CHAPTER ONE
At the end of the grueling ballet class, Gina applauded her teacher and the pianist, as she had customarily done at the end of every ballet class for the last ten years of her life. All of the other dance students clapped enthusiastically and loudly. “They think they will get a better part in a ballet if they clap extra loudly,” Gina thought as she looked around at her classmates.
In the crowded dressing room she changed quickly, cramming her sweaty leotard, tights, and pointe shoes into a dance bag. Seventeen-year-old Gina let down her long, dark hair and looked into green eyes in the mirror, thinking, “That was one awful class. I couldn’t turn, leap, or jump. Nothing. Nothing! And that creep, Niles kept staring at me.
“Why was I accepted at the School of American Ballet, anyway? I’m nothing like the other girls. And I certainly am not the best dancer. I can' t make any friends. Why can't New York be like when I took class in St. Petersburg? That was fantastic," she thought pulling on jeans and a sweatshirt. Gina and her Uncle Gene had moved to Manhattan so Gina could study at the School of American Ballet. Gina, born in Minneapolis, had lived with her uncle for almost a year in Russia when she was thirteen.
“At least Tiffany was nice to me.” She smiled and thought, “Even at the end of that awful class, Tiffany came up to me at the end and whispered in my ear that I was beautiful. Maybe I do have one American friend who is a dancer. I don’t have any friend like Tina, my very best friend. But, she's a Russian ballerina, so she was snapped up by the Paris Opéra Ballet the second she graduated!” Gina sighed. "I miss her.”
She stopped by her dorm room, tossing her bag onto the bed in her cluttered half of the tiny room, and thought, “Oh, good, no roommate. Violin students are such a drag. All they ever do is practice. I know I should practice that much,” she thought looking at her roommate’s pristine, perfect half of the room. Gina felt disgusted. “I should practice more, but I have a life.”
She saw a picture on her bed stand of her beautiful, honey haired, blue-eyed Russian friend Tina. She thought of Tina dancing exquisitely in Paris. Gina was jealous of her success, but loved her. “Yeah, well, you and I would have been great roommates, but you had to go and get accepted in the Paris Opéra Ballet company.”
Grabbing a pen and a notebook, Gina walked out into the sunshine, and headed for Central Park. It was May and there was an early summer warmth in Manhattan that day. She sat down on a bench overlooking the boathouse and the lake. Birds singing, dogs barking, scraps of nearby conversation, and far off police sirens filled the air. Runners, picnickers, nannies with strollers, and tourists passed by her as she studied.
As she did every day, she reviewed all of the mistakes she had made in class, making notes about them in a notebook. She was in her last year of training at the School of American Ballet. She imitated her teacher’s precise voice: “Tendu - a stretch of instep and ankle while pressing the foot into the floor. Gina, what you are doing is not a proper tendu.”
“A stupid tendu. The very first thing my mother taught me in ballet and I can’t even do that right," Gina said to no one in particular as she scribbled in her notebook.
An elderly man walking an Italian Greyhound passing by looked at her sympathetically. She looked away from his pitying gaze, thinking, “I can’t be the only person in Manhattan who talks out loud to themselves. Geez.”
She figured out that she had probably done at least 38,000 tendus in her life. “I am seventeen and this is the end of my life. Ten years of ballet classes, six days a week, rehearsals four days a week. Not counting performances, recitals, and summer eight-week intensives when I danced eight hours a day.”
She looked out onto the lake and sighed. “I can’t. I can’t face another one. Not even one more tendu.”
She gave up, drew huge cross outs over her mistakes, and started walking. She looked up after nearly tripping over a Pekinese ferociously yipping at the end of a very angry woman’s leash. The woman picked up the dog and cradled it, and glared at Gina saying, “Stupid klutz.” The woman scurried away when Gina glared back saying, “Stupid klutz is right. And I’m a loser. And ugly.”
Gina silently argued with herself. “They just don’t care about Russian training. Gelsey Kirkland found that out after she took classes at the Kirov. So did that ballerina that I met in Russia, Zhanna Ayupova. I saw her dance in LaSylphide in St. Petersburg. She was the most ethereal sylph anyone has ever seen. She looked like a cross between a ghost and an angel! The critics didn't like her when she performed here in New York. How can they not get it?”
She felt she had the solution to her dilemma when she thought, "Russian training is the best, and my American teachers hate me for it. They're all jealous, that’s what! And it doesn't help that my last name is Shostek. Right away they think it's a Russian name, besides they can see the Russian training." She knew her teachers weren’t jealous of her, but it made her feel better to think so. Better than thinking they didn’t like her because she was a bad dancer.
A smiling young man with blonde hair wearing a Failure is not an Option tee shirt ran up behind her and grabbed Gina’s arm. She jerked her arm away from his grasp and ran ahead. He ran after her. “Gina, it’s me! “
She turned. It was her boyfriend, Charlie. She stopped on the path. “Don’t scare me like that! Charlie, you know my mother trained me to be defensive because I didn’t grow up with a dad! I had no idea it was you!”
Charlie grinned, “Well, you must have had a dad at some point. You are here.”
Gina glared at him. “I know. I know. I’m sorry.”
He took out his driver’s license. Showing it to Gina, he pointed out that he was indeed, Charlie. He got down on one knee. “Please, Miss, if I may ask, wilt thou allow me to kiss thee? O Helena, goddess, nymph, perfect, divine! To what, my love, shall I compare thine eyne? Crystal is muddy. O, how ripe in show thy lips, those kissing cherries, tempting grow!”
“Charlie, my name is not Helena and for god’s sake, get up. People are looking.” He scrambled to his feet as she said, “When are you done with that stupid Shakespeare class?”
He gave her a kiss and said, “One is never done with Shakespeare.” He stepped back and looked at her. “Usually you’re laughing by now. Am I losing my touch?”
They started walking on the path along the lake together. “I'm in this awful mood. I had a bad ballet class.”
He frowned. “Why is that enough to put you in a bad mood? There are tons of times people don't appreciate my stand-up. Actually, most of the time, lately. You need to toughen up, you know. Or you’ll never make it.”
“Thanks a lot. So, I’m not talented enough, or tough enough. What else am I doing wrong?” Gina threw up her hands.
“Nothing! It’s just... How long are you going to keep trashing yourself like this?”
“Until I have a good class.”
“Well, and what makes it a good class?” he asked as though he were talking to a child.
Gina clenched her teeth. “One where I dance better than anyone else. Or at least I dance better than I have ever done before.”
“You do realize this is probably not a great way to get through life. You are going to get old some day and there will be all these little teen girls running around who are better than you. If you're pregnant someday, you won't have a good class for a whole year.”
“I thought you were on my side? Now I feel even worse! And why are we talking about babies? Ugh!”
“Cheer up. Maybe I hope I'm around for those days when you get older.” He kissed her again and swung her arm as he held her hand. “Let's keep walking until you feel better.”
“You know I'm not supposed to walk very much," she said sullenly.
“Why the hell not?" he frowned annoyed. "I always forget.”
“It tightens up my hip flexors.”
“So what?” he asked testily.
She batted his hand away in annoyance. “So what? I tell you this all the time. Don’t you ever remember what I say? So, if I walk too much, I can't turn out my legs the right way.”
“Are you sure it's worth it to be a ballerina? Your legs look great to me.” He grinned.
She swatted at him and giggled a bit. “I can go biking. That doesn't tighten up my hip flexors.”
“All right. Let's go rent bikes. It's only a few blocks. Oh, no, I forgot. You can’t walk that far or something bad will happen to you!” He grabbed her and picked her up in his arms. She batted him on his shoulders until he put her down.
“God, you eat lettuce all the time. You can't walk. You have a bad class and it ruins your day. It's way easier to be a comic.”
“I thought you said drunk people heckle you and swear at you if they don't think you're funny?”
“Other comics, Gina. Other comics. Besides, that’s why I love Shakespeare. He wrote the best of the best insults. If anyone ever does heckle me, I’ll be ready!”
To prove this he yelled, “You scullion! You rampallian! You fustilarian! I’ll tickle your catastrophe!” He laughed to himself. “Shakespeare is so awesome.”
“More of your conversation would infect my brain.” He yelled at a couple walking by holding hands.
And finally, “Thou art unfit for any place but hell,” was yelled at a pretzel vendor who shook his fist at Charlie.
“Stop," Gina shushed him. “You’ll get yourself beat up. Charlie, no one would ever heckle you. Everybody loves you!”
“I'm a stand up comic. That's the whole point. To get people to love me.”
“Why doesn't everyone love me? The girls at the school are horrible and the teachers don’t like me, either.”
“You know that's not true. You're in a really competitive art, for christ's sake. And you're really good at it. And the teachers do like you. They are just pushing you. Of course no one likes you. Even negative attention from your teachers is attention the other dancers aren't getting.”
“I suppose. But I never feel like I am good enough, or thin enough, or anything enough.”
“Maybe you don't see yourself as others see you.” He continued in a theatrical tone. “And since you know you cannot see yourself, so well as by reflection, I, your glass, will modestly discover to yourself, that of yourself which you yet know not of.”
“Now you sound like Tina.” Gina's year studying ballet at the Kirov Academy and living with her uncle, who worked at the American consulate, seemed like a million years ago. “I can't believe it's been four entire years since we danced together in Russia."
“It's been that long? Anyway, good! I'm glad I sound like Tina. I know you miss her.”
“I do, and there's nothing I can do about it. She’s in Paris, being loved in a great part, in a great ballet company. While I’m here getting nothing parts.”
He stopped walking. “Gina, do you ever like yourself?”
“I can't think of a time.”
“Not even when you're with me?”
“Especially not when I'm with you! You're great. You're perfect! I'm just plain, old nothing.”
“Gina, that is so not true," he sighed. "I don't know how to help you.”
“You can't. Not when I feel like this.”
“Oh, yeah?” He picked her up again putting her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
“Charlie, No! Put me down! Why do you always want to carry me around?”
He started running. “So I can control you. Mmmwaaaa ha ha. I’ll throw you into the lake! Under love’s heavy burden do I sink.” He pretended to stagger under her weight.
“Hey! I am not fat. Stop stumbling around like that. You’re going to drop me!”
She screamed as he tripped, and they went down onto the grass together. And finally, she laughed.
He leapt to his feet and gave her a hand to help her up. “You had me worried. I thought I was never going to get you to laugh. Laughing is good for you, you know?” He led her back toward Sixty-Sixth Street. “Forget biking! Next is pizza! Then back to our dorm! I am victorious!”
She stopped and kissed him, for real.
“This woman’s an easy glove, my lord; she goes off and on at pleasure.”
“I should slap you!”
He took off running. She chased after him swinging.
“Charlie, I'll tell my uncle what you said! Easy glove!”
She spent the evening with Charlie in his dorm. She laughed at his jokes that she thought were funny and argued with him over why she didn’t find others funny. She read lines back to him that he skipped over as he acted out a scene for his acting class. She helped him figure out what he would wear to an audition for a television show, even though he refused to consider her suggestions. His roommate arrived allowing Gina to dodge the question of spending the night. She kissed him good-night and left.
Back in her room she tried to reread her scribbled notes from the afternoon. Her roommate liked to sign out practice rooms and play violin pieces over and over far into the night. Gina thought, “I imagine that's where she is. Maybe if I did that, I wouldn't make so many mistakes in ballet class. No wonder the teachers don’t like me. They can’t trust me to do anything right."
She threw the notebook across the room landing on her roommate's side. Retrieving it she said, "God knows what she would do if she saw my dirty notebook in her hypoallergenic environment."
Looking out the window she thought, "Why can’t I just be beautiful and loved like Tina? Why don't I ever feel I'm as good as anyone else? Why do I spend hours going over my mistakes? Why am I so afraid I will make them again and everyone will think I’m an idiot?” She turned out the light and after much tossing and turning, fell asleep.
