A Gift of Magic Page 2

  “But Kirby has had instruction,” Elizabeth said. “She has attended dance seminars all over Europe.”

  “Seminars!” Madame Vilar made a snorting sound. “Seminars cannot take the place of regular classes. Short periods of study do not make a child into a dancer, Mrs. Garrett. The body must be trained for years.”

  “I have been training for years,” Kirby said. Her light, soft voice broke into the conversation with a note of certainty. “I’ve done my barre work every day, no matter where we were. I’ve studied from books. I’ve watched ballet everywhere there was a performance—the Bolshoi Ballet, the Royal Danish Ballet, the Russian State Ballet in Frankfurt, the Royal Ballet, Les Ballets des Champs-Elysées—”

  “Which is worse,” Madame broke in, “than if you had never tried to dance at all. You have undoubtedly taught yourself all kinds of wrong habits.”

  “If I have,” Kirby said, “I will unlearn them.”

  Madame Vilar turned her gaze full upon Kirby for the first time. To the girl she seemed to resemble nothing so much as a black swan. Her neck stretched, long and supple, from between narrow shoulders with a fierce, dark head poised proudly at its top. Her eyes glared, sharp and bright, from beneath arched black wings of brows. She was thin everywhere except for her long, muscular dancer’s legs, and although the lines in her face proclaimed her age, her body was as firm and strong as steel wire.

  “Very well,” she said. “Let us see what you have succeeded in doing to yourself. Pas de bourrée, please. Grand jeté en tournant.”

  Kirby lifted her arms and moved forward. She went through the steps slowly and carefully and did them again and then again.

  “Let’s see you do some pirouettes,” Madame Vilar commanded.

  She stood, watching the girl in silence as she twirled across the room.

  “Don’t you want to see her dance?” Elizabeth asked. “I mean, really dance? She can improvise so beautifully. If we could just put on some music—”

  “That will not be necessary,” the woman said. She turned her attention from Kirby back to Elizabeth. “You are aware, of course, that she does not have a dancer’s build? I should consider it very doubtful that she will ever make a place for herself as a professional dancer.”

  “I see nothing in the world wrong with her build!” exclaimed Elizabeth. Her normally tranquil face was flushed with sudden anger. “If you don’t want Kirby for a pupil, I will take her somewhere else. I hear there’s a studio in Sarasota. That isn’t so far that—”

  “I did not say that I would not accept her,” Madame Vilar said sharply. “Which days can she come?”

  “I can come every day,” Kirby told her.

  On the way home, her mother’s hands were clenched so tightly on the steering wheel that her knuckles showed white.

  “What a horrible woman!” she said in a furious voice. “Imagine, not even letting you dance for her! And criticizing your figure! You don’t have to go there, Kirby. There is another studio in Sarasota. and that’s only a forty-five-minute drive away, and—”

  “I want to go to this studio,” Kirby said firmly. “I want to study under Madame Vilar.”

  That night, she stood for a long time in front of the bathroom mirror. The girl who looked back at her was pretty in the same soft way as her mother, although already she was taller. She had nondescript, brownish hair with a slight curl, light eyes and brows, round cheeks, and a gentle, good-humored mouth.

  Kirby stretched herself tall, picturing Madame Vilar’s tiny swan’s head, proud and fierce on the thin neck.

  “She’s right,” she said as she went back into the bedroom. “Madame says I’m built all wrong for ballet, and I am.”

  “How come?” Brendon asked. He had come from his room to play with his Nintendo DS on the floor in the hallway just outside his sisters’ door. His whole object, both girls knew, was to force them to step over him every time they went in or out. Now he glanced up with interest. “Is it because you have too big a butt?”

  “Yes,” Kirby said seriously. “And my shoulders are too broad. My boobs are going to be too big.” She pulled her shirt in close against her body and stared down worriedly at the womanly curves. “I wish I was built like you, Nance.”

  Nancy was sprawled on her bed reading. She did not lift her gaze.

  “I guess you have to be a pretty self-centered person to be a dancer,” she said. “A person who’s always worrying about her appearance.”

  “That’s not true,” Kirby objected. “I’m not always worrying. What’s the matter with you, anyway? You’ve gotten so bitchy lately I’m about ready to move in with Bren.”

  “No way!” Brendon said, forgetting his game in joyful anticipation of an argument. “Do you think I want you leaping all over my room, knocking over my stuff? Nancy’s mad because Mom’s going to make her take piano lessons, that’s all.”

  “You’re both just unbelievable!” Nancy slammed her book closed and sat erect, wrapping her arms around her knees. “You’re selfish and unfeeling and—and—oblivious! All you can think about are your games and dancing when the most terrible thing in the world has happened right here in our family!”

  “You mean Mom and Dad?” Kirby regarded her sister with sympathy. “I mean, it’s sad and everything, Nance, but when you really think about it, things won’t be too different. We’ll still see Dad when he’s between assignments, and that’s about all we ever saw of him, anyway. During the last few years he’s been racing around from one dangerous place to another, and we’ve been stuck on the Riviera or some other tourist place with Mom. We haven’t been a family together for ages.”

  “But they love each other!” Nancy cried. “You know they do! Mom’s going to be miserable living here!”

  “Do you think so?”

  Kirby let her mind go back to that first morning they had gone into town together. They had stepped off the bus in front of the used-car lot, and immediately a little fat man with a gray mustache had come rushing up to meet them.

  “Liz Burke!” he had cried. “Little Liz Burke! I can’t believe it! Are you back for a visit? These can’t be your children!”

  “Back to stay, Mr. Crandel.” Elizabeth’s face had brightened with pleasure at being recognized. “I’m Liz Garrett now, and these are my daughters. And that whirlwind that just blew past you was my son.”

  Brendon had already rushed ahead to inspect the cars, which were parked in long rows with their prices marked on their windshields. The man’s glad white smile had covered his entire face.

  “Back to live here? How wonderful! And these beautiful girls are yours?” He shook his head in astonishment. “It seems like only yesterday when you were their age. You came in here with young Tom Duncan when he was buying his first car.”

  “Tommy Duncan!” Elizabeth’s voice was warm with remembering. “I hadn’t thought of him in years! I wonder where he is now and what he’s doing? I guess no girl ever forgets her first boyfriend.”

  “He’s right here in Palmelo,” Mr. Crandel said. “Living right down the beach from your mother’s house, in fact. He’s the guidance counselor at the new high school. I guess there’s something about this old hometown that draws people back to it.”

  “Well, it’s home,” Elizabeth said. “And now I’m the one who needs a car. Do you think you can help me find a good one? I don’t exactly know much about engines and things like that.”

  “Certainly, certainly, we’ll find you the perfect car!”

  Mr. Crandel walked with them between the rows of automobiles, and all the while, between comments on gearshifts and tires and power steering, the two of them kept talking about people and events about which Kirby had never heard before. For as long as she could remember in her parents’ life together, it had been her father who had dominated every conversation; wherever they had gone it had been his dynamic personality and great booming laugh that had filled the world, with her mother soft and smiling in the background. Now here was this little man
with the gray hair who did not even mention Richard Garrett. He made it seem as if Elizabeth were a kind of princess come back to visit a kingdom that she had left too quickly.

  They completed the morning by buying a seven-year-old Chevy Impala.

  “Our first car,” Brendon grumbled disgustedly, “and it’s just ugly. You could have at least gotten us that Ford Mustang. And I still don’t get why you wouldn’t even look at the Lexus SUV with the GPS.”

  But Kirby, glancing across at her mother in the driver’s seat, had felt nothing but pleasure in the car and in its driver. Elizabeth might not have driven for a long time, but there was no uncertainty about her as she shifted gears and pressed the accelerator to bring the engine to life. There was a proud little smile on her face as she turned off the main street of town onto the shore road that led to their house on the beach.

  “I knew I could still do it,” she said softly. Now, in the face of Nancy’s misery, Kirby tried to think of some way she could bring back her feelings of that moment and make her sister understand them. It was as though a special part of her mother had lain sleeping for years in the shadow of someone else and was now slowly coming awake.

  “Maybe Mom needs to be herself,” Kirby said slowly, “more than she needs to be Mrs. Richard Garrett. Being in love isn’t everything, Nance. I couldn’t give up my dancing, for instance, ever, for anybody. It would be like giving up the part of myself that makes me me.”

  “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Nancy said flatly. “Mom isn’t a dancer. Without Dad, she won’t have anything, and I’m glad she won’t. Maybe she’ll miss him so much that she’ll put us all on a plane and take us back to him again.”

  “I hope we stay here until I can find the treasure,” Brendon said. “I wonder if I can talk Mom into getting me scuba gear. Then I could—” He paused as he caught sight of Nancy’s expression. “What is it, Nance? You seeing something?”

  “There’s somebody at the front door,” Nancy said. “A man. He’s starting to—”

  The doorbell rang. Their mother’s footsteps tapped lightly across the hardwood floor of the living room as she went to answer it. They heard the door being opened.

  “Tom! Tommy Duncan!” Elizabeth’s voice rang out in a little cry of welcome. “It’s great to see you! I didn’t hear your car!”

  “I didn’t bring it,” a man’s voice answered. “I walked over on the beach. I ran into old man Crandel in town the other day, and he told me you were back home again. I couldn’t believe it!”

  “It’s true,” Elizabeth said. “Come on in, Tom! Don’t just stand there.” There was a sound of the front door closing as their mother drew her guest into the living room. “Kids! Come down here! I want you to meet an old friend of mine!”

  By the time Kirby reached the top of the stairs, her mother was standing at the foot of them, looking up expectantly. Beside her stood a thin, sandy-haired man with glasses.

  “Good lord, Liz,” he exclaimed in a stunned voice as he caught his first glimpse of Kirby. “She looks like you twenty years ago! Taller, maybe, but the same face—the same smile—”

  “And this is Brendon!” Elizabeth smiled as her son shoved his way past Kirby and started thudding down the stairs to what he evidently assumed would be the serving of refreshments. For a moment longer Elizabeth stood, still gazing upward, waiting for the third figure to appear.

  Finally she said apologetically, “My other daughter must be reading. She never hears anything when she’s deep in a book. Go get Nancy, will you, Kirby? I want Mr. Duncan to meet all of you.”

  Kirby turned and went back down the hall to the bedroom. Nancy was still seated on her bed, glaring defiantly.

  “I am not going to go downstairs,” she said in a harsh whisper. “Not until that man is gone. And if you have any sense, you won’t go down, either.”

  “Why not?” Kirby asked in bewilderment. “He’s just an old friend of Mom’s. What’s gotten into you? I’ve never seen you act like this!”

  “Kirby, I feel it!” Nancy’s voice was shaking. “I felt it the moment he came to the door. He’s not just an old friend. He’s something different. There’s a different feeling about him. He’s not like anybody else—anybody—we’ve ever met before!”

  “What kind of feeling?” Kirby asked. “He looks nice enough to me. Ordinary—and kind of skinny and—oh, Nance, don’t be such a dork. Come down and meet him. He is Mom’s guest, and we have to be polite. He won’t be staying long. It’s too late.”

  Slowly, reluctantly, Nancy got to her feet.

  “That’s what you think,” she said in a tragic voice. “Not staying long, is he? Not tonight, maybe, but he’ll be back again, and again after that, and still again later. That’s what the feeling’s about.” She regarded her sister helplessly. “This man wants something! We may never be able to get rid of him!”

  By the time school was actually ready to start for the year, Brendon had worked himself into a state of happy anticipation. It wasn’t because he liked school; quite the opposite, he hated anything that involved sitting still and being quiet. Even so, he told himself, school could not possibly be more deadly than the long mornings of sitting in hotel rooms and being tutored by his mother. At school, at least, there would be other boys.

  Strange to say, in his entire nine years, Brendon had never really gotten to know another boy. Through the years spent in various hotels, his sisters had been his chief companions. He was fond of them in a way, but most of the time they drove him crazy. Kirby was always springing up and down on her toes and Nancy was always frowning into a book.

  There was something about the sight of Nancy reading with her brows drawn tight together and her long, straw-colored hair hanging down her back that made it impossible to resist grabbing a handful and pulling. Then she would scream. There was no sound in the world that could match Nancy’s scream. She would drop her book and leap up to slap him, and he could jump aside and kick at her, and for a few heavenly moments there would be a real down-on-the-floor scuffle.

  It never lasted long, however. Soon the energy would begin to pile up inside him all over again. In an hour he would have to go looking for Kirby and do something to her—pinch her, perhaps. Kirby never got as furious as Nancy, but it was only fair to pick on her part of the time, too, so as not to favor one sister over the other.

  Now, however, there would be school. He pretended, of course, that he didn’t want to go. He knew that no normal kid would ever admit he wanted to go to school. Still, it was all he could do to keep himself scowling as he climbed out of the car and faced the crowd surging up the concrete steps of Palmelo Elementary School.

  “Don’t you want me to come in with you?” his mother asked in surprise. “You won’t know what room you’re in or anything. It might be confusing.”

  “I speak the language,” Brendon said. “I’m not a baby, Mom!”

  “Well, go straight to the office then,” Elizabeth said. “I called yesterday to say you were coming. They’ll give you your room number and tell you who your teacher is. I’m going to run the girls over to the high school, and I’ll see you at the end of the day, okay? I’ll pick you up right here.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” Brendon said. “I’ll walk. I know the way to the house from here. It’s not so far.”

  “Oh, Mom,” Nancy said with disgust, “can’t you see that he’s trying to get out of this? I bet he doesn’t go in at all. He’ll turn around and go home as soon as we’re out of sight.”

  Elizabeth said, “Brendon wouldn’t do a thing like that!” but she sounded a little doubtful.

  Brendon noticed that she sat in the car and watched him until he was up the steps and safely into the building.

  Once through the school door, Brendon found himself faced with a noisy, milling mob of what appeared to be at least a million kids. They shouted and shoved and disappeared into doorways and came popping out again with lists in their hands. A few of them had harried-lo
oking mothers hurrying along behind them, but most, like Brendon, were without parents. There were signs on the walls with arrows pointing in all directions. TO THIRD GRADE CLASSROOMS, they said, and TO FIFTH GRADE CLASSROOMS, PTA REGISTRATION, RESTROOMS.

  With a feeling of adventure, Brendon hurled himself into the swirling mob and was immediately swept along like a leaf in a river. A few moments later the door marked OFFICE swam by him on the right, and he hauled himself through it into the comparative calm of a sunny room full of desks and telephones.

  A woman behind the first desk looked up.

  “Hello, there,” she said. “Can I help you?”

  “I’m Brendon Garrett,” Brendon said formally. “I’m new. My mom said for me to come in here and find out where to go.”

  “Brendon Garrett.” The woman repeated his name slowly. Then suddenly her face broke into a great smile. “Of course!” she exclaimed. “You’re Liz Burke’s little boy! Marvelous! Mr. Manzi said your mother called yesterday to register you.” Turning to the woman at the desk behind her, she asked, “Is Mr. Manzi in his office? I know he’ll want to meet Liz Burke’s son. Liz was always one of his favorite students.”

  “He’s in there,” the second woman said, “with the Russo boy. First day of school, and he’s in trouble already. He was shooting water pistols filled with ink. He got little Amy Steider right in the middle of the back and ruined her new dress.”

  “And he’s a psychiatrist’s child!” The woman at the first desk shook her head. “I wish Dr. Russo would try analyzing his own son for a change. In all the years I’ve been working in this school, I’ve never seen a child so—”

  She broke off abruptly as the door to the principal’s office swung open. Mr. Manzi stood framed in the doorway, and beside him was a freckled, red-haired boy with the largest ears Brendon had ever seen.

  “Mr. Manzi!” the woman said quickly. “Guess who this is? It’s Liz Burke’s son, Brendon!”

  “Well, Brendon!” The principal’s stern expression changed at the mention of Elizabeth’s name. The hard set of his mouth seemed to soften, and he came over to Brendon and shook his hand. “It’s good to have you with us, son. Your mother was a pleasure to all of us. It will be a treat to have a child of hers in school here.”