Helen Markowitz had sent her foster child out among the Catholics to honor a covenant with Kathy’s birth mother, a woman Helen had never met. Kathy had never spoken about her first mother, and so Helen had to intuit the wishes of this woman who had taught her child to make the sign of the cross. It was the only stitch of evidence to link Kathy with a past. Protestants did not make such signs, so it was determined that Kathy must have begun life as a Catholic. Helen had honored that original intention-up to a point. The experiment had ended badly.
The child was sent back to frustrate Rabbi Kaplan until her religious education was deemed complete. His greatest frustration had been the fact that she was his brightest student, and he could not separate the makings of a scholar from the greater talents of a thief and a gifted liar.
When she was well into her teens, he had offered her a choice of which faith she would continue in. She had chosen Judaism on the grounds that Jews had no place called hell.
If he had been marginally successful in keeping her from the flames of the Catholic hell, he had not brought her any nearer to God. She had been insulted by his efforts, believing that deities of every faith were no more than fairy tales for slow learners. But for some strange reason, the Christian devil was very real to her. She had met him somewhere out on the road in those first ten years of life, the years she shared with no one.
Despite all the traps he set for her, all the lost leaders he had put out upon the air between them, he had learned very little of her origins. Through the years, he had continued with his gentle probes into her past, and she had fended them off with agility. And so their relationship had always been a bit like a badminton game.
The rabbi set the black telephone receiver down in its cradle and looked across the desk to the child he loved as much as his own. “All right, Kathy. You have an appointment. Madame Burnstien will look at you.”
“Look at me?”
“She must have assumed I was sending her a dancer. She hung up on me before I could correct that assumption. It’s just as well. My wife tells me Madame’s whole life is the ballet. If you’re not connected to that life, you don’t exist. The woman only accepted my call because Anna’s charity group donates scholarship money for the ballet school.”
“Markowitz couldn’t get anywhere with her. What do you suppose he did wrong?”
“Well, your father’s best weapon was charm. As I recall, the scum of the earth could be quite taken with him.”
“So we know that doesn’t work on the old lady.”
The rabbi only smiled at the idea that charm might be an option for Kathy Mallory. “Now, you will mind your manners with this woman. You will address her as Madame Burnstien. Helen raised you to show respect for the elderly. Of course, Madame Burnstien is a lot tougher than you are.”
“Yeah, right.” She was not at all impressed. “I have a photo of her at Aubry’s funeral. She must be pushing ninety by now, and she walks with a cane.”
“My wife tells me Madame eats dancers for breakfast.”
“I still think I can take her two falls out of three.”
“And I understand she’s very good with her cane. I only saw it once-it’s formidable.” He stopped smiling and leaned toward her, all serious now. “When I say Madame Burnstien is tough, I’m not being facetious. She survived two years in a Nazi concentration camp. I don’t know what you could have in your own history that even comes close to that horror.”
“Four years with the nuns at the academy.”
“You’re so competitive.”
“So what’s the best approach?”
“The key to Madame Burnstien is respect. Try to earn it without bloodshed.”
Mallory stood on the sidewalk staring up at the old brown building reported to be the finest ballet school in the country. It had been a factory once, and now eight stories of lofts had been converted into rehearsal halls and classrooms. Girls and young women hung off the fire escape, dangling limbs sheathed in bright-colored leg warmers. Some smoked forbidden cigarettes, others lifted their faces to the weak light of the sun, leaching what warmth there was so early in the spring.
The rabbi’s wife, Anna Kaplan, had warned her that today there would be at least a hundred children underfoot. When Mallory passed through the front doors, she entered a wide room with high ceilings, where pandemonium ruled. Small breastless girls and a sprinkling of boys bore numbered cards hung around their necks with strings. Mothers hovered over them, clutching the leg warmers and costumes, harried and frazzled women consumed by the tensions of audition day.
The front desk was besieged by shouters and elbowers. A man with a phone attached to one ear was holding four separate conversations. And above all of this, a loudspeaker called out numbers, and children were separated from their mothers, taking positions on one side of the room.
Beyond this crush of tiny dancers stood a young woman close to Mallory’s age. They exchanged a look across the room. At first the other woman’s expression recognized Mallory as neither mother nor novice, but a fellow creature of the ballet. She smiled and shrugged to say, Awful, isn’t it? But now her head tilted to one side with the realization that Mallory was an altogether different animal, and interest intensified as Mallory moved toward her, advancing on the mob of children. They parted for her in a wave, the act of one mind in many small bodies.
“Where can I find Madame Burnstien?”
“Third floor. The stairs are quicker. The elevator takes forever.” The young woman pointed to a narrow staircase several feet away. She called a loud warning after Mallory. “If she’s not expecting you, she’ll nail your hide to the wall.”
A hundred small faces turned in unison, eyes rounding.
“I can handle it,” said Mallory. “I went to Catholic school.”
Fat chance old Madame Burnstien could outdo an insane nun.
Mallory took great pride in her enemies, and she was particularly proud of Sister Ursula.
She climbed to the third floor and stopped at the wide-open door to a rehearsal hall. There were other students in the room, leaning against the walls and seated tailor-fashion on the floor, but all Mallory could see was the single dancer hurtling through space in a powerful swirl of music, her body arching in the leap-call it flight- and at last touching to ground in tattered red satin shoes.
She wore bright purple tights and leotard, and brilliant orange wool covered her legs from ankle to knee. A long braid of lustrous black hair floated on the air behind her as she stepped and turned before the mirrored wall. And now she began to twirl like a dervish, sweat glistening on her young body, spinning madly, wonderfully, and finally coming to rest before a white-haired woman with a wine-dark dress and a cane.
This old woman only frowned, declining any comment with the slow shake of her head, and disappeared through a red door, slamming it behind her.
The young dancer’s head bowed. Her body seemed to be losing strength, all confidence and power gone now.
Mallory watched her for a moment, trying to understand her and failing. The ballerina should have known how wonderful she was, but apparently she did not.
Markowitz would have understood. It had been his gift to sit across a desk from strangers, and then to steal inside of them, peek out through their eyes, walk in their flesh, go where they go, and then to know what their soft spots were. He had called it empathy.
Mallory had none, and she knew it. She might be adept at crawling into the living skin of a killer, but never would she be able to go where the ballerina goes.