my heart hammered in my ears. I tried to sit up but an emotion of such helplessness and guilt overcame me that I rolled onto my side, clutching my knees to my chest, my head to my knees. The sharp edge of the credit card—I was still clutching the credit card—pressed into my cheek. “I’ve got to get to Japan,” I wailed.
“What are you doing?” she cried. “Are you stealing from me? David, are you stealing from me?”
Then it was over. I got to my feet and tried to defend myself for my action. Marlene demanded the card; I refused to give it to her. We had a brief tussle over it, but it was all acting.I was even conscious of the audience, my fellow students, and I knew they knew we were just winding down, cleverly, skillfully, but that for that one moment when I fell to the floor in terror and shame, I’d found that for which we all strove, a pure emotion expressed in my own person. There had been no space between my character and myself. I hadn’t considered what David might do, or what I might do in David’s place, I had simply cried out in David’s voice, David’s desperation, which was my own. Anyone watching understood that something real had happened in the last place one might expect to find it, inside an actor, on a stage.
Marlene stopped the scene with a raised hand and a sharp “That’s it.” My fellow actors burst into wild applause. I realized that I was sweating, that my knees were still weak, my heart racing. The whole business had taken about four minutes. I bowed stiffly and Marlene said, “Well done, Ed.” I took her hand and kissed it, gratitude flooding up from the bottom of my soul. “Thank you,” I said.
“My pleasure,” she replied. I raised my eyes to her bemused, almost tender smile. She was pleased with herself and with me. It had been no accident. She had taken my measure and contrived how best to get me to the place I needed to be. The photo, so startling and confusing, the furious board-wielding territorial mother, it was all of a piece. And of course, because of what she had put me through and because of what I now knew about myself as well as about her, I was in love with her.
———
W inter dragged on. I had a small part in a play about García Lorca which got no reviews. In the spring, desperate for an Equity card, I did the group auditions for summer stock. To my surprise I secured a place at a playhouse in Connecticut.
In my first summer at college I had worked as a technical intern at a summer theater in upstate New York, so I had some notion of what to expect. We interns were the equivalent of a Suzuki orchestra of ten-year-olds, grinding out Bach on tiny violins with no idea of theory or art, running on the enthusiasm of being young and attached to a real stage. We were turned loose in an old, run-down hotel a long walk from the theater. The walls were peeling, the water was rusty, and the kitchen was inside a cage constructed of chicken wire to keep out the raccoons which patrolled the place so stealthily and determinedly that if one of us failed to secure the latch at night, in the morning it looked like a band of crazed drug addicts had staged a break-in. The clever creatures opened every door, including the refrigerator, as well as every box, jar, and carton. What they didn’t eat, they scattered, and what they scattered, they pissed and shat upon. Hostilities broke out between those of us who carefully secured the latch, hoping to preserve our little stashes of comestibles—a process that required threading a length of wire through two holes—and those who couldn’t be bothered. Signs were posted— FASTEN THIS GATE YOU JERK —and scrawled over with tart graffiti. Those determined to prepare decent meals (coffee and sandwiches was the platonic ideal, though one sad, anorexic girl, the child of divorcing parents who didn’t care to know exactly where she was, lived on nothingbut cereal for two months), tried securing cabinets with metal ties and
“What are you doing?” she cried. “Are you stealing from me? David, are you stealing from me?”
Then it was over. I got to my feet and tried to defend myself for my action. Marlene demanded the card; I refused to give it to her. We had a brief tussle over it, but it was all acting.I was even conscious of the audience, my fellow students, and I knew they knew we were just winding down, cleverly, skillfully, but that for that one moment when I fell to the floor in terror and shame, I’d found that for which we all strove, a pure emotion expressed in my own person. There had been no space between my character and myself. I hadn’t considered what David might do, or what I might do in David’s place, I had simply cried out in David’s voice, David’s desperation, which was my own. Anyone watching understood that something real had happened in the last place one might expect to find it, inside an actor, on a stage.
Marlene stopped the scene with a raised hand and a sharp “That’s it.” My fellow actors burst into wild applause. I realized that I was sweating, that my knees were still weak, my heart racing. The whole business had taken about four minutes. I bowed stiffly and Marlene said, “Well done, Ed.” I took her hand and kissed it, gratitude flooding up from the bottom of my soul. “Thank you,” I said.
“My pleasure,” she replied. I raised my eyes to her bemused, almost tender smile. She was pleased with herself and with me. It had been no accident. She had taken my measure and contrived how best to get me to the place I needed to be. The photo, so startling and confusing, the furious board-wielding territorial mother, it was all of a piece. And of course, because of what she had put me through and because of what I now knew about myself as well as about her, I was in love with her.
———
W inter dragged on. I had a small part in a play about García Lorca which got no reviews. In the spring, desperate for an Equity card, I did the group auditions for summer stock. To my surprise I secured a place at a playhouse in Connecticut.
In my first summer at college I had worked as a technical intern at a summer theater in upstate New York, so I had some notion of what to expect. We interns were the equivalent of a Suzuki orchestra of ten-year-olds, grinding out Bach on tiny violins with no idea of theory or art, running on the enthusiasm of being young and attached to a real stage. We were turned loose in an old, run-down hotel a long walk from the theater. The walls were peeling, the water was rusty, and the kitchen was inside a cage constructed of chicken wire to keep out the raccoons which patrolled the place so stealthily and determinedly that if one of us failed to secure the latch at night, in the morning it looked like a band of crazed drug addicts had staged a break-in. The clever creatures opened every door, including the refrigerator, as well as every box, jar, and carton. What they didn’t eat, they scattered, and what they scattered, they pissed and shat upon. Hostilities broke out between those of us who carefully secured the latch, hoping to preserve our little stashes of comestibles—a process that required threading a length of wire through two holes—and those who couldn’t be bothered. Signs were posted— FASTEN THIS GATE YOU JERK —and scrawled over with tart graffiti. Those determined to prepare decent meals (coffee and sandwiches was the platonic ideal, though one sad, anorexic girl, the child of divorcing parents who didn’t care to know exactly where she was, lived on nothingbut cereal for two months), tried securing cabinets with metal ties and
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