My Life

by Maryrose Wood

  BwayPhil: What we don’t know is whether we should call you Aurora,

  BwayPhil: or Mr. Smeave.

  AURORAROX: or maybe you’d prefer A.?

  BwayPhil: It’s a helluva fix you’re in, when you think about it . . .

  SAVEMEFROMAURORA:

  SAVEMEFROMAURORA: speechless

  SAVEMEFROMAURORA: how did you . . . ?

  BwayPhil: Don’t ask too many questions, please.

  AURORAROX: hee hee

  SAVEMEFROMAURORA: life passing before eyes

  SAVEMEFROMAURORA: the internuts will have a field day

  SAVEMEFROMAURORA: you have no idea what a catastrophe

  SAVEMEFROMAURORA: head hurts, feeling dizzy

  SAVEMEFROMAURORA: this is how people have strokes

  BwayPhil: RELAX! If you don’t want us to tell anyone, we won’t.

  SAVEMEFROMAURORA: You must want something. What do you want?

  BwayPhil: We just want to meet you.

  AURORAROX: and find out why you’ve been so unhappy with the show

  BwayPhil: Because we love it.

  AURORAROX: and we think you’re amazing

  BwayPhil: And we’ve been through a lot for the show.

  AURORAROX: A LOT

  AURORAROX: and it just would be nice to know

  AURORAROX: if it was all worth it.

  BwayPhil: That’s all.

  SAVEMEFROMAURORA: That’s all?

  AURORAROX: yes

  BwayPhil: Yes.

  SAVEMEFROMAURORA: Damn.

  SAVEMEFROMAURORA: You had to go and say all the right things.

  BwayPhil: What do you say, Mr. Smeave?

  AURORAROX: please?

  AURORAROX: you can trust us

  AURORAROX: we didn’t tell anybody about your “hunch”

  AURORAROX: remember?

  SAVEMEFROMAURORA: Unlike some people! I could strangle that Marlena. What I get for being nice.

  SAVEMEFROMAURORA: But that’s water under the bridge, now.

  SAVEMEFROMAURORA: thinking

  SAVEMEFROMAURORA: Okay.

  SAVEMEFROMAURORA: You know the Toys ‘R’ Us? The one in Times Square with the Ferris wheel inside?

  BwayPhil: Sure.

  SAVEMFROMAURORA: Four o’clock, upstairs by the animatronic dinosaur. If you bring anyone with you the deal’s off.

  AURORAROX: awesome!!! Thank you!!!!

  BwayPhil: How will we know you?

  SAVEMEFROMAURORA: Wear mittens. I’ll find you.

  During the whole careening ride from Philip’s house to Emily’s, with Mark whooping and hollering at the wheel of the dinged-up but still drivable Winnebago, Emily had Philip recite the Rockville Centre train schedule. Mark had begged to drive them into the city, but the thought of him maneuvering the RV through Times Square was too terrifying to contemplate.

  In theory it would work: they would catch the 3:02 into the city, meet SAVEME at four o’clock, then Emily would make the 6:39 from Penn Station back to Rockville Centre and be at school in plenty of time for the show. What an inconvenient night to be making her stage debut! She fully expected that the thrill of meeting Aurora—the real Aurora!—would knock every bit of Mr. Henderson’s Fiddler choreography out of her head, but she didn’t care. She could always fake some steps from the movie version; those she knew by heart.

  There was a tiny element of risk in stopping at Emily’s house on the way to the train station, but the mitten thing seemed important and Philip didn’t have any at D-West. Besides, Emily’s parents were supposed to be at the lawyer’s office with Grandma Rose, so the house would be empty. They’d head in, grab the mittens, and be long gone before any parental interference could occur.

  Mom, Dad, I know I’m grounded, but somebody incredibly important is going to meet me and Philip at an animatronic dinosaur in Times Square at four o’clock and can I go and please please have money for the train, please?

  No. Grounded or not, it was better to just go and suffer the consequences. She could apologize later, beg forgiveness, be confined to her room for the rest of her life. This was too important.

  Just to be sure, Mark let them off a block away and Emily had Philip go around the side of the house and peek in the window of the garage to see if the car was gone. It was. Only then did they approach the front door.

  There was a small flower arrangement sitting on the steps, still wrapped in clear plastic and wrapping paper from the florist. Philip bent to pick it up.

  “It’s probably for Grandma Rose,” Emily said. “Better leave it there.” She put her key in the lock and cautiously opened the door.

  Lights off. Empty rooms. “All clear,” she said to Philip. “Keep an eye out while I get the mittens.”

  Philip took up his post by the door as Emily trotted upstairs. She quickly found what she was looking for in the back of her closet, in a box marked HATS & GLOVES. Mrs. Pearl tended to be very organized about things like that. Emily raced downstairs again.

  “Got ’em,” she said to Philip. “We’d better get out of here.” She was halfway out the door before he could stop her.

  “Wait! The flowers are for you,” Philip said. “Look.”

  “For me?” Emily reached for the card stapled to the top of the paper. “To Miss Emily Pearl,” the envelope read, in a familiar red script. Emily opened the card.

  Emily,

  Thank you for being an “A+” trouper! But Lorelei says her ankle is much better and she insists on performing tonight. See you at the show?

  Mr. Henderson

  She stared at the card in her hand. “What is it?” Philip asked.

  “A miracle,” Emily said. “Hang on a minute. I just changed my mind about something.” She picked up the arrangement and carried it into the house, placing it prominently on the coffee table in the center of the living room. Then she turned back to Philip. “Can I borrow a Sharpie?”

  Philip reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out one of his ever-present markers, and handed it to Emily. She turned the card over and wrote on the back.

  Dear Mom & Dad,

  I’m going into the city with Philip. Something has happened that is the most important thing that’s ever happened in my life. Not only that, but it is part of my spiritual journey. If you have any questions please call Rabbi Levin.

  No time to explain but I hope you can trust me that it is the right thing to do.

  She paused for a moment, then added:

  Also, tell Grandma Rose that the cheerleader is a pro after all (see other side of card for details).

  Love,

  Emily

  Emily put the card next to the flowers. “Okay,” she said. “Now we can go.”

  “What’s the miracle?” Philip asked, puzzled.

  Emily smiled. “I’m getting an A-plus in Mr. Henderson’s class.”

  26

  “THERE’S NO BUSINESS

  LIKE SHOW BUSINESS”

  Annie Get Your Gun

  1946. Music and lyrics by Irving Berlin,

  book by Herbert Fields and Dorothy Fields

  Saturday. One performance left.

  The animatronic T. rex on the third floor of Toys “R” Us was as big as a house, with bloodred eyes that stared right at you as the thing lurched around with lifelike, reptilian movements. To Emily it looked like it was about to burst out of the Jurassic Park exhibit, hurl itself down the escalators and through the plate-glass storefront, and go on a rampage through Times Square.

  Every few minutes it roared, in deafening, floor-shaking surround sound. One would think the parents and nannies would know not to shove their two-year-olds up close to this thing, but apparently not.

  “Rrrrrrrrroooowwwwwwwwwwwww!” roared the T. rex.

  “Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!” screamed the children.

  “I don’t know which is more frightening,” commented a man who stood near Philip and Emily. It was 3:59 and they were waiting, exactly as instructed. “The kids, or the dinosaur.”

&nbs
p; “They’re just scared,” said Emily.

  “Parents are so clueless sometimes,” said Philip.

  “True,” said the man. He was short and round, in high-water pants, a green sports coat, and glasses. “Look how overdressed those kids are. I’d be cranky too if I were in a snowsuit. It’s so overheated in these stores.”

  Emily and Philip both nodded as they scanned the crowds, looking for the very special person who was somewhere nearby. Emily tried hard not to envision the rotund little man dressed in a baby’s snowsuit, but it was futile.

  “You think it’s hot?” the man said again.

  “Yeah,” said Emily. He was kind of a weirdo. Maybe they should go wait in the next aisle. Anyone as fabulous as the real Aurora undoubtedly would be easy to spot, even from ten feet away.

  “Then why,” the man asked, in a low, “gotcha” tone of voice, “are the two of you wearing mittens?”

  Ever so slowly, Philip and Emily held up their mittened hands, like it was a stickup. “You must be Phil,” said the man. “And his faithful friend Roxy, I presume?”

  “Oh my God,” said Emily. “Oh my God.”

  Philip looked down at the man, unavoidably noticing the comb-over swirling around his bald spot. “Are you—Aurora?” Philip stammered.

  “My name is Albert.” The man’s eyes darted around, rat-like. “Albert Smeave.”

  “Rrrrrrrrroooowwwwwwwwwwwww!” bellowed the T. rex.

  The only place to sit down in the whole store was on the Ferris wheel, so Albert bought a strip of tickets and the three of them climbed into one of the small, garish cars, each one shamelessly promoting a toy based on a television character or a television character based on a toy.

  They boarded in the basement level of the store and soared around and around, swooping upward past the stuffed animals and the Hot Wheels, and lingering at the tippy-top right in front of the glass elevators filled with awestruck shoppers. The glass elevators went up and down, the Ferris wheel went round and round, and Philip felt like he might throw up.

  “Thank you for buying the tickets, Mr. Smeave,” said Emily. She meant for the Ferris wheel, but Philip thought that this guy Smeave might well say the same to her.

  Albert waved away her thanks. “Let’s be honest,” he said. “I’m a wealthy man. All because of that show.”

  “Tell us,” said Emily as the wheel lurched them forward and up. “Tell us who you really are.”

  Albert shrugged. “I’m just a guy from Illinois,” he said. “Aurora, Illinois. That’s my hometown. I was your average miserable kid, until I joined the drama club at school. It changed my life.”

  “The drama club?” asked Emily dubiously. “Really?”

  “Sure,” said Albert. “Pretending to be other people somehow made me feel like I knew who I was. I was Nicely-Nicely Johnson in Guys and Dolls. Herbie in Gypsy. Arpad in She Loves Me. They were character parts, but I always stopped the show.” He smiled at the memory. “Still, it wasn’t enough for me, so I started to put on my own shows. Pretty soon I discovered that writing was my passion.”

  “Our school’s doing Fiddler this year,” said Philip, clutching the safety bar and fighting the urge to retch. “Emily’s in it, sort of.” The car ahead of them was decked out with characters from Jimmy Neutron, and from Philip’s perspective the leering, painted face of Jimmy was staring at him from over Albert’s shoulder.

  “I’m just an understudy,” Emily said, suddenly feeling a twinge of disappointment that she wasn’t going on.

  “Fiddler!” Albert cried. “See—if I could have written that show! Or any of the great ones! West Side Story! Oklahoma! Gypsy!” Albert sounded reverent. “But to make it big with this . . . professional embarrassment . . .”

  Emily wanted to leap to Aurora’s defense, but an ocean of pent-up, unspoken suffering was ready to burst out of Albert, and he spent the next full revolve of the Ferris wheel in nonstop confessional mode.

  All he’d ever wanted was to write serious, literary theatre, he told them. Like Inferno! The Musical. Now his dream was to complete an historical epic about the Black Death.

  “It’s called Plague!” Albert sighed. “With an exclamation point. I slave for years on these projects, but no one understands them! No one will put them on! I wheedle little student productions here and there, just so I can hear my work, but—amateurs! It’s always a disaster.” The Ferris wheel spun them upward and stopped. Albert slumped in despair. “And I wrote Aurora over spring break my second year at college, because everybody else had a girlfriend or a boyfriend or a trip to Florida and I was broke and alone. It’s sophomoric crap, and look what happened.”

  They were suspended at the top now, and Philip was paralyzed with the same fear that had gripped him at the top of the Space Needle. He was afraid to look out of the car.

  “That’s why I can’t put my name on it,” said Albert. “If people know I wrote Aurora, that’s all they’ll want from me ever again. My chances for a career as a serious dramatist will be ruined.”

  “But we like it, Mr. Smeave,” said Emily. “It makes us happy. Doesn’t that mean anything?”

  “Kids!” Albert said, leaning forward so suddenly he rocked the car they were in. “Artistically, I am a failure. I want you to know this. Find another hero, okay?”

  “It’s too late for that,” said Philip suddenly. Emily looked like she was about to cry, and he was feeling as green as the stack of Kermit dolls they kept whooshing past, but this cruel dismissal of the show they loved so dearly had to be refuted. “It’s much too late, Mr. Smeave. We’ve already given everything we have for Aurora, and you—you won’t even put your name on it.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” said Albert.

  So Philip and Emily told Albert the whole saga, starting with Emily’s bat mitzvah and encompassing all that happened afterward: the joy and lies and borrowed money, the uncounted miles on the Long Island Railroad, Lester and Morris and the Closing Toe, Grandma Rose and Stan’s failing eyesight and the Winnebago, Mark and his improbable romance with Stephanie, Ian’s performance at Don’t Tell Mama, not to mention a nasty bruise on the arm of a New Jersey state trooper.

  By the time they were done, Albert Smeave was stunned. He considered himself a skilled storyteller, but only real life could cook up a tale as preposterous as this one. Philip and Emily sat there looking at him with big wet eyes, like two waifs in a black velvet painting.

  “Well.” He tried acting gruff to cover up how touched he was by their story. “Huh. That’s some wacky tale.”

  “And so you know, we’ll come see whatever you write,” Philip added, with conviction.

  “Yes,” said Emily. “We’re fans of yours.”

  “You are?” Albert was confused. “You mean, you’d come see something I wrote even if it wasn’t crap—I mean, Aurora?”

  “Of course,” said Emily, as if it should be evident by now. “You’re our favorite writer.”

  Philip wanted to sit up straight and proud, but these cars were designed for little kids and his head would bump against the top if he did that. With as much dignity as he could muster in a hunched-over position, he pulled an Aurora Playbill out of his backpack. It was the one from his birthday, with the signature of every single member of the Aurora cast on it. He offered it to Albert.

  “Please,” he said. “Do you need a Sharpie? I have tons.”

  Albert looked at the Playbill as if it were crawling with lice. “Phil. Roxie,” he said, his voice cracking. “You guys turned out to be a lot nicer than I expected. But I hope you understand why—I can’t, I just can’t put my name on that.”

  “We understand,” said Philip. “Just sign it ‘Aurora.’ That way you can keep your secret.”

  “ ‘Aurora’? But that would mean nothing!” said Albert.

  “Anyone could write that!”

  “But you’re not anyone! You’re the real Aurora,” Emily declared. And he was! She could see it now, just by looking in his eyes: t
he wounded idealism, the capacity for struggle and sacrifice, the creative fire burning inside. It was all there. “It’s who you truly are,” she said, touching his hand. “Even if no one knows it but us.”

  Albert looked at them, with their shiny, somewhat zitty adolescent faces beaming at him, all innocence and trust. Jeez, he thought. The boy’s got nothing, and the girl spends her grandma’s money on my stupid little show. And they don’t even look sorry.

  Before he could change his mind, he scribbled something on the Playbill and shoved it back at Philip.

  “Albert Smeave,” Philip read, with wonder. “You signed it Albert Smeave. Are you sure?”

  Albert shrugged, but his heart was pounding in his chest. “If Aurora could mean that much to a couple of nudniks like you, maybe I have nothing to be ashamed of.” He sat on his hands before Emily and Philip could see that they were shaking. “Anyway, the show’s closing tonight. If I don’t own up to it now, when can I? Wait a minute. Maybe you guys want these, huh?”

  He patted all his pockets before finding what he was looking for. A slim, white, rectangular envelope: the kind that held tickets.

  “There’s two in there. Enjoy,” he said. “Stephenson’s office keeps sending me house seats but I don’t want ’em.”

  Emily and Philip were practically cross-eyed staring at the envelope that dangled in front of them. Neither one of them reached for it.

  “No, Mr. Smeave. You should go,” said Emily firmly. “But take Philip.”

  “Take Emily,” Philip said, even more firmly and practically at the same time. “You both deserve to be there tonight.”

  “How about you two go,” said Albert, grinning and tucking the tickets into Philip’s pocket. “I’ve seen it plenty, and I know how it ends.”

  The Ferris wheel had returned them to the ground, and it was time to get out. “Anyway, I’m going to go home and write,” Albert said. “It’s possible you kooky kids have given me an idea.”

  A miracle! A miracle! A miracle had happened and they were going to see Aurora one more time. Tonight, closing night. It was all Emily had wanted, just like the character Emily in Our Town was given one last visit to the land of the living. One more time, but knowing it was the last time, so she could breathe in every moment and collapse in an overstimulated heap afterward. Philip would be there with her, and the thought made Emily feel happy inside. Happy in a cozy, best-friends kind of way.