by Dyan Sheldon
I was about to explain that I hadn’t gotten it wrong, that Carla presented Mrs Baggoli’s idea as her own, but Mrs Baggoli didn’t give me a chance.
“Let’s start with Colonel Pickering, shall we?” she asked, and she picked up her script and sat down.
Because the drama club is small, everyone tries out for a major role. After she decides who’s gotten the leads, Mrs Baggoli assigns the minor parts. Anyone who’s left over gets to be stage manager, or understudy for the entire play, or something like that.
After Colonel Pickering, we went to Henry Higgins. And then we got to Eliza herself.
Susan Leder and Janeann Simmons went first, with all the passion and enthusiasm of soldiers crawling out of a foxhole to certain death by enemy fire.
At last I took my place on the stage. I didn’t really need the script because I already knew most of the part by heart, but I held it in front of me anyway. For effect.
“I’m ready whenever you are,” called Mrs Baggoli. “Begin with ‘You got no right to touch me’.”
I glanced at my script. What Eliza actually says (whimpering) is, “Nah-ow. You got no right to touch me.” I took a deep breath. I looked straight at Mrs Baggoli.
“Nah-ow,” I said in an accent that would have made Henry Higgins jump for joy. “You got no right to touch me.”
You could hear everyone making an effort not to laugh.
Except Mrs Baggoli and Carla Santini.
“No, Lola,” said Mrs Baggoli between hearty chuckles. “It’s set in New York now, remember? You can drop the cockney. Try it again.”
I nodded like the true professional I am. I repeated the line in my head. I took another deep breath.
“Nah,” I said. “Ya got no right t’ touch me.”
This time everyone laughed; though no one louder than Carla Santini, of course.
“Lola,” gasped Mrs Baggoli. “You’re not trying out for Serpico. Let’s do it again.”
I walked over to the edge of the stage. “But Mrs Baggoli, I don’t know what this girl is like any more. I knew who she was when she was an English flower-seller, but I don’t have a clue now.”
Mrs Baggoli’s smile thinned slightly. “I thought this was going to make it easier, not harder,” she announced.
“Yeah, I know.” I shook my head. “But the thing is, I have to know something about this girl.” How could I do Eliza’s accent if I didn’t know anything about her? It was like painting the portrait of someone you’d never seen. “Is she Italian? Irish? Black? Puerto Rican? Vietnamese? Thai? Serb? Czech? Russian?” All Mrs Baggoli had to do was ask and she would have it. After all, I’d lived in New York all my life – excepting my nearly one year in the wasteland of Deadwood – there wasn’t an accent ever heard in those grand canyons of the metropolis that I couldn’t imitate.
“What about Polish?” shouted Bryan Perkowski. “What do you have against us?”
“Never mind the Poles,” said Beth Millstein. “What about the Jews? You have something against the Jews?”
“You know,” chipped in Carla, “she could be Korean. There are lots of Koreans in New York, aren’t there, Lola?”
Mrs Baggoli clapped loudly. “Let’s all settle down, shall we?” She smiled at me. “Her name’s Doolittle, Lola,” said Mrs Baggoli. “She’s just a poor white girl who was born in New York. Use your own accent.”
Nodding, I went back to my place on the stage. I closed my eyes, imagining myself in a red jacket with a name-tag pinned to the pocket: Hi! My name’s Liz. I heard the Muzak and the rumble of shoppers’ conversations; I heard someone drop a bottle of oil on aisle three; I heard kids whining and the packers fooling around; I heard people grumbling about the prices and the state of the tomatoes. I waved a cucumber over the scanner. My fingers touched the keys of the register. I thought about my father, Mr Doolittle. My father was a garbage man and a hopeless drunk. My mother died when I was little, probably from drugs. I left home when I was sixteen. I shared a grungy apartment with two other check-out girls who also came from dysfunctional families. There was a boy I liked who worked on one of the delivery trucks. He had three tattoos and a gold nose ring. I could see this boy clearly. His name was – I opened my eyes. I had no idea what his name was. It could be Tom, or Tony, or Jesus, or Vinny, or Joseph, or Onion for all I knew.
“We’d all appreciate it if you could do this this afternoon,” boomed Mrs Baggoli. “There are other people waiting to audition, you know.”
“I’m sorry,” I apologized. “I really am.”
I took a deep breath.
It was Liz Doolittle from Brooklyn who spoke next. But girls from Brooklyn don’t whimper, no matter what the stage directions say.
“F— off, turkey,” snarled Liz Doolittle. “Keep your f—in’ hands off me.”
Everybody cracked up at that. I was afraid Mrs Baggoli was going to choke to death, she was laughing so hard.
“I don’t think the PTA’s going to think very much of that,” she said when she was finally capable of speech. “But I can see that I may need your help polishing the modernization.”
Carla Santini gave me one of her mega, full-dental smiles. I had no trouble interpreting its meaning: It’ll give you something to do – now that you won’t be Eliza.
Mrs Baggoli didn’t let outsiders sit in on the auditions, so Ella waited in the library until I was done.
She started shutting her books as soon as I came through the door.
“Well?” Ella demanded in a loud whisper. “How’d it go?”
I flung my cape over my shoulder. “I’m pleased to be able to announce that after a rocky start our heroine gave a brilliant reading.”
I really was pleased with what I’d done in the end. I was sure that when the parts were posted the next morning my name would be the one next to Eliza Doolittle. I explained about the rocky start as we left the library.
“Oh, God…” groaned Ella. “What a nightmare.”
“It happens,” I said philosophically. Wasn’t it Shakespeare who said that you can’t be wise if you’ve never been a fool? “There isn’t a great actor in the history of the theatre who hasn’t done something even worse. I read that Robert De Niro once got up on a stage and started performing the wrong play.”
“Really?” Ella grinned wickedly. “Wouldn’t it be great if that happened to Carla Santini?”
Mentioning Carla Santini’s name was like mentioning Satan’s. She instantly appeared, walking across the car park with Mrs Baggoli. Carla drives a red BMW convertible. Mrs Baggoli drives an old black Ford.
“Speak of the devil,” said Ella. She gave me a look. “So how did Carla do?”
“She was good.” If you’re going to be a great actor, you have to learn to be magnanimous. I winked. “But she wasn’t as good as I was.”
“You can’t tell from looking at her, though, can you?” said Ella.
I followed her gaze. Carla and Mrs Baggoli had stopped by Mrs Baggoli’s car. Mrs Baggoli was nodding as she climbed into the driver’s seat. Carla was talking animatedly. Her curls were tossing all over the place. She didn’t look like someone who knew she’d just lost her chance to play Eliza.
I whipped my cape over my shoulder and bent to unlock my bike.
“She probably thinks that if she talks long enough, Mrs Baggoli will give her the part just to make her shut up.”
THINGS GET BOTH BETTER AND EVEN WORSE
Even though my soul was withering like a rose deprived of sunlight and water, I was in a pretty good mood Tuesday night.
As I’d told Ella, although I’d admittedly gotten off to a less than spectacular start with my reading, I was confident that I’d performed significantly better than Carla in the end. I mean, I’d have had to, wouldn’t I? Expecting Carla to identify with a poor supermarket check-out girl was like expecting the Queen of England to identify with a mud wrestler from Alabama.
And although playing Eliza wasn’t the same as knowing that Sidartha was out there – a sp
iritual satellite in the great nothingness of the universe – it did give me something positive to do with my grief. I would use it to be the best Eliza Doolittle I could be, no matter what her ethnic background. It’s what all great actors do, of course: they put aside the disappointments and tragedies of their own brief lives and throw themselves into their work. The show, as they say, must always go on.
Self-doubt didn’t kick in until sometime between Tuesday night when I fell asleep to the Stu Wolff classic “Everything Hurts” and Wednesday morning when I woke up with a heart as cold and as heavy as Mount Everest.
I dreamt about Carla Santini. She was up on the stage of a packed auditorium. The spotlights were on her, and her arms were filled with dozens of orchids. I was standing in the wings. I was wrapped in my cape because the costume I should have been wearing was on Carla Santini. Just as the flowers that were meant for me were in her arms, and the applause that should have been mine was falling on her ears. I was crying very, very softly. As the audience erupted in shouts of “Bravo! Bravo!”, Carla turned to face me. She smiled at me the way she had during my audition.
My eyes opened to the stain that looks like an amoeba on the ceiling over my bed. From one cell all life grew. One day there’s just this microscopic dot floating around in some swamp, and a few billion years later I’m lying in bed wondering how I could be so stupid.
How could I be so stupid? Why had I been so certain I was going to get the lead? Had I forgotten how Mrs Baggoli had laughed at me? Had I forgotten what she had said? You’re not trying out for Serpico… I don’t think the PTA’s going to think very much of that… We’d appreciate it if you could do it this afternoon… I thought this was going to make it easier, not harder… I can see that I’m going to need your help polishing the modernization…
All she’d said to anyone else was “Thank you”, or “Try it again”, or “Could you speak up a little?”. At no one else had she rolled her eyes and sighed.
I’d gone too far. This is something my parents often wrongly accuse me of doing, but this time I really had. I’d figured Mrs Baggoli would be impressed by my desire to know the character I was portraying in every intimate detail and to make her real, but now that I thought about it she’d been more annoyed than impressed. What convinced me of that wasn’t the expression I could remember on Mrs Baggoli’s face, but the look I could remember on Carla Santini’s. That smile… It was the smile of Iago as he watched Othello storm off to ruin his life.
I jumped out of bed and dressed in record time. I raced into the kitchen, grabbed something for lunch and was out of the house before my mother could yell at me for not having any breakfast. I had to get to school before everyone else. If I really wasn’t going to play Eliza, I wanted to be the first to know. And I wanted to be alone when I found out. I could handle it – after all, rejection is part of the creative process; as painful as it is necessary for true growth and greatness – but I’d need a little time to prepare myself, to decide how I was going to play my defeat.
It wasn’t something I’d thought about before. I had a pretty good idea how Carla Santini would play it if she got the losing role. When she stole Anya Klarke’s boyfriend last spring, Carla had managed to act as though she and not Anya were the injured party. It was Anya who was generally treated as though she were an evil witch and Carla who sat around polishing her halo. There was no way I was going to let that happen to me.
By the time the green fields of Dellwood High finally hove into view, I was sweating and breathless and my mascara was running. There were a few cars in the car park, including Mrs Baggoli’s old Ford. That meant she’d posted the results. I jumped the curb in front of the main building, and rode straight to the entrance of the auditorium.
Carla, Alma, Tina and Marcia were standing in front of the doors, their heads together as though conjuring a spell. If I’d been quicker, or if I ever bothered to oil my bike, I might have gotten away before they saw me. But I wasn’t, and I didn’t. My brakes screeched as I tried to slow down enough to retreat.
Like cows, they turned together. There was no sweat on Carla or her friends. They all looked as though they were waiting for the photographer. Considering the amount of make-up they all wore, they must have been up at dawn.
“Well, will you look what the wind’s blown in,” cooed Carla.
I knew that coo. If it had been a weapon, it would have been a submachine-gun. Carla was happy. I hadn’t gotten the part.
But a great actor acts, whether she got the part or not.
I smiled. “I couldn’t stand the suspense,” I said, as if I was interested but personally unconcerned. “I had to see how the casting went.”
“Oh, did you?” Carla smiled. A switchblade joined the Santini arsenal.
“Yeah.” I forced myself to smile back. A great actor puts the play before her own petty needs and desires. She doesn’t sulk or get grumpy when she loses out to a lesser talent. She is generous even in the most ignominious defeat. “Well,” I said brightly, “are congratulations in order?”
Alma, Tina, and Marcia all looked to Carla. Carla just stared at me.
When no one responded I went on. “I can’t wait to see what part I got. No matter what, it’s going to be a great production.”
“If it is a great production, it’ll be thanks to Carla,” said Alma. I thought she meant because Carla was going to play Eliza, but she didn’t. “I mean, whose idea was it to update the play in the first place?”
Surprise, I’ve noticed, can often provoke honesty.
“Well, actually, it was—”
Carla cut me off before I could say “Mrs Baggoli’s”.
“Oh, please…” she sneered. The teaching staff of Dellwood High would have been pretty shocked to hear the venom in her lovely, well-modulated voice. “Stop pretending, will you? You’d rather kill yourself than play anyone but Eliza, and you know it.”
I was about to say that, actually, I’d rather kill her, but before I could even open my mouth Carla stepped right up to me, as though she were going to invite me behind the school to have a fight.
“Well, you’re going to wish you had killed yourself when I get through with you,” she whispered.
Alma, Tina and Marcia smiled, nodding.
I felt like Macbeth, but with one extra witch.
I flung my cape over my shoulder, defiantly. Carla jumped back with a cry of surprise.
“Are you threatening me?” I asked in a calm and reasonable voice.
Carla gave me one of her “what’s this bug doing on my sleeve?” looks.
“You’ve gone too far,” said Carla Santini in this dead-calm voice. “You always have to have things your way, but this time you’ve really gone too far.” She smiled. It wasn’t what you could call a pleasant sight. “I didn’t think you were this stupid,” she continued. “But now it’s time you learned your place.”
And with that she swept away, the other three hurrying behind her.
I knew, of course, why Carla was so furious, but I pushed my bike up to the list on the door anyway. I had to see it for myself. I started at the top of the list and worked my way down. Henry Higgins: Jon Spucher. Colonel Pickering: Andy Lightman. Mrs Higgins: Carla Santini. Eliza Doolittle: Lola Cep.
Carla Santini is not the sort of person to slink quietly away into a corner after a defeat. There are a lot of negative things you can say about Carla, but giving up easily isn’t one of them.
That’s why Ella and I wound up sitting near Carla at lunch. When we got to the cafeteria, Carla was already in our place, talking and laughing as though she were a total stranger to jealousy and anger.
“There’s a couple of spaces in the far corner,” said Ella, starting to veer to the right.
I grabbed her wrist. “We’ll sit where we always sit.”
She gave me one of her looks. “What?” hissed Ella. “You want to sit in Carla’s lap?”
It was true. In order to sit where we always sat I’d be in Carla’s lap and Ell
a would be in Tina’s.
“OK, OK,” I said, “not exactly where we always sit. There’re two empty chairs behind their table. We’ll sit there.”
“Why can’t you ever just lie low?” muttered Ella, but she muttered as she followed me across the room.
Surprise surprise, Carla Santini was talking about the play.
Enthusiastically.
“Actually,” she was saying as we took our seats, “the character of Mrs Higgins is more interesting than Eliza’s in many ways. I’ve always thought of her as a symbol of feminism.”
Ella glanced at me as she began to remove a series of pastel plastic containers from her lunch bag. Mrs Gerard’s cooking class had moved on to salads.
“Even though she’s not the female lead, it’s a part with depth and true contemporary resonance.”
I was happy I hadn’t started eating yet; I might have been sick.
Carla sighed. It was a sigh full of sadness and regret.
“To be totally honest,” said Carla, “I think Mrs Baggoli made the right decision.”
There were a few gasped protests and a couple of sympathetic snorts.
“Really,” insisted Carla. “I mean, what is Eliza when you get down to it? She’s a loser, isn’t she? She’s illiterate, she’s ignorant, she’s in a dead-end job with no future or opportunities…” She sighed again. Poor Eliza. “She’ll probably end up on drugs or as a prostitute – what else is there for her?”
I could feel her shudder delicately but distastefully behind me. I felt a few Santini curls hit my head.
“Now that I think about it, I really don’t think I could identify with someone like that,” said Carla. She laughed sharply. “It takes a thief to catch a thief, doesn’t it?”
“Huh?” said Alma.
