Julian didn't even knock before he entered the girl's dressing room to survey me in my costume of rags and tatters. "Stop being so damned nervous. They're only people out there. You don't think I'd come back here to dance with a girl who wasn't sensational, do you?"
As we stood in the wings his arm stayed about my shoulders, lending me confidence as we both counted toward my cue to go on. His part didn't come until much later. I couldn't see Paul, Chris, Carrie or Henny out in the darkened audience. I trembled more as the footlights dimmed and the overture was played, and then the curtain rose. My mounting anxiety disappeared and took all my insecurity along with it, as some astonishing kinesthetic memory took over and I allowed the music to control and direct me. I wasn't Cathy, or Catherine, or anybody but Cinderella! I swept ashes from the hearth and enviously watched two hateful stepsisters prepare for the ball, feeling love and romance would never come into my life.
If I made mistakes, if my technique wasn't perfect, I didn't know it. I was in love with the dance, with performing before a large audience, with being young and pretty, and most of all I was in love with life and all it had to offer outside of Foxworth Hall.
Red, yellow and pink roses came to fill my arms. I thrilled when the audience rose to give us a standing ovation. Three times I handed Julian a rose of a different color; each time our eyes met and clung. See, his were saying to me mutely, we do create magic together! We are the perfect dancing partners!
He cornered me again duri
ng the buffet party. "Now you've had a taste of what it's like," he said softly and persuasively, his dark eyes pleading. "Can you give up the applause? Can you keep on staying here, in a hick town, when New York is waiting for you? Cathy, as a team we'll be sensational! We look so right together. I dance with you better than I dance with any other ballerina. Oh, Cathy, you and I could reach the top so much sooner together. I swear to take good care of you. I'll look out for you and never let you feel lonely."
"I don't know," I said miserably, though I was lit up inside. "I have to finish high school first--but do you really think I'm good enough? Up there they expect the best.,
"You are the best! Trust me, believe in me. Madame Zolta's company isn't the largest, or top rank, but she's got what it takes to make our company rate as high as the larger and older ones--once she has a couple of fantastic dancers like us!"
I asked what Madame Zolta was like. Somehow that made him confident I'd already agreed and, laughing first, he managed to plant a kiss on my lips. "You're going to adore Madame Zolta! She's Russian and the sweetest, kindest, most gentle little old lady you ever met. She'll be like your mother. [Good God!] She knows everything there is about dance. She's our doctor sometimes, our psychologist; whatever we need, she's it. Life in New York is like living on Mars compared to here, another world, a better world. In no time at all you'll love it. I'll take you to famous restaurants where you'll eat food such as you've never tasted before. I'll introduce you to movie stars, TV celebrities, actors, actresses, authors."
I tried to resist him by fastening my eyes on Chris, Carrie and Paul, but Julian moved so he blocked out my view. All I could see was him. "It's the kind of life you were born for, Cathy," and this time he sounded sincere and deeply earnest. "Why have you studied and put yourself through so much torture, if not for success? Can you achieve the kind of fame you want here?"
No. I couldn't.
But Paul was here. Chris and Carrie were here. How could I leave them?
"Cathy, come with me to where you belong, behind the footlights, on stage, with roses in your arms. Come with me, Cathy, and make my dreams come true too."
Oh, he was winning that night, and I was heady with my first success, and even when I wanted to say no, I nodded and said, "Yes . . . I'll go, but only if you come down here and fly with me. I've never been on a plane, and I wouldn't know where to go once I landed."
He took me in his arms then, tenderly, and held me as his lips brushed my hair. Over his shoulder, I could see both Chris and Paul staring our way, both of them looking astonished and more than a little hurt.
In January of 1963 I graduated from high school. I wasn't particularly brilliant, like Chris, but I'd made it through.
Chris was so smart it was more than likely he'd finish college in three years rather than four. Already he'd won several scholarships to help take the financial burden of his education from Paul's shoulders, though he never mentioned a word about any of us paying him back--for anything. It was understood, though, that Chris would become an associate with Paul when he had his M.D. I marveled that Paul could keep spending on us and never complain, and when I asked, he explained. "I enjoy knowing I'm helping to contribute to the world the wonderful doctor Chris will make-- and the super ballerina you will be one day." He looked so sad when he said that, so terribly sad. "As for Carrie, I hope she decides to stay home with me and marry a local boy, so I can see her often."
"When I'm gone it will be Thelma Murkel for you again, won't it?" I asked with some bitterness, for I wanted him to stay faithful, no matter how many miles I put between us.
"Maybe," he said.
"You won't love anyone else as much as you love me, say you won't."
He smiled. "No. How could I love anyone as much as I love you? No other could dance into my heart the way you did, could she?"
"Paul, don't mock me. Say the word and I won't go. I'll stay."
"How can I say the words to make you stay when you have to fulfill your destiny? You were born to dance, not to be the wife of a stodgy, small-town doctor."
Marriage! He'd said wife! He'd never mentioned marriage before.
It was more than awful to tell Carrie I was leaving. Her screams were deafening and pitiful. "You cannot go!" she bellowed, tears streaming. "You promised we would all stay together, and now you and Chris both go away and leave me! Take me too! Take me!" She beat at me with small fists, kicked at my legs, determined to inflict some pain for what Chris and I were giving her--and already I felt pain enough for the world in leaving her. "Please try and
understand, Carrie, I will be coming back, and Chris will too--you won't be forgotten.
"I hate you!" she screamed. "I hate both you and Chris! I hope you die in New York! I hope you both fall down and die!" It was Paul who came to save me.
"You've still got me every day, and Henny," he said, hefting Carrie's slight weight up in his arms. "We're not going anywhere. And you'll be the only daughter we have when Cathy is gone. Come, dry your tears, put a smile on your face and be happy for your sister. Remember this is what she'd been striving for all those long years when you were locked up."
I ached inside as I wondered if I really wanted a dance career as much as I had always thought. Chris threw me a long, sad look then bent to pick up my new blue suitcases. He hurried out the front door trying not to let me see the tears in his eyes. When we all went out, he stood near Paul's white car, his shoulders squared off, his face set, determined not to show any emotion.
Henny had to pile in with the rest of us; she didn't want to be left home to cry alone. Her so eloquent brown eyes spoke to me, wishing me good luck as her hands were kept busy wiping the tears from Carrie's face.