Privilege

by Mary Adkins

  Bea hurried to the center of the room and raised her arms above her head with her palms touching.

  “Hello, what are you?” asked Chris.

  “Olive oil. As long as I’m displayed somewhere on the counter, I’m fine,” she said, aware of a few snickers behind her, “but I should under no circumstances be relegated to a cabinet. I’m far too lovely for that.” She returned to the line of hopefuls milling near the back wall while the others took their turns.

  The next two rounds unfolded in similar fashion—they did not have to improvise with one another; they only had to step out and individually improvise a single idea based on whatever word Chris hollered. For “sea animal,” Bea chose an agoraphobic conch, wrapping her arms and legs around herself. For “circus performer,” she chose a stuttering mime with jerking gestures. While miming, she heard the girl from the team—whose name she’d learned was Lesley—laughing, and this filled Bea with pride.

  “For the next scene, we’re going to partner you up,” said Chris. When he spoke, his mustache bounced the tiniest bit, as if it were riding on his words. “Two of you will take a seat”—he pulled two folding chairs out to the center of the room and placed them side by side facing the same direction. “Together, you’ll tell us about yourselves and your relationship. As if the two of you are being interviewed for a documentary or on a talk show, minus the interviewer.”

  He went on to explain that the point of the exercise was to learn to say, “yes, and.”

  “There are two cardinal rules of improv,” Chris shouted, holding up two fingers. “One, you do not negate your partner. If your partner calls you an elephant, you’re an elephant. If your partner decides you’re a clown, what are you?”

  “A clown!” everyone yelled.

  “We call this ‘Yes, anding’: whatever your scene partners do, you say yes to it, and then you add something. Yes, and. Rule number two is that you have to step out. You can’t stand back. This isn’t an art form where holding back works. When people are hesitant to step out, it leaves your scene partners with blue balls and saps the energy from the room. Got it?”

  Everyone nodded.

  “Got it?” he asked.

  “Got it!” they shouted.

  “Who’s up?”

  Bea was in one of the two centered chairs before she even had time to notice who else was moving. She turned to face her partner: the guy who’d posed as a kumquat in response to “tropical.”

  “Hi,” he said. “Paul.”

  “Bea,” Bea said and smiled.

  “Let’s hear it for Paul and Bea!” Everyone clapped. “Ready when you are, guys.”

  Paul spoke first.

  “We met about . . . what was it, four years ago?” he said, placing a hand on Bea’s knee. She put her hand on top of his.

  “That sounds about right, babe,” Bea said. “Four years ago, you asked me out before you even knew my name. And the rest is history.”

  “Should I tell them where we met? Because that part of the story is pretty hilarious,” said Paul.

  “It’d be silly to keep it a secret,” Bea said. “Tell them. Oh, shucks, I will. We met in his bathroom. In his house.”

  Titter.

  “It’s very unusual,” said Paul. “That we met in my own house. In my . . . own bathroom. But she was there for . . .”

  He appeared stuck, and so Bea said, “I was there for this party.”

  “She was there because I’d had a party the night before, and the place was a total mess. I don’t usually use cleaning ladies, but there was no way I was going to clean all that up alone.”

  “Annnd scene,” said Chris, his words for wrapping us up. “Okay, guys, I want to try that again, but this time, Paul, be careful not to negate Bea.”

  “Did I negate Bea?” Paul appeared shocked.

  “She said she was there for a party, and you said she was there to clean your house.”

  “Oh, right. But isn’t that a form of being there for a party? She was there because of the party, just not attending it. I thought it would be a more interesting dynamic if we got together because she was my cleaning lady. I felt like that’s way richer than just, like, two people meeting at a party, you know?”

  “Your choices are your choices. Just be careful not to negate is all I’m saying,” said Chris.

  They started over. This time, Bea was still the cleaning lady, and they hit it off because Paul’s character was such a gentleman that he insisted on helping her clean. By the end of the scene, he had asked her out.

  “And, like she said, the rest is history,” said Paul, squeezing her thigh.

  “I think you’re leaving out one little piece, aren’t you, love?” Bea said. Was she cooing? She was cooing.

  “Oh?” said Paul, nervously. He appeared to have decided the scene was done. “What’s that?”

  “I said no.”

  “She said . . . right, she said no . . . at first. She wanted to think about it.”

  “I said no because I felt like he was so self-congratulatory for helping me clean that there was no way he was going to be anything but an entitled little shit. And even one date with him sounded so boring that I couldn’t stomach the idea of spending a single hour across from him. I was sure he’d just talk about himself the whole time and expect me to be impressed. So I said no.”

  Paul said nothing.

  “But then he wouldn’t stop stalking me, and eventually he told me that if I didn’t come to this interview, he’d kill me. So, here we are. HELP!” Bea cried, aware of guffaws erupting from the cluster of fellow auditioners as she threw her arms in the air dramatically and rushed offstage.

  “That took a turn,” Paul mumbled, openly irritated.

  “And scene,” said Chris, grinning. “Thanks, guys. Next pair!”

  As the audition moved to scene work, Bea’s doubt grew, bottlenecking in her gut. Why had she done that? Sure, she’d drawn a few laughs, but Chris hadn’t looked amused, and Paul was downright pissed. She’d definitely negated Paul, and knowingly. She’d done so because he’d made her into the goddamn housekeeper. So hilarious, the idea of him, the white man, helping out and then hitting on his own brown housekeeper!

  But, dammit, Bea, she scolded herself. It was an audition. And the only rule once you were out there was not to negate.

  Bea smiled and applauded along with everyone else while deciding that if she didn’t get called back for the second round, she would know why. She’d let personal offense get the better of her.

  When the audition hit the ninety-minute mark, Chris stepped aside so that another guy, Mike, could offer a parting spiel. Those who were selected to return for the second and final round would be contacted; they’d all been great; improvising was about bravery and taking risks and merely for showing up they should be proud.

  As Bea walked to the shuttle stop to catch the bus back to South Campus, despite lingering regret over that one choice, she nonetheless felt alive, electric. It had been the most energizing two hours of her life.

  Her phone buzzed with a number she didn’t recognize, a 305 area code.

  “Hi, this is Bea,” she answered.

  “Bea! It’s Chris. From C.U.N.T.”

  “Hi, Chris,” she said, surprised.

  “Congratulations. You’re one of us.”

  She stopped walking. “Wait—isn’t there . . .”

  “A second audition? We let some people skip it. Today, actually, you were the only one everyone agreed was a definite yes. So, yay! Good job. Congratulations.”

  “But I negated Paul. I don’t know why I did that.” She did know why she did that. Why did she just say she didn’t?

  “Listen,” said Chris. Bea was pacing next to a blue emergency phone—those are everywhere, she distractedly registered—with her own phone against one ear and her finger in the other so that she could hear Chris against the whir of a mower on the lawn and the chatter of students passing by. “You were shitty to Paul. Sure. We also saw you in plenty of
scenes where you weren’t a shitty teammate. Do you have stuff to learn? Of course. And you’re right to pick up on what happened, because he’s still your scene partner, even if he’s being a dick. Even dicks can be your scene partners, and you have to treat them like your team members. So, yeah, you took that a little far. But at least it was intentional, and, frankly, you bring a much-needed perspective.”

  When she didn’t respond for a moment, he said, “Hello?”

  “I’m here,” Bea said. “It’s all good. But what do you mean by ‘much-needed perspective’? . . .” She trailed off. She’d not only been chosen; she was being allowed to skip the normal process. Before she stepped out to perform in front of the whole school, she needed to know that she was actually funny. People weren’t going to laugh to be politically correct.

  “Bea, honestly, that was my way of saying you were the strongest one at the audition today. You elevated the entire group’s performance. That was the first thing Lesley said after everyone left.” He just continues. “Lesley. Who also isn’t a token, by the way, if you haven’t noticed. She’s fucking brilliant.”

  Lesley!

  “But for fuck’s sake,” Chris said, “don’t let it go to your head. I hope you’ll join us. We have a blast, obviously. That’s why we do it. But it’s a huge time commitment. We’re also under some pressure this year, because . . .” He chuckled. “I guess because of me. I’m putting pressure on us. Four years ago, the year before I started at Carter, the team won the National College Improv Championship. It’s my last year, and I want a championship. But first we have to win regionals at UVA in December. So you in?”

  “Oh, obviously,” Bea said.

  “Fantastic. Let’s talk schedule. Rehearsal is Sunday, and I thought your first show could be next Saturday night. September 9. We have shows a few nights a week this time of year. It’s pretty busy. But that’ll give you time to get two rehearsals under your belt first. Sound good?”

  “Yes,” she said. Yes, and; yes, and; yes.

  IF MAKING THE improv team her first Wednesday at Carter had heightened Bea’s excitement about her first year, Thursday’s events hoisted it to a feverish peak.

  Dr. Friedman came down from New York to teach Justice on Fridays. Thursday evening he’d invited Bea and the other three scholarship students to Ovolini, an Italian restaurant within walking distance of campus.

  On the last day of August, a balmy evening, Bea made her way to the restaurant. She wore a cotton tank dress she’d borrowed from Lorn over the summer and then never returned because she liked how it fell over her hips, giving them the illusion of shape. She’d pulled her hair back in anticipation of the humidity and swapped her platforms out for well-worn flats at the last minute, unsure about the walk down the stony, sloped path that led from campus to Main Street.

  She arrived at Ovolini, which glowed in the dusk, and pushed open the door to a blast of cold air. The restaurant still smelled faintly of fresh paint, and its dark hardwood floors shone. At the center table in the back, she spotted Dr. Friedman seated across from two scholars—Mark and Dionne. Dr. Friedman was sampling wine, swirling it about as the waiter hovered over him, bottle poised.

  “Bea! Hello!” He stood and gave her a hug, which sent an ache through her chest, a longing she couldn’t place, except that it was for something tender and present in his touch. She reluctantly pulled away. “Now we’re just waiting on Veronique.”

  The waiter poured white wine into Dr. Friedman’s glass as he ordered a burrata appetizer for the table.

  “I was just telling Mark that this semester I’ll be trying to come in early enough on Thursdays to get dinner with you all, whoever can join. I’m in and out of town pretty fast—I leave class and head straight to the airport to get back for Friday afternoon dad duty.” Dr. Friedman had two boys, Irish twins he’d called them. Bea had assumed this referred to Irish heritage until she came across the term in a novel and realized it referred to children born fewer than twelve months apart. She was relieved she hadn’t embarrassed herself by saying something to reveal her misunderstanding. He’d called her “special” after reading her essay the previous fall, and she didn’t want to let him down, even in such a small way.

  His wife was a high school Spanish teacher, which is all that Bea knew about her. She felt confident that the woman did not teach at the kind of high school Bea had attended; Dr. Friedman would have a wife who taught in public school, given his unflinching commitment to social justice and equality issues.

  Veronique arrived minutes after Bea, wearing a silk scarf loosely looped around her neck and a linen jumper. Bea wondered if the messy bun on the top of her head was as effortless as it looked.

  Dr. Friedman asked them to go around the table and introduce themselves, beginning with Bea.

  “I’m Bea,” she said. “I grew up in New York and Boston and went to school in Connecticut.” She always left out the “boarding” part.

  “Hello, friends. I am Veronique. I spent my first eight years in France,” their newest addition said. She had only the slightest French accent. “I’ve been here in America since, in Los Angeles, where I acted and was homeschooled.” Bea didn’t recognize her from anything—but then she’d never watched much TV, even before Porter’s. Veronique told them they could call her “V.”

  Mark, an ROTC student from Houston, came from a third-generation military family, and Dionne hailed “from down the road” and was a graduate of the local arts charter school. Dionne had a charming southern twang, similar to Early’s in saturation but with different round vowels.

  “Seeing all these disparities in resources on and off the campus of my high school,” Dionne said, “I was really bothered. So I decided to stay local and come to Carter just for this program.”

  “Great to see you all,” Dr. Friedman said. “Tomorrow you’ll meet your classmates. There are fifteen of you.” Bea was feeling inadequate following the others’ intros. Had there been nothing else she could have shared? Besides the fact that she’d just made the improv team the night before, which felt too recent and frivolous in this context. “And did you get your invitations for the student advocacy training?”

  They all nodded as the waiter topped off Dr. Friedman’s glass.

  “Dr. Friedman,” said Mark.

  “Lou,” said Dr. Friedman.

  “Lou,” said Mark happily. “What’s the hardest case you’ve ever tried?”

  And then Dr. Friedman—Lou—was telling them about the time when, while working as a young public defender in California, he was assigned the case of Walden Summers, also known as the Merrell College shooter, who’d slaughtered eleven students and injured seventeen more before, in a sick twist, surviving his own gun blast as well as police fire. He was left to stand trial.

  “Walden was universally loathed, of course, for this monstrous act.” It was strange, even unnerving, to hear Dr. Friedman refer to the shooter by his first name. “He’d wrecked the lives of hundreds of people. He had no remorse. He understood what he’d done. He said it was to avenge his rejection by the women on Merrell’s campus. You may recall this. He was a maniacal misogynist.”

  They listened, rapt. A plate of seared scallops wrapped in bacon arrived and was placed, steaming, in the center of the table.

  Bea only vaguely recalled the shooting—there had been so many over her lifetime, too many to remember the details of them all, and, honestly, they were so depressing and frightening that she’d stopped reading about them. At Porter’s she’d felt safer than her peers at co-ed schools across the nation. She was cognizant that an elite girls’ school was unlikely to be the target of a massacre, for while motivation had apparently varied across the spectrum of deranged teenage shooters, what linked them was the glaring fact that they were almost exclusively male.

  “How was I to defend this guy? I mean ethically speaking?” Dr. Friedman asked, his eyes flickering in the soft candlelight. “People were livid, and understandably so. They hated me. Not just me�
�they hated my role, that it even existed. Why did this guy get an attorney? My car was egged. Someone left a squirrel carcass on my porch. I got so many threatening calls I had to change my number at home and at work. The refrain was ‘How could you?’ And it wasn’t like I wasn’t asking myself the same question. Only, my own questioning wasn’t rhetorical. How could I? How was I going to bring myself to perform this task I was professionally obligated to do? When I graduated law school and went into public defense, I knew I’d have to represent people I knew were guilty, okay? Of bad stuff. I wasn’t under any illusions about that. It was going to be a huge part of the job. But I believed deeply enough in the sanctity of the Sixth Amendment, that critical sliver of American justice, to accept this.”

  He paused. Mark chewed ferociously on a scallop.

  “I was in a new realm, one I hadn’t braced myself for. And to be honest I didn’t know if I could do it. I believed he had a right to representation, but I didn’t know if that representation could be from me. It wasn’t the public pressure—that was its own challenge, but one I could stand. Don’t go into criminal defense unless you’re able to give no fucks what people think of you. No, the harder part—it was my own soul that wasn’t sure anymore. My gut was at odds with itself for the first time. I thought I was going to have to quit.”

  The waiter emptied the bottle into Dr. Friedman’s glass. Bea and the others waited, alert. They knew how the story ended, how it had to end because of where they were and who he was, but even Mark had stopped chewing.

  “And that was a pivotal point in my career. I realized that what I was experiencing—a gut at odds with itself—wasn’t going to be the exception. It was going to be the norm. It was going to be my life. An occupational hazard, so to speak. Like a construction worker learns to wear earplugs, I was going to have to learn to hold two colliding values in my head and heart. That, or I wasn’t going to survive in this work. And if I was going to stick with it, I only could if I was going to give it my best, my all, every time. Every case, including this one. There was no middle ground.”