YOU DON’T REMEMBER THEM all, of course. No way a person could do that, as many little girls as I get, clattering up and down these stairs in their tap shoes year in year out. I’ve been doing this going on eighteen years now, and let me tell you, the faces start to blur after a while. Faces of the kids, faces of the mothers. Which year it was you did All-America Salute for the spring show and which year it was Gay Paree. All you can bet on is some kid was sure to get out there the night of the show and freeze. Some kid was bound to start giggling. And somebody had to wave to their mother.
But Suzanne now—I remember her. And would even if all this hadn’t happened. There aren’t a lot like her around.
Not that she was much of a dancer. She had a cute little body all right. She just didn’t have the feel of it. There are some people, they might weigh 300 pounds or they’ve never taken a dance class in their life, but you put on a record, and they just can’t sit still. They’ve got to move. It’s in their blood.
Suzanne was more what you’d call a technician. Every step executed just right. Always knew her combinations. And you never worried about her panicking in front of an audience either, the night of the recital. Far from it. Suzanne loved an audience. From the minute she stepped onstage to the minute she stepped off, it was like the smile was glued on her face.
She took tap from me three, maybe four years, but once they get to be thirteen or so, they lose interest. She switched over to my modeling class in high school. Never could have got too far with it, of course, being as short as she is. But like she told me, no matter what you do in life, it’s important to present yourself well. Besides, we all knew her ambition to be on TV. A competitive field like that, a person’s got to have everything going for them they can, and Suzanne really seemed like she did too. I mean, this was a girl that said she didn’t like to laugh because it gave you wrinkles. This was a girl that wound Saran Wrap around her thighs before she went to bed, to sweat off extra water weight. She told me once she put Vaseline on her teeth to make them shine in the spotlight.
One thing I’ll always remember about Suzanne. You never met a person with a worse sense of rhythm. She could be sitting in a crowd of people, all clapping in time with the beat, you know, and she’d be clapping on the offbeat, without fail. The girl just could not get the feel for music.
Applause now, that was a different story. I remember coming into my studio one time and finding her there before class. She was standing in front of the mirror, smiling that fifty-thousand-watt smile of hers, blowing kisses. She never even noticed I was there.