Strip by Andrew Binks Page A

up a storm, which was interspersed with her fawning over Jean-Marc, then she’d scream at the baby, and cough from imminent lung cancer. She’d fly around the kitchen like Giselle gone mad: “Jean-Marc/ that bastard Milosz/ oh but Jean-Marc/ look what that fool Milosz has done/ Jean-Marc is so, so…/ goddammit, can you believe this idiot cellist?” All I knew was that I couldn’t dance tired, look for a job, find money and an apartment. I couldn’t even afford the dumps with pink walls, orange shag carpet and dusty macramé hangings covering the holes in the walls.
    That night I lay in my room, the world of ugly apartments and the mayhem of Madame’s home on the other side of the door. I stared at the ceiling thinking that maybe Romeo and Juliet in Montreal had been my swan song and the best I would ever dance. I had stepped out at the wrong time entirely. These dancers in Quebec had dreams and futures different from mine. Madame had a home, albeit in a hurricane zone. With kids, a husband and a ballet school, she had much to fall back on. I had little, verging on nothing. I was living someone else’s plan. I had strayed so far from thinking I would be settling in with a beautiful man and dancing like a prince. I was in the wrong ballet, one for which I hadn’t learned the steps.
    The next afternoon Bertrand stared me down. I’m not sure why, but it was too late to bother convincing me of anything. After, in the dressing room he approached me. “Now you fight. Il faut que Madame sache que tu es mieux que Jean-Marc. I saw at the Conservatoire. Mais avance, comme les Mongoliens.”
    Bertrand saw me dance when I was in love . “Mongolians?”
    â€œMagyars,” added Louise. “That’s what Madame said.”
    I had no idea what they were talking about and it could very well have been lost in his translation or hers, but he persevered. “Mais, quel obstacle t’arr ê te?”
    â€œRien. Nothing is stopping me, but I can’t go back.”
    â€œCes chances-l à n’arrivent qu’une fois.” A polite way of telling me this is my last chance.
    I argued, “Vous etes fou! Madame aime Jean-Marc! Christ! Louise, tell him. Madame doesn’t like men like me. I don’t look at her the way she wants. I don’t give a shit about Jean-Marc, which bothers her even more. Explique-lui, s’il vous plait!”
    Â 
    I don’t believe in grace— maybe disgrace; I’ve never thought my useless prayers deserved to be answered over anyone else’s. However there is something to be said about finally knocking on the right door (after slamming my head repeatedly against the wrong one), and feeling slightly blessed, even if the blessings are small. After a lacklustre class with Madame (in which she attempted to distract us from the doubts that she was less than brilliant by spontaneously breaking into a series of fouettés, once again, and I started to see her as a fearful, insecure spoiled brat, unfulfilled and desperate for attention from six equally desperate dancers) I wandered up toward the Old Town, delaying the return to Madame’s bedlam of burned food and broken toys. I was empty of Daniel, dance, energy, inspiration and direction; and especially sick of Bertrand’s psychotic enthusiasm. My body was rebelling. My lower back, which had never been a problem, was locked up tight as if a metal corset were clamped around my torso, from all the lifting she had me do. Therefore, even if I had wanted to stoop so low, I could no longer hope to impress Madame in class. In the mornings, I walked like my grandfather in his last years, and stared at the ground until I became limber and warm. She had proven to me that I was not worthy, nor capable, of any roles of substance in her repertoire. I thought of that pathetic dance teacher in Montreal who used to beg for his job on his knees. I wanted to fall to my knees and