Swan Lake

             SWAN LAKE

When the call came, I was in the middle of a shoot. My phone had been ringing all day, and I had been ignoring it all day. She always called me when she needed something, but this time mother wasn't going to suck me into one of her harebrained schemes for making money. I had my own family now, lots of expenses and I could just see Pete's eyes boring into mine and looking at me like I was a chump if I told him mother needed money again.

 Once I had dreamt about my mother needing me, all those times in childhood, when I had been left with a nanny or my grandparents, while she was off pursuing her dreams of being the prima ballerina. It never happened, but I guess mother was good enough to always get work as a ballet dancer. So many days I would wait up till late night, way past my bedtime, pretending to be asleep, just to hear her come in, hoping against hope she would tiptoe into my room and kiss me goodnight, pull that blanket over me, just like the parents did in the movies, but mother never lived up to the illusion. 

 My father, I had never met. A fling with a dancer, she had said and she would never take his name. I was Olive skinned, dark haired, curvy, unlike my lithe, icy blonde mother. I would dream she had met a dancer who was a prince from some Asian country or maybe some charming Latino from a very distinguished musical family. My half sister Sadie had once said that was unlikely, she thought mom was an alley cat, probably behaved the same.

Unlike me Sadie wasn't a bastard child. Her father was some hedge fund guy who had watched mom dance at a School of Ballet Performance at Lincoln Center. I am not sure he was particularly struck by mom. That performance was like many others, filled with dancers who looked alike, in the same clothes, rippling, lean muscled men and women in skivvies, their form and the dance the main attraction, but he claimed he recognised her right away on the street the next day, in front of New York public library. 

 A whirlwind romance and a bun in the oven later, the love soured, mostly from mother’s side. The child she knew would be taken care of, she did not want to be tethered by the man. So Sadie’s father was thrown to the sidelines as well, after making sure he would pay child support. The grandparents were older by now, and looking after Sadie fell on me. The festering resentment I had against mother was cloaked by my growing love for Sadie. Then Sadie and I became a team, and it wasn’t too difficult to transfer my feelings of abandonment and neglect by my mother to Sadie as well.

 Then came the day every dancer is scared of. Mother turned old, the work dried up, unlike other dancers who lined up side jobs or other work affiliated to the industry, mother never did. Dance was her only true love. The academy bid goodbye to her, and just like that she was out of work. Luckily my grandparents were well off and Sadie and I never felt any material discomfort. Mother left her loft in the city and moved in with us, but the suburbs never suited her. She floated around the house like a wraith, wondering how she would survive the mundane domesticity.

 Something alarming had happened by then, Sadie turned out to be the tinkle toes that I never could be. I had once shown her a video recording of our mother’s performance of the Nutcracker, and it was like something changed within Sadie. I watched her pirouette, and sashay and follow different steps, oh so gracefully. She could pick up any number of movements. Mother saw it as well, and soon she was training Sadie in different dance techniques. I could hear their laughter and their shared joy of the dance and something started twisting inside me. I had never known a mothers love, I couldn’t possibly lose my sisters.

 I spoke to my grandparents and although they were sympathetic, they felt it was a passing phase and Sadie would grow out of it soon, but I knew Sadie had a quality that I lacked, that single minded devotion and recklessness she had inherited from our mother. I had to do something to change this turn of events, before it went south.

 Luckily the next day a flyer showed up, which had the American School of Ballet, Oregon setting up an audition at Lincoln Center.

They wanted to audition dancers for a modern rendition of Swan Lake and age was no bar. They wanted to test all the talent out here on the East Coast. My mothers eyes lit up, I thought good riddance, she would rush back to try her luck and then realised she was speaking to her peers about herself and her daughter who was a prodigy. Sadie was good, but she was not a prodigy yet. I could see Sadie getting distant and leaving me, ensnared by the glamour of ballet. I could not be abandoned twice. I asked mother for a drink, it was when she was most pliable. I gently broached the topic of age and youth and how would the juxtaposition of both fare. Little did I know then, a seemingly innocuous statement would turn my life upside down.

  Mother was gone the next day, bag and baggage. When Sadie came home from our dads, I could see her heart shatter into a million little pieces when I told her mother had left to audition for The Swan Lake. She was cold to me afterwards, almost as if she blamed me for mothers impetuous ways. Mother got us tickets, and we went to see Swan Lake. I could see tears in Sadie’s eyes, moved by the dancers and the performance.

  We took the train back to Jersey, but Sadie was quiet throughout. The next day Sadie’s bed was unmade. I was about to call the cops when I got a call from her father. He said Sadie would live with him now, and he was sending her to a boarding school in Europe. She would specialise in dance. I wanted to speak to her, but she never got on the phone. 

Later in one of her drunken moments, mother revealed that she had told Sadie about our little chat and Sadie and hated us both.  I worked as a fashion stylist now, freelancing for top magazines, still lived in the town I grew up in, and Sadie went on to become a world famous prima ballerina. She never spoke to either of us again. I sighed and picked up mothers call. We clung on to each other, rejected by Sadie.