Juno's Swans

by Tamsen Wolff

  She was one of those white people who are almost translucent, the veins on the backs of her hands prominent, the skin dry. She was thickly built, somehow middle-aged looking, as though she wouldn’t really find her calling until she could be cast as a beleaguered television mom trying to get stains out of someone’s soccer jersey. Something about her on the bench eating congealed French fries with her spidery hands seemed so sad that I didn’t want to know anything more about her, or be let in on any intimacies, not the shampoo she used or her parents’ divorce or what pajamas she wore or her last boyfriend or whatever she was talking about at the moment. I closed my eyes to block her out. Then I had to have a vision of her bedroom with a ballet barre and giant posters of the Thompson Twins and Tom Cruise in his Risky Business sunglasses. This was incredibly depressing for some reason. It kind of made me want to hang myself.

  “Using the ocean might be a little impractical,” Geoffrey with a G said to Emily then, not unkindly. “Right? I mean, we don’t even know what time of day we’re performing.”

  Emily nodded vigorously, although her mouth was a little wobbly. Everyone else looked at Geoffrey with gratitude. He was maybe the only one in the group who you could always count on to listen—to really listen—when you were in a scene with him. He told us on the first day that his mother was Mexican and his father was Swedish and he was a sophomore at Brown. These facts had instantly merged in my head till they seemed inseparable. I couldn’t manage to think one without thinking the other two at the same time. He was usually calm, and he looked both slick and muscular, like a very assured mob guy, but somehow gentle at the same time. He smoked constantly and could make the most intricate piece of Shakespeare make sense. No matter what he was playing, he was always telling a story that you could hear. I think you could have understood him even if he were speaking Urdu.

  It was good that we had Geoffrey, because creating a theatre piece in a group in the early stages means there are no leaders yet and there’s a lot of straining and trying, hanging back and uneasy jockeying. No one wants to be held responsible for getting it wrong and everyone is worried that they aren’t as good as the next person. Geoffrey operated as our diplomat, our maître d’, our air traffic controller. He was reliable and he had skills, but he wasn’t showy about it.

  Some of the group had already surprised me. Lanky Chris, for instance—who looked like he wished he were Douglas Fairbanks, as though he could be ready at a moment’s notice to swashbuckle, or lounge against a doorframe with a cigarette draped from his fingers—he was at his best in stage combat class and in our brief exposure to historical dancing, when all his affectations seemed to fall away, or maybe they suddenly had the right outlet. Suddenly, strangely, with the minuet he was completely at home. (Do not ask me why we had a historical dancing class because I don’t know, except that the program had managed to recruit a woman named Janice, tall and nervous like a disturbed crane, who was some kind of historical dancing expert. She came in one week and was gone the next, taking her ancient record player with her. Actually, I found I loved the minuet, the precision, the arched feet, the up and down of it.)

  The Gertrude Stein assignment was hard for all of us because it was so determinedly open-ended. We were responsible for most of the text of Act III, not that it mattered since there was no more or less coherence in that bunch of text than in any other.

  “Are we supposed to make sense of this?” Ann asked. “‘Pigeons on the grass alas? Pigeons on the grass alas? It was a magpie in the sky?’”

  She seemed to be frowning, but Ann had dark eyebrows that grew together in the middle so it was hard to tell when she wasn’t frowning. I asked her one day on break why she was here. She was sitting on the window ledge of the main room in the art gallery, reading the New York Times, which she did every day. She would roll the paper up carefully and return it to her blue and white Yale canvas bag. She had a complicated system for unfolding and folding the newspaper so that all the time she was reading, it remained the size of a large book.

  “I’m a math major,” she said, pushing her glasses up her nose. “I thought it would be good for me.”

  “That’s amazing,” I said. “You wanted to spend your summer in an acting workshop because you thought it would be good for you?”

  “Yes,” she said, and returned to her paper. She seemed to be the person Titch would refer to as the LCD, or the lowest common denominator, which maybe Ann might have appreciated at least in theory, although not in application: the LCD is the person you know is likely to be the weak link, so you don’t have to be.

  But then Ann turned out to be a great fit for Stein. She had the idea to create a grid on the floor that we all moved on, she came up with the water gun, and she suggested we make hard and fast rules for movement—Shisha pitched in with this too, and Geoffrey, we all did. But with the imposition of a spatial structure and the specific movements, the text started to fall into place. We divvied up the lines, such as they were, and we began making our own sense of them. Relationships sprang up. Suddenly it was sinister and it was funny, speaking this gibberish, one day more film-noir-ish, the next the story of Christ on the cross.

  All the groups were rehearsing at the same time, in the same building where we had gathered on the first day. We met there for the first four hours of the day every day for the second week. At the start there was a strange territorial, secretive feeling, people looking out of the corners of their eyes to see who else was doing what. Bursts of laughter from other groups derailed our efforts in the beginning, but we had begun to gain our momentum already by the second morning.

  I wasn’t looking so much at other groups as I was constantly looking for Sarah. I couldn’t help it. I was always conscious of her.

  When you want a flock of sheep to go somewhere—into the barn to administer worming boluses, let’s say—you position yourself almost casually in opposition to them. You have to stand your ground enough not to have a wave of panic sweep the flock and cause the ewes to surge over you. You have to be calm and steady and purposeful, slow moving and nonchalant, and not look anyone in the eye. Look a sheep in the eye and she will generally assume she is up against the firing squad. I countered Sarah in the room as best I could, keeping soft eyes, knowing where she was without looking directly at her much, or at all. Once though, in the middle of the second week, I was watching her as she was looking out the window. She was pulling at the neck of her T-shirt, frowning, distracted, a piece of hair stuck to her cheek. She looked over quickly as if to catch me, and my face flamed because we both saw it exposed—my stupid naked desire. But then she came over to me after and looped her arm through mine. I stopped breathing. Can’t wait for the weekend she said and it seemed for a moment magically like something about the two of us, that we were woven through the word weekend. This wasn’t the case. She said she was going to New York; she had plans. After the party Friday night, she would be away for all that free time.

  The party on Friday night was at someone’s house in Provincetown. It was to celebrate the first round of performances—the performances of everyone’s chunk of Four Saints in Three Acts, all strung together in a row—at the end of our first two weeks together. Are you going? she’d asked. Was she kidding? It was a chance to be near her in after-hours rooms, in anything-can-happen rooms. Was I going? Are the pigeons on the grass? Yes, in case you were wondering. Yes, they freaking well are.

  I’d never been to Provincetown on a Friday night before, and it was the Fourth of July weekend, so it was even more than usually flooded with people and color, explosions of light and noise. It was a little like being at the World’s Fair in Tunbridge, Vermont, at night when the party really gets going. Totally different crowd of course, but I had to resist the same urge to stare at everyone in my path, people with their mouths too large and slippery from drinking, a kind of garishness everywhere. It was a little scary and I almost wished I’d talked Titch into coming with me.
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br />   But then.

  I slipped my hand into Sarah’s at that crowded party. What I thought was, I’ll just get her attention to say goodnight.

  We did not look at each other.

  The world was between our palms.

  When I drove home that night, I went fast around the corners, reckless, impervious, chosen, untouchable. The windows were down, the smells of salt water and stagnant marsh came gusting in on a cool breeze, the tires rasped over the sand on the asphalt. It was quiet at home. In the driveway in Truro, I stood on the floor of pine needles and leaned against the car door, breathing in the night air. Everything was hushed, with only the wind causing a gentle stir, before settling down again. It felt like the night, all but asleep, had gently readjusted her covers. Then it was very still, cavernously black. Time passed.

  I climbed the stairs two at a time. I was carrying a new country in my chest.

  Titch was up that night. She wanted to know about the party. Usually she’s quiet, unobtrusive, like a really talented robber, using her skills to get information, in and out, no fuss, no theatrics, nothing direct, nothing at gunpoint. But she circled me in the kitchen that night, while I fished for leftovers in the fridge, cold wet bedraggled salad, chilly clumps of spaghetti. I hadn’t eaten anything at the party. I had had no awareness of food, no ability or memory of how to chew. Now I was ravenous. My body was humming. I perched on the counter to eat. Titch leaned against the counter opposite me.

  “So was it fun?”

  “Mmm,” I said, or something equally noncommittal.

  “Who was there?” she asked, casually.

  “Just about everyone from the program.”

  “Was Sarah there?”

  “Mmm.”

  She didn’t ask me what she might have wanted to ask me and I didn’t volunteer anything about Sarah, about my heart, anything. The hair on one side of Titch’s head was completely flattened down, as if she’d fallen asleep on it. I thought she had probably been waiting up to talk to me. But I kept my spaghetti bowl between us, inhaling long strands with pointed concentration and thinking, There’s nothing to tell, which was true and not true.

  How do you know? Titch would ask eventually, shyly but determined, her upper lip working slightly. She meant, How do you know how you feel? About Sarah. About girls. How do you know? she would ask, almost fiercely. But not for a while yet. Now she narrowed her eyes at me and held her thoughts to herself, while I pretended to be innocent, unconcerned, ignorant, hungry.

  When did you know? Titch would also ask eventually. When did you really know? And I would say, Never. There was no one moment that I knew.

  But I think I knew right then when I didn’t tell Titch. That’s when I knew.

  CHAPTER 12

  The phone rang well before 7 the next morning. Titch called it’s for you in sleepy displeasure and my heart sprang up like a dumb dog. Sarah said hey do you want to go to New York today, can you call in sick or something and I said yes give me ten minutes and then I tore around the house scattering clothes and hair products and cat food in my wake. Titch emerged from her bedroom in her off-pink pajamas from when the reds ran. She watched me silently as I spun around, as I left my semi-fluent lie on the voice machine at work, as I banged cupboards, and clattered down the stairs out the door to Sarah’s truck, jumping in, flushed, triumphant, instantly utterly shy. Titch was still standing at the top of the stairs as I pulled the truck door closed with a bang. I waved. She did not wave back. I forgot her immediately.

  Sarah looked over at me under her lashes and said, “You look like a Catholic schoolgirl.”

  “Do I?” I said, giddy. I had on a knee-length skirt, a white V-neck T-shirt.

  “Mary Margaret.”

  “Mary Rose.”

  “Mary Gallagher.”

  “Mary Patrick.”

  “Mary Malone.”

  We beamed at one another, enchanted. I thought the sight of her hands on the wheel—her thumbs barely touching, the delicate gold-linked chain bracelet slipping down her wrist—might actually make me faint. She put the gearshift in reverse, turning her head crisply around, and the sharp definition of the long bones in her neck leapt toward me, the hollow in her throat, her decisive chin, the swell of her bottom lip, the confident, easy way she handled the truck—we were not out of the driveway and a light sweat had broken out on my forehead. I gripped the door handle on my side and tried to breathe in deeply, feeling drunk from the cool morning air pouring in the window and blowing my hair all around.

  The light was coming up pink on the horizon and the asphalt was glistening from the rain the night before. We stopped at the Hot Chocolate Sparrow in Orleans and bought carrot muffins and large cups of coffee with cream and sugar.

  By the time we hit the city, we were both famished and ate an enormous breakfast at a French place on 9th and 21st, with giant bowls of café au lait served by skinny, sullen, glamorously disheveled waitresses, who either were French or gave a great French impression. We had found a parking place right off of 9th Avenue and Sarah pulled into it with a flourish. She said I didn’t understand what a miracle it was. Stepping out of the safe containment of the truck was jarring at first, the pavement bone-jostling. When I nearly tripped on the sidewalk, Sarah caught my elbow for an instant to steady me and then when I looked up all the faces we passed looked luminous to me. Even the angry, hurried, and sick people on the street had halos, like the light distortion that happens when you have a migraine, but glittering with happiness instead of pain.

  Sarah had an appointment to get her hair cut at a place on the corner of Bank and West 4th Street. It was not like any hair salon I had ever seen. It was like visiting someone’s oversized elegant foyer, with giant urns of flowers and floor-length windows, with heavy drapes of amber-colored raw silk pulled back with oversized sashes. Two ornate retro barber chairs sat before marble counters and long mirrors with tarnished silver frames. The basins for washing hair were discreetly tucked away in the rear. A regal pug dog named Honey came to greet us and then returned to her place of honor on a large red velvet floor cushion, with a bowl of water. I sat and watched while Sarah chatted to her hairdresser, a man with a big, hard stomach and white hair, an expressive, rubbery face, and glasses with owlish, pink plastic frames.

  He asked me questions about my home and told Sarah where she should take me to eat and what we needed to see in the city over the weekend. I basked in his friendliness, sitting cross-legged surrounded by old copies of Vogue on the sunny velvet window settee.

  Outside on the street again, Sarah was shy and kept fingering her hair.

  “Hold on,” I said to her and she stopped obediently while I pressed a thumb to her temple and removed two small golden scissored hairs from where they glinted against her skin.

  Just then a red-haired man passing by us said, “Look at you pretty girls,” and there was no harm in it, only blessing, an admiring acknowledgment of our shininess, the way her light bounced off of me and the way we gleamed, like new pennies. Anyone who could have seen us would have said the same. There’s no denying that kind of radiance. I thought I might crack from happiness. I thought—giving in, entirely breaking my seams with glee—I have met my match: I am matched.

  Sarah took me to Kiehl’s on Third Avenue then, with its white-coated, bristly salespeople, the clean lines of the bottles with their tidy black graphics. The potions, the samples, the impossible numbers of products you could spread on yourself; it was intoxicating. Everything looked or sounded delicious, from the swimming pool blue of the astringent to the pineapple facial scrub. Sarah was serious and intent in this setting. She fit right in. She picked up various items—shampoo, conditioner, lip balm—with the stern efficiency of a seasoned shopper. She rubbed heather-scented lotion on her hands and held them up for me to smell. When I wandered aimlessly in different parts of the store, no matter where she was I could feel an unb
roken yellow ribbon of happiness and complicity stretching between us, which would unspool in a leisurely way and then just like that quickly wind us together again. I was more content than I could remember being in that lazy, dogpaddling day, not needing to be anywhere, unconnected to my previous life, miraculously transported, everything right with the world.

  We walked all the way back across town, and stopped at a bodega on the corner of 9th Avenue and 23rd Street, close to Sarah’s apartment. The bodega was empty except for a tall slender woman with a lush brown ponytail who was browsing the magazine rack. She looked over at us twice sharply and then called out, “Sarah?”

  Sarah turned away from me to greet her.

  I heard ponytail girl ask her, “How’s Bess?” and Sarah say, “She’s fine.”

  Her shoulders were hunched up protectively. The woman tilted her head to one side, looking around Sarah over at me, slightly bemused. She gave me a careless once-over, which made me feel sweaty and ungainly. Then she said, “Well,” gracefully flapping her hand at us, “enjoy the day.”

  When the woman had gone, Sarah turned back and smiled at me, an odd, tight, apologetic smile.

  “I don’t like her much,” she said.

  “Who is she?”

  “Well, she rooms with some friends of mine from NYU and she models. She thinks she’s a very big deal because she has the same agent as some of the hotshots.”