where was it again? And for the first time in a very long time, I wanted my mum. I wanted her very badly.
I scooped up the phone again and dialed before I couldthink better of it. At the other end, thousands of miles away, the phone rang. And rang. I realized that I would be terribly disappointed if it rang out. That, despite the fact that my mother would nag me to come home, I still needed desperately to hear her voice.
Just when I was about to give up, the line went live.
“Hello?” Out of breath.
“Mum?” I said, my voice already breaking.
“Oh, Em, what’s up? You sound—”
“Josh has left me.” Big sobs bubbled out of me, the first I had allowed myself since Josh had abandoned me at the restaurant. “He’s run off with his assistant.”
“Darling, I’m so sorry,” Mum said, and while I cried, she kept up a comforting string of sounds and words. For the first time in years, I actually wished I were home in Sydney, just so I could put my cheek against her cool throat and be comforted like a child. Mum and I had a tense relationship, a clash of personalities that we hadn’t been able to resolve. But she was still my mum, the person who had smoothed Band-Aids over my cut knees and driven me to every ballet class.
Finally, I got my tears under control. “God, Mum, one minute I think I’m living the perfect life, and the next, it all falls apart.”
“You could come home,” my mother ventured.
The familiar sting of irritation. “No.”
“Just for a visit. You haven’t been back since before your grandma died.”
“I can’t. I’m in rehearsal for a production.”
“After that.”
“There will be another production.”
A sigh on the line. “Emma, you’re nearly thirty-two. You can’t dance forever.”
But I could: that was the thing. My body still felt fine. If not forever, I hoped to get at least another ten years out of my work. Maybe more. I’d seen footage of Maya Plisetskaya
en pointe
at sixty-three. Since childhood, I’d wanted to do nothing but dance; I couldn’t even think of stopping. I didn’t know how to stop.
“Mum,” I said, “I promise you I’ll come home when I stop dancing. But for now it’s still my life.” In fact, it was all I had left.
I must have heard the expression “broken heart” hundreds of times in my life. But now I understood with every muscle and nerve in my body what it actually meant. My heart, the vital organ that pumped blood through my body, and love and longing through my veins, never stopped hurting. I would wake up with the pain, then go to sleep with it again at night. I cried into my hands over the bathroom basin getting ready for work. I couldn’t think straight. I didn’t know myself.
The only way I knew to shut out the awful feelings was to move. After rehearsals every night, I stayed on, dancing and dancing and dancing. Adelaide gave up on me at six every evening and wisely went home to her family in Clapham. I cherished the gleaming empty room, its high white lights and its long mirrors. I had all the space in the world to express my anger and my pain. The more my feet ached, the closer Iknew I was to getting over him. I danced like a mad person; I danced as though it were the only thing keeping me alive. And in some ways, it was.
Thomas, the janitor, rattled around the hallways. I heard the vacuum cleaner, the water running in the bathrooms. One evening he came and cleaned the mirrors from one side of the room to the other, studiously not watching me as I tortured my body. By the second Friday afternoon, Adelaide couldn’t hold her tongue anymore.
“You’ve been doing this for two weeks. You
know
it’s bad for you.”
“Practicing is never bad for you.”
“You can push your body too far. If Brian found out—”
“Don’t you dare tell Brian!” Brian Lidke was the artistic director. The last time he’d cast me, he’d pointedly asked me how old I was. “I need to do this, Adelaide. I spent far too much
I scooped up the phone again and dialed before I couldthink better of it. At the other end, thousands of miles away, the phone rang. And rang. I realized that I would be terribly disappointed if it rang out. That, despite the fact that my mother would nag me to come home, I still needed desperately to hear her voice.
Just when I was about to give up, the line went live.
“Hello?” Out of breath.
“Mum?” I said, my voice already breaking.
“Oh, Em, what’s up? You sound—”
“Josh has left me.” Big sobs bubbled out of me, the first I had allowed myself since Josh had abandoned me at the restaurant. “He’s run off with his assistant.”
“Darling, I’m so sorry,” Mum said, and while I cried, she kept up a comforting string of sounds and words. For the first time in years, I actually wished I were home in Sydney, just so I could put my cheek against her cool throat and be comforted like a child. Mum and I had a tense relationship, a clash of personalities that we hadn’t been able to resolve. But she was still my mum, the person who had smoothed Band-Aids over my cut knees and driven me to every ballet class.
Finally, I got my tears under control. “God, Mum, one minute I think I’m living the perfect life, and the next, it all falls apart.”
“You could come home,” my mother ventured.
The familiar sting of irritation. “No.”
“Just for a visit. You haven’t been back since before your grandma died.”
“I can’t. I’m in rehearsal for a production.”
“After that.”
“There will be another production.”
A sigh on the line. “Emma, you’re nearly thirty-two. You can’t dance forever.”
But I could: that was the thing. My body still felt fine. If not forever, I hoped to get at least another ten years out of my work. Maybe more. I’d seen footage of Maya Plisetskaya
en pointe
at sixty-three. Since childhood, I’d wanted to do nothing but dance; I couldn’t even think of stopping. I didn’t know how to stop.
“Mum,” I said, “I promise you I’ll come home when I stop dancing. But for now it’s still my life.” In fact, it was all I had left.
I must have heard the expression “broken heart” hundreds of times in my life. But now I understood with every muscle and nerve in my body what it actually meant. My heart, the vital organ that pumped blood through my body, and love and longing through my veins, never stopped hurting. I would wake up with the pain, then go to sleep with it again at night. I cried into my hands over the bathroom basin getting ready for work. I couldn’t think straight. I didn’t know myself.
The only way I knew to shut out the awful feelings was to move. After rehearsals every night, I stayed on, dancing and dancing and dancing. Adelaide gave up on me at six every evening and wisely went home to her family in Clapham. I cherished the gleaming empty room, its high white lights and its long mirrors. I had all the space in the world to express my anger and my pain. The more my feet ached, the closer Iknew I was to getting over him. I danced like a mad person; I danced as though it were the only thing keeping me alive. And in some ways, it was.
Thomas, the janitor, rattled around the hallways. I heard the vacuum cleaner, the water running in the bathrooms. One evening he came and cleaned the mirrors from one side of the room to the other, studiously not watching me as I tortured my body. By the second Friday afternoon, Adelaide couldn’t hold her tongue anymore.
“You’ve been doing this for two weeks. You
know
it’s bad for you.”
“Practicing is never bad for you.”
“You can push your body too far. If Brian found out—”
“Don’t you dare tell Brian!” Brian Lidke was the artistic director. The last time he’d cast me, he’d pointedly asked me how old I was. “I need to do this, Adelaide. I spent far too much
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