Chapter Thirteen: Greetings

                                    

                                          
    Madame Bethique Chausir was the ballet instructor; she and Monsieur Lefay choreographed every opera and play. Madame was not a woman known for her mercy or playfulness, but she did have a soft side, and Grace faintly admired her. She did not put up with any kind of nonsense  and was unafraid of being severe or persistent when she was not viewing a dancer's full potential. The dancers were not very fond of her.
   No one, however, seemed to be very fond of Guy either. He had a way with women that no one in the opera house  - excuse me, that no one with morals in the opera house  - shared. Guy was the kind of man who pushed his affections, cared not for propriety, and irritated many people on a daily basis. While Madame Chausir was merely austere, Guy could only be described by the following six adjectives: contemptuous, fatuous, masculine, pedantic, pretentious, and prurient. In simple words, he was a rakish fop.
    Grace was very pleased to be able to go back to the hotel at the end of the day with Nora and George. True, tomorrow she would have to move into dancer's quarters, but tonight, she would have some space between herself and the occupants of the theatre she now worked at. She needed to gather herself so that she would not appear a fool tomorrow.
    As to why she had unconsciously chosen to sing - no, consciously, it had been her choice, to go with instinct, that persuasive power - she was not quite sure. But thank goodness she did sing. If she had not been admitted to the opera house, she would have felt she could only walk through the rest of her life blindly, with her limbs weighed down and her vision obscured, all her senses dulled by the what if. It was this or nothing. (But of course there were two options of nothings, one of which, in her mind, seemed even more nonexistent than the other. The other was more of a hell of nonexistence.) This, was deciding to marry and become a wife. And Grace would have done this... except she didn't want to. In some ways, to her, marriage and children were still actions; the true meaning of nothing is exactly nothing. What she would have wanted to do was become an old maid who stayed at home - and she couldn't picture herself doing this - all day and night, sitting in an old wooden rocking chair. And she'd only wear black. A long black dress ending in lace cuffs at the ends of her sleeves, that were almost tight, and a high lace collar, the crepe making a design against her snowy skin, that too would nearly choke her. Her mousy brown hair would turn gray, even as the dress remained eternally black. Even if she died in that rocking chair and her body collected dust, the dress underneath would still be black. 
   Grace ran her fingers through her flimsily limp, curly hair as she looked at her reflection in the vanity mirror, allowing her mind to wander down a path she'd never take. A path that as of this afternoon, she'd never follow, receiving a strange, morbid sense of comfort from the exactness and certainty - control? - of a future that will not happen.
   It was the hour when most would be asleep, a few would be waking up, and others would be working. Several would be with their lovers. The moon cast silvery shadows on the dark world. A couple would be young girls, considering themselves in this moonlight, contemplating life, thinking or wishing and wandering or wondering. Grace was a part of this last group. In her nightgown, twiddling with her hair, watching the dim glow of candles reduce to nubs, dancing with her heart.
   But what had she left to think of? Oddly and horribly, for she thought the following was wrong and unfair to George and Nora, for she should  be thinking of the coming day, she found nothing of importance to worry over. And she had time to think and worry as she wasn't tired. 
   Shaking her head, she rose, and crossing her hotel room, blew out the three lit candles illuminating her dark night. 
   She climbed into bed and hovered between consciousness and sleeping. She walked on Nothing Land.