“Yes!”
“Shh!”
Early the next morning, with silky-shiny hair, Carolyn drove her mother’s Saab to the studio. She could have taken a limo, like Peggy or Rudy, but she found it pretentious, especially to play a hornet.
Inside the frigid location, the director greeted her with a handshake. “Carolyn Sohier, I presume?”
Carolyn’s stomach lurched. Something deep inside told her not to go through with the commercial. She wanted to tell him she was backing out, but instead, she sat in a chair—in a room filled with coffee, tea, and breakfast items—while a team of artists lathered rubbery material over her face and she transformed into an insect.
The gig paid well. She tried to keep her mind on the money, but she didn’t really need it. Rudy did. What would Rebecca do? Since leaving Summerwind, the witch played heavily on her mind.
An auburn-haired makeup artist brushed green goo near Carolyn’s ear. “Would you mind just turning a bit to your left? That’s it.”
“Excuse me.” Carolyn winced, as an antennae cap adhered to her head. “I need to use the restroom.”
“Oh, can you wait one—”
“Buzz off!” Carolyn cleared her throat. “No. No, I can’t.”
The woman wheeled her chair back. “Go ahead.” She raised her arms; a hand held a brush.
Carolyn rose. Perhaps she saw me on the VTV Awards. She took her bag.
In the bathroom, she ripped off the hornet face, washed, scratched out a note claiming ill, and exited a side door. “Rudy’s going to kill me.” She hustled to the car with a smile on her face. The liberation felt wonderful.
When Carolyn returned to her mother’s place, she made little mention of the day. The hour drive back, a stop for a bite to eat while confiding to Michael over the phone about her escape elicited no concerns from her mother about her early arrival.
Mrs. Sohier put the newspaper down. “Oh, look what the cat dragged in.”
“Hi, Mom.” Figuring she’d offset any questions, Carolyn added, “It was a quick shoot. I’m glad it’s done. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Fine.” She flipped a page of the Temple Emmanuel Weekly. “What would you like to do? The day’s still early.”
“Take a nap?”
“No! We’re not old ladies. There’s Mah-jongg at two thirty.”
Her mother’s smile reminded Carolyn of her own.
“Or the gals play shuffleboard by the pool at three.”
“Whatever? I’m open.” She flopped down next to her mother.
“Oh, I got it.” She tapped Carolyn’s knee. “Tonight, let’s head over to the synagogue for bingo. You don’t have to be a Jew to go.”
In the back hall of Temple Emmanuel, Carolyn fanned cigarette smoke away while a litany of geriatric residents from the synagogue’s nursing home shuffled in. “Mom, I can’t believe you go to this place. Next to me, you’re the youngest one in here.”
“I know. Better chance of winning.” Her mother grabbed a bingo card and picked a spot next to a couple in wheelchairs. “I’m usually the only one with full faculties,” she whispered to Carolyn.
“Mom, shhh.”
“Don’t worry. They can’t hear well.”
“Mother.”
“The others seem to forget what they’re doing. They don’t keep track of their cards well. So I win.” Her mother grinned.
“Mom, that’s cheating!”
“Ah, they pay for the good time, not to win. They can’t complain. They get a free egg salad sandwich and a pack of Chip Ahoys! out of the deal.” Mrs. Sohier took a package of cookies from the bowl in the center of the table. “You want one?”
After the hall settled in, a tiny man at the head of the conference room read balls handed to him by another man spinning a metal cage. “B-four.” His voice was wispy, with a shake to it like phlegm jammed his airways.
The night dragged on. The couple next to them fell asleep, and Carolyn tried to keep up for them by daubing their papers when a number matched one on their card.
“N-thirty-seven.”
Carolyn looked down at her bingo card. “Oh my God, Mom! I just need one number and I’ll have bingo!”
“It’s only for forty bucks. I’d shoot for the cover-all.”
A few more balls were announced, and Carolyn wiped beads of perspiration from her forehead. “Oh, God, Mom, this is stressful.” She daubed the card of the now-drooling woman next to her.
“Stressful? Honey, it’s fun.”
“I-fifteen.” His voice rattled.
Carolyn looked down in astonishment at her one paper card. “That’s my number,” she said to herself, then standing up and in full singing voice to the tune of a nursery rhyme she sang, “Bingo! I have bingo. I have bingo tonight! B-I-N-G-O! And bing-o was his name-o!”
“Carolyn, that’s great, now sit down,” her mother said, looking around and smiling awkwardly. “You don’t have to sing about it. They’re going to think you’re one of the Alzheimer’s patients.”
The couple beside them stared.
Carolyn blinked. “Um.” She brushed imaginary lint from her tank top and took her seat. “I didn’t even realize…” She opted to let it go instead of trying to explain.
“Don’t get so excited. It’s not as if you’ve won a Mercedes-Benz or something.”
Later that evening, with her mother reading the latest edition of People magazine, Carolyn aimed the remote control at the television and talked to Michael on the phone.
“I couldn’t believe it. I won! Thirty-eight dollars.”
“Wow.” Michael bespoke feigned excitement.
“You’re not happy for me?”
“I’m thrilled. Can’t you tell?”
“No one thinks it’s a big deal. I’ve never won anything in my life.”
Carolyn’s mother looked up from her magazine. “Tell him it’ll buy you an air freshener, fuzzy dice, and the bobbling poodle for the back window. Then you’ll just need to foot the Mercedes to go with it.”
Carolyn moved to the guest room, fussing for her mother to stop, while Michael told her about his shopping spree. “I don’t think I can sing anymore,” she said matter-of-factly to him when she closed the bedroom door.
“We’re onto that again?”
“No, really.” She considered confessing her ability to seem to only do so when excited, but even the thought of it sounded silly. “I can’t sing.”
“You’re crazy. Of course you can sing.”
“Yeah, only when I win at bingo or I’m terrified in a plane.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind.” Her theory about bursting into a song when excited or stressed seemed more ludicrous the more she thought about it.
“What did Rudy say about you leaving the set this afternoon?”
“I didn’t tell him.”
Silence lingered on the line. “He’s gonna burst a blood vessel when he finds out.”
She searched the dresser for the spare pajamas her mother kept for her. “I don’t care. I need to take control of my career more.”
“Are you having fun with your mother at least?”
“Sure. I’m thirty-eight bucks richer.”
“Did she give you a protein pack yet?”
“First night.”
“Told you, didn’t I?”
“You know her too well.”
The line cracked. “I don’t know when I’ll see you again.”
“Christ, you sound like you’re dying.”
“Well, we’re in Mykonos till the end of the month and then…God knows.”
“You and Terrence still haven’t made any decisions about what’s next in your life?”
“No, not yet.”
“Any bites on the house?”
“None… Oh, don’t say anything, but we may be stopping on the East Coast on our way back from Greece… weirdest thing—Viola called us.”
“Viola! Viola from Summerwind?”
“Carolyn,
how many Violas do we know in the world? Out of the blue, we had a message at the house when we checked them the other day. She wants to talk to Terrence.”
Midler vs. Streisand
At her mother’s condo, before settling in for the night, Carolyn decided to get a fan out of the closet. Her mother kept the place so warm, it was difficult to sleep. In a pink sleeveless nightshirt, she removed several boxes from inside the closet, and in doing so, the bottom of one fell open. “Son of a—” An old scrapbook she had as a teenager landed at her feet. “Oh my God.” She picked it up. “I haven’t seen this in probably twenty years.” Her mother kept some of the old belongings from when they lived in Peabody.
She brought the book to her bed. A card slipped out: Carolyn’s membership to the “Best on Bette: Official Fan Club of the Divine Miss M.” Carolyn held the card up. It indicated she was a “member in good standing.”
She smiled, and a musty smell from the scrapbook hit her as she cracked it open. Yellowed newspaper clippings of Bette Midler hung precariously to the pages. Dried tape left darkened spots where pictures of Carolyn’s idol had slid off and into the book’s binding. Carolyn picked one up—a promotional piece from the movie The Rose. “I can’t believe I still have these.”
In 1979, Carolyn and Michael first met at drama club at Higgins Junior High School in Peabody, Massachusetts—a large one-level building that housed the burgeoning city’s seventh, eighth, and ninth graders.
Carolyn—a portly, self-conscious freshman—became infatuated with the movie The Rose, and got Michael, a recent transplant to the area, to latch on to her newfound enthusiasm for Bette Midler. Midler, show tunes, music, and theatre deepened Carolyn and Michael’s connection.
She found Michael—and his outward enthusiasm, brashness, and optimism—as the motivation she needed to bring her out of a teenage funk. Normally, she remained reclusive—holed up in the sixties ranch house her mother and aunt shared—listening to movie soundtracks and not interacting with many. Her mother had moved them there a few years after her father’s drug overdose.
Michael teetered, arms out, along the curbstone that ran the length of the school’s drive. “What? Are you serious?” he asked, continuing their discussion on female vocalists.
Carolyn stayed on the street; at least that way, she and her new best friend were the same height. “Yes, I am serious. I now think Bette Midler is better than Barbra Streisand.”
“I’m just surprised you think that is all.” Michael’s curly brown locks bounced in the spring breeze. The school day had just ended, and the front of the building met with a flurry of kids escaping from various exits.
“Bette’s just so much more dynamic. Have you heard her older stuff?” Carolyn clutched her algebra book. “I got her Live At Last album. She did it many years before The Rose. The songs are so cool. Campy but cool.”
“I know the album.”
“You do?” Carolyn loved how she could be open about her passion for music with someone who appreciated her taste.
“My uncle had a copy back in Cali.”
“She’s so different. Barbra is too straight-laced.”
“I agree. I just can’t believe I’m hearing you say this.” Michael flipped a lock of his hair with a flick to his head. “You love Barbra Streisand. What about the Wet album? Isn’t that one of your favorites?”
“Well, yeah.” Carolyn liked both performers, and being a member of Barbra’s fan club, she felt obligated to remain loyal. “It’s not as if I don’t like her. Like I said, I just think Bette Midler is more…how do you say it? I don’t know, unique, more energetic…a diverse talent.”
“Hmm.”
“Oh, but before I forget to tell you, A Star Is Born, of course with Barbra—not the old Judy Garland one—is going to be on Starcase Monday morning. I’m thinking of skipping school to watch it. You wanna join?”
“Skip school?” He eyed a kid carrying a hockey stick. “Well, I haven’t seen it in a while. I do have to say that Bette’s performance in The Rose is much better than Barbra’s in A Star Is Born. I’ll give you that.” He waved to Mrs. Lamy clapping erasers out her room’s window, but she didn’t see him. “In fact, I read in People that Barbra was envious of Bette. She wanted her performance in A Star Is Born to be that raw.”
Carolyn smacked Michael’s book bag. “That’s it! Raw! Bette is just a raw talent. Barbra, while an excellent performer, is very refined.”
He looked back at his shoulder. “Did you have to hit me?”
They chuckled and went their separate ways. Michael lived on the other side of town, closer to the high school, where they would be attending their sophomore year.
The following Monday, in the den of her South Peabody home, decorated with the latest in discount furniture from Levitz, Carolyn waited for Michael’s cab to arrive. With her mother and aunt out cleaning houses—a business they ran together—Carolyn had the place to herself.
“Ladies and Gentlemen,” Carolyn mimicked the recording from her record player. “Esther Hoffman…no, no, Carolyn Michelle Sohier.”
Then, standing alone in her bedroom, she launched into the song, trying hard to match Streisand’s range along the way. At various points, she stopped, moved the needle back on the record, and started over. She’d already memorized the lyrics; she just needed to work on her delivery.
At the end of the song, she threw her arms out, like in the movie, and forced herself to hold the note longer than Barbra. When she finished, the doorbell rang. She cut short her pretending with a throat clear and answered it.
“Was that you?” Michael asked, holding a box of Dunkin’ Donuts and a wax-paper bag.
Embarrassed, she avoided eye contact. “Yeah.” She let him in. “I’m still working on it. Pretty bad, huh?”
“No, it was bitchin’. I stood outside listening, wanting to hear the whole thing.”
“What? You’re not supposed to listen to me.” She appreciated the compliment but felt awkward about someone hearing her.
“If you want to make it in the high school’s showcase then you’ve got to let people hear you.” Michael’s practicality got him places. Only a few months in Peabody, and he already ranked popular with the students.
They went into the kitchen, ate donuts while waiting for the movie to start. Their conversation moved off Carolyn’s small role in the junior high’s production of Carousel—including how it could lead to bigger parts at the high school—and on to boys.
“Well, I’ve got something to tell you,” Michael said.
“What?”
“I’m gay.”
Carolyn had already assumed this but she never mentioned it. “Oh…well, I kind of suspected.”
“You did?” Michael chomped a chocolate cruller. “How?” he asked through bits of food. “Do I act it?”
In truth, Michael’s effeminate ways had many talking, but Carolyn didn’t want to be rude. “Just a little, but there’s nothing wrong—”
“I do? That’s what Seth Stevenson told me.” He tore open a pint of chocolate milk and handed it to Carolyn, and then removed another from a bag.
“Seth Stevenson? The high school quarterback?” Carolyn had read about him in the newspaper.
“He lives next door to me.”
“Right.” Carolyn took a sip of milk. “He told you…you were queer-like?”
Michael rested his chin on his hands. “But he still let me suck his cock.”
Carolyn choked on the milk. “What!” It dripped out her nose, and she grabbed a napkin.
Michael got up. “Are you okay?”
“Fine.” Carolyn’s voice squeaked through a hack, and she took a moment to catch her breath.
“He’s not gay. I don’t want you to think…he just…well, I don’t know. We don’t talk about it. We just do it.”
Carolyn barked out a final whoop to clear her throat. “Oh my God!” She swallowed. “You had sex…with Seth Stevenson, the high school quarterback?”
“We
ll, fooled around.” Michael popped a donut in his mouth and grinned.
“No way.” Carolyn wiped her eyes, tearing from her choking.
“Way. But you can’t tell anyone about it. I promised him, if he let me do it, that I wouldn’t tell a soul.”
“I won’t.” Carolyn picked a cherry donut from the box. “Well, what was it like?” Her virgin-teenage curiosity took over.
“Hot! He’s huge…down there, I mean. I’d say at least…” Michael held his hands out in measurement.
Carolyn’s eyes bulged. “And you fit…” She laughed nervously. “In your mouth?”
“Well, with a bit of lockjaw but…ain’t you ever done it before?”
“Sure I have.” Carolyn blushed. “Okay, well…no.” No sense lying to your best friend.
“It’s easy. Some of those football jocks…they’ll let you do anything.”
“Really?”
“Back in Cali…well, I won’t go there.”
“Where did you do it?”
“With Seth? In his room. Funny thing is his buddy, Peter Papadopolous, the running back, came over right as we finished. I had to hide in the closet till he left.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“Nope, and then another time we did it in his parents’ shed.”
Carolyn held up a hand. “Michael, I don’t even want to know. This is too much.”
Michael glanced at the clock. “Shit, the movie’s starting.”
They ran to the television console and watched the first half of the movie in rapt silence.
During a slow point, Michael draped a leg over Carolyn’s. “She’s clearly not as good as Bette is in The Rose.”
Carolyn found the physical contact comforting. “I know.” She placed her arm around Michael’s shoulder. “Hey, Bette’s up for the Academy Award, you know? Barbra never got nominated for this.”
“Bette clearly deserves it.”
“One day, I want to be just like the Rose,” Carolyn confided.
“You do?”
“Well, minus the drugs and the dying.”
“Last week, you wanted to be Esther Hoffman Howard.” Again, he pointed to the screen.
Summerwind Magick: Making Witches of Salem Page 19
