PAID BY A program to foster the arts in public schools, Marta Lowenstein taught dance after school every day at a New Haven high school, almost always to girls. In college, twenty years earlier, everything Marta did felt foolish and conspicuous. Then she took a dance class, two more, and became serious. In large part it was embarrassment—even humiliation—she became serious about. She wasn’t a natural and she was always being yelled at. She fell during a performance. Worse, she wasn’t hurt; she had to stand up, dance some more, and bow. When she was alone that night, her shame was mitigated by ambition: she would learn not to care. Marta is not easily injured, and sure enough, after a while nothing troubled her. That is how, of all her classmates, she became a dancer. The others wore out.
Last year she had a lump in her left breast. The doctor said it was nothing, although Marta should have a mammogram anyway. “I don’t have time for problems,” she told the doctor.
“Neither do I,” said the doctor, a kind woman with two-year-old twin sons whose photograph, across the room under the doctor’s elbow, caught Marta’s eye while the doctor examined her. “Luckily, we don’t have to worry about this one.” Marta searched the doctor’s happy, intelligent face. The mammogram, a few days later, showed she was fine. The next day, naturally, she read a story in the paper about false results from mammograms.
In the dance class, some girls had crushes on Marta. The girls crossed the floor diagonally, stretching or leaping badly, and then she did it: faster, more grandly, her huge arms and huge legs taking up all the room they wanted, eating the air around them. The girls—black girls, white girls, Latinas—hugged themselves and stroked the dusty floor with their bare feet. They were chilly and self-conscious in their little leotards. Marta glanced at the group and without pity took in the looks of those who loved her: that one, that one.
Last year one was Rosemary, called Rosie. One evening after class Marta’s car wouldn’t start. It was almost dark, and Marta wasn’t sure what to do. She flooded the engine and made herself wait and try again. Then she couldn’t stand waiting, and she knew it wasn’t going to start anyway, so she set out on foot for a public phone. She walked fast in the dark. A car pulled up beside her with a girl and a woman in it. “Marta, do you need a ride?”
Marta got in without looking hard at who was helping her. She thought it was a girl called Jen. She said, “I thought you had to go play the flute,” because Jen had left early for an orchestra rehearsal, infuriating Marta. When the blond, skinny girl in the front seat turned and looked at her, her tangled hair hanging down over her forehead, Marta saw that it was Rosie. She thought Rosie would be defeated by the pain of being confused with Jen, but Rosie looked at her steadily and said, “This is my mom, Marie.”
“Where are you headed?” said Marie.
“A phone. My car won’t start.”
“What do you mean, it won’t start?” Marie said. “I don’t like that attitude.”
“My attitude or the car’s attitude?”
Marie turned around to look at Marta, even though she was driving. “I can start any car,” she said. She drove back to the school. “From what Rosie tells me, I wouldn’t think you’d be afraid of cars.”
“I’m not,” said Marta.
“Ma,” said Rosie.
Marie was wearing a dress and heels but in the dark she looked as young and thin as Rosie. When they got to the car, Marie bent over it and looked under the hood. Then she sat in the driver’s seat and listened shrewdly while she held the accelerator down and turned the key. The car wouldn’t start. They went out for pizza. Marta phoned her mechanic. Back at the table, she could see in the light that Marie’s skin was older than Rosie’s; Marie was Rosie with a lot of makeup and, even so, lines around her eyes. She smoked.
“I can’t stand it when you smoke,” Rosie said.
“I know,” said her mother.
“You’ll get cancer and I’ll be an orphan,” said Rosie.
Marta started to say, “I have a lump in my breast,” which she would not have expected to say to someone she didn’t know, but Marie was already talking. “Then your father will have to show up,” she said, but she put out the cigarette, took the pack from her purse, and handed it to her daughter. “I just quit,” she said.
“Do you quit once a week?” Marta asked. “Are you one of those?”
“No, I never quit before,” Marie said. “When I say something, I mean it.”
Marta didn’t want to say, “But you didn’t start my car.” She said, “I have a lump in my breast.”
“Did you go to the doctor?” said Marie.
“She says not to worry,” Marta said.
“So you’re not worrying.” They both laughed.
“Well, I’m not,” said Marta. “I’m not a worrier.”
“Lucky you,” said Marie. “Pass that on to Rosie, would you?”
Rosie blushed.
“She worries plenty about your class,” Marie said.
“Shut up,” said Rosie.
IN THE DANCE class, Marta told the students to find stories they could dance to. In a rash moment she had agreed to let them perform in a benefit for the PTO, along with jazz musicians and poets. “Find stories with action,” she told them, “not just love and thinking.” At the end of the following class they sat on the floor in a circle and told their stories, with gestures and little demonstrations. Most of the stories couldn’t possibly be danced. Rosie’s was the best, though she was the worst dancer. She had invented a story. A man and a woman are driving together, quarreling. They dance an unhappy dance.
“How do they dance while driving?” someone said.
“The dance is what they feel,” said Rosie. “Now and then, they can pretend to drive.” She mimed driving. It was acceptable. “A girl will play the man.” It went without saying.
A hitchhiker appears. He dances a dance of independence, solitude, need. Rosie stood and struck a pose, her thumb out like a hitchhiker’s. For the first time, her movements had authority. This was what she’d do if she wanted a ride—but it was more interesting.
“Or maybe it’s a girl hitchhiker,” said one of the other students.
“Okay, a girl hitchhiker.” The couple stops for the hitchhiker. “They all dance together,” said Rosie. “But then one of them leaves with the hitchhiker, and the other is alone.”
“The hitchhiker doesn’t get into the car?” said Marta.
“No, the hitchhiker steals the woman. Steals one of them.”
Marta said Rosie’s dance would be one of three they would do at the show. Rosie said, “Can I play the hitchhiker?” Marta was caught off guard. There was an obvious person to play the hitchhiker, a good dancer, a tall black girl named Lakeesha. But Marta paused and then said that if Rosie stayed half an hour after class each day, Marta would teach her to be a better dancer, and maybe Rosie could play the hitchhiker.
MARTA CONTINUED TO feel the lump. She thought she could make it out through her bra and leotard, just at the bottom of her breast. She thought it might have changed. “Feels the same to me,” said the kind doctor, who had had her hair streaked since Marta had been there last.
“Surely you can’t remember it,” said Marta, irritated that the doctor wasted time coloring her hair.
“Of course I do,” said the doctor.
Marta got dressed. In the waiting room she met Marie, who saw another doctor in the practice. “Wait,” said Marie. “I’m just picking up a prescription.”
They went to the drugstore. Marie needed a new diaphragm. “I can’t believe I’ve gone back to it,” she said. “Did you ever use one?”
“No.” They stopped for coffee.
“I hate that thing,” said Marie.
“Hate what?” Marta looked at her coffee mug.
“The diaphragm.”
“You have a boyfriend?” said Marta. Marta was alone and she liked other alone women.
“My boss asks me out now and then so people won’t think he’s gay.”
“Is that a problem, going out with your boss? What’s his name?”
“Cameron Corey,” said Marie. Marta didn’t know any lawyer of that name. “You bet it’s a problem. Of course, he’s difficult to start with.”
“Are you in love with him?” Marta said.
“No, I’m certainly not in love with him,” said Marie. “All right, yes, I’m in love with him.”
Marta snorted. “Did you really give up smoking?” she said.
“So far.”
“Why?”
“To please you.”
“To please me?” Marta. “Why?”
“I liked the cut of your jib,” said Marie. “Whatever that means.”
“Listen, do you think I have cancer?” said Marta (but she knew she meant, Are we friends?).
“No,” said Marie (which meant, We are).
ROSIE STAYED FAITHFULLY after the dance class every day. She waited, sitting on the floor, her legs crossed, or she did stretches. Marta saw the others out and went to the bathroom, and then she took Rosie through some of the exercises and worked with her, wishing she had not made this offer. Rosie had no line. She had no strength. But she sometimes became lively, almost hysterical. She whirled swiftly across the floor, all shyness gone. She wrapped something around her head and impersonated a scared old woman, then a frightening man. One day when Rosie was in an antic mood of this kind, a man in office clothes came into the room where they were working and sat on a folding chair near the window. Marta guessed that he was Cameron Corey, Marie’s boss and boyfriend, coming to call for Rosie. Mr. Corey did not tap his watch or breathe out loud, but she knew he was impatient and annoyed. She felt protective, and even joined Rosie in a zany routine Rosie was inventing.
ONE DAY MARTA was alone in Marie and Rosie’s house. She took a bath. She had an elaborate fantasy of breaking in like a burglar, but that wasn’t how she’d come. They’d gone out for pizza again and Marta had mentioned that her apartment was being painted. Marta had a part-time job as a copy editor for a journal at Yale, and she worked at home. Now the paint smell bothered her. Marie had turned to Rosie. “Give her your key,” she said, tilting her head toward Marta.
“My key?”
“You don’t need it. I come home before you.”
“Not always,” said Rosie, but she took out a key on a chain with a small stuffed bear on it and handed it to Marta.
“Work at our house,” said Marie.
After her bath Marta wandered from room to room. The rooms were messy, which interested her. Working there had seemed like a good idea, but Marta couldn’t decide where to sit.
In Rosie’s room she found a diary. Without hesitating, she turned the pages until she saw her name. Rosie had written:
Marta stays every day whether she feels like it or not, and if she feels like it, so much the better for me. She looks better and I think maybe she isn’t ugly. Maybe she’s even beautiful. If I talk she doesn’t slap my shoulder but writes down the first word of what I say on the blackboard. If I say “What do you want me to do?” she writes “What” on the blackboard, maybe at a slant, maybe even banging into a word she already wrote.
When Marta doesn’t want me to be there she doesn’t write on the blackboard and she slaps my shoulder if I talk—not hard. Once she cried. Just a little. This is how I know she isn’t mad at me.
After she checked to make sure there was nothing more, Marta put the diary exactly where she had found it. She tried to think about writing on the blackboard. Sometimes she made diagrams to show direction, and unlike some dancers she liked words; she might write a word like “shoulders” as she spoke. Why would she write the first word that Rosie said? Why would she write “What”? And of course she hadn’t cried.
She heard a noise and walked quickly to another part of the house. Marie came in. “I’m early,” she said. “Cam sent me home to change. There’s some kind of political dinner.”
“Should I do something with your hair?” said Marta. She didn’t know much about hair but she wanted to touch one of these women. She tried to remember the feel of Rosie’s shoulder.
“What for?” said Marie. “He could care less.”
“I didn’t like the look of him,” Marta said.
“When did you see him?”
“Wasn’t that Cam, picking up Rosie last week?”
“Oh, right. Did he do anything obnoxious?”
“No,” said Marta.
Marie sniffed. “When he wants me to sleep with him, he doesn’t say a word. He brings me flowers. Heaven forbid I have my period when he brings me flowers.” She was tidying the kitchen while she spoke. Marta laughed at what Marie said. When Marta stopped talking and laughed, she thought of Rosie’s diary. The thought hurt, but it was interesting.
“He liked the look of you, though,” Marie said.
“Your boyfriend?”
“Mmm. He said you had decent breasts.”
“Decent!” Marta saw in Marie’s look that she herself was a somewhat frightening person. She slapped Marie’s shoulder quickly and then saw what she had done. And recognized the bony arm, like Rosie’s.
MARTA AND ROSIE faced each other and Rosie tried to imitate her stretch and reach. Then Marta walked around Rosie and molded her arm into position, and pressed down on her shoulders. Rosie was obedient but what she did was always wrong. It was hard not to pummel and squeeze and pull her to get her right. Marta’s hands hurt when she watched Rosie flutter irresolutely across the room, turning. She slapped her own sides and it made a sound and Rosie stopped, breathless, and looked at her, waiting to be criticized some more.
Marta looked at the clock. She should keep Rosie another fifteen minutes. But she said, “This isn’t working.”
She thought Rosie would say, “I know,” but Rosie said, “Do you want me to do it again?”
“I’m afraid you can’t play the hitchhiker.”
“But you aren’t sure?” said Rosie, coming toward her quickly.
Marta walked to a chair where she kept a sweater and put it around her shoulders. “You can’t be the hitchhiker. I’m going to ask Lakeesha to do it.”
“Who do you think you are?” said Rosie. “You can’t.”
“Rosie, listen to me,” said Marta. “It’s a fine dance, and you made it up, but I want the right person.”
Rosie stood opposite her in the grimy, empty room. She wore a leotard but no tights and her bare legs were thin. She stood with her feet straight ahead of her, not like a dancer. “Whatever,” Rosie said. Then with a swift gesture, she pulled her leotard off. She stood in a pink bra—she barely had breasts—and white cotton panties, which had slipped partway down. She pulled them up and stepped out of the leotard and kicked it toward Marta, and then she ran from the room in tears. Marta reached down for the leotard but then she stopped, put on her sweater, and left. She was being cruel, but sometimes people are cruel.
The next day the leotard was gone, but Rosie did not disappear forever. She missed one day of class but came on the next, wearing shorts and a T-shirt. One dance included an ensemble, and Marta asked Rosie if she wanted to be in it, but Rosie said, “No, thanks.” Then Rosie volunteered to direct her dance. “I want Lakeesha to do something different when she first comes in,” she said to Marta as they were all leaving one afternoon.
During the week of the performance, Rosie spent extra hours at school rehearsing the girls in her dance. The dancers dropped the question of whether they were playing men or women. Lakeesha was good. Rosie followed Marta around, keeping lists of costumes and talking about music. Marta saw almost as much of her as before. They worked calmly together, selecting music for the dances and copying songs from tapes brought in by the other students. Rosie set about making a master tape, which she offered to play at the performance, since she was the only student who wasn’t dancing. She insisted the tape would even have silences of the correct length on it. She was quiet and careful with Marta, as if she imagined each meeting in advance and relived it when it was over.
The night of the performance, Marta arrived early and sat in a classroom near the auditorium. She’d thought there would be things to do but there weren’t. Rosie kept bustling in. Lakeesha was late. Marta had a fantasy: Lakeesha doesn’t show; Rosie dances after all; Rosie is terrible and Marta comforts her, telling her of her own early misfortunes as a dancer. Then Rosie came in to report that Lakeesha had arrived, but it was freezing in the dressing room, and she was going in search of someone to turn on the heat. “I can’t have this,” she said. Marta followed Rosie into the hall and watched her hurry away. Rosie landed hard with each foot when she walked, like someone running.
People were beginning to arrive. A woman sat at a table outside the auditorium collecting money—two dollars a person, five for a family. People dropped money into a box.
Marta wasn’t sure what to do next. She and Rosie had planned to run through the tape one more time. She stood in the classroom holding the tape recorder, and at last Rosie appeared. “Sorry!” she said cheerfully, and sat down on a desk top. Marta had been running her finger against her breast again, and moved it quickly away from herself. She and Rosie played the tape. Rosie had never recorded the silences, and now she admitted it was better just to turn off the tape recorder between sections of the dances, which was what Marta had thought all along. Rosie had a notebook in which she made complicated entries.
Marta watched Rosie rewind the tape. Rosie was in jeans and a black bodysuit. Her blond hair, as usual, fell in a floppy curl on her forehead. Marta picked up her coat so they could get going.
Then a man burst into the room—a furious man, whom Marta recognized after a moment as Marie’s boss and boyfriend, the lawyer Cam. Mr. Corey. Cam was in a suit and coat, and in his right hand he grasped a fistful of bills, which he released on the desk top next to Rosie. “Royalties,” he said to Rosie. “Your goddamn royalties. I’m paying you for making up the dance. Your mother just told me you’re not even in it. And you people”—he looked at Marta—“are in addition too stupid to keep your eyes on your money. That woman at the table turns her back to gab with her girlfriend.”
Rosie jumped up and stared at the ones and fives now scattered on the desk.
“Take it!” shouted Cam. “You earned it, and you got cheated. Take it!”
“Cam!” Marie was coming in behind him. “I couldn’t figure out where you went.” Marie was dressed up, wearing higher heels than she wore to the office. She had that flowery smell some women can manage, a smell that joins with heels and hairspray and the flash of jewelry to make a new presence. Marta knew she should deal with this crazy lawyer, but she needed to think about Marie’s festive skinniness, or maybe Marie’s daughter, this nearly identical creature now backing away from the bills on the desk, moving like her mother, as if Marie had lain down on plaster of Paris and used the indentation as a mold to make Rosie. And she remembered that they loved her—or something.
“We’re not interested!” shouted Marta to Cam, and Cam gave a half shrug and backed away.
“He’s impossible,” Marie said, but she sounded indulgent. She was gathering the money and shuffling it into a pile. Rosie reached for a bill that had fallen. Then Marie called after Cam, “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“What?” said Marta. “What?” She had not been troubled by Cam’s first sally, because it made sense for Rosie not to dance, nor by his second, because Marta wasn’t in charge of the money. She faced Marie.
“We were talking in the car,” said Marie.
“What did you say?”
“Well, I said it wasn’t fair—but I didn’t mean he should go steal the money and give it to Rosie!”
“What wasn’t fair? Have you ever seen Rosie try to dance?” said Marta, much too fast, and she felt Rosie flinch, while Marta’s hand went toward Marie’s shoulder. She did not strike Marie but seized her shoulder—as if she were going to yank Marie to a place from which the view would be clear—and Marie tottered on her heels before she shook Marta off and caught her balance, saying, “She dances fine.” Then she said, “And what did you want with her leotard?”
Marta had never talked to Marie about what had happened. She had forgotten to be friends with Marie.
But Cam, apparently, had turned back. He came into the room again. “You simply know nothing about kids!” he shouted—to Marta, who had been a kid. “You don’t even have kids!”
“Oh, neither do you,” said Marie, to Cam’s departing back. Marta reached for her but Marie followed Cam in her heels, holding the money high to show that she for one was not stealing it.
“Marie!” said Marta. But now she was alone with Rosie. It was time to go into the auditorium and see the show.
“Why didn’t you tell her?” Rosie said.
“Tell her what?”
“What’s wrong with my dancing.” Rosie was trying to keep from crying, but she said, “Don’t cry.”
“What makes you think I’m crying?” said Marta.
“You do this thing…” Rosie said. “I watch you.” She touched her own cheeks and Marta imitated her gesture. Her cheeks felt pulled out of shape, and she ran her fingertips over the details of her own face, identifying something—the grimace that precedes crying. How alone she was. She held out an arm to Rosie, and in a moment Rosie was holding tight—oh, probably stunned at her luck—pressing her hair into Marta’s face and catching tears.