by Sarah Dreher
"How long?"
"I'm not sure," Gwen said. She glanced at Stoner. "About four years, I guess?"
Stoner calculated and nodded.
"Seems like a funny thing not to be sure of."
"Well, we met one summer in Wyoming, and made love in Iowa, and again in Maine. I guess we really became lovers in Maine." She glanced at Stoner. "Didn't we?"
"I guess so."
"It was on a dirt road, outside of Castleton."
"Must have been uncomfortable," Divi Divi said.
"It was late winter," Gwen went on. "I was driving, and we had a fight about something and I made her get out of the car in the middle of the woods, and she leaned up against a tree and started to cry, and that's when I realized I was being an idiot and I told her I loved her, and we went back to the awful motel and made love on the pink chenille bedspread. Several times."
"Gwen," Stoner said under her breath, "I don't think she's interested in the details."
"Sure I am," said Divi Divi.
"She's a writer," Gwen explained to Stoner. "Writers are always interested in things like character and motivation and..."
"No," Divi Divi said, "I'm just nosy."
"The next night," Gwen went on, "I was mugged in an alley behind the drug store, and we made love again. We had to be really careful that time because I wasn't feeling too well."
''You were mugged in an alley?"
"It was a very dark alley," Gwen said.
“Well," Divi Divi said with a little smile, "I hope it went better in Iowa."
"Actually, that was the trip to Wyoming, when I was on my honeymoon, with my husband."
"And what happened to your husband?"
"Stoner killed him," Gwen said.
Divi Divi turned to her. "Girl, you don't mess around."
"She didn't really kill him in cold blood," Gwen explained quickly. "He was trying to kill me. It was sort of self-defense."
"Mugging, killing. Sounds like men give you a rough time," Divi Divi said.
Gwen nodded solemnly. "I never had much luck."
Divi Divi slipped an arm around Gwen's shoulders. "For what it's worth, doll, I give men a hard time."
"Good," Stoner said. "Someone has to."
"Okay," Rebecca said loudly, "let's run through the script. Off book if you can. Don't think about expression or phrasing. Say your lines as fast as you can, and pick up your cues. Barb will cue you. Div?"
"Coming, boss." She strode back to the stage.
Rebecca detached herself from the group and came toward them. There were spots of bright red on her cheeks and the tip of her nose. Either she had acquired a severe sunburn, or she was about to have a heart attack.
"Are you all right?" Stoner asked.
"Just need some air," Rebecca said tightly. She left the barn.
Stoner followed. Outside, Rebecca was pacing back and forth across the packed-dirt barn parking lot. Stoner fell into step beside her. "Anything I can do?”
"Do you have a cigarette?"
"Sorry. I don't smoke."
"Neither do I. At least, I haven't for six years. I may start again."
"I can't imagine doing what you do," Stoner said. "It must be grueling."
Rebecca paused in her pacing and ran both hands through her hair, pushing it back from her ears. "Every time we do a show, there's a point at which I want to kill either myself or them."
Stoner smiled. "I guess you've reached that point."
"Nope. Three weeks from now. Then I'll have reached that point." She dropped to the ground in the sun, back against the side of the barn.
"When does the show open?" Stoner asked, sitting beside her.
"October 1. If ever."
"Then you still have five weeks."
"Guess so." Rebecca pulled a blade of grass and split it with her thumb nail. "If things stop going wrong."
So Rebecca had noticed it, too. "What kinds of things."
"Oh, nothing big. I'm just frustrated."
"Really, what kinds of things?"
"The flashlights, for one." She held another blade of grass between her thumbs and blew through it. It made a satisfyingly lewd sound. "Someone took all the flashlights. Big deal, huh? Except it is a big deal when you have to stumble around back stage and can't find anything. Or when you have to feel for the light sockets because they're up on the rafters and there's no light up there."
"That could be annoying," Stoner agreed. "And dangerous. Any idea who took them?"
Rebecca shrugged. "Kids, probably. A lot of hikers come through here in the summer. There's a cut-off from the Appalachian Trail just beyond the lake. They don't mean any harm, really. It's just a darn nuisance."
From here, she could see the Cottage in its entirety. A large, rambling building made of stone. French doors leading onto the terrace. A tall chimney with tendrils of vine crawling up the sides. A few women sat at the white wrought iron tables, reading or having cool drinks. "Do you always rehearse here?” she asked.
"For the last two years. It's a great place. And Sherry's been so generous with us. I don't know what we'd do without her."
Aha. More evidence of Sherry's importance to the company.
"Rehearsal space has completely dried up in the city," Rebecca went on. "Even places that used to let us use empty rooms want to charge by the hour. It's the recession, I guess."
Or they're still operating under an 80's "Greed is Good" mentality, Stoner thought. Grab as much as you can while there's grabbing to grab.
"Sometimes I think we should just pack it in," Rebecca went on. "Between the no-budget and the fits of temperament, I honestly don't know why we do it. Masochism, I guess. We draw pretty good audiences, enough to cover our expenses so we can start the next year with nothing, but at least no debts. Theater rentals are going up, though. And the audiences are getting smaller. People just don't seem to want to do anything any more. I remember when we first started, we had so many people wanting to help we couldn't find jobs for them all. Now we're doubling up. Maybe it's time to see the handwriting on the wall." She glanced over at Stoner and gave a small laugh. "I'm sorry. Here I am talking your head off, being pathetic, and you don't even know me."
"It's fine," Stoner said. "I need to let it all hang out from time to time, myself."
"Yeah? What do you do?"
"I run a travel agency."
Rebecca nodded. "Well, you probably have a pretty good idea of what it's like living on a tightrope."
"Sure do," Stoner said. She liked Rebecca. More than liked her, trusted her. Maybe it was instinct, or maybe it was the way the woman had let her collar deteriorate, one end folding under, the other standing as straight as a rabbit's ear. She hoped she wouldn't turn out to be their perpetrator.
If there was a perpetrator, she reminded herself. So far, they had only the missing flashlights to go on, and Rebecca's explanation was as good as any. And there was Sherry's note. But that could be a prank.
They sat for a moment in silence, feeling the sun and the slight uprising breeze. that whispered of oncoming evening.
Rebecca had slipped her whistle off and was twirling it around one finger.
"That's a nice touch," Stoner said. "Makes you look very authoritative."
"Maybe authoritative, maybe authoritarian. Potato, po-tah-to. To tell you the truth, I think it's a little crass. Sort of camp-counselorish. But sometimes it's the only way to be heard."
"That's what we needed back at the Cambridge Women's Center," Stoner said. "That and a referee."
Rebecca looked at her. "You know CWC?"
"I practically lived there when I first came out," Stoner said. "I went from one support group to another. Some of them got pretty raucous. Especially the ones where we tried to define Feminism."
"The last time I was there," Rebecca said, "the only groups they had were for women with eating disorders and lesbians with babies."
Fifteen years ago, they'd had dozens of groups. Women entering the work place. Women re-entering the w
ork place. Consciousness raising and values clarification. How to fix your own car. Whether to fix your car, or convert to the less patriarchal and more environmentally sound bicycle. How to organize a demonstration. Organic gardening. Passive resistance. Organic gardening as passive resistance. Communal living. Class and race consciousness. Self-defense for women. Turning the contents of your purse or knapsack into lethal weapons. The list was endless.
But the world had moved on. Women burned out. Funding dried up. The Religious/Political Right sharpened its back-lash tools. Women's Centers, if they existed at all, did so now through the reluctant generosity of colleges and YWCA's, and services were restricted to the absolutely necessary-for-survival. Women no longer had the time or energy to fix their own cars. They were too busy just trying to make ends meet. The younger women looked at the old revolutionaries as dinosaurs, and cringed at the use of the word Feminism. Even lesbians, that ever-contentious tribe, seemed to be satisfied to call themselves "gay women," and spend their evenings at gender-free dances.
It made Stoner feel sad, and kind of middle-aged.
Someone left the Cottage and crossed the terrace, stopping to chat briefly with two women who seemed to be writing letters. She began to trot toward them across the grass.
"Hi," Sherry said cheerfully. "Hope I didn't keep anyone waiting."
"It's okay," Rebecca said. "But from now on, I wish you'd plan to stay once we get started. It really throws off the rhythm."
Sherry's face took on a whipped-puppy look. "Gee, I'm sorry. 1 wanted to change into jeans so I could help out the tech people. I didn't mean to inconvenience anyone."
"I appreciate your wanting to help," Rebecca said. "Next time, just tell someone, will you? It'll save you a lot of grief."
"Everyone was busy," Sherry said earnestly. "I didn't want to interrupt. I'm sorry if I upset you."
"You didn't upset me. Go on in now. They're probably waiting for you."
"Do you think they're angry?"
"No, I don't think anyone's angry. Maybe Rita..."
"She's always angry," Sherry said brightly. She gave Stoner a quick smile and slipped into the barn.
"Mother said there'd be days like this," Rebecca muttered under her breath, "but she didn't say when or how many."
Stoner laughed. "You're amazing, the way you keep it all calm on the surface. Are you an ex-nun?"
"No ex-any-nun I ever met," Rebecca said. "You must be Protestant." She pushed herself upright and stretched. "I'd better go referee."
Time to make her pitch. "Listen," she said, "I'd really like to help out, and you look as if you need all the woman-power you can get. I don't have any experience..."
Rebecca grinned. "That's the best. With experience comes Attitude."
"But I could maybe hold the script during rehearsals, and help the actors with their lines or whatever. We'll be here for a week, at least."
"Great." Rebecca squeezed her shoulder. "As of now, you're our temporary assistant director. Which is a fancy term meaning you get all the jobs no one else wants to do."
Temporary assistant director. It sounded a lot easier than understudy.
"It's your line, Roseann." Marcy's face was red and blotchy with anger. She saw Rebecca and Stoner enter and spun around to address them. "She's throwing my timing off."
Roseann looked as if she were about to cry. "You never gave me the cue,"
"I did so."
"I never heard that line before."
"It was close enough."
"It didn't make any sense," Roseann said. She showed Marcy her script. "It's supposed to be ..."
Marcy barely glanced at it. "It was the general idea." She addressed her frustration to the rest of the cast. "If she's going to be like this on stage, we're fucked. One misplaced comma, and the lead goes up on her lines." She flapped her arms. "This really makes me feel secure. This is really safe."
"I can't even find the line in the script," Barb said.
"I didn't recognize it," Roseann said. She was beginning to shake.
Rita moved over to stand beside her. "Forget it. She never gives the right cues.”
"Personally," Divi Divi said, "speaking as the playwright, even though I didn't really write this turkey, I'd like it if you'd say the lines the way they're written."
The Goddess of Discord was in charge. Rebellion was right around the corner.
"Marcy," Rebecca broke in, "you really ought to have your lines down by now.”
"I'll be ready when we open," Marcy said. "I never go up on a line on stage."
''You don't go up on them," Rita said, "but nobody can recognize them."
"Can we just move along from here?" Barb said. She picked up a few pages of script from the floor. "Shit, I don't know where I am."
"Well," said Marcy, "there goes my timing."
Barb threw up her hands. "I'm out of here," she said, and thrust her chaotic script in Rebecca's general direction. She stalked to the silence and sanity of the back stage area.
"I always get the sense of a speech," Marcy whined.
Rita gave a huge, weary, condescending sigh. "You don't even have the sense of the play."
"Because the play doesn't make sense," Marcy retorted.
Rita addressed herself to an invisible, sympathetic audience. "Wonderful. A general understudy who can't even remember her own lines." She blew the hair off her forehead. "Chills and thrills."
General understudy? So, if someone—like maybe the lead—drops out, Marcy gets the part. The plot thickens.
"Okay," Rebecca said brightly, "let's try to pick up where we got stuck. Stoner is going to hold book." She handed Stoner the stack of loose pages. "Marcy, please go over your pages tonight. We all know you'll be ready by the time we open, but your sister actors need to hear their cues in rehearsal, too." She turned to Roseann. "Roseann, you need to think in terms of what you can do if something goes wrong on stage."
Roseann looked as pale as fog, even under her suntan. "Huh?" she said.
"The most important thing is, don't break character. Think of how your character would respond to..."
"Can we do this later?" Sherry interrupted. "I have to break to meet with the kitchen crew at four thirty, and I really need a line run-through."
"Fine," Rebecca said. She turned to Roseann. "Let's meet after dinner and we'll work on this, okay?"
Roseann nodded. She looked terrified, frozen.
Stoner's heart went out to her. She couldn't imagine what it would be like to be on stage for the first time, with a group of people she'd never met, with the responsibility of the lead on her shoulders. Well, actually, she couldn't imagine what it would be like to be on stage at all, but she was pretty sure she wouldn't enjoy it.
"Let's back up a bit and start at the top of page 25," Rebecca said.
Stoner pawed wildly through Rebecca's script, which was badly Xeroxed, out of order, and covered with pencil notes and boxes and arrows and something that looked like short-hand and cryptic messages like MxR and RoxUL. She couldn't find page 25.
"I can't find page 25," she said.
Everyone looked around on the floor, under chairs, in their own scripts. No page 25.
"It was here yesterday," Sherry said. "I was on book, remember? I know I saw it."
Rebecca was beginning to gnaw on her lanyard. "Can someone lend Stoner a script?"
"Here," Roseann said. "Take mine." She handed it over.
"I'll run one off for you tonight," Sherry said. "And an extra page 25."
Stoner hoped someone had copied down the arrows and boxes and MxDC's. They looked important.
"Okay," Rebecca said. "Lets go." She turned to Stoner. "I want you to correct them even if there's only a misplaced 'the' or 'and'."
"Got it," Stoner said. She felt a little self-conscious and overwhelmed with the importance of this. Stoner McTavish, who can find lost luggage, deal with surly airline booking agents, pick her way through the intricacies of multiple main frame computers, arrange aro
und-the-world tours for forty—panics at the sight of a play script.
But this was Theater. Magical, Mystical Theater.
They were looking at her expectantly.
"I'm all set," she said. "Go on."
"We need you to give us the first line," Sherry said.
Oh. She did.
Three lines later, Divi Divi went blank.
Stoner read out her line in what she hoped was a clear and commanding voice.
"Something's wrong," Divi Divi said. "I didn't hear my cue."
Roseann, whose line it had been, repeated it.
Divi Divi shook her head. "That's not the line."
"You're the playwright," Marcy said. ''You should know the right lines."
"Honey, I just write 'em, I don't read 'em." She came over and took Stoner's script. Looked through page 25, then page 24, then page 26. She picked up her own script and Roseann's script and compared them. Picked a page at random from the early and late parts of the script and studied them, and shook her head. “Where'd you get this script?" she asked.
"Rebecca gave me the new pages last night," Roseann said, looking embarrassed and frightened, "the same time the rest of you got yours. I memorized all the changes, just like you asked us to."
"Well, it's not the same script."
"Maybe it's an earlier version," Sherry suggested.
Rebecca looked them over and shook her head. "I had them run off in town last evening. All of them. From the master. The only changes are the ones we wrote in today."
"Can we please move along?" Marcy yelled.
"Right." Rebecca said.
"Use my page 25," Divi Divi said to Stoner, and handed it to her. She smelled like vanilla.
Stoner flashed her a polite and—she hoped—warm "thank you" smile.
"Stoner," Rebecca said, "you keep an eye on Roseann's script. When they don't agree, make a check mark in the margin. We'll update them later."
She felt sorry for Roseann, who was already pretty shaky and was now faced with the prospect of saying the wrong line every time it was her turn. Life upon the wicked stage was, she decided, even more of a nightmare than she had thought.
It wasn't so great off-stage, either. Juggling two manuscripts, neither of them bound, comparing both, and trying to keep everyone's lines compulsively exact. Then there was the strange pattern to Roseann's mistakes. She'd go along letter-perfect for two or three pages, and suddenly everything would go wrong for a page. Stoner didn't know a lot about learning curves, but she knew it had something to do with first and last and then the middle. Roseann's learning curve looked more like buckshot.
