Читать книгу A Song in the Daylight - Paullina Simons - Страница 30

Atensely waiting Ezra pulled her aside as soon as she entered the school lobby. “I have to talk to you,” he said.

“What’s up?”

“Not here. My office.”

“No.”

“No, we can’t go to my office?”

“No to whatever it is you want to ask me in it.”

They walked speedily down the hall and into Ezra’s comfortable, chaotic, book-lined chambers. It must be nice to be head of the department.

She fell into his visitor chair. “Whazzup?”

“I’m not asking you anymore. I’m begging you. You have to save us.”

“Ezra, I told you a thousand times. I’ve thought about it. I talked to Jared about it. To you. To Maggie. To Bo. I’ve written to Che about it.”

“How is our little professional protester?”

“Not pregnant. But I’m talked out.”

“Will you hear me out?”

“Ezra, you got Leroy. What’s wrong with him?” She smirked. “Besides wanting to stage a two-man play for spring?”

“Leroy said he’d prefer not to do it,” admitted Ezra. “His kid is failing math.”

“So you want me to do it so my kids will fail math? My kid is already failing English!”

“They’re honor students!”

“Not Asher. Not Michelangelo. He glues all day. Can’t get far in life with glue, Ezra.”

“Bring him. Bring them both. I’ll tutor them.”

“You’ll tutor Michelangelo.” Larissa looked down into her hands with incredulity. “Tutor him in what? Obstinacy? Sculpture?”

“We’ll pay you.”

“Jared works his ass off all week. We can’t both be away from the kids.”

“You won’t be away. Studies have shown that children benefit from seeing their parents be successful at something other than parenting.”

Larissa stared at him. “Are you making this crap up?”

“Yes.”

She laughed. “Ez, what am I supposed to do when Emily has cello in Chatham, and Asher a track meet in Maplewood, and I’m in Short Hills in the afternoon directing Godot? You haven’t thought this through.”

“I have, too. We’ll rehearse on Saturdays. And please, not Godot.”

Larissa said nothing. Ezra took that as encouragement.

“It’s just for two, three months. Play goes on in June. If you don’t want to continue next fall, we’ll get someone else. I promise. Denise will come back.”

“Denise is going to leave her baby and come back?”

Straightening his red tie, Ezra adjusted his falling-down crooked glasses, beaming at her. “We have a deal?”

Larissa shook her head. “Ez, do you remember how the parents hated me at the Hudson School?”

“No, they loved you. But a little diplomacy here at Pingry wouldn’t kill you.”

“It’s either the play or diplomacy.”

Ezra nearly clapped. “So we’re set? Auditions are next week.”

“How can that be? We haven’t chosen a play yet! Or should we stick with Leroy’s terrific suggestion? In an instant it all will vanish and we’ll be alone once more in the midst of nothingness. What, that’s not inspiring enough for spring?” Larissa smiled. This diversion for her … it was ideal. The offer came along at just the right time. This would take her mind off things, let her get back on track.

“Lar,” Ezra said, helping her up from the chair, “let’s go and announce the good news and choose a play. Try to think of something appropriate.”

“How much time do I have?”

Ezra looked at his watch. “Can you think while we walk down the hall?” He pulled her up by her elbow. “Hurry. Meeting started fifteen minutes ago.”

“How can the meeting have started? We’re not there!”

“Come on,” he said prodding her out. “Fret as you walk.”

“Ezra, you’ve gotten very demanding since you’ve become department head.” Picking up her purse, she took out a lipstick. “I liked you better absent-minded and lackadaisical.” Without a mirror, she applied a shade of pink beige to her lips.

“We don’t have an hour fifty-five, Larissa,” Ezra said, watching her.

She didn’t want him to know she was grateful. She wanted him to think she was grudging. Otherwise, how to explain her sudden exhilaration?

But no matter how welcome the distraction, the everyday stress of theater, the demand of it made her anxious even as she rushed down the sunlit hallway. “What if I can’t do it, Ez? What if it’s just too much for me?”

“You’ll be fabulous. We don’t want someone who never reaches. You always reach, Larissa. For places other people can’t go. That’s why we need you.”

“Plus you’re desperate.”

“That, too.”

They stopped at the double doors of the conference room. He looked her over before they came in. “So how come today of all days you’re dressed to go ride the go-karts?”

“Because I thought I was coming in as the set decorator,” Larissa rejoined, opening the doors. “This is what painters wear.”

Inside the conference room, buoyed with black coffee and a sense of his own importance, Leroy, though having relinquished the coveted position of director, clearly did so resentfully. His first action after they all sat down and got some water was to distribute to each of the eight seated people copies of Godot, and embark on a long sermon punctuated by no periods on why it was the greatest play of this or any century.

Larissa could tell that there were some people at the table who did not think a set decorator was qualified to be a director, despite Ezra’s excited recital of Larissa’s credentials: theater and English double major at NYU, summer stock theater (the Great Swamp Revue and Jersey Footlight Players) director of the acclaimed theater department at the Hudson School. Larissa could tell neither Leroy nor Fred, Ezra’s assistant, was impressed.

“Leroy,” Larissa said in her no-nonsense voice, palms down on the table, her manner sober, “I appreciate your recommendation, and we can all agree to the quality of Godot, but we need a different direction. Something more lighthearted. I was thinking of a Shakespearean comedy.”

Leroy had no intention of giving up. “Godot is a comedy.”

“Well, yes. A tragicomedy. But Godot is wrong for spring, with all due respect. The air of bleak existentialism as read mostly by a cast of two, with a set of one scraggly tree is not the joyful experience most children and parents associate with a spring production. I’m thinking of something more inclusive and multi-parted. A little funnier, a little less angst-ridden.” She smiled amiably at him. He did not return the smile. Ezra, though, smiled exquisitely at Larissa.

For the next ninety minutes, Larissa, Ezra, Fred, Leroy, Sheila Meade, Vanessa (Sheila’s assistant), Vincent (Leroy’s), and David, the line reader, pounded out the possibilities. Leroy shot everything down. As You Like It was not funny enough (“certainly not as funny as Godot”), Midsummer had too much confusing dialogue, and Much Ado was too long. (“Godot, on the other hand, is brilliant, funny, deceptively short, and will be simple to stage and direct.”)

Larissa kept quiet. Ezra had to prod her. “Well, Larissa, you’re the director,” he said. “What do you think?”

“Choosing a play is a collaboration,” Leroy announced haughtily.

“Yes, but the director has final say,” Ezra pointed out. “Lar, what say you?”

“Well all have to agree so we can throw our support behind it,” Leroy announced, with Vincent nodding next to him.

Larissa suddenly realized it was nearing one! She had to go. Knowing that time was running short tensed her into silence. She had to get into her car right now and drive away.

Wait. Wasn’t she going to forget about Stop&Shop? Wasn’t that the purpose of all this? Wasn’t she freed from the constraints of the supermarket parking lot? Accept the position of director, straighten out, back on the rails.

If she left now, she would barely make it there for one.

She felt fourteen pairs of eyes on her as if they expected her to decide; at the very least to speak. “Okay, here’s what I think,” Larissa said. She was out of time. “As You like It is meant to be performed outside,” she stated. “We can do it inside, but it won’t be as good, and outside is impossible.” She tried not to sound impatient or hurried. “I suggest Comedy of Errors. It takes place in one day, serious subjects such as death by hanging and slavery are pushed aside for the sake of the joke, and all action is physical rather than internal, which makes it easier to rehearse and execute successfully.” She fell silent, waiting for them to agree. From Leroy’s barely suppressed sneers, Larissa guessed he was not a fan of The Comedy of Errors. Sheila said she preferred to do As You Like It. Twenty-six-year-old Vanessa, who was trying on theater for size before she fled into the world of fashion design, agreed with her boss. Vincent agreed with his. Young Vincent painted sets with her, so Larissa was miffed at his backstabbing, while Fred, who worked with Ezra, fancied himself smarter than anyone (including his boss) and therefore had to have an opposite opinion on everything just to prove his intellectual superiority. David, the line reader, thought because he read lines with the kids, he was qualified to make staging decisions. Ezra was, as always, bemused. Noncommittal, but bemused.

Well, whatever. At one time, back in college, in Hoboken, theater consumed Larissa. Being on the stage herself, what power! But that was over ten years ago. Dionysus was not her god anymore. Oh, sure, if you gave in to him, surrendered yourself to his charms, he would make you good, he would make you great. But it was a Faustian deal you made with him. And while Larissa accepted Ezra’s offer, she accepted it for her own reasons and was not about to dance with Dionysus again. She just didn’t care that much anymore.

“Why not Tempest?” Leroy suggested sourly.

“Maybe Taming of the Shrew?” Fred piped up. Oh, so he was unhappily married, Larissa thought, him and his bow ties and French berets. He certainly looked unhappily something.

“Tempest is too long,” Larissa said.

“So?”

“Leroy, but you were just lauding the brevity of Godot. Now you don’t care how long the proposed play is. Plus,” she continued evenly, “Tempest is complicated, it’s hard to memorize and stage.” She turned to Fred. “As for Shrew, we put it on three years ago last fall.”

“I don’t think that’s true.” Just to be contrary!

Larissa was quiet. “I painted the sets. I know. Vinnie might recall it.” She glared at him. “He painted the sets with me. Remember, Vinnie?”

A sheepish Vincent barely nodded, hoping Leroy and Fred wouldn’t see him agreeing with her!

Larissa exchanged an impatient glance with Ezra, that reluctant-to-intervene people-watcher. “Fred, I don’t understand what the issue is. What’s wrong with Comedy of Errors?”

“What’s wrong with Much Ado About Nothing?” he countered. “We didn’t stage that three years ago, did we?”

“I still think Tempest is a good idea,” Leroy weighed in. “It’s not an actual tragedy, you know.”

“I know,” Larissa drew out. “Do you really want to stage it?”

“Let’s say yes.”

“Can I ask you, Leroy, why are you so suddenly adamant about The Tempest? In my hands I’m still holding the play you were adamant about an hour ago.”

“Well, if I can’t have the one I really want …”

Vinnie and Sheila and Fred nodded in assent.

Ezra finally spoke. “How do we feel about Much Ado?”

Leroy first looked at Larissa, as if to gauge her imminent reaction. Then he said, “I like it. It’s a fine choice.”

“What do you think, Lar?”

Now he speaks! “It’s fine for fifteen-year-olds?” said Larissa. “On the one hand we have Comedy of Errors, 122 pages, light, external, easy to set, funny, just right for spring. On the other we have Much Ado About Nothing, about betrayal, shame, humiliation, infidelity, death, itself only one bad performance away from becoming a tragedy.”

“That’s what makes it so rich and rewarding,” said Leroy.

“According to you, Larissa, every comedy in Shakespeare is a breath away from becoming a tragedy,” said Fred.

“And not just in Shakespeare,” muttered Larissa.

“Okay, then how about Midsummer Night’s Dream?” interjected Ezra as the situation was about to become untenable. (About to?)

“Midsummer Night’s Dream,” repeated Larissa in a slow voice, (poorly) hiding her supreme irritation, “deals with lovelorn triangulating. It’s too adult to be performed by fifteen-year-olds. Then again …” She didn’t even have to glance at her watch. She knew it was one o’clock. Getting up, she grabbed her denim suede purse off the back of the chair.

“You’re leaving?” said Ezra. “But we haven’t finished.”

“You’re right,” Larissa said. “But you know my opinion. Discuss amongst yourselves. Tell me tomorrow what you’ve decided.”

“Should we do a casting call this afternoon?” asked David the line reader, already thinking ahead.

“Choose the play first.”

“Larissa …” That was Ezra.

“I really have to go, guys. Honest, I have no dog in this fight. It’s the end of March, the play opens in June, that’ll be barely eight weeks after auditions to rehearse. Not a lot of time. Whatever you decide, I’m fine.”

Ezra followed her to the double doors.

“Lar, what are you doing?” he said quietly. “They think you’re storming out.”

“Aren’t I?” She patted him on the sleeve, “Make nice with them, as only you can.”

“We have to have a decision!”

“Am I the director, or are you? Or is Fred? Or perhaps Leroy wants to direct from the sidelines. I hear there’s a play he’s just dying to do,” she added with a brisk smile, pleased with herself. She waved Godot in front of Ezra.

“Stop it.”

“Gotcha. Well, I’m going to tell you how it’s going to work.” She placed her implacable hand on the metal bar, ready to push open the doors and sprint. “If you want me to be the director, I have final say. That’s how it works. What play we do, whom we cast, how we stage it, what I cut. I decide.” She nodded in Fred and Leroy’s direction. “No devil’s advocate arguments from the peanut gallery.”

“Fine. Decide.”

“I’m going to torture you and give you what you want. Much Ado About Nothing. Betrayal, shame, humiliation. In spring. I’ll see you.” She blew him a teasing kiss and ran down the hall in her Frye boots. Ran. From Pingry to Stop&Shop was 5.2 miles and twelve minutes if she made all the lights and there was no traffic. She made no lights, and there was a mob of traffic. She made it in nine minutes anyway.

He wasn’t there.

Granted, it was 1:20 and perhaps he had come and gone, but then it was 1:30, then 1:40 and he wasn’t there. Larissa bought some steak for dinner, potatoes, frozen corn, peanut butter—1:50—cereal, coffee, sugar, tea, dry dog food—1:55—and then reluctantly went to stand in the express line and listened to a heavy, sour woman (perhaps Fred’s spouse?) behind her say, “Looks like you have more than twelve items there, dearie.” And Larissa said, “All righty, I’ll play.” Normally, she wouldn’t have done it, but this is what happened when small inflammations festered into giant sores. “Let’s count together. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve—look at that! Exactly twelve.” Larissa gave the embarrassed woman a cold stare. “Unless of course, you want to count each of the steaks as a separate piece. But we might have to count your six English muffins individually, and then where would we be?”

The woman mumbled something about the sign saying TWELVE OR LESS.

“Yes, and I’ve got one of those. Twelve. See?” Harrumphing to the cashier, Larissa pushed her items down the conveyor belt.

“Cash back?”

“No,” Larissa barked to the register girl. “Just the receipt, please.”

Still steaming, she bagged, paid and without a backward glance of smug contemptuous self-satisfaction pushed her cart outside. She was almost at her car when a voice behind her said, “Boy, you really showed her.”

She whirled around, swirled around like a tornado on boots, and in front of her Kai stood, looking worn and pale, unshaven, scraggly, unwell and sad, holding a coffee and a brown paper bag in his hands.

“Hey,” she said, her heart thumping, her voice shaking a little. Damn! Larissa hated that old witch even more for forcing her to be unlikeable when he was nearby. “Everything okay?” What to say? What to say! “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

“Yeah … I had …” He bowed his head. “I know,” he said, without looking up. “You have time to grab a bite?”

It was 2:07. Larissa had exactly seven minutes to grab a bite, and then she stood a thirty percent chance of being five minutes late to pick up Michelangelo. She wished that once, just once …

“Hang on,” she said. “Let me call my friend.” While he waited, Larissa called Donna, whose kids were walkers, asking her to please keep Michelangelo for ten minutes because she was running “a tiny bit” behind. Though she and Larissa had spoken barely two words the whole year, Donna was gracious. She and her own kids were headed to the playground. Could she take Michelangelo with them? “Oh, he’d love that. Thank you so much. I owe you one …”

Larissa turned to Kai. She stood dumbly in the parking lot, and her steak in the Jersey sun was going to reach room temperature, oh, in say, fifteen minutes, just long enough for her to get home and throw it out.

“Did you already eat?” he said, holding his brown bag in his hands. “We can split my sushi if you want.”

“No,” she said. “I’m okay.” It was unseemly to say she was starving. As if she had uncontrollable appetites. She stayed composed in front of him, the way she was with everyone, the line lady and Leroy notwithstanding.

They had nowhere to go but her car. So they went and sat in her car.

“Is everything okay?” she said, turning on the engine and staring ahead at her comforting tombstones. Was it her imagination, or had some new ones popped up? She could swear there were more gray markers in the ground than last week.

“It’s fine,” he said curtly. After a silence that seemed to Larissa like someone stopping playing the piano because he couldn’t figure out what the next note was, Kai continued, “You know—everything is not fine, but I really can’t talk about it, so …”

“I understand.” She wanted to tell him that Brian and Gary already mentioned a funeral, but there was no good way of explaining her reasons for dropping by his dealership when he wasn’t there, and talking about him to not one but two men. She was silent because she herself couldn’t figure out what the next note was.

“Everything okay at work?”

“I guess. Monday’s my day off,” he said, taking a gulp of coffee, then another, and staring at his open and untouched container of sushi.

Who had died? Was it his mother? He looked pale enough for it to be his mother. A friend of his? He had mentioned that he had to leave Hawaii because of stuff. Could this have something to do with that? Larissa was idly curious, slightly concerned, but mostly shamelessly relieved that he was back. A funeral in Hawaii seemed a long dry spell away from her current pool of calm water.

“How’s the weather been here?”

Talk about small talk. “It’s been pretty good,” she replied. “A little chilly. It rained all weekend. What about Hawaii?”

“Same old, same old,” he said. “Never changes. Eighty. Sunny. Windy in the afternoon.”

“Sounds fantastic.”

“I guess.”

Oh, so now he didn’t want to chit-chat even about the weather. They sat. The music played low, Alice Cooper, the Ramones.

Could she here deny the story that is printed in her blood? Leonato says to Friar Francis in Much Ado. Love conquered all, despite one’s best intentions. What a lesson it would be for her young charges. Larissa had to go. She didn’t want Michelangelo to worry.

“I just wanted to say I’m sorry.” What she wanted was to touch him.

“For what?”

She said nothing. He said nothing. Then he groaned, in small restrained anguish. “Larissa,” Kai said. The way he said it, her name had a din to it, like a song of the summer swallows, something deep that rolled off his tongue.

The name was a caress. Larissa, he caressed her with her own name. The rest of what he said was insignificant.

“It’s not that I don’t want to tell you. But trust me that the story is worse and more tawdry than you imagine, and there will be nothing for you to feel but pity, and the reason I don’t want to tell you is because I don’t particularly want your pity. Can you understand?” He didn’t look away from her as he spoke. “It will seem like I’m trying to manipulate you with tragedy. And I don’t want to do that.”

“I understand. Don’t worry. Just … take care of yourself.”

“I might eventually tell you,” he said.

“Eventually? Why not now, said the undertaker.”

Kai half smiled, half didn’t. “Funny. But I won’t ever feel like telling you.” He looked wretched when he said it.

“Does it have anything to do with why you left Hawaii in the first place?”

“Everything.” He took his empty can, his uneaten sushi, opened the door. “Nice to see you again,” he said.

“Yes, you too.”

That was positively breaking the courtesy barrier! Larissa thought as she drove to pick up Michelangelo, the fingers gripping the wheel trembling from the tension.