audience watched, rapt, held in thrall by their skill.
And suddenly, in a rush of blinding clarity, she knew.
She couldn’t do this anymore.
Andrew and Dr. Hanson had been right. Her body was old, not up to the sort of effort she saw on the stage before her. In her heart of hearts, she’d known it for some time.
She just hadn’t been ready to face it.
She would never dance professionally again.
MAX STIFFENED with shock as Maddy suddenly shot to her feet. He could see tears in her eyes. She pressed a hand to her mouth. Then she began pushing her way past the people seated beside her until she gained the aisle.
“Maddy!” he called after her, but she broke into a run as she raced for the exit.
The people sitting around them stirred, annoyed by the interruption. Max scooped up Maddy’s coat and handbag and excused his way to the aisle. By the time he’d gained the dress circle landing, Maddy was halfway down the stairs to the foyer. He took off after her, barreling out into the Paris night.
He stood panting on the steps, scanning the crowds of tourists. He had no idea what was wrong, but he’d felt the tension vibrating through her the moment they stepped out of the Metro station. That she was profoundly distressed he had no doubt.
He caught sight of her at last, standing to the left of the entrance. Her arms were wrapped around her torso, her head was bowed. As he moved closer he saw that she was sobbing, her body racked with emotion.
“Maddy,” he said, pulling her into his arms. He found the back of her head with his hand and pressed her close to his chest.
“I can’t…I can’t,” she sobbed. She was quivering, her whole body shaking. “Not anymore. It’s over. It’s all gone.”
He ran a soothing hand down her back.
“Maddy, what happened in there?” he asked.
She leaned back from him so she could look into his face.
“They’re so good. And I could see how hard it was, how unforgiving and demanding. And I realized I can’t do that anymore, Max. I don’t have it in me. I want it so badly, I need it, but my body has let me down. They were right. It’s over for me.” Her words were rushed, almost garbled. But he understood.
Her cheeks were smudged with mascara, her mouth twisted with misery. He’d never seen a sadder, more tragic sight in his life.
“You don’t know that, Maddy,” he said, desperate to reassure her.
She closed her eyes. “No, Max. It’s over,” she said with heavy finality.
Her shoulders started to shudder, and he embraced her again.
She was inconsolable, devastated. He saw a cab dropping off some late theatergoers and raised an urgent hand. A moment later he was bundling Maddy inside and holding her in his arms as she cried all the way home. It was only ten minutes, but it felt like a lifetime.
Once they hit his apartment he led her to the couch and sat with her in his lap. She curled up against him and wept out her grief.
By the time she began to calm down, his jacket was soaked through. Slowly her tears turned to sniffs, and finally to hiccups. He leaned forward to pluck a handful of tissues from the box on the coffee table, pressing them into her hand.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“Maddy. It’s going to be okay.”
She was silent, and he tightened his embrace.
“I mean it. We’ll work something out. We’ll find you some other way to get in to see Dr. Kooperman, whatever it takes. And you’ve still got Dr. Rambeau to see this coming week.”
She shook her head.
“No, Max. There’s no point. I think I’ve known it for a long time. Ever since I was so slow to recover after my knee reconstruction. My body isn’t up to dancing professionally anymore. I’m not up to being a prima. It’s over.”
“You don’t know that until you’ve had more tests, seen more specialists,” he said, refusing to let her give up on her dream. He knew what it was like to stop being a dancer. He wouldn’t wish the pain of separation and the loss of passion on anyone. Especially not Maddy.
“Everyone has to retire sometime,” she said quietly.
He frowned, wanting to argue, to convince her not to give up. But what she’d said was true. She was twenty-nine. The average retirement age for ballet dancers was thirty, thirty-one, tops. A few innovative ballet companies were taking on older dancers, women who’d had children then come back. But the reality was that ballet demanded an enormous amount from its practitioners. It consumed their bodies then abandoned them when they still had the bulk of their lives left to live.
He realized suddenly that he had never seriously considered the idea that Maddy might not succeed in her battle to be reinstated to her former role with the Sydney Dance Company. He’d been worried for her, certainly, but he’d been unable to conceive of a time when Maddy would not dance. It was so much an essential part of her—Maddy was a ballet dancer. She was only ever fully alive when she was en pointe, on stage, performing for an audience.
He knew exactly how much she had sacrificed to her vocation. Her distant, detached relationship with her mother, the result of Maddy having left home when she was fourteen to travel interstate to train at the Australian Ballet Academy. The trail of ruined relationships. The lack of any life outside her career. Maddy had given dance everything. Her life, in fact. And now she was about to discover what was left over for herself.
They were both silent a long time. Finally, Maddy began to talk.
“I can still remember my first ballet class. I bugged my mom for months before she took me. I was a year younger than anyone else, younger than they normally accepted into the class, but I’d seen Anna Pavlova dancing on television and I wanted to be her so badly that I harangued my mom night and day. That first class, Madame took us through the positions. The other girls had trouble with their turnout, with pointing their toes, with their arms. But it all seemed so natural to me. It felt like home.”
He smiled, circling his hand on her back.
“I used to pretend to my friends that I was going to soccer practice and then sneak off to my dance classes,” he said. “My maman was embarrassed, I think. I’m sure she thought it was the first sign I was gay. But Père told me that he had danced a little when he was young, and he always regretted letting his friends’ opinions matter more than what he wanted.”
“Thank God he did, because you were a beautiful dancer, Max.”
He pressed a kiss into her hair.
“And you were a star, Maddy. You dazzled. You lived the dream.”
“Yes.”
