Chapter Twenty-Eight
Florence’s letters to Scarlet became fewer and farther between.
There was more going on that she had to omit than there was that she could relay.
Just the other day, Astrid had told her how RJ had stumbled home again at two in the morning.
She heard him take off his shoes at the edge of the bed—two loud clunks as they hit the floor.
And then he had crawled in next to her still fully dressed and put his arms around her.
She could feel his want sticking into the small of her back, smell the whiskey on his breath.
She told him if he was going to do it, to hurry up and get it over with so she could go back to sleep.
“And then, of course, he just got charming,” Astrid said, taking a long drag on her cigarette.
RJ told Astrid she was impossible to please, and Astrid told him with the way he was built, he couldn’t please any woman. Florence didn’t have the gall to ask if that were true.
“It’s terrible, the things we say to each other,” Astrid said. “The things we don’t mean. The things we do.”
Scarlet was eager for news of grandchildren; she hinted at it in nearly every letter. Florence suspected this was because Scarlet thought that motherhood might tame Astrid in a way that marriage had not, that it might finally settle her.
My friend Mrs. Bennet was here the other day, Scarlet wrote.
You remember her—she has a daughter around Astrid’s age.
She and her husband just welcomed a baby boy.
I wonder when Astrid might be so blessed as to enjoy a similar happiness?
There is nothing like a child to humble a person, to give them proper perspective.
And in another letter: When you come home for Christmas this year, I wonder if I might need to air out the nursery and have the maid assemble the crib? I know it is still several months away, but these things do take time and I want to be sure I have the proper notice.
Florence didn’t know how to answer her. Privately, she wished that a baby would not enter into the mix.
With RJ’s drinking, the other women, and the bruises that Astrid hid under long sleeves and silk scarves in the summertime and thick turtleneck sweaters in the fall, they had enough to worry about without involving an innocent child.
Besides, there were other secrets Florence was keeping on Astrid’s behalf. Astrid barely ate, and she exercised to exhaustion. She had taken up ballet.
When the remodeling was finished and there was not one wall left unpapered, nor a single ottoman left to be reupholstered, Astrid turned to dance.
There was a studio in a fourth-floor walk-up in Notting Hill, where Madame Petrov taught classes in her thick Russian accent.
“This is what it means to dance,” Madame Petrov said as Astrid leaned over the barre, bruises blooming in her inner thighs where the muscles had torn.
“You must break yourself down into your smallest parts and then put yourself back together.”
RJ came to see her practice, just once, in that fourth-floor walk-up studio.
He stood in the corner, lighting a cigarette, puffing smoke into the room—a room already stale with sweat and the smell of glue from busted toe shoes.
Florence heard the other girls whisper among themselves.
They began to eye RJ from their places at the barre or on the floor.
He was handsome, this husband of Astrid’s.
They knew he was the one who kept her in delicate organdy skirts.
A blush-colored one for early morning. A pale-blue one for after lunch because she liked the way it looked in the afternoon light that filtered in through the skylight overhead.
RJ kept Astrid in black tights without runs, in fresh canvas shoes.
And they had all seen her tutu—the fine layers of tulle, the steel spiral boning, the hooks, the eyes, the bars, the silk ribbon.
Astrid, who had never danced in a real ballet.
Astrid, who, at twenty, was just beginning to dance at an age when many were peaking in their careers.
“Please don’t,” Astrid told RJ, waving away the cigarette smoke. “It makes the girls sick.”
“Come out with me tonight,” RJ said, taking another drag. “You never come out anymore.”
“I have to practice,” she said.
“I wish you wouldn’t take this all so seriously,” he said, but Astrid was already drifting back toward center floor.
Florence went with Astrid to the studio to keep her company. She sat on the floor near the mirror, watching, a notebook open in her lap so she could write down everything Madame Petrov said and give Astrid her notes later.
One afternoon, after they’d had their lunch and Astrid had changed into her blue organdy skirt, they sat on the warm floorboards of the studio together.
Another girl, Mary, was sitting on her knees in a group of girls just to their left.
She had something in her hands—something they couldn’t see—and the girls were giggling and conversing in whispers.
“She’s married to a prince, you know,” one of the girls said, and for one dreadful second, Florence thought they were talking about Astrid.
“Yes, but it’s a tragic story,” another one said. “I heard their son died in an accident when he was just a boy—fell through the ice in the winter. Her husband has gotten into gambling. They’ve lost all of their money. That’s why she teaches.”
“Anyone worth knowing is a tragic story,” Astrid said loudly, inserting herself into the conversation. “It makes them interesting, gives them angles.”
Of course, Madame Petrov had never told any of the girls these things about herself. She was always telling them stories, but none of them were about her.
“Ballet is a long tradition,” Madame Petrov was always saying.
“If you look at it as just a set of techniques you must memorize and master, you will never learn them. You will always be on the outside of them. But if you learn their history, if you learn about the people who first danced them and why, you will not only learn the move but become a part of it.”
The other week, Madame Petrov had told them about the ballet rivals, Sallé and Camargo.
“Men used to be the stars of ballet, not women,” Madame Petrov had said.
“Yes, it is true. Women used to wear high heels while they were dancing—can you imagine?—and these full hoopskirts that reached all the way to the floor. They couldn’t do any of the flashy techniques the men did—and even if they had been able to do them in those heels, those heavy skirts would have hidden them.
But Sallé and Camargo—they cut off their heels, they let down their hair, they shortened their skirts.
While performing the role of Galatea in Pygmalion, Sallé wore nothing more than a flimsy muslin tunic.
Can you imagine? And Camargo was the first to perform the entrechat quatre and the cabriole, which before only men had done.
Now when you do a cabriole, think of Camargo, and I bet you dance it differently. ”
Mary leaned toward Astrid, holding the photograph in her hand. “Did you see?” she asked.
Astrid took it. It was a photograph of a young dancer, posed en pointe. Her back was to the photographer in the shot, but she’d half twisted her body around to face the camera. It was staged in the forest, and the dancer was pale and wearing a long white tulle skirt.
“It’s Madame Petrov. From her time in the Imperial Ballet in Russia,” Mary said. “When she danced the role of Myrtha in Giselle. I found it in the library.”
The photograph was yellowing, and the edges were rough. Mary must have ripped it from an old newspaper.
“It’s lovely,” Astrid said.
In the photograph, Madame Petrov was younger than Astrid was now. Her hair was dark and full and piled on top of her head. And in her eyes, Florence thought she saw what Madame Petrov meant every time she told Astrid to lift herself.
“Do you think Madame Petrov will be pleased?” Mary asked. “I was going to give it to her after class. Perhaps she could frame it and keep it on her dressing table?”
Mary was always bringing Madame Petrov presents—flowers and fresh fruit—even though Mary lived by herself in a one-room studio and had only two practice skirts (one taupe, one faded gray), which she washed herself in her sink and hung out the window each night to dry.
Madame Petrov had hired her to play the piano during afternoon lessons and let her use the studio for free in her spare time.
“Poor Mary,” Astrid was always saying. “Poor, poor Mary.”
“She’ll love it,” Astrid said, handing her back the photograph. But when Mary turned away, Astrid whispered to Florence, “If it were me, I would hate Mary for reminding me that once I was young and beautiful.”
“Levez-vous! Levez-vous!” Madame Petrov said.
Florence looked up to see Madame Petrov entering the studio, dressed head to toe in heavy black chiffon, as she always was, as if she were in mourning.
Her salted hair was gathered into a chignon on the top of her head, and her skin caught in rivulets at the creases of her eyes, her mouth.
She was stockier here than in her photo, her waist thick, her shoulders stooped.
“Il faut casser le noyau pour en avoir l’amande,” she said, and everyone rose from the floor to take their places at the barre.
In Astrid’s first lesson with Madame Petrov, Astrid had told her about Svetlana Beriosova, about Giselle.
“I must learn to do that,” Astrid said.
“You are too old,” Madame Petrov said. “Why did you come to me so late?”
That whole first week, Madame Petrov made Astrid stand facing the barre, holding it with both hands, learning how to do nothing more than move her head properly. She taught her how to turn out her hips, how to align her body. The way she was supposed to lift herself.