The Nutcracker
Zach followed a half-stride behind Becca down the long left-center aisle of the grand old auditorium. She kept pausing to wave to some familiar face or couple already seated in the nearly full theater. Zach would stop every time she stopped, his hand pressed lightly to the waist of her camelhair coat, and nod in the direction of her wave. He was never quite sure who she was waving to, as everyone in the auditorium seemed to be looking in their direction and smiling. Normally he was delighted to be seen with Becca in public, proud to show her off. But on this occasion he felt uncomfortable, sensing that everyone was checking him out, not her, and evaluating whether he was a worthy escort for this local belle. He stood tall and tried to strike a pose between amiable and aloof, but secretly hoped they’d soon be at the high-dollar seats Becca had secured through family connections.
They were in Memorial Auditorium in Becca’s hometown attending a weekend production of The Nutcracker performed by the Carolina Ballet, an annual holiday gala for the region in general, and especially for the upper middle-class society that Becca grew up in. Becca’d invited Zach several weeks earlier and made it clear that it was an important occasion. Zach was dressed in a dark suit and Becca wore a black knee-length, sleeveless evening dress under her open coat. Everyone in the auditorium, including the children, was dressed in their holiday finest.
They finally made it to their row and slid past numerous seated patrons to their seats near the middle. Zach helped Becca slide her coat off. He draped it over his right arm as she slowly, confidently surveyed the crowd in all directions. She was stunning in her black dress, the color highlighting her perfect fair skin and her thick blond hair that she’d left loose this night and flowed halfway down her back. She knew everyone was looking at her but didn’t give off the least sign of haughtiness or conceit. Her welcoming smile and relaxed manner was totally disarming. She was so comfortable in her own skin that she made all those around her feel comfortable in theirs. Zach could’ve happily watched her all night except he felt that as the crowd was watching her, they were also watching him. And as good as she made him feel about himself, this unfamiliar crowd more than countered that confidence. He didn’t know what they were looking for in him, didn’t know what they saw; this uncertainty made him feel uncharacteristically insecure. So he finally sat down and draped her coat across his knees. He would’ve rather draped it over his head, but that would’ve caused even more attention. So he shrank into his cushioned rocking seat and hoped Becca’s shine blinded them to his awkwardness.
Becca soon sat and took his near hand and turned those eyes on him. “Thanks for coming, Zach,” she said firmly but in a voice that only he could hear. “I wanted you to see my world.” She looked over his shoulder at the rows upon rows of patrons receding into the dimness beneath the double balcony. “And I wanted them to see you.”
“Why?” By this time he was more curious than peeved.
“Because you’re the cutest guy in the whole auditorium.” Her eyes settled on his and remained there.
From that moment, Zach no longer cared about the thousands of eyes critiquing him. Far as he was concerned, the rest of the crowd ceased to exist.
The lights in the hall flickered off and on, off and on. Spectators that were still standing scurried to their seats. The murmur in the hall quickly faded to silence. Then the lights went out. After a long and pregnant pause, the curtains opened on a scene of Christmas gaiety and excited preparations as dancers ran back and forth carrying tree ornaments and candles and presents and garland to place on and under and around a tall Christmas tree at the center of the stage. The sheer energy and enthusiasm and number of dancers in coordinated mayhem combined with the array of colors and lights and costumes captivated the audience, which responded with a mixture of gasps of wonder and cheers of joy. The show had begun.
Zach had seen excerpts of the ballet over the years and was familiar with the more famous pieces of Tchaicovsky’s accompanying music, but he’d never sat through an entire performance. Earlier in the week, he’d borrowed an audio tape of the ballet’s music from Barton and read the notes on the ballet that came with the tape, so he was somewhat familiar with the storyline. He was prepared to dismiss the whole performance as a children’s play performed for and largely by children. And the first couple scenes, while dazzling in their combination of endless motion and myriad colors, seemed to bear out his assumptions—the dancing wasn’t dancing at all but running and rough-housing, and the subsequent march and the party goers response to it seemed clichéd.
Then the real story began, and the star of the show emerged. The petite blond dancer that played the part of the child Clara was, even to Zach’s untrained eye, far and away the best dancer on the stage. Further, as the dramatic action unfolded—with the toymaker showing his opulent wares but leaving only a modest wooden nutcracker in the shape of a man, a toy that Clara grew attached to despite, or perhaps because of, its humble nature, only to have it broken by her jealous brother Fritz—Clara was allowed to become not only the central dancer of the scene but the narrative center as well, rivaling even the eventual transformation of the restored nutcracker into the dashing Prince. Zach assumed this was a directorial choice, as whoever had put this production together identified his greatest performer and used her to elevate the whole show. Throughout the fantastic scenes that followed in Act One—gingerbread soldiers succumbing to mice legions; tin soldiers and dolls thrown into the breach; the wounded nutcracker, saved by Clara, then slaying the Mouse King; and the Act’s closing scene of the nutcracker become Prince dancing with Clara through dancing silver snowflakes—Zach’s eyes never left Clara. He had discovered the beating heart of the ballet.
After the curtain fell on Act One to great cheers, Zach and Becca stayed in their seats as children and their parents and grandparents headed for the aisles leading to the restrooms and snack bars in the lobby. After an initial burst of noise and commotion, the hall became fairly quiet and relatively empty with so many patrons outside.
“So the toymaker is God?” Becca asked.
“Or human ingenuity,” Zach said, being more contrarian than convinced.
“And the Nutcracker?”
“Resourcefulness? Heroism? I don’t know.”
“Then where does the life come from?”
He loved Becca’s inquiries. He loved everything about her; but at just that moment, he loved her passionate curiosity most of all. “Think about it, Becca. The toymaker makes the toys, but they’re just wood and cloth and horsehair—whether in the real world or the fantastic world. He’s powerless to bring them to life.”
“Clara? A child?”
“Love—the universal life-giving force, child or adult.”
Becca’s look of surprise and incredulity slowly transformed into an indulgent grin. “Zachary Taylor, you are the world’s worst romantic.”
“Or best.”
“The best.” She leaned over and gave him a chaste kiss on the forehead—her helpless romantic.
If he hadn’t already been brought to life by this princess, that kiss would’ve done it. As it was, that touch simply cemented him in surrender to the life-giving force of this divine child.
“Becca, that’ll get you sent to the principal’s office,” a stranger’s voice said from nearby.
Zach looked past Becca to a dark-haired beauty in a full-length cobalt-blue satin gown held in place by silver-sequined spaghetti straps over her lily-white shoulders. She winked suggestively at Zach before Becca had a chance to turn around.
“Janice Oldham,” Becca said in surprise. She stood and leaned over and gave the dark-haired girl a brief hug.
“Hey, Girlfriend. Long time, no see. Now I know why.” She gazed over Becca’s shoulder at Zach.
Becca shook her head. “Same old Janice.” She turned and introduced Zach to Janice, “A friend from high school.”
“Now going to State—go Pack,” Janice said with a little shimmy of her hips.
Zach s
tood and shook Janice’s hand lightly. “Nice to meet you Janice now of State.”
Janice said, “Likewise, of that I’m sure.”
Zach tried to look interested as Becca and Janice exchanged information about past acquaintances, but he couldn’t help feeling like an outsider—which, of course, he was. Normally, such a feeling would not bother him—Zach was an outsider in almost any circle he found himself in. He actually enjoyed the condition, had cultivated the persona. But this time he was an outsider in the world Becca came from and enjoyed, if not fully revered. And from this vantage point, it was hard seeing himself ever joining that world, or Becca ever leaving it. Thus, in this particular instance, being an outsider was a very big problem.
Janice extended her hand again to Zach, and held his hand for some seconds longer than would be considered polite. She leaned forward and whispered (knowing Becca could hear), “If you ever get tired of Becca, come by State.”
Zach nodded. “I’ll take it under advisement.”
Janice laughed a wicked laugh, touched Becca’s shoulder, and said, “Later, Girlfriend,” before heading back down the row now refilling with the returning audience.
Becca faced Zach. “One of my shier friends.”
“Regular wallflower.”
They both laughed, sat down, and waited for the show to resume.
The second act, despite its elaborate choreography—including the signature Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy—and inclusion of all the familiar orchestral pieces, seemed anticlimactic to Zach, as Clara took on the role of observer, rather than dancer and actor, in the Land of Sweets. Zach quickly grew bored with these elaborate fantasies danced mostly by children. He was wrenched out of his torpor by the haunting denouement, as Clara was suddenly left alone in the original parlor beside the unlit tree holding the wooden nutcracker in the moments before dawn, bereft of her Prince and his fantastic world, awaiting her return to everyday life. Set against nearly two hours of non-stop bright lights, constant movement, and fast-paced action, this momentary pause before the curtain dropped was powerful and poignant. As the entire audience leapt to their feet in cheers and applause following the curtain drop, Zach remained glued to his seat, briefly stunned by the image of the young Clara trying to make sense of what had just happened to her.
He finally stood beside Becca and added his applause. He felt an odd surge of relief and hope as the smiling woman that had danced as Clara was presented to the audience, generating the loudest cheers and applause of any of the performers. Zach was glad to see her performance properly recognized by the crowd, and even more grateful to be reminded that Clara’s pause on the threshold of grinding reality was not the final word—for her or him. It was, after all, just a performance, right?
He posed that question to Becca as she drove them through the deserted backstreets of the city on a short cut to her parents’ house, where he’d left his truck parked. “It was just a performance, right?”
She laughed. “The ballet or the audience?”
Zach hadn’t thought about that. Maybe the ballet, Clara’s story, was the transcendent reality, the promise; and the crowd—the affluent and highly structured society that opened the ballet and the affluent and highly structured society watching the ballet—was the passing and corrupt illusion. “When did you learn that?”
“Zach, I grew up in that world. It’s one continuous performance—costuming, make-up, dialogue, props, stage design. If you took away the performance, nobody would know what to do.”
“And you’re O.K. with that?”
“I don’t know what you mean by ‘O.K.’ I’ve never tried to fight it. I’d only lose and end up hurting a lot of people in the process. Besides, they’re my family—you accept family as they are. But you notice I don’t spend an awful lot of time here. I’d rather be in Shefford. I’d rather be with you.”
“An austere world compared to all that opulence.”
“Most of that’s fluff, Zach, as you well know. And your world has a different kind of richness, as you also know.”
“How’d you get so smart?”
“A good teacher.”
She turned into the cul-de-sac, switched off the headlights, and coasted to a stop behind Zach’s truck parked along the curb. The front-porch light of her parents’ house was on; otherwise, the rest of their house and the other houses on the street were all dark. They sat unmoving and unspeaking in the car, letting the new darkness and the new stillness settle over them.
Becca turned toward Zach. “Thanks for coming tonight. I know it wasn’t easy for you.”
“It was O.K. You took care of me. I hope I didn’t cramp your style.”
“You didn’t cramp my style, Zach.” She leaned across the car’s console, put her arm around his neck, and pulled his face to her. Their mouths locked together and they kissed for the longest time, breathing back and forth the air they needed.
Eyes closed, Zach’s hand found Becca’s hair and brushed slowly over its full rich length in repeated invisible passes, seeing the map of his future through his fingertips, through his lips, through the air of her lungs giving him life. For him at that moment, there was no gap between illusion and reality, no tension between what he would wish and what he could have. It all resided in the flesh and soul of this girl now joined to him, this one who had found him wandering out there in the darkness and brought him to this home.
Somewhere in the cul-de-sac, a dog barked twice then was silent. When they opened their eyes, they saw the spotlights of the house behind them glaring. Becca laughed. “Can’t even make out in private in my world.”
Zach said, “Then let’s go make out in mine.”
Becca leaned forward and gave him a brief kiss then said, “Later.”
She walked him to his truck then went on to the beacon of that front-porch bulb. She stood in that pool of light and waved as he drove past on his way to the main road. He waved back then drove on into the night, his long ride home.