“Oh!” Vivienne says, placing her hand on my arm and squeezing it. I can tell she has something important to say. Once again, I curse my terrible French. Instead, she fishes inside her bag, pulls out a small envelope, and hands it to me. Her eyes sparkle with anticipation as I open it to find two grainy, sepia-toned photographs with frayed edges. They both feature the same dark-haired young woman. In one, she is standing on a cobblestoned street, posing in front of a building with two other girls. The next is a portrait of her standing in first position and wearing a ballet costume—pointe shoes, a short cardigan, and a long, stiff tulle skirt.
Vivienne starts to speak quickly with grand arm gestures, but then she realizes that I don’t understand much. I need Louis. It’s so much less fun to do this without him. Giving up, Vivienne turns to her daughter and says,“Dis à Mia.” Tell Mia.
So Madeleine does. “We think, this is…the girl, hmm, you know, our ancestor.” She doesn’t sound quite as excited as her mom. Vivienne points to the back of the second photograph, and I flip it over. There’s an inscription in beautiful cursive handwriting.
Élise Mercier,
Opéra de Paris, 2 février 1880
I gasp.“C’est vraiment elle?”I ask Vivienne.Is that reallyher?
She grins and nods at the same time. “Élise Mercier,ton arrière-arrière-arrière grand-mère.” She squeezes my hand, making sure I understand her. And I do. This is my great-great-great-grandmother: a ballerina standing in front of the Paris Opera. In this moment, it doesn’t even really matter if she was painted by Degas. This photograph feels like a treasure of its own.
“Mom found this in the attic after your visit,” Madeleine explains in French as Vivienne watches for my reaction. “She thought maybe it could help you find the Degas painting.” She looks to her mom, and then quietly adds, “If there is one.”
The thought warms me up inside. I want to call Mom and sayI told you!Even more so, I want to let Grandma Joan know that she was right. But most of all, I want to push the crowd out of the way, throw myself in Louis’s arms, and tell him to strap on his helmet. Because whatever crazy adventure we embarked on the day we met on the school steps is only just beginning.
THE NEXT DAY,the showcase already feels like a distant memory. From now on, it’s just one straight line to the final performance, and it’s becoming very real. I’m feeling tenser in class, and it’s obvious that my classmates are as well. There’s less chatting before the instructor arrives, bigger circles under our eyes, and fewer smiles. And it’s not just that the show is coming up in two short weeks: our first fitting with the costume team from the Institut de l’Opéra de Paris is today.
After class, I head to the lower level of the school, below reception, to the costume department. On my way, I do what I’ve done pretty much every time I’m in this part of the building. I stop by the information board and zoom in on the call sheet for the next day’s rehearsals. I run my finger on the paper, my heart palpitating, though I know exactly what I’m going to find: Mia Jenrow—me, me, me!—next to the name of Odile. It never gets old. I gaze at the call sheet for a moment, my confidence boosted for another day.
A few minutes later, my hands tingle with anticipation as a woman named Valérie hands me a black beaded corset with a tutu attached at the waist. I immediately think of it asmycostume, but it turns out I’m wrong. Excitingly so.
“Myriam Ayed wore this in the last production ofSwan Lake,” Valérie tells me, her eyes sparkling.
My jaw drops. “Myriam Ayed wore this exact costume?”
“Don’t worry, it has been cleaned,” Valérie says with a small laugh.
I squeal. “I’m going to wear Myriam Ayed’s Black Swan costume!”
Next to me, Audrey is receiving the same careful consideration from one of Valérie’s colleagues. She rolls her eyes at me. I gather that her White Swan costume was also worn by Myriam Ayed, but Audrey is too cool to get excited about that.
I return my attention back to the piece of black tulle in my hands. It’s both stiff and soft under my fingers, and, while it needs a few repairs—some of the beads have come undone, and there’s a small rip in the chest—it feels magical to hold. I put it on over my leotard and slip off my straps to get a better feel of the sweetheart neckline. This is seriously an out-of-body experience.
“Let’s see,” Valérie says once I’m dressed.
She studies me carefully and then grabs her sewing kit.
“Oops,” she says, stabbing the top of my thigh lightly with a needle. “This tulle is so thick!” Is it weird if I tell her that she can stab me all she wants? Ballerinas are used to pain. We live with it every day, from our split toenails to our strained muscles. You can’t be a dancer if you’re not willing to make friends with pain.
Audrey spins around to accommodate her seamstress, who starts pinning the top in the back. Facing me now, she looks me up and down, her face impassive. “You were good earlier,” she says flatly. “Yourfouettésare coming along.”
Before this, we had another rehearsal with Monsieur Dabrowski, and he was as hard on each of us as ever. “All that stomping around! You’re swans, not horses!”
“Oh,” I say, taken aback. An unsolicited compliment coming out of nowhere from Audrey Chapman. Paris, city of miracles.
“I’m impressed,” she says, shrugging, like she could hear me think.
“Thank you,” I reply. “You were really great. You’re always great.”
Audrey shrugs again, but even her shrugs are tired. Her shoulders slump as she looks away.
The truth is Monsieur Dabrowski has been especially hard on us leads. “Where is your heart, Audrey? You’re a young woman in love with a prince who can deliver you from a curse. Does that mean nothing to you?” He will not let that go. “You need more intent in that leg, Mia. It has to carry you all the way! What are you going to do during the performance? Hop like a bunny?” He even called Fernando an Oompa Loompa. Which is actually pretty funny, considering how tall he is.
“How does it feel?” Valérie asks me as she leads me toward the floor-length mirror.
She stands behind me and smiles at my reflection, proud of her handiwork.
