How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship & Musical Theater

by Marc Acito

  Rehearsals for the fall play, The Miracle Worker, start but I don't have that much to do in it. I play the biggest male part, of course—Helen Keller's father—but it's still a supporting role. Mr. Lucas actually takes me aside and tells me he purposely chose something without a big male part because he wants me to focus all my attention on my Juilliard audition.

  Kelly surprises everybody (me included) by landing the lead role of Annie Sullivan, which is a big stretch for her. She's nervous as hell about it, but I'm going to coach her. The first read-through is really ragged, but then again, it's hard to read through a play in which the principal character is blind, deaf, and dumb. I stay after and perform my audition monologues for the cast. Amadeus is solid, and for my classical I do “Bottom's Dream” from Midsummer, mostly because it's the only Shakespeare play I actually read this summer. It's funny and it goes well, but Mr. Lucas says he'll find me something else for better contrast.

  Natie and I drop off Kelly, then rush home to change into dance clothes for rehearsals for Anything Goes, which Kelly and I are choreographing for the Wallingford Playhouse, the local community theater. “This must be what it feels like to be at Juilliard,” I think as I drive, “dashing from rehearsal to rehearsal, full of artistic inspiration.” I make a mental note to ask Paula about it; that is, if she ever gets the phone hooked up in that pit she's living in.

  I park in front of the house because Dagmar has taken my spot in the garage with the Corvette Al bought her as a wedding present. In return, Dagmar bought them coordinated vanity plates—his says SEIN, hers IHR. It feels strange to come into my own house through the front door like I'm company, and every step I take in the entryway echoes because there's no carpet to absorb the sound. I pull off my shoes and slide across the floor like Tom Cruise in Risky Business, accidentally knocking a copy of Forbes out of Al's big, hairy hands as he rounds the corner.

  “Where have ya' been?” Al says. “You missed dinner.”

  “What are you talking about?” I say as I go into the kitchen. “It's not Wednesday.” I open the fridge to see what's available. Dagmar looks up from the stove where she's stirring what looks like hot cocoa in a saucepan.

  “Don't make a mess,” she says. “I just cleaned everytsing up.”

  Al glances at his Rolex. “You better hurry, kid,” he says, “or we'll be late.”

  “For what?”

  “Waddya mean, for what? For college night. I left the flyer on your bed the other day.”

  I sniff at a strange-looking casserole. “I went last year,” I say. “There weren't any drama schools there.”

  “So?”

  “So, I've already got the applications for Juilliard, NYU, and Boston University.”

  Al glances at Dagmar, who just keeps stirring the pot. “Well, maybe we should look at some other options,” he mutters.

  There's something about the way he doesn't make eye contact that gives me a tight feeling in my chest. “Like . . . what?” I say.

  “I dunno,” Al says. “That's why people go to college night, don't they, to find out?” He sticks his hands in his pockets and jingles his change.

  I speak deliberately, like I'm a special-ed teacher and he's a mentally impaired student. “But I already know what I want to do,” I say. “I have for years. That's why I've already chosen the best acting schools.” I turn to leave the room. “Besides,” I add, “I can't go tonight. I've got play practice.”

  “Well, you'll just have to miss it, then.”

  Miss it? What the hell is he talking about? “I can't miss it,” I sputter. “I'm the choreographer. I'm in charge of the rehearsal.”

  “Well, I'm in charge of you and I say you're going to college night.”

  The words hit me like a slap in the face. My father's never talked to me like that before. He reaches for me to make up for it, but I flinch.

  “Listen, Eddie,” he says, “I know you've been having fun with all this drama stuff.” He makes a vague gesture to indicate the airy-fairyness of it all. “But it's time you put all these fun and games behind you and started thinking about doing something serious.”

  The tops of my ears start to burn. “I am serious. I'm serious about becoming an actor.” Dagmar grabs a whisk and begins whipping the cocoa vigorously. The clacking unnerves me and I feel my heart begin to beat faster.

  “C'mon kid,” Al says, chuckling, “you know what I mean. It's time you did something sensible. Y'know, like business.”

  “Business?” I say, spitting out the word like it doesn't taste good. “Where did you ever get the idea that I'd want to major in business? What do you think all those classes I've taken in the city have been about, all those plays I've done? Acting isn't just some little hobby for me. It's who I am.”

  “Quit being so dramatic,” Al says.

  I turn to Dagmar for support. “Dagmar, you're an artist, you understand, right? Explain it to him.”

  Dagmar doesn't look up from her cocoa, but just murmurs, “Vaht I understand is tsat you should do vaht your fahter says. You are, how do you say, a big fish in a small pond.” She pours a cup for Al and brings it over to him like he's lord of the fucking manor.

  “But that's why I need training,” I say, “and Juilliard is the most prestigious school in the country for acting.”

  “Baloney,” Al says, swatting the idea away with his hand. “I keep telling you acting's all about connections. Even I could do most of the crap you see on TV.”

  Dagmar slides on a pair of rubber gloves to wash the saucepan. “But I don't want to do the crap you see on TV,” I say over the sound of rushing water. “I want to train to be a classical actor.” It's infuriating that someone as uninformed as Al should be empowered to make decisions about my artistic future.

  “I see,” Al says. “And how much does it cost to train to be a classical actor?” He pronounces the words “classical actor” with the same contempt I used for the word “business.”

  “Tuition is $10,000 a year.”

  Al snorts. “So you expect me to throw away forty grand of my hard-earned money so you can go play in some fancy-pants drama school that will qualify you for exactly nothin'?”

  Why is he pretending this is news to him? Going to acting school has been my plan all along. “But this is my dream,” I say.

  Al sighs like he's had enough of this nonsense. “Listen, kid, if you wanna pursue some wacky pie-in-the-sky notion, go ahead. Just don't expect me to foot the bill.”

  “But, but you and Mommy always said, ‘Be whatever you want to be, as long as it makes you happy. You want to be a garbage man, be a garbage man, but be the best garbage man you can be.' Remember?”

  “I never said that,” Al says. “Maybe your crazy mother did, but not me.”

  This is a lie.

  “But you were there,” I cry. “I'm sure you were.” My vision fogs and the whole room goes blurry. I grip the counter to stop myself from falling over. “How am I supposed to pay for college all by myself at this point?” I feel the walls closing in on me.

  “Listen, I'm not payin' for acting school and that's that. If you wanna go to college, you've got to major in business or else forget about it.”

  Al's voice sounds far away to me, like I'm under water. This must be what it's like to drown. “If I have to major in business,” I hear myself say, “I might as well shrivel up and die. Do you understand me? I will shrivel up and die!”

  “Tsat is enough,” Dagmar screams, tearing off her gloves and throwing them on the counter. “Your fahter, he owes you nutsing, you hear me? Nutsing! It is you who are indebted to him for all tse generosity he has shown you vile he puts up vit your foolishness!”

  “Listen, honey . . .” Al says.

  “No, I cannot stand it any longer.” She marches over to me and wags a crooked finger in my face. “You and your sister are nutsing but spoiled sons of bitches . . .”

  “Dagmar . . .”

  “. . . who don't appreciate anytsing tsis man has done for y
ou, raising you all by himself after your crazy muhter abandoned you.”

  I feel my temperature skyrocket. “Don't you dare say anything about my mother!”

  Dagmar's eyes go wild and her mouth curls up horribly. “Now I know vy she didn't vant you!” she howls.

  I feel a wave of rage barrel up through me and I want to knock over the entire kitchen table the way they do in the movies or, better yet, smash a plate over her goddamned allergy-ridden head, but instead I just slam my hand down hard on the countertop.

  It really, really hurts.

  Dagmar leaps back like I've hit her and I turn and stomp out of the kitchen, my hand throbbing, my pulse racing, and anger surging through me so fast that I shake. I grab my shoes, throw open the front door, and slam it behind me as I go. Then I let out a scream that echoes around the neighborhood.

  Across the street Natie steps out of his front door. “What's wrong?” he calls.

  “JUST GET IN THE CAR!” I yell like we're refugees who need to flee before the border is closed. Natie scampers down his front lawn, jumps into MoM, and we tear off into the black night.

  I'm so distracted and panicky at rehearsal I have to keep going outside and walking around the block just to keep calm, asking myself over and over again, “What am I going to do? What am I going to do?” Thank God Kelly's there to run things. Afterward we go back to her house, which always makes me feel better.

  Kelly lives in a cozy Tudor in Wallingford Heights set back on a large, woodsy lot. There's almost a fairy-tale quality to the house, like you'd expect a kindly woodcutter and his wife to live there, rather than a divorced, alcoholic therapist and her daughter.

  As we step out of the car Kelly points to the sky. “Look,” she says, “a harvest moon.”

  Natie and I turn and there, indeed, like an enormous pumpkin, hangs a bright orange moon. I stand behind Kelly and put my arms around her, the way you do in a musical when you sing a duet and you both need to face front. I reach up and cup her breasts in my hands. The night air is cool and I feel her nipples harden under her leotard.

  It's a comforting feeling.

  We open the front door, being careful to sidestep the two manic cats who guard the entryway, then toss our coats wherever we want to because it's that kind of house.

  Kelly's mom is definitely not the type of person who worries about the disabling effects of dead skin in the carpet. “Hell,” she says in her no-nonsense New England-y way, “I wouldn't be surprised if you found a dead body in my carpet.” The house is about as tidy as most people's attics, which makes it a particularly hospitable hangout for sloppy teenagers. You can't sit down without having to move several unread issues of The New Yorker, some stray knitting needles, a couple of used wineglasses, and the occasional odd Christmas ornament, not to mention the TV clicker, which has the irritating habit of always being exactly where you want to sit but then mysteriously disappears the moment you want to change the channel. Every available horizontal surface—tables, chairs, windowsills, the piano bench, the piano, as well as every step leading both upstairs and to the basement—is utilized as a stacking space. It's as if the whole house were just one big, open closet. “A clean house is a sign of a misspent life,” Kathleen says.

  Everywhere you turn, the walls are covered with lopsided photos chronicling the lives of Kelly and her brother and sister, Brad and Bridget, both of whom are away at college. Kathleen so admires her children she wedges extra snapshots of them into the corners of the frames.

  The whole house radiates with love.

  Kathleen's standing at the kitchen counter when we come in, dipping celery sticks into cottage cheese and drinking a Bartles & Jaymes white wine spritzer. Her leotard and tights are damp, which means she's just finished working out to her Jane Fonda video, or “Pain with Jane” as she calls it. It also means she too has got that nipple freak-out thing going, which is kind of embarrassing to me considering she's my girlfriend's mother. But at forty-three years old, Kathleen still doesn't look substantially different from the old black-and-white wedding portrait that hangs on the living room wall, a photo she never tires of psychoanalyzing. “Note the demure closed-mouth smile,” she'll say like she's a docent in a museum, “the hands folded discreetly over the lap, the enormous white dress. It's like I'm Miss Chastity Belt 1961.”

  Kathleen.

  I share with her the wounds inflicted by the slings and arrows of my outrageous fortune and she listens intently, her brow knitted with therapeutic concentration. Occasionally she asks a question for clarification, but mostly she just nods her blond head and makes affirmative mm-hmm and uh-huh noises. I get more upset as I talk and she reaches across the kitchen table to grip my hand, her eyes all ripply with tears, like she's crying for me because, of course, I can't.

  “What am I going to do?” I ask.

  Kathleen swallows the remainder of her spritzer, then orders Kelly and Natie into the living room. She wants to talk to me alone. While they trudge bewildered out of the room, Kathleen pours us both a spritzer. “Here,” she bleats in her brittle Katharine Hepburn-y way, “you look like you could use one.” Some may question the mental-health wisdom of serving alcohol to minors but, as far as I'm concerned, Kathleen's my kind of therapist.

  She sits back down at the table, the light from the stained-glass lamp casting shadows across her high patrician cheekbones, and she looks at me for a long time with what seem to be Kelly's eyes, or perhaps I should say Kelly's right eye, the one that favors blue. Finally, she says, “Edward, can I trust you?”

  “Of course you can,” I say.

  “You can't tell this to anyone, especially Kelly. You understand?”

  “I promise.” One of the coolest things about Kathleen is how she treats kids like grown-ups.

  “Do you know what Kelly's dad gave me for our twentieth anniversary?”

  Of course I don't. I also don't know what this has got to do with my paying for acting school.

  Kathleen doesn't wait for an answer. “He gave me a trip to the Caribbean,” she says, “and a case of herpes.”

  I stare at her, not knowing how to react. It never occurred to me that middle-aged people got herpes, particularly those who are products of a Catholic education. She stares back at me, nodding her head, her lips pursed.

  “And not the nice kind of herpes, either,” she says, “but the kind you get for the rest of your goddamn life.” She takes another swig of her Bartles & Jaymes. “I'm telling you this so you can understand a bit about what happens to men when they reach middle age.” Kathleen then proceeds to expound her theory of male menopause. Kathleen's got a theory about everything. This one revolves around the idea that since men's bodies don't shut down the baby-making mechanism the way women's do, middle-aged men facing their mortality feel an increased biological need to propagate the species. As a result they start screwing around on their wives with younger, more fertile women.

  “It's not like they want to have more children, although sometimes that happens, too,” Kathleen explains, pouring herself another spritzer. “It's more that by choosing a new, younger wife, a man effectively has another child, but one he can sleep with, too.”

  “But Dagmar's not young,” I say, “she's your age.”

  That didn't come out the way I wanted it to.

  “Doesn't matter,” Kathleen says, swirling her spritzer. “She's like a child, because she needs his support.” Kathleen's never been one to let something as inconsequential as the facts get in the way of one of her theories.

  “So what should I do?” I say. Okay, maybe I whine a little but I've got a right. I'd say Dagmar pulled the rug right out from underneath me, except she got rid of all the rugs.

  Kathleen stands. “You've got to prove to him that you are a man yourself,” she says. “The time for relating to him as a dependent child is over. Show him that you don't need his help, that you are perfectly capable of paying for college on your own.”

  “But I'm not perfectly capable of paying fo
r college on my own.”

  Kathleen leans across the table and the light from the stained-glass lamp shines bright on her taut, freckled face. “Edward, don't ever let me hear you say that again, do you understand? You are perfectly capable of paying for college on your own and you will. You have to.” She pulls up a chair and takes my hands in hers. “Listen, sweetie, I know it seems bleak and you feel betrayed and scared. But the only way out of a situation like this is through it.” She strokes my face lightly with one finger. “So many things could happen between now and then, but what I know is this: you've got strengths you're not even aware of yet and you are going to be amazed at what you can do when this is all over. I believe in you; not just in your talent, but in you yourself. There is so much more to you than you even realize, I promise.”