Hidden Worthiness Page 14

  “Your papa didn’t say you were right, exactly, though, did he?” What Nick had said was that the boy had been wrong, and that he deserved to pay for it, but Carina had to be aware of her power and take appropriate action. “Do you understand what he means?”

  She nodded. “He didn’t deserve me to hurt him so bad. But Noah does stuff like that all the time. Girls complain about him every day. He stands under the stairs and looks up our skirts, he snaps bras, he runs after us making kissing noises. It’s gross. Father Brennan says to just ignore him.”

  “Maybe you should. If he’s not touching, he’s just being a pest. You need to remember who you are, Carina. You’re older, and stronger, and you’re a Pagano. You have a lot of power. When you’re powerful, you have to be careful how you use it. Do you know what the saying means, ‘don’t punch down’?”

  She rolled her eyes at him. “I’m not a little kid. I know what things mean. It means don’t pick on somebody weaker. I don’t do that. I didn’t pick on Noah.”

  “You didn’t?”

  “I taught him a lesson. Like a Pagano. I can’t forget who I am, ever. Everybody knows Papa. But Noah’s not just a pest, Uncle, and I don’t care that he’s younger and smaller. Snapping bras is touching, and it’s not okay. You don’t know what it’s like to be a girl. Did anybody ever grab your junk when you were in school?”

  He laughed. “Only if I wanted her to.”

  He’d managed to draw a smile from her, but it didn’t last. “Gross. But see? Girls don’t do that to boys. But we’re supposed to take it from boys like it’s fun. It’s not. It’s embarrassing. Everybody laughs, and it feels bad. So I didn’t punch down. Maybe I did too much, but I didn’t do wrong, and it’s not fair I can’t go to New York.”

  Donnie had listened at dinner, while Nick and Bev had tried to talk to her. Carina’s parents presented a united front, they worked out their disagreements in private, but their very different personalities were obvious nonetheless. Bev was a nurturer. She wanted to get deep into an issue and salve everyone’s hurts. She wanted to help her daughter understand and navigate the world—but she was also a woman, and had wanted her to stick up for herself. Nick was a leader. A problem solver. He was a fiercely and openly loving father, but he was also the ruthless don of a powerful organization. He wanted to crucify the boy for coming anywhere near his daughter with ill intent, but he was also aware that every time one of his children drew attention, they drew it to him as well.

  During the afternoon, after he’d spoken with Father Brennan at the school, Nick and Donnie had gone to the hospital to check on the boy. Nick had spoken with his parents there, and Donnie was sure that Noah Connelly would never touch a girl—or look at her, anywhere—without her consent again.

  Carina was right—the boy was in the wrong. But she’d broken his nose, blacked his eyes and knocked two permanent teeth from his mouth, and left him with a concussion, and she’d done it with the entire middle school for an audience.

  Frankly, one-hundred percent of the grownups in this house tonight were one-hundred percent in awe of this girl and what she’d done. But she was a Pagano, and the Paganos did not make ostentatious displays of their power. When Nick sought revenge—he called it rendering justice—he did it in the dark. Night, not day. Decisive, but not declaimed. A man who had to shout his power had none.

  So Nick Pagano had sat privately with the school principal and brokered a solution for his daughter, one that showed the other students and parents that the Paganos didn’t wield their power injudiciously. Carina was suspended for three days for fighting. And Noah was suspended for ten days for fighting and dishonorable conduct.

  Then Don Pagano had gone to the hospital and made sure Noah’s parents understood the danger should their son ever behave dishonorably again.

  Eventually, Carina would be able to hear her parents on this matter. When the sting of the lost trip had faded. For now, Donnie said, “You can’t act in rage, Carina. A hot head explodes. A cool head controls.”

  Again, she rolled her eyes at him. “I don’t want to be don of Christ the King School, Uncle. I just wanted Noah to stop.”

  Donnie laughed and reached over to pull her into a hug. “Well, then, you accomplished your goal. And I think I’d better let your parents give the rest of the advice.”

  “Carina?” Bev called from the house. “Come on, honey. Homework.”

  Leaning on Donnie’s shoulder, Carina sighed. “I’m suspended, and I can’t go to New York this weekend, but I still have to do algebra. It’s not fair.” But she kissed him on his cheek—she and her mother were the only people who kissed him, or who were allowed to do so—and got up.

  As she went in, Bev came out and took Carina’s chair. “Did she talk to you at all?”

  “She did. Nothing you don’t know, though. I don’t think I’m the right audience for this one. I don’t get the female middle-school experience.”

  “She doesn’t want to talk to me because she doesn’t think I get her. I’m too nice, she says.”

  Donnie didn’t know anyone as nice as Bev Pagano. She truly was a kind soul, all the way through. Gentle and sweet, open to everyone. The kind of woman people spoke of as a saint. The day to Nick’s night.

  Never had Donnie let anyone down the way he’d let her down. She’d been savaged because he’d failed to do his job and protect her. And yet, she loved him. She’d never blamed him for her attack. She’d blamed herself for his.

  “Carina will be fine,” he told her now. “She’ll calm down once the trip is over and her friends stop talking about it.”

  “I know.” Bev sighed. “She’s so much like her father. So strong, but so uncompromising. It’s hard to get her to see anything but what she thinks is right. And she’s not wrong this time, so it’s even harder. I’m glad she hurt that boy. She’s right, it’s not harmless. Boys like that are the ones that date rape girls later because they think they’re entitled to sex. And you and Nick are both wrong that there was a better way. I understand why he let her be suspended, I understand what he’s telling the other parents by allowing it, but Carina is right this time. That boy needed to be shamed, and she needed to shame him, where people saw. It’s not fair that she’s punished for doing what she needed to do, but Nick’s position comes first. If that boy behaves, it won’t be because he respects Carina or any woman. It will be because he fears her father.” She sighed. “I wish my daughters didn’t have to live in a world where every public space they walk through is a potential danger zone. They have to wonder if every man they meet might be a predator, or if every man who offers them friendship is really just waiting for something more. I hoped it would be better when they were becoming women, but it’s not. We are under siege every day we live in this world.”

  Donnie stared at Bev’s profile, all his dark thoughts bursting to life. Was this why Arianna had run from him? Had she seen him as a threat? Of course that was it—why else would she have run? But what had he done that was aggressive? Threatening? Predatory?

  As underboss of the Pagano Brothers, he was a dangerous man, an apex predator. That was his role, and who he was. But he had no wish to hurt or frighten women. He wasn’t Nick’s right hand when he was with a woman. He was only Donnie. He needed control because there was so much danger for him.

  All he’d done was tell her his rules. Women were sometimes offended by them, but none had ever been threatened or hurt by them. They existed to prevent hurt, not create it. Had Arianna seen them as a threat of some sort? How? Why?

  And why did it matter? Why couldn’t he let this go?

  “Donnie?”

  He blinked and climbed out of his head. “Sorry. Just thinking about your girls. They’ll be fine, Bev. They’re Paganos, and they’re strong. Nobody will dare fuck with them.”

  She smiled and took his hand. “I love you, Donnie. But you really have no idea what it’s like to be a woman in the world.”

  ~ 12 ~

  Ari walked along the li
ne of girls at the barre, checking their form in penché. Though most instructors she’d had when she was learning had moved her body into position and expected her to hold where they’d placed her, she used a different approach, talking dancers through as they moved their own bodies.

  After The Phantom of the Opera finished its run, the second and final ballet of the fall season was a showcase of up-and-coming dancers and choreographers in the area—mainly high school and college students. Ari had a few weeks off, with only regular classes scheduled as workouts. Dancers in the company earned their keep during their downtime in community outreach—school visits, guest instruction at affiliated studios, and in the dance programs at area colleges.

  Today, she was giving instruction at a dance studio in the ‘burbs, teaching a group of middle-school girls. This was a critical age, where an ‘activity’ became an ambition. These girls had every advantage—the best studios, the best teachers, parents with the resources, both money and time, to ensure their daughters’ best success. But here was the point where those resources could do only so much. Once these girls entered their teens, if they didn’t have the talent and body and drive for ballet, none of which could be bought and paid for, they would never be ballerinas.

  Pausing near the end of the barre, where one of the smaller girls struggled to find the highest point of her arc, Ari said, to the whole group, “I bet you’ve heard the thing that you should imagine there are strings running through your center, pulling you up to the ceiling, and through your arms and legs, pulling them in the way they should go.” Though these preteen girls were already too well trained to break position to nod or speak, she could see in their faces, reflected in the mirror, that they were familiar with the instruction. Several made an effort to improve their penché, as if she’d given the instruction. “Return to first position, please, and turn to me.”

  The girls came off pointe, gracefully returned to first position, turned, and resumed first. They all stood in their practice leotards and filmy practice skirts like figurines waiting for their music box.

  “I think of that instruction as ‘the marionette.’ Have you all seen a marionette show?” She mimed a marionette herself, and a few of the girls laughed softly. “It’s a good idea, because if you can imagine yourself like that, everything loose and pliable, then you can strive for the fluid grace a dancer needs. It’s like we don’t need gravity, right?” To demonstrate, she ran into the middle of the room, and did a series of grands fouettés into fouettés rond des jambs en tournantes. Every eye was fixed on her, devouring her movements, coveting them.

  She stopped and faced them again. When the girls applauded, she curtsied lightly. “But I always had trouble imagining somebody else was pulling my strings. I saw a few of you who maybe have the same trouble. So, if thinking of strings doesn’t work, you can try what I do and see if that works better. I think of myself as trying to reach something I’m not supposed to reach. So I make myself as tall and long as I can. Instead of a string pulling on me, something outside myself, I’m inside myself, pushing every part of me to be go as high and far as it can.”

  She went en pointe and into penché, extending her leg to the ceiling, her arm to the wall. “No one is pulling me. No strings. Only me.” Taking a turn around the studio, she performed a short series of grands jetés and returned to the center. “I don’t defy gravity because I’m being pulled from the floor. I defy it because I can fly. Okay. Let’s try again. To the barre. En pointe. And penché. Good!”

  ~oOo~

  After class, most of the girls clustered around her like star-struck groupies. They wanted her autograph. They had a million questions each. Ari took as much time as she could, trying to answer all their questions, take their selfies, and sign their notebooks. She hadn’t needed to star in a ballet to have the admiration of girls like this. As long as she’d been dancing professionally, girls in studios had wanted to be her.

  When they asked questions about what dancing professionally was like, she tried to strike a balance between realism and fantasy. Girls like this already knew about the pain and hard work. There was more of that, and she was honest about it. She was honest about the competition and disappointments, too—they had some experience in those areas as well. But she skirted some of the seamy underside, not speaking directly about men like Baxter Berrault. Instead, she told them that their body was their own, and while their bodies would always feel the discomforts of hard work, they should never be made to feel uncomfortable in their own skin.

  Lessons she tried to master herself, and she’d thought she’d done well at it. But in the past month, she’d been shaken.

  The last performances of Phantom had gone well enough—nothing like the premiere, but more true to herself than the second performance. She’d shoved Donnie ‘The Face’ Goretti into her personal scrap heap of bad dates and dumb mistakes and stopped thinking about him. For the most part. And she’d successfully avoided being alone with Baxter, mainly because Julian, and Sergei, too, had made it their purpose in life to keep her company in the theatre. She’d given up her dressing room to squeeze in with Julian, and her partners had been her shadows for the rest of the week.

  So no more horrible moves from Baxter, but he was vividly aware that she avoided being alone with him, he showed his displeasure just as vividly, and she knew she was going to pay. Tomorrow was the first winter season planning meeting, a mandatory, company-wide affair, and Ari fully expected to be humiliated in front of everyone. At a minimum, she expected him to announced auditions for the role of Clara.

  Devonny, six years older than Ari, had never had to audition for the starring role of any ballet in all the time Ari had been in the company. But Devonny was not yet ready to dance again. Ari was inarguably the next-best dancer—arguably the best dancer—in the company. Baxter had given her the role of Christine—not necessarily with good grace, but without question. But he would make her audition now, she was sure. And depending on how angry he was at her rejection, he might well give the part to someone else. Jessi, most likely, whom he often held up as her chief competition.

  Jessi wasn’t close to the dancer Ari was, in art or craft, but she was emotionally and mentally pliable, and her body was less evidently muscular than Ari’s. More Baxter’s type. Baxter despised The Nutcracker, and hated that ticket-holders demanded the ballet every December. Ari absolutely believed that he’d sacrifice the quality of their ‘kiddie show’ on the altar of his unsatisfied penis.

  For the past few weeks, she’d felt the constant weight of Baxter’s angry, petulant, vindictive gaze. No matter where she was, how far from him she was, what she was doing, that feeling never left her. He had control of her career, and she had little else of value in her life.

  Once all the girls had left the studio for the changing room, Ari sat on the floor. She removed her pointe shoes and slipped into a pair of split-sole shoes instead. She pulled legwarmers over her tights and wrapped a pashmina shawl around her shoulders. The girls’ teacher, an elegant older woman named Marlene, who’d danced professionally in the Midwest, slid her arms into a well-worn cardigan.

  Ari prepared to make small talk. She preferred to wait and change to her street clothes when the girls were gone and the studio was quiet, and she knew that the instructors liked their time with her as well. Most ballet instructors had been professional dancers of one sort or another, and they all liked to talk shop and relive a life when little girls and demanding mothers were not part of their daily grind.

  “You know,” Marlene said, watching Ari gather up her gear, “what you said about pushing your body rather than allowing it to be pulled, I’m not sure I agree. I think the grace comes in the way our bodies seem to be controlled by something greater than ourselves.”

  Ari smiled. “You mean God?”

  “If you wish. But something more powerful than our petty human selves, certainly.”

  “I understand. But we work hard for our art. We hurt for it. We don’t wake up one mornin
g with the ability to do the things we can do. It takes years of real, painful effort.”

  “Of course, yes. Like all artists, we suffer.”

  “Then why give credit to something other than ourselves?”

  “It’s not credit, dear. It is still the dancer, herself, on the stage. But the art is in making hard work look effortless.”

  Marlene was right, obviously. Ari had been told often enough that her dancing was too ‘strong’ for true greatness that she understood: her strength was her weakness. But it chafed. It particularly chafed that this old dancer who’d never achieved enough success even to fail at the ABT thought she could offer unsolicited advice.

  Since she wasn’t a diva, though, she let it slide, and she put a point on the conversation. “You’re right, I know. I didn’t mean to confuse your students.”

  “You didn’t. It’s good to have different ways to think of things. Do you have time to share a cup of tea?” Marlene asked.

  Though she was no longer in any mood to hang around in this studio, Ari smiled. “Of course. I’d love a cup of tea.”

  “I have shortbread cookies, too. Do you dare?”

  “I think I can dare a cookie, yes. That sounds lovely.” She followed the woman back to her office, which she knew would be a cramped, dreary, disheartening space.

  And a look into her own future. Maybe her near future.

  ~oOo~

  “If he does”—Julian met her at the back of his car and pushed the trunk lid open—“you should talk to a lawyer.”

  “I don’t think it’s a prosecutable offense to make me audition.” Ari reached in for her dance bag, but he brushed her hand away and took them both.

  “I’m not a lawyer, and neither are you, so we don’t know. But everybody knows you’re the best girl in the company. I think you’re better than Dev, too. There’s nobody even close, and everybody knows it.” With both bags hooked over one shoulder, he offered his hand, and Ari took it.