Chapter 15 Nutcracker #2
Nastia’s phone was ringing. It rang and rang in Debra’s ears, even as Sophie collapsed on the stairs, sobbing.
What will I say? thought Debra. What will I tell that psycho?
How dare you! How dare you make my daughter think that she can’t eat?
Do you want my lovely girl to look skeletal like you?
She’s sixteen years old, you horror show!
Words crowded her mind—but Nastia did not pick up.
Debra sat with Sophie on the bottom stair. “She’s inappropriate. You know that, right?”
“But she’s a good teacher,” Sophie said.
“Not if she talks that way to you. And makes Emma cry.”
“I want to learn!” Max was snuffling Sophie’s knees, and unconsciously she knit her fingers into his fluffy white fur. “I want to be a dancer.”
Oh, Christ, thought Debra. Nutcracker was one thing. Dressing up and jumping, holding your head high. That was wonderful. But wanting to be a dancer, really to be one—to accept that pain? To compete and to be judged by your tummy and your breasts? “You can be a lot of things.”
“I want to dance,” said Sophie.
“You can always dance,” said Debra. “You don’t have to dance at MBA.”
“But I love it there.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m learning!”
“What are you learning? To hate your body?”
“Technique.”
“Listen to me. You’re growing! You can’t look the way you did at twelve.”
“I know,” said Sophie. But Debra thought, Do you really? “Just please don’t call her,” Sophie said. “I promise I’ll eat!”
And Debra embraced her, and Max licked both of them, and they made up, as though they had been fighting—but what was the fight about? Just Debra trying to save her daughter from her teacher. From ballet itself. From the notion that puberty, like gravity, was a force you could transcend.
Sophie swore she would not think less of herself. She promised Debra she would remember she was beautiful just as she was. She said she had to study for her math test, and she wasn’t sad. She was okay.
But what would happen at the next rehearsal—and the next? And what of Lily, still so slender at thirteen? Would she hate herself when she had hips?
Upstairs, all was calm. Sophie finished her practice problems. Lily sat on the floor of her room writing rapidly in her composition book.
“It’s getting late,” Debra said from the doorway.
“Okay.” Lily did not look up.
“What are you working on?” Debra asked shyly.
Lily didn’t answer. In the past, princesses had filled her pages. Twelve sisters in a castle, but she’d lowered the portcullis. She never talked about her writing now.
At ten, Debra corralled the girls to bed.
They didn’t fight her; their eyes were closing, even as Debra kissed each of them good night.
Soon she heard them breathing deeply—but Debra couldn’t stop thinking about the studio.
She paced the hall outside their rooms and her heart warned, Don’t take them back.
“It’s my fault,” Debra told her parents on the phone. “I let them stay too long. And now Sophie is in Level Seven, so she has Nastia all the time. They’re doing competitions in the spring.”
“Pull her out,” said Debra’s dad, Ed, the voice of reason from West Palm.
But how? Debra thought. If she pulled out Sophie, she would have to pull out Lily too. And then what? “They’ll be crushed if I make them quit.”
“They don’t have to quit,” said Debra’s mom, Cindy.
“Find another studio,” said Ed.
“Your sister switched a couple of times,” Cindy pointed out. “And she was a wonderful dancer.”
“They think they’re in the best place! They won’t let me switch them. It’s not like kindergarten!”
“Little children, little problems,” said Cindy. “Big children—”
“Thanks, Mom.” Debra thought of Sophie’s jumps, her innocent face. Lily’s composition book decoupaged with magazine pictures of roses and diamonds.
“Sweetie?” Cindy asked. “Are you still there?”
“Yes.”
For a long time, no one spoke. Then Ed said, “If parenting were easy—it would be easy.”
Cindy added in her make-the-best-of-things voice, “We don’t have to see the show. We’re flying up to see you—not Nutcracker. We’ll do something else!”
But even as she spoke, Debra knew her hands were tied. There was no way she could pull her daughters from rehearsals—not when they knew their grandparents were coming.
It was always going to be like this. Another performance and another. Sleeping Beauty in the spring. Scenes from Giselle in summer. Nastia had bewitched the children so that they craved class more and more. They lived for pointe shoes, tutus, sparkling sugar plums. All the sweets you could not eat.
—
In the morning, Debra’s head ached as she drove the girls to school.
“Mom?” said Lily. “Can we have Christmas music?”
“I really think—” Debra began.
“No!” said Sophie.
“It’s my turn,” said Lily.
“But the songs are so bad,” said Sophie.
Debra agreed—but Lily loved the Christmas station with its retro tunes, and it was her turn to choose, so Debra let her listen. “Santa Baby” filled the car, despite Sophie’s protests.
Should I worry that she likes “White Christmas”? Debra had asked her dad. She’s an old soul, he said. I know, said Debra, but should I worry about the content? What content? her dad answered. And by the way, those songs are all by Jews.
Even so, she worried. How could she not?
She worried about the music. She worried about the dancing.
She had done a terrible thing—buying into Nastia’s studio.
She had obeyed her children’s wishes, against her better judgment.
What if they got injured? They could ruin their feet.
Blow out their knees. It hadn’t happened yet—but if it did?
And what if Sophie really did stop eating and starved herself and gave up on schoolwork?
In Level Seven girls talked about auditions and conservatories, not college.
“Bye, Mom. Love you.”
Debra realized she had arrived at Lily’s middle school.
“Can you turn it off now?” Sophie said a few minutes later, as Debra pulled up at the high school.
Debra turned off the radio as her oldest opened the door and dashed out. “Have a wonderful day,” Debra called after her, but she forgot to wish Sophie luck on her math test, and she felt wistful as she drove away.
—
Was everything worse now, or was Debra worse? Was it difficult for her because Nastia was dangerous? Or was it hard because she had dedicated so much of her life to mothering that she thought of nothing else?
When she talked to her parents, she said am I obsessing? And her mom said yes.
When she talked to her therapist that afternoon, she felt even worse. Suzanne asked, Do you think you’re not enough? No, Debra said. I know I’m not enough.
She called her sister from her parked car immediately after the session.
“Ballet is evil. I told you that before,” said Becca, who had studied dance for years, and now taught creative movement to people with developmental disabilities.
“Why did Mom and Dad let you do it then?” asked Debra.
Becca said, “What did they know?”
Debra thought back to her childhood. Her younger sister had not been thin. “You never had an eating disorder.”
“Sure I did.”
“Oh God.”
“Just breathe,” said Becca, as she always did.
“I can’t just sit here breathing.”
“That’s your whole problem,” Becca said.
“Okay, this is not helpful.”
“Do you want me to tell you the kids are all right?”
“No. Because they’re not—and I did not protect them.”
“Do you want me to tell you how even though I danced as a kid I turned out fine? Eventually?”
“I want concrete suggestions!”
“Make Richard tell the girls they have to quit.”
Debra burst out laughing.
Encouraged, Becca said, “Seriously, why are you still doing this shit on your own, even after you’re divorced? Doesn’t Richard have joint custody? Tell him what’s happening and make him be the bad guy!”
Which Debra would never do. Of course she would never do that. But just hearing this was liberating. After all, the girls did have a father—and a future stepmother! Had they not all promised to be one team? Debra texted her co-parents. emergency team meeting.
—
Of course, once he figured out no one was dying, Richard said he was tied up, but he would try to juggle. His fiancée was the one who met Debra at Jersey Java. Heather came in huffing, out of breath, set down her giant bag, and heaved her pregnant self into a chair.
And Debra, who was there to talk about the sick diet culture of ballet, took one look at Heather and thought, Oh my God, you’re huge.
Heather’s breasts had swollen. Even her face had widened.
Wowwowwow, thought Debra, who had not seen Heather since October.
Debra was not proud of her reaction. The irony did not escape her.
Nothing escapes you, Richard used to say. But that wasn’t true.
“Oof,” Heather said.
“Almost there,” Debra told her.
“Almost,” said Heather. “I don’t fit anything. I can’t even wear my ring.”
Sure enough, Heather’s hand was bare. Debra still had the little diamond ring Richard had given her in law school. Sell it! her friends told her. Trade it in! “How are you feeling?” she asked Heather.
Shyly Heather said, “Were you kind of desperate at the end?”
“Totally.”
“I’m already on leave,” Heather said, “so I have way too much time.”
Debra said, “I know what that’s like.”
“Really?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Was it hard to go back?”
“It was bad,” Debra said. “That’s why I quit my job.
” And then she thought, Don’t worry her.
Don’t scare her! “Let me bring you something. No, don’t get up.
” Debra was almost afraid to see Heather walking around.
How was Richard still at work? Seriously, what was he thinking?
Was Debra going to be the one taking Heather to the hospital? Would she have to do that too?
She brought Heather juice because she wasn’t drinking coffee. And she got her an orange ginger scone, which Heather hadn’t asked for. Debra ended up drinking coffee and eating the scone.