Viola in the Spotlight

by Adriana Trigiani

  “Hope the food is good.”

  “It won’t be. It’s a camp. I’ll be eating wilted lettuce and shepherd’s pie. That is, if I’m lucky.”

  “Look at it this way. When they cook out, it will be better than Dad’s,” I remind him.

  “No stretch there. What are you going to do while I’m gone?”

  “Well, I have my internship. I’m told I’ll really learn something about theatrical lighting during tech week at the play. Barry says he’ll make sure I’m a part of everything. At this point, all I really know about lighting is that Julius Ross has a lot of crap that needs to be delivered.”

  “That’s what an intern does, Viola.”

  “Right. I don’t mean to complain. At least I’m observing the master,” I agree with a sigh.

  “Pretty soon it will be the end of summer. And then your roommates are coming. Your mom is turning this place into a hotel.”

  “I’m surprised she’s not putting an air mattress on the roof. Every room has a couple of beds in it. My friends can’t wait to meet you.”

  “Really.” Andrew shifts his long legs and props them on the fence.

  “They think you’re cute.” I decide it’s okay to tease him, just a little.

  Andrew laughs. “How do they know? Oh, right, when we Skyped.”

  “I told them you look better in real life.”

  “I look bad on Skype?”

  “No, not terrible. A little pasty.”

  “Oh man. Pasty? That’s gross.”

  “Well, maybe pasty isn’t the right word. You look blue…ish.”

  “That’s even worse. You’re saying I have the skin tone of the underbelly of a lizard.”

  “It’s not that bad,” I say with a laugh. I’m glad Andrew and I are back to normal after the other day.

  “I’ll get a tan at camp.”

  “Good idea.”

  “So, I do look pasty.”

  “You are awfully sensitive.” I swig my root beer.

  “I guess I better go. The bus comes at six in the morning.” Andrew gets up to go downstairs.

  “How awful.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  I place my bottle of root beer on the table to get ready to walk him out. I plan to come back up and call Marisol after I walk Andrew out. It’s her night off from Target, and we get a lot of gabbing in.

  Andrew turns and looks up. “That’s a really bright moon.”

  “It’s as big as the sun,” I say, following his gaze.

  “It just seems that way because it’s close to the earth.”

  “The sun?”

  “No, Vi, the moon.”

  “Why does it seem closer over Brooklyn than anywhere else?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “The moon seemed so far away in Indiana. But there, you could see the stars. Here, you hardly ever can.”

  “The city lights are too bright. They cancel out the stars,” Andrew says.

  “Call me from camp.” I give Andrew a pat on the back.

  “Are you serious? Of course I’ll call. I’ll be in the woods with nothing to do.”

  “What if there’s no signal?”

  We look at each other. “Oh no!”

  Andrew puts his arms around me and gives me a hug. And then, just as I’m letting go of him, he pulls me close and kisses me.

  Seriously. It is happening. Andrew Bozelli and Viola Chesterton are kissing on the roof of 345 72nd Street. I’m outside of my body watching this scene like the Channel 4 news team in a hovering helicopter. I can’t believe it.

  The kiss leads to…confusion.

  I’m confused, because after all, I’ve only ever kissed Jared Spencer, and this kiss, of course, is completely different because it’s delivered by a boy I have known all my life—before he had straight teeth and an excellent haircut. It’s so weird to kiss Andrew, because I know him.

  When I kissed Jared for the first time, it was like discovering the shore of a foreign country from the boat. I wasn’t quite sure what I would find when I landed.

  The gears in my mind race, and I almost hear a voice in my head say, “What does this mean? What does this mean? What does this mean?” But the rhythmic sound isn’t the whirl of gears of repetitive thought in my head. The Melfis’ exhaust fan from their air-conditioning chute on the next roof has kicked on in the heat.

  “Bye, Viola,” Andrew says, pulling away abruptly. He goes out the porthole and down the ladder. I can’t move.

  I just stay on the roof.

  In the dark.

  Just me and the giant pink moon.

  What a relief, I’m thinking, as I pull open the work door to enter the Helen Hayes Theatre. I think I might major in theater when I get to college, because there’s something about working in a cavernous and dark place that makes me feel as though anything is possible, and also, that it’s easy to hide in this big, raw nothingness where plays are born.

  I check my BlackBerry.

  AB: I don’t know what came over me last night.

  Me: Me neither.

  AB: Drop it?

  Me: Dropped!

  Andrew, my BFFAA (Best Friend Forever and Always), has now officially become my BFFAAAOKO (BFFAA…And Only Kissed Once). I exhale a sigh of total and genuine relief.

  I wish The Kiss had never happened. But it did. It’s so much better to be friends. Once a boy becomes a boyfriend, you can’t talk to him about what you’re feeling, because he assumes whatever you’re feeling is about him even when it’s not. This was the takeaway from my year of dating Jared Spencer. And I would never want to trade my friendship with Andrew for a rooftop kiss. And once again, I’m going to have to deal with a surprising turn in my life story that I didn’t see coming. (I count attending a year of boarding school as one of the most shocking turns my life has taken, but I survived it, and even ended up better for it.) Just goes to show you, sometimes you have to live in the moment and not worry about the big picture—as long as what happens in the moment doesn’t ruin your life.

  I turn my attention back to the task at hand. I’ll focus on the play and let the Andrew thing vanish into thin air like a stage kiss. It happened, but it doesn’t mean it’s real life. Mr. Longfellow is onstage by himself, walking around. He doesn’t look worried, he seems in control and ready for anything.

  I’ve learned a lot hanging around this production. Of all the designers, and that would include Julius Ross, Jess Goldstein is the nicest and actually says things about theatrical production that really stick with me. Jess taught me about mounting a revival versus a brand-new play. He likes the historical aspect of researching what the designers invented for past productions and reinventing them for a new audience. Also, when Les Longfellow wants something, Jess delivers.

  I spent a day with the costume crew as they distressed the fabric for the dresses that the spinster aunts (Grand and Mary Pat) wear in the play. When Les Longfellow saw the costumes under the light, he felt they looked too new. Also, these are characters of modest means, who have one dress for everyday and one for church, and the one for everyday has been hand washed and pressed and worn for ages, so it should not look new.

  Jess chose a deep forest green wool for Mortimer Brewster’s suit. Brings out the hazel in George Dvorsky’s eyes—he’s the leading man and has to look scrumptious. Jess had the team tailor the suit just so, so George is truly the romantic lead down to the creases in his 1941 pants.

  “Take a look at this hat.” Jess comes out onstage with George, who is wearing the new suit.

  Mr. Longfellow looks at the hat. “I don’t like it.”

  “Laura?” Jess calls. Laura, one of his assistants, comes onstage with another hat.

  “This one is too Sinatra,” Mr. Longfellow says.

  “How about this one?” Jess takes the Sinatra hat off and places a second hat, this one with a wider brim, on George’s head.

  “I like it,” Les says.

  “I’ll change the band. It should be deep gray�
��not black,” Jess says.

  “Fine,” Mr. Longfellow says.

  I’m amazed that something as small as a hat matters. But I’ve learned that everything matters when it comes to a play production; it’s all about perfect details. I won’t forget that when I’m cutting film.

  The set is magnificent, a version of the original Broadway design, but beautifully rendered anew by the Great Robin Wagner. (Well, that’s what Grand calls him. The Great is, like, his first name.) I may ask him to sign a poster for me.

  Julius Ross, my boss, enters the theater, barking orders on his cell phone.

  He is followed by what look to be three college-age assistants to the assistant. They blow past me and take over the entire work table. One assistant unrolls blueprints, while another opens a laptop. The head of the lighting crew emerges, a tall, burly man.

  The stage manager gathers the actors onstage. Grand doesn’t stand with George; she sticks with James Hampton, the famous character actor, with thick gray hair and a wide, warm smile, who plays the Rev. Dr. Harper, and Mary Pat Gleason, her character’s sister, who has brown curly hair and drinks slowly from a water bottle without taking her eyes off the stage manager. She and Grand will be wigged for their parts, as neither of them appear as old in life as they need to in the play. The cast listens raptly as the stage manager runs through the schedule for the day.

  “You can sit over there,” Cameron, the head follow-spot operator, says to me.

  We are high in the mezzanine, on a platform behind the audience. Three follow spots are rigged on stationary platforms. The two other operators, two guys in their twenties, stand at the ready and look to Cameron to tell them what to do. The lighting instruments are shaped like black metal rockets with a guide bar across the back to focus on the actor onstage. Inside these instruments is a wide, bright, single beam of light.

  I slip the lens cap off my camera and flip it on. Using the light from the follow spots, I drink in the theater: the molding around the doors, the seats that are lined up like red dominoes, and then the stage.

  From my point of view, the set is enchanting. I get a different sense of the color palette Mr. Wagner used from here. It looks like a mixing bowl from a country kitchen.

  Pretty. Sturdy. And you want to hold it.

  It’s important in Arsenic and Old Lace to feel safe when you’re watching it. After all, it’s about two old ladies killing off unsuspecting men with a poisonous cocktail. They have a nutty brother who buries the bodies in the basement. The romantic element is about a man (George playing Mortimer) who isn’t sure he wants to get married. It’s a farce, so the set has the feeling of a pop-up book, with lots of doors, windows, and trapdoors so the characters can enter and exit, missing one another by a second or two, keeping the audience on the edge of their seats.

  I zoom in and focus on the bench where the aunts keep the bodies. I’m going to film the backstage area (I’ve already gotten wonderful footage of the actors coming to work through the stage door). I plan to film the opening-night party, and then cut it together and give it to George and Grand as a keepsake.

  Mr. Longfellow walks down the aisle to the lip of the stage. He is followed by his assistant and Maurice. I quickly flip the camera off. Mr. Longfellow looks up and surveys the light grid. The follow-spot operators stand at the ready like machine gunners on a ship while Mr. Longfellow confers with the stage manager.

  Mr. Longfellow turns and goes back up the aisle to the last row of the theater to observe the tech.

  The craft of operating the follow spot includes having to widen out the beam with one hand while guiding it with another. Mr. Longfellow likes to use follow spots to emphasize action in a scene, “to pointedly draw attention to it,” which is why three instruments are engaged for a play that takes place on one set. Cameron wears a headset, taking instruction from Ravonne, who looks up at him from the orchestra and then back at the stage.

  Grand stands downstage as the lights are focused on her. The light around Grand closes in tight around her, like a ray of afternoon light. From up here, a silky black shadow trails upstage until it diffuses to black. This is the moment in the play when Grand’s character is scheming to serve a brew to the unsuspecting men that will kill them. The effect of the light conjures the meaning of the text. I lean forward and watch.

  Grand stands patiently for a long time as Mr. Longfellow and Julius confer about the lighting.

  After a while, George exits the stage. He returns moments later with a crate. Without saying anything, he places it behind Grand and invites her to sit. She looks up at George gratefully. George returns to his place as the director and lighting designer continue their heated discussion.

  George Dvorsky is a true gentleman, and most of all, he anticipates what Grand might need, and tries always to put her first and make her comfortable—no matter what the situation. This is the definition of a perfect boyfriend—or friend period. Andrew is my George, but friend only.

  Out of all of Grand’s ex-husbands and former boyfriends, I like George the best. And not just because he is a great actor and he’s tall and the closest thing I’ve seen to a chiseled Cary Grant type since, I don’t know, Cary Grant himself. He’s a good guy. And sometimes, more than anything I seek in a date—including brains, general hotness, athletic ability, or similar interests—kindness is the most important character trait of all. It means you will be treated with respect, no matter what. And as my mom is quick to point out, respect is the backbone of love.

  EIGHT

  THE R TRAIN NEVER HAS A CAR WITH AIR-CONDITIONING that works in the summer. Every single train car is hot; it’s like riding in a Crock-Pot set on stew.

  Maurice, Caitlin, and I are returning from Manhattan in a near-empty car that has the scent of chili fries and motor oil. When we reach the Bay Ridge Avenue stop, I stand. “Let’s go, guys.”

  “We’ll catch up with you later,” Maurice says.

  “But you’re having dinner at my house….”

  Maurice and Caitlin shake their heads; they are not having dinner at my house as planned.

  “You’re not having dinner at my house?” I sit down as the doors close, missing our stop. But I don’t care, I can double back at the next stop. “What’s going on?”

  “We only have five days left until opening night,” Caitlin says.

  “Yeah. So?”

  “Once the play opens, Maurice goes back to England. We figured out that we have only a little more than seven thousand minutes left. And we want to spend as many of those minutes together as possible,” Caitlin explains.

  For a moment, I want to give Caitlin a lesson in get real, but she’ll get enough of that if her mother ever finds out that she’s been spending the summer riding trains into Manhattan to meet her boyfriend. The expression on Caitlin’s face is pleading for me to understand.

  “Please, Viola.”

  I take a deep breath. “Okay.”

  Maurice smiles at me. “Thank you.”

  “It was obvious to me that you were nuts about each other from the first moment you laid eyes on each other…”

  Caitlin and Maurice nod that it’s true, as they hold hands tightly, as if to hang on to each other, knowing this is not a dream.

  “…and long-distance anything is the worst. I get that. I just hope that everything works out for you. In the meantime, I have your backs.”

  The train pulls into the 77th Street station. I get off on the ramp and turn to look back at the train, which pulls slowly out of the station. Maurice and Caitlin have their heads together, talking, as if one summer is not possibly long enough to fit in everything they have to say to each other. That must be what it’s like when you find: your forevermore love, your true blue, your one and only, the person who totally gets it, in every possible way, every single day.

  I’m happy for Caitlin and Maurice, even though my nerves are shot from worry. I just hope that seven thousand minutes will be filled with enough memories to last for both of them, once Ma
urice goes home for good.

  “Don’t you have to walk Cleo?” Mom asks from the doorway of my room.

  “Grand doesn’t have to be at the theater until three. So I have the morning off.” I roll over in my bed and smash my face into the pillow. I forgot how much I love not having to show up for a job or an internship. I don’t have to be at the theater until five. I do have a twinge of guilt; after all, I could be spending my downtime cutting all the footage I’ve taken at the theater. The more I do now, the easier it will be to cut the opening-night party later. I throw the sheet off me with my leg to get up.

  Mom sits down on the edge of my bed. “We have a problem.”

  I sit bolt upright. “What happened?”

  “Mrs. Pullapilly called and asked if Caitlin was here last night.”

  I jump out of the bed and yank my phone out of the charger to check it. There are no messages from Maurice. “What did you tell her, Mom?”

  “I told her I had a meeting in Manhattan and that I was sure Caitlin was over, because she’s always over. That seemed to make Mrs. Pullapilly feel better. Evidently, Caitlin missed her curfew. She was over an hour late.”

  My heart sinks in my chest. “Mom, Caitlin was supposed to be with me last night. But she wasn’t. She was with Maurice.”

  “I see.” Mom smooths the comforter on my bed. Then she stands and begins to make the bed. I get up and fluff the pillow. “So, Caitlin decided not to tell her mother she has a boyfriend?”

  “She can’t! You know how strict Mrs. Pullapilly is. Caitlin’s life is on orange high alert every day. Don’t you remember? We practically had to walk through a metal detector to go to Caitlin’s thirteenth birthday party.”

  “They can be a little strict.”

  “A little? How about prison wardens in solitary confinement are more lenient!”

  “You understand it’s wrong for Caitlin to lie to her parents.”

  “Or for me to lie to you. I know. I totally get it. But I had a higher goal in mind. To honor and support the path of true love!”

  My mother, who had a very stern look on her face (complete with the check mark worry lines between her eyes that she refuses on principle to Botox), smiles. “So the lie was noble?”