The Magical Mr. Mistoffelees

By Emily Neuberger

“Watch me,” my brother said, and began to turn. 

During the lull between the understudy run-through and tonight’s performance, he’d snuck in another rehearsal in the theater basement. He had hardly enough space to avoid knocking his ankle on the washing machines. After turn sixteen, he tried to add arms for flair and fell out.

I brushed the dust off my rehearsal tights. “We need to eat.”

James shook his head. “I don’t have time.” He bent his knees in a deep fourth-position plié, already prepping to go again. I slid into a split for the pleasure of the stretch before standing. 

“You nailed it in rehearsal today. Let’s go.”

“We’ll never land principal contracts if we aren’t consistent,” James said. “You want to be an understudy forever?” His voice bounced off different parts of the wall as he spun.  

He was baiting me, but I needed dinner, not an argument, and James’s bonus rehearsal had already swallowed most of my break.

In the last few weeks, his rehearsing had advanced from disciplined to compulsive. This wasn’t the first meal he’d worked through. He’d been losing weight and snapped when I reminded him that part of his job was fitting his costume. Well, he could ruin his own dinner, but he wasn’t taking mine.

I had to hurry. My makeup took me half an hour. I didn’t perform most nights, but I still had to wear the full feline face paint. I felt like a kid grounded on Halloween. While James was a true understudy, performing every night in the ensemble and covering a principal role, I was a swing. I covered the ensemble, and waited backstage ready, in case any of the female dancers were injured mid-show. My eye for choreography landed me the gig covering eight different tracks. No matter what occurred inside or outside of the theater, the show must, must go on.

 That night, elly had a migraine, so I was performing. I rushed out to grab dinner before getting dressed. This morning’s snow had turned to putty-colored slush, and I jumped to clear a wide puddle. The neighborhood was swollen with Christmastime tourists. On the corner, a man sold New Year’s glasses, the eyes made of the two nines of the approaching decade. It was surreal to see people celebrate the passage of time. Inside our theater, the men rehearsed to cover the gaps of those who wouldn’t see January.

My parents were finally venturing into the city for the show tomorrow. I’d had to beg to get them to come, and only the bargain of comped Christmas-week Broadway tickets could draw them out of Edgewater. They’d never seen any of James’s performances, only mine. They didn’t even pay for his classes; he’d caught my teacher’s eye while spending his afternoons following along in the waiting room. Talented boys with the drive were so rare, she taught him for free.

The line at the deli was long. Serves James right if he doesn’t eat, I thought. Let him pass out during the Jellicle Ball. I couldn’t do everything for him. But then it was my turn at the counter. “Two tunas, please, rye.”

*

The marquee glowed over the line of tourists with their disposable cameras and scarves wrapped around their necks, smiling under the photos of us leaping in cat costumes. All throughout midtown, storefronts boasted twinkling lights and red bows, and bars enticed people with hot toddies or eggnog. We’d sold out nine shows a week. The other day, Rob, one of the male swings, had heard a scalper offering three hundred for orchestra seats. I shouldered through the line of hopefuls begging for last-minute cancellations outside the box office and opened the stage door. Several of them gasped and pointed at me like I was somebody special.

Inside, I initialed the sign-in sheet twice. JC, JC, Jules and James Carmichael. He never remembered to sign in. James was eighteen, just one year younger than me, though it felt like more. All my life he’d followed me, first into dance classes, then auditions, and now, here, to our first major gig. I think both of us had expected it to be more fun. The mood inside the theater was far more somber than the one outside, and not only because our weekly show count rose from eight to nine between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. The brutality of the schedule meant injuries and colds and flu; I’d gone on more in these weeks than any other time of the year.

I’d been saving the overtime to move out of the apartment I shared with James in Hell’s Kitchen. I was sick of living so close to the theater, of talking only about dance, of him shaking me awake to go to a ballet class at eight o’clock in the morning. I wanted a place I could bring a boyfriend to, if I ever got one. January first, I’d move to a studio in the village. The lease was signed. I’d bought the previous tenant’s bed, dresser, and kitchen table. The only task left was to tell my brother.

 I ducked into the male ensemble room to deliver James’s sandwich. He was swiping the white makeup over his neck. Most weeks he didn’t remember to buy groceries, much less launder his rehearsal clothes. All our lives, James had been like a little laser, focused only on his goals. When he was small, he’d dissolve into hysteria when things went wrong. It was my job to walk ahead of him, sweeping chaos out of the way.

 His white t-shirt was so drenched that it was transparent. The pinkness of his cheeks looked wrong to me. My brother’s body was as familiar as my own, and the way he held his head was different, heavier than usual. I smoothed his hair, damp with sweat.

“Thanks, sis,” he said. We were built similarly, though our bodies presented different problems in our careers. I was too muscled for a ballerina, and he was too small to lift a woman over his head. We both inherited our mother’s tight Achilles tendons, and had to stretch them to avoid injury, though that was more of a problem for pointe work. Before I gave up the dream of classical ballet, I’d battled this genetic reality, vacillating between starving myself and purging, hoping in vain to shrink my muscles into sleek reedy limbs like Suzanne Farrell’s or the women of the Bolshoi. Broadway was more accepting, if only slightly.

The faces beside James in the mirror were drawn. Still, someone played music, and two of the dancers gyrated against the chairs, trying to make Frankie, the most serious in the bunch, laugh. But there was something forced about it which called to mind eating your vegetables; it was important, these days, to laugh.

Joan, who screeched out “Memory” every night, told me once that Broadway wasn’t what it used to be. “There’s a pall in the air, girl,” she said, waving her hand. I could almost see a cigarette there, though she wouldn’t let the smoke near her voice. “You missed how it used to be. The theater was a refuge. Now, it’s a warzone.” 

*

I ate half my sandwich and then slipped on my wig cap. Normally Robert, the male swing, hung out backstage with me and we put on a cassette and danced around in our tights and wig caps like little bald aliens. But he was performing every night now that Lee was gone, and the producers hadn’t been able to replace Gabriel. Half the male dancers in town were doing seasonal contracts over at Radio City — and the other half were in the hospital or praying to stay out of it. Still, every night the bridge and tunnelers packed in, jubilant over our feline antics. I thought of them and their grubby kids infesting midtown and more than once wanted to spit during curtain call. It was obvious why we were such a hit. Cats glinted distractions before the eyes of those who did not wish to see. It was a balm of nothing —yet the something seeped through our walls like poisonous gas, smothering our dancers one by one. Still the audience paid to clap. The whiskers made us invisible; they let the audience enjoy watching men spin and twirl their glorious bodies without discomfort.

Once I squeezed into my lycra, I drifted down to the wings. The Winter Garden was one of the largest theaters on Broadway, and backstage was an ant farm, with hallways and staircases and little rooms tucked away, the cast and crew streaming like insects. I waited in the wings for a microphone, stepping aside to let Joan go ahead of me. Twenty years of Broadway earned her the right. The tech was wearing blue latex gloves. Joan presented the back of her neck to him, so he could tape down the wire, and caught my eyes. “War,” she mouthed.

My brother was stretching with Robert. It would be easier, I thought, to leave him with a boyfriend than an empty apartment. But he always said he didn’t have time. Last week, after we all went out for a post-show dinner, I’d pressed harder than usual. He just shook his head. “I have a chance at Mistoffelees once Neil’s contract’s up, Jules,” he’d said. “That’s my priority. I don’t have time for a boyfriend.” It seemed just as ridiculous now, as Robert’s dark eyes crinkled in laughter and, no matter where he looked, always returned to my brother’s face.

Sometimes, I wondered. I’d hear the door open late at night. Or I’d have to shake him awake in the morning, his body heavy with sleep. But he never offered an explanation, and in truth I did not want to know. I worried about him all day, I could not give him my sleep, though of course at times he took it anyway, while I lay awake, waiting for him to come home.

In the stairwell outside stage right, I used the railing as a barre. As they passed, the singers who danced murmured to “break a leg,” the dancers who sang said merde, ambling in their catsuits and wigs toward their places for the opening number.

I felt fingers tap the back of my neck as I balanced. Heat flushed my skin, and I smiled before turning to face him.

“Jules.” Neil, the dance captain, played the most difficult and lauded role in the show, the fouetté-turning Magical Mr. Mistoffelees. He had ascended at New York City Ballet as one of the last dancers selected by Balanchine himself. The master had choreographed a solo for Neil, only a member of the corps de ballet at the time, before he died. This granted Neil a mystique and respect around town: the father of American ballet’s last prophet. 

“Neil.” I lost balance and looked up at him. He was dressed in black and white, his costume a glittering tuxedo. He had a good eight inches on me, and leaned against the railing, teeth gleaming. “Hey.”

James was Neil’s understudy, though he’d never performed the role. Neil was on a sabbatical from the ballet and credited ten years of twelve-hour days for his stamina. James aped his lifestyle from the weight training to the vile shakes – spinach, yogurt, blueberries, three raw eggs. Neil’s number concluded with a series of grand-jetés around the stage and twenty-four fouetté turns en lair, which he could turn into thirty by adding a triple pirouette every eight count. James had been rehearsing these turns every day for a year, and could do them almost every time now. But it didn’t matter, because Neil never called out of the show. 

“You have such beautiful turnout.” He gripped my knee and moved it into second position, watching how my hip flexors adjusted to keep my pelvis straight. “Gorgeous.”

I blushed. “Thanks.” 

“Did you tell him the news?” His thumb pressed on the inside of my thigh. “When’s the move-in date?”

I couldn’t believe he remembered. I held my relevé, eyes fixed on the wall opposite so he couldn’t read the giddiness there. “January.” My calf burned. “I haven’t told him yet. He’s going to be upset.” I pliéd to stretch out my Achilles.

He cupped my leg once more, his thumbs on the tender back of my knee, and rested my foot on his shoulder so I could stretch my hamstrings. I bent forward, his hand closing on my inner thigh. “Have you ever done a night rehearsal?”

I brought my foot down in an enveloppé and closed in fifth. “No.”

Neil eyed my flat fifth. I’d worked hard for my turnout and relished his eyes on my feet. “It’s magic. I rent a space on the twenty-fifth floor. You turn the lights down and dance with the city all around. Come with me tomorrow, after the show. Dance out the stress.”

Angie called two minutes. I couldn’t find my tongue to speak. He tapped my nose this time.

“Think about it.” He picked up his green protein shake, and I watched his quads and glutes moving as he sauntered off.

*

The overture twinkled on. I entered from the back of the house, leaping through the aisles. The tourists turned their heads, the shyer slumping into their seats. I always chose these people to hiss at, baring my teeth like I had rabies. James and I passed each other on stage crosses. He grinned, his back convex in a gorgeous curve, thighs twitching up as he bent his knees. My parents were fools to have skipped all their chances to watch him. They acted like the suggestion was obscene. I did not know a greater pleasure than dancing together. So much of life, he drove me nuts, but when we danced, we were one person, as though we had originated as one embryo. Every time we performed together, I felt a pulse of wonder. It had come true.

The choreography in the ten-minute Jellicle Ball punished. Even after all this time, I reached the three-quarter mark wondering whether I could finish. My fur leg warmers burned on my calves, I could feel the sweat pooling underneath. I hit my mark, my brain a step ahead of my body, sorting through different tracks I covered. If I mis-stepped, I’d bang right into someone onstage, causing havoc or even injury. But my body recognized the symmetry of the choreography, the way the crosses completed the stage picture. The movements came to me then, and I smiled, my muscles singing even as they screamed. 

Dance was different from other art forms. Sometimes we were mere puppets — ask any of those Radio City dancers. But an Alvin Ailey soloist wasn’t only someone’s paintbrush, they were also the painter. Their bodies were their art, and the choreography was the instrument through which it flowed. We, the cats, were somewhere in the middle. Once we got to the middle of the ball, I felt my soul lighten and lift. My fatigue melted away as we jetéd, battemented, pirouetted as one. Slowly, finger by finger, limb by limb, I ceased to exist.

During Act II, Neil executed his solo beautifully as ever, and by his eighth turn, the audience began to cheer. I crouched on the stage, watching. His black and white costume glittered rainbow under the lights. My compact form meant I was a better turner than most, but even I couldn’t help drifting six inches or more when I fouettéd. Neil might have been nailed to the ground, only I could see his standing foot rotating on the spot. When at last he leapt out of the turns, his grin was real, as if he was relieved, even after executing this perfectly over four-hundred times, that he hadn’t fallen out of his turns. Or else he was just enjoying the cheers thundering through the house.

*

My disdain for the audience did not dam the adrenaline that came with every curtain call. After the lights dimmed, we ran backstage. James gripped my shoulders and pushed off, leaping through the dark. 

“Meow!” he cried, then spun around, throwing his head back and kicking his leg. I laughed, though the post-show glow ebbed faster than usual. I needed to tell James about my move. But he was impossible to talk to in this state, like a helium balloon that kept rising to the ceiling.

As he passed me, Neil squeezed my shoulder in praise, but left before I’d recovered enough to speak. The air was humid with dancers’ sweat. I unsnapped the shoulders of my costume and pulled it down around my waist. The cool air rushed over my fevered skin. James did the same, his chest glistening, dappled with red, and when Robert joined us backstage, James leapt on him and pulled off his costume, too. I watched Robert smile, his eyes shifting over James’ face, trying to read through the exuberance as my brother’s fingers brushed his skin.

Our spirits soared as we raced up the stairs to our dressing rooms. James crawled up like a cat, then jetéd through the hallway, turning back, his chest rosy against the white paint on his neck. 

“Sexual cats, prostatical cats, backstagical cats, erectical cats, fellacical cats…!”

 James put one leg on his chair, waving his hands in the air like claws. He was sweating so badly that his neck makeup ran. He dropped into his chair, gasping,  then tugged at his wig, one of the pins sticking. “Help,” he whined.

“If you do me next,” I said. The wigs were the worst part of the costume. They were hotter than wool caps.

My heart was still pounding, even minutes after the show. I had never betrayed my brother before, and I knew he’d see my move as just that. In one more day, I reminded myself, I’d be in a studio with Neil, his hands on my body. I just had to tell him first.

I began to unpin James, brushing the back of his neck. My fingers came away moist and too hot. He was feverish.

As I removed the wig, I saw his neck, skin swollen and puffy beneath his ears, round as Christmas baubles. My mouth went dry. He’d been sitting for several minutes now but the flush on his chest did not dissipate.

He was still whispering the dirty version of the opening number under his breath. I said his name. But Robert caught my wrist and grasped, hard. I looked at him. He was pale, staring at my brother’s lymph nodes. Slowly, he shook his head, eyes flicking to the other boys in the room. I looked in the mirror at James, who was still smiling to himself, high on his performance.  

*

Once we were alone, I asked when he had found out. James kept his eyes on his feet to avoid me. People passed us on the dark sidewalk, heads bent against the cold, but they were nightmarish figures, unreal, I did not care that my voice was loud with hysteria. I asked him who. I named names. Still he kept walking. How could this even happen? James was young, immature, but was he so careless? All at once I was overcome by the same frustration I felt when I washed his clothes or bought him dinner, intensified now into fury. I should not have had to tell him to use protection. I shouldn’t have to tell him to get tested. 

I caught his wrist, afraid of being left behind on the sidewalk. Questions bottlenecked in my brain, until I could not speak at all. It didn’t matter. None of the “whys” would tell us what to do next. No words of comfort existed. But I realized I already knew how long.

“Your rehearsing,” I said. “All those extra hours.”

James raised his eyes to meet mine. “I told you,” he said. “I don’t have time to waste.”

*

In the morning, I woke to James  banging around  in the bathroom, but I kept my door closed, my eyes on the ceiling, hands gripping the bedspread, until he left. All the while, my blood thickened in my veins with each passing second, as though I was trying to slow down time. I was wasting these moments with him, and knew I would look back on this lost day later with regret. But I did not know how to look into his face. I had dreamed that I, not he, was sick, and woke up feeling that this was somehow true. 

I had planned to grocery shop that day, do laundry, go to the chiropractor. Instead I lay under my covers, waiting for the light to fade in the early afternoon before I dressed for the theater.  

*

My father was waiting for me under the glowing marquee. His hands were in the pocket of his coat and he was scowling against the wind. Surrounded by the corporate cheer, he looked like a spirit sent to spoil Christmas. “I thought we said six?”

“Sorry,” I said. “Napped, overslept.”

His expression made it clear how lazy he thought this. I didn’t rise to it. I presented the tickets. “Center orchestra, row F.” I saw his blank face. “Great seats.”

He slipped the tickets into his inside coat pocket.  “Do you know what we paid for parking? Your mom is at a café.” He looked at Times Square. “I didn’t want her hanging around here.”

It had been a long time since I noticed the peep shows and adult bookstores around the theaters. “James and I want to take you backstage after the show. Can you stay? Go for dessert?”

“Your mother isn’t sleeping well lately,” he said. “We can’t be out late.”

Three young men, swathed in scarves, passed us. “Hey Jules,” one said. Robert was last. “Is this your dad?” He pulled the scarf down from where it covered his mouth and smiled. “Hi, Mr. Carmichael. I’m Rob, I dance with James and Julia.” He held out his hand.

My father huffed through his nose. I waited, my face growing hot. Then Robert put his hand, pale now in the cold, back in his pocket. I tried to apologize, but he just moved for the stage door. My father watched him go.

I glared. “You can’t get it from shaking hands.”

He stepped back, as if proximity to me, now, made him nervous. “It’s cold. You should get inside.” He stepped toward the curb, looking around the crowds. I knew without looking that his hand grasped his wallet inside his coat pocket. 

*

I found James in the laundry room, shining with perspiration, practicing his fouettés. He didn’t see me. I stood near the dryers with my arms folded over my chest as he turned and turned, his face shining with perspiration. I dropped my bag with a thud. “Have you eaten?” 

He fell out of his turns and shook his head, beads of sweat flying off. I flinched. “No time,” he said. “I still have my core exercises to get through. Don’t worry, I had a shake.”

“That’s not food.”

I walked forward and handed him a bottle of water. He had that look on his face, the obsessive one. Finally, he finished with a perfect, straight pirouette, and used the last of the strength on his standing leg to launch himself into a jeté.

I didn’t have any praise in me. “James. This isn’t good for you. You’ll make yourself sick.”

“I want to dance,” he said, then, quietly, he added, “While I can.”

He prepped to go again. His shoulders were too tense, too high up near his ears, he’d never get around properly. I was right. He fell out. He glared at me like I’d pushed him. His face was high in color, and he looked healthy as Apollo. Finally he said, “Don’t tell Mom and Dad.”

“James.” My voice broke as desperate dreams for him piled up, and I didn’t know which to pick. I wanted him to be healthy, I wanted him to dance, I wanted him to live, to do everything neither of us had done yet.

He faced the front of the room, spotted the exit sign, and began to turn.

*

I huffed up the stairs. Anger pingponged through my body, looking for a target, and it latched on my parents, probably complaining about the small theater seats, before it spread to the rest of the crowd. Fuck them all, I thought, and their hotel rooms at the Marriott Marquis, their chocolate lava cakes, their family values. They’d brag about our show over the water cooler – what a phenomenon! None of them, I thought, deserved to watch my brother dance, not when I knew that after the shows they went to sleep thinking that the disease had nothing to do with them.

Neil caught me by the shoulders outside my dressing room. “What’s with the scowl, Julie?”

“I have to put my makeup on.” If he was gentle with me, I was sure I’d cry.

He cupped my face in his hands. I averted my eyes, but he stroked my cheek. “Hey.” His voice was soft. “Are you nervous for your parents?”

I laughed. I may not be Balanchine’s last hope, but I was over stage fright by now. “I’m not even dancing tonight.”

He put his fingers under my chin and tilted my head so I was looking at him. “You’re a beautiful dancer, did you know?” He pressed me closer when I rolled my eyes. “Really. I love to watch you move. In the understudy rehearsals, you’re like a storm.”

My face warmed. “I can’t believe you watch. James would be thrilled.”

“He’s talented.” His voice was light with disinterest. I hadn’t noticed before the flecks of gold in his dark eyes. “But when you dance, I can’t look away.”

I bent my gaze again. I squirmed away into my dressing room. I felt disloyal admiring him now. Neil took pride in his stamina. While he played the role, James would never perform. And by the time his contract was up, James might not be capable.

Neil leaned over my makeup station, squinting at the pictures and cards I’d shoved into the edge of the mirror. I dipped my sponge in the makeup and swiped it on my cheeks. I had to concentrate on each task to keep from crying.

“Is that you?” He put down his shake to examine a picture of twelve-year-old me wearing a white nightgown, in an arabesque, holding a nutcracker. It had been my first year in pointe shoes. When I didn’t answer, he knelt beside me. “Talk to me. Did you tell him? Did he take it hard?”

I put down the sponge and squeezed my eyes shut. “I’m not ready to move out yet,” I said. I had to break the lease, I realized. “I can’t leave my brother.”

He frowned. “Okay.” There were other dancers in the room getting ready. He reached a hand up, as if to brush my hair away from my forehead, then let it fall. “We still on to dance later? Or maybe just dinner?”

I turned back to the mirror. My brain couldn’t fathom anything outside the crisis at hand. He moved toward the door. My silence had hurt him. “Wait,” I said. “If you were dying,” my throat went thick, “would you keep dancing?”

The question didn’t seem to surprise him. We were all thinking about it these days. I watched his face clear as he understood, on some level, my anguish. He took his time before answering. Finally, he just said, “What else would I do?”

*

Makeup on, I waited upstairs in my leg warmers when the opening number began. I usually went down to wish James merde, but today, I couldn’t. I sat with my Walkman over my ears, mind racing. 

Somewhere out there, James was dancing in front of my parents for the first time. I doubted they’d be able to tell which cat he was. They would miss it without knowing they wouldn’t have another chance. But I could pick him out anywhere. I knew his athletic movements, the lift he had in his ribs, the way his feet didn’t seem to touch the floor when he was in the groove. When he danced, I danced. It did not seem that my brother’s body could harbor an illness that did not, too, infect mine. For so many years we had battled our tight achilles tendons, our stocky frames. 

I opened my eyes and looked in the mirror. The green shake sat in front of me. 

*

There wasn’t much time. 

No one noticed as I slipped my jeans over my tights, my hood over my wig cap, and hustled out the stage door. I had seven minutes until intermission.

I kept my head down in the freezing mist. My makeup was waterproof, but I doubted it could withstand the wet winter. Still, people saw me. Only in Times Square would people double take at my cat’s face; anywhere else in the city and no one would care. Of course I had to commit my crime in a place filled with tourists. But I hustled on, and they pointed, excited to see an authentic New York City freak.

In the drugstore, I found what I was looking for at once. I knew the orange box from my flirtations with bulimia. The pills took some time to work, which I didn’t have. Still, I doubted even the most robust digestive system could withstand a triple dose. 

The cashier bagged the laxatives. “I thought you guys just got hairballs.”

Inside the theater, I slipped off my wet hood. Jim, the security guy, scowled. “It’s mid-show,” he said, probably upset that he hadn’t noticed me leave in the first place. I held up my bag. 

“Lady trouble.”

Neil’s shake sweat on my makeup station. I took it to the bathroom where, sitting on the toilet, I popped the pills out of the foil. My hands hovered over the cup of green glop for a long time, picturing Neil’s exultation as he finished his number. But then I thought of James, and crushed three of the pills into the mixture, stirring them in with the straw.

As the final notes of Act One sounded through the house, I was waiting with the shake outside Neil’s dressing room. Seeing me, a smile broke across his face, and he pulled me against his damp body. I pressed the shake into his hand and escaped his grasp. I couldn’t meet his eyes as I slunk away, but I heard the throaty sound of the last of the shake, sucked up through the straw.

*

I waited with my eyes closed, listening to Act Two through the tinny monitor.

And then I recognized Angie’s voice. She was announcing a second intermission, barely minutes after the first. My heart skipped. I could not believe it had worked.

Out in the hall, some of the cast came upstairs. I kept my face blank as they passed. “Someone’s out,” Joan said, shouldering her door open and drizzling water into her mouth. 

I searched the group until I found him, running toward me, his face breaking into a smile like sunshine through a storm cloud. I opened my arms and he ran into them. I held him as tightly as I could, even as he struggled for his dressing room.

“It’s Neil.” He panted. “He’s sick — help me, Jules, I have to get dressed…!”

He peeled off his costume and threw it at me. I was ready with the black and white glittering tuxedo, Mr. Mistoffelees’s costume. 

His makeup was designed so he wouldn’t have to change it if this happened, but as it never had happened before, his hands hovered over his face, frozen, frightened, unsure of what to do. I unpinned his wig, careful of the puffy glands on his neck, as Angie came into the room. 

“James, you ready in five?”

“Five!” he shouted, grinning, his eyes sparking. He turned to me in his wig cap. “Oh, Jules, I’m going to throw up —”

“We can’t have two sick cats.” My voice shook, but he was too preoccupied to notice. He closed his eyes as I fastened his black wig, reciting the choreography under his breath, mimicking the footsteps with his hands, steps he knew better than anything in the world. I added extra pins so the wig was secure as could be. He shook his head back and forth, it didn’t budge. 

He stood. “All right, I gotta go—”

I gripped his shoulders. The dressing room was empty. All the other men were downstairs, holding their places, ready to begin again. I pressed my forehead against James’s and held him there for a moment. His shoulders vibrated under my fingertips.

“I’m so proud of you,” I said. 

He squeezed my hands. “Will you watch?”

I blinked away the tears before he could see them. “Of course.”

He grinned at me and then ran to places. 

*

On my way down, I passed the bathroom. The door opened. Neil, costume around his waist, emerged clammy and white. I dropped my gaze to the floor. When I looked up, he was still staring. I swallowed. 

“Lucky your mom and dad are here tonight.” I felt as sick as he was. He bent forward with one hand holding his stomach, but continued to watch me through narrow, gold-tinted eyes. They were wide, hurt. Then he whispered, “You could’ve just asked me.”

“Your shake sat out,” I said, mouth dry. “The eggs.”

Neil continued to watch me, but then something must have moved in him, because he reached back with a wild hand, grasping for the door. 

My heart was pounding. But the show was going on. I heard Angie’s voice, announcing the cast change, and ran for the stairs. I squeezed into the wing where the audience could not see me. They groaned, they were disappointed to miss Neil. But it didn’t matter. My brother’s name was called in front of everyone, in front of my parents. 

Robert was crouched on stage left when the curtain went up. In the dim lights he could see me hiding backstage in my warmups. Robert blinked at me, slow, like a cat giving a kiss. 

And then James leapt onto the stage. I realized, as he began to dance, that every muscle in my body was taut, as flexed as though I myself was dancing. As he pulled a rainbow cloth out of a hat and began his circle of grand jetés, I realized I had been worried that he would be stiff or nervous. That he would be in his head, that his obsessive rehearsal mode would carry out onto the stage and petrify his performance. But none of those fears had come true. 

My brother was glowing. 

His eyes glinted, gleamed, crossing the audience, his shoulders dropped, his body as relaxed as if he was doing nothing more difficult than strolling down the sidewalk.

And then he began his turns. I blinked away my tears. I knew he would want my opinion, after, and even though I would offer no criticism, no matter what happened, I refused to miss even a moment. My eyes could not see enough, time moved too quickly, I was missing it even as I watched. I needed to remember. The lights shined on the sparkles on his costume, sending shards of rainbow off in a thousand directions. His back was straight as though lifted by invisible wires, his standing leg strong. But it was more than that. As he turned, as the spotlights glowed on the glittering shirt, the stones sewn into the legs, my brother seemed to catch fire, his foot seemed to lift off the stage. He ascended right before my eyes, and he stopped dancing, and started, instead, to fly.