Chapter Two
Meg.
I finished the rest of the wine myself when Erik had left for the evening. He had been troubled, I could tell, and it had taken courage on my part to challenge him, but I had needed to explain and justify my anger. He still seemed to struggle with the notion that other people had feelings as strong as his. He looked tired, and I knew that his concern for Mother was as strong as mine. She was his oldest and dearest friend, his saviour, and, perhaps unbeknownst to both of them, his companion when there had been no other. I was familiar enough by now with male and female interactions to know that there was no romantic or sexual interest between them. Their relationship was platonic and respectful, and if—when—the worst occurred it would hit him hard.
Desperate to escape these writhing thoughts, I put on my coat and picked up my keys. Terra firma for tonight, though. The events of last night and this morning were unclear in my mind and I was uncertain what had happened after Erik and I had left the hospital, what had been real and what had been a dream. But either way, I would be keeping both feet on the ground.
The night was cloudless and cold, and I thrust my hands into my pockets and walked down to the seafront, letting the salt-and-seaweed wind coming off the waves clear my head as much as possible. When summer arrived, I decided, I would start swimming in the shallows of this beautiful beach. It had been a long time since I had learned to swim, and it was an activity I enjoyed. As much as I loved music and dance, they were my occupation, and I wanted something that was outside of Erik's reach.
The Imaginarium was closed to the public on Mondays. For those whose sole duty was manning the stalls or rides, it was a day off. For those who performed, crafted or constructed things, it was a work day. Monday was a day of rehearsal for me and the others who performed; with Erik being such an exacting taskmaster, his performers needed all the rehearsal time we could get. He had ideas of perfection that the rest of us were expecting to achieve, come Hell or High Water.
I wondered whether Mother's aneurysm came under the category of Hell or that of High Water as Erik and I rattled along the Brooklyn streets in a taxicab, and then thought that I was being unfair. He acknowledged that the people who worked for him had lives outside of his business, and it was a mark of how much he had changed over the last six years. I could not imagine the Angel of Music allowing people time off work for other commitments or personal reasons. It was my own intervention that had prevented Erik from tutoring the sixteen-year-old Christine Daaé in the early hours of the morning instead of at a more reasonable time. He might have thought that Christine had deliberately missed her singing lesson if I had not arrived on the stage of the Paris Opera House in her place. I had suffered a rope burn to the throat for my trouble, a result of Erik's Punjab lasso, but he had taken into account that other people needed more rest than he did. Now, we sat side by side, jostling each other as we made the journey to the Benjamin Rush Hospital and Asylum. I tried to sponge the last word of the building from my mind; my father had been a madman, incarcerated in an asylum for a few months before he took his own life, and I feared that my life was going the same way.
To his credit, Erik knew that my fear of the medical profession had escalated into a phobia. When we exited the cab outside of the hospital, Erik linked his arm through mine. It was just the gesture that a man should make when accompanying a young lady, but also ensured that he could catch me if the anxiety flapping at the back of my mind like a colony of bats overwhelmed me to the point of collapse. It meant that I could not run away from that which scared me most. The very smell of the building made me want to vomit.
"Be brave, little dancer," Erik murmured. "Just keep breathing."
Mother was lying in the third bed on the right as we entered the ward, out of seven on each side of the long room. When I saw her for the first time, her raven-black hair fastened in a braid over her right shoulder and her face as white as the bedsheets and hospital gown, I could not help but weep. I did not know enough to understand what an aneurysm was, how it was treated or how it affected its victims. I just knew, somewhere in my spotty education, that it was fatal. I had a vague memory of being six or seven—I can't have been much older because my father featured in it—of an overheard conversation in which 'aneurysm' had been revealed as the cause of a patron's death. He had died while he was watching an opera. I remembered hoping that the unfortunate patron had enjoyed what he had seen of the performance; I must have been too young to understand the concept of death.
It was the end of June by the time Mother was well enough to leave the hospital. I had struggled through the Imaginarium's Spring season, but I knew that the worry for her health weighed on more than just my shoulders. Erik and I were the closest to her, but it surprised me how many other employees of the Imaginarium counted Antoinette Giry as a friend. Throughout her hospital stay, visitors and bouquets arrived for Mother, with well-wishes for her recovery.
When I had first seen her awake in the hospital bed, she had been unable to communicate. She could speak, but her words were a mixture of English and French, a stream of nonsense that meant nothing Mother knew what she was trying to say, but the words that left her lips bore no relation to those on her mind. It had terrified me to tears, but her doctor told me that this was a side-effect of the aneurysm which would hopefully be temporary.
In those early days, that only thing that really calmed her was music. She relaxed when I sang to her, and Erik brought in his violin to play. It took weeks of work for Mother to regain control of her speech in both languages, and even then, walking more than a few steps was such a struggle that Mother discarded her cane in favour of a wheelchair. She would never be able to dance again, and her ability to read and write was gone altogether.
Erik was as astonished as I was when Mother told us that she intended to continue working for him at the Imaginarium, choreographing new dance routines.
"Now that I have control of my tongue, I can describe to Meg and the others what I envision," she insisted. "I can even draw it."
I myself was dubious; I did not know how someone could choreograph if they could not walk. I was not privy to the discussions Mother and Erik had, and was ashamed by the notion that he had more faith in her than I did. As soon as we knew when Mother was leaving the Benjamin Rush Hospital, Erik set about making the Imaginarium accessible for a wheelchair. Ramps sprung up like flowers around the amusement park; anywhere I could go on foot, Mother could follow. The only exception was Erik's office, right at the peak of the Imaginarium, like the crow's next at the top of an old sailing ship or a fortress on top of a mountain. One needed a good reason, strong legs and a healthy pair of lungs to make it all the way up those stairs. I was astonished when I heard him talking about having an elevator installed for the express purpose of going from the ground floor to his office. Maybe it would be a private one that only a select few could use. I myself had never been inside such a contraption, and was not keen on the idea of being suspended inside a metal box by a cable, no matter how safe they were supposed to be. I would stick to the stairs, if given the choice.
"All this wheeling myself around is going to give me incredible upper-body strength," Mother commented as she rolled herself up the ramp to her apartment in the Grand Circle. "I'll have muscles like Paul the Strongman."
I chuckled and followed her inside. Both Erik and I had offered to push the wheelchair for her, but Mother had flatly refused. It was a way of maintaining her independence, I knew. I had offered to move into her ground-floor apartment, at least on a temporary basis, to assist her while she got used to her reduced mobility, but this was also gently rejected.
Erik, too, was dubious about the idea of Mother 'choreographing by proxy', as he put it. There were twelve dancers in all that she oversaw—seven women including myself, and five men—and we were familiar enough with her terminology and techniques to at least attempt translating her verbal commands into actions. It wasn't the same; it never could be.
Erik watched us all from the doorway of the Imaginarium's rehearsal studio, his arms folded as he leant against the frame. He had been doing something manual around the Imaginarium, I judged by his clothing. He wore brown trousers and sturdy boots, an off-white shirt that had been better days, and black braces over his shoulders to keep the trousers from slipping. I could see the seam line where the trousers had been extended to accommodate his unusually tall height; the only other person I knew over six feet tall was the Imaginarium's doctor and part-time performer, Dr. Gotreich. As always, Erik wore a mask over the deformed right side of his face, as white as bone, and his mismatched eyes, one blue and one green, watched Mother the whole time.
"A word in your ear," I told him when the dancers had dispersed and Mother had wheeled herself away down the corridor. He raised his eyebrow and I wondered if he thought I was being impertinent.
"My office?"
"I don't think my legs are up to climbing all those stairs," I said, scowling. "Are you needed somewhere?"
"Not immediately," he sat down on the piano bench, his hands in his lap. "What do you have to say?"
I stood before him, my feet in third position, pleating my light cotton rehearsal dress between my fingers.
"You aren't going to keep Mother on as choreographer, are you?"
"I was surprised by what I saw today," he said after a pause. "I have not seen a choreographer teach a routine without demonstrating it themselves before. She took you through it before today, didn't she? So that you could dance it for the others in her stead." I opened my mouth. "Don't trouble yourself to lie, Meg, it is perfectly clear."
"What of it?" I challenged, lifting my chin. "It was a good routine, it works very well with the music."
"Mmm."
"You disagree?" The fingers at my skirt had clenched into a fist.
"How many evenings did it take for you to learn the routine well enough to teach it to the others?"
"I wasn't teaching—"
"Oh, Meg," he sighed my name as he dropped his masked face into one hand, rubbing his bare cheek. "I don't know what the correct course of action is. Antoinette is my dearest friend, but I how can I employ a choreographer who is unable to dance?"
"You can't take this away from her. You just can't. She has lost so much—her legs, her literacy. You can't take this from her too."
"What other choice do I have? This method, ingenious though it is, takes too long. It will take twice the time for a routine to be learned—more than that. You are my leading lady, I cannot spare you so that Antoinette can teach you and you can teach the rest. What am I to do? Tell me, girl, I am open to suggestions."
"I don't know," I muttered.
"Nor do I." He looked weary, worried, upset. "And it must be her decision, in the end. She knows better than I what she is capable of. But choreographing in this way is not practical in the long term." He looked up at me. "I wish it didn't have to be this way. I pray that Antoinette will regain the full use of her legs. But I feel forced to reassign her."
"She'll be devastated." I shook my head.
"I know." He stood up. "Don't look at me like that. You know that I will always pay your mother a wage, regardless of her abilities."
"That's charity," I objected.
"Then tell me the solution, girl!" He returned, throwing up his hands in exasperation and pacing around me to the other side of the piano. "If you were consigned to a wheelchair, I would not hesitate to replace you as leading lady. The whole point of an understudy is to take over when you are unable to perform. I have no understudy choreographer."
I nodded thoughtfully, not insulted that I could be replaced at a moment's notice. During the months of Mother's recovery, I had been working what I thought of as part time hours. The Imaginarium shows I did not perform were headlined by Helen Roylott. It was an unusual arrangement within the world of light entertainment, but the norm in opera.
"If I lost the use of my legs and couldn't dance, what would you reassign me to?"
"You would sing," he answered, almost at once. "I have not spent hours of time improving your vocal skills to let you waste them."
"Assume that I can't carry a tune in a bucket, that I never progressed beyond nursery songs and hymns."
He let out of breath of laughter, and looked me up and down.
"A pianist. You really do have talent with the piano, Meg."
"Flattery will not accomplish anything. No, in this scenario, I lost the use of my legs because a piano fell on me and I have vowed never to go near one again."
"You could just say that Antoinette does not play a musical instrument and cannot sing."
"Come on now, use your imagination. The hypothetical me cannot dance, sing, or play the piano. Where do you reassign me?"
Erik rounded me again and resumed his seat on the piano bench, drumming his fingers on the closed lid. His eyes studied my every feature from head to toe as though I were a model he was preparing to paint, and I stood still, patiently waiting.
"Sewing," he said at last. "I would have you sew. Maybe paint props or scenery… But Antoinette can sew."
"Can she?" I wondered doubtfully. "She can't read, she says all the letters merge together."
"She is illiterate, not innumerate," Erik said, and then, when he saw my confusion: "letters may merge together, but numbers do not. She can still follow a pattern, and your mother is a talented seamstress."
He was right; how had I not thought of this myself? After my father had died, the Girys had lost a substantial income. We were not quite a single-income family, since the Paris Opera House also paid me a wage, but it was an amount that would barely have covered my living expenses if I had not had accommodation in the Opera House dormitories. I had grown up with clothes that were second-hand contributions from other people, and required some tailoring to ensure that they fitted me as I matured from girl to woman. I am disproportionate as far as ballerinas go, with a bosom too large for my frame. In addition to making some of the stage hands and other men around me call me a slut long before I knew the definition of the word, it meant that the hand-me-down garments had to be tailored to fit me. The tailoring had been done by my mother. After we had moved to America, Mother had made nightwear for Erik's unusually tall frame, and we had both worked in textile factories. Her sewing skills had not been robbed by the aneurysm, since afterwards I had seen her working on embroidery during her time in hospital.
It was December 1884 when Antoinette Giry's life changed forever. She was one of the prima ballerinas at the Opera House in Paris, and had never been happier. Over a decade earlier, at the age of eighteen, Antoinette Étourneau had defied her parents and married the love of her life, an Opera House pianist named Claude Giry. The Étourneau family had disowned her, cutting her off from a fortune that would otherwise be hers. She had thought it romantic that she had fallen, head over heels, for the young pianist. It had been an uncomfortable adjustment, especially when Antoinette had realised that she was expecting a child with her new husband. Now, with little Meg a six-year-old who believed whole-heartedly in Père Noël and had proven skilled in both playing the piano like her father and ballet dancing like her mother, Antoinette was happy.
She was returning to the Opera House by carriage, laden down with Christmas gifts and wondering how Claude and Meg had spent their day, when the accident occurred. The first thing Antoinette knew of it was the rattle of hooves, the shouts of men, and then the world tumbled as the carriage tipped onto its side, the wood buckling, and she was pinned under the weight of a screaming horse. For years, that screaming would haunt her nightmares. Less than a mile from the Opera House she called home, two other horse-drawn carriages collided with Anotinette's and she was trapped in a tangle of broken wood and the body of the dying animal. It had been hours before she had been freed and sent to hospital with her left leg broken in so many places that Antoinette was sure that she would never dance again.
Antoinette was thirty-one years old, an age at which some prima ballerinas might choose to retire from the stage. She had been discussing the possibility with Claude; she had never expected to decision to be made for her. It was almost a year before Antoinette's shattered left leg had healed enough to let her dance. She would never be a prima ballerina again, but she could still dance well enough to teach and to choreograph. It meant using a cane to walk, which would gradually improve over the years, but her right side was undamaged and still channelled the magic of dance that flooded her soul.
Fate had caught up with Antoinette Giry in March 1900, and finally robbed her of her dancing ability altogether.
Erik commandeered my dressing room to deliver his decision, several days after our conversation. I could not bear to be in that cramped space with them, but also wanted to be within call if Mother should need me.
"You are my right hand, Antoinette," I heard Erik say in gentle tones. "Please don't talk so."
I wondered what she had said to him, as I paced the corridor outside, silent in my soft-soled ballet slippers.
"It may be my name on the lease, but the Imaginarium would not exist without you and your daughter."
"I cannot read, Erik!"
"Half the population of this country cannot read; it does not diminish your diplomacy or how good you are with people."
Mother's voice did not carry as well as Erik's and as my pacing took me away from the dressing room door, I could not hear her reply. I continued to the end of the corridor, where a right turn would lead me to the stage left wings and the orchestra pit, then spun on my heel to retrace my steps.
"…I know that. But you have so much more to offer."
"Sewing is a hobby, Erik, I never wanted to make a career…"
I passed by the door in the opposite direction, back and forth along the corridor, picking up snippets of the conversation each time I was close enough to the dressing room.
"…what you can do, even if you…"
"…my limitations. I was starting to believe…"
"…open my eyes to a group of people…"
"…in the public eye, or on the stage. These days…"
"…bring some organisation to the area."
"…who has the training and the communication skills. Meg?"
I stopped, thinking that Mother was calling me, but Erik's reply put paid to that.
"I cannot spare her. She has too much work to do as it is, as my leady lady. She cannot…"
I started pacing again, my heart pounding and anxiety twisting my stomach.
"Grace Gibson, maybe. She is talented in the areas of dance that…"
"…to review those pieces before they are shown to…"
"Meg?" Mother called my name at last.
"You can stop eavesdropping now." Erik's dry remark confirmed the summons. I hurried to the dressing room and put my head around the door. Mother was in her chair in front of the vanity table, and Erik was sitting in the armchair, one ankle resting on the other knee.
"There's no need to look so scared," he said, amusedly. "You are not walking onto a battlefield."
"Am I not?" I took Mother's hand as I stood by her side.
"Erik and I have come to an agreement with regards to my future in the Imaginarium. I believe that you helped him find a new role for me. Darling, really, don't look so worried. I never truly believe that things could continue the way they were, given my condition. I am going to take over the wardrobe department, and Grace Gibson will assume choreography duties. Under my supervision, at first anyway."
"Mama," I searched her face. "Are you terribly unhappy?"
"No, my love." She squeezed my hand. "I am still to be as involved in the Imaginarium as I ever was. I daresay it would fall to pieces without my supervision."
"Undoubtedly." Erik nodded.
I think I have learned how people behave when they lie, in particular when they lie about their emotions. Mother was truthful when she said that Erik's decision did not make her 'terrible unhappy', but she was not content. It was the best of a bad situation, but the changes that the aneurysm had wrought on her had twisted Antoinette Giry's world out of shape. I wished the I knew how to set it right, but it was beyond my power. I could only hope that Mother was a more adaptable person than I.