There have been complaints about Pam. There have been complaints by parents that she does New Age shit before each performance. Apparently one of the mother’s stated that there were too many children on stage and some sort of fire hazard was breeched. Purportedly some of the parents are still pissed about several of the initial leads dropping out.
There is no longer gossip about Anthony and Stacia. Instead today the gossip circulating around the dressing room is all about Pam.
I think about Pam who gave me a chance. Pam who intrinsically handed me a script and said all I needed to do was read through and I had the part.
I ask Brennan who that is. He says that it is the head of Children’s Community Theater.
“Yeah, she really pissed a lot of parents off having that many kids up on stage. Plus throwing in that additional performance at the last second. Everyone is furious with her.”
“Maybe we should say something. I mean, maybe we should stand up for Pam and say how amazing of a director she is.”
Anthony remains stoic. He states that he prays nothing serious is going to happen to her. When I ask him what it is we could do he looks back and shrugs and says that it doesn’t look like there’s much we can.
There’s no way she should be allowed to be exiled from her own show.
Anthony just seems nonchalant. I am fired up. I want a protest.
Dave Aikens turns to me.
"We’re all gonna go out to the mall after the afternoon performance and pick up a thank you gift for the director."
Anthony just seems nonchalant. I am fired up. I want a protest.
"It’ll all be good brother. There’s no reason to get
fired up. Just a bunch of middle-age
ladies trying to raise hell.”
They are Picakdilly ladies. I tell Anthony.
"Any more estrogen and they would be laying an egg.”
We continue to step into our play attire. We have two shows today. There is a tangible silence in the dressing room.
We continue to step into our play attire. We have two shows today. There is a tangible silence in the dressing room.
Dave asks me if I would like to come.
“No,” I say, reaching into my back pocket. I take out a twenty, about half of my weekly paperboy income, handing it in his direction.
“Get her something nice.”
***
I am the only male with a speaking part who doesn't do his own make-up. Dawn smiles when she sees me. She asks me how it's going, which I've learned, is Dawn Michelle's way of saying hello.
"Hey, I went out this morning and after I ran purchased CATCHING UP WITH DEPECHE MODE and listened to Just can't Enough and thought of you.
Dawn looks down and blushes.
"I really like it I've only listened to the first side of the cassette."
Dawn is wearing plaid shorts. She has been wearing the cool barber shop quartet hat all week.
"So you liked it?" Dawn inquires.
"Yeah, the first side was really cool. It felt you were lodged inside a video game."
Dawn smiles. She is circling my lips with cosmetics. When she is finished applying lipstick to my lips she blows me a kiss.
Her lips look like a metro entrance in Paris.
It's like they can take me somewhere I have never been before.
"I'll see you backstage." I tell her, for the third consecutive day in a row.
***
That day before both Saturday performances we refrain from holding hands en masses as a group on stage after singing vocal tune-ups. We do head-shoulders-knees and toes. Miss Jana the director informs us that Pam is running late and will be in the audience of the show but will not be able to meet with us before hand.
In the corner the fat soccer mom with the bad perm is holding her clipboard like Napoleon prior to Waterloo.
I look at Anthony, my nemesis in the production, giving him a look as if we need to do something fast. As if we need to have a cast protest. As if we need to talk about the significance of what Pam has brought to the production.
I raise my hand. Miss Jana calls on me by stating my on-stage name.
"This seems crazy but I think we should all hold hands and pray the way we have been doing before the first two performances. "
I look over in the direction of the soccer mom with the bad perm. Her teeth are beginning to growl. Both Anthony and Mayor Shinn seem to be waving their arms back and fourth as if I missed a field goal.
"We're not going to do that tonight," Miss Jana says.
I look around.
"Why not?" I add. No one is saying anything. No on is standing up with me The soccer lady with the clipboard stands forwards.
"If you want to pray individually you can meet backstage or pray in the dressing room but as for now there is to be no more weird low-key meditative stuff permitted on stage of this facility."
I step forward.
"It just seems like we have a streak going. It just seems it something isn't broke don't fix it so to speak."
The soccer mom clears her throat with a guttural yah-hehm.
I am waiting for her to publically lambaste the director. I am waiting for her to say that some of Pam's teaching method's have proved to be unorthodox and contradictory with the vision of Peoria Park District's Children's Community Theater.
Instead she clears her throat once again. She doesn't talk. Miss Jana the accompanist is at the helm.
"We're not going to do that tonight." Is all she says.
We continue with Head shoulders knees and toes.
Behind the curtain patrons are finding their way to their seats.
***
"Tell me something about growing up in Peoria since we come from different sides of the city and when you were entering high school I had only just left middle school, so to speak."
Dawn says its not much different from where I live.
"But you guys are all like rich, right? You go to Richwoods. The color of your jerseys are even green."
Dawn just starts laughing. She says that contrary to popular belief people who go to Richwoods are not rich.
"Everyone in the south side refers to Richwoods as Richweeds because that's the school where all the doctors and lawyers send their kids."
She lives on Big Hollow road. Ironically will Barnes and Nobles will be erected come four years time.
As is the norm I hang out the entire time with Dawn and lil’ Betsy. I can stop looking at Dawn. She has the most extensive vocabulary of anyone I have ever met yet she acts like it is no big deal. We talk about Enya. We talk about music she is into. We talk about Depeche and the Cure.
“Are you traveling anywhere exotic this summer?”
“No. But I’m taking a class at Bradley”
“It’s a poetry class.” I look back at her and smile.
Dawn say do what.
“It’s nothing. It’s just that I honestly hate poetry
and everyone I know and their mother seems to be taking a poetry class this summer.’
“Who?”
“I had a friend named Laurie. She really wasn’t a
friend more of an acquaintance but she was taking a summer poetry class at the high
school I’ll be attending only in a crazy twist of fate the class turned out to
be taught by our director Pam."
Dawn looks back at me and smiles. She says that she
has heard that Pam has had several of her poems published in journals I have
never heard of before.
During the mock kiss I swivel my head. Three rows back I swear I see her. Her black hair is dripping like ink into the nest of her lap. She is holding the program subtly in front of her as if she is ready to fan herself with it. She is smiling. The audience is falling into toothpicks when I kiss Summer. When Summer pushes me back and I say Criminey. I swear, I see her. I can see her kiddie-pool blue shirt that is not quote a tank top and her bleach bra strap slightly visible. She is laughing in a way I wish I made her laugh in Madame Berton's class.
She came
She is outside watching me.
Later I will ask Dawn Michelle about that song, I will ask her what it is about Just can’t Get Enough by Depeche Mode that makes her loses it. That makes her embraces the variegated neon boxes board of the dance floor.
Dawn looks back at me and smiles.
“I don’t know. Sometimes when you hear music that just infiltrates every pore of your being and you just have to move.”
I look at her. I smile. I want to squeeze her wrist.
“The girl from my French class. Her name is Andrea. Her father is a professor at ICC. We kinda left on weird terms. I never got her phone number. I never got her last name. yet she is hear.”
Betsy looks at me. She blinks again. We are seated under a spray-painted sign reading PIPPIN '88.
“Sew you don’t Th' ove Th'awn anymore,” She says, as if I have just taken something inexplicable away from her.
I ask dawn who. She snaps back. She says the make-up lady and my babysitter and the best friend of her sister.
Because of her lips it sounds like th'aby-thitter.
“Dawn and I are just friends.” I tell Betsy, ruffling her forehead the way I have seen insouciant fathers’ ruffle the foreheads of daughters in sitcoms all my life.
“You and Thawn are special,”
I nod. I tell her that Dawn is a good friend.
Betsy looks like she is ready to cry.
“I’m not. It’s just that this was a special friend who was in a French class I took. She is someone really special to me when I was being hurt by someone else.”
“I see her in the dressing room. Everyone knows about thurr and Th'Anthony. About thurr being th'ounded.”
They are calling me onstage. It is my scene with Harold Hill. The scene where I am supposed to be hit. The scene where his cohort Marcellus is pressing me on the stage the moment I stammer forward. I am talking about putting Harold Hill away.
Again I see her. She is smiling. She I still holding her program out in front of her neck although she is not fanning herself with it. I’ve learned not to heave Harold Hill to hard across the brim of the stage.
When I point and say that I am going to get even with Harold Hill even if it’s the last thing I do I can’t help but glare into the third row.
Andrea is smiling.
She came.
She is smiling. She is seated four rows back. She is wearing one of her tank tops which slightly avails the strap of her bra. I can see her looking down and smiling when I perform my lines. I can see her lithe frame and her stolid cheekbones and forehead and her lips.
She came. It is the woman I should have been with. After all the drama with Stacia. After all the failure the creature who smells like summer made an effort to visit me.
After the production I sprint out the side doors of Peoria Players taking
a sharp right, looking for the back of her head like a drape. I take another right in front of the sunken
acropolis-shaped entrance. Surely she wouldn’t have just dissipated. Surely she
would have hung around holding her program just to say hi. I flap open the doors to the lobby and am
swarmed by exiting patrons, several issuing accolades. I nod and continue
looking. Near the door I see Teri Andrews who has been in charge of the stage
light during the entire production.
“Hey—this sounds weird. You didn’t happen to see a
really pretty girl with prominent limbs and black hair and an azure tank top
who smelled like she had been sitting out in the sun under a coconut tree all
day?”
Terri looks back at me and says no. She then says that my enunciation has gotten
better and she can lucidly hear me up in the booth.
I take off,
exiting with the crowd, hopping in spurts hoping I can catch her in the
parking lot. The moment I exit the doors I take off sprinting to the right.
I run past the front of the building, past the Library the looks like it was constructed out of Lincoln logs. I take a right and veer 90 degrees, making a complete 180, re-entering the theatre through the front doors.
I run past the front of the building, past the Library the looks like it was constructed out of Lincoln logs. I take a right and veer 90 degrees, making a complete 180, re-entering the theatre through the front doors.
But perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps it wasn't her. Perhaps it was just the reflection of light ricocheting off the forehead of a woman I have never met before.
I enter the strips of the illuminated theatre again.
I look for Andrea. If I squint I can make out her scent, looking at me, laughing at my lines.
Perhaps she was an apparition. Perhaps she was never there.
I head back stage. I am lost. My cousin Matthew lumbers past me en route to the dressing room.
The first person I see when I descend the stairs is Couri.
"Lover boy Charlie your girl was asking about you.”
I think at first she is alluding to Stacia. The I
think maybe she is referencing Dawn. I begin to sound like and owl and say the
word who twice in a row.
“Some girl I've never seen before. She says she was
a friend of yours from French class. She said she just wanted to come down and
see you and to tell you hi.”
“When was this?”
“Dunno, about five minutes ago.”
Couri states that she is surprised I didn’t bump
into her when I was coming down the stairs. I take off. I see Dawn and offer a
flippant flap of my palm. For some reason Betsy is next to her and I don’t even acknowledge her. I turn around and sprint out the actors’ door. I
take four steps at a time at the same time realizing that it wasn’t a delusion,
that she had actually arrived.
When I get to
the south side of the theatre again I begin optically combing the parking
lot. Perhaps she is waiting by the shoreline of the curb with her purse slopped
over her shoulder. I see nothing. From behind me I hear the wing of a car door
staple shut. Somehow I know that is her ride. Somehow I know that Andrea from Madame
Breton’s French class is located inside that vehicle.
There is nothing left to do but to run.
I can see the car signaling to take a right There is
something almost satanic about the way the brake lights screech. I have dropped
the weight of my emotional anvils I am
running. I have my hand up in the air
beckoning whoever is driving the vehicle to halt.
Only I am too late.
The car turns and I find myself stranded and all
alone.
Traffic whizzes past me in bleep. I look down Lake
street and can see the vehicle massaging its way in the left turn lane before
turning, dissipating into the lips of oblivion.
She came.
The creature I should have spent the summer with
came to see just me.
And now I am all alone.
***
Peoria Players is empty. The emerald coated seats are folded up into themselves as if they have a bad overbite. I comb the aisles. I swear I smell coconut lotion and sun. I am tracking her scent.
“Good job tonight Charlie, baby!’ She says, it almost sounds like a scream.
I am looking down. I am looking for the creature I invited who I can’t find.
I am by myself. I am now sure she was here. I am sure somehow Andrea was in the audience and I was able to make her smile in a way I was never to do in French class.
“You alright Charlie,” Pam says, looking at me.
“Yeah,” I tell her all alone on the stage.She asks if I saw the sign where they placed my name near the entrance. I respond in the affirmative. She is looking at me wondering if something is wrong.
I want to ask her if there is anything I can do. I want to tell her that I don't believe what the CCT board is doing is right saying she can't meet with the group she directed prior to the production. I want to tell her that all of the craziness that I have experienced over the past six weeks wouldn't have been possible if she hadn't taken a chance on me.
I open my mouth and nothing comes out.
***
I am pensive. While walking down the stairs I see the creature called Dawn. We address each other simply by saying hey.
Dawn does a double-take. For the second night in a row she asks me if I am all right.
“Hey, thanks for helping out. I mean, I know you’re not getting paid for any of this. Thanks a lot for just hanging out.”
I am trying to thank her. I am trying to thank her for this experience.
Finally I speak. I speak very fast.
"Is there anything I can do. I mean, it's just not fair you know. All the hard work you've put in and everything you've done for the production. It's just not fair.."
Pam looks like she is going to say something. She then laughs. The next thing I know she is grabbing my hand and giving it a little squeeze.
"Charlie baby everything is fine, baby. Everything is fine”
I am Charlie. I am the anvil Salesman. I am the antagonist of the production. I am the villainous impetus out to thwart professor Harold Hill, played by a man I have known all my life, played by a man who will be a senior when I am a freshman nest year at Manual.
The protagonist who has tasted the one thing I have wanted in this world.
***
I walk back up to the dank plateau of the stage. It is dark. It looks like an interior sun has set in a tinseled-hued west.
I walk past the signs. West Side story in '81. Brigadoon in 1980. Downstairs there are youthful voices. Everyone is celebrating the third night of our consecutive performance.
Dawn does a double-take. For the second night in a row she asks me if I am all right.
“I thought I saw someone in the audience whom I was madly in love with.”
Dawn looks at me as if to say I’m sorry. She then says that at least I appear to be over that Stacia bitch.
Dawn is a state speech champ. She is three years older. She has the most brilliant vocabulary of anyone I have ever met.
She doesn’t call me Charlie. She doesn’t call me David.
She calls me Dave.
She calls me Dave.
“I’m sorry Dave, it looks like you were waiting for someone who was really important to you."
I tell her yeah. I tell her that it doesn’t matter. I tell her to tell me about Depeche Mode. I tell her to tell me more about what Stage two was like back in the day.
Dawn smiles into the direction of her ankles.
"What is chin?" I ask, having never formally been introduced to hard liquor.
“We once got in trouble because one of my friends snuck in alcohol in an empty bottle of hairspray. We were going to the ladies room. We all got drunk. We were drinking cheap gin.”
"What is chin?" I ask, having never formally been introduced to hard liquor.
Dawn says it is a British spirit that smells like pine needles and can get you nice and relaxed.
"Thanks for being here." I say to Dawn, looking at her forehead before giving her a hug.
Tomorrow is our final performance.
Tomorrow all of this will be gone.
"Thanks for being here." I say to Dawn, looking at her forehead before giving her a hug.
Tomorrow is our final performance.
Tomorrow all of this will be gone.
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