was too old to bear. Simon had been right. He had kept her young, even now, as she walked home, spry at sixty-two, to Marina, anxiously waiting up for her beloved Grandma.
It was midnight when she got home, and heard her granddaughter call out to her from her bedroom.
“Grandma, is that you?”
“I certainly hope so.” She walked into her room, took off the hat she'd worn to dinner with Nicholas and Julie, and smiled at the child who looked so much like her. Her red hair was as long as Zoya's still was, though hers was now white, and Marina's was cascading over her nightgown. “Guess what! I've been asked to dance at Lincoln Center!”
“Now there's a coup! Tell me what happened.” She sat down on the edge of her bed, listening to her chatter happily. She lived only to dance, but there was no denying it now, it wasn't just grandmotherly pride, the child had enormous talent. “All right, now tell me when.” She had reeled off the names of the entire cast, the choreographer, the director, their life histories, the music, to her the when wasn't as important.
“In six weeks! Can you believe it! I'll never be ready.”
“Yes, you will.” Her studies had suffered a little bit in recent years, but to Marina that didn't matter either, and Zoya found herself wondering frequently if this time, the muses would sing, if Marina would one day be a great dancer. She had long since told her about dancing for the Ballet Russe in Paris in her youth, and once with Nijinsky, and then long after, she had told her about Fitzhugh's Dance Hall. Marina loved to tell the tale, it made her respectable grandmother seem far more exotic.
And six weeks later, the performance went beautifully. She was reviewed for the first time. At fifteen, she was on her way. Marina was a real ballerina.
CHAPTER
51
Nicholas's first child, a daughter, was born in 1963, the same year that John Kennedy was shot, and that Matthew came to work at Countess Zoya. And Zoya was deeply flattered when Nicholas and Julie named their baby girl Zoe, it was an Americanization of her own name, and in truth, she liked it much better.
Marina was dancing full-time by then, at seventeen. She had taken Zoya's Russian name and was known as Marina Ossupov. She was working hard and traveling all over the country. Nicholas thought she should be forced to go on to college once she finished school, but Zoya didn't agree with him.
“Not everyone is made for that, Nicholas. She already has a life. Now that you're a father, don't be so stuffy.” Zoya was ever open to new ideas, always excited about life, never boring. And Paul was still deeply in love with her. He had retired several years before and was living in Connecticut full-time. She drove out to see him whenever she could, and he always complained that she was much too busy. The store seemed to be enjoying a whole new life. She had brought in Cardin, Saint Laurent, Courroges, and now Matthew went with her when she went to Paris. He chased every model he could, and enjoyed staying at the Ritz. At twenty-four, he was full of excitement and mischief, not unlike his mother. And instead of slowing down, as she had promised to do, once he came on the scene, she only seemed to work harder.
“Your mother is amazing,” Julie told Nicholas, and unlike most daughters-in-law, she really meant it. The two women had lunch together from time to time, and by the time little Zoe was five, Zoya had bought her her first tutu and ballet shoes. Marina was twenty-two by then, and a star of major proportions. She had danced all over the world, to rave reviews. She was the darling of ballet devotees everywhere, and the previous year she had even danced in Russia. She had told Zoya excitedly about her visit to Leningrad, which had been St. Petersburg, she had seen the Winter Palace, and even visited the Maryinsky. It brought tears to Zoya's eyes as she listened to her. It was like a dream come true … all those places she had left more than fifty years before, with a piece of her still there, and now Marina had been there. She still talked about going to Russia herself, but claimed that she was saving it for her old age.
“And when will that be, Mom?” Nicholas teased on her seventieth birthday.