19. Frankie
NINETEEN
frankie
It comes together in bits and pieces: the music is a mix of classical and contemporary, and Frankie plays sections of various songs over and over in her little dance studio, lifting the needle on a record, writing something in her notes, and setting it down again as she listens and then moves to the music.
The lighting needs to be simple: a spotlight that stays focused on her, following her around on stage. There are no other performers; she doesn't need them. Every time she leaves stage to change costumes, the music will create a mood that weaves one scene together with the next. She's gone over to the Cocoa Beach Performing Arts Center on two different occasions to look at the various set designs they have in storage from other performances, and she's found a few that are perfect: a stark white backdrop; a bleary, rain-soaked city scene with lights and taxi cabs that will work as scenery; and a plain black velvet backdrop.
As for costumes, she has so many in her boxes and bins at home that after a day spent trying them on one by one for Jo, who sat on her couch approving and vetoing them, Frankie has her full wardrobe selected. She's nervous, she's apprehensive, she's fearful of giving herself away, but she's also invigorated and energized. It's been too long since the thrill of dancing and being on stage has filled her heart with this kind of joy and anticipation.
"Knock knock!" A woman with a handbag dangling from one arm and a hat in her hands is standing in the doorway to the dance studio as Frankie jots notes and listens to the same segment of a song for the umpteenth time.
"Oh!" Frankie sets her pen down and smiles. "Hello, can I help you?"
The woman steps into the studio, looking around as she does. "I heard from a friend that you're enrolling for your dance classes."
"I am," Frankie says, feeling a thrill as she walks over to the woman. "I'm Frankie Maxwell. How old is your daughter?"
The woman smiles. "Actually, it's not for my child--it's for me. Do you do adult classes?"
Frankie is taken aback; she hasn't even begun to consider teaching adults to dance. "I'm not sure," she says with a laugh, hoping that her honesty will be disarming rather than making the woman feel awkward. "I don't have one set up because I honestly had no idea that I'd have any takers for something like that."
The woman tucks her chin-length hair behind one ear shyly. She's younger than Frankie had thought when she first caught a glimpse of her in the doorway, and Frankie notices that she's not wearing a wedding ring.
"I'm Ophelia," she says, looking at Frankie through her eyelashes. "My mother thinks I need to be more graceful if I'm ever going to find a husband, so I thought maybe taking ballet or something might help me." She looks around the empty dance studio. "Do you teach ballet here?"
"I will," Frankie says. "I'm actually teaching my first class next week, and it's full of girls who are under the age of eight."
Ophelia giggles. "Okay, well I could be the only girl over eight, if you'll let me join."
Frankie puts one hand on her hip and cocks her head to the side. "I don't know, Ophelia. You're actually giving me an idea--I think I should offer an adult class. I really do."
"I would be your first student," Ophelia promises. "And I think I have some friends who might want to join, too."
"Really?"
Ophelia nods eagerly. "Definitely. If you tell me when you can teach a class, I'll spread the word. I promise."
Ophelia looks so earnest that Frankie has to laugh. "Okay, it's a deal," she says, eyeing the young girl up and down. "And if you don't mind me asking, how old are you?"
"Nineteen."
"Are you working at the moment?"
Ophelia shakes her head. "No. I want to be a teacher, but I haven't started college yet."
"How would you feel about being both my first adult student and my stage manager?"
"Sorry? How do you mean?" The younger woman's brow creases.
"I'm putting on a one-woman show this Sunday at the Cocoa Beach Performing Arts Center, and I need someone to help me backstage. All my friends will be there, but they'll be watching the show. If you would be willing to help me, I could pay you."
"You don't need to pay me!" Ophelia says, looking stricken. "I'd be honored to help you, Mrs. Maxwell."
"Please, call me Frankie. And how about if you help me out on Sunday, your first month of dance classes will be free."
Ophelia gives a pleased smile. "That sounds like a deal to me. What will I need to do as your stage manager?"
Frankie points at a table on one side of the studio. "If you have a few minutes, maybe you can set your stuff down and I'll walk you through it now?"
Ophelia sets her purse and hat on the table obediently and turns to Frankie with her hands folded in front of her. "I'm all yours," she says.
Frankie barely sleeps on Saturday night. She tosses and turns and worries about her performance, getting out of bed more than once to consult her notebook. She's thinking of adding a section and taking out another, and at one point--maybe around two o'clock in the morning--she jumps out of her bed and wanders out to the kitchen, thinking of all the reasons she should cancel the event altogether.
"Hey," Ed says that morning, coming up behind Frankie as she stands at the kitchen sink, rinsing out a cup while her thoughts are somewhere else. He snakes his arms around her waist and holds her tight. "Are you ready for your big night?"
Frankie shuts off the water and wiggles her body in his grasp so that she can turn around and face Ed. "I'm nervous," she admits, putting her arms around his neck and burying her face in his shoulder. "Maybe this was a terrible idea."
Ed pulls back from her and looks into Frankie's eyes searchingly. "I think it's brave of you to get back on that stage and dance again. I mean, I don't know what the show is going to look like, but I have a lot of confidence in you as a dancer."
Frankie smiles, remembering the night that Ed came to see her show with his friend Rick after he'd hailed a cab for her on the street. "Thank you," she says softly, kissing him on the lips. "For always supporting me. I know I'm not the easiest woman to love, and when you married me, you married my loud, crazy Italian family, but I appreciate how much you give, Ed. I do."
Through the window over the sink, the sun is just starting to rise over the tops of the houses. The morning is already warm and pleasant, and the neighborhood feels still at this early hour. Frankie rests her head on Ed's chest again and closes her eyes. In just a matter of hours, she'll be on stage. Before the sun sets again, everyone will know who she is, for better or worse.
Frankie's heart flutters in her ribcage like a million tiny ballerinas doing out of sync jetes and pirouettes .
The low hum of conversation and anticipation fills the auditorium that night. Jo has done an amazing job spreading the word, and while the Performing Arts Center was willing to let them use the space without any expectation of anything but breaking even on the show, there are nearly two hundred people scattered in the seats facing the stage, and everyone is excited to see a former Rockette come out in her sparkling costumes as she high-kicks and dances around for their entertainment.
Backstage, Frankie is vibrating with nerves. She's dressed from head to toe in black, with a black beret perched on her head at an angle. Her long, brown hair is curled and cascading down her back, and she's applied red lipstick and drawn in her eyebrows.
"You look fabulous, Mrs. Maxwell," Ophelia says with excitement. She's still refusing to call Frankie by her first name, but at this point, Frankie is too preoccupied with the notion of the curtain going up to worry about it.
"Thank you," Frankie says, picking imaginary lint off the front of her black bodysuit. "Ophelia, have you double-checked the music? And talked to the lighting director?"
Ophelia, holding a clipboard in her hands, nods with nervous enthusiasm. "I have. Everything is good to go. We have about seven minutes until curtain, and I heard that there were over two hundred tickets sold."
Frankie tries not to double over at the way that number gives her stomach pains. "Oh," she says. "Over two hundred. Okay."
"You're going to do beautifully, Mrs. Maxwell. I know you are."
Just then, Ed appears backstage in a suit jacket and button-up shirt, face pink with pride and anticipation. He's holding a bunch of red roses. "Hi," he says to Frankie.
Ophelia ducks her head and disappears discreetly.
"Ed," Frankie says hoarsely. "I'm not sure about this." She shakes her head, eyes wide with fear. "I feel...naked."
Ed looks her up and down. "But you're not. You're fully covered."
"Not literally, more metaphorically. I'm about to go out there and throw the doors wide open in front of all these people."
"Frank, these are your friends. Jo is out there--and Bill. And all the other ladies and their husbands. Everyone is here for you."
Frankie reaches out for Ed's hands and grasps them as she nods. "I know. But there are a lot of people I don't know, and I'm not sure what they'll think of me."
Ed runs a hand over his head and blows out a breath. He clearly hadn't anticipated his wife being quite this nervous. "I think they'll see that you're a wonderful dancer, and they'll want to enroll their kids in your classes."
This pulls Frankie out of her head and she smiles at her husband. "You're right, Ed. If I do a good job, it's just advertisement. I've got this." With a deep breath, Frankie hugs him tightly and takes the flowers. "Now, go out there and get your seat so that I can imagine you looking up at me. It'll make me less nervous to think that I could just see you if the lights went up." Frankie sniffs the roses and then pauses. "But the lights better not go up--that would be terrible."
"Everything is going to go off without a hitch," Ed assures her, waving as he walks over to the side of the stage. "Break a leg, sweetheart."
By the time the curtain goes up, the white backdrop is in place, and Frankie is standing in front of it with one hand holding her beret to her head, chin tilted down. Her high-heeled dance shoe is pointed, knee bent, when the spotlight hits her and the music swells. In an instant, she is out of her own head and inhabiting her body, letting herself move freely and without fear.
The first scene is one that had flowed from Frankie without hesitation when she started dancing again: it's her, dancing in a body conscious leotard and tights with her beret, doing the routine she'd done on stage at her Brooklyn high school when they'd put on a production of 42nd Street . Frankie felt the smile come from deep within as she remembered that moment of complete joy and freedom. Her parents, sisters, and brother had all been there on opening night, and when the crowed had gone wild at the end of the show, Frankie had known that she'd found her calling; from that point on, all she wanted to do was dance. On stage. For an audience.
As she executes a series of spins now, face beaming, the light follows her, shining into her eyes and blinding her, which is just how she likes it. Of course it comforts her to think that Ed is right there within reach, but if she could really look out there and see his face, it would throw everything off. It would pull her away from the story she's creating with her body, and she doesn't want that.
The audience cheers for her when the song ends, and Frankie steps aside as the curtain falls, giving her time to change. Ophelia is waiting right there with a dress that she puts on over her leotard, and she takes the beret from Frankie, then fastens a small hook on the side of the dress before whispering, "Go!"
Frankie is back in place before the music changes, ready for the curtain to go up again. Instead of the pure white backdrop, the New York City street scene has been put up, and Frankie steps in front of it, waiting for the light to find her. When it does, she channels the feeling she’d had all those years ago when she’d taken the train from Brooklyn to Manhattan, leaving behind her familiar neighborhood with its friendly neighbors, grocery stores, and quiet feel. Standing there in the hustle and bustle of the city had overwhelmed her; she was just a few train stops away from home, but it felt like light years. Could she do this? Would she get chosen from the ranks of talented hopefuls at the auditions? Maybe she should just go home and make her mother happy—marry a nice Italian boy from the neighborhood.
Those fears and uncertainties fill Frankie again as she turns slowly in wonder, looking up at the tall buildings on the backdrop. She puts her arms out to the sides and tilts her chin to the sky with a huge grin, spinning around to the rising music like a woman who just discovered her freedom.
But it ends quickly. The music changes to something dark and atmospheric, and Frankie falls to the floor in a puddle. Surreptitiously, she feels for the hook that Ophelia had fastened on the side of her dress and frees it, pulling the fabric away from her and leaving it on the stage as she stands, this time wearing just her leotard and nylons with a black beaded dress that clicks and clacks as she turns. The very sound of it brings back the night in the car with Whit Evans when he’d made her change into the beaded dress in front of the driver.
This time when the music changes, it’s to a scattered, unfocused, anxiety-ridden jazz number with horns all over the place. Frankie flits to and fro, mimicking a woman flung between groups of people as she dances. She holds an imaginary drink in hand, knocks it back, passes it to someone else, then dances on—this time drunkenly. She trips, her moves becoming sloppy. At one point she falls to the ground, panting on her hands and knees, then turns her head and looks up at some unseen figure with fear. Frankie holds up one hand to shield herself, mouthing the word NO with as much conviction as she can. She lets her face show the audience exactly how terrified she is, and as the curtain falls, she can feel their tension as they live the scene along with her.
Ophelia rushes to her as instructed the minute the velvet curtain has hidden Frankie, and she looks down with just a beat of hesitation. “Are you sure, Mrs. Maxwell?” she asks in a whisper.
“Go,” Frankie says with a nod.
Ophelia crouches down and uses the seam-ripper that Jo had given to Frankie, pulling at Frankie’s nylons and leotard until she’s ripped holes and left long ladders in the nylons. She shreds the outfit the best she can, taking one of Frankie’s shoes and then reaching over as Frankie had instructed her to do and smearing the red lipstick across Frankie’s cheek. She looks down at Frankie with wide eyes, uncertain about the mess she’s just made. Frankie nods at her and points at the side of the stage so that Ophelia will be gone when the curtain rises on this new scene.
When it does, the audience gives an audible gasp; this version of Frankie is not what they’d been expecting. The music she’s chosen here has cracks of thunder and the sound of falling rain, and Frankie sits up slowly, looking around. Slowly, she stands, though she’s missing a shoe and this makes dancing difficult. She does it anyway, her moves jerky and uncertain like a woman who has lost her balance in life. Frankie puts both hands to her face, hiding behind them as if she’s hiding from the world. She stumbles and gets up again, stumbles and then rises slowly, kicking off her remaining shoe so that she can move freely. In her stockings, she glides across the floor, turning her moves from herky-jerky, halting attempts at dance into the freeform grace of a butterfly once again.
By the time the curtain drops for her final change, Frankie has risen from the ashes like a phoenix, showing everyone that whatever terrible thing had happened to her hadn’t kept her down. She spins one more time, the beaded dress swinging out around her as she holds both arms directly overhead into the spotlight. A tear falls down one cheek as the curtain descends, and Ophelia springs into action. Someone out of Frankie’s view activates a pulley system, changing out the city backdrop for the black one as Frankie strips out of her ruined dance costume, tossing it into a heap that Ophelia will grab in a moment.
There is no time to waste as Ophelia hands Frankie a small mirror and a wet cloth to wipe the red lipstick and the tears from her face. The moment she’s done, she steps into a white gown that Jo has quickly sewn up for her, then stands still so that Ophelia can help her step into her flat ballet slippers and place a simple white veil over her head. She sets the netting carefully over Frankie’s face, which helps to hide the fact that most of her makeup has been smeared and wiped away at this point.
“How do I look?” Frankie asks nervously, looking at Ophelia from behind her veil. The black backdrop is in place behind her. Ophelia hands her a bouquet of silk flowers.
“You look beautiful,” Ophelia says in a reverent whisper. “Like a bride.”
The music changes and the opening notes of Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” fill the auditorium. Ophelia scoops up the cast off costume and scampers away in time for the final curtain, which peels back to reveal Frankie the bride standing in the spotlight against the stark black background. She’d considered flipping the first and last backdrops so that her black beret dance was set against black, and her white wedding gown scene was done with the white background, but in the end, she’d preferred the contrast.
Standing there in virginal white, with the trauma she’d lived through already revealed to the audience, feels even more poignant with black behind her. It’s as if she is there, hopeful and full of dreams just like every other bride before her, but with a dark cloud lingering in her past. Frankie lets the music guide her as she begins to dance in a classical ballet style, moving across the entire stage like an excited bride trying to do everything and speak to everyone on her wedding day.
As Frankie reaches the side of the stage where she knows Jo is sitting, she pauses and lets her eyes search a crowd that she cannot see, hoping that she lands on Jo for even a moment. Jo’s friendship and love have been a gift to Frankie this past year, and there is no way she could have gotten up on this stage without feeling the kind of unconditional support that comes from a real friend.
Frankie moves across the front of the stage and stops at the other side, doing the same thing. She smiles at the people who are shrouded by the stage lights, hoping that whoever is sitting there can feel her love and gratitude. Even the people she doesn’t know are filling her heart with joy at the moment; these are strangers who have come to see her in her moment of truth. These are people who paid the price of a ticket, putting themselves in her hands for the evening as she guides them through a performance that they certainly could not have imagined they were in for.
As the final moments of the song swell and reach the highest rafters of the auditorium, Frankie moves to center stage again as her movements become more grand. She takes a final turn, picking a spot in the distance to focus on as she turns, turns, turns. The lights spin and everything swirls around her until suddenly she stops with her back to the audience.
“One, two, three,” Frankie whispers to herself, gripping her bouquet with both hands. At precisely the moment she’d planned, she throws her arms high, sending the bouquet sailing over her head and out into the audience, just like a bride throwing her flowers to the maidens waiting to catch it at a wedding.
The audience cheers as Frankie turns to them, arms wide. There are real tears in her eyes as she pulls back her veil and looks out at them, both hands pressed to her lips. She bows to stage right, then stage left, and one more time to the center before sinking to her knees, the folds and gathers of her white dress puffing up around her as she sits there, smiling up at the spotlight triumphantly.
The curtain falls. So do Frankie’s tears.