The Groaning Board

dancer in
imitation of the ideal.
    “I can tell you’re a dancer,” Wetzon
said, catching Artie Metzger’s eye where he stood head and shoulders over the
glut of women in the small living room. Artie had sent his little girl over to
talk to her.
    “You can?” Jessica’s plain little
face was transformed as if some inner light had been turned on, giving her
translucent skin a golden glow.
    Wetzon knew the feeling, saw a very
young Leslie Wetzon in Metzger’s Jessica. “Let’s see if we can find a place to
talk,” she told the girl, wondering herself where in the crowded-to-bursting
house that could be.
    “My room,” Jessica said eagerly. She
led Wetzon around the edge of the crowded room and up a short flight of stairs.
    The second floor held three bedrooms,
a large master and two smaller ones, and at least one bath that Wetzon could
see. Jessica’s room was small and tidy, with pale yellow walls and a yellow
floral print quilt, ruffled pillowcase and matching curtains. A desk, a chest
of drawers, and a night table all in nicely waxed country pine gave the room a
lovely, warm feeling.
    On the walls were framed posters of
Darci Kistler, a principal with the New York City Ballet, flying through the
air, and Wetzon’s favorite, Natalia Makarova, in a classic pose. From a hook on
the wall behind the bed hung a pair of porcelain ballet slippers, exactly the
same as the pair Leslie Wetzon had hung on the wall behind her bed thirty years
ago. For an instant, she felt as if she’d stepped backward in time and her eyes
teared.
    “What a nice room,” she said.
    They sat on the bed, Wetzon sipping
coffee while Jessica told her about her audition coming up for The
Nutcracker. Then Jessica said, “Will you tell me about Broadway?”
    “Do you tap?”
    “A little.”
    “You must study tap, and jazz.
They’re different movements entirely and it’s important to be expert at each if
you want to cross over and do theatre.”
    On the night table was a framed color
photograph of Jessica in a tutu, in a deep curtsy, and another of two women and
Jessica in front of the fountain at Lincoln Center. One of the women was Judy
Metzger. The photograph was obviously recent, because Jessica looked as she did
this evening.
    Wetzon picked up the second
photograph. “I recognize your mother. Is that your Aunt Sheila?”
    The child stared at the photograph as
if seeing it for the first time, and without warning began to cry. Wetzon
dropped the photograph on the bed and took Jessica in her arms as the girl’s
body was racked with misery. Between sobs, she gasped, “She took me to the
ballet and to Damn Yankees and Crazy for You.”
    “And you loved your Aunt Sheila very
much and will miss her terribly,” Wetzon whispered, stroking Jessica’s slender
back. “And what you make of your life will be part of a tribute to your Aunt
Sheila.”
    Jessica’s head nodded against
Wetzon’s dampening bosom.
    Wetzon looked down at the photograph
on the bed. Sheila smiled up at her with heartbreaking bravura, no thought
whatever that she was soon to die.
    “It’s not fair,” Jessica said, her
voice muffled, the sobs diminishing.
    “No, it’s not fair,” Wetzon agreed.
“But accidents happen. Good people get hurt. And good people die. And we must
go on. Your aunt will always be as she was: she’ll never get older because you
will never forget her.” Wetzon dried the child’s tears with a tissue.
    Tears still shimmering in her eyes,
Jessica pulled away from Wetzon, folding her arms across her narrow chest. “It
wasn’t an accident.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Someone did it on purpose.”
    “Did what on purpose?”
    “Killed my Aunt Sheila.” She shook
her head in denial. “It wasn’t an accident.”
    “How do you know that, Jessica?”
Surely, Wetzon thought, it was a child’s imagination running wild.
    “The phone calls.”
    “What phone calls? Does your father
know about this?“
    “Aunt Sheila made me promise not to
tell. She was getting these really weird phone calls.”

Chapter Eleven

     
     
     
    “Sheila was
getting weird phone calls, Silvestri,” Wetzon said. He hadn’t said a word since they
got into the car, much as she’d tried to draw him out. It had been an
exhausting evening. Emotionally exhausting.
    “Now how would you know that, Les?
You didn’t even know Sheila.” There was enough irritation in his voice to make
her defensive... as if Sheila were his property and she was