“Yeah! Very!” I looked away from him. “Okay, maybe it’s true. Maybe I’ve had you to myself for so long, I’m just not willing to share you with anyone.”
“You’re not really serious about quitting the apprentice thing, are you?”
“No . . . I guess not. . . .”
“You don’t have anything to worry about, Morgan.”
“I don’t?”
“No—Robin’s nothing compared to you.”
I didn’t say anything else on the way home. Neither did Jimmy. He turned on the radio and we listened to some rock on WLS. I felt pretty good. That was something I could never figure out about Jimmy: Somehow he always said what I needed to hear.
11
My big chance to do some acting came a couple of weeks before Christmas. I was lugging a pile of costumes up to the dressing rooms when Ben stopped me on the stairs.
“You have Robin’s costume in there?”
“Yeah, I think so. It just came back from the cleaners.”
“Think you could fit into it?”
“Excuse me?”
“Robin’s cramming for her midterms tonight. You want to go on for her?”
“Go on for her. . . .”
“You’ve got an hour before curtain; you can get up in the part by then, can’t you? There’s not that much to memorize.”
“I’m not—Robin doesn’t have an understudy?”
Ben smiled. “Morgan, I guess you’ve realized we’re not the Shubert or the Blackstone or any of those. When we need an understudy, we grab anyone we think’ll fit into the costume. How about it?”
“Yeah, I’d like to, but . . . Robin’s a lot thinner than I am. I’m not sure her dress’ll fit—”
“It’ll fit better on you than it will on Jimmy. Go try it on, okay? I’ll get you a script and we’ll run through your scene.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
I took the stairs two at a time. I ran down the hall and pounded on the men’s dressing-room door.
“Hey, Jimmy!” I yelled. “You decent?!”
“You should know better than to hand me a straight line like that, Morgan!”
“I’ve got your costume here!”
The door opened. He was standing there in his underwear.
I tossed him his costume. “Here,” I said. “Put some clothes on.”
“I think I left my black shoes in the car. I don’t suppose you’d—”
“Forget it. I’m through being a slave, Jimmy. I’ve been promoted.” I turned around and headed for my dressing room. Jimmy tried walking beside me and pulling on his pants at the same time.
“Promoted to what?” he said.
“Robin’s not here today, so I’m going on for her.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really. I’m your new co-star. Surprised?”
“No, I’m just trying to figure out how you did it.”
“Did what?”
“Got rid of Robin—what’d you do? Slip her some poison? Shove her down the stairs? What’d you do?”
“Don’t be a jerk! She’s studying for midterms or something.” I walked into the dressing room and hung the costumes on the wardrobe rack. “Would you please turn around? I’ve got to get dressed—”
“You want me to turn around? After all we’ve been through together?”
“Turn AROUND!”
He shrugged and turned around. I pulled off my sweatshirt and wriggled out of my jeans.
“You know something, Morgan—a lot of famous people have started this way. The star breaks a leg, the understudy goes on, and as fate would have it, there just happens to be a talent scout from MGM in the audience—”
“You’re laughing at me!”
“I am not!”
“You think this is funny!”
“I do not!”
I pulled Robin’s dress over my head. “Let me tell you something, Jimmy. You’ve done a million plays out here, so this isn’t a big deal to you. But this is my first play here, and it’s a big deal to me. Understand?”
“Yeah, I understand.”
“Good. Zip me up.”
He turned around and started tugging at the dress. “This is gonna be a tight squeeze, Morgan—”
“God, your hands are cold!”
“Yeah, that’s what Robin always says—”
“Very funny! Gaa!” The dress zipped. I could hardly breathe.
“Not bad, Hackett—you fill it out a lot better than Robin does. Robin doesn’t have . . . Robin’s not as . . . she’s a little less—”
“I know there’s a compliment in there somewhere, Jimmy. I accept it, okay? Just tell me what I need to know to get through this play.”
“You’ve been watching Robin do it, haven’t you? You have—what—about ten lines in the second act, that’s all. Don’t worry, I’ll help you out if you get stuck.”
“Morgan!” Ben hollered. “You ready? Come on down; we’ll do a quick run-through!”
“This is it, Morgan,” Jimmy whispered. “A star is born!”
“Good grief,” I said.
Ben nodded at me when Jimmy and I walked out onstage. There’s just something kind of neat and romantic about walking out onto a bare stage, when there isn’t any proper lighting to cover up all the marks and scratches.
Ben handed me a script. “We’ll have a bench set up for you downstage during the play, but for now let’s just run through the scene, okay?”
I flipped through the script. It was sort of nerve-racking, jumping into the middle of the play like that and knowing that even if I was lousy, they were stuck with me because the dress fit.
ME
(playing Belle, about to kiss off young Scrooge): It matters little! It matters little to you that another idol has taken my place!
JIMMY
(playing Scrooge): What idol, Belle?
ME
In these last six years a golden one!
JIMMY
I am not changed toward you, am I?
ME
When our contract was made, you were another man—
JIMMY
I was a boy!
ME
Your own feeling tells you that you were not what you are. . . .
I was actually doing some real acting! Okay, maybe it was just a kids’ show and maybe it wasn’t exactly an award-winning performance, but I was rehearsing for a real play, not just doing an exercise in an acting workshop that some audience would never see. I felt like I did the first time I rode my bike without training wheels: scared, excited, all of that.
“Not bad,” Ben said when I finished. “One thing, though, Morgan; remember, we’ve got an audience full of kids here, so you’re gonna have to be loud enough to drown out their talking.”
“Kids make an interesting audience,” Jimmy said. “Once when I was doing a play here, I had a kid walk across the stage, tug on my pants, and ask me to take him to the bathroom.”
“What’d you do?”
“What could I do? I took him.”
“In the middle of the play?”
“Well, I thought about not taking him, but then I considered the consequences. . . .”
“That kid took a curtain call with you, didn’t he?” Ben asked.
Jimmy nodded.
I’m lucky. I’m a pretty quick study. I learned my lines while the lady who played the Ghost of Christmas Past pulled my hair back into a semidecent Victorian hairdo. She lent me her makeup kit, and I attacked my face the way I’d seen Robin do hers: lots of pancake, blush, dark eyeliner, too, so they could see my eyes way in the back of the theater. I’d just finished when Jimmy stuck his head into the dressing room.
“Well, it’s now or never, Hackett. You ready?”
“I guess,” I said. “Yeah, I’m ready.”
It was pitch-black backstage except for a little light over the clipboard the stage manager was holding. He motioned for us to take our places behind the curtain. Standing backstage and waiting to go on has to be
one of the great highs of all time. It’s probably a mixture of nerves, anticipation, excitement, and adrenaline all rolled into one.
“Hey,” I whispered to Jimmy. “I think I’m getting nervous.”
“You don’t have time to get nervous.” He took my hand. “You can get nervous later. I’ll remind you, okay?”
“You’re always so practical, Jimmy.”
“One of us has to be.”
Out onstage Old Scrooge was ranting and raving at the Ghost of Christmas Past. This was a pretty watered-down version of the Dickens’ classic, but even so I could hear some of the kids fidgeting or talking, shuffling their feet. I knew if I could hold my own in front of them, I could probably handle any audience.
The Ghost of Christmas Past gave our cue: “My time grows short! Quick!”
The stage manager threw a switch and the lights onstage came up. Jimmy and I ducked around the curtain, stepped onstage. I couldn’t see beyond the footlights, but I felt all the people out there. I took a deep breath, started across the stage, caught my toe on something, and fell forward. Flat on my face. I got the wind knocked out of me but good. It seemed like I was on that floor for a hundred years, although I know it was only a second or two before Jimmy was beside me, helping me up.
“Look at me,” he whispered. “Look at me. Come on; you’re okay.” It was hard for me to take my eyes off the actor and actress playing Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Past. They looked as shocked as I felt.
I looked at Jimmy, locked my eyes into his, let him lead me to the bench set up downstage. All the lines I’d memorized had been knocked clear out of my head. I couldn’t even talk; I was too numb.
“Belle, how many times have I told you,” Jimmy said, “stay away from that rum punch; you know what a kick it has.”
The audience roared. Some of them applauded. I was vaguely aware that Jimmy had done something good, that he had pulled the audience over to our side. I sat there, paralyzed, while Jimmy rewrote our Dickens dialogue into a minimonologue. It started like this:
JIMMY
I know you think a golden idol has replaced you in these last six years, Belle. . . .
Slowly, things started coming into focus. The pain started to register where I’d whacked my left knee, and the whole humiliation angle began to sink in. It takes a while for things to hit me, but when they hit, they hit hard. I sat there watching Jimmy bail me out, and I knew I was going to cry. I was going to cry a lot, and I couldn’t wait to get off that damn stage.
12
I think I got off the stage without anyone seeing me fall completely apart. I brushed past Ben backstage. He said something like: “Look, try not to be too upset,” but I didn’t stick around to hear anything else. I pushed open the stage door and clanked down the metal steps to the parking lot. I leaned back against the building and watched the traffic on North Avenue, watched the snow flurries float past the parking-lot lights. I don’t know what the hell I thought I was doing, crying all alone in a parking lot at night. I really do dumb stuff when I’m rattled.
“Christ—what are you doing out here?”
I looked up. Jimmy was just starting down the stairs.
“Jimmy, just leave me alone for a few minutes, okay?”
“You don’t look too good, Morgan.”
“I’m okay.”
“You always do that. You always say you’re okay even when it’s perfectly clear you’re not okay at all.”
“I said I’m OKAY!”
“All right, Morgan. Be tough. Have it your own way. . . .” I just stood there, biting my lip and staring at the parking lot. I was barely hanging on. Jimmy walked around in front of me and took off his coat. He wrapped it around me and pulled me close. I rested my cheek on his chest, and I felt like everything was breaking down inside me: I really started crying hard.
“I’m never going out on a stage again!”
“Sure you are.”
“I’m supposed to be an actress! I’m supposed to be an actress, and I can’t even walk across a stage!”
“Morgan . . . you know how many people screw up the first time they go on? It’s practically a theatrical tradition—”
“Ben’ll never let me go on for Robin or anyone else again—”
“Yes he will.”
“I’ll be lucky if he even lets me go back to making the coffee!”
“Morgan . . .”
“I’m not kidding! God, I cannot believe I walked out in front of hundreds of people and fell flat on my face!”
“Morgan?”
“What?”
He hugged me tight. “Shut up.”
I shut up.
“Now, listen. You remember a conversation we had a while back in front of the Shubert Theater? Huh? You remember that?”
“Yeah . . .”
“Yeah? You remember how crummy I did at that audition? You remember how I screwed up?”
“Yeah. I remember.”
“Everyone screws up, Hackett. It’s a big club.”
“I’m never going out there again, Jimmy.”
“You have to take your curtain call.”
“Are you crazy?” I pulled his handkerchief out of his vest pocket and blew my nose. “Take a curtain call? They’d laugh me off the stage!”
“No one’s going to laugh at you.”
I took off his coat and tossed it to him. “No one’s going to laugh at me because I’m not going out there. Not after what happened.”
“You’ve got to. Especially after what happened.”
“I don’t believe in all that ‘the show must go on’ crap, Jimmy.”
“If you don’t go back out on that stage now, you never will.”
“Fine.”
He took my hand. “And I’d hate to see that happen, Morgan, because I know how badly you want to act.”
I frowned at him. “Jimmy, let go of me.”
“After the play, Morgan.”
I tried pulling my hand away, but he held on tight. “Jimmy, this isn’t funny! Let go of me, DAMMIT!”
“Later.”
“You’re crazy! I won’t go with you!”
“No?” He started pulling me up the stairs. It was no fair: As kids we had been evenly matched, but somehow he ended up stronger.
“Jimmy, I just want you to know that as of now you can consider our friendship permanently canceled!”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah . . .”
“You think I’m kidding?”
“No, Morgan, I don’t think you’re kidding. . . .” He opened the stage door and pulled me inside. He didn’t let go of me, either. When I saw Ben walking over to us, I was all set to fly out the door again, only this time I couldn’t.
“You okay?” Ben said. “You didn’t hurt yourself when you fell, did you?”
I cleared my throat. “No. I’m okay. Thanks.”
“Well. It’ll go better next time. You’ll see.”
I heard the audience applauding, so I knew the play had ended. Most of the actors who’d been hanging around backstage started lining up two by two for the curtain call. Jimmy very casually walked me over there. Anyone who didn’t know better would have thought we were such good friends we just naturally wanted to hold hands.
“I’ll never forgive you for this, Jimmy!”
“You’re getting yourself all upset for nothing, Morgan.”
“I mean it! Never!”
The couple in front of us stepped around the curtain and onto the stage.
“Ben likes us to do a little bow when we take the curtain call,” Jimmy whispered.
“Forget it! I’m not bowing! I’m not doing anything!”
Jimmy shrugged. “Do whatever you want.” He walked around the curtain and pulled me with him. I honestly thought I was going to pass out—that’s how scared I was. I don’t know what I expected: a hostile audience with a bushel of tomatoes, maybe. The stage lights were up. Jimmy and I walked to center stage; then that jerk let go of me. He turned to the audience, bowed, and
exited stage right. I stood there all alone on that stage like an idiot. I took a quick bow. The audience kept on applauding, and no one hurled any vegetables at me. I actually got off the stage without being laughed at, without falling on my face, without anything happening. Backstage, no one came up to tell me I’d ruined the play. They were all too busy, undressing on the way upstairs, talking and laughing.
I changed out of Robin’s dress and back into my sweatshirt and jeans. I washed my face and combed out what was left of my Victorian ringlets. There was a knock on the door.
“Who is it?” I said.
“Your former friend.”
“Go away!”
Jimmy opened the door and stuck his head in. “I told you no one would laugh at you, didn’t I?”
“You have an interesting Me Tarzan, You Jane approach to the entire male-female relationship, Jimmy. Has anyone ever told you that?”
“Oh, come on—I did the same thing you did the day I blew my audition at the Shubert. I just gave you a little pep talk, that’s all.”
“Yeah. Except yours was physical.”
“You know something, Morgan—sometimes it seems that you and I are like an old married couple. No matter what happens between us, we always end up back together again.”
“Maybe it’s time we start thinking about a divorce, huh?”
He stepped inside the dressing room. “You really mad or what?”
“Let’s just put it this way, Jimmy: It’s been a hell of a night.”
He sat down in the chair next to mine and stretched his legs out. He put his hands behind his head. “I didn’t want to see you throw a whole theatrical career away just because you took a little spill onstage.”
“I’m glad you did it.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“So the divorce is off, huh?”
“I couldn’t ever divorce you, Jimmy. You’d be helpless without me.”
“Guess you know me pretty well, Morgan.”
“I guess after seventeen years there isn’t much we don’t know about each other.”
“Let’s go home, okay? I think we’ve had enough show business for one night.”
Say Goodnight, Gracie Page 6
