal warmth. Johnny. For half a song we swayed, his chest grazing my shoulder blades. Had he been among the men watching? Soon his hand was at my waist, gently turning me. Back when we were teenagers, the summer kids collected us like trophies. Our parties, our bonfires, our bodies: they all gave them cred. Sidling up, they would dangle access to their parents’ liquor cabinet, bring back baggies from the city, ask us if we wanted to party. Except Johnny. A few years older, he lurked in corners, left early, wanted nothing to do with us townies. Most found him stuck up, but I had respected his remove.
Now, when he asked me to step outside for a smoke, I said yes. For a while we stood in a lick of ocean breeze, talking softly about the past, our childhoods, the best coves and secret beaches, which homes were never locked.
You were so quiet, he said. The shy one. I blushed. The dorky one.
No! I always thought you should have talked more. Whenever you did open your mouth, you surprised me.
He looked right at me.
You were obviously the smartest one in the group. But you didn’t trust yourself. And you still don’t. Even tonight, your friend had to pull you out to the dance floor.
He smelled faintly of dirt, his teeth were stained yellow. I don’t like dancing.
Sure you do.
His blue-chip eyes found mine. Scorching.
Tess. You’re much prettier than you realize. You know that, right?
———————————
Standing there beneath the inky island sky, he brought out his bruised and battered heart. Over and over again he said her name. He talked about her casually (Charley claimed she’d been shy once, too), scornfully (She never seemed religious), sadly (We spent our first summer here). She was a wound he worried.
Not that he was in love with her. Not exactly. He more gave the impression of damage. Guilt. Self-recrimination. Stunned by the disaster his marriage had become.
I was dumb enough to find this romantic.
———————————
Tangled in his sheets the next morning, I asked when he had known he would lose her. Already she felt like a project between us. A puzzle to solve.
Oh God, as soon as we met? She was crazy. Totally brilliant, but crazy. She was really unwell.
Sick?
He shook his head as if trying to clear some bad vision from his brain. I blame dance. That extreme discipline. She did everything to the max. No moderation. The night we met, she followed me out of this gala. Did I tell you that? Starting screaming at me in the street. Yelling, because I wouldn’t take her home. Nuts.
His chest resonated against my ear as he rumbled. I tried to picture the dancer standing in the street, her slender arm in a sleeveless gown, her scrunched, yelling face.
She must have wanted you bad. Is that what you think?
Oh, I have no idea. I laughed uneasily. I don’t even know her. (Though I had seen her once, that first summer after they wed, tall and lean at the farmer’s market, with freckles on her shoulders.)
But you’ve been listening to me. You’re a writer, use your imagination. What do you think happened?
All at once I regretted telling him about the novel.
Well. I knotted the comforter in my hand. It’s hard to believe she would quit. She was a star, right? She was good.
Yeah, she was good, she was really good. She did get injured, I guess, but she could have gotten over that. Instead, she left. It was so abrupt. All at once I thought of my mother. Putting up with my father’s smoking and drinking, talking about how nice the garden looked, the roses were really blooming this year. Ready with a kind word for everyone, while inside the most essential parts of her were folding up.
We had never even guessed it.
Were there any clues? I said. Tell me anything you noticed.
She went away . . . she said she needed time to think. Then suddenly she wouldn’t talk to me. She returned my letters unopened. There’s no cell service, no internet at the convent. I went and got turned away. You can’t imagine how painful that was. Do you know she annulled our marriage? It’s like it never happened.
But do you know why?
He bit his lip, and the skin beneath his beard turned vegetal white. She must have finally realized how disgusting I am.
We had been passing Charley between us like a water balloon, soft and heavy and cold, sinking in our thumbs, watching the latex go tight. But now the balloon had burst. I ran my index over the pale veiny bulge of his bicep and tried to be kind.
You know, if someone thinks they’ve found all the answers to life, it’s hard to tell them otherwise.
GINA – 2018
He had been with many women. I knew that from the beginning. A cellist, a painter, a poet. All promising young artists—always artists, though he did not make art himself, nothing except some photography on the side. I didn’t mind. I didn’t even care about his ex-wife, who had been a fabulous dancer, truly gifted, but who had gone crazy and become a nun. Only Tess gave me pause. Even though she was old, almost as old as him, and even though he had made it clear they hadn’t slept together in a long time. They were friends. She had been with him on his island, and she made him laugh. She liked to touch him. And when she spoke, he got very still.
Plus there was something else. He told me she’d once wanted to be a writer. Knowing that she had abandoned her dream made me uncomfortable around her. Her cutting mouth, her stiff smile and brittle shoulders, all screamed unhappiness. Oh, we have to do this again sometime, she had exclaimed, that first, awkward time we met.
But she was a terrible writer, Johnny said later. Really. You don’t need to feel bad for her. It was a relief to everyone when she quit.
That sounds mean.
But it’s not! Do you know how well-regarded she is in publishing? Everyone wants to work with her. Her books win so many awards.
We were naked when he told me this, our legs entangled beneath the sheets, his dick cool against my hip. He slipped a hand between my legs.
She’s great, he murmured. I just wasn’t attracted to her. Not like you. Oh, not like you.
His fingers, smooth and sure, parting me. The wave of sensations like a TV going funny, the static rolling up.
I love watching your face when I do this. You get so soft and open.
I could do anything to you. Anything.
———————————
We had met at a cast party. He came right over to me on the dance floor and held out his mitt, looking like a big sloppy bear who’d stolen human clothes. But I recognized him, too, as one of the donors who flitted through our grubby downtown scene, vaguely “involved,” but without the deforming ambition that marked the rest of us. A funder, but one who hadn’t been around lately. Maybe he’d been traveling.
We danced together. He was good. When he asked me to step out for a cigarette I said yes, and that’s when he told me he’d been in the audience that night. You were fantastic, he said, ashing the sidewalk. I mean you were the best thing on that stage.
Partygoers slipped past, clocking us together. I knew that should worry me. But a magical cool balm was anointing my forehead, a thrill indistinguishable from terror was rising from my gut. Putting my head on his shoulder, I sighed.
———————————
After that, we were together all the time. He took me to wine bars and bistros and trattorias with seventeen kinds of amaro. Always when the bill arrived, he clunked down his card and nudged the tray away as if it were a nuisance. I admired that.
He admired me. No, he was enchanted with me. He would run his fingers along my arm and tell me my face held a thousand feelings up there on the stage. No one had ever talked to me like that before. He came every night to the full run of my show, and when it was over, he started pushing me to audition for bigger things.
I agreed, went out for a few commercials, even flew to LA for pilot season. But when he sent me a notice that Sjoerd Van Arsdale was reviving Angels in America, I told him no. For Harper? I said. No way. It’s not my kind of show. It’s not my kind of role.
He bit his fist. You drive me crazy, you know that? Johnny, I can’t.
Gina. You’re going.
During sex he often issued commands. Don’t move, he would say, or, Put your leg there. He spoke firmly. He did it at restaurants, too: No, the salad’s not good here. Get the asparagus. Don’t order the chicken.
Now I said, Why are you always bossing me around? He laughed. I’m not bossing. I just know what’s best. Oh, really? I put my hands on my hips.
Yes, really. I know.
We were both laughing, and I guess it was funny. I guess I’m glad he was self-aware.
———————————
Sjoerd was famous for stripping masterpieces bare. Like Matisse with his scissors, he liberated from sprawling classics lean curved shapes. Critics used the words essence, distilled, crystalized. They said things like: Now we can see the play as it truly is. Rumors were this production would head right to Broadway, and the audition room was packed. I almost turned around, but Johnny really had insisted, even buying me a green dress specifically for this day, and somehow, somehow, four callbacks later, I was cast as the Valium-addicted housewife whose misery is the inevitable cost of her husband’s liberation.
Oh my God oh my God, Johnny hummed when I told him and hugged me hard. What did I tell you?
I was laughing, wriggling, dizzy with good luck.
I knew it the moment I saw you. You’re a Harper. You’re going to kill. Let’s go out tonight, we have to celebrate. Let’s go to the opera.
I’d been hoping he would take me to a fabulous restaurant. But the thing about him paying for everything was that it made it hard to say no.
Which opera?
Oh my God, does it even matter to you? Oh—for I must have looked hurt—I’m teasing you, sweetheart. It’s La Traviata. Let’s go. I already have the tickets.
You already have—
They’re season tickets. Come on. Charley and I used to go.
———————————
By then he had told me more about her. He had described her injury, the uneven recovery, the suggestion that she take time off. The flight to Paris, Rome, Madrid; the growing obsession with cathedrals, incense, Mass; the six-week retreats to convents, the increasingly plain clothes. And then—abrupt renunciation.
For a long time I blamed her, he said. I told everyone she was crazy, too extreme. And she was. But recently I’ve been doing some self-reflecting. I can see how my actions might have contributed to the situation.
He spoke in a halting way, though usually he did not hesitate when he spoke.
Like what? What did you do?
I said things I shouldn’t have said.
We were on the couch, and I tucked up my legs so I was kneeling before him. Like what?
He smiled sadly. Oh, babe. Another time, maybe.
———————————
After that, I spent hours clicking through old photographs and reviews. There she was, covered in mud, crawling across the stage. Or here, in a pale lilac tunic, leg swept back in arabesque. After a premiere, giving an interview; or laughing at a reception, Johnny’s arm around her. On and on I scrolled.
———————————
I don’t come from money. Half my life I’ve felt like a fake. Walking into the opera house that night, my fingers ached to press the red plush, my eyes were dazzled by the chandelier. We sat in something called the Grand Tier, beside a woman dripping with jewels, and I could have lingered all night in that glorious music, with those twirling sets, but, gathering up his coat, Johnny said he didn’t want to stay for the third act, he couldn’t stand to see Violetta die. I want to pretend their happiness goes on and on, he said.
Outside, the courtyard looked barren, its fountain frothing low. That red plush was still inside me, hectic as blood; I was still thinking about the crystal chandelier, the ceiling of dull gold, the double spiral stair.
Ahead of me, Johnny weaved around a puddle, shoulders hunched. Hey, I called. Hey, wait for me.
———————————
Later. Opening my legs like butterfly wings.
Stay like that.
Hand at my throat. Then, over me, feeding himself into me. I tried not to gag.
Oh God that’s hot.
I couldn’t speak, my mouth was full of him. Oh God I need a picture of that.
I squirmed free, I closed my mouth, I pushed him away. He blinked.
We stared at each other in a wide-open way.
Can I take a picture of you sometime?
My skin went hot. No. No, I don’t think so.
Carefully he traced my eyebrow with his thumb. You’re pretty, he told me. You’re one of the pretty ones.
He got out his cell phone. Stay like that, he repeated. My head felt big and light, as if it were an overinflated balloon. Good, he said. Good. The big light feeling was not unpleasant. My will had drained away, the same as water after you take the stopper out of a tub: it had all drained out, and I was left, big and white and gleaming. The novelty of the sensation arrested me.
His eyes over the phone were narrowed, intent, but then they rose to meet mine, daring me to object. And—still with him in my mouth—I hummed.
———————————
Rehearsals began, and almost at once they were difficult. At the front of the room Sjoerd stood, severed script in hand, and urged us on. More, he would say. More, bigger. Bigger. Let me see the words on your body.
But I couldn’t do what he wanted. Weird jags of panic kept creeping into my voice. No, he would say. No, again. Again.
In his wisdom he had distilled my big scene down from seventy-eight lines to fourteen, plus a blowjob. Some joke about Europeans and oral sex would be appropriate here, but after the thing with Johnny I had apparently lost my sense of humor.
I heard on the radio—
My voice chirpy. The wife, the dumb wife. And the boy: You really shouldn’t listen to stuff like that.
The actor playing opposite me had a wet, squishy face. Not unhandsome, just unfinished. Soft jaw.
Mormons can give blowjobs.
Ah, good, good. Gina, a little, let us say, more sexual? ventured Sjoerd.
Oh my God, you look so good on your knees, Johnny had said. Oh my God, let me take a picture of that.
This is a good time. For me to make a baby. Now I lowered my voice, giving it a dip like the sway of a woman’s hips. You want to try?
Okay, okay, Sjoerd said. She has been home all day thinking about this. So. A little more—he popped his dry lips—seduction. Again, please?
———————————
At the end of the second week Johnny appeared at the door. Rehearsals were closed, he shouldn’t have been there, but no one stopped him. Johnny’s money had a way of making itself known even when he wasn’t spending it; it was something he wore, like his boots or his beard. He settled in a chair by the door and motioned for everyone to continue.
We could try, Joe. I heard on the radio—
Sjoerd could have been kind that day. He might have treated me nicely in Johnny’s presence, he must have known about us. But the interruption, the assumption embedded in it, angered him. I found out later that Johnny had funded a very early show of Sjoerd’s, back before he got famous, and then abruptly pulled the grant.
Maybe she gets down on her knees, Sjoerd said. What?
I could hear the youth in my voice, I could see all the men watching me, and the one other woman, the stage manager, in the corner with her arms crossed.
Try it on your knees.
Everyone watched as awkwardly I bent, first one knee and then the other, wobbling a little.
We could try, Joe. I heard—
Sjoerd had a tube of chapstick in his front pocket, and when things were not going well he would take it out and smear it sloppily all over his lips and skin, as if painting a clown face over his usual face. Again, he said. Again. From the beginning.
You never go out in the world, Harper, and you have emotional problems.
I rummaged around in myself for that feeling, thinking, Harper with her emotional problems, Gina with her emotional problems, Gina so bothersome and trying to be good and make you feel good and—
This is a good time. For me to make a baby.
No. Out came the chapstick, around and around, a cartoon mouth.
Again, please. Let me see it again.
———————————
Later we fought. Not Sjoerd and me, Johnny and me. We fought over dinner and we fought afterward, on the street. Maybe it was my fault. I asked him what he had thought of rehearsal, hoping he’d call Sjoerd an ass, a butcher and a bully, but instead he sighed heavily and said, I don’t know, Gina. Maybe you’re not that sexual of a person.
Seven years later and I’m still hearing those words.
I used to think you were sensual. I used to think you knew how to let go, but watching you today, I realized, She doesn’t have it in her. She doesn’t have access to it. When you act, you’re imitating. You’re gesturing, you’re not feeling.
We were at dinner, some place fancy and French, and when I started shaking the server discreetly withdrew.
Then Johnny got into it. I was lazy, I was not trying, I was afraid to bring my full self, my sexual self, which he had seen, into the rehearsal studio, and what kind of actress was that? Really, what kind of actress did I want to be? Rather than argue I pleaded, I asked for advice, I tried to shake loose from him that faith he had had in me, but this begging only made him angrier, and after he had signed the check, he said, I don’t know. Maybe I wasn’t ever that attracted to you.
That squeezed my heart so hard I could have bawled. Right there on the white linen I might have lowered my head and wept. But instead,
I followed him into the street. When I finally caught up to him, he whirled around, and the strangest look came over his face. Sort of shellacked with horror, smooth with astonishment. I turned. Following his gaze, I saw, rushing toward us in a shabby, slate-blue peacoat and a hummus-colored hat, the ex-wife, the dancer. Charley.
Without a word Johnny tucked me under his arm and yanked me across the street. Down the next block we hurried while she came after us like an angry ghost. Oh my God, I panted.
Oh God, Johnny agreed.
We crossed Broadway, barely making the light. I looked back. Behind us, she was wading into traffic. Horns blared. Johnny took off again. What is happening? I panted. Johnny, slow down, why are we—
Right, right.
We slowed and then stopped. As she approached, Charley’s face resolved itself, like a developing photograph, into Charley’s younger, imperfect double. Some college kid, a little gawky, with freckles on her face. Not Charley at all.
Johnny! she said. Johnny. I thought it was you. I can’t believe you’re back.
Frances. Johnny loosened his arm from around my shoulder. Yes, I’m back. I’ve been back about six months now.
They locked eyes. How do you two know each other? I asked loudly. Frances is Charley’s sister.
Ohhh.
A sister. Of course. But the shock of thinking that this girl was Charley—a mistake that seemed more ridiculous the longer I looked at this shabby younger version of the dancer from the photographs—had left me shaken. I really had thought it was Charley. So quickly, so readily, I had believed Johnny had lied about everything: the convent, the disappearance.
We should really get together, this girl—Frances—was saying. She was staring up at Johnny so hopefully, but panicked, too, as if she thought he might dissolve in thin air. It’s been forever. Actually, I wrote you an email, I don’t know if you saw. You never answered it.
Johnny rubbed his sleeve. That would be great. I’m really busy these days, but—
But let’s do it! It’s been so long. There’s so much to catch up on! I want to hear about your time away.
Such naked need in her voice! I averted my eyes. No, this wasn’t Charley, back from the nunnery; this was her kid sister, clearly heartbroken, desperate to understand. Even from inside her shapeless coat I could see her frantic, shallow breaths. In everything he had told me about his marriage, there had been nothing about this trembling younger sister, or her confusion, or grief. He had erased her from his story. He had deleted her from his inbox; he had tried his best to ignore her on the street. It was outrageous.
Frances said something about this Wednesday, and Johnny hedged. I slipped my arm through his. You could make it, I told him. You should go.
I don’t know if—
You should go, I repeated. She’s practically family.
Perfect, Frances cried. So it’s perfect. Five o’clock. Let’s plan on it. Through gritted teeth Johnny hissed, I’ll look forward to it.
———————————
At his place he exploded at me. What the fuck was that for?
We had walked back in icy silence, sealed in our separate thoughts, and came into his apartment still avoiding each other. As usual, he made us both drinks; from the kitchen came the tap-tap of the long spoon. Then he was giving me my glass and sinking down on the sofa with a big sigh, and I was thinking that maybe I had gotten away with it, when he snarled.
I stretched out my legs. Oh, go. What’s the big deal? The poor girl obviously misses her sister. She just wants to talk to you.
When he didn’t say anything, I chuckled, though my heart was pounding. Do you know what I thought when I saw her barreling toward us on the street? I thought it was Charley. Your beautiful ballerina, the holy nun. Escaped from the convent. Really, Johnny, I thought that.
It’s not funny.
Oh, but it is, you know.
Why was I needling him? With one foot I nudged his thigh. There are certain things you don’t know about that time.
Oh, yes. I put my glass down on the floor. Clearly there are things I don’t know about that time. Tonight made that abundantly clear. Like: Why is this girl chasing you down the street? Why has she sent you emails to which you’ve never replied? She was looking at you so desperately, like you held all the answers. And so I’m thinking: Answers to what? What really happened between you and Charley?
Gina, tonight was very dangerous for me. I raised an eyebrow.
There are so many things you don’t understand. Charley’s family never liked me. Especially that girl, the sister. He flicked some condensation from his glass. She was always unpleasant to me. So anxious and judgmental. But whatever. I never felt like any of them liked me, and after what happened, they blamed me completely. Especially the sister. Oh my God, there were days when I thought they were going to sue me.
That’s ridiculous. For what?
Well, exactly. But those first few years, they were sniffing around, looking for proof that I, I don’t know, abused her or something. Which is why it’s so dangerous for me to talk to Frances.
He looked at me over the edge of his glass.
What do I know why she’s chasing me down on the street? You saw her, she’s unhinged. Maybe her folks sent her. Maybe they still want to haul me into court.
I’m sorry, I said, subdued. I didn’t realize that. But they’re not going to sue you now. It’s been, like, six years.
He shook his head. When you have a lot of money you learn to be careful. People are always trying to get their hands on it.
Right. I guess I don’t know anything about that. But I am sorry.
I reached down to pick up my glass, and my left ankle, swinging in counterbalance, somehow struck his drink, sending it spilling across the hardwood floor, cherry, booze, and ice.
Goddamnit, Gina.
As we were both on our knees cleaning up, I said, Can I ask you something? Why did Tess stop writing?
He sat back on his heels. What made you think of that? Or when? When did she stop writing?
He shrugged. I don’t know. Toward the end of our relationship? She couldn’t get an agent. I convinced her to try editing. There’s not really much of a story there.
Johnny. I grabbed his hand. What do you do to women? I mean, seriously, what do you do?
His face slackened with sadness. The flat blackness of city night pushed against the windows. Somewhere, a horn honked.
Carefully he slipped his fingers free.
Don’t you know? he said. I’ve already started doing it to you.
———————————
We broke up the next morning. It was an awful row. He punched the wall and everything. But when I finally escaped into the bright cold street, with the trees shrunken and hard, what I felt was relief.
———————————
A week later, Sjoerd replaced me in the cast. He was kind and gentle, talking to me after rehearsal; he made it sound like a shortcoming of his. When at last I understood what was happening, I got down on my knees and begged. I thought he would appreciate the joke. But he was firm. I was now a swing. I did get to go on a few times during the run, but my performance wasn’t reviewed anywhere, it did nothing for me. That was the year I started to drift away from acting. There didn’t seem to be much point. I was getting older, it wasn’t going to happen for me.
Or maybe I was afraid I’d never get cast again. When Johnny posted his “art” online, a friend called to alert me, and the curious thing was, as I listened to her description of the photographs, I felt myself splitting in two, the way a dreamer does in old Hollywood movies, a ghostly copy of myself lifting from my prone form. Always, now, my body would be doubled, floating, light and pale. Shimmering at the edges.
Though when I saw the photographs, what struck me was how flat and harsh they were. Drained of mystery.
He had posted them on his website along with a long note about how the end of a recent relationship had made him realize he had to get back to showing his work. That he needed to push artistic boundaries, that otherwise he acted out. The photos got flagged and taken down a week later, but that didn’t reassure me. My friend said she had seen a screenshot. There must be others around, forwarded on text chains, part of group chats.
Walking in the street now, I looked for her, the girl who had been photographed and put online. Studying the face of every man I passed, trying to guess whether he had seen her.
Sometimes she was elusive and sometimes she was too close, right next to me, split and fucked and dumb, a spiteful ghost belching in my face. Eyes wide, smarting, as he feeds himself into her. The fleshy cleft of her ass. Forever already out there, always happening. Always down on her knees, always like she loves it, slow and sloppy and just past where it hurts, the stupid slut, she does love it, she loves doing it for you.
Everything I do now is negated by those images.
There they are, dark circles sliding against the pale blue of sky.
———————————
When this same friend asked why I hadn’t protested more, I told her about the big lightness in my head, as if I had been pumped full of air. I told her it wasn’t unpleasant, just strange. Oh, she said, you were disassociating. Sounds like disassociation to me.
That was everything. That was language. When he was taking the photographs, I disassociated. Later, writing the post, that label felt so good. The relief of pouring chaos into a mold.
But the sentence looked lonely there on the screen. So I elaborated. I told about the commands during sex, the green dress, the casual way he had slighted Tess and ignored his first wife’s sister. I talked about how his money gave him power, how he waltzed into whatever rehearsal he liked and held sway over casting. That last point I couldn’t prove, but I suspected. I said I suspected. Then I posted the whole thing to Instagram.
To discover my anger like a rock in my pocket was to discover I was ready to hurl it against glass.
TESS – 2019
Sometimes I feel he’s still watching me. Making little comments about what I’m doing or wearing. Sometimes something will fly out of my mouth, and I’ll imagine it repeated back with his little moue of disdain.
It’s not debilitating, this internalized judgement. Mostly I can ignore it. But it makes me realize: if I had stayed with Johnny Fitcher any longer, he would have destroyed me.
I said this once to a friend, and he leaned back against the banquette and sighed voluptuously. Destroyed? he said. Destroyed?
Annihilated, I affirmed. Destroyed.
But it wasn’t exactly destruction that I feared, more a subtle but irreversible alteration of self. So quickly, I learned to fit into the negative space around Charley’s personality. She was reactive, so I was reasonable. She sulked at parties, so I small-talked. She was narcissistic and performative in her self-discipline; I never mentioned my writing or told Johnny when I had been working.
An idiot could have seen that he was still in love with her. But I was something more than an idiot: I was a woman insecure in love.
———————————
To my surprise, a few years after our break-up—but before the whole Gina thing—Johnny began finding reasons to reach out. Mutual friends he’d seen, publishing connections he wanted to offer. Finally: Would I consider coffee?
When I arrived, he was already sitting in the stiff hard-backed chair, a cup of steaming tea before him. I saw him begin to rise, then think better of it.
Thank you for meeting me. His voice was formal and correct. I didn’t want to come.
He smiled in a way that claimed all the history between us.
Johnny. (I had been coached by my friends, I had practiced.) You really damaged my sense of self. You made me feel horrible. I promised myself I would have nothing more to do with you.
I know. I was terrible to you.
You were. You were bloody awful.
I winced. A girl had said bloody awful in the office last week, and I’d been repeating it ever since. I could hear Johnny’s snide voice: Pretending we’re British, are we?
I was so twisted up then, Johnny was saying. I was trying to separate from Charley, but I was still obsessed with her. I know I acted like a complete dick. I have no right to ask for your friendship. But I want it. If you’ll have me.
When he finished this speech he lowered his head, and it was the sight of him hunched over his tea, the beginnings of gray in his curls, the hint of paunch beneath his expensive sweater, that loosened something in my chest. He looked pathetic, and it filled me with noble, tender feelings.
We talked of other things then, the island, publishing, our families, and as we talked, I became aware that my stomach was fluttering. Fluttering as it had that first night at Lenny’s. I knew then that I would not be able to resist him.
And so we became friends. We got lunch, we got drinks, we graduated to dinner and talking about dating, our new loves, the painful progression of art. Somewhere along the line my stomach stopped fluttering, and he really did become a friend. When my father died, he came to the service and stayed late at my aunt’s house, drinking whiskey and nodding as I babbled. I grew protective of him. I enjoyed, more than I cared to admit, drinks, or walking down the street together, the admiring glances of those who thought we were a couple, but it wasn’t only that. I came to love him.
And yes, the thing with the photos was horrible. Johnny can be dumb. He’s so charming and sweet and perceptive that people miss it, but he’s got a massive blind spot. He never thinks his actions are going to affect anyone, he never considers how someone might feel. When it happened, I told him I believed in art, self-expression and all that, I said it wasn’t that big a deal, you could barely tell it was her, or see his dick, but really it wasn’t belief in art that was making me kind.
Everyone is beating him up, I said to Sophie the other night. His money’s been returned, he’s been kicked off three or four boards, he’s got nothing to do but hole up on Cup and drink. I feel bad for him. Everyone deserves to have at least one person on their side.
Plenty of people are on his side. Yeah. Someone who’s not an asshole.
When I went home to visit my father’s family, we’d hang out. The first time he had moved back to the island, after Charley left, there had been something dignified in his retreat, but now he was just hiding, aging and graying and gaining weight, and I couldn’t help but feel it was my job to hold what was good in him, to return his solid hugs and laugh at his jokes. Mostly we didn’t talk about the photos or the petition—we certainly never mentioned Gina. But one time he said:
All my life I’ve felt there was something disgusting about me, something gross. And for a long time I used women to bury that feeling. I used love. But it never worked completely, I always felt like they could still see the worst parts of me. When Charley left, it was like she was saying I was so gross she had to flee from me, literally lock herself away. And once it became clear that she wasn’t coming back, I thought everyone else knew I was a monster, too. I had destroyed this beautiful young dancer, because I was so selfish and fucked up. I felt like some kind of Bluebeard, honestly.
He took a shaky breath. When he spoke again it was in a small voice. What those women who signed the letter don’t understand is that there’s this kind of relief. It’s a relief to finally get a big red X across my forehead. It’s awful, of course, there are some days I can’t get out of bed, but there’s this other part, too. This weird—liberation.
What could I say? We were friends. He had hurt me terribly, and he had hurt Gina worse. In another lifetime I might have added my name to the list. But now I put my hand over his and squeezed.
CHARLEY – 2018
The morning the letter arrived, I awoke before Lauds and lay in bed a long time, listening to the space heater click, watching the light gray out to blue. All the familiar details of my cell—the bare chipped desk, the crocheted blankets, the handrails by the toilet—were dim and hazy, soft, and I felt soft, too, yearning back across the years.
During breakfast I bit into a crust of bread, and cold creamy butter, not the taste but the memory of it, filled my mouth, more vivid than any butter I’ve had in all my years in France. I hadn’t craved butter like that in a long time, and I received it as a gift. Here was the pleasure of renunciation, first learned in dance: I wanted something, and I knew the desire was mine.
———————————
All of us here are immigrants, though I’m the only one from America. My fellow sisters hail from Benin, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Niger. With me they still need to speak patiently, in simple, blocky nouns and verbs, but I think they like me; they call me petit chat.
Mother Mariama I am less sure about. The letter had arrived sometime in the night, but she waited until afternoon recreation to summon me to her office. Seated behind her ancient Dell, she handed me printed pages, saying in her stilted English, For you, before reminding me in French that personal correspondence here is frowned upon. On and on she went, a whole frothy paragraph I mostly missed. After she finished, I took the letter back to my room, but I didn’t read it right away. When I saw the signature, I knew I had to pray.
Of everyone I left behind, Frances was the hardest. Not because I loved her most—the seven years between us were an uncrossable sea— but because she was the least capable of understanding. She thought Johnny did something awful to me; she pinned my whole conversion on him. An insulting simplification.
Now, as I skimmed the printed pages, it was Johnny’s name I saw, Johnny’s deeds, the words outrage and social media over and over again. I tried to slow down, but the words scalded, it hurt to linger. Something about running into him on the street, a woman, a protest, a petition—but suddenly I felt so tired and had to resist the urge to skim again. Nudes. Oh yes. Johnny always liked his dirty pictures.
For a moment, I allowed the woman I had been to come back. Bombastic, self-important. Hooked on whipping up great surges of emotion. Would I have signed their letter? No doubt. For after all, what else can be done? What is to be done with a man so damaged and charming, so eager and clumsy and careless with the black pit inside him?
Oh, Charley, he had said to me once. You could kill me if you’d like. Slit my throat and lock my body in the basement and throw away the key. I wouldn’t even mind. Then I’d always be with you, then we’d always be linked.
I crumpled up Frances’s letter. Letters weren’t the answer, or petitions, or protests; they kept you connected. Involved. Better to let him go. That’s what I would say to my fellow sisters, the other brides. Let him be, let him go, and find something greater to which to give your life.
As I tossed Frances’s letter, the boys’ choir began to sing. Vespers. A cool haunting sound, as if the earth’s bedrock were humming. By the time I reached the chapel, the soprano had started her solo, a plaintive golden thread. I lowered myself in the pew, and a phrase from Mother Mariama’s speech landed in my mind. Union cachée avec le Christ. That’s what she had said. A hidden union with Christ.
A glance upward, at His uplifted eyes and bloodied side, and then I’m on my knees, ready to pray.