Dr. Edith Vane and the Hares of Crawley Hall by Suzette Mayr

Author:Suzette Mayr
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Coach House Books
Published: 2017-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

She attempts pliés and jetés, pirouettes, and tries to reach her toes above the level of her waist, she tries not to judge her gangly, angular flamingo self in the long mirror reflected in the high sparkling windows. Her quads and buttocks ache, her neck sweats, she sweats into the tangling, frizzling roots of her hair, while her ballet teacher counts out loud, tells them, – Move with propulsive strength and purpose! Don’t flop around like dolls!

Edith chugs her breaths like a train, the inside of the windows veiled in the students’ condensed sweat and breath, her joints straining until they tear and pop. Exercise is my furniture, she chants to herself as she sweats and pains. Exercise is my furniture.

The teacher plays the first strains of ‘Dance of the Little Swans.’ She and the other women in the class link hands in two human woman chains, the teacher presses Play on the CD player, and they hop and clump sporadically in and out of sync while the teacher shouts directions, trying to keep in time to the stabbing notes of the flutes. Edith towers over all the women, her hands and the two hands she desperately holds on to slippery and hot.

The lack of coordination, the sweat trickling around her ears, the puffy fingers of the other women clutching her own, the clumping of their feet on the shiny wooden floor. The ceilings in this room stretch very high, and she wonders what part of the train station she is now galumphing around in. The old waiting room? A storage room? She can hear the whistle of the train as it crashes toward her while she hoofs from side to side, pretending to be a little swan, the train’s scream splitting her open.

The teacher crashes the CD player off and emotes at them, – I want to see the electricity crackling out of your fingertips!

Edith sags.

She stops in a 7-Eleven on the way home to buy aspirin, when she sees Angus Fella using tongs to pick up a wiener from the rolling rows of greasy, withered hot dogs in the corner of the store.

She has never seen him off-campus. She is like one of those children who believe their teachers live at school, are shocked that teachers do things like shop for packets of French onion soup mix or aluminum foil.

– Angus! she calls.

He fumbles his hot dog, startled. It squelches to the floor and rolls, picking up layers of dust and dirt.

– You’ll have to pay for that, sir, declares the pimply clerk.

– No, interrupts Edith – I’ll get it!

But even as she says it, she remembers she only has small change in her sweatpants pocket; her wallet and credit card are back home in her hallway closet.

– That would be super, says Angus.

She jingles her hand in her pocket, anyway, fruitlessly. – I can’t get it, she says, – I don’t have enough money on me.

– Well, that’s just great! says Angus, he claps together his thick, wrinkled hands.

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