Girl Through Glass Read Free Page B

When Mira goes upstairs, she finds her father’s dresser top cleaned of cuff links and his closet empty of suits.

CHAPTER 4
PRESENT
    In Johnson, I climb the creaking stairs to the overheated turret. Up past the college’s alumni offices. Buttressed by a cup of coffee—black, no sugar—and the sweet smell of illicit cigarette smoke coming up from Dr. James’s (emeritus professor in classics) office below me, I’ll make it through office hours. Outside of the classroom, I’m not so easy with the students.
    The office on the other side of the hall belongs to the other visiting professor in performance studies, Bill Krasdale. He’ll be in later for office hours and then there will be a line of students waiting for him. That’s Bill, the vulnerable, the well-loved by students—more shaman than teacher. I may have a few groupies, but he inspires love.
    Sioban sits outside my office door. “Hola. Bonjour,” I say. I fumble with the keys in the lock.
    Inside my musty-smelling office, she flops into the metal folding chair. I squeeze by her, catching my dress on the edge of her chair, stuff myself behind my desk, and settle in. Behind me the ferns I brought up from seedlings have grown so thick they tickle my hair. They have flourished in the dim rafters here.
    Still wide-eyed from her ideas, she hikes one leg over the other and bounces a green neon sneaker on her knee. She wears only workout clothes—pants so tight that they grip every muscle or so loose you can barely see her form.
    â€œI just love your class so much, as you know.” She gives me a wicked smile that makes her long face look fuller. She begins picking at a Buzz Lightyear Band-Aid on her finger.
    I take in her nervous energy, her bitten nails half-stripped of their red nail polish, and it occurs to me that Sioban’s headlong rush into academia is simply the animal’s response to totally new terrain—fight or flight. It reminds me of myself in my twenties, when I was dancing modern in San Francisco, both fearful and willing to try anything. She is choosing to advance, to fight. I smile at her, a real smile.
    I take a slug of my coffee. “I’m enjoying having you in this class. Your perspective”—I look out the window. It’s started to rain lightly—“is invaluable.”
    â€œThanks,” she says too brightly. I wonder if I’ve betrayed something.
    â€œSo what can I help you with now?” I manage a warm, professional tone. To give myself something to do, I pull out my pile of mail and start sorting.
    She pulls out the syllabus. “For our next research paper? On early modernist choreographers? I was just wondering—Can I do Nijinsky? I know we already did him in class, but I just don’t feel as strongly about any of the others?”
    Her eyes really are translucent. “I’d like you to do someone else, at least as a—a—comparison.”
    I’ve come across a single white envelope with my name on it. Something about the letter gives me pause. It’s a plain envelope with my address in meticulous handwriting. I realize what’s strange about it: there’s no return address. I weigh the letter in my hand. It’s extremely lightweight; I wonder whether anything is in it at all. I slip a finger in and rip it open. Inside the envelope is a folded sheet of Florentine-style parchment paper that falls open in my hand. I recognize the tight, cursive handwriting—from another era. My eyes hit the initial at the bottom: M. I snap it shut.
    My head feels like it is buzzing with light; a crushing weight has landed in the back of my skull. Through all of this, I am apparently talking to Sioban about Nijinsky’s sister, Bronislava Nijinska. I’mtrying to convince her to write a paper on Nijinska using Nijinska’s own memoirs, which is a terrible idea. “Bronislava was faithful to his modernist project. She wrote a