Something Wicked

by Carolyn G. Hart

  The Horton family stood in a clump at downstage right. Although they were near each other physically, their familial bonds, were, as usual, stretched to the breaking point. Cindy, the nubile teenage daughter who fancied herself the eighties’ answer to Marilyn Monroe, so far forgot her lacquered persona as to permit a scowl to crease her normally unsullied brow and twist a mouth generously fashioned by the wettest-looking lipstick the local drugstore could provide. As a stagehand, she hovered backstage at all hours, but her thoughts were seldom on the play. She was wildly infatuated with Shane Petree, which everyone except her mother recognized.

  Her mother, Janet, was no prize in the brains department. At the moment, she was registering ladylike disapproval, with several sad little headshakes at Hugo’s ungentlemanly behavior. A somewhat limp but moderately attractive midforties, Janet played Martha surprisingly well indeed and was an accomplished enough actress to recognize the truth in Hugo’s furious bellows. But women are notoriously blind to flaws in their beloveds, and the whispers around the island made the odds ten to one that Janet was another of Shane’s foolish conquests.

  T.K. Horton looked to be odd man out on every front, with his daughter pursuing Shane with the tenacity of an overripe hound in heat, and his wife reverting to giggly, preteen behavior whenever the great lover appeared. T.K. was such an unlikely center for domestic tragedy. As he watched Hugo, his jowly face began to look years younger. Hope flickered in his spaniel eyes. If Shane were kicked out of the play—God, T.K. obviously could taste it!

  Another face watched with burgeoning hope, and the sight really made Annie sad. Eugene Ferramond was born to play Teddy Roosevelt. He had the same bluff good looks, the same orange brush mustache, even the rimless eyeglasses that hung from a cord. He was burly as a bear, moved with a bouncy swagger, and was as nutty as his hero about history. Until this year, he could always count on playing Teddy whenever the players revived Arsenic and Old Lace.

  But not this summer. Instead, when the cast was announced, Eugene was picked to play Officer O’Hara. Now, to be sure, that was a wonderful role, the cop who desperately wants to be a playwright and is consequently sublimely oblivious to the presence of a wanted murderer. He concentrates instead on selling his plot outline to the theater critic Mortimer Brewster, who is frantically trying to save his old aunts from incarceration as murderesses and simultaneously foil the deadly plans of his dangerous brother Jonathan and Jonathan’s sidekick, Dr. Einstein. Even as Hugo raised his volume another notch, Annie thought in passing what a wonderful Mortimer Max was.

  Eugene was a very good Officer O’Hara. But he didn’t want to be Officer O’Hara. He wanted to be Teddy.

  It was Henny Brawley who had gotten the real scoop and shared it with Annie when she dropped by Death on Demand to pick up her latest batch of books (two by Liza Cody, two by Jim Stinson, and three by Anne Morice). According to Henny, Burt Conroy had forced the director to pick Shane for Teddy because Sheridan Petree, Shane’s wife, had agreed to underwrite all the expenses for the play. And that was too tempting a plum for Burt to refuse. After all, if the play didn’t cost a penny, every cent of ticket sales could go for profits and make it that much more likely that the summer season would turn a profit—and Burt Conroy loved his community theater with a passion that most men reserve for their wives, mistress, or cars.

  Hugo reached his dramatic finale. “God knows why Sam picked Shane! It would take a deity to understand that incredible decision. I consider it one of the world’s inexplicable mysteries.”

  (But not to Henny, Annie thought.)

  Hugo hit full vocal stride. “Shane’s an unmitigated disaster as Teddy. He’s a disaster as an actor. Although, God knows, it would help just a little bit if he would learn his lines. Is it too much to ask,” and now his voice dripped venom, “that the sorry bastard know his lines five days before we open?”

  An ebullient call erupted as Sam pushed through the center aisle doors. “Kids, kids, let’s get ready! Time’s a-wasting.” Sam bounded toward the stage, clapping his hands. “Act Two, that’s the ticket. Everybody ready?”

  Even Sam noticed something curious in the quality of silence that greeted him, but he shook his head, and the blondish fringe of hair that stuck out in tufts like a friar’s headpiece quivered with energy. “Come on now, lots to do, kids. Jonathan, stretch out in that armchair, look like the lord of the manor. You’re back home, king of the hill. Come on—”

  Hugo didn’t make a move.

  Sam squinted up in concern. “Sorry to be late.” His watery blue eyes flickered away. “Having trouble locating the programs.”

  But Annie saw the pain in those eyes and in the sudden droop of the director’s mouth. So “sweetie” was still hellbent to leave the island.

  Hugo looked down at Sam, in the manner of an executioner measuring rope. “Take your pick. Shane or me.”

  The stuffy, airless heat in the foyer had leeched the last vestige of freshness from Sam’s seersucker trousers. Sweat ringed the armpits of his faded Grateful Dead T-shirt. His pink-rimmed eyes fluttered nervously as he looked up against the overhead lights at Hugo’s determined face.

  “Now, Hugo …”he began placatingly.

  But Hugo wasn’t having any. “Less than a week to go.” His voice clanged like a closing cell door. “And this show is hopeless. If that fat moron louses up again today, I’m walking.”

  If it were possible for cherry red cheeks to blanch, Sam’s did. “Oh, Jesus! You can’t do it! Without you, we’re sunk. Dead. Rigor mortised.”

  “With Shane, we are an abominable embarrassment to the world, and I’m not going to put up with it any longer. I’m telling you right now, Sam, if that sweaty stallion doesn’t know his goddamned lines today, I’m going to break his goddamned neck—and then I’m going to walk out of here a happy man.”

  Sam jiggled unhappily on his tiny feet. “Hugo, Hugo, you don’t mean it, man. Why, you’re marvelous as Jonathan. The critics will go nuts. You want to go to Broadway, don’t you? Well, listen, I got news. I got great news. Listen, everybody. Hey, everybody, gather round, I got news.”

  And that, of course, was when Shane made his entrance, slouching down the center aisle like Elvis Presley on a bad, late day.

  “Coming, everybody. Coming.” Twenty minutes late at least, but there was no hint of apology in his voice. He was so full of himself it was miraculous that he didn’t explode like an overinflated balloon. Shane had starred in a series of low-budget surfer movies in the late sixties, and he still had the body of a Huntington Beach golden boy, except for the softness of his belly. Well over six feet tall, at a distance he looked like a casting director’s delight. Close up, he carried puffy pouches under his eyes from too much scotch and too many late nights.

  Oblivious to the varying shades of disgust and dislike aimed at him, he sauntered up the stage right steps with a quick wink at Janet and a hot little glance at Cindy.

  Hugo glared.

  Sam swiped nervously at his perspiring face.

  Cindy’s well-endowed bosom quivered.

  Janet’s pale blue eyes widened rapturously.

  T.K. stared glumly down at the boards.

  Carla turned away and began to pound a nail into a loose tread of the stairs.

  Eugene sighed, tugged on his orange brush mustache, and dropped heavily into a seat beside Annie.

  Burt’s color turned muddy, offering an unpleasant contrast to the sky blue of his leisure suit.

  Arthur batted nervously at that lank piece of hair dangling near his eyes.

  Henny’s mouth formed a perfect O.

  Max poked an elbow in Annie’s ribs, but she didn’t need a warning. Anyone could decipher these storm signals.

  “So,” Hugo sneered. (And Annie put the tone right on a Richard Widmark level. Damn, Hugo was good.) “God’s gift to summer theater has deigned to join us—finally.”

  Shane gave him an indifferent glance, then thrust out a middle finger in the immemorial gesture of
disdain.

  Hugo’s dark visage twisted with fury, and he lowered his head to charge.

  Sam sprang forward, grabbed Hugo’s arm, and hung on like a limpet.

  “Sweetheart, sweetheart, toss it off, ’cause I got news,” and he dug in his heels. He wasn’t big or strong enough to stop Hugo and was being pulled over the boards, but his voice kept rising with banshee desperation. “Producer!” he shrieked. “Broadway producer! Listen to me, Hugo, I got a Broadway producer coming for opening night!”

  Hugo stopped. His clenched hands and flexed biceps slowly loosened. Slowly his head turned, and his glazed eyes focused on Sam.

  “A Broadway producer?”

  Sam knew he had his fish; all he had to do was play in the line. Sweat coursed down his face in rivulets. Panting, he poured it out. “God’s truth. Cross my heart. Solomon Purdy. You know who he is.” Sam looked around at his captivated audience. “Everybody knows him. Right? Three Tonys. Successful revivals of The Crucible and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? And he’s casting Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”

  On the rare occasions when Hugo directed his attention to anything other than himself, he was fond of discussing Tennessee Williams’s plays. He considered Williams the quintessential American playwright. And, since his retirement as a trial lawyer at the peak of his career, Hugo considered himself the greatest undiscovered actor in America.

  “Opening night?” Hugo repeated.

  Sam’s shoulders heaved in relief. The fish was hooked. “Yeah, sweetheart. So, let’s go after it, baby. Give the brass ring a big try. Come on, Hugo, show these folks how they do it in the big time. You’re Jonathan and you’re so goddamned pleased with yourself—”

  And, easy as that, they slid into the rehearsal of the first scene in Act II.

  Annie never could decide which act she enjoyed the most. As Jonathan lit his cigar and leaned back comfortably in the armchair to the left of the table, Abby and Martha perched uneasily atop the window seat, while Dr. Einstein relaxed in his chair. Did she like best that wonderful moment in Act I when Mortimer finds the body in the window seat? Or his incredulity when he discovers that his aunts are merrily providing destitute elderly men with poisoned elderberry wine? Or the scene when Mortimer proposes to Elaine (her own fun role)? But Act II certainly had its moments, not least of which was Teddy’s enthusiastic agreement to dig another lock in the Panama Canal (the nice deep holes in the basement which the old dears utilized for gravesites).

  As Teddy stomped out onto the balcony, wearing a solar topee and carrying a book, Eugene moved restively beside Annie.

  She shot him a quick sideways glance. Eugene’s underlip drooped, and he suppressed a weary sigh. For once, in a life filled with conversational gambits, Annie couldn’t think of a thing to say.

  Unfortunately, Eugene saved her the trouble. She knew, before he spoke, that he was going to share with her yet another flash of information about the life of his idol and look-alike, the redoubtable Teddy. Eugene was a walking authority on the interests, achievements, passions, and pursuits of the twenty-sixth president.

  “The head of the African Cape buffalo that hangs over the mantelpiece in the entrance hall at Sagamore Hill was shot by TR on a safari to Africa in 1909.” Eugene nodded happily. “Oh, the colonel was a great hunter. And you know, it was a cartoonist’s rendering of a bear hunt in Mississippi in 1902 that got the rage started for teddy bears.”

  Annie made a noncommittal noise. As the act progressed and Teddy came onstage again, she learned that Roosevelt was very partial to natty and stylish gray trousers.

  It was with a feeling of relief that she made her escape. It was almost time for her to come onstage as Elaine. She didn’t know which bothered her the most, Eugene’s devotion to his idol or Shane’s wooden performance in the role. Each made the other worse.

  As she waited backstage to enter through the front door of the set, she watched Abby and Martha resisting Jonathan’s orders to go upstairs and go to bed. (Jonathan is eager to clear the lower floors of the old ladies because he and Dr. Einstein have their own corpse which they wish to smuggle into the house.) Jonathan bellowed at Martha, and she started reluctantly up the stairs.

  Annie heard a rustling behind the backdrop not too far from where she stood. A rustling, a high giggle, then a squeal. “Oh, you better not! I’ll tell my daddy on you—if you don’t do it more.”

  Martha stopped midway up the stairs, and her head swung toward the backdrop. The image of Martha dissolved, and as it did, Annie saw Janet clutch her throat in shock, her usually placid, somewhat obstinate face crumpled in pain.

  Another suggestive giggle, and a murmured, “Come on! You can do—”

  “Cindy!” The name exploded from Janet’s contorted lips.

  Taut silence behind the backdrop.

  “Hey, what’s the matter, Janny?” Her husband’s voice came from the auditorium.

  A rustle of movement behind the backdrop, a quiver as someone moved against the curtain.

  Janet clung to the banister. She was breathing in jerky gasps, her face an unhealthy pinkish red.

  “Janet?” T.K. lumbered solicitously toward the downstage left steps.

  At that moment, Janet proved to Annie that she could indeed act. She lifted her head, took a deep breath, then turned to face the auditorium. “It’s all right. I just felt faint for a moment. That lunch. I know I can’t eat chili.” She managed a light laugh. “I’ll rest for just a moment offstage, and I’ll be all right.”

  T.K. peered up at the stage. Concern warred with suspicion on his face. Obviously, he hadn’t heard the exchange behind the backdrop. Just as obviously, he had an inkling that there was more to this moment than indigestion.

  Sam clapped his hands. Clearly, he knew damn well what was going on behind the curtain, and he was determined to keep the Horton ménage tamped down. “Let’s pick up at the top of the act with Einstein coming back up from the cellar.” But he gave a worried glance offstage, hoping, no doubt, that Janet would keep her mouth shut until she came back onstage.

  Damn Shane’s proclivities. Annie’s entrance was now delayed until they ran through the first half of the act again. She tossed a glower over her shoulder but didn’t see anyone in the dimness. Then she turned back to watch, keeping an ear cocked for a first-class row, but a pastoral quiet reigned behind her. It figured. Janet was much too ladylike to mount a virago attack on her daughter in public, even though she had just had a traumatic shock. Annie shook her head. However could Janet have missed the byplay between Cindy and Shane?

  The scene with Jonathan and Einstein went superbly and even Janet did well when she returned as Martha. Annie began to have a cheerful conviction that, by golly, the show was going to be a success, as by all rights it should be. Her good cheer remained until Shane entered as Teddy. Then the mood shattered. For his entrance was even more off-key than usual.

  Shane looked excited, horny, and overpoweringly masculine. It was that rampant sexuality that made him so wrong for the role. Teddy is one of life’s innocents and Shane’s dissipation seemed almost obscene as he swaggered downstage. And, as usual, before he spoke, his eyes darted at the nearest prop, which held a prompt card. He was the only cast member who had yet to master his lines. In desperation, Carla had taped cards at various spots on stage so Shane could read Teddy’s dialogue. Shane’s cavalier attitude toward his lines enraged Hugo more than anything else. If Shane would learn his lines, Hugo groused, he could be a passable Teddy. Not a great Teddy, like Eugene, but passable, because beneath that layer of self-adulation and self-indulgence, lurked a minor talent. But the flicker of talent wasn’t enough to offset the wooden delivery of badly read lines.

  Shane leaned closer to the table. “General Goethals,” he boomed, “says out damned spot—”

  Sam’s high explosive scream sounded like a toreador gored by a bull.

  Everyone swung to look at him.

  Sam jumped up and down, absolutely out of control, his fringe of blo
ndish hair flapping like mast flags in a hurricane. “Oh, Jesus X. Christ, I give up! So friggin’ hot it’s like rehearsing in the Black Hole of Calcutta, a stage that even a corn-pone outfit would sneer at, and now this hot-panted excuse for Teddy queers everything! Jesus, now there’s no hope at all!”

  Cindy began to giggle.

  5

  Shane stared at him, open-mouthed.

  Quivering with frustration, Sam slapped his hands against his temples. “What kind of friggin’ idiot are you?”

  “Hey, wait a minute, buster! What the hell’s wrong with you?”

  “Wrong?” The director’s reedy voice wobbled, then cracked, as he glared at his star. “Oh, God, what isn’t wrong? A Teddy who has about as much class as a Hollywood bimbo and who won’t learn his lines. Or maybe you’re so damn dumb you can’t learn them! That’s what comes of casting a hunk out of a surfer movie. And now, this!”

  Shane lunged forward, grabbed the front of Sam’s T-shirt, and hauled the little man up on his toes. “Listen, creep, I don’t have to take this shit.”

  Sam wriggled like a gigged fish.

  Max moved to rescue Sam, but Hugo was nearer. The big actor clamped a viselike hand on Shane’s arm. “Let go.”

  There was an instant’s stillness, but the outcome was never in doubt. It would take a brave man, and Annie felt sure Shane didn’t qualify, to ignore the steel in Hugo’s voice.

  Shane’s grip loosened. Sam bounced on his heels and rubbed at his throat. His chest heaving, the director’s face contorted. Weeks of cajoling Shane and placating the other cast members boiled over into flaming rage. “Shit?” he exploded. “Who’re you to talk about shit? You trying to ruin the play? Put us out of commission? We might as well close the doors now. You know what happens, when somebody quotes from that play!”