The Sugarless Plum: A Memoir Read Free

my talent. He has to love me again. Still, while Jerry chose me for my dancing, I realize that something else drew him, as well. After all, everyone at City Ballet can dance. Everyone is special. Everyone sparkles.But what Jerry saw in me was an extra sparkle. Maybe it’s not possible to shine when your body is struggling as mine is.
    Have I lost my sparkle in his eyes?
    Â 
    At the end of my solo I have a series of turns on the diagonal. I’m supposed to end up right at the wing where Jerry’s standing. I run across the stage. Just as I begin turning toward him, I see him walking away while I’m still dancing. I’m performing for more than two thousand people, but the only one I can think of is Jerry. I’m smiling for the audience, but my heart is sinking.
    I try not to think about Jerry as I take my curtain call with the rest of the cast to enthusiastic applause.
    An hour later, the stage is bare, the audience has long since gone home, and I’m leaving the theater with Romy, cradling a bouquet of roses from Peter Martins. As we’re walking out, I notice a message tacked to the bulletin board: “Zippora, urgent. Call your doctor.”
    I know I should call her, and I promise myself that I will—just as soon as the season is over, which is in just three weeks. I get through the remaining five performances of Les Petits Riens on sheer strength of will. But a few days later I receive an unexpected wake-up call in the form of a dream.
    I’ve always believed in the significance of dreams, and this one is particularly frightening. I dream that I’m in a car. The car isn’t moving and the windows and the doors are open, but the engine is running. Suddenly, the windows roll up and the doors lock shut. Then the fumes from the exhaust start coming through thevents in the dashboard and filling the car. I can’t breathe and I can’t get out. I wake up just before I suffocate.
    As I lie there, trying to catch my breath, the dream seems to me like a portent. The car is my body and the exhaust is something happening inside me that is life-threatening. I realize that something is not right.
    Â 
    That afternoon I phone the doctor during a five-minute rehearsal break, and she tells me I have to come in immediately. A few hours later, I’m in her waiting room. It’s cold and sterile. It gives me the creeps. It’s six-twenty and I’ve been waiting for an hour. To get there, I had to skip my final rehearsal of the day for a ballet I was scheduled to dance the following week. Now I have to get back to the theater by seven-thirty to put on my makeup and get ready for this evening’s performance. I don’t have time to sit here, but I need to know what’s so urgent and she wouldn’t tell me over the phone.
    Finally, the door to her office opens. She invites me in. She’s a tall, thin, attractive woman in a tailored white doctor’s coat. She’s smiling, but I see pity in that smile and it puts me on edge. She looks as if she’s about to tell me she ran over my dog. She studies my chart for a moment, then tells me that my blood sugar levels are 350. Normal levels, she says, are 120 or under. I ask what this means. She says it means that I have diabetes.
    Diabetes? I’ve heard of it. It’s one of those charity diseases, the kind they raise money for. She hands me four pamphlets that describe what may happen to me: heart disease, stroke, blindness, kidney failure, foot and/or leg amputations.
    I can’t take it in. I refuse to take it in. Instead, I try to figure out how long it will take me to get back to the theater. If I get out of here soon I can make it. Even if I don’t get a cab, I can walk it in twenty minutes.
    She says we can discuss a treatment plan during our next appointment. Another appointment? Why can’t we discuss it now? I want to know what to do. I want everything to go back to being the way it was. But all