Fallow Park Today

by Joseph Glenn

  “Indeed,” he concluded in an I’m-joking-ha-ha-but-I’m-not-really manner, “you may find yourself out of your league with some of us.”

  Meredith laughed out of obligation, but mostly at the realization that the professional jealousies and competitiveness of the theater, so perfectly illustrated by this plump, somewhat pompous ass, never go away. Under different circumstances, Meredith wondered if she would not find this fellow a little endearing. It was clear to her he was accustomed to being well liked.

  “We’ve had to turn some wannabes away,” Del Carroll whispered.

  Meredith raised an eyebrow at this; his “confession” seemed to beg such a response. He said it as though he were letting her in on a great secret. She made a reasonable effort to be interested in his gossip and to meet his efforts at fellowship in kind. She could not, however, place him anywhere in the entertainment industry. He said he was an “old warhorse,” and that before he moved to the park he had “concentrated” on acting and directing, but that could mean anything.

  “Yes,” he continued in the same conspiratorial tone. “Community theatre type.” (Again employing the affected pronunciation.) “Not professionals, not what I would call professionals. Certainly not equity. People who never got themselves out of Cleveland community theaters, the ones we assume failed for good reason. And I say, if you weren’t willing or able to take the leap on the outside, why do you think you’ll get your breakthrough here? So, I imposed a strict rule: professionals only, no exceptions. To keep that element out, as we must for obvious reasons, we required auditions of all performers—oh, with the exception of you, of course, the honored guest, and Germaine, as her credits speak for themselves.”

  Del Carroll’s constant use of the word “we” left her a little confused, but not enough to seek clarification. It could be that by “we” he meant himself and the park people with whom he was in direct communication. Alternatively, he could be using the word in the royal sense. His presentation, full of grand movements and sentences punctuated with theatrical hand signals, as well as a commanding, indeed projecting voice, was fairly regal. Either interpretation seemed plausible. She nodded her agreement and murmured without thought, “Yes, most sensible.” It was her plan to invest as little of herself as possible in this so-called extravaganza. She was more than willing to accede to the director on all his points. The sum total of her involvement with the show was to read some introductory words at the top of the show and then serve as the Master of Ceremonies, introducing the various acts.

  But then the full impact of his statement hit her. “Did you say everyone has to have a professional background? That’s going to be a problem.”

  “Not at all,” he answered too slyly to put Meredith at ease. Getting around this pompous actor/director might be an issue. She cringed at the realization she would have to massage his ego a bit.

  “And I have to say at the outset thank goodness you’ve gone to the trouble to weed out that element,” she said, patting him on his arm. “You and I both know how frustrating it is to deal with the amateurs who fancy themselves great talents. In your experiences as a director, I’m sure you’ve had to shatter many dreams, but that goes with the territory, doesn’t it? Taste and discrimination are necessary to make sure…” she lost her train of thought but knew she needed a good finish; he was hanging on every word. Owing to the lateness of the hour, she finally settled on: “to, to make sure the show goes on.”

  The ploy worked and he took her arm in his. “We’re extraordinarily simpatico,” he told her, clearly flattered, and taken in, by her obvious effort to elevate him to her status.

  “Superlatively so,” she quickly agreed, blanking on a better superlative than the word itself. “I do have to share this with you, and please accept my apology in advance if this proves to be a major imposition: I’ve got unique associates.” She said this with just enough intonation to make him understand it was time for him to scratch her back.

  “Don’t worry yourself about that,” Del Carroll said in the most supportive of voices. “They’ve all been approved. Your hairdresser from Pots of Luck—not an issue; clearly a pro. And his partner—Carl—no problem with him as Tyler’s assistant. And you have an assistant—Bill, I believe, is his name—obviously not a problem.”

  “I’ve picked up a new assistant,” Meredith said calmly and clearly, “a second assistant, a friend really. That’s him over there.”

  Del viewed the thin man standing a dozen yards beyond them. “I think I’ve seen him…”

  “You probably have. He has apparently picked up some kind of a reputation here. He was in jail. I managed to get him pulled out of the stockades, temporarily, because I insisted I need him. And I do.”

  “Well, of course, if you’re certain you need him.” Del offered, grudgingly granting Meredith’s request. She cozied up to him, privately cringing. “As I said,” he told her in a reassuring voice, “we are extremely simpatico.”

  Rehearsals proved to be as arduous as Meredith anticipated. Del could not decide if his role was to oversee the talent as an impresario or actively participate in each act. He was part Ziegfeld and part bossy stage mother. He proved to be, as she expected he would, a tyrant to his cast, though he spared her any of his harsh words. She was prepared to read each of her introductions prior to each act, but Del preferred that she run through all of them at once, so that she could then take a seat in the empty auditorium and appraise each act. “You’re my unofficial assistant director,” Del told her. This she believed was intended as a compliment, so she graciously acquiesced. She ran through her monologue and the introductions to each act in a straightforward, pedestrian manner. At the end of her performance, such as it was, Del was full of warm words. She had brought so much of herself to it, he assured her. He concluded his empty praise by admonishing the cast. “Meredith’s work,” he informed them, “reeked of class.” Why, he badgered them, were they so unable to affect the same degree of naturalness in their performances?

  Meredith had to pass Austin and one of the cameras as she made her way up one of the aisles. Her back to Del, she allowed herself the opportunity to express her frustration by rolling her eyes. She hoped the camera did not pick up this momentary lapse in professionalism. What Austin thought of the proceedings she dared not imagine. To a director of Austin’s experience, Del Carroll’s style, and his single-minded absorption in his duties, would seem out of place. Out of proportion to the scope of the project, Austin would have said. Del’s indiscriminate badgering almost the entire cast contrasted with Austin’s method. Though Austin could be stingy with compliments and vocal about his corrections, his criticisms were more discrete and succinct.

  Throughout the early acts, Del constantly mopped his face. He had a stack of paper towels on the small table to his left—“stage right,” he pointed out—at his ready. He had evidently anticipated the perspiration issues he was going to have. Less than twenty minutes into the performances, following a ventriloquist’s act, he told the acrobatics act setting up to “take five.” He informed the quartet that he would resume his duties from a seat in the theater, which he again pronounced “theatrah,” while he explained that he preferred this vantage point; it seemed pretty clear he needed to get off the hot stage and into the cooler, darkened theater. He flopped into the seat beside Meredith with an exhausted sigh. “I am thoroughly fatigued,” he announced, with a hint of pride she suspected. “This is my home,” he began with the promise that he was beginning a long reflective speech, “but I will say I’d forgotten just how much work it is.”

  “You’re doing a remarkable job,” Meredith told him in a conscious whisper, hoping he would take her cue and lower his voice for the sake of the performers rehearsing on the stage. They were sitting in the fourth row and Del’s words, projected and enunciated like a drama student’s, were most certainly audible to the cast. “So wise of you to take yourself out of it for a moment,” she offered encouragingly, thinking he might possibly let the ca
st alone for a while. “Probably best to sit here quietly,” she again offered with hope, “and just absorb it all. Let’s soak it all in. How much fun will we have when the full rehearsal is over and we can sit down and compare notes?” She trusted that the promise of a one-on-one meeting would appeal to his vanity.

  But her suggestion went ignored. His barrage of criticisms as the troupe presented their acts, a collection of three- to eight-minute sketches, scenes, and songs, was endless. “All wrong,” he frequently said. “Off-key and behind the beat,” one singer provoked. “My audition to the AADA was better than that—and I still had a lot to learn back then.” “Never cared for him; I’m happy that my initial assessment of him is now being validated: overrated.” And so forth for the better part of two hours.

  Del frequently tilted his head in Meredith’s direction, at one point resting it on her shoulder to express his frustration with a particularly problematic duet of “Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better.” “As neither one of them do it well, the title is likely to get unintentional laughs.”

  Meredith offered no criticism of this or any of the other acts. When Del asked her opinions, she offered non-committal observations.

  “Reserving your judgment, are you?” he asked in response to her cagy silence. “How wise you are to wait to form your impressions until you have a sense of the whole.”

  This was as much praise as she wanted; it was enough that he did not realize the extent to which she was playing him as she listened to his critiques of the others and as she nodded enthusiastically about his “vision” for the show. He appeared satisfied and convinced that she was as emotionally invested in this little production as he was. She had successfully suspended his disbelief. That her mind was far removed from the stifling theater (spelled and pronounced as it usually is in American English) was something she was certain he never suspected. One of her finest performances; a pity, she thought, that she was playing to such a limited audience.

  A respite from his seemingly endless stream of bitching presented itself when Sybil made her appearance around ten p.m. Del had insisted, in the interest of keeping the rehearsal on schedule, that snacks be brought in from the nearest cafeteria. As he called the end of the snack break, Sybil entered as if on cue. She found Meredith in the fourth row. She clutched a library book and let it fall into her lap, face up.

  Meredith asked, “What do you have in mind?”

  “Something a little more upbeat.”

  “By O’Neill?” Meredith asked incredulously, referencing the book.

  “Why not? I made my mark in O’Neill’s works. I’m quite the tragedienne.”

  Hoping to avert a recap of Sybil’s stage triumphs, Meredith proposed: “What about something from Ah, Wilderness? At least it’s a comedy.”

  “Um, because there aren’t any decent female roles in that play.” Here was a flash, a glimpse of the Sybil she remembered, asserting her expertise and by implication denouncing Meredith’s stature in the same profession. But the veteran actress quickly dropped the haughty arrogance. “Maybe you’ve got something there. How much of myself do I want to throw into this anyway?”

  Del Carroll, still sitting on Meredith’s other side, took a deep breath and let out what sounded like a rehearsed sigh of exasperation. He had remained focused on the performers on stage during this exchange. “No! No! No!” he shouted. “You’re falling behind and have lost all connection to the melody.” The recipient of his vitriol was an elderly man in a wheelchair. To Meredith and Sybil he said, “Will you excuse me? I can’t allow this creature to destroy this song.” With another big theatrical showing, complete with more brow beating and looks of desperation to the heavens, he extricated himself from his seat and walked the long distance of the row to get out the further aisle and march up to the stage. Doing so meant crossing in front of Meredith and Sybil, both of whom stood up to let him pass. It was not the most practical path to the stage, but it was clear to Meredith he was determined to have his scene.

  “He’s big on entrances and exits,” Meredith said. She would have indulged in another eye-rolling moment if the darkened theater were bright enough for Sybil to appreciate it. She chuckled softly. Once more she found herself bonding with the elderly actress. For she, too, had suffered at the hands of such bullies-cum-theater dilettantes. It seemed as tragic as anything by Eugene O’Neill that the two had not shared their insights and experiences as younger women.

  “I’ve been running into his type since I was in my teens,” Sybil said. “I’m gay so I can say this. About our director, this Mr. Del Carroll. I’ve got exactly two words: gay summer stock. Three words I guess.”

  It was a true Sybil moment. Only she could say it and not sound homophobic.

  Chapter Fifteen

  A soft tap, scarcely audible, but too rhythmic to be random, caught Meredith’s attention. She debated with herself; should she go to the door? Was it even worth investigating? The rapping was too quiet to be a caller. It would not be Ansel, her nightly visitor. He had the evening off and could not show up unscheduled—he had told her there was no way he could pull off a plausible excuse for being at the park. His, he informed her, was the sort of job one leaves alone during off hours. He had tried to pick up an extra shift, but when no one in his immediate circle was willing to trade, he let the matter drop. It would have raised too many questions if he appeared desperate to come to work. They spent the previous night, Wednesday, together and had a very official goodbye scene, as it was unlikely they would ever meet again. Most likely this rapping was something in the walls; the plumbing she expected. Was something about to break or crack? Such calamities, after all, were everyday occurrences at Fallow Park. She heard the tapping again. There was something too even and measured about it to be explained away as a mechanical malfunction. But she could not imagine anyone calling this late at night. And whoever it was, he or she was so timid about their manner they deserved to be ignored. Certainly there was nothing urgent about the knock. Sybil had said as they parted that she would drop by sometime this evening. But surely she had not meant as late as this. Besides, Sybil was a pounder, not a tapper. So who, she wondered, could be at her door at this hour?

  Stirred at last from her inertia, Meredith pulled a robe on over her nightgown and stepped to the door and peeked through the peep-hole. Sybil’s shock of white hair, still well-coifed, was unmistakable. Meredith pulled the door open.

  “Sybil, come in. I’d about given up on you.”

  Sybil walked in and gingerly, four-pronged cane in hand, crossed to the living room couch.

  “Sit here, next to me,” she told Meredith in a hopeful, pleading tone. This, Meredith observed, was in sharp contrast to her usual order-barking style.

  The evening’s rehearsal must have taken more out of the aged actress than Meredith had realized. She was more wobbly than Meredith had noticed before, as the white knuckles on her cane attested; and her manner was subdued, almost apologetic. Her demeanor was almost as uncharacteristic as her quiet knock. Meredith noticed that she had sat down before even struggling to get out of her overcoat.

  She now looked Meredith in the eye. Meredith wanted to look away, but found she could not. Sybil’s eyes were red and watery, as though she had not slept in some time. It was a contrast to her appearance at rehearsals just a few hours earlier. “I meant to come earlier. I had to work up my nerve. I knocked off my birthday wine—that helped.”

  Meredith wondered at first if she were playing a role. There was a cautious, furtive vibe to her words and actions. The cane, the exhaustion, and, she realized, her speech: she was almost talking under her breath. She was uncharacteristically composed, as if she were respectful of the lateness of her visit. This was as close to frightened as Meredith had ever seen Sybil—or ever wanted to. It was an alarming, painful thing to witness in a person Meredith had always thought of as strong, someone who was always “on,” a woman who was forever the aggressor, and unapologetically combative. Sybil was an intimidating p
erson. The part she was playing now, the wounded and bewildered senior citizen, was never going to work with Meredith as her audience; Sybil was typecast for her as the domineering sort. When she consented to appear in big budget films, she was often cast as the commander or business executive, inclined to cut subordinates off at the kneecaps. These were the sort of roles that suited her. Even on Pots of Luck she had played the bossy, intrusive role of the Queen of the Leprechauns.

  “Good heavens,” Meredith said, “It can’t be as bad as all this.”

  “I don’t like to ask favors,” the veteran actress began. “Never been good at it.”

  Requesting a favor, and probably a simple one at that, reduced Sybil to this. Meredith was touched. However, she knew better than to let her manner veer into excessive concern or, God forbid, pity. Sybil would surely detect the slightest change in Meredith’s response, and would bristle at anything that felt like patronization.

  “Tyler is your son, isn’t he?” She put the question bluntly. The statement was presented more as a fact than an inquiry.

  Meredith was not expecting this.

  “He…” Meredith paused, surprised by the thin tinny tone of her voice, and began again, “How did you come to that conclusion? Ha! Why, no! What a thing to say!” But what point was there in subterfuge? Dropping every shed of pretense, and finding a voice she recognized as closer to her own, she asked, “Why?”

  Sybil shook her head. “Don’t get nervous; it’s not a burning question for me. That’s not the favor. I just wanted to establish the background. It’s no more than backstory. Let’s start out on the same page.”