Chapter 20
Opening night of Nutcracker arrives in a blustery cold gale of wind and rain.
The backstage atmosphere during the Nutcracker season is almost always chaotic, but on opening night, it’s anarchy.
Wanda embraces the mania, hell she runs at it with open arms.
After almost three weeks of meticulously deep cleaning her apartment to escape the cacophony of thoughts swirling around and around in her head, she’s loving the mayhem.
There are two casts for the Nutcracker corps de ballet: cast A and cast B. The leads rotate far more often, because of the demanding nature of the roles, but the women in the company are divided down the middle with each girl receiving an alternate during the forty-six-show run. It means that ideally, each woman only has to perform the show twenty-three times, however, due to the grueling schedule of the Nutcracker season, almost half of the girls end up out because of injuries or illness.
Wanda is in Cast A and her alternate this year is an apprentice named Margot. Wanda isn’t very confident that she’ll be around longer than a couple of weeks; apprentices tend to be the first out of Nutcracker because they haven’t learned how to keep themselves from getting burnt out.
The light is fading as Wanda exits the Café after a quick dinner and tears across the Plaza to the stage door, the rain and cold wind slapping her cheeks and piercing through her coat. As she pushes open the stage door, she's almost thrown back by the light and noise spilling from backstage.
There are children running everywhere with wranglers sprinting after them, there is a props intern nearly crying in a corner as she preps forty or so fake glasses of champagne for the first act party scene, and Wanda spots two incredibly nervous looking apprentices, already in their snow costumes, warming up in a free spot of floor.
A tiny girl with her hair in curlers and wearing a deep blue dress with short, puffed sleeves, bumps into Wanda as she runs shrieking into the hallway, a boy hot on her heels. “Oh!” she squeals, looking up at Wanda with huge eyes. “Sorry!”
The boy, dressed in a pair of beige colored breeches and a small, eighteenth-century frock coat, smacks his hand against the girl’s shoulder. “You’re it!” he yells gleefully.
“Roger!” the girl races away from Wanda, her fingers reaching vainly to touch the boy.
Wanda pushes open the door to the dressing room, a half-smile caught on her face.
“Why are you so cheerful?” Natasha is stabbing bobby pins into her hair, fashioned in a low bun.
“Dunno,” Wanda admits, settling in her chair. “Just like the energy today.”
Natasha snorts. “Oh yeah?” she says. “You’re enjoying the screaming children and the stressed-out costumers and the screaming children?”
Wanda thinks. “Yes.”
“Your funeral,” Natasha grumbles.
“Why are you so grouchy?” Wanda questions.
“She’s quit smoking,” Pepper has shoved open the dressing room door, her gold hair already immaculate. “Does anyone else think it’s a bad idea that the kids are playing tag?”
“Not Wanda,” Natasha answers. “She likes the energy today.”
Wanda pokes her tongue out at Natasha. “Leave me alone.”
Pepper is smiling. “Oh, Wanda,” she says gently, her face a sweet oval. “It’s good that you’re having fun! You’ve been so unhappy since-,” Pepper breaks off, biting her lip.
“Since?” Wanda challenges.
“Since Vision left,” Natasha finishes the thought.
Wanda stiffens at the name. “Don’t be silly,” she says, though her voice sounds overly bright. “Vision leaving had no affect what so ever on my mood.”
“Oh, no?” Natasha asks, turning in her chair to face Wanda head on. “You forget, I’ve known you for almost ten years and I know your coping mechanisms.”
Pepper kicks the legs on Natasha’s chair and she settles back in front of the mirror.
“I’m just saying that she’s not as subtle as she thinks she is,” Natasha mumbles.
Wanda narrows her eyes. “Thank you very much for your input,” she snaps at Natasha.
They sit in a stony silence after that, Wanda blotting makeup across her face before pinning up her hair and stepping into her first costume of the night: a wine-colored eighteenth-century gown with a full skirt and black velvet trim.
Within the company, any dancers over five feet, six inches are cast as the adults in the party scene for Nutcracker, the only part of the ballet that has any kind of story element attached to it. Generally, it’s an easy job, Wanda typically walks around, pretends to sip champagne, and tries not to think about how quickly she’ll have to warm up for the second act.
This year, her onstage husband is Clint, and at least one of the screaming children next door is supposed to be her kid, though she can't remember which one.
“Places for the top of show,” Jimmy’s disembodied voice floats through the speaker in their dressing room.
Wanda slides her feet into a pair of character shoes, flexible black shoes with a low heel, and clips out of the dressing room without a word.
Clint finds her backstage as the orchestra warms up, strains of screeching violins and flutes running through scales are drifting through the thick red curtain. “Hello, wife,” he coos in her ear.
Wanda turns around to bat her lashes at him. “Is that my husband?”
“You look like you’ve got something in your eye,” he informs her.
“Be still my heart,” Wanda claps her hand to her chest dramatically.
A large group of children are ushered backstage, the little girl cast as Marie, the main character of the ballet, continues to a spot on the stage, smoothing her blue-grey dress with red ribbons. Roger, the little boy playing tag is Marie’s brother, Fritz, follows her meekly, plopping in a chair onstage, right behind the curtain. The audience breaks into raucous applause, the conductor taking her spot in front of the orchestra.
There is a moment of pure silence before the overture begins, the strings beginning a dance with the flutes, the two chasing each other in harmony.
Wanda feels a small hand slip into hers and she looks down to see the little girl cast as her and Clint’s onstage daughter, looking up at her with big brown eyes.
“Hey, kiddo,” Clint has squatted down to the little girl’s level, and is grinning in her face. “You ready?”
The little girl nods nervously, just a small bob of her head.
“You’re going to be great,” he smiles at her. “Just look at me or Wanda if you get nervous, we’re right there with you.”
The girl cuts her eyes up to Wanda’s face for reassurance and Wanda manages to give her a small, hopefully comforting, smile.
The overture finishes with a flourish and the curtain begins to rise, the audience applauding as the lights come up on Marie and Fritz as they begin choreographed fight as the Christmas tableau is set.
As Wanda watches the action, the little girl still holding her hand, tugs lightly, just enough to tell Wanda that she needs to lean over to listen.
“I’m going to be Marie next year,” the little girl whispers in her ear.
Wanda tries to remember what it was like, back when she had enough confidence to say a sentence like that. “I believe you,” she whispers back, just as their musical cue is heard.
“Here we go,” Clint mutters, placing his hand at Wanda’s back and leading her onto the stage.
The party scene goes by in a flash, Wanda spends most of her time upstage with Clint as they mill around with the other adults and let the children do most of the heavy lifting.
As soon as she, Clint, and the little girl who’s name she can’t remember have exited the stage, Wanda and Clint run to their dressing rooms with barely a backward glance at their onstage daughter. Clint has less time than Wanda to change, he’s a mouse in the battle scene, but Wanda has to make sure she’s fully warm by the time the snow scene begins.
Natasha and Pepper are both already back in the dressing room, having exited the party a little earlier than Wanda and Clint, but thankfully the quick change is too rushed for them to talk.
Wanda’s still feeling a little stung by Natasha’s comment, though she’s not quite sure why, and the confusing snarl of feelings that begin and end with Vision is still a tender and raw knot in her chest that she refuses to acknowledge.
So, she dresses as quickly as she can in her snow costume; a blue bodice and long white tulle skirt with tiny fluttery arm bands that wrap around her biceps and a glittery rope tied around her bun.
She ties her pointe shoes and leaves the dressing room, warming up backstage as the battle scene draws to a close, and the nutcracker turns into a prince, leading Marie away as snow begins to fall.
The curtain lowers as the set is changed in an instant and Wanda poises to explode onto the stage.
Waltz of the Snowflakes bleeds into the Land of the Sweets and Wanda finds herself back in the dressing room sooner than she would have liked, spitting synthetic snowflakes out of her mouth as she changes for the corps of Waltz of the Flowers.
The silence in the dressing room is grating, but Wanda has a sneaking suspicion she’s the only one who can break it, and she’s far too embarrassed by her own feelings to lower her façade of sulking.
So, the silence continues as the ballet pushes forward until she and Pepper are standing in the wings for the beginning of the Waltz of the Flowers.
Natasha has just exited the stage after performing in the Marzipan corps, her cheeks pink and her tiny yellow tutu standing straight out from her hips.
“Wanda,” she hisses, grabbing Wanda’s hand.
“What?” Wanda is almost proud of the bored drawl that escapes her mouth.
“I have something I need to tell you-.”
Onstage the lights have dimmed to a pinkish hue and the beginning strains of Waltz of the Flowers has begun.
Wanda closes her eyes against the surge of feeling that escapes her tiny snarl of Vision related emotions to smack her across the face as the familiar tune begins to roll across the stage in a fog.
“Sorry, Nat,” she answers, her voice shaking. “Duty calls.”
“But, Wanda it’s-.”
Wanda doesn’t hear what Natasha wanted to say, she hears her musical cue and runs on stage, her deep pink skirts floating behind her.
The first half of the dance goes remarkably well. Though she feels a sense of deep sorrow burrowing deeper and deeper into her bones at the melody, Wanda’s able to shove her feelings aside in the wake of getting the steps correct.
She focuses on staying in line with the other girls as she tour jetés towards the audience confidently, her pink skirts billowing magnificently around her hips, and tries to evoke the feeling of a flower floating through the wind as she pirouettes and flutters her fingers.
It isn’t until they’ve made a long line, all moving in sync as they port de bras, choreographed arm movements, that Wanda sees him.
Glittering gold hair sitting in the second row, house right, his chin on top of his fist, his eyes on her.
Wanda stutters and almost loses the movement. Julie Tyler Tremble, the Dew Drop Fairy for the night, spins by her and Wanda takes a deep breath.
It’s not him, she tells herself firmly. You’re going insane, he’s not here.
She bourrées to her next position, her arms in an open fourth position, her focus firmly on raised arm, ignoring the spot where Vision fucking Shade may or may not be sitting.
She chances another look as she’s kneeling on the ground and she sees an empty seat where the blond man had been and Tony Stark’s sheepish face sitting next to the empty chair.
Wanda can’t stop her eyes from widening and cutting to where Pepper moves, two spots over from her.
Luckily, Pepper’s focus seems to be where it should be, her eyeline caught dreamily upwards, but Wanda doesn’t relax until the piece is over and she and Pepper have both exited.
What the hell is he doing here? she fumes to herself.
She stands seething in the wings while Maggie performs the Sugar Plum fairy pas de deux with Patrick, her thoughts a jumble of obscenities and frustration.
“You look like you’re ready to strangle someone.”
Wanda jumps at the unexpected voice and comes face to face with Darcy, her dark brows quirked and her mouth pulled into a smirk.
Wanda hadn’t gotten a chance to talk to Darcy about anything that had happened since she’d learned about her role in the Hank/Vision fiasco. Wanda had expected awkwardness, she’d expected to be tongue tied and unable to speak without apologizing profusely for encouraging someone like Hank to hang around the theater.
Instead, Wanda suddenly feels the tenseness in her shoulder vanishing.
Because of course, Vision and Tony would be here to support Darcy. She’d designed all the lights. They weren’t here to plague her or mock Pepper, they were here to support a friend.
Wanda realizes with a start that Darcy is waiting for a reply. “Just counting down the minutes until I can get out of this scratchy tulle skirt.”
Darcy snorts and Wanda allows herself to be carried away by the music through the end of the ballet, her only focus getting Pepper out of the theater before she realizes Tony is around.
As she exits the stage after bows, Natasha grabs Wanda’s arm. “Did you see?” she hisses.
“Yes,” Wanda mutters back.
“Did Pepper-?”
“Not that I know of.”
Natasha relaxes. “Good, that’s good. Let’s keep it that way.”
***
Wanda stays jumpy for the next few days after opening night.
Pepper stays blissfully ignorant and Natasha and Wanda don’t discuss Tony and Vision’s impromptu appearance on opening night, but Wanda is expecting to see Vision around every corner at the studios and in the theater.
Her focus wobbles and her dancing suffers; her anxiety rockets every time she see blond hair. Agnes has all but given up on her, ignoring Wanda outright in class and rehearsals, passing by her as though she’s a ghost.
Natasha gets the worst of Wanda’s ire, she’s the only one in the dressing room brave enough to push the Vision issue with Wanda, but all it succeeds in doing is creating a frosty silence that stretches across the room until Wanda leaves for places.
One evening, on a precious night off, Wanda stops at the Trader Joe’s on 72nd Street, craving frozen dumplings and needing some Greek yogurt. She’s wandering around the cereal aisle, looking for granola, when she sees blond hair and wide shoulders standing in front of the yogurts and sour cream.
She freezes, her eyes enormous, her feet unable to move.
The man moves his face in profile and she sees it’s not Vision Shade, the man’s nose is too long and his chin is too soft. Wanda curses her stupidity and orders her feet to move.
She grabs her Greek yogurt and gets out of the store as fast as she can.
All the days begin to mix together as the sun starts setting at five and the temperatures begin to drop, November bleeding into December.
As Wanda predicts, her alternate, Margot, sprains her ankle two and a half weeks into the run and Wanda is on every night, eight shows a week.
She can’t remember a time before the violent blisters on her feet or the countless empty bottles of Advil she has piled in her trashcan. She can’t remember a time before she began dunking her feet into ice baths after every show, the sting against her skin causing her stomach to roll unpleasantly. She’s dreaming about dancing nutcrackers, the music plaguing her brain until she wakes up in a cold sweat.
The worst is the synthetic snow.
It’s beautiful to look at from the audience, she knows; cascading flakes of powdery whiteness bathing every dancer in an ethereal layer of glitter.
But after it makes its magical journey to the stage, the snow is swept up and reloaded into the machines in the flies that then drops it back on the group the following day. So, amongst the beautiful powdery white flakes are lost bobby pins, dirt, rosin, glitter, and bits of ribbon, debris that sticks to her body and gets caught in her mouth, tasting like permanent marker and sulfur.
Once, Wanda found a false eyelash stuck to her shoulder from where it had been swept up and dumped with the snow.
To make matters worse, the stuff is all over her apartment. In her bathroom, in her shoes, on her kitchen floor, between her sheets, she even found snowflakes in her medicine cabinet.
Wanda’s teetering dangerously close to burnout and she knows it.
The worst part is that during the Nutcracker season, the dancers are required to attend annual Christmas parties thrown by donors to the ballet. After dancing a full day, they are expected to put on their best dress and smile while a bunch of rich people tell them, patronizingly, how wonderful it must be to “follow your dreams”.
Luckily, there is usually an open bar, which is where Wanda finds herself on one such night, in a donor’s penthouse, her best red cocktail dress that she bought five years ago for this exact scenario hanging off her shoulders loosely. There’s a band in the corner of the large open floor, a singer crooning “White Christmas”, while couples dance.
“What can I get you?” the bartender is already looking frazzled and its barely eleven thirty.
“Uh,” Wanda catches sight of a waiter walking around with a tray of martini glasses filled with a neon pink liquid. “What’s that?” she points to the drink.
“The evening special,” the bartender answers.
“What is it?” Wanda wonders.
“Cotton Candy-tini,” the bartender says.
“It’s so pink,” Wanda wrinkles her nose.
“It’s vile,” the bartender assures her. “You don’t want that.”
“I’ll have a vodka tonic,” she says.
He nods at her choice and quickly mixes her drink. She stuffs a couple of ones in his tiny tip jar and walks away, clutching her drink to find a sofa.
“Nope,” Monica snags her arm as she beelines towards a couch. “You don’t want to sit over there.”
“Why not?” Wanda sips her drink, grimacing at the sharp burn.
“Our host, Mrs. Mannox, has monopolized Pepper and they’re discussing the benefit of red wine and increased libidos.”
“Oh god,” Wanda looks at her.
“I wish I were joking,” Monica’s face is grim. “I only narrowly escaped.”
“And you left Pepper all alone?”
“Hey, don’t judge me,” Monica points her finger in Wanda’s face. “There’s only so much I can hear before I have to douse my ears in bleach. Besides, Pepper’s much politer than I am, she’s actually managed to keep the conversation going.”
Wanda takes another large slurp of her drink, the burn less noticeable the more she drinks. “Where’s Nat?”
“Oh,” Monica waves her hand. “She ran into what’s-his-name, your friend who we all thought you were going to date.”
“What?” Wanda wrinkles her brow in confusion.
“Harry- or no!” Monica snaps her fingers. “Hank. Hank Pym.”
Wanda feels as though she’s been dropped in a bucket of cold water. “What?”
“Hank Pym?” Monica repeats, clearly confused by Wanda’s reaction. “He came in about half an hour ago, I guess he knows the Mannox’s somehow?”
“Is Darcy here?” Wanda asks and then immediately curses herself.
“No,” Monica is looking at her uncertainly. “Why would that matter?”
“It doesn’t,” Wanda pastes a cheery smile on her face. God, how had Vision managed to stay anywhere near calm near Hank Pym? Wanda wants to kick him in the balls and she’s not even sure where he is.
“Okay,” Monica says cautiously. “If you’re sure,” her eyes suddenly get very large. “Oh shit, it’s Mr. Harrison.”
“Who?” Wanda twists her head.
“Mr. Harrison,” Monica gestures to a middle-aged man with greying temples and a receding hair line. “Tell him I had to go to the bathroom,” she ducks away, leaving Wanda alone.
“Excuse me,” Mr. Harrison has arrived, his overpowering cologne tickling Wanda’s nose until she has to hold back a sneeze. “Your friend, where did she go?”
“Uh, the bathroom,” Wanda answers.
“Again?” he worries his bottom lip with his teeth. “She must be drinking a lot of water.”
“Well, you know us dancers,” Wanda takes a healthy gulp of her drink. “Always trying to stay hydrated.”
Mr. Harrison’s eyes hone in on her. “Oh, are you a dancer too?”
“I am,” Wanda replies cautiously.
“I knew you looked familiar!” Mr. Harrison snaps his fingers. “I need to know; how exactly do they make the Christmas tree grow during the first act?”
Forty-five minutes later, Mr. Harrison is still talking, Wanda’s drink is long gone, and she knows why Monica ran when she did.
“…and then I told him: ‘son, don’t argue with me on this, twenty-five thousand dollars is exactly the kind of investment I want to make in your new school’,” Mr. Harrison guffaws.
“Mhmm,” Wanda murmurs, wondering how bad the Cotton Candy-tinis could be and how bad it might look if she downed three in a row.
“I tell you,” Mr. Harrison doesn’t seem to notice that she’s not listening. “Vision Shade is certainly a budding philanthropist!”
Wanda’s focus snaps to his face so fast, she’s surprised she doesn’t give herself whiplash. “What?”
Mr. Harrison looks shocked by her reaction and Wanda forces her face muscles to relax back into her pleasant stage smile. “I’m sorry,” she says through her teeth. “Did you say Vision Shade?”
Mr. Harrison looks at her as though she’s a little slow. “I did,” he answers. “Haven’t you heard about his school in Brooklyn?”
Wanda’s eyes are wide. “I knew he was planning it,” she admits.
“Well, he’s almost ready to open it!” Mr. Harrison pats his belly. “Thanks to donors like me, he’ll be opening the doors early next year.”
Wanda feels the most concerning twist of emotions in her belly. “Good for him,” she whispers.
“It’s amazing to think the kind of talent he might turn out from that school, even if it is in Brooklyn,” Mr. Harrison continues but Wanda ceases to listen, her brain a jumbled forest of unanswered questions.
She continues to nod and smile along with whatever Mr. Harrison says for the next few minutes, but it isn’t until she catches sight of Hank Pym, his narrow pale face tugged in a smirk, his hand caught in Natasha’s as he leads her towards the front door that she’s jerked from her internal reflection.
“Excuse me,” Wanda says to Mr. Harrison, not caring that she’s interrupted his sentence. “I need to say good night to my friend.” She hurries around Mr. Harrison, not waiting to see his reaction as she pushes her way to the crowd to where Natasha is standing by herself, Hank presumably going to grab their coats.
“Nat!” Wanda grabs her hand.
Natasha jumps. “Oh, Wanda!” she says, a loopy smile on her face. “How’s your night been?”
“Not great,” Wanda says. “Why’re you with Hank Pym?”
Natasha tilts her head in confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“How do you know Hank Pym?” Wanda amends.
“We ran into each other a couple of weeks ago after rehearsal,” Natasha answers, confusion still caught on her face. “I hadn’t seen him since you stopped bringing him around so it was nice to catch up.”
Wanda swallows. “And now you’re leaving with him?”
“Yes,” Natasha wrinkles her forehead. “Why?”
Wanda presses her lips together. “Okay, look normally I wouldn’t say this because I know you’re a grown woman who can make her own decisions but I feel obligated to tell you that you need to be careful. Hank’s not a good person.”
Natasha’s eyes grow hard. “How do you know?"
“I can’t tell you,” Wanda answers. “But I promise it’s from a credible source.”
“Uh huh,” Natasha says. “And this credible source wouldn’t happen to be Vision Shade, would it? Because Hank’s told me all about their relationship and quite frankly, it doesn’t surprise me.”
“Nat, come on,” Wanda hopes her voice doesn’t sound as desperate as she feels. “You know me, you know my judgement.”
Natasha snorts. “Honestly, Wanda, I really don’t anymore.”
“What?” Wanda tilts her head.
“Well, no offense, but you’ve kind of been a bitch to me since I got promoted.”
Wanda rears back. “Excuse me?”
“Oh, come on,” Natasha rolls her eyes. “Lashing out at me? The silent treatment? You know, I think this might be the longest conversation we’ve had since the gala night.”
“Natasha,” Wanda is scrambling to regain control of the conversation. “This isn’t important right now.”
“Not important?” Natasha moves into Wanda’s space and Wanda can smell the alcohol on her breath. “Of course, it’s not. Because god forbid anyone else should have problems except the great Wanda Maximoff.”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it,” Wanda retorts hotly, refusing to step back.
“You’re so selfish, you know that?” Natasha throws up her hands. “It’s always Wanda this and Wanda’s problems that.”
“Would you have been happy for me?” Wanda fires back. “If our positions had been reversed?”
“Of course, I would, because I’m not cold and unfeeling!”
“Cold and unfee-,” Wanda gapes at her. “You never once congratulated me for getting cast as Juliet!”
“That’s different!” Natasha hisses.
“How?” Wanda challenges her.
“Because I worked my ass off for that promotion and you only got Juliet because the choreographer wanted to get in your pants!”
Wanda physically falls backwards, stumbling in her heels, Natasha’s words hitting her like bullets.
“Here you go, Nat. Sorry for the delay, there was a horrible line,” Hank Pym walks up with her coat. “Oh, hello, Wanda.”
His presence slices the tension cloaking the corner and Wanda can feel, rather than see, Natasha taking a deep breath, sliding her arms through her coat sleeves.
Wanda ignores both of them, knowing she’s being horribly rude, but she’s not sure what she might do if she actually looks either of them in the face.
Hank clears his throat. “Right, uh,” he looks down at Natasha. “I’ve got a cab downstairs,” he says.
“Bye, Wanda,” Natasha doesn’t attempt to hug Wanda goodnight, she merely wiggles her fingertips before walking away with Hank Pym on her arm.
Wanda is suddenly hyperaware of the noises around her: the hum of chatter, the clink of glasses, the singer warbling the chorus of “Silent night”, his voice low and melodic.
She reaches out to snag a glass of the Cotton Candy-tini from a passing waiter and throws it back in one gulp.
The bartender is correct, its vile.