She smiles and even seems to blush a little as she curtsies, holding out her embroidered dress like an old-timey member of the court. She glides off the stage and now we are left with Bearded Guitar-Playing Guy from the café.
It’s a little less successful with him, to be true. He comes up on the stage, sits down humbly on a hay bale, and begins to strum the silky opening chords of “Gangsta’s Paradise.” At first, it does seem like a soulful ballad and there’s hope. Then, it all goes horribly wrong.
Cringe.
It’s not just that once the song is revealed his heartfelt singing feels almost like a joke . . . which, by the way, it does. Example: Someone even laughs out loud in the audience before getting elbowed by his wife. And it’s not that some members of the audience have a devout attachment to the heartwarming movie about saving inner-city kids with blondness. It’s that, for some bizarro reason, he keeps slipping off the hay bale. Now, I don’t know about you, but I have never noticed it’s particularly hard to sit on a hay bale. Usually, the directions are: 1) See hay bale. 2) Sit on hay bale. 3) Stay. However, Bearded Guitar-Playing Guy maybe didn’t practice or is wearing unusually slippery skinny jeans or has lost his ear/brain equilibrium.
Whatever the case may be, he keeps falling over. So, it goes: Strum strum. Sing. Fall. Recover. Strum strum strum. Sing soulfully. Fall. Recover. Rinse and repeat.
The members of the audience are too nice to heckle him, although I do notice a couple of bored husbands holding in their laughter under the watchful eyes of their well-mannered wives. Also, everyone pretends not to hear this from the bleachers:
“Mooooommy, why does he keep faaaaalling?”
Then, the wind kicks up about fifty notches and the screen leans over to approximately a sixty-degree angle, coming dangerously close to blowing over on top of both Bearded Guitar-Playing Guy and the entire audience.
He, then, looks up in horror, ends his song prematurely, and dashes off the stage, slumped over like a hermit. He looks over at me furtively on his way down the stage steps.
I offer an enthusiastic thumbs-up.
There is a smattering of polite applause.
I’m not sure what effect the wind is going to have on Terri’s lasso extravaganza, but I am only going to assume that her Arizona state competitions prepared her for inclement weather.
She begins to take the stage. Henry, who is behind the screen preparing his magic act, looks up at me. We share a look of dread.
Oh, Lord. Please help us.
Apparently, our prayers are answered as the wind dies down just as she settles in.
What happens next can only be described as a historic transformation the likes of which we have never seen. Henry stops preparing his magic kit and ducks down behind the speakers, stage left, just to take it in. I find myself walking forward in a kind of trance. And the audience—you could hear a grain of sand drop to the floor.
Terri takes the stage with gravitas, standing in the middle of the pitch black under a lone spotlight. She’s wearing an all-black Western outfit, with stitching and mother-of-pearl buttons, slick pants, and cowboy boots with snakes twisting up the sides, sinister. The whole getup somehow manages to look regal, tailored, elegant. From somewhere behind her, a sad, soulful song plays. From below the stage, a fog begins to rise. Under the lights it climbs around Terri like a thousand serpents. She stays perfectly still. The audience holds its breath.
And then . . . it begins.
The lasso comes up, suddenly in a circle twirling outside of her, and around her, and beside her, then around again. In little circles, and then big circles, and then giant circles. So giant you’d think she couldn’t possibly keep control. And then the lasso is miraculously transformed into a whip, and then suddenly the whip is cracking, twirling, spinning around, and Terri is cracking the whip to the beat of the dramatic song. Each crack of the whip on the stage drawing a gasp from the crowd.
But that’s not all, no, sir.
Before we know it, Terri magically lights the lasso on fire. So now she is twirling, essentially, a ring of fire in front of her, in back of her, side to side. The audience erupts into spontaneous applause, whistling and cheering all around. Whooping and hollering.
The wailing song crescendos and now Terri does the unthinkable. She jumps in the middle of the ring of fire, spinning it in circles around her body. Now she jumps in. Now she jumps out again. Now in. Now out again.
And here . . . for her grand finale, she actually spins the rope from her ankles below, up up up around her, the fire spinning around her like a blazing tornado, and up over her head. One. Two. Three times! And then she majestically spins the lasso out with a flourish. Whoosh! No more fire.
Done.
There is a moment of stunned silence as the song comes to an abrupt end.
And then it’s like chaos.
The entire crowd leaps to its feet—pictures, flashes, hoots, hollers, communists are marrying libertarians in the aisles. The spotlight comes back up and Terri stands there, proud. Beaming. The light reflecting off her face, radiant, her breath coming in and out, fast. Like a Western goddess she stands there taking it in. Flush.
She is amazing!
And I will never call her Terri the Terrible again.
This applause lasts for a good five minutes. Then Terri comes off the stage and gives me a wink, descending the steps.
Well, well.
Who knew?
Henry awkwardly mounts the stage.
“Honestly, I’d like to direct you all to lower your expectations immediately.”
He says this with all sincerity but the audience laughs.
“I’m serious. This is going to be a grind, unfortunately, compared to the prior act.”
And the lights come down and now the screen behind Henry is filled with twinkling stars, which seem to almost come off the screen, the clouds from the screen seem to go from two dimensions to three, wafting upward and outward to mix with the fog coming up from beneath the stage. I’ll say this, Henry has really outdone himself with these special effects. I mean, they look like something you’d see at Disneyland. Or, possibly, Universal Studios, where they happen to have a Harry Potter section complete with rides, but no I don’t want to go, stop asking me.
As discussed, this magic routine involves turning common paper towels into doves. At first one dove, then two, then three, then four, and on and on until I find myself not only wondering how, exactly, Henry is accomplishing this feat but, also, Where the heck did he get all those doves? By the end of the routine, I count about fifty doves, which seems impossible considering I have no idea where they even came from.
I imagine myself caring for fifty doves for the rest of my life.
I will have to build them an aviary and find the proper foliage.
Before I know it, the routine is over and the applause is authentically enthusiastic. No, it wasn’t quite the showstopper Terri’s flaming lasso routine was but, let’s be honest, nothing could be. Had I known, I would have put Terri last in the lineup. That’s showbiz.
Henry comes off the stage and gives me a nod.
“Ready, sis?”
And my stomach fills with butterflies. Here it is, folks. The moment of truth.
The play within the play.
(Yes, I’m terrified.)
But there is, also, the small detail of justice. Justice for my parents.
I manage to sneak a look at Uncle Claude in the crowd.
He’s tilting back a drink, joking around with his neighbor.
And he will never see this coming.
8
TO SAY THAT Henry put a lot into the play within the play does not do it justice. Quite simply, he spent all last week cutting the scenery, finding a boat off Craigslist, and building a miniature Queen Mary Victorian home out of gingerbread. Bearded Guitar-Playing Guy has agreed to play the part of Uncle Claude, dressed in a kind of suburban-man outfit. Light blue oxford. Beige khakis. The parts of both myself and Henry will act
ually be played by miniature figurines, created by Henry from his super-nerdy Dungeons & Dragons collection. There is a series of projected texts on the back screen as well, everything from e e cummings to Shakespeare. Also, we have moody and evocative background music, which Henry has also been noodling over for weeks.
There’s a pretty simple structure to this little piece of theater. Act I: We are happy, everything’s great. Act II: Claude shows up, sees the house, gets greedy, plants a bomb on the boat, removes the life jackets. Act III: Our parents, played by Henry and me, go out on the boat, which explodes, and sink to the bottom of the ocean whilst the music crescendos and the billowing smoke blows in. Then, Uncle Claude, played by Bearded Guitar-Playing Guy, steals the Queen Anne Victorian gingerbread house, all the while cackling maniacally.
Do not, folks, be fooled by the simplicity of the plot. The music, combined with the projections and the fog, all contribute to turning this rather rudimentary tale into a mixed-media theatrical experience. I don’t want to toot my own horn, obviously, but I think it’s rather inspired.
Lastly, our lines are projected onto the screen behind us, à la silent film, so that Henry and I are able to embody our respective characters. I forgot to mention, as a final bit of flair for the dramatic, Henry has decided we should be wearing masks, so he’s created two papier-mâché masks in our parents’ likenesses that are somehow much more interesting than our own actual faces. Bearded Guitar-Playing Guy didn’t want to wear his Uncle Claude mask, but we finally convinced him it was an aesthetic choice and we needed consistency among the characters.
By the end of the first act, everyone is clapping wildly. Henry and I hold for the audience, exiting backstage as our castmate goes onstage as Uncle Claude.
“I think they really like it,” I whisper into Henry’s ear.
“It appears so.”
“Can you see Uncle Claude in the audience?” I ask.
“Yes, so far he looks very much involved. I’m not sure he realizes that’s supposed to be him onstage.”
“Not yet,” I whisper back.
I’m fairly sure when Uncle Claude does realize it, his face will go from vague amusement to crimson indignation.
Bearded Guitar-Playing Guy, dressed as Uncle Claude, boards the boat and plants the prop TNT at the helm. The audience watches with keen interest. Tension in the air.
Now he tiptoes off the stage, taking off his mask behind the curtain.
“How was I? Do I seem convincing as a suburban man?”
“Yes, you were brilliant!” I answer.
Now Henry and I scurry back onto the stage, as our parents, seating ourselves back in the boat. We mimic the boat’s movement through the water by projecting moving water on the screen behind us. Pretty sneaky, huh?
It’s a moment of quiet serenity. No music. Calm. Peaceful.
Then . . .
BOOM!
The special-effects explosion rocks the stage. A simple mixture of ammonia and bleach. Henry was really excited putting that whole business together. The audience gasps. A few people let out a sigh of relief and a nervous laugh.
Henry and I, in our masks, mimic falling into the ocean by lying down ever so slowly, with silk chiffon ribbons of different shades of blue waving all around us, standing in for the deep blue sea.
The audience grows nearly silent.
You could hear a pin drop.
You see, many of the people here know us. They know our story. They know about our parents’ deaths. And now they know that our little play is a bit more profound, meaningful, and pointed than perhaps they had imagined.
The atmosphere is heavy. You could cut the air up with a butter knife right now.
Henry and I sneak off the stage and now the Uncle Claude actor comes back on, in his Uncle Claude mask.
But now, the actual Claude, in the audience, is starting to shift in his seat. He looks around at the people near him but no one dares to look back.
As the Uncle Claude actor cackles madly from the stage and begins stealing the miniature Victorian gingerbread house, wheeling it away . . . the real Claude, our uncle, finally cracks.
“Enough! Enough! Lights! Lights! Turn on the lights!” he bellows, standing up from his seat in the audience.
Henry rushes over to the lighting equipment and turns the spotlight on Uncle Claude and Uncle Claude only. He stands there, cursing and holding his arm over his eyes to shield himself from the white-hot spotlight and the stares of the entire audience. A deer in headlights.
We got him.
We got him good.
As the audience begins to whisper, point, cover their mouths, and whisper again, the chief of police swaggers his way over to Uncle Claude.
“Claude, kind of looks like something might have struck a nerve here tonight,” Chief Talley says, sizing him up.
More hushed whispers from the rest of the audience, furtive glances.
“Officer, I just . . . I can’t believe what’s happening here. This is insane! This is crazy!” Uncle Claude laughs nervously, looking around him at the rest of the audience.
“Well, that may be. But you’re causing a disturbance. So maybe you should come with me and just answer a few questions. If you don’t mind, sir,” the cop suggests.
Claude looks around him at the accusatory glances, from every direction. Surrounded. Caught.
“Don’t you people see? This is a setup! I’m an innocent man!”
Somehow the more he says it, the less true it seems. Some members of the audience look away now, ashamed for him. I don’t blame them. It’s painful.
Uncle Finn watches from his seat in the audience.
Terri watches from the opposite side of the stage.
“Terri?” Uncle Claude looks to her, pleading. She averts her eyes, looking down at the ground, troubled.
Now Claude looks back to the audience, to his brother, Finn, for salvation. “Aren’t you going to stop them? This is madness!”
But Uncle Finn only looks on with pity in his eyes, giving a slight shake of the head, stunned.
“All right, sir. No need for hysterics. We just want to ask a few questions. That’s all.” The police officer has had enough.
“No, I absolutely refuse. No. I will not.” Uncle Claude stops short of stamping his feet.
“Sir, you may want to come down with us, right now, in a voluntary fashion.”
“This is ridiculous!”
And now the police officer is losing patience. He leans in and whispers, “Mr. Billings, we can do this the civilized way or the ugly way. It’s up to you. May I remind you there are children present.” The officer nods over to me and Henry, staring from beside the stage.
Uncle Claude looks over at us.
A moment of contemplation.
He nods at the officer, dutifully, and the two of them come quietly down from the bleachers. A fellow officer joins them on the way out. It looks a lot like they’re heading for the police station.
For a moment, no one knows what to do. Is it over? What about the screening? Is everything ruined?
I leap onstage and make an announcement.
“Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being patient. Now let’s all just take a breath, sit back, relax, and watch the film we came here to see!”
There’s an audible sigh of relief.
I come off the stage toward Henry.
We share a moment.
“Holy moly! We did it. We actually did it,” I say, breathless.
“Do you think Mom and Dad would be proud of us?”
“What? Of course they would be!”
Up on the screen, the film begins. Twenty feet tall, black and white, through the streets and over the arches of the beginning of Touch of Evil.
Henry smiles at me, somehow lost in thought.
Our nightmare is finally over.
9
THE AUDIENCE IS still rapt as Henry and I make our way behind the giant flickering image to the box office. We saw that justice was d
one, and raised money for hungry children. That feels right, giving back something.
The Random Yoga Instructor Lady and the Bearded Guitar-Playing Guy have taken a seat next to each other in the audience, staring up at the celluloid and all the dreams thrown on it.
We’re about halfway behind the screen when Henry stops short.
“Hey, you almost tripped me!”
“Shh. Eva. Stop.”
Henry is standing there like a cat with his spine up, perfectly still. The ions around him charged.
I freeze behind him, puzzled. It takes everything I have not to open my mouth, but there’s something swirling around my kid brother that I know not to mess with. Something electric.
Instead, I try to figure out what, exactly, is his damage. He’s staring past the screen, about fifty yards away, and at first, I can’t quite tell what he’s looking at.
But then I look closer.
It’s Uncle Finn.
And closer still.
Oh no!
Have you ever been in a car crash? Even a little one? You know that feeling where time slows down and everything seems like it’s taking three hours but it’s really only three seconds? As if the very nature of time is stretched out like Silly Putty?
That’s this moment.
Staring at Uncle Finn.
And I can’t believe what I see.
10
HENRY STAYS NEXT to me, still as a statue, the giant image of Orson Welles projected behind him.
Uncle Finn’s movement is hurrying, a furtive kind of thing.
It’s the movement of someone putting. Putting one thing from here to there. But what is it? What is he doing?
And then it comes into focus and I see exactly what it is. There, in big black Sharpie letters that are very familiar to me because I scrawled them out earlier, in a rush:
CHILDREN’S FOOD BANK
And the putting?
Finn is taking money out of the labeled Children’s Food Bank jar and putting it into something.
BANG!
Like dynamite, it hits me.
It hits me straight in the gut.
Henry & Eva and the Castle on the Cliff Page 15
