The Star

THE STAR

There’s a question that you ask the famous when they are obviously on their way to the top and so I asked it.

“ How’d you get started?” I said. “Who or what provided the necessary push?”

She gave me a quizzical look, she wasn’t really pretty, but she had a merry sort of a face. ‘That’, she said, ‘is a stock question. But never mind, I can go back about 15 years though.’

“That’s all right?” I said. “ Do we have time?”

And as we stood there in the chilly dampness, this is what she told me.

In those days she lived in the twilight land between childhood and adolescence and she didn’t like it much. She was eight years old, she was awkward as a newborn colt, and when she looked in the mirror, which was as seldom as possible, all she could see was a pair of enormous eyes and a lot of bands on her teeth. She was shy, she was lonely, and she was convinced that she was hideous. Her name was Margaret, but everyone called her Maggie.

To make the matter worse, she had a sister named Sybil who seemed everything she was not. Sybil was 16, blonde and cunningly streamlined. She had decided opinions, and on this particular wintry afternoon she was voicing one of them loudly. ‘Oh, Mother,’ she wailed, ‘do we have to take Maggie? She’s only a child, and she can’t even skate!’

‘The Bancrofts asked her, dear.’ Their mother said.

‘It won’t do you any harm to have her along.’

Sybil brushed back her honey-coloured hair. ‘But Larry is taking me! It’s all arranged! He…’

‘He can take you both,’their mother said in a tone that Sybil recognized as final.’ Heavens, it’s only an afternoon skating party.’

Sybil gave her sister a baleful glance.

‘You needn’t worry,’ said Maggie in a small voice.

‘I’ll sit in the back seat and not say a word…’

He came at three o’clock- tall thin, lithe, the best athlete in the high school. He was 17, but he seemed older, there was a kind of quiet assurance about him. Sybil explained in tragic tones that they would have a passenger. Larry smiled. ‘That’s all right.’

They went down the snowy path to the street, Sybil on Larry’s arm, Maggie stumbling along behind like a lost puppy. Sybil opened the rear door for her sister. Larry raised one dark eyebrow but said nothing.

They drove to the lake near the Bancrofts’ house. The lake was a sheet of magnificent black ice under the gray December sky. Already 20 or 30 skaters were swooping and spinning over the polished surface, their cries thin and sweet in the frosty air.

Larry laced Sybil’s skates for her. He offered to lace the pair that Maggie had been given for Christmas, but she refused. She would just watch.

She stood, small and alone, feeling her fingers and toes grow numb. The skaters circled like bright birds, their runners making rhythmic, whirring sounds. Watching them, she felt a longing that was almost like a physical pain, a longing to be graceful as they were, as beautiful, as free.

Larry must have been watching her, for suddenly he came over. He looked down at her.

‘How about giving it a try?’

She shook her head, mute and miserable.

‘Why not?’ he persisted. ‘It’s fun.’

I’m not good at it.’

‘So what?’ he sounded surprised.

 She stared at her mittened hands.

‘My father says that anything worth doing is worth doing it well.’

He did not say anything for a moment. Then he knelt, unlaced his skates, and slipped on his moccasins.

‘Come on let’s go.’

She looked up at him, startled. ‘Go? Go, where?’

‘Over there, behind that point of tree. Bring your skates.’

‘Oh, no’ she said. ‘I couldn’t. Sybil…’

Never mind Sybil. His hand was under her elbow, strong and insistent. Incredibly, she was walking beside him through the silver dusk. She said feebly, ‘Don’t you like Sybil?’

‘Sure, he said. I like her fine. I like you too.’

Around the point was a little cover, frozen secluded, quiet.

This will do, he said. Put on your skates.

But I…

‘Put them on. I’ll lace them for you.’

 He laced hers and then his own. He stepped lightly on to the ice and held out his hand. ‘Come on, Maggie.’

She shook her head, her eyes full of tears. ‘I can’t. I’m afraid.’

He said gently, ‘I’ll tell you why you’re afraid.’

‘You’re afraid because you’re lonely. I know because I was lonely once. Afraid to try things. Afraid of not doing things well. Afraid of being laughed at. But finally I found out something.’

She stared up at him, puzzled, confused. It was so quiet that she could hear her heart beating. Around them the sentinel pines stood black and motionless. Above the pines, now, the first star gleamed.

It’s funny, he said. ‘I couldn’t tell this to Sybil. I didn’t think I could tell this to anyone, but I can to you.’ What I found out was very simple. It’s that no one is ever really alone.

‘Even when there’s no other person around, there still must be someone. Someone who made you and therefore cares what happens to you. Someone who will help you if you do the best you can. So you’re never alone. You can’t be alone, no matter what you do. That’s the secret of happiness, of doing things well, of everything.’

 He held out his hand again.‘Come on, Maggie,’ he said.

She got her feet and stood wavering. But then his right arm was around her waist and his left hand held hers. He said, ‘All right, now relax. Slide your left foot forward, and push with the right. That’s it. Now slide the right, and push with your left. Fine! Now once more… and again… and again…’

That was the story she told me in five minutes or less. Then the lights went out in the big arena, the music blared, and the spotlight caught her as she left me standing in the runway and flashed across the ice on glittering skates to meet the members of the troupe who came spilling out of the other runway. The crowd roared as the rink became a whirling kaleidoscope of colour and rhythm and movement. The greatest ice show on earth, they called it. I guess it was.

I saw her husband standing in the darkness a few yards away, watching as he did every night. I moved up and stood beside him. He gave me a quick smile, but all his attention was out on the ice.

‘She’s wonderful, isn’t she?’ he said, and it was a statement, not a question.

I looked at his face, so eager and proud.

A reporter isn’t supposed to feel much, but somewhere inside me there was a little, unaccustomed glow. ‘Both of you are, Larry,’ I said.

But he wasn’t listening.

By

Arthur Gordon