Chapter 2: Too Many Years
The walk from my apartment to the dance studios only took about fifteen minutes, so of course I procrastinated leaving for as long as I could. With Meg home as a distraction, it was far easier.
"Please tell me you called him," Meg said with that scolding parent look.
"Yes, yes, yes. I called him after our little chat three nights ago-- And, before you start asking me a million questions, we didn't speak for long. Nothing is resolved, and I have nothing to report." Meg had been my friend since high school, and I loved the fact that she looked out for me so closely, but sometimes her onslaught of questions annoyed me. So, best to nip them in the bud.
"Okay,okay. Inquiring minds just wanted to know..." She looked a little hurt at the way I had snapped at her.
"Well, if it makes you happier, we're meeting this afternoon when I'm finished dancing. I've been trying to catch my body up, so I haven't been able to meet with him yet. Plus, I have auditions coming up soon, so I at least wanted to get in a few days of solid practice without some Randall-Relationship fight to dwell on."
Meg smiled, apparently mollified. "Well good! Practice, then work things out with Randall. Even if 'working things out' means taking some time off from each other. There's nothing wrong with that. Although I'll feel like the fairy tale couple in my life has been killed."
"Geez, no pressure from you, right?" I laughed.
"I try. Besides, you may not even have a fight to worry about. He might feel exactly the same way. Maybe he's been calling twenty times a day to break up with you. You never know. And if he does, then you'll feel silly for the whole thing, and then just immerse yourself in dancing!"
"I hope you're right. I can't have too many distractions in my life. Starting work again is rough enough. I need this contract with the Opera. It would be huge for me. I've got to really focus on this one. We not only have to dance-- we have to sing. It's a pretty big production, and they aren't going to just take me because I dance well. They're looking for triple-threats this time."
Triple-threats-- actors, singers, and dancers rolled in to one. I shuddered to think about the amount of girls who would show up just to be a dancer and in the chorus. I knew most of them would probably sing better than I. But the dancing I had down. In the world of opera, it seemed everyone was on a level playing field with the acting part as applied to their respective art. Now I just wished I had actually begged my parents to let me have voice lessons. No, I wished I still had my mom and dad to teach me themselves. I remembered them giving impromptu lessons and tips to friends from their theatre circle. I needed that advice now.
"I'm sure you'll be great at auditions. You can obviously dance already, so that's no big deal? Just get your body back into shape, and you'll be fabulous. And as for singing-- please, Christine, I hear you singing in the shower all the time. You don't fool me. Your voice is good! Imagine how you would be with some proper help. Which I'm sure they'll give you once you're cast!" Meg pointed out, the forever optimist.
"If I'm cast," I said, the forever pessimist. We made a good duo. "Which I won't be if I don't go rehearse, and if I hang around here any longer, I'll be late."
We said our goodbyes as I went to go quickly pack up my stuff, threw some jeans on over my leotard, grabbed my pointe shoes, and ran out the door.
The weather was still really hot, but nice. I walked down the old red brick and cobblestone sidewalk in the shade through my Beacon Hill neighborhood. Meg and I had been entirely too lucky when we had found our apartment in an old brownstone building. Beacon Hill was filled with the wealthiest, well-to-do people in Boston. Rent was generally outrageous, especially for college students and those just starting out in life.
Through some friend of a friend, Meg and I had heard about a wealthy, but eccentric, woman who was somewhat of a philanthropist. She owned an entire building on Chestnut Street, and each of the floors had been turned into separate, fully furnished apartments. Mrs. Valérius, the owner, lived on the top two "penthouse" floors as we called them, and rented out the bottom three only for students or recent graduates, and at an unheard of rent for the city. Though, if she liked you enough, she let you stay on has she had with the couple who used to live in our apartment. They'd been there for five years after they both graduated, but soon became engaged and married, then decided to move out of the city. Mrs. Valerius had a vacant apartment, and Meg and I had the money to spend. Seven-hundred dollars a month in rent, plus we had to pay our own cable and internet bills. All other utilities, even laundry, were included.
Money hadn't been much of an issue for me throughout college though. I wished the reason was because my parents were doctors, or lawyers, or in some other high paying career. But they weren't any of these things. My parents were dead.
It had been almost five years since my parents' deaths. At first, right after it had happened, I couldn't stand the grief or the guilt I felt. I didn't think my parents' death was my fault. But I felt guilty because I should have died with them. I should have been in the same accident that took their lives.
It was late February of my senior year in high school. I had just turned 18 and I thought things couldn't get better. I was a senior member of my local ballet studio in Connecticut where we lived. I was rehearsing everyday for my upcoming recital where I had three solo pieces. My parents were working for a regional theatre company at the time, but my father had been offered a job as the music director at the Connecticut Opera in Hartford. I had been accepted to college at the Boston Conservatory of Arts for the dance program, on a full tuition scholarship. Things were definitely great.
Before my father started his new job, he and our family had been invited to attend the Connecticut Opera annual gala fundraiser. At first I had been so excited about the thought of going until I realized the event was on the same weekend as Meg's 18th birthday, an event that could absolutely not be missed. Her parents were going to take us both to New York City for the weekend and were paying for us to see a Broadway show. I had used to live in New York with my parents, but we had moved to Connecticut when I was very young. I hardly remembered living there. And I had never seen anything on Broadway, although my parents promised me someday I would dance there.
My parents understood my need to celebrate Meg's birthday, and even encouraged me to go. My father just smiled and said I would have plenty of future opportunities to attend parties at the Opera, so missing one wasn't even a big deal. He would hardly know anyone yet, so it might be awkward anyway.
So with a smile on my face, I packed into Meg's family car and we drove off to New York, leaving my parents behind. I hadn't even said a proper goodbye because I had just gone straight with Meg after school. It was sometime during the finale of Les Miserables that my parents had gotten into a wreck on the icy Connecticut roads on their way home from the gala. I didn't even know about the accident until I arrived home on Sunday evening to an empty house. My parents' car was gone, so naturally I assumed they were just out. When I listened to my answering machine, my heart sank.
It was the police calling from the hospital. They had called the night before looking for me and said I needed to contact them right away or head to the Intensive Care Unit. I jumped into my car and drove as fast as I could to the hospital, ignoring the road conditions. It's amazing that I made it safely.
When I got to the hospital I found a nurse who looked up my parents information. She made a few phone calls, and within minutes a police officer and a doctor came down into the waiting room to speak to me. There had been a terrible accident. Icy roads. Car hit a tree. Parents on life support. Brain dead. Could they stop the machines? Could they donate organs?
It was too much for me, and I just stared at them blankly. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't react. My entire world was upside down. Like I was in Wonderland...like any moment I would wake up from my dream and find myself on my living room couch, having fallen asleep to some fantasy movie and my mom would be there waiting to send me to bed. Not there, dead, waiting for me to decided whether I should have her organs donated.
The rest of the time was a blur. Meg and her parents came at some point, although I can't remember how they knew to find me at the hospital. Maybe I had called them? Maybe the police? I wasn't sure. The doctors all told me there was no way my parents could recover from the state they were in. I decided to kill their machines, killing them. And the whole time I knew I shouldn't have to make that sort of decision. I knew because I should have been there too, lying beside them, hooked up to my own machine, waiting for someone else to decide my fate. I should have been with them in that car, coming home from the gala. I had chosen my best friend's birthday...but shouldn't I have chosen my family that weekend? Deep down, I knew I had already been planning Meg's trip weeks before we knew about the gala. But it still hurt. The guilt was still there. I was torn. I wanted to have been with them. To have had one more night, one more beautiful weekend. But the other part of me was almost glad to have been in New York. I wasn't really ready to be dead either.
I barely remembered the funeral. There had been so many people who had shown up to pay their respects to my parents. Old friends, fellow actors, singers, performers, directors-- all came to say goodbye to my parents. I was a wreck. I sobbed through the entire day, the entire week really.
Every year since then, the pain and grief and guilt had become less and less. It still hurt. I still felt empty inside. I missed my parents, and their love. Meg had become my family. Even Randall had helped fill the void originally, but even that paled in comparison to what I had had at home. I barely finished up the school year and graduated from my high school. I had stopped dancing for quite awhile after the accident, and really paid for it when I went to college in the fall. But even I survived freshman year.
All of my parents money and savings had been left to me when they died. Since I was already 18, I was legally an adult, and took care of myself. I had no other family. I also collected insurance money from their wrecked car. It wasn't a lot of money as their car had been fairly old, but even so, it felt, in a deranged way, like blood money to me So I donated it all to my old dance studio as scholarship money for some other little girl who would grow up to be like me.
Since I was on scholarship at the Conservatory the only thing I had to pay for was Room and Board. Through what was willed to me, I had more than enough money. But soon I knew the money would run out. I had originally gotten a part time job to keep me active more than anything else. But I still kept the job, even now, at the Boston Public Library. I hoped someday soon I'd become a big enough star and could quit. But, I actually enjoyed my job. Working at the library was so different from dancing, it served as a nice contrast-- very slow and quiet compared to the dedication and focus dancing required. And plus, it beat waitressing like so many other performers had to do.
Eventually I sold my house in Connecticut. It wasn't my home anymore without my parents, despite all the years I had lived there. For holidays and vacations I went to stay with Meg, and later a few times I went to spend time with Randall and his family in California. Then in our Junior year of college, Meg, who was at Boston University, and I heard about Mrs. Valérius' apartment deal, and we jumped at the chance. It was somewhat of a small commute for both of us either by walking, train, or sometimes I drove. But the apartment was gorgeous, and in one of the safest neighborhoods in Boston. And cheap. I couldn't complain.
As I continued to walk that day to Boston Ballet's studios, I thought some more about my parents. I really could have used their help right now. I wanted to make this audition so bad. I wanted to make my parents proud in heaven. I wanted to make myself proud. I only had three weeks to get it together for the mid-September auditions. Then, if all went well, I would be cast, and perform with Opera Boston. The show would open in October and run until the middle of November. Then I'd sign my contract and dance for the Nutcracker with Boston Ballet and that would keep my occupied until the middle of January. But it was the Opera I was looking forward to most. If I got a solid part it would open up a whole new type of career for me. I had performed with Opera Boston once before in my Freshman year, but it was a small role that was organized in conjunction with a class I was taking. I mostly acted as a supernumerary, hardly any dancing at all, and no lines or singing whatsoever.
Resumé building was vital for me, especially now that I was out of school. And I needed to be constantly in some production. I wasn't going to waste all the dance lessons and classes my parents bought for me, even when they were struggling themselves.
Before long I had walked out of Beacon Hill into the busier streets in the center of Boston, next to the impressive mirror-glass Hancock Building, and finally back into the quiet historic South End streets where the studio was located. I got into the building and headed down into Studio One where I was practicing. I had another long hard afternoon ahead of me. My body was still sore and readjusting to the life of a ballerina. I cleared my mind as I put on my shoes and started to stretch out. I couldn't think about my parents right now. I didn't want to think about my impending conversation with Randall. So I just focused on dancing.
A/N: Please R & R! This is my very first time writing anything that isn't academic, so I appriceate reviews...but please, don't say I suck or anything. Constructive criticism is, of course, very welcome-- so I guess you can tell me "I suck" if it's done eloquently. As I tell people, you may call me anything you want, it just needs to be at least three syllables long.