“But wouldn’t it be weird if Helen could only do the first act, and a younger Audrey Bradford came out for the rest of the show?”
“I wondered the same thing. But Ben is pretty confident that if Helen couldn’t perform, he’d know well in advance of her ever taking the stage. And with only forty-two performances, the odds of her becoming ill during the show are minimal. She agreed to a physical with her doctor, and I guess passed with flying colors.”
The coffeemaker puffed its last gasp. Avril proceeded behind the island to pour us each a cup of day starter. She returned carrying two mugs to the living room with poise, and handed one to me. I blew delicately across its surface before setting it down to cool.
“I meant to ask you,” Avril said, “does Sydney know you’re here in New York?”
Sydney Bloom, our beloved theatrical agent, our wise and witty mother hen, had loved actors all of her fifty-plus years, Avril and me for the last seven. She was equally at home talking shop over lunch at a kosher deli on Fifty-first Street, or a wheat grass bar on Santa Monica Boulevard. I loved to picture her in the place she loved best, her beach house in Monterey.
“I left Sydney a message,” I said. “Just told her I was flying to New York, but I didn’t say why. I didn’t want to share my news over voice mail.”
I’d fallen in love with acting the day I stepped into a crowded theater class at Northwestern in Chicago. At first, The Fundamentals of Acting was just a freshman elective, a stop on the road to my English degree and nothing more. But by the end of the semester, I was no longer content simply to read Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet—I wanted to be Juliet. The next fall, I switched my major to drama and theater and began soaking up the art form with other theater students, including Avril and a bumbling young theater major named Ben Hughes who discovered his talent lay not in acting but directing. We dubbed ourselves “The Misfits” after the 1961 John Huston movie starring Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe, mostly because none of us felt like we fit in anywhere else. We were a tight-knit group in and out of the classroom, writing and performing student productions, blocking our scenes, and trying our hand at improvisation. We pooled together our meager dollars to root through vintage clothing stores in Chicago for authentic costumes and crazy props.
We fought off butterflies fluttering in our underfed stomachs each opening night, peering through the thick black curtain and counting heads under the houselights of the campus theater. We were young romantics, dreaming of somehow making a career out of pretending.
What’s the best part of acting? It’s the indescribable feeling of being someone you are and someone you’re not, all at the same time. Acting is finding a character that’s in you, forgetting yourself, and then bringing out this whole other person. Character is all that matters when you’re onstage.
“I never do this,” Sydney told me one night outside Chicago’s Lookingglass Theatre after a midseason performance of Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie. She handed me her business card, which I was understandably leery to take. We stood outside the theater chatting, wrapped in heavy wool scarves and thick winter coats to stave off Lake Michigan’s bitter winds. Her cheeks were pink from the chill, and I remember thinking she wasn’t made for exposure to the elements. Her trademark designer glasses, oversized purple frames, fogged with every breath that puffed out of her round face.
“Call me next week if you think you can stand talking to a real agent,” Sydney said, as if there were hardly a worse thing a person could do.
“Sydney will be thrilled you’ve landed a role in the first New York revival of Apartment 19 in thirty years,” Avril said now.
“I know, but I’ve wanted to avoid ‘the conversation.’”
“Which conversation?”
“The one that follows a thirty-year-old actress who hasn’t worked in a year. The gentle pep talk your agent gives you when she knows your career is over.”
Avril waved my argument away with a brush of her delicate hand. “You’re crazy. Sydney will be thrilled you’re here. You should call her this morning to let her know.”
“Avril, Sydney and I haven’t spoken in six months,” I confessed. “We stopped talking after Grease ended, when there wasn’t a job out there for me and we both felt awkward with her ‘something will turn up’ talks.”
“But all that’s changed now. You’re back on your feet, on Broadway no less. Sydney will love hearing the news.”
I blew across the surface of my coffee again before taking a sip. The flavor was strong and black, and by the time I took my second sip, I realized that Avril was right. Sure, I was broke, and going back into the world of unemployment in six weeks, and my acting job didn’t involve any real stage acting. And, yeah, I was single without prospects and almost every stitch of clothing I owned was still locked away in my checked suitcase, lost somewhere in the dungeons of LaGuardia or maybe Philly. But I wasn’t going to worry, and not just because I had a good cup of coffee and a temporary roof over my head. I had at least two other incalculably good things going for me: my vivid memory of God’s well-timed rescue, and my belief He could do it again whenever He pleased.
“I’ll call her,” I said, clinking my cup to hers.
“Happy new year.”
I showered in a tiny white-tiled bathroom Avril had “colorized” by adding a yellow daisy curtain, a matching floor rug, and photographs of wildflowers arranged on the wall beside the medicine cabinet.
I dressed in dark slacks I’d stuffed in my carry-on and buttoned up the black chemise Avril had purchased for me the night before, wearing it untucked. Judging from the full-length mirror in the bedroom, everything fit the look of a New York winter: basic flats, a red wool scarf I borrowed from Avril, and finally, my made-for-Manhattan leather jacket.
“Can you get yourself back to the subway?” Avril asked as I cut across the living room and rattled open the latches and chain locks on the apartment door.
“Think so. See you at the Carney later, right?”
“Right after your rehearsal with Tabby,” Avril said, teasing me as she refilled her coffee. I gave her a friendly “oh, shut up” look before closing the door behind me.
Life had been so easy in Chicago with Avril, and our yearlong stint in Grease was the icing on the cake. Avril played the female lead, Sandy, and I was one of the sassy (but nameless) Pink Ladies. It didn’t matter that my name wasn’t written in lights on a marquee, and I really didn’t think much about it. I was happy to be working in a career field known for an 85 percent unemployment rate.
What kept me financially afloat was a commercial I shot for a nighttime cold medicine, Drowz-U-Tab. That one-day commercial shoot rewarded me with $8,500 per quarter in residuals, a “performance” fee paid to actors whenever the commercial aired on TV. $30,000 for one day of sitting up in bed and pretending to suffer the insomnia associated with a runny nose. The truth was, after that first check arrived, I never slept more like a baby.
But all good things must come to an end. The last Drowz-U-Tab check arrived the week after the plush red curtains closed on Ben Hughes’s all-that-and-a-milkshake production of Grease. That’s when Avril boarded a jet to Boston for the next act in her breezy, triumphant career, and I was set adrift in a sea of icebergs.
I stepped off the subway car in midtown Manhattan, a short twenty-minute ride. The smell of hot tar and diesel fuel thickened the air like the breath of a dragon. I walked the remaining blocks to the dance studio, studying the faces of New Yorkers on the street. It was time for Scene 2 with Tabby Walker. I prayed I’d do better this time, hold my tongue, and be the person my faith said I was.
With closed eyes I recited my lines, practicing a Zen-like concentration. I stood in the middle of the makeshift stage Tabby and I had constructed using folding chairs and an Asian rug we found rolled up in a closet. I juggled the recitation of Audrey Bradford’s wo
rds with hitting my mark or remembering to bolt out of a chair when I recited a certain line in Act 1. After I’d surprised Tabby by knowing the script off book the day before, she’d decided to up the ante on New Year’s Day, running me through all the stage blocking for Act 1 and 2 in a single morning. What was her problem?
Tabby threw a line to me from her do-it-yourself director’s chair, Ben’s master script open on her lap like a fifty-state road atlas. I began to perspire as I concentrated on my lines and moved to the correct stage positions Tabby had marked out on the rug and the studio floor. I thought about the difference watching Ben’s rehearsal DVD would have made, but it was too late for that now. I also ignored the dirty looks Tabby gave me when I messed up, and just did the best I could.
After a long monologue, I stood in character, eyes still closed, waiting for Tabby to throw me my next cue. Silence. I opened my eyes to find Tabby lost in a text message on her cell phone. I cleared my throat.
“Okay, we’ve been at this long enough,” she said. “It’s almost eleven thirty. Someone is supposed to bring lunch here so we don’t have to leave. Since she’s not here, I suggest we take a break while I go see what the problem is.”
Tabby slid off her perch on the wooden bar stool, dropped her master script to the floor, and rounded the corner out of sight.
I let the weight of concentration fall off my shoulders like a pack from a mule and wandered off the improvised stage, taking a dancer’s towel from a folded stack near the doorway to dab my face and forehead. How long had it been since I’d worked so hard and sweated like this? On the wall opposite the mirrors, I took a sip from an old turn-wheel drinking fountain like I hadn’t seen since grade school. I grasped the star-shaped gear, turned it away from me, and bent down to taste the cool water arcing from its spigot.
From my position at the drinking fountain, I could hear Tabby talking on her cell phone around the corner.
“I walked her through the script and we’re working on blocking … like I said, not great. I mean, I respect your decision, Ben, but we both know we could have called in Tira Bancroft, Melanie Catsburn, Elizabeth Benton—any one of them could have nailed this, and they’re all local. What? I guess, but Ben, I’m basically teaching a rudimentary acting class today. Harper’s so far behind the rest of the cast she isn’t … yes, she knows her lines, but … yes, she’s hitting the blocking, but …”
Tabby’s voice rose and fell like waves in a sea of churning drama. It was clear that Tabby didn’t care if I overheard her.
“Whatever you say, Ben. I was a professional when I woke up this morning, and I’ll … right, if you want her to work, I’ll make Harper work.”
It was the last I heard of their conversation. Tabby’s heavy footsteps descended the stairwell to the street below, where I heard the outside metal door hit the wall with a smack.
I took liberty with the break, lying down on the rug to catch my breath. I slowed my breathing and tried to relax every aching muscle in my body. God had showed Himself again, protecting me from Tabby’s sniper fire. I thanked Him, like I’d done the night before, for bringing me to New York. And for sending Bella to run into me at the used bookstore on Michigan Avenue in Chicago when my life was a mess.
Bella had invited me to the stone church on LaSalle Street. She’d held my hands when they trembled, sat with me on the back row in the church. Listened quietly while I cried, and prayed with me when I told her how hard life was, how hopeless I felt. She shared her faith with me, told me she didn’t believe everything was hopeless, and asked if I believed Jesus had risen from the dead, and “was anything impossible for God?”
Two months before Christmas I’d been baptized. Bella flew home to North Dakota before Christmas break, and Ben called to invite me to New York just days after Christmas. Just like that, things had fallen into place after a year of telephones that wouldn’t ring. I felt like a blind trapeze artist, somehow catching the bar with chalky hands at the peak of its swing. I had no clue how the trick was done, only that I wasn’t the one doing it.
Ten minutes later, Tabby returned with sandwiches. I sat up on the rug, then stood to my feet and made my way toward her in the doorway.
“That took a few minutes,” she said. “I had to sharpen my teeth in someone’s hide.”
Tabby dropped a brown deli sack on top of the upright piano. I heard one of the low notes vibrate inside the wooden shell.
“Is something wrong?” I asked.
Tabby snorted. “In my job, there’s always something wrong. I explicitly told her to bring the sandwiches to the studio, not the theater. So, what does she do? She takes the sandwiches to the theater. Unbelievable.”
“I overheard your conversation with Ben,” I said, because I couldn’t pretend I hadn’t.
She darted her eyes toward me.
“So,” she remarked. “Ben wants you as Helen’s backup, that’s the way it goes.”
Tabby wadded up her sandwich bag into a tight ball. She tossed it at the small trash basket near the door, and her shot hit the rim and ricocheted out the studio door.
Thoughts of Bella’s care for me were still fresh on my mind, as was a trace of regret for not apologizing to Tabby the day before. I decided to extend an olive branch, hoping she wouldn’t snap it off with her teeth.
“Tabby, I was surprised when I got Ben’s phone call too,” I said. “But I think things happen for a reason. I appreciate the time you’ve devoted these last two days, and I hope as the show moves forward, you and I can learn to get along.”
She recoiled, flashing a look that was something between condescension and total dismissal.
“Harper, you and I are not going to be friends. It’s my job to make sure you can take Helen’s place for a night in the unlikely event we have to send you out onstage. But thankfully, it’s not in my job description to be your buddy because I don’t have the time or the interest.”
She picked up her cell phone, eyes scanning up and down the screen like she was reading another text message. I wanted to say something kind and brilliant, like Bella could. I wanted us to be friends, not adversaries, but my mind was a blank.
“Let’s eat,” Tabby said. “I want to wrap up as quickly as possible this afternoon. I have to get back to the theater. It’s the first day of dress rehearsal, and I can think of a hundred other things I’d rather be doing.”
By two o’clock on New Year’s Day, the show’s costume designer, Phyllis Holcromb, had fitted all eleven cast members into their costumes with the help of her assistant, Mira.
My exhaustive morning rehearsal with Tabby over, I milled about backstage marveling at the transformation of the cast wearing their costumes. Harriet Greene pointed back with her thumb as she exited the fitting room.
“Harper, I think Phyllis is looking for you. She has costumes for you to try on.”
Harriet was wearing her landlord’s costume, a man’s tan slacks and vest over a white business shirt. Though the role was originally written for a man, Ben recast the landlord, Mr. Hedges, with a rotund African-American woman, Ms. Hedges. I’d seen Harriet at rehearsal the day before, joking around with some of the other actors.
“Thanks,” I said, entering the wardrobe room.
“There you are,” Phyllis said, as if she’d been looking for me all morning. She spoke with two pins pressed together in her mouth, hemming a costume at a sewing machine. She took the pins out. “Your costumes are over there, Harper. Ben gave me your sizes and sent me shopping, but you’ll have to try everything on. You’re the last I have today.”
Phyllis pointed to a rolling wardrobe rack half filled with costume changes. An elegant black evening dress caught my eye, hung on the rack’s end with a string of gaudy large pearls looped over the hanger.
“Size six, right?”
“I’m a size four,” I told her.
Phyllis stopped the sewing machine.
“Shoes, dear. Size six.”
She pointed to four cardboard shoeboxes sitting on the bottom rack below my wardrobe. I crouched down and shimmied the lid off the box on top. Inside, a hot pair of black designer heels rested in a bundle of thin white packing paper.
“These shoes are amazing,” I said. I felt the soft Italian leather against my fingertips, remembering the life I’d once lived.
I stood up to thumb through my costumes. A vintage 1950s black cocktail dress, the evening gown, black wet-leather pants like a rock star might wear, a frilly chemise as red as bloody roses. Phyllis joined me to admire the eccentric collection.
“Well, what do you think?” Phyllis asked.
“They’re beautiful,” I said, holding up the short cocktail skirt against me, admiring it in the large oval of mirror on a stand. Phyllis looked pleased with her work.
“I found that at Gargoyle, a vintage clothing store off Broadway. Ben called me and specifically asked for a drastically different look for you than he wanted for Helen.”
“What do you mean?”
“He said he wanted Helen’s Audrey Bradford to look like she rarely goes out, and your Audrey Bradford to look like she never stays in.”
Phyllis pulled the plastic cover off the dress for me in one quick motion. “You’ll look and feel gorgeous in this gown, Harper. It’s Versace.”
“Oh my. It’s too bad I’ll never wear it.”
“Well”—Phyllis tilted her head sympathetically—“it’s a funny last-minute detail, but Ben gets these ideas, and he calls me at odd hours from the back of taxi cabs or wherever he might be. I just jot down his impressions for costumes and hit the boutiques.”
I ducked behind the changing screen and emerged minutes later in the long black Versace gown. Even in bare feet it was gorgeous, and powerful. I felt like I was someone else watching me in the mirror. Tabby stopped dead when she entered the fitting room and saw me.
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