A Puzzling Last Wish

The photograph lay on the floor where I’d be sure to find it and showed Ada in her twenties when she’d already become a New York City Ballet sensation. I’d unlocked the door to her closed-up house, the sunlight pouring into the familiar entryway, remembering treasured past visits. She’d given me a shiny new key a few days after settling in at the assisted living facility. She said she’d changed all the house’s locks and for me to hold onto it. 

            I’d smiled, amused to be in on her secret, but unaware at the time of its significance. Ada left instructions in her will that I was to be the first person to enter the house after her death, and I was to go there alone. 

            The photo, taken at the height of Ada’s career, reminded me of the depth of my loss. I remembered the sunny afternoons I’d spent here, enjoying a cup of the English tea she favored, discussing new stars of “the dance” as she called it, and telling her of my progress with my new ballet school. She was at least thirty years my senior, although she refused to tell me her age, but we’d become close friends. I’d grown to love Ada much like a favorite aunt. 

      We’d met when she attended a dance recital for the students in my ballet school. Years had already passed since she’d performed, but when she walked in her erect posture and graceful hand gestures hinted at her background. Her famous profile cinched it. I’d welcomed her and said how much following her career had meant to me.

      She’d starred in most well-loved ballets during her heyday, her performances reviewed in dance magazines and mainstream periodicals.  Stories of her private life appeared in the society columns and speculated about her marriage to a wealthy, prominent man twenty years her senior. I’d read every article I could find, including those about her private life--her husband, her two children, and the idyllic summers they spent at their Rhode Island estate. Posters of Ada and other celebrated dancers decorated the walls of my bedroom in my middle school years—unlike the walls of my friends’ rooms cluttered with black and white images of rock stars. 

            Ada returned to her childhood home here in Boston after her husband died, frequenting local dance performances as an honored guest.       I’d heard rumors of these visits and felt especially gifted that she’d come to see my students perform.            

            I turned her photo over, looking for a date and saw she’d written the note only a few weeks before she died: “Your key unlocks the door to the attic. Look in the dollhouse.”

            I’d never been in the attic and didn’t relish going there. I imagined a dark space redolent of mouse droppings, a windowless room filled with cobwebs. What compelled her to reveal some carefully guarded secret only after her death and to hide it in the attic? And why to me? Why not to her son or daughter? I sat on the carpeted steps leading to the second and third floors, probably the attic as well, and gathered my courage before going to search for a flashlight in the kitchen pantry.

            The third floor under the gabled roof housed the servants’ quarters. The door to the maid’s room stood open, daring me to enter. I discovered another door on the back wall. Ada’s key fit neatly into the lock. I held my breath and pulled the door open.  Five steps led up to an attic room with steeply sloping walls and a large window at the far end that streamed in sunlight. An array of dusty boxes and trunks filled most of the space, but a path had been left on the oak floor that led to the window. A wooden chair with a torn leather seat sat next to it with several pairs of used ballet slippers slung over the back. Someone had attached tags to the laces of each pair. “Swan Lake,” one read. “Giselle.” “Sleeping Beauty.” All ballets Ada danced as principal ballerina. I picked up a slipper labeled Swan Lake and peaked inside, surprised to see a dark brown stain in the toe area I surmised was dried blood.                                           

      I switched on the flashlight, shone it into the darker corners, and found the dollhouse under an old quilt close to the chair with the ballet slippers. I sat down on the floor beside it, realizing it was a replica of Ada’s house. 

            Inside were finely made pieces of dollhouse furniture, Oriental rugs the size of folded napkins, tiny walnut-colored wardrobes, a canopy bed like the one Ada slept in as a child. An hour into my search with no results and feeling at a loss as to what I was even looking for, I thought back to my last visit with Ada here in her home. I remembered sitting in the dining room working one of the puzzles she loved—intricate jigsaws she bought from a company that specialized in making difficult puzzles. I looked again at the dollhouse dining room, half expecting to see a miniature jigsaw puzzle spread out on the tiny dining table, but the table was bare.

                  My luck changed when I found an envelope the size of a playing card taped to the back of the dollhouse china cabinet. My name was scribbled across the envelope enclosing a page ripped from a professional directory. A name on the page was circled in red. “Because I know you love puzzles” swept across the top in Ada’s handwriting.

                  I tucked the document in my pocket, locked up the attic and left the house feeling more mystified than before I arrived. Of all the puzzles I’d enjoyed solving with Ada, this proved the strangest.

            That night she appeared to me in a dream looking as she had the last time I’d seen her, white hair drawn into a ballerina’s knot, eyes clear, her gaze direct.

            “Find the doctor,” she said in my dream.

###

             “I’ve been wondering if you would show up,” Dr. Morgan said.  “Ada’s instructions were quite clear that I was not to contact you.” 

            “What’s this about?” I asked. “Why all the cloak and dagger? Ada and I were close—she could have told me anything.”

            “There’s a lot at stake,” she said. “Ada left me explicit instructions, including asking you to take a test.”

            “A test? Why on earth would she want me to take some kind of test? What’s the point now that she’s gone?”

      Dr. Morgan opened the middle drawer of her desk and withdrew a sealed, letter-sized envelope and handed it to me. “She told me you might have that reaction. She asked me to give you this. Why don’t you take it home and call me after you’ve read it.”

            I accepted the envelope, stood and headed for the door.

            Several days passed before I called Dr. Morgan and agreed to return. Waiting outside her office now for the test results, I thought of how my life might change. A good chance existed  it wouldn’t change at all. I’d continue running my dance school, intent on building an audience for classical ballet.  But if my life did change, I’d be able to buy the building I rented now, grow my school to national prominence and realize a life-long dream.

            Dr. Morgan opened the door and motioned me inside her office. I sat on the edge of the chair she indicated. She opened a file folder on her desk. 

            “The lab report came back yesterday. As Ada long suspected, her blood test and yours revealed a DNA match. Looks like you are, indeed, the daughter of a famous ballerina, the child Ada birthed and gave up for adoption.”

            I folded my arms tightly against my chest and stared at the doctor, the stinging ache of loss rising from my core. I thought of the years I’d spent searching for my biological parents only to be told the adoption records were sealed. 

            “Why didn’t she keep me and raise me with her other children?”

            “You were the result of a brief affair she had while on an international tour. For what it’s worth, your father was also an extraordinary dancer, a Russian. When Ada’s husband learned about the nature of her pregnancy, he orchestrated a plan to keep news of it out of the press. Giving you up at birth was the agreement he demanded or end the marriage. The ballet company’s press liaison spun a story that Ada had sustained an injury that would keep her from dancing that season. Their plan worked. 

            But it left a hole in Ada’s heart. 

            She regretted giving in to her husband’s demand and left him a few years later, but by then your records had been “lost”—possibly another action orchestrated by her powerful husband. When she moved back to Boston, many of her friends mentioned your ballet school and how much you resembled her. When she attended your school’s dance recital all those years ago, she suspected the truth. 

Finding you after years of searching and including you in her estate was Ada’s last wish.”