I Was a Dancer - Jacques D'Amboise [174]
There was no small talk in our vehicle, until …
“I don’t believe it!” Randy declared. He was looking out the window. In the left lane, hurtling by, was Frances Schreuder, alone in the back of her limousine and desperately determined. She passed our entourage, the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz melded with Carabosse from Sleeping Beauty.
The cemetery, beautiful with its newborn foliage emerging from winter sleep, was a landscape to rest in. The weather was far from restful, a tumultuous, windswept, gray, watercolored day, but appropriate for the occasion. Lost in grief, we gathered on a knoll a short distance from the roadway. Our small group, less than half a hundred, stood around the coffin—each of us touched in different ways by the monument that Balanchine had been.
A large part of our identities was molded by our association with him. As musical themes introduced in the early movements of a symphony come together in the last movement, so did grief, palpable during the ceremony at the cathedral, unite all of us at the gravesite. Few were without tears. I felt divided—a part of me was separate—watching myself and everyone else in a slow-motion dream. I was playing my part in a silent movie, surrounded by a trio of Balanchine’s ex-wives: Tanny, next to me in her wheelchair; Alexandra Danilova; and Maria Tallchief, a few feet away. The set, a vision of tree branches running their fingers through the wind. Grieving nearby were Karin von Aroldingen; her handsome, salt-and-pepper-haired husband, Morty; and their yellow-haired, teenage daughter, Margot.
Balanchine never had a family of his own in the traditional sense, except the one Karin, Morty, and Margot gave him. They opened up their home to him, and he was Margot’s godfather. He had a comfortable, homey life with them, the kind where you sit around in your underwear reading the morning paper, or watching TV late at night with your feet up on the coffee table and eating junk food. Years earlier, Karin and Morty had acquired a condo for their family in a development in Southampton, and they had persuaded Balanchine to invest in a small one for himself. He loved it there and would cook scrumptious feasts in his sandals and bathrobe. With Karin, Morty, and Margot, he had a life of the ordinary, a world away from Lincoln Center, the State Theater, and his New York City Ballet. The Sag Harbor cemetery is a few miles away from his condo.
We formed a circle, clustered around the grave. Some of us stood alone, others huddled close, perhaps trying to find solace in one another, but, just as in all death, the solitary is supreme. A quartet of lumpy gravediggers waited on the outskirts, leaning on their shovels, routine for them, since they probably bury half a dozen people a day. Outside our circle, on a solo knoll some twenty-five to thirty yards away, stood Frances Schreuder. Conducting the ceremony, Father Adrian led the prayers, the wind blowing his long, curled hair and belly-warming beard into fluttering black-brown ribbons. After the prayers, one by one we went up to the hole and dropped flowers into it. I pushed Tanny there in her wheelchair, her hands like eagle’s claws gripping the chair’s arms; it seemed all her life forces centered in those clutching fingers. I split the flowers I had, and we threw them on the casket.
The very bones in Tanny’s face seemed to tighten. “Get me out of here,” she said. She was on the verge of screaming, so I quickly wheeled her toward the limousines.
“We’re supposed to go to Gold and Fizdale’s,”3 I mumbled, “for the reception.”
“I’m going back to New York,” she screeched. “I’ve got to get out!”
It took a while, returning along the dirt road to where the cars were parked. At Tanny’s limo, she took command, and in clipped, short sentences, ordered a litany of directions: “Don’t forget to lock the wheelchair before you try to lift me out. Now, pick me up carefully. Don’t bang my head against the edge of the door.”
I’d been her partner for years. I used to tell her what to