My image-consulting lessons with Sylvia abruptly ended.
But Martha stepped in. She helped my mother groom me for stardom. She prepped me for Juilliard and New York. My CV and headshots were set up, with photographs of multiple looks: they clicked and snapped me in my Vogue winter look in a woollen hat. Click. And the terrified girl with tears in her eyes. Click. The tough-girl shot with the hard face. Click. And the feminine look, complete with lace-frilled top, curled hair, and makeup. Click. Click. Click.
Meanwhile, Mother arranged auditions for television shows and theatre productions: at Saidye Bronfman, the Centaur, CBC. She told everyone she was my manager. I envisioned her as a caricature of a white male producer with a cigar hanging out of her mouth, round glasses, and a moustache: Oh yes, my daughter started professionally on Sesame Street. Joanne is in a new TV show for teenagers. Or, I turned down the Mickey Mouse Club when they were scouting. She was only five at the time, didn’t want her to move away from home. Then an independent filmmaker asked if I could do a nude scene at the age of twelve. After seriously considering it, Mother, thankfully, said no. Thankfully.
I had friends now, too. Steffin, Georgia, and Patrick were in Martha’s company. Steffin was seventeen, fat, gay, and sarcastic, with long dirty-blond hair. Georgia was twelve, had light-brown skin, and wore a black miniskirt with fishnets. I would sneak peeks at her when she wasn’t looking; something about her made me breathe a little faster than usual. Patrick was also gay, with long brown hair dyed jet-black and a faux-fur scarf. He dressed like a girl and used Nerf balls he had cut in half for breasts. He lived in foster care and called himself Splash. He changed his name as often as he changed homes, and that was often.
The four of us were rehearsing our original stage play in the large main space of our studio in Saint-Henri. We were the leads. Martha was shouting stage directions at us all when a boy I hadn’t seen before entered the studio. He had thick blond hair and beautiful green eyes. He wore dirty faded jeans and a T-shirt, with a pack of smokes sitting on his shoulder under his shirt like a shoulder pad and a cigarette lodged above his ear. His name was Clint.
Steffin and Splash salivated over his Marlboro Man good looks, trying to outdo each other without speaking as they stretched, coughed, and waved their hands. If gay was visible, it was hard to miss those two. Georgia couldn’t have cared less. She bit her nails, then looked at her fingers. I tried to seem uninterested, but I couldn’t help but stare at Clint.
He was the male version of Georgia, but older, and was as overtly masculine as she was feminine, and just as hypnotic. I had been on a few dates up to that point, had kissed a few boys. The only girl who made me feel like kissing her was Georgia, but I shied away and didn’t know if what I was experiencing was real, or if she would want me to. Being with a girl seemed taboo, too intimate, terrifying, and I didn’t dare give it much conscious thought. Clint was a boy many girls seemed attracted to, as well as adult women, even Martha, who sexualized everyone, young or not. She had a thirty-five-year-old friend named Bev who used to tell me she thought Clint was attractive. She used to drive him around, and many years later Clint told me Bev gave him a blowjob in the front seat of her car.
My friends and I headed to Mount Royal after rehearsal to do what teenagers like us did: drink, do drugs, make out. We made our own curfews, defied the rules of our guardians or parents. We were the raw ones, or the queer ones, and we were incredibly stubborn. We made fun how and when we wanted.
I invited Clint to come with us, and though he seemed resistant because of my age (he thought I was too young), he came anyway. He kept calling me “kid,” which annoyed me and yet inspired me to pursue him. It was dark out when we climbed the mountain, the cross shining brightly above us in the warm air. Steffin was flirting with Clint, which he did with all the boys.
“Come on, what you so afraid of? Think I’m going to do something to you?” Steffin struck a flamboyant pose. We all laughed except for Clint.
“Lighten up. You can’t catch being gay.” I was the last person to give advice on lightening up. I was the girl who drew ink drawings of coffins with dead flowers around them and earned the nickname Black-Monday. But I was intent on kissing this boy, and I did. We didn’t stop kissing until I heard laughter coming from behind the bushes. I smiled at Clint and took off at a run toward Georgia, Splash, and Steffin.
Meanwhile, I was in the final phase of my rehearsals for Julliard, a solo performance of my monologues: Romeo and Juliet, Medea, and a contemporary piece. Martha and I worked weekly, and the studio was converted into a theatre, filled with about fifty chairs, tables, hors d’oeuvres, and wine for the audience.
At the end of my last monologue, I heard the applause and bowed while people yelled “Bravo!” Clint sat behind my mother, clapping. We smiled at each other, and Mother turned to look at him, then back at me. I looked away from her.
Adults were getting drunk, Tom Waits blared through the speakers, and my one-woman show turned into a party. Even my mother wiggled about in her best dress, made of floral-patterned velvet, while she nibbled on cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches, accepting praise for my talents like a proud peacock.
Georgia, Splash, Steffin, and I snuck into a washroom stall and drank red wine from plastic cups. Splash pulled out a spliff and we lit up.
“Kiss me, Splash.” Steff touched Splash’s thigh.
“Oh please, Miss Thing,” Splash said, “you don’t have enough money.”
Georgia giggled, sitting on my lap, cupping my neck with her hands for balance. I tried to ignore the shivers I felt while my friend cradled my legs. I was incredibly attracted to her, but I was dating Clint and not quite aware of what was going on with my body.
“What are you kids doing in there?” It was my mother.
“Is that marijuana?” asked another woman from behind the door.
We heard taps turning on while Splash and Steffin laughed. “We’re busy, Mrs. V.”
“Is Joanne in there?”
Georgia put her hand over my mouth and Steffin responded no.
“She’s not with Clint, is she?”
How did she even know his name?
“Seriously, Steff … will you take some advice from me if I give it to you?” my mother asked.
“Uhhh, no,” he replied.
The boys laughed. We were rude.
“I can’t believe your mouth, young man, and for goodness’ sake, next time use the boy’s washroom, will you?”
Georgia and I suppressed our giggles. She whispered in my ear before my mother left the bathroom. Her lips so close sent another shiver up my spine. I tried to pretend I felt nothing, even though every part of me wanted to kiss her.
CHAPTER NINE
NEW YORK. It felt like home with its tall buildings, lights, yellow cabs, theatres, corner carts, trolleys, horses, and Central Park. Men and women stood on every street corner with pretzel and hotdog carts. There were stores with cigarette packs lining walls, key chains with apples, portable stereos, beat boxes with speakers of every size, watches, calculators, and gadgets, and restaurants everywhere. Electric.
It was fall, and the winds were so strong they blew Lou right off the sidewalk, which was the start of her disdain for the entire trip. We ate at the popular Leo Lindy’s, a deli where black-and-white photographs and signatures of stars lined the walls. The menu included the Carol Burnett side dish, the Jack Benny egg dish, and the Lucille Ball special platter. We saw the Rockettes perform at Radio City Music Hall, Agnes of God off-Broadway with Amanda Plummer (whom I worked with many years later), and A Chorus Line on Broadway. I loved every second of it.
This was the city that held my childhood fantasies right in reach. The possibility of becoming a professional actor felt real.
Juilliard.
I had to audition three times after an 8:00 a.m. check-in. Hundreds of us lined the hallways of the school, speaking to ourselves, stretching, clearing our throats from morning until night. We were ushered into a l
arge room and asked to choose an animal, become the animal, then take a bath as the animal. I was a cat, meowing and scratching away at the side of the tub, finding a way to leap out, stretching on an imaginary blanket to purr, occasionally licking my front paw. I watched all the other hopefuls wildly behaving like animals all around me and took in all the older auditioning actors while adults walked around us with their clipboards and pens, marking sheets.
We all waited as time slowly passed and we continued to prepare for the first round of auditions. Some were visibly nervous, sweating as they read out loud from their monologues scribbled on paper, or listening to beat boxes with headsets, practising in whispers in corners and stairways everywhere. I was taking in my competitors, who felt like kindred spirits. All our dreams hung in the air, and we would have to crush each other to achieve them. Hundreds of us would be cut down to forty for the second round, where we would have to audition again, and then, after six hours of auditions and cuts, we would be cut down to five hopefuls. A notice would go up on a corkboard each time, until we were down to the last short list.
When I looked up at the list tacked to the board, I saw the typed font with my name, Joanne Vannicola, second from the top. There had been so many disappointed faces leaving the building all day, but here I was in the top five, so close it could be real; this life, this city, could maybe be my home. I wanted it, let myself believe I could live there. Prior to this I had been mostly going through the motions, not really thinking ahead, just getting through the days.
I had an interview with four adults who were seated behind a large table in a room with ceiling-high windows. I sat in the middle of the mostly empty room, facing the table.
“You’re only thirteen years old.”
“Yes.”
“We’ve never had anyone your age in the theatre department in our program. We’ve had the occasional musician, but the theatre department here is different than the musical department,” one of the men said. He had a moustache, a beard, and a soothing voice. “It’s emotionally intensive. How would you feel about leaving home at the age of thirteen?” he asked.
“Don’t know, good. I would feel good,” I said nervously, but didn’t know how to answer the questions. My mouth was dry as I shyly started to answer with one-word responses.
“Do you know the city?”
“No.”
“Do you know anyone in New York?”
“No.”
“Have you ever been away from home?”
I stumbled over my words. “You mean on purpose?”
“Pardon me?” asked a beautiful woman sitting beside the man — the kind of beautiful woman I had seen in movie pictures, with long coiffed hair and makeup and wearing an expensive-looking dress with matching gloves and handbag.
“What do you mean ‘on purpose’?”
I jiggled my legs up and down in the chair and rattled, “’Cause a kid could be away from home if they ran away, or they could be away from home if someone was keeping them for a while if they fought with their mother all the time or social services paid a visit, or they could be in a foster home like my friend Patrick. Well, he changed his name to Splash, and anyway, his parents didn’t want him and his mother is crazy. Or I guess they could go to a place like Juilliard and that could be on purpose, right?”
The room fell silent. Four faces looked back at me, paper and pens poised in front of them. I was not prepared to speak unscripted. I had only worked on the monologues and was confident in the characters and my ability to inhabit them, but I could not hold a conversation or find the language to express my thoughts. I was afraid I had blown it. My legs shook up and down and my foot hit the floor over and over, tap, tap, tap.
Don’t sniffle or rub your nose or slouch, I said to myself, squirming in the chair and adjusting my body. Two of the adults looked at each other before the man spoke. “I think we’re done. I want you to know something, Joanne. You were very, very good. If we don’t accept you this year, we want you to come back when you are older, okay?”
“Okay.”
They would be accepting only three out of the five of us. Mother and I looked at the last sheet and my name wasn’t on it. I turned to look back down the hall as we walked toward the exit, and the beautiful woman was staring back at me. She smiled and waved. I waved back. I wanted to be with her and start a new life, to walk the hallways for years. I hadn’t realized how much I wanted it until it was over; I hadn’t given it much thought, what living in New York could be like. I tried to cover my disappointment and faced my mother as if it didn’t matter. Her disappointment was visible enough for the two of us, even if she didn’t speak.
I replayed in my head the Juilliard meeting after three rounds of exhaustive auditions, wondered what I could have done to change their minds. I hadn’t been prepared for conversation, only for rehearsed dialogue, but if I could have said anything, if I had only been prepared, I would have told them, “I must leave. I must be in this school. I am more ready than all the twenty-year-olds and I need it more. I don’t care if I don’t have family or friends in New York, just accept me.” It could have changed my life, the course, could have changed what was to come for the next few years. If only. The real dialogue would have been “I need out, I need to get away from my mother, from the suffocating pressure, and New York might save me.”
If only the young were taught to communicate with adults. Maybe some were, but no one I knew.
Mother was gloomy and Lou was unbearable. She swore and muttered to herself the whole walk away from Juilliard.
“Can’t you be happy for your sister? Don’t you want to have fun?” Mother said. It was another cold day in New York.
Lou shouted back, “Why don’t you leave me alone!” Her back rounded as she stared down a city drain like it might catch the tears she hid from our mother. Lou hated being with us in New York. She was the tagalong; I knew it but tried not to give it attention.
An appointment was set up for me with an A-list talent agency that represented models and actresses. Mother and Lou were outside in the waiting room while I sat across from a man in front of a large wooden desk covered with papers and photographs. He stared at me for a while, then looked at my photos and resumé while I nervously waited for him to talk to me. He looked up at me for a few beats, and then waved his hand in the air, gesturing for me to move. “Stand up.”
I stood up and he continued to stare.
“Turn around slowly,” he said.
I felt naked, exposed. I dared not speak back or say no. I was not trained for no, and men in positions of power seemed to know they held the strings.
I turned slowly, faced him, and waited for him to speak.
“Lose five pounds and come back again to see me.” He stared at me without uttering another word.
I ran out of his office and past my mother and Lou, who were submerged in cushy leather-upholstered chairs, reading magazines. I ran until I was outside.
They both tried to keep up with me, my mother asking what had happened. I couldn’t tell her how he’d undressed me with his eyes like she did. Everything reduced to five pounds of body weight and flesh.
Too young.
Five pounds too fat.
I believed I was ready, had made it to the top five in auditions at Juilliard. I wanted it. But after all those months of preparation, it was over.
I wouldn’t be moving to New York.
CHAPTER TEN
AFTER NEW YORK, Lou and I rarely spoke to each other. Lou had taken to reading tarot cards and smoking quite a bit of weed. Our room turned into a mini-shrine with candles, rocks, beads, and knick-knacks. We had little in common other than the hatred of our mother, a love for music, and old wounds, but she was still my big sister and could take me down. Normally we argued, so it was odd when she did speak up for me.
“I have beer, you guys. Please stay. Don’t leave,” Mother said to Clint and me, begging us not to leave her alone.
“Get out, you guys. You don�
�t have to stay with her,” Lou said.
Mother’s hands were curled into fists. “Joanne, Clint. Stay!”
Lou defended us, telling our mother that we were not her babysitter, but the fight escalated until our mother snapped.
“You mind your business, you little bitch.” Mother grabbed Lou by the hair at the back of her head and repeatedly called her a bitch.
Clint and I escaped the fight and ran under the bridge on Cavendish Boulevard. We avoided talking about what had happened, only throwing out one-word encapsulations while we ran: nuts, fucked, freaks. We ended up at the Rose Bowl bowling alley at the end of the block, where we played Space Invaders and pinball, and smoked cigarettes.
A small group of men in blue shirts and dress pants were bowling, and while pins crashed and fell, Clint and I wandered away for privacy.
“I’m just going to kiss you right here,” he said, kissing my neck and lips and touching me over my shirt. He gently asked, “Is this okay?”
I nodded yes and looked to see that we were still alone, then I practised touching him over his jeans. We kissed endlessly, staying out as late as we felt like. I wanted Clint to be as far away from my family as possible. But it was dark and we decided to make our way back to the apartment. We stole one last kiss before going in together.
“Finally, you’re home. I’ve been waiting for you,” Mother said. She was seated at the table in her white nightgown.
“Waiting for what?” I asked. “Where’s Lou?”
“Out.” Mother looked at me and changed the subject. “I bought a case of beer.” She stood up and went into the kitchen.
Entering our apartment was like squeezing inside clothing too small, everything tight and uncomfortable. My mother sat down with two beers, one for herself and one for Clint. I went to get a beer from the fridge.
All We Knew But Couldn't Say Page 5
