The Fat Lady Sings

by Lovett, Charlie

  “You had a chest,” says Cynthia, “and you were curvy.”

  “I’d say ‘curvy’ is putting a positive spin on things.”

  “Anyway, that’s when I started talking to my therapist about these,” says Cynthia, pointing to her boobs, which I am feeling more and more guilty about making fun of with each passing second.

  “You have a therapist?” I ask.

  “You won’t tell anybody, will you?” says Cynthia.

  “Of course not,” I say, and I think this is it — this is the moment when Cynthia Pirelli and I become friends.

  “Anyway, my therapist said that sometimes surgery can really help self-esteem in cases like mine, so once I turned eighteen we decided to give it a try. I mean, think about when you hated being fat.”

  “I still do plenty of the time,” I say.

  “Right, well, imagine you could take a week off school, have an operation, and you wouldn’t be fat anymore. Wouldn’t you do it?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, and it’s true, I really don’t. I mean, I’ve heard about that stomach stapling thing, but that’s not exactly the same as a boob job. “I might. I think it depends on what day you made the offer.”

  “I would have taken that deal any day,” says Cynthia.

  “And did it solve the problem?” I ask.

  “It wasn’t a panacea,” says Cynthia.

  “Nice SAT word.”

  “But I definitely don’t feel as self-conscious as I did.”

  “They do look — really nice,” I say.

  “Having the surgery didn’t exactly change who I am,” says Cynthia, “but it did change the way people see me. Especially boys. I mean, sure, now they look at me because of my chest, but at least they look at me.”

  We sit there in silence for a minute, and I think we both know what a big deal this conversation is, that now we are bound together in a way that neither of us is bound to anyone else, and it’s weird to feel that this monumental event — the forging of this most unlikely bond — is taking place in the middle of a school full of hundreds of people, yet nobody knows about it. How can something so major be so secret?

  “I’m sorry you had to go through all that,” I say.

  “You really do have some nice curves,” says Cynthia.

  And I smile, and now I can’t stop myself and I reach out and wrap her in a hug and the next thing I know we are both crying.

  You know how the Eskimos have like fifty words for snow? I think teenage girls should have fifty words for crying. I mean, I know there’s “sobbing” and “bawling,” but those are mostly just heavy duty crying. They’re about intensity, not quality. When you’re eighteen, there are lots of different kinds of crying, and Cynthia and I go through most of them in the next fifteen minutes before the bell rings. And I’m feeling relief and anger and love and hate and guilt and forgiveness and loss and at least forty-seven other emotions and I know she is, too.

  So whatever you call that kind of crying session — catharsis or melodrama or teen angst on steroids — that’s what we do until the bell rings and we wipe off our faces, and head off to fifth period, both making up stories about our allergies acting up.

  Scene 4

  Rehearsals are going well. David is complaining less about my singing and hasn’t asked why I’m not going to see Mrs. Carleton. Suzanne has a whole gang of kids from the youth group hammering and painting scenery in the hallways of the Sunday School building, and Melissa Parsons is helping out, too. Her Mom ungrounded her long enough for her to be on the set crew, which is nice. Elliot is working with another group organizing ticket sales, posters, concessions, programs, and everything else that never occurred to me when I started writing a play. Taylor has done an amazing job of learning a massive amount of blocking and dialogue in just a couple of weeks. I’m starting to think that this is really going to happen. The only person who worries me is Cameron — he seems really tired and stressed. On nights when he drives me home he hardly says anything at all, and he used to chatter nonstop about the minutiae of directing. He’s spending less time jumping up on stage and working with us on some great little character bit and more time sitting behind his script just watching us, saying almost nothing when a scene is over. He also keeps changing the rehearsal schedule, and frankly, I think we’re not spending nearly enough time on Act II. We’ve worked Act I to death, and it’s good, really good — but there are two scenes in Act II we haven’t even blocked yet, and the rest of the act is still super rocky.

  On Friday Mom lets me borrow her car, because I want to get to rehearsal early and practice my songs alone in the fellowship hall. My voice sounds nice and full in the practice room now that Cynthia has taught me a little about breathing, but the fellowship hall is about a thousand times bigger than the practice room, and we’re working Act II tonight at last and I haven’t sung those songs in front of David and Cameron and Elliot since before I started my secret singing lessons, so I want to run through them on my own before anyone else shows up.

  The outside door to the fellowship hall is locked, but Taylor showed us a door by the church office that’s usually unlocked, so I go in there and cut through the Sunday School building. As I’m walking down the hall I hear a voice coming from one of the classrooms, and as I get closer I realize it’s the room where we usually have our production meetings, and it’s Cameron’s voice. Did I have a brain fart and forget we had a meeting today?

  The door is slightly ajar, and I hear Cameron say, “OK, enough about details, let’s cut to the chase. What are we going to do about Act II?”

  Thank goodness, I think. He realizes how behind we are.

  I’m just about to push open the door and say “Sorry I’m late,” when Elliot says, “We’re going to have to tell Aggie. I mean, we can’t just rewrite the script without her.”

  Rewrite the script? What’s he talking about?

  “Besides,” says Cameron, “we’re not just talking about tweaking a few lines here and there. It needs to be totally reworked. I mean, I’m sorry, but Act II as it stands is enough to tax anyone’s abilities as a director. Taylor, tell everybody what you told me.”

  Taylor? They invited Taylor to a production meeting and not me?

  “Only that I was thinking about it, after Cameron said the other night that he was worried about the second act. I was trying to figure out why it wasn’t working, and it seems to me the first act is set up just like a romantic comedy — you know, two characters meet, they seem really different and mismatched, then they start a relationship. I mean, this one isn’t romantic, it’s just friendship, but it’s basically the same thing.”

  “That makes sense,” says Elliot.

  “The problem is, nothing new happens after the first act. They just keep having the same relationship. In the movies they always break up — there’s usually some sort of misunderstanding or something — and then at the very end one of them does something wild and crazy to prove their love and they get back together.”

  “So,” says Elliot, “if Aggie and Suzy get mad at each other halfway through Act II and then get back together in the end — “

  “It would basically be a friendship version of a romantic comedy,” says Taylor.

  “Like the girl version of a bromance,” says Elliot.

  “I thought it sounded like a good idea,” says Cameron, “and it would mean only rewriting the second half of the act.”

  So Cameron and Taylor have been scheming behind my back. Why didn’t Cameron come to me? Why didn’t Taylor come to me? Why am I, the person who actually wrote the script, the last to discover that nobody likes it?

  “It would be nice if she only has to rewrite half an act,” says Taylor, “because that’s more than enough new material to learn two weeks before opening.”

  “Yeah, but aren’t you forgetting something?” says Suzanne, speaking up for the first time. “What about Aggie? Do you remember what happened last time we asked her for a rewrite? And that was before rehearsals
or anything.”

  “I see a diva fit coming,” says Cameron.

  “That’s all I’m saying,” says Suzanne.

  “Is she really that bad?” says Taylor.

  “She’s pretty bad,” says Cameron.

  And up until then I was almost OK. So they want a rewrite — sure it’s a pain, sure it hurts that they don’t like Act II, sure I wish someone had said something earlier, sure I wish they hadn’t talked about it behind my back, but hey, it’s the theatre. Broadway playwrights do rewrites during previews. But the fact that they don’t believe in me enough to think I can take a little criticism, the fact that they think I am so much of a baby that I get angry at every little thing, the fact that they think I’m going to tear their heads off or something — well, that makes me want to tear their heads off or something.

  “So who’s gonna tell her,” says Suzanne.

  “I should,” says Cameron.

  “No, I should,” says Elliot. “I’m the producer, I should take the heat.”

  Well, if heat is what they want, then that’s exactly what they won’t get. I push the door, it swings open, and they all turn and look at me like the bride of Frankenstein just walked in the room.

  “Hello, Taylor,” I say, as icily as I can, and believe me, when it comes to ice, right now I am the queen. “I didn’t realize that backstabbing was a Christian virtue, but bravo. Well done.”

  “Aggie,” says Elliot, but I’m not about to let him get a word in.

  “Cameron,” I say, calmly picking up his director’s script from the table and tucking it under my arm. “I understand you are not quite up to the job of directing a ‘concept musical,’ as you called it. I’ll see if I can’t make it a little less challenging for you.”

  “Aggie, really,” says Elliot, but I’m on a roll now.

  “I’m sorry to disappoint you all by not throwing a temper tantrum, but perhaps in the future if you twist the knife a little more you can still get me to scream. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do. I won’t be at rehearsal tonight, Cameron. You might make a note of that. I know you have a lot to keep track of and I wouldn’t want to tax your abilities.”

  Always exit on the callback, I think, and I turn and walk down the hall.

  Of course as soon as I reach the corner I break into a run, because I know they’ll be coming after me. Thank god I drove myself tonight, because before they have any chance of catching up to me I’ve flung Cameron’s script into the back seat and screeched out of the parking lot, spewing gravel after me.

  OK, so maybe the exit wasn’t completely calm, but I think I did pretty well under the circumstances.

  I expect to start crying as soon as I am clear of the parking lot, but instead I’m just angry. And I’m angry that they predicted I would be angry and that makes me more angry. I’m surprised there’s not steam coming out of the car.

  I need to vent. I need to yell and scream and have somebody say, “Damn right — you should be mad.” But who can I go to? All the people who usually listen to me rant and rave when I’m upset about something were in that room. I can’t go back to Mom’s and get some sort of June Cleaver advice. Karl is at some conference about delivering babies — I mean, really, they’ve been getting born pretty much forever, do we really need a conference for this? Just catch them already. Dad is definitely not on my list of confidantes. Besides, if I go home — either home — Elliot and Cameron will find me. So I point the car towards the only place I can think of, a place I only know the location of because it was on the route when I used to ride the bus to school. I drive to Cynthia’s house.

  Cynthia’s room is not what I expected. When someone is perfect at math and has the lead in the musical and a great figure (even if it is man-made) I just imagine her living in perfect neatness, with a pink bulletin board covered with signed pictures of all the gorgeous guys she’s dated. Until the other day I had created this vision of Cynthia at home as sort of an evil Elle Woods. But her actual room is great — it’s a total mess. There are piles of paper and those recruitment postcards you get from colleges scattered all over the place. Dirty clothes are heaped on the unmade bed, and nothing — I mean nothing — is pink. We plop down on two ancient looking beanbag chairs in the corner, Cynthia barely seeming to exert any pressure on hers, me threatening to burst the seams and send beans (or whatever they stuff these things with) all over the room.

  “So what’s the problem?” says Cynthia.

  “What makes you think there’s a problem?” I say.

  “Other than the fact that you actually came to my house — “

  “I thought we were friends now,” I say.

  “We are,” says Cynthia, more gently. “But there are friends who meet in secret in the practice room and there are friends who come to your house when anyone could be watching. Anyhow, you look awful.”

  “Thanks.”

  “No, I mean that’s how I knew something was wrong. You look like your best friend just died or something.”

  “They hate the script again,” I say.

  “Who?”

  “Cameron, Elliot, Taylor, Suzanne, everybody,” I say.

  “And they told you this?”

  “That’s the real problem,” I say. “They wouldn’t come to me. They had to plot behind my back.”

  “That sucks,” says Cynthia, and I want to hug her right then and there. It does suck, and it feels so much better to hear someone say it out loud. So I tell Cynthia all about what happened at the church and how they want an arc to Act II that makes it more like a romantic comedy.

  “The funny thing is,” I say, “that I wanted more of a plot all along, I just couldn’t figure out how to write one.”

  “Then this could be a good thing, right?” says Cynthia.

  “That might be exaggerating the point.”

  “An opportunity, then,” she says, and of course she’s right, which I still find annoying, even though I like her now. “Why don’t we read the play?” she says.

  “What, you mean just read through the whole thing, the two of us, right now?”

  “Why not?” says Cynthia.

  Why not? It’s a Friday night, I don’t have any homework, I’m not going to rehearsal, I certainly don’t have a date, and apparently neither does Cynthia.

  “OK,” I say. I only have one copy of the script because I left Cameron’s in the car, but it’s more fun to pull our beanbags together and read off the same pages.

  Cynthia does really well for a cold reading — a lot better than her audition for Dolly, that’s for sure. She reads Suzy and I read Aggie and we take turns with all the other parts. She laughs occasionally, but not much in Act II, I notice. The further we get into it, the more I am forced to admit that Cameron and Elliot are right and that Taylor’s idea is actually pretty good. It doesn’t make me any less angry at them, but now I’m focused on the script and making it as good as it can be.

  “So Taylor thinks that Aggie and Suzy should have a breakup in the second act?” says Cynthia when we’ve finished.

  “Right,” I say. “I mean, I guess I should have figured that out, but I was all caught up in this idea that they would ever be friends in the first place.”

  “You think it’s weird for a skinny girl with fake boobs and a fat girl with low self esteem to be friends?”

  “Not weird,” I say. “I just thought it would make a good — ” and I look up and see Cynthia staring at me with this really odd look on her face, like a combination of “I want to hug you forever” and “I want to tear your head off and use it to play soccer.”

  “This play is about us, isn’t it?” says Cynthia.

  “Not exactly,” I say. “I mean when I wrote it, I wasn’t that crazy about you, so — “

  “But it’s about us,” she persists.

  “Look, Cynthia, yeah, I may have used you, or your body at least, as inspiration, but — “

  “I’m a character in a play,” she says, not seeming to hear me. I’m br
acing myself for the outburst, and even I’m good enough at math to know that after this my number of friends will be zero, when she says, “That is so cool!”

  “You’re not angry?” I say.

  “Why should I be angry?” she says. “Suzy’s nice — way nicer than me. You know everybody who sees this is going to think we’re friends in real life.”

  It had never occurred to me that The Fat Lady Sings could out me and Cynthia as friends — mostly because we weren’t friends until last week.

  “But it’s made up,” I say. “It’s make believe.”

  “So what can you make believe for me to do that would make you break up with me?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m Suzy, right?” says Cynthia. “And Suzy needs to break up with Aggie in Act II. So what could I do that would make you so mad at me you wouldn’t want to be friends anymore?”

  “Get cast in a part I wanted,” I say.

  “Yeah, but I already did that,” says Cynthia, “and besides, in the play Aggie doesn’t want to audition for the musical.”

  I’m tempted to say “Neither did you, before Dolly,” but Cynthia is being really nice to me right now and I don’t want to sound catty.

  “So what else could I do?” says Cynthia.

  What else could she do? It’s totally obvious, isn’t it? But am I actually going to say it to Cynthia Pirelli? What if the whole friendship is a sham? What if she set up this whole thing just so I would make this confession? What else could Cynthia Pirelli do that would make me never speak to her again?

  “You could date Roger Morton,” I say.

  Cynthia gives a low whistle. “You like Roger?” she says.

  “This isn’t about me, it’s about Suzy,” I say.

  “Yeah, but you like Roger Morton,” she says again.

  “Yes, OK, I like Roger, and I’ve got about as much chance of dating him as I do of fitting into one of your outfits.”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” says Cynthia.

  For a split second I pretend that she knows something, that Roger has secretly confessed his adoration of me to her during rehearsals, but I force the fantasy away. I’ve got work to do.