The Rehearsal

Most of the girls now lack a key definition in this new and halting lexicon of forbidden words, some slender dearth of understanding that will later humiliate them, confound them, expose them, because it is expected now that their knowledge is complete. They envisage rigid perpendicular erections and a perfect hairless trinity for the male genitals, groomed and gathered in a careful bouquet. They have not heard of the glossy sap that portends the rush of female drive. They know ovulate but not orgasm . They know bisexual but not blow . Their knowledge is like a newspaper article ripped down the middle so only half of it remains.
    “Is it useful?” asks the saxophone teacher. “Do you learn things you didn’t know before?”
    “We learned that you can only feel one thing at one time,” says Isolde. “You can feel excitement or you can feel fear but you can never feel both. We learned why beauty is so important: beauty is important because you can’t really defile something that is already ugly, and to defile is the ultimate goal of the sexual impulse. We learned that you can always say no.”
    The two of them sit in that self-conscious half-profile demanded by music-lesson etiquette. Facing each other squarely feels too familiar and standing side by side feels too formal, as if they are amateur actors onstage for the first time, fearful of turning their faces away from the auditorium lest their performance be lost. So they position themselves always at forty-five degrees, the angle of the professional actor who includes both the stage and the audience and holds in delicate balance that which is expressed and that which is concealed.
    The Sonny Rollins track has the thin gritty sound of an old recording.
    “You can take the record home if you think you’d find it inspiring,” the saxophone teacher says kindly. “I really think you’d suit playing tenor.”
    “We don’t have a record player,” Isolde says.

FOUR
    October
    The gymnasium was not a gymnasium but a fluid space, a space that seemed to inhale and exhale and settle around the shapes and figures on the floor. There was a giant accordion made of steel that compressed the plastic bleachers against the wall, and dusty heavy drapes that could divide the space into thirds and quarters and fifths. The stage was formed of many chalky footprinted podiums that could be rearranged or stacked or upended or tiered, depending. Today the drapes were all pushed to the sides and the podiums stacked against the wall in a hasty barricade. The space was clean and full of light.
    “Mime is literal embodiment,” said the Head of Movement once the doors had closed. “To mime an object is to discover its weight and volume and thus its meaning.” He was weighing something in his hand as he spoke, something invisible and heavy. “If we occupy each other, we begin to truly understand each other,” he said. “The same is true for all things. Mime is a path to understanding.”
    He turned over whatever he was holding in his hand.
    Everyone was taut and straining and watchful, waiting for an opportunity to say something clever or profound or interesting that would set them apart from the other hopefuls and secure the approval of the tutor. Some of them were nodding slowly with their eyes narrowed to communicate insight and deep reflection. Some were waiting for the tutor to reference something they had a particular knowledge of, so they could snare him afterward and force a conversation. Stanley was sitting on the outer rim, alert and upright but sneaking careful sideways glances at the other hopefuls whenever he could.
    “The first and most important point,” the Head of Movement said, “is that you must start with a thing itself, not with an idea of a thing. I can see what I am holding in my hand. I can see its weight, its shape and its texture. It doesn’t matter if you can see it yet or not: the important thing is that I can.”
    They all strained to see the invisible thing he was holding in his hand. Every pair of eyes followed the Head of Movement as he moved slowly back and forth. He was barefoot, like all the tutors at the Institute, and when he took a step his foot rolled from the heel to the ball in a slow feline movement, lazy and deliberate at once. His feet were milky and lean.
    The Head of Movement said, “Many of us fear women. We are afraid of woman as woman, longing for her as virgin or as madonna or as whore. It is not by becoming a woman that