Good Riddance

by Elinor Lipman

  “He feels—and maybe you should talk to him directly—that the invitation was a sincere apology from an ex-student to his old principal. And your father is big enough to let it be water under the bridge.”

  “What a hypocrite!”

  “Your father?”

  “No, Armstrong. He had Dad dragged from his office and arrested!”

  “But the trespassing charge was dismissed, correct?”

  “I still don’t consider it water under the bridge.”

  “Did I misunderstand? I thought you said you were going to the wedding, that it was just the getaway you needed.”

  I said yes, true, I was. I didn’t tell her what my own reasons were—that Peter Armstrong was keeping me afloat. And thanks to a white lie about a fully booked inn, Jeremy would be sleeping one bed away.

  35

  Take Your Seat, Daphne

  We began by lying flat on the dirty rehearsal-room floor, doing stretching exercises, then breathing from the abdominals, then moving and swaying around the room in a fashion I found not only awkward but embarrassing. Was I really about to impersonate colors?

  “Orange!” our gray-haired, ponytailed teacher called out. “Blue!” And inevitably the downer, “Black!” Bodies sagged. Fingertips brushed the floor. Why was everyone else so into it, so earnest and eager to please?

  Next the lecture: Acting is reacting. Good acting is listening. Feel it from the inside out. Mining what you are. He himself, in the late 1990s, had read the stage directions while rehearsing Sanford Meisner. In a single evening with that brilliant practitioner of the Method, he’d gleaned infinite wisdom about the “reality of doing.”

  Next: Each would get a folding chair from a stack against the wall, then reach into the paper bag containing our clues. This, we were told, was the Who’s Knocking? exercise. One by one we’d leave the room, close the door, then knock in the manner of the character named on our folded piece of paper, returning only when someone guessed the correct identity.

  Any volunteers? Of course the handsomest guy—I guessed Italian mother, Irish father, or vice versa—stood up, but then had to sit down because he announced proudly that his knocker was a census taker.

  “The point is to have your fellow classmates guess who is knocking,” said the instructor.

  The next volunteer, a short, pretty blonde woman with straight hair to her chin, walked out the door, closed it, and delivered a pounding that sounded frantic.

  I volunteered, “Someone who hears her neighbor calling for help, and even though they’re not on friendly terms, her Good Samaritan instincts kick in—”

  Incorrect.

  “An angry wife who’s showing up at her husband’s secret love nest!” someone else yelled.

  That wasn’t it, but at least I was enjoying the audience-participation part of acting.

  A woman with very long, very black hair yelled out, “There’s a fire in the building!”

  The instructor said, “So who’s knocking? Remember, it’s the person’s identity we need.”

  “A fireman!” she called.

  The door opened and the blonde woman returned, smiling and waving the unfolded piece of paper. “Firefighter arriving at a burning building,” she read.

  Which would’ve been fine, but the handsome guy announced he was a real-life firefighter. “Who knocks? Maybe if you’re going house to house raising money for the families of the fallen.”

  My slip of paper said, “Doctor approaching an examining room.” With such a booby-prize situation, I didn’t volunteer. Neither did anyone else. Probably because I had my head down in an effort to disappear, the instructor said, “You. At the end of the row in the yellow T-shirt. You’re up.”

  I said, “I have a real stinker. I’ll pass.”

  “You can’t,” he said.

  Once outside, I knocked tentatively, earning no guesses. I tried a louder knock, which must’ve sounded more authoritative than I intended because I heard someone say, “A parent who thinks his kid is smoking dope in his room?”

  I tried to act from the inside out, making myself the patient, sitting on the examining table, under paper, naked from the waist down, waiting for the gynecologist. This time I went for the quick rap from the impatient doctor who’d already kept me waiting an hour.

  “A twelve-year-old kid,” yelled our twelve-year-old classmate, whose mother had been taking notes from her own row. “Maybe he hit a home run that broke a window and his father made him come over and apologize.”

  Oh, brother. This could go on all night. I knocked again, willy-nilly. Who cared? What a stupid exercise.

  “A teacher on her first day of school,” someone tried.

  Really? Why would a teacher be knocking on her own classroom door?

  “A casualty-notification officer?” said a sad male voice.

  No and no. Was I getting everyone’s life story? Was this the point? Against the rules, I called out, “How about one more guess?”

  “No words,” warned the instructor.

  One final, uninspired knock by me.

  I heard “UPS guy” followed by “Bill collector?”

  Bill collector? What century was this? I opened the door. “Give up?”

  The various classmates said yes, no, get back out there.

  I didn’t. I held up my piece of paper. “Didn’t my knock sound exactly like . . . wait for it . . . a doctor approaching the examination room?”

  Our instructor asked my name. I told him.

  “This isn’t improv, Daphne. Please take your seat.”

  There was no mistaking from his tone that he considered improv a lesser form of the dramatic arts. This was serious scholarship, he was trained in the Stanislavski method, and I’d effectively flunked the first exam.

  36

  What’s So Secret?

  I took over as soon as we crossed into New England, mainly to show off one of my few proficiencies: driving a manual transmission. Our plan was to check into the inn, unpack, walk around the Exeter campus, slip into the five o’clock wedding, eat, drink, dance if there was a band—all the while keeping my ear out for insensitive remarks directed at my father on topics such as his wasting no time finding an attractive, younger girlfriend.

  The hometown-scouting part of the trip would be on Sunday morning. From the passenger seat, Jeremy asked whether I could introduce him to Pickering natives who might have tips on what to see and where to go.

  “I’m your Pickering native,” I said.

  “But what about places off the beaten path? Maybe hangouts for the class of ’68. I’m going to need a lot of slides for the PowerPoint presentation.”

  Ha, ha, good one: PowerPoint presentation! That snooze—except that Jeremy was saying, “No. I’m serious. I’m planning slides in the background, big ones.”

  “Background of what?”

  “The thing I’m working on.”

  “The ‘thing’! The Manhattan Project of top-secret theatrical works in progress!”

  “How is it a secret? You know it’s a piece for the stage. And you know, for starters, that I need to see Pickering—”

  “That doesn’t help! It makes me think you’re pulling a Geneva.”

  “Which you define as . . . ?”

  “An unhealthy yearbook obsession channeled into some kind of show! Why else would you need a guided tour of hangouts frequented by the class of 1968?”

  “What yearbook? The one that’s history? You saw to that.”

  Ouch. That was new, that edge. If we hadn’t been on the turnpike, I’d have pulled sharply over to the side of the road and braked with a decisive jerk. Instead, I remained silent, knowing there was a service plaza coming up that would serve my purposes.

  He must’ve been aware that I was stewing because he tried to make conversation, starting with the unwise question of when I’d last seen Geneva.

  “Not since the emergency room. The last conversation we had was after the yearbook went missing.”

  �
��Went missing? Or met a shredder at FedEx?”

  I was no longer proud of that. I admitted: bad that I’d destroyed my mother’s prized possession; good riddance when I thought of it as Geneva’s so-called intellectual property.

  I could hear the click-click of his typing. “Are you writing down what I said?”

  “Just making a note.”

  “Be sure not to tell me why,” I huffed. A sign announced that the Charlton Service Plaza was upcoming, a mile ahead. At the half-mile point, I put my blinker on.

  “Bathroom?” he asked.

  “No. We’re pulling over, and I’m not moving until you tell me what this secret project is.”

  He pointed to the glove compartment. “I don’t think you can hold me hostage if the rental car’s in my name.”

  “Try me,” I said.

  I pulled into a spot inconvenient to bathrooms, drive-through refreshment, and fuel. Jeremy busied himself, leaning over the front seat, patting his garment bag flat on the back seat, turning it over, patting it some more. “Just making sure my charger and camera are in there.”

  “Are they? Is that settled? Anything else? Or can you now tell me what the fuck you’re writing?”

  “C’mon, Daff. What more do you need to know? I’ve told you it’s for the stage—”

  “And set in New Hampshire, which I find more than annoying.”

  “Listen . . . New Hampshire, okay . . . the place is sort of a character in the story. I need to evoke it without actually setting it there.” He tapped the stick shift as if to say, Now we can go.

  “There’s still something missing, something you’re not saying.”

  “Trust me, you’ll be the first person to read it. I want to get it into really good shape. Then we’ll discuss—”

  “Why do you care what I think of it? You’re the pro. I’m no script doctor. I don’t know what makes a play work.”

  He slid downward until his head was resting on the back of the seat. “Believe me, I need you on board.”

  “Because . . . ?”

  “Because . . . it’s a one-woman show.”

  That explained his stalling, his nerves: He knew I’d never go along with a play about my mortal enemy. I said, “I could never give my permission for that.”

  “Without even reading it?”

  I shrugged. I supposed it wouldn’t kill me to read a project that would never see the light of day. I’d probably find it satisfying to see Geneva portrayed as a bigger-than-life thief and villain. “Maybe it has potential,” I said to be charitable, “but I don’t think you’ll ever get her permission. She’s probably writing her own one-woman show as we speak.”

  “Her own show?” he repeated. “Whose did you think I was talking about?”

  “Geneva’s!”

  “Not Geneva’s,” he said. “Yours.”

  37

  Be Nice

  We discussed his pipe dream of a project for the rest of the ride. “Let’s just say you got this off the ground. Who’d play me?” I asked.

  “You’d play you.”

  That introduced a new level of shell shock. I, who knew nothing about the world of theater, expounded anyway. “A producer would want a name actress. Not a nobody, especially a nobody whose only experience was a month of acting classes and understudy to the female lead in a fully clothed high school production of Hair.”

  “But the charm would be that it’s your story. And don’t think of a one-woman show as acting. It’s essentially stand-up, and I’ve seen you do stand-up.”

  “No, you haven’t!”

  “Not in a club,” he said. “In life.”

  “Ridiculous. Forget it.” But after another few miles, I asked, “Not that I’m warming to the idea, but how long would I have to stand up there talking about myself?”

  “I won’t know until it’s finished, but I’d say ninety minutes max.”

  “Could I sit on a stool or would I have to move around the stage?”

  “You could sit on a stool part of the time, and when you were talking about something that riled you up, you could pace.”

  I thought about the exercises from acting lessons, supposedly using our bodies as . . . I forgot. Conveying emotion? Acting from the inside out, the Stella Adler method. Or was that outside in? I might have a well of hatred for Geneva that I could tap from either side.

  Still protesting, I said, “Who in the world would put money into a show about a nobody starring the nobody?”

  “We’d start small, at festivals.”

  “Would it be my life to date or just since I’ve known you?”

  “It would begin with Geneva’s taking possession of the yearbook. I’ve been in on that pretty much from the beginning.”

  “But she wouldn’t be in it, right?”

  “Correct. Just you. Hence the ‘one-woman.’”

  I pondered this some more. Airing grievances in public could be therapeutic if I didn’t have stage fright. “Could it include some things about my horrible ex and his horrible mother?”

  “Maybe. I couldn’t stop you from improvising.”

  “Would I have to use my real name?”

  “Hard to avoid in a one-woman show.”

  I continued to play the skeptic through Worcester and up I-495. Approaching Lowell, I asked why he wouldn’t use one of his fellow actresses from his show. Or an old girlfriend from Tisch.

  “Just a hunch about what would work. And we’d start small. We’d do a staged reading.”

  “In front of an audience?”

  “Depending on who was interested, but that’s when the potential agents and backers scope it out.”

  “You’d better not give up your day job. This sounds like it has the same chances as Geneva’s documentary, i.e., stillborn.”

  “Have a little faith. At least wait to read it.”

  “How long till you finish?”

  “Weeks? Months? Depends on my schedule. But I don’t want you to see it until it’s as polished as I can make it.”

  Though pretending I was adjusting the rearview mirror for better visibility, I was stealing a glance at my face. Would these laugh lines be visible from the orchestra seats? Was this head-shot material? I’d never thought of myself as a one-woman anything, but I guess Jeremy the professional knew best.

  Our room was small. The registration desk told me it was a “traditional queen,” which sounded grand enough to accommodate nonpartners. It wasn’t. There was a double bed, just one, and a squeeze of a bathroom with a loopy scatter rug that kept the door from closing.

  Jeremy said, checking out the nonview from the one window and squeezing past me to appraise the tubless shower, “Fine with me.”

  I didn’t admit that it was fine with me, too. But because I’d be sharing this space with someone I was no longer having sex with, I felt it was my duty to ask, “Should we try to get a cot or a separate room?”

  “We’re adults,” he said.

  “I consider that answer nonresponsive.”

  “I was going for that. Can we just play it by ear?”

  “Did you bring pajamas?”

  “Darn it. I forgot.”

  I made myself busy unpacking my toothbrush and toothpaste. We hung up our wedding finery; in gentlemanly fashion, he insisted I get the one padded hanger.

  There was a light rain falling, so we did an abbreviated circuit around campus, peeked into the library and church, saw catalogue-worthy students of all descriptions. We had coffee in town, both agreeing to change the subject away from the work in progress to the topic of the upcoming wedding and its potentially awkward moments.

  I said, “I’m going to try to be as pleasant as possible to the bride. Clean slate. If she apologizes for making a horrible first impression—”

  “She won’t.”

  “But if she does, I’m going to be so gracious that you won’t believe it’s me.”

  “See. There’s your method acting.”

  I noticed that two girls, teenagers ea
sily identified as Exonians by their maroon and white scarves, were gaping at Jeremy. “Even here in the boonies,” I said.

  Jeremy gave a nod that said, Yes, I’m him; I’m who you think I am.

  One of the two called over, “I love the show. And I voted for it in the Teen Choice Awards.”

  “Thank you so much.”

  “There’s going to be a third season, right?” asked the other one, who suddenly had no need for her glasses.

  “Can we get your autograph?” the first one asked.

  Jeremy said, “Sure.” When they were standing next to us, he said, “Let me introduce Daphne Maritch. We’re collaborators.”

  Their interest in me, if any, was as my role of photographer with each of their smartphones.

  “Wanna go?” Jeremy asked after the fans had returned to their table, autographs signed.

  “I’m used to it. It’s fine.” I did wonder how I looked to these girls, hoping the rain hadn’t had a deleterious effect on my hair or the cappuccino on my lip gloss.

  Like two professional actors sharing a trailer, we were unselfconscious about getting undressed and dressed. My interpretation of “cocktail attire” had led me to the pale gray chiffon thing, tastefully ruffled, expensive simplicity personified, that I’d worn only once—to my own rehearsal dinner. I’d shopped with my sister, who’d flown in from LA for the wedding and insisted we go to Bergdorf ’s, her treat.

  I needed help with the tiny cloth-covered buttons up the back. Jeremy said, “Good thing I’m here. What would you have done otherwise?”

  “I’d have flagged down a housekeeper.”

  “I was going after something more like ‘Yes, I thank my lucky stars that you and your nimble fingers are here.’”

  “That, too.” I turned around, fully buttoned, for inspection.

  “Quite spectacular,” he said.

  I took a step back, and said, “Vous, aussi.” I also noted that his silver tie made us look coordinated.

  “I brought three ties up with me, so not so much of a coincidence.”