Backstage Stuff

by Sharon Fiffer

  Just then, Tim drove up in front of the house and slammed his Mustang against the curb, his signature parking style, and jumped out waving both arms.

  “Nellie! Sorry I’m late. I’ve been trying to call you to tell you the cast was coming over to meet you. Your phone must be out of order.”

  Tim was lying. Jane knew he hadn’t tried to call Nellie because Nellie would have told him she didn’t want to meet the goddamn cast and hung up on him. Much better to tell everyone to show up—in a group—and then dash in, breathless, as the hero, to smooth things over. This would allow Tim to explain away Nellie’s crusty exterior as part of a mix-up rather than what the other actors would discover soon enough—that her crusty exterior was the outer manifestation of her crusty interior. Jane tried to catch Tim’s eye so she could convey to him that she knew what he was up to even if Nellie was fooled.

  “Well, you’re here anyway, so come in.” Nellie stepped away from the door, wiping her hands on her apron.

  Don slammed his recliner forward, changing from man-dozing-under-the-newspapers to awake-affable-host as his chair shifted him into second.

  Don and Nellie stood awkwardly as the cast filed in. No bar, no rinse tanks, no rags in hand, no tap, no cooler, no jukebox in the corner—Jane realized that without the fittings and fixtures of the EZ Way Inn, Don and Nellie had no idea what they were supposed to do in the company of other human beings. Used to serving drinks and offering plates of food, at ease with the patter of conversation as customers filed in and out, Jane saw her parents now totally bewildered. People were in their house. What next?

  Jane suggested everyone sit and make themselves comfortable, while frantically trying to make eye contact with Don, who seemed frozen in his spot.

  “Dad, don’t we have some iced tea or something? Mom, some cookies? Some…”

  That did it. Orders. As soon as he realized he could serve them up glasses of something, anything, Don thawed and beamed before heading to the kitchen. Nellie, still wiping her hands and looking at these people as if they were museum specimens, did not move.

  “So who’s who?” said Nellie. “Don’t tell me your real names again,” she added, holding up her hand like a traffic cop as both Tim and Mary started again with introductions. “Tell me who you are in the play and I’ll just call you that. It’ll make it easier for me to remember.”

  “In that case, from now on, I am Detective Craven. Phillip Craven,” said Tim. “Rica is playing Myra, the actress who returns to the valley after a successful career and buys a huge mansion and moves her mother in, that’s you, Nellie, playing Marguerite. Myra wants to reconnect with both her mother and her newly divorced daughter, Hermione, played by Mary. Chuck plays Hermione’s jealous estranged husband, Malachi. Patty is the cousin who invites herself to stay in the house, but is—”

  “Jeez, Lowry, I told you to make it simple. I’ve read the play,” said Nellie.

  It was Tim’s turn to be shocked. He cast Nellie as a bit of whimsy and as an inclusive bit of politicking between the town and the amateur theater group, and he expected he would be able to plant her onstage for the weekend of three performances with little or no interaction on her part. He had hardly expected her to read the play.

  Jane was delighted to see Tim squirm a bit. She had carried her legal pad in with her to investigate the front-door debacle and now held it in front of her mother. After finishing her preliminary list of set props and design notes, she had listed the cast members in preparation for determining their personal props, scene by scene. Now, next to the character names printed in large block letters, she added the names of the people sitting in front of Nellie.

  MYRA: Rica Evans

  HERMIONE: Mary Wainwright

  DETECTIVE PHILLIP CRAVEN: Tim Lowry

  MALACHI: Mr. Havens—Jane scratched out “Mr.” and wrote “Chuck.”

  COUSIN FLIP: Patty … Jane hadn’t caught her last name

  MOTHER/GRANDMOTHER MARGUERITE: Nellie

  COOK: tba

  PERKINS THE GARDENER: tba

  DINNER GUESTS/NEIGHBORS: tba

  “What did you think of it, Nellie?” asked Tim.

  Nellie studied the legal pad Jane put in front of her, looking at the names, then up at the faces of her guests.

  “The play, Nellie, what did you think of the script?”

  “Not much, to tell you the truth. Seemed like Myra was kind of a sap, letting all those people live off of her. She must have felt guilty about something to let the town run over her like that,” said Nellie.

  Before Tim could defend MITEV in front of his cast, Rica, who had kept her head down, even as they all sat down, looked up at Nellie.

  “I feel the same way, Nellie. I’ve thought about it a lot and I think Myra must have felt that she deserted her mother or that she left something undone or unsaid when she went to New York to pursue her dreams. I think she is consumed by guilt. Much more interesting than thinking about her as someone ditsy and naïve who doesn’t see others taking advantage of her,” said Rica, looking down as soon as she finished.

  Don entered with iced tea for everyone, balanced on a large modern wooden tray that Jane had never seen before. She realized she had never seen her parents entertain anyone in their home, so it would make sense that anything passing for “partyware” would be hidden away.

  Everyone stood to reach for their glasses so Don wouldn’t have to step through to their chairs, and as Patty reached for hers, she looked down at the legal pad Nellie was studying and in a squeaky voice asked, “What’s that?” pointing to Jane’s doodle in the corner of the page.

  Tim, perched over Jane’s chair, looked down and studied Jane’s sketch of Mr. Bumbles hanging from the chandelier. “Oh God, the strangest thing happened—” he began.

  Jane, shifting the tablet, managed to spill iced tea on Tim’s perfectly pressed khakis. She quickly handed him a napkin so he could dab at the spot while she folded the tablet over on the coffee table and stood up.

  “Just the remnants of a hangman game I was playing earlier.”

  “So are you still acting, Jane? I lost track of your career after college,” said Mary.

  “Advertising,” said Jane. “I went into advertising.”

  Tim remembered that he had not only arrived in time to save the day, to protect his cast from getting the heave-ho from Nellie, but he also had a tray of sandwiches and cookies and cupcakes in the car. He ran out to fetch as Nellie gathered plates and napkins.

  “Help me get this stuff, Jane,” said Nellie in a voice Jane had never heard her use. Part sweetness, part helplessness, adding up to one hundred percent phoniness.

  “Wasn’t that Wainwright girl the one who took your boyfriend in high school?” asked Nellie, pushing Jane away as she tried to help get small plates from a high cupboard shelf.

  “Yup,” said Jane, standing back as her mother grabbed napkins and sugar, and found a lemon in the refrigerator and began slicing it for the iced tea that Don had already served.

  “And she ran against you for vice president of the school, right?”

  “Student council,” Jane said, nodding.

  “She made your life miserable, right?”

  “She tried,” Jane said.

  “She sure has gained a lot of weight, hasn’t she?” said Nellie, grinning maliciously.

  “Mom!” said Jane, happy beyond measure that Nellie in her meanness was giving her best motherly attempt at protecting and defending Jane. “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “Tim should have put you in that part.”

  Nellie had finished gathering everything and insisted on carrying it all out on the second tray Jane had never seen. Jane gave her a minute to make her entrance before following her into the living room. Things always work out, she thought. If Tim hadn’t asked her to do props, if he had cast her in his play, Jane would have never gotten to hear Nellie champion her. This was beginning to feel like it was all worth it.

  “Oh yeah, she’s solved lots of cr
imes. Murders even,” said Don.

  Don, on the other hand, never tired of championing Jane, and although she was appreciative, she had hoped to keep the fact that she was doing detective work a secret for the time being. Jane hadn’t really thought much of Tim’s ruse to get her interested in helping him—the mysterious death of playwright Freddy Kendell would not amount to much, she was sure. But the fact that Mr. Bumbles had been swinging from the end of a Hermès noose this afternoon signaled that someone concerned with the Kendell estate was up to some mischief. Much easier to find out who the someone was if no one knew she was looking.

  Don, however, was beaming at Jane as she stood in the doorway. When Jane was a little girl, all dressed up for church or a party, Don always called her “Miss America.” Now he smiled at her as if she were wearing a sash proclaiming ACE DETECTIVE.”

  “Dad, I just help out a bit on some investigations. I’m not—”

  “They were going to do a movie about her,” said Don,

  Jane caught Tim’s eye as he set down the tray full of goodies he had put together from a trip to Myers Bakery and the deli counter at the supermarket and gave him the pleading head-to-one-side this-is-your-bright-idea-of-a-get-together-so-get-going kind of look.

  “We have a few more cast members on the way,” said Tim, “but we can get started, you know, getting to know each other.”

  “Why?” said Nellie. “What’s the point of that, Lowry?”

  “Actors have to trust each other, Nellie. It’s important that we know a little bit about who we’re going to be performing with and—”

  “Seems to me Marguerite has to know Myra and vice versa. They have to know what makes each other tick. Doesn’t matter a damn if Rica knows me as Nellie or Santa Claus. She’s got to know me as her mother, Marguerite,” said Nellie. “We should be talking about the play. We only got a few weeks to get this show on the road.”

  Nellie’s understanding of theater, the press of time, and the importance of the characters connecting to each other onstage impressed Jane. As far as she knew, Nellie had attended six plays in her whole life—two when Jane had appeared in them in high school and four of the productions Jane had been in at college.

  Chuck Havens cleared his throat. He looked amused, but Jane wasn’t sure if he really was or if his slight smile was the residual coolest-guy-in-the-room expression that he had always used in the halls of Bishop McNamara. Jane realized that he must have been only four or five years older than she was, but the distance between high school senior and recent college graduate was enormous. Jane looked at his left hand—no wedding ring—and told herself it was just a reflex. An observant, trained detective always checked for the obvious.

  “Marguerite?” he said, looking at Nellie. “I think you’re quite right. And although Myra and Hermione would address you as Mother and Grandmother, I think I wouldn’t have been the kind of grandson-in-law who would have adopted the Grandmamma address. You would be Marguerite to me, and even if I were scheming about how to stay in the will after Hermione divorced me, I think you and I were friends and I would be truly sorry to see you ill and unable to communicate your wishes.”

  “Yeah, even though you try to put words in my mouth that will help you get your hands on the family money,” said Nellie.

  “Touché,” said Chuck, laughing.

  Jane was impressed with how well Nellie had studied the script. She could see Tim was appalled. Interpretations seemed to be flying fast and furiously past him. Had he ever directed a play before? Jane was pretty sure he had not. And if he couldn’t take control soon, establish his vision of Murder in the Eekaknak Valley, Tim wouldn’t exactly be directing this one.

  The rest of the cast arrived. A husband and wife whose claim to fame was that they had appeared in every Kankakee Community Theater production for the past five years—always as “dinner guests” or “chauffeur and maid” or “neighbors 1 and 2,” but nonetheless took their roles seriously and loved their lives in the theater. Another married couple was introduced as Kendell cousins who were going to cover a few small parts. And Henry Gand, whom Tim introduced as Perkins the gardener, arrived just as Don came in with a full pitcher of iced tea to offer refills.

  “Henry.” Don nodded.

  “Don.” He nodded back.

  “What the hell are you doing here, Hank?” asked Nellie.

  “I am Perkins,” he said with a slight bow and smile at Nellie.

  Jane might have squirmed a bit when she saw Mary Wainwright at the door, but it was nothing compared to the stiffness Jane saw in her always hospitable father. And Nellie? Either her mother had just been stung simultaneously by several insects or placed her feet on a bed of hot coals or … was it possible? Nellie was blushing?

  There were enough people talking past each other and over each other that the community theater gossip and chatter covered any personal relationship confusion that might have emerged due to Tim’s surprise prerehearsal, but Jane filed away this little play-within-a-play for later discussion.

  Jane managed to take down everyone’s name and even talked costuming, writing down some sizes and measurements to share with the costumer Tim claimed to have in the wings and made some notes about who might own what as far as personal props for their respective characters.

  Except for the frost that formed between Don and Henry, everyone seemed to get along, and as far as accidental rehearsals go, Jane thought Tim might be able to deem this one a success. Actors picked up their plates and glasses and brought them into the kitchen, then picked up scripts and notebooks as they said their good-byes, promising to take up where everyone left off the next evening when rehearsals began in earnest at the cultural center.

  Although she had enjoyed the novelty of an impromptu party at Don and Nellie’s secret lair, Jane was getting anxious to grill her parents about Henry and some of the other townspeople who had attended. The last person out the door, Rica Evans, pulled Jane to one side, lightly tugging on her sleeve.

  “Your hangman doodle?” she began. “I saw that you had written ‘Mr. Bumbles’ on it.”

  “Oh, that?” Jane stalled, trying to decide quickly whether she needed an elaborate lie or just something simple and elegant, a little black dress of a lie.

  “I found this in my script,” she said, withdrawing a scrap of dingy lined paper from between the pages of her copy of MITEV. “I just thought it was a joke, a child’s prank, but maybe it’s something else? Your father said you were a detective?” Rica sounded apologetic. “I was using it as a bookmark.”

  Written on the paper in large block letters:

  DO NOT PUT ON THIS PLAY.

  IT IS A “CURSED PLAY.”

  YOU WILL BE SORRY ALL YOUR DAYS.

  LISTEN TO ME.

  YOUR FRIEND,

  MR. BUMBLES

  6

  Tim offered to wash the dishes. It was the least he could do, he told Nellie, and Nellie, who never let anyone near her sink, nodded and agreed with him. Nellie handed Jane a dish towel and motioned for her to stay in the kitchen with Tim. Nellie walked into the living room and gave Don a stern stare while he pretended as long as he could not to see it. However, since she stood directly in front of him, arms folded, as he sat in his chair concealed behind the front page of the Kankakee Daily Journal, he finally had to give in.

  “What?”

  “You know what, Don. Henry Gand, that’s what,” said Nellie.

  “I don’t know what you’re—”

  “Can it,” said Nellie. “Let’s not have any nonsense about this. It was all over between him and me when I met you and I didn’t know he was going to be in Lowry’s idiotic play.”

  Don set the paper aside.

  “I know, Nellie, it’s just that Henry’s an educated man, a successful man, and I’m afraid I never—”

  “Can it,” Nellie said again. “Never would have worked. His family didn’t approve of me. I was a factory girl and he was going to college. He just wanted me to be in those plays of
his because I could remember lines, not like some of the twits in his usual crowd. Besides…” Nellie stopped.

  “Besides what?” Don asked, starting to sound more like himself.

  “You know damn well. I didn’t love him.”

  Jane hoped the gasp she felt escape from her wasn’t as loud as it sounded in her own head. She and Tim were crowded into the doorway, watching Don and Nellie play roles for which they never would have been cast—at least not by Jane and Tim.

  “And you loved me at first sight?” Don said, his big grin returning.

  “I didn’t say that,” said Nellie. “But you’ve been all right.”

  Nellie turned around and trained her laser-beam eyes on Jane and Tim. “I told you both to do the dishes and stop staring.” Don, behind his wife’s back, winked at them.

  Jane now remembered that she and her brother, Michael, had come across a rare souvenir of Nellie’s youth once when leafing through the giant North American Atlas, one of the few books in their home. Jane was helping Michael—or maybe Michael was helping Jane—with a geography project, and pressed between Illinois and Indiana they found an old folded paper with hand-drawn illustrations, carefully lettered and with their mother’s name in it. They figured it was a joke of some kind—some bit of ephemera from the EZ Way Inn, a piece of nonsense or doggerel courtesy of Slats, the poet of the bowling league, or a prank from Sy, a printer who often made up joke posters to hang on the tavern wall. Nellie had snatched it away from them and said it was nothing, just some silly old play she and her friends were going to put on. Now, with all of tonight’s theatrical planning going on in the house, the memory came back to Jane. Those names on that dusty piece of paper were a cast list. It was a theater program. Of course. Apparently Murder in the Eekaknak Valley would not be Nellie’s theater debut.

  “Your mother is a woman of many secrets,” said Tim, finishing up the last of the glasses.

  “As if I didn’t know,” said Jane. “Charley calls her the ‘dig’ because there is always something to uncover. A shard here, a shard there.”