Positive thoughts. Positive thoughts.
It’s not always easy to think positive thoughts.
Um.
Just start somewhere.
Accomplishments.
Positive things in my life right now.
Um.
I’m alive.
The obvious. Always a good place to start.
I had a good time with Clark over the holidays.
Not an accomplishment, exactly, but still, a fun thing to think about.
Clark and I met at freshman orientation and were inseparable from that day on. Everyone who knew us assumed we’d get married. We never talked about it exactly, but I’m pretty sure we both thought the same thing.
Then Clark only got into law school in Chicago—not in New York at Columbia, like we’d planned. He asked me to come with him, he wanted us to move in together: “They have great theater in Chicago, too,” he’d said, but I couldn’t give up on New York, not before I’d given it a try. So we made one of those “agreements” to sort of take a break and see where we were after he finished school in three years. That’s where my deadline came from—I figured if he could get a law degree in that amount of time, it was long enough for me to make some measurable progress, too. I’ve had a few dates since then and he probably has, too, but nothing serious. And when we see each other it’s still like no time has passed. He tells me every time he knows we’re going to end up together.
“Are you sure you won’t come back with me now?” he asked last time, as I waited with him at his gate at the airport.
“I just—not yet.”
“Okay,” he said. And then, with a wink: “Call me when you change your mind.”
Sometimes, when the tips are bad and my feet ache, I wonder why I’m putting off the inevitable. I wonder why I don’t just pick up the phone and move to Chicago rather than continuing to attempt something that has a less than five percent success rate.
But for some reason, I don’t.
As much fun as I have with Clark, it can also be confusing when I see him. I miss him, a lot sometimes …
Shit.
Do you see why focusing on the positive is such tricky business? You’ve got the slippery guy for a minute, and then he turns all negative on you. I’ll be more specific—I’ll just think positive work thoughts. Thinking about my personal life is not helping me. I came to New York to be an actress, not a girlfriend or a happy person.
Positive thoughts about work.
Well.
I did book that one job.
Before Thanksgiving, right after Dan moved in, I got a small regional commercial, my first, for a local discount clothing store called Sally’s Wear House. It was a holiday promotional to run for just a few weeks, featuring really bulky sweaters, made out of acrylic and ramie, whatever that is. Mine had a gray and white argyle pattern and padded shoulders with white fur trim around the neck and cuffs, and I had to wrap my arms around myself in a hug, and say, “Yummy, Yummy.” In another shot, I had to jump up in the air and yell, “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas!” Then, I had to look up at absolutely nothing and say, “Ohhh, snowflakes.”
The three of us went out to the upstairs Chinese place, whose name we can never remember, to celebrate. Then the commercial happened to come on a few weeks later, while we were all together watching Law and Order, and first we all screamed, then Jane practically fell down laughing. Not in a mean way, but she just couldn’t believe I’d managed to appear happy while wearing such an ugly sweater. It was shocking to see myself on television. No one had thought to set the VCR, and it was gone in what felt like a few seconds. All I could remember after it was over was thinking that my face seemed round, and I looked much taller than the other girl I was with.
“I’m a giant!” I said, covering my face and peering out between my fingers.
“You’re not a giant,” Jane said, still laughing/coughing/hicupping. “You’re a fucking great actress is what you are. I totally believed you loved that sweater that came from where angora goes to die.”
“Those snowflakes they added looked so fake,” I said, still in shock.
“But you looked great,” Jane said. “Really pretty.”
Finally, Dan spoke up.
“So, it’s an ad for Christmas sweaters?” Once again, nailing the obvious.
“Um, yes, Dan,” Jane said, rolling her eyes at me. “I think we can all agree that what we learned in those thirty seconds is that the commercial was for Christmas sweaters.”
Dan nodded slowly, as if he were making a very important decision about something, then he smiled at me.
“Well, Franny, I felt that,” he said. “It was very Christmas-y. You looked like Christmas, Fran.”
What does that even mean, to say someone “looks like” Christmas? Jane and I shared a look, and I immediately began to formulate my snappy comeback, the way I do whenever I’m complimented. But something about his sincerity stopped me, and for some reason, for once in my life, I nodded at Dan and blushed a little, and just kept my mouth shut.
I made seven hundred dollars on the sweater job, the biggest amount by far I’ve ever seen on a single check. But I haven’t booked anything else since. It was probably a fluke. I’ll probably never work again.
Positive thoughts.
Well.
I got that one job.
And today I have a chance to get one more.
There. I did it.
When the subway arrives, I find a seat and take a deep breath. The D train between Brooklyn and Manhattan is one of my favorite lines, because at one point the train emerges from underground and goes high over the river along the Manhattan Bridge. Sometimes I put on my headphones and listen to music, sometimes I do the New York Times crossword, and sometimes I read, but no matter what else I’m doing, I consider it very bad luck if I forget to look up as the train crosses over the East River, even just for a second, before it goes back underground. It’s just a superstition, but looking at the river, the boats, the sign leaving Brooklyn that says “Watchtower” in big red letters, is a ritual that reminds me I am small, I am one of thousands—no—one of millions of people who looked at this river before me, from a boat or a car or the window of the D train, who came to New York with a dream, who achieved it or didn’t, but nonetheless made the same effort I’m making now. It keeps things in perspective, and strangely, it gives me hope.
3
The casting place that’s holding the session for Niagara dishwashing detergent has one of those bathroom-stall-sized ancient New York elevators that move so slowly you think it might be stuck, and I’m crammed in with what appear to be two child actors and their mom. They’re twins, I think, a boy and a girl, with reddish hair and freckles. The little girl flashes me a big smile that looks like it’s been perfected by hours of practice in the mirror. She twirls a fat, shiny curl around and around her finger.
“Pretty hair,” I tell her.
“I sleep on a special silk pillow so the curls don’t smoosh,” she replies, beaming.
“Fancy,” I say, smiling back at her but achieving nowhere near her wattage. “You guys want to push the button for me? I’m going to four.”
“I’ll push it!” the little boy offers.
“No! I’ll push it,” his sister says, giving him a little shove. “It’s my callback.”
The little boy shrinks back from the elevator buttons and I smile sympathetically at their mom, but she seems mesmerized by a spot somewhere north of the top of my head, so I decide to take a sudden interest in the laces of my shoes and endure the rest of the long, creaky ride in silence. Even in the best of elevators, I think, there’s no place where time passes so slowly.
Upstairs, the waiting room is crowded, which means there must be a few different casting calls. There are boys and girls near the age of the elevator twins; a couple of men in their fifties, both in suit and tie; and several girls who remind me of me, but a better, more put-together me. The me who would play me in the TV
movie of the fictional life of the real me.
I sign in.
Name
Time arrived
Time scheduled
Agency
Soc Sec #
While writing my information in the tiny spaces allotted by the sign-in sheet, I try to subtly scan and analyze the list of those who’ve auditioned before me. I’m a sign-in sheet sleuth looking for clues. I’m trying to figure out how many people they’ve seen already today, and if I know any of them, and if they’re from my agency, and if they were on time, and if they have neater handwriting than mine. Anything at all to indicate what a person who books a job does differently from what I do. If my appointment were five minutes earlier, would I book the job? If I made a smiley face out of the “o” in Penelope, like the person who signed in a few people in front of me did, would I work more? If I were the first person they saw today instead of the tenth, would I—
“Franny? Is that you? It’s Franny, right?”
My cheeks go hot. I’ve been caught. I drop the pen more quickly than a truly innocent person would, and look up.
“Franny Banks, right? From Stavros’s class? Or have I gone totally koo-koo bananas?” The girl standing before me laughs, doubles over with laughter in fact, like someone who might truly be koo-koo bananas, and continues laughing at a volume that says she doesn’t care that the other twenty or so people in the waiting room are all staring at her.
I’ve never seen this person before, and I don’t know how she knows me or my acting teacher, John Stavros, but the first thing I’m struck by is her incredibly long, shiny blond hair. Also, she’s tiny, like a doll who became a person, or a person pretending to be a doll, with her hands elegantly angled, fingers outstretched and ready to hold a variety of objects, and her toes forever slightly pointed, waiting for their interchangeable plastic high-heeled shoes. She’s wearing a thick stack of jangly gold bracelets, and her tiny wrist looks like it could snap under their weight. Even though it’s a bleak day in January, she’s wearing white jeans, perfectly fitted and to the ankle, as if she’s Mary Tyler Moore on a special Hawaiian-vacation episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show.
“Um, yeah, that’s me. I’m Franny.” I feel like I’m towering over her. I suddenly feel awkward, like they gave me an extra arm by accident and I can’t figure out how to use it.
“I knew it! Oh, God, you must think I’m so rude. Hello! I’m Penelope Schlotzsky. I know, terrible name, right? They’re probably going to make me change it.” She laughs again and swings her blanket of hair so that it all cascades over one shoulder. You can almost feel a breeze, it’s so thick.
I’m sort of at a loss for what to say, which rarely happens. All I want to know is who “they” are and if they have any advice for things I should change about myself.
“I’m new in class with you!” she squeals, before I can pull myself together. “I had my first class last week but I was sitting way in the back, like, petrified, so that’s why I wasn’t sure if you were you, or just someone who looks like you, but I just had to risk it and say hello because I swear to God, you were, like, the best actress. So funny. You like, really go for it. You’re going to do great in the Showcase.”
Stavros doesn’t encourage this kind of talk among his students. “Who’s better, Pacino or DeNiro?” he’ll say to us. “Don’t waste time comparing. Keep your eyes on your own paper.” And while I’m secretly thrilled by her compliments, I’m shaken by her (very loud) mention of the Showcase: the Showcase that’s looming in exactly two weeks, the Showcase we’ve been working toward for months, the Showcase that is the one opportunity we get all year to be seen by agents and directors and casting people, who come because they respect Stavros and his taste in actors. It’s a night where anything—or at least something—could happen. Last year, Mary Grace got cast in the chorus of a Broadway musical from the Showcase, and two other people got agents, and that’s how James Franklin got the screen test that eventually led to that Arturo DeNucci movie. He’s the best example of what could happen. But he’s an amazing actor—I could never hope for something that big. All I want is to get an agent, or even a meeting with an agent. That’s all I’ll let myself hope for.
“Wow, thanks!” I say. “And welcome to class. You’re going to love Stavros.”
I mean what I’m saying, but something in my voice sounds strangely insincere. I’m trying to match her enthusiasm, but with less volume, and the combination makes me sound fake, like one of those ladies who sell stretchy flowered pants on that new home shopping channel. The elastic waistband is so comfortable. You’ll live in them.
“Oh, Stavros is the best!” Penelope gushes. “So sexy, right?”
The truth is that our acting teacher is very attractive, but it embarrasses me to hear her talk about him like he’s one of us. It doesn’t seem respectful. “Well, he certainly does talk very fast,” is as close as I can come to agreeing with her.
“Right? So passionate! I’m still totally shocked I got in, especially since he doesn’t usually take people right before the Showcase. But I guess he was like, she already has an agent at Absolute, and she’s got two movies in the can, so like, you know, fine—just one more beanpole to deal with!”
This is the kind of confidence you’re supposed to have as an actress, I think. I mean, I would personally never announce that I had an agent at Absolute Artists, the best agency in town, or talk about movies I’d done, or refer to myself as a “beanpole,” especially loudly and in a room full of people. But then again, in my case, none of those things are true.
“So are you going to class from this torture session?” she says, flicking an incredibly shiny strand of blond hair back from her face. “Want to go with me to that diner on Eighth and get a salad in between?”
Salad. Oh yeah. I’m supposed to eat more salad. It just never seems appealing. In fact, I was already planning to go to “that diner” on Eighth for my usual pre-class dinner: grilled cheese, french fries, and the New York Times crossword puzzle. But for some reason I find myself making an excuse.
“I, ah, can’t. I have another, you know, torture session after this one.”
The lie comes out before I can even consider stopping it. I’m totally unprepared if she asks what my other audition is for, or where it is. Maybe I can recycle one from a few weeks ago, but what if it’s one she had, too?
Luckily, she doesn’t seem to care. “Good for you,” she says, punching me lightly on the shoulder. “You’re PERFECT for commercials. I suck at them. I totally TANKED in there.”
Somehow I doubt that Penelope “tanked” in there. I bet she seldom “tanks” anywhere. And something about the way she said I’m “perfect for commercials” makes me bristle. That’s the only explanation for what comes out of my mouth next.
“Yeah, and actually, after that, I have, um, a rehearsal, too.” I roll my eyes like, Rehearsals, pah, I have them every day.
One summer at camp, they tried to teach us to water-ski. I stood up for approximately two seconds before I fell. Forgetting everything I’d been told, I held onto the rope and was dragged, bumping across the lake, until the driver finally noticed and brought the boat to a stop. That’s the feeling I have right now, telling lie after lie to Penelope—I’m powerless to stop myself.
“Auditions and rehearsals!” Penelope exclaims, as though she’s just seen her two best friends in the whole world. “Isn’t it all so mad?”
“It is mad,” I tell her. “Mad.”
“Well, next time then. Nice to meet you, officially,” she says and shakes my hand, gold bracelets clattering and clinking. “See you on the boards!” She giggles and waves over her shoulder, a general wave that is for me, but also seems to generously include the entire room. Charisma, I think to myself. That’s what someone with charisma does to a room full of strangers. Together we watch as Penelope and her tiny white pants disappear down the hall.
I feel sort of depressed after she leaves, but I don’t know why. The spectators in the room
seem similarly unsettled. They stare after her longingly, like they miss her already and wish she would come back. Gradually, they seem to realize their entertainment won’t be returning, and one by one they go back to reading, looking at their newspapers or their commercial copy—something I should have been doing this whole time.
I must never lie again, I think. Why did I say no to Penelope and her offer of salad, besides my ambivalence regarding salad? Because she’s the type of person who uses the word “mad,” as if she thinks she’s British? Now I’ll have to go to the worse diner on Sixth Avenue, two long blocks farther away from class and much more expensive.
Keep your eyes on your own paper, I hear Stavros say, and right then, I resolve to become friends with Penelope. I imagine how wonderfully supportive I’ll be from now on, clapping loudly after every scene she does in class. I’ll be gracious, I’ll be kind, I’ll eat more salad.
“Frances Banks, you’re next,” a monotone voice says. A bored-looking girl in vintage ’50s glasses, a baby-doll dress with a suspender clip in the back, and a pair of lace-up combat boots reads my name from the sign-in sheet.
Crap. I thought I had more time. I haven’t even looked at what I’m supposed to say, not one word of it. I should have gotten here earlier, shouldn’t have spent time chatting. I was basking in the glow of compliments and having envious thoughts about hair when I should have been preparing. I can’t afford to mess up an opportunity. My heart is pounding hard and fast now.
“Ready?” she asks, with a listless half-sneer that she might intend to be a smile.
“Um, yes. Totally. Totally ready.”
I would be great in a car crash, or at giving CPR. I’d be the one you’d ask to perform the Heimlich maneuver if someone started choking in a restaurant. Because in a crisis, I get very, very calm. I’m calmer in a crisis than I am in actually calm situations. So while she puts film in the Polaroid camera, I quickly scan the copy, remaining calm, focusing on my lines, ignoring the stage directions. They won’t be helpful for this kind of commercial anyway. They’re usually descriptions like “she inhales the intoxicating scent of the fluffy towel.” There’s never anything real: “She sits at laundromat breathing through her mouth due to sweaty guy hogging dryer nearby.”
Someday, Someday, Maybe: A Novel Page 3
