Evan Zimroth - Collusion: A Young Girl Becomes a Dancer

Australia

HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty. Ltd.

Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street

Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia

www.harpercollins.com.au

Canada

HarperCollins Canada

2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor

Toronto, ON M4W 1A8, Canada

www.harpercollins.ca

New Zealand

HarperCollins Publishers New Zealand

Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive

Rosedale 0632

Auckland, New Zealand

www.harpercollins.co.nz

United Kingdom

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF, UK

www.harpercollins.co.uk

United States

HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

195 Broadway

New York, NY 10007

www.harpercollins.com

EVAN ZIMROTH is a writer whose first novel, Gangsters, won the National Jewish Book Award in 1996. She has also published two collections of poetry. She lives in New York City with her two daughters.

Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.

novel

Gangsters

poetry

Dead, Dinner, or Naked

Giselle Considers Her Future

A Virago Book

Published by Virago Press 1999

First published in the United States by Harper Collins, New York

Copyright 1998 by Evan Zimroth

The moral right of the author has been asserted

COLLUSION. Copyright 2015 by Evan Zimroth. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 1 86049 266 5

EPub Edition September 2015 ISBN 9780062457011

A Division of

Little, Brown and Company (UK)

Brettenham House

Lancaster Place

London WC2E 7EN

For my father,

and in memory of my mother

I wish to thank my editor, Terry Karten, for her vision and experience: Her acute intuitiveness and sweet persistence on behalf of Collusion helped me immeasurably. I am happily indebted also to Lydia Wills, my agent, who gave me courage to begin this memoir and was with me every step of the way. My family, then and now, sustained me generously, as only the best families do. I am very grateful to all of them, and especially to my daughters, Lilly and Kate, who encourage me daily, offer excellent literary advice, and keep me anchored in real life. I am also more than ever aware of my good fortune in having friends like Diane Steiner, B-J Lunin-Frishberg, and Ed Marston, who have known me for years and who have lifted my spirits (as always) with the right word at the right time.

It makes me especially happy to record a loving thank-you to Judi Witt Fried, who was there from the beginning, who shared her memories with me, and who at the start of this book gave me the gold charm that I wear on a necklace, as I used to wear my long-ago ballerina.

Did it hurt?

No, I lied.

Do you want it again?

Yes, I lied again.

I had just been raped, or so I told myself. But rape was not quite what had happened: Even at that moment of fear and panic and anger when he grabbed me, pinned me to the bed, and pressed himself into me, I knew you couldnt really call it rape. For one thing, I was in love with him. For another, we were in a motel, somewhere in the Blue Ridge Mountains, although exactly where we lodged I could not have said; it might have been Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, or the moon for all I cared. The day had been wonderfulwe had driven lazily through the mountains, stopping at one Civil War battlefield after another to read their impressive Latinate signs, telling us who fought what battle where and under what dire circumstances. At least he said the inscriptions were Latinate, and read them aloud to me with much pleasure. I, as usual, felt too young, embarrassingly uneducated, and resolved that when I got back to college and could sign up for my spring semester courses, I would start Latin. How had I missed Latin when it would turn out to be so important for reading Civil War battlefield inscriptions in this, my first real love affair?

After the battlefields we had stopped in some small, depressed southern town in the mountains to find dinner and a motel. The meal was enchanting, despite the unpalatable food; the waiter had even found us a bottle of wine, although it was clear that the restaurant did not often serve it. My companion fingered the stem of his wineglass in a gesture that would become meaningful, and ominous, for me in the years that this affair wore on. It meant sex; it meant, Later I will fuck you, and lets have none of your nonsense. Later well make love, whether you want it or not.

Why did the sex turn out to be so awful? Why was I so reluctant? Why couldnt I just give in, let go, open up, enjoy it? Why did I suddenly find myself fighting and struggling to push away the man I was in love withthis man whom I had thought about constantly for months, wondering when I would see him again, when he would call me, wondering whether he was as overwhelmed as I was by the sheer presence of the other? When he had telephoned me in my dormitory room at college for a dinner date, I had gotten sick at the sound of his voice, faint and dizzy from wanting him so badly. So why was I fighting him off in some lost motel room deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains?

He did, very sensibly, what many men would have done in the circumstances: He decided that the struggle was part of my naive courtship, that I really wanted it, pinned me down, and took me. For me, it was the first time. Afterward I lay in his arms, so glad it was over, laughing and crying, deeply in love with him and overcome with exhaustion, guilty at what I had forced him to do. I seemed to be bleeding ever so slightly. Help, I cried tremuluously, throwing my arms around him. Ive been raped. Yes, I suppose you have, he answered, gently kissing me. Did it hurt? Do you want it again?

The questions were oddly familiar. For a moment I tried to place them, and then with a sudden burst of memory I knew where I had heard that exact questioning before. I had been twelve, and had just been struck by F., my ballet master. For the first time. In fact the violence had been meted out with a leather cane on the very day I entered F.s class, the Advanced Class, as punishmentor so I thoughtfor my still inexperienced and inexact classical technique.

As in the motel room where I was introduced to the dark strangeness of love, the violence in the ballet classroom was also an initiation. There, too, a man had taken me, possessed me, and launched me into a new world with one swift and indelible act. The questions in the motel room, with their echo from the past, overwhelmed me with knowledge I had never spoken of and had tried not to think of for years. The repetition of the questions showed me that F., too, although he had been my ballet master and I only a young student aspiring to a life as a dancer, had initiated me into another story. A love story. That realization, just as much as F.s first act of violence, left me stunned.