Crab Orchard Review Vol. 12, No. 2, our

130 ◆ Crab Orchard Review
Terez Rose
dozen and produce she hadn’t seen since leaving her native Nebraska.
The prices are shocking—the equivalent of fifteen dollars for a stalk of
limp broccoli, but it is broccoli, nonetheless. Chocolate fills an entire row.
Wine comprises another. Kate wanders the aisles in a happy reverie.
Holiday music plays through the tinny overhead speakers, as out
of place as a dusty village woman at an English tea party. Bing Crosby
should be dreaming of a White Christmas on another continent, Kate
muses, wiping the sweat off her face. She is perusing the spice rack
when, to her shocked surprise, she hears Tchaikovsky’s “Waltz of the
Flowers” from The Nutcracker coming from above. The music invades
her senses like a drug injected into the bloodstream. Something in her
body leaps to life, while another part freezes in dismay. It’s like seeing
an old boyfriend she isn’t yet over.
She performed in The Nutcracker every year for the past fifteen
Christmas seasons. She’s purposely avoided playing her tape recordings
in her dusty little town to keep from feeling the nostalgia that now
sweeps over her. But like an alcoholic holding a drink, she has little
choice but to succumb to its seductive power. She shuts her eyes and
she is there, lights blazing down as she leaps across the stage, every
muscle and nerve in her body tuned in, focused single-mindedly on
the dance. Listening to the store’s muffled music, she can almost feel
the high again, the surge of power coursing through her arms in the
finishing pose. That intoxicating, otherworldly feeling—it is why she
craves dance.
“Kate?” Her eyes fly open. Carmen has rounded the corner with
the shopping cart and now stands in front of her. “Anything wrong?”
She shakes herself free of the music’s spell. Her head begins to
pound. She dumps her purchases into Carmen’s cart and tries to
steady her voice. “I just need to get out of here for a minute—it’s really
stuffy. I’ll wait for you outside.”
Home—the place she has successfully avoided thinking about,
until the Nutcracker music brought it back. Following dinner with
Henry and Carmen, she steps outside Carmen’s house to look up at
the stars. The memories, along with the pain, slide back into place.
On Christmas Eve last year, the entire family gathered at the
house, the way they did every year. The usual Christmas tree filled
one corner of the living room, bloated with decorations, gifts spilling
out from underneath. Kate had just finished a run of ten Nutcracker
performances, leaving her physically and emotionally depleted. It was