Just North of Whoville

by Turiskylie, Joyce

  “But you’re not broken, mama. Let me explain how this works. I can steer you in the right direction; but only you can solve your problems.”

  “What IS my problem? Am I depressed? Should I be on medication?”

  “You haven’t complained of any of the usual symptoms of depression. I think you’re just afraid.”

  “Of what?”

  “Everything. But mostly, of being happy.”

  “Who doesn’t want to be happy?”

  “Happiness isn’t just the absence of problems; it’s a state of being. That dog we talked about----the one at the pound wagging his tail. Is he happy or sad?”

  “He seems happy. I mean, he’s at the pound, but he’s happy.”

  “How do you know he’s happy?”

  “Because he’s wagging his tail.”

  “Exactly. A dog doesn’t fake being happy. He just is. And he has way less control over his life than you do. You think it sucks that your oven broke down? A dog can’t even control what you put in his dish or when you let him outside to take a shit. But he’s happy.”

  “He also has a smaller brain,” I tried to sneak in.

  “You’re missing the point!” she practically screamed at me. “Stop trying to control everything in your life, and then getting disappointed when you don’t get what you want. The universe is constantly handing you good stuff and you’re pushing it away because it’s not exactly what you wanted. Turkey pizza? Damn! That’s funny! You could have had fun with that. But no, you sat there bitching because it wasn’t turkey. If you say to a dog, ‘You wanna go for a ride?’ and you open a car door---that dog will jump right in. He don’t know where he’s going. It could be to the vet or it could be to the park. He don’t care. He just wants to go for a ride. Let life take you for a ride, Dorrie.”

  “Well….okay. I guess can do that.”

  “That ain’t good enough. Let’s try it right now,” she said as she stood up and began patting her calves and smiling as she dog-called me, “Come on, girl! Wanna go for a ride? Come on! Let’s go for a ride!”

  “Okay!” I let myself sound silly and replied, “Let’s go!”

  But I made sure to take a second glance at that diploma as I walked out the door.

  The next day at work, Jamie called me into her office.

  “How would you like to be an agent?”

  I knew it was a car door opening, but this one sounded like The Godfather asking me to “go for a little ride”.

  “We’re thinking about expanding. Models AND actors. Twice the money. Surely you have actor friends who would want to sign with an agency?”

  She said the word “agency” as if she were handing me a prank can and asking if I wanted some “peanut brittle”.

  “Well,” I tried to at least look inside the car, “I’d have to think about it. I don’t know how comfortable I’d be with being their friend and their agent. It’s just really important to me to be professional…”

  “Dorrie, what’s your back-up plan? I mean, I know you want to be a writer…”

  “Director.”

  “But what if that doesn’t work out? What are you going to do? Go to trade school and become a refrigerator repairman? You’re too young to retire and too old for porn.”

  “Porn is not in my game plan…”

  “Do you even have a game plan?”

  “Well…yeah. It’s to work really hard and keep getting better at what I do…”

  “Oh, Dorrie…” she sighed. “I know you and your friends are all trying to be professional, but the truth is---most of you are not going to make it. Those are the odds. I know you think it’s a career, but it’s a hobby. That’s how the IRS sees and, trust me, that’s how all your parents see it, too. You know what you do with a hobby? You enjoy it. And you spend money on it. Let me show you something,” she said as she rummaged thru stacks of photos on her desk. “The elf kid,” she said accusingly as she shoved photos from Timmy’s latest photo shoot in my face. “Do you really think he’s going to be a model?”

  “He’s a sweet kid. With character. And he wants it so badly. You never know,” I offered hopefully.

  “Dorrie, trust me, this kid is going nowhere. But it makes him happy pretending, doesn’t it? Look, I know how you feel about this place. You think we’re just scamming people out of their money. But we’re like a golf store. Our customers will never be pros. But they love the game. So if they want to fantasize about being pro golfers, we sell them the clubs.”

  “But you encourage them so much…”

  “And in a golf store they’ll tell you you’ve got a great swing. Look, you enjoy doing your little plays, don’t you? You’re not getting paid, but you’d probably do it till the day you died for absolutely nothing, wouldn’t you?”

  “Well, it’s what I do.”

  “Exactly. So just how are you going to pay the bills to support your hobby? I mean, “career”.

  Call me crazy, but I don’t think is how agents are offered their jobs at William Morris.

  “Why don’t you take the rest of the day off, Dorrie? I’ll pay you for the whole day---but just think about it.”

  If nothing else, the car door had opened on a half-day off work so I jumped in. Well, I jumped into a pile of wet towels and dirty laundry, but it had been a while since I’d actually seen the bottom of the laundry basket, so I figured I’d take advantage of the free time.

  As I carried my laundry down the stairs, I saw Nate walking up them.

  “Dorrie?”

  “Hey! Nate,” I said as I peered over my overflowing bag of towels and unmentionables. “Are you looking for Alex? Because he’s at work…”

  “Actually, I just wanted to leave these for you,” he said as he handed me a large envelope. “I had to stop by anyway, and was going to leave it in front of the door.”

  “Your plays?” I said, trying to maneuver my laundry bag.

  “Yeah. Just a couple of one acts. I didn’t want to scare you off with a full-length,” he laughed. “If you don’t have time, you don’t have to read them…”

  “No, I’d love to read them. Thank you. I read the adaptation you did for the show.”

  “Oh, well, that’s just… I wish I could do something more exciting with that, but… This is more what I really do.”

  It felt like a moment. Call me crazy, but it felt like we were having a little moment. It wasn’t exactly an open car door, but somehow we’d cracked a window. Halfway down the landing, an apartment door downstairs opened and a young couple kissed in the doorway. So now we had an uncomfortable moment. Made even more uncomfortable by Nate saying:

  “Alex?”

  The woman shut the door and Alex stood there with lipstick all over his face. As I stood there holding a dirty sock, I had to process a lot of information pretty quickly. With The Building Manager right next to me, I realized that I was supposed to be the cheated-on girlfriend. I tried to think back to my college improv class.

  “Alex!” I said with what I felt was the appropriate amount of disbelief, hurt, and rage.

  “Um…” he stood there. Someone had to break the silence.

  “How could you do this to me?” I cried out and nodded my head in the direction of Nate, hoping and praying he would pick up the cue.

  “It’s not what you think,” he pulled out that old chestnut.

  “Oh, really. Then what is it?”

  “Um….do you really want to talk about this now?” he said as he nodded towards Nate.

  “No. I suppose not,” I said like a character in a Noel Coward play. And then I turned my head down and away. A gesture so old it had whiskers; but I’m a director, not an actress.

  The three of us just stood there. I clearly recognized that I was the meat in a cheating sandwich. I had to take an attitude. What attitude was I supposed to take? I decided to stick with Noel Coward and announced, “I think it best if you don’t come home tonight.”

  Unfortunately, my Noel Coward comedy was playing off his
National Lampoon.

  “Soooo…I shouldn’t come ‘home’ tonight? Or ‘home’ tonight?”

  Oh no. He was going to blow it.

  “Just as I said. I think it best you don’t come home tonight,” I said, and tried to find common ground with a Monty Python nod towards the fifth floor. God, just pick up your cue. Pick up your cue!

  “All right,” he finally replied with a lowered head in the Shame Number Two pose. “I’ll get a hotel tonight.”

  Then, with his tail between his legs, he crawled down the stairs.

  “Dorrie,” Nate said as he put his hand on my shoulder, “I’m really sorry. Do you want to get coffee or something?”

  I finally get a cute, nice guy to ask me out for coffee and it’s to talk about my imaginary cheating boyfriend.

  “That’s okay,” I answered. As much as I would have loved to share a coffee, it didn’t seem right to keep dragging on the farce. “I’ll be fine.”

  And I would be---as soon as I had it out with Alex.

  I think now is a good time to say that I never particularly cared for Alex. I thought Celia could do better. I always found him a bit smarmy, tasteless, and I’m gonna go ahead and say it---cheap.

  Which is why I was not in the least surprised that when I called for a meeting, he suggested the White Castle.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” I whispered as we stood in line looking at the menu on the wall. Why I was whispering the word “fuck” in a White Castle I had no idea. People were yelling it all around me.

  “Please don’t tell Celia,” he begged from behind his dark sunglasses.

  “What is going on? You’re engaged!”

  “I know. There’s nothing going on. It’s…do you want some onion rings or something?”

  “No. I don’t want onion rings,” I said in my lowest, slowest register and added my withering, disapproving look I’ve been told I do so well.

  “Look---Tanya and I have known each other for a few years now. I mean, I used to live upstairs.”

  “So…what? She’s an ex?”

  “No. Sort of. Maybe.”

  “She’s your booty call.”

  “She’s a nice girl.”

  “But you’re having sex with her.”

  “Well…yeah. On and off, though.”

  “Goddamnit, Alex.”

  “It’s a White Castle. You don’t have to whisper your swear words.”

  But I continued to whisper. Because I’m a nice person.

  “You have messed up on so many levels I don’t even know where to start.”

  “But you’re going to.”

  “Damn right I am. First of all, you’re cheating on my friend, which I think makes you a royal piece of shit. Secondly, you’ve fucked me over. Right in front of the building manager. He thinks we’re breaking up now. Where am I going to go?”

  “I guess you’ll just have to take me back,” he said smugly.

  “You know what? That was the wrong thing to say there,” and I started to walk out.

  “Hey, hey, hey, hey…hey…hey………hey,” he followed me, the “heys” getting slower and more space between them as he caught my arm on the door. “I’m sorry. Just please don’t tell Celia.”

  “She asked me to be a bridesmaid! You expect me to stand there and let her marry you? Are you out of your mind?”

  “Look, Little Miss Know-It All---I’m trying to break it off with Tanya. But she’s not going to take it easy. I admit, I’ve been a cad and a beast…but I really do love Celia. I know that now. That’s why I proposed. And why I want to spend the rest of my life with her. Nothing happened down there…”

  “Really?”

  “I swear! Nothing! I… I told her I might have crabs and didn’t want to pass them on.”

  “And then you kissed her in the doorway?”

  “Well…that was her thanking me for not infecting her.”

  To be honest, I only believed about ten percent of what he was saying---the ten percent being that he likely did have crabs. But then he said something I did believe.

  “Have you ever told someone that their partner was cheating on them? Have you? I did once. I had this friend and his girlfriend was cheating on him, so I told him. He thanked me, but he never spoke to me again. People always say they want to know. Maybe they do, but they hate the messenger. She’ll hate me. But she’ll hate you, too.”

  I knew he was desperate and would say anything, but I’d seen it happen to friends. It was the one thing he’d said that had a ring of truth.

  “Look, I swear to you I’m breaking it off with Tanya. I just don’t want her to go crazy and tell Celia. I really do love her.”

  I’m not a violent person, but I admit I smacked him in the arm; not once, but three or four times.

  “Fuck, you fucking asshole,” I whispered. “You put me in this position and I will never forgive you.”

  “So don’t get us a wedding present.”

  “Not the time, Alex. Not the time. And what am I going to tell Nate? He thinks we’re breaking up. ‘We’ can’t break up. Where am I supposed to go?”

  “If Celia finds out, I’ll have to move out of her place---and, hmmm…where am I going to live?”

  “You expect me to sacrifice my best friend’s happiness for a studio apartment?”

  “It’s Midtown. Rent stabilized.”

  “I have no lease, jackass!”

  “I’ll break it off tomorrow. I promise. If nothing else, better she hear it from Tanya than you. Okay?”

  I took a very long sigh.

  “So, I guess you’re going to have to take me back.”

  Oh god. I guess I was.

  That night, I crawled into bed wondering why I was doing this to myself? Why was I ruining my life for the perpetual grind of three weeks of rehearsal and a two-week run? A few minutes later, I pulled out Nate’s scripts and began to read. By the end of the first ten-minute play, I had my answer.

  This was the reason why.

  11

  “So, what’s the story to tell Nate? Repeat it back to me,” I tested Steve as we waited to start our first rehearsal.

  “You and Alex are patching things up. He’s going to therapy. Oh, and he sent you a dozen roses. Kind of clichéd, don’t you think?”

  It was more than clichéd. It was lying and awful and I felt horrible, but I also needed a place to live. So---I would “take Alex back” on a probationary period; a fake relationship that would hopefully continue to grow and prosper until I got my own apartment. God only knows how long that would take. I’d have to get a second job and save every dime over the next few months. This imaginary break-up was going to be expensive. Hopefully the imaginary painters would be union and would drag out the imaginary paint job a few months. After all, I wasn’t the live-in cheated-on girlfriend; I was supposed to have my own place.