Tart

by Jody Gehrman

  I’m unreasonably, sickeningly nervous the night of the reading. It’s scripts-in-hand—not a big deal, really. Minimal rehearsals, black-box venue, just a chance for Merrit to hear it all the way through. A glorified rehearsal, really. But the department—well, Ruth Westby in particular—was very generous about getting the word out. My publicity budget for this was twice what they gave me for Heirloom, and mysteriously, announcements have been popping up on the radio and in the papers that I don’t recall orchestrating. By the time I arrive at the theater the night of our show, I can’t say I’m shocked to see a long line snaking out the door. Still, my heart picks up its tempo until it’s practically a death-metal anthem.

  “Professor Bloom—thank God you’re—did you hear? What will we…?” Ben Crow runs up to me in his requisite staged-reading black, out of breath, with his usually golden-brown face geisha-white.

  “What happened?”

  “You haven’t heard? Sarah had a nervous breakdown.”

  I put a hand on his shoulder. Ben is still particularly vulnerable to preshow nerves, and Beach Barbie’s still masterful at squeezing maximum drama from her allegedly tumultuous personal life. I seriously doubt there’s a real emergency here. “Sarah has a nervous breakdown every day,” I tell him soothingly. “Where is she?”

  “That’s just it. She’s in L.A.”

  “But she came to rehearsal last night,” I say, still unwilling to believe there’s a problem. “Come on, this is some kind of joke….”

  “I’m serious. She’s not here. Everyone says she was sleeping with Merrit, and today she found out he’s not going to marry—”

  “Wait a minute. Who was sleeping with Merrit?”

  “Sarah is—or was. Until he broke up with her this morning. Then she had a nervous breakdown and her mom bought her a ticket to fly home to Bel Air. The point is, what are we going to do? Who’s playing Juliana in—” he looks at his watch “—forty minutes?”

  Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. Why did I cast Sarah again? She’s got wonderful expressions and she read so well at auditions—I loved the Valley Girl twist she added to the otherwise insipid ingenue, Juliana—but I should have learned by now she’s volatile as a Molotov cocktail. And Merrit, the head case. What is it with men? Do they suddenly become raging, hormone-driven beasts the second they see a nineteen-year-old with nice tits?

  Okay, Claudia, think fast. Script in hand, not a big deal, who do you know that could pull off Juliana with only forty minutes to prep?

  “Hey, Big Director Lady.” I turn and Rose crushes me in a warm, patchouli-scented hug. When she pulls away, she hands me a big bouquet of passion flowers and nasturtiums, their stems braided and tied with twine. “I had to steal them from the neighbors,” she confesses, smiling at the flowers. “But I knew they were your favorite.”

  “Rose. You’ve read Merrit’s play….”

  “Of course. I can’t wait to see it.”

  “Well, I kind of have a really enormous favor to ask….”

  I have to watch most of the show from the doorway, holding Rex by the collar, straining to keep him from bounding down the aisle or peeing in protest on my leg. Rose has agreed to play Juliana, in exchange for my promise not to be doggist and to let Rexy see his mommy-wommy snatch her fifteen minutes of fame. Tim, forever the good sport, relieves me from my post after intermission, so I get to watch act three from a seated position.

  And Rose—my God—she’s glorious. She’s never acted in her life and here she is, performing circles around my best students, sending chills down my spine with her spot-on inflections. She takes Juliana—a flat, uninteresting heroine, hemmed in by unrealistic dialogue and absurdly phallic vegetable obsessions—and turns her into a funny, vivacious little sprite. Her diction is perfect, her timing impeccable, and she adds humor where there was melodrama, sparks of insight where there was listless overwriting. She’s made for it; I can hardly sit still, I’m so thrilled for her.

  The only unfortunate part of all this is she makes Organically Grown seem like a passably decent, maybe even promising play, though I decided weeks ago it sucks. I’m even more convinced I hate it now that Merrit’s been revealed as an inconsiderate, ingenue-fucking oaf; how could I ever have kissed that weasel? The skirt-chaser. The smarmy, egomaniacal—writer.

  After the show—after Westby’s pulled me into a spontaneous, totally unexpected embrace, and a reviewer from the Sentinel has patted me energetically on the back and the cast has filled me in on how Ben puked before the show yet again—I run up to Rose and squeeze her so hard she loses her breath. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” I squeal. “You were the best Juliana ever.”

  “You think?” she asks modestly. “I wondered if I was loud enough?”

  “Oh, my God, Rose, you stole the show.”

  “Is that a good thing?”

  “Yes,” I say. “It’s a very, very good thing.”

  Tim is there, beaming at her, his bald head shining and his face filled with adoration. “You’re a regular Audrey Hepburn,” he says. She turns to him with a dreamy expression before kneeling and kissing Rex, who is pulling so hard at his leash only someone as mammoth as Tim could possibly restrain him. I decide I like Tim and Rose together, even if monogamy is an evil plot and all men turn out to be helplessly drawn to jailbait, in the end. In spite of these strikes against him, I suspect he loves her almost as much as I do.

  I’m in my car, fuming halfheartedly about Merrit. He skulked off during the curtain call, the yellow bastard. No doubt he figured I’d heard about his ingenue-fucking when I barely spoke to him at intermission. Perhaps he’s booking the next flight to London right now, having figured out that Santa Cruz women aren’t exactly generous when it comes to teen molesters. Good riddance. He can take his lukewarm kisses and his nauseating vegetation references right back to that fog-ridden city—see what I care.

  Oh, shit. I left my bag backstage, and it’s got my wallet in it. Dammit. Now I have to trudge back, unlock the theater, disarm the security, dig around in the inevitable post-show mess until I find it.

  When I open the door to the green room, I hear a low murmur of voices and I freeze. No one’s supposed to be in here—I locked everything before I left. Instinctively, my stomach constricts and the horror-movie score swells in my mind, the sort they inevitably play right before some hapless chick gets decapitated. I can already see my obituary: She lived for the theater, she died in the green room. But then I hear a soft, girlish come-hither giggle, so I figure maybe Frank the janitor’s treating his date to a little backstage tour. While I don’t exactly relish the idea of interrupting Frank’s secret seduction, I do need my purse, and I can’t find it without lights. I cough twice, pray they’ve had time to beat it to the dressing rooms, reach for the switch and flood the room with light.

  The vision that greets me makes me gasp in horror, then blink in surprise. It’s Merrit Russell, with his expensive-looking camel trousers bunched around his ankles and his bare ass, white as milk, thrusting frenetically; a pair of shapely legs are wrapped around his waist, looking weird and disembodied at first glance. Then I see he’s got whoever she is propped up on the makeup counter, her back against the mirror. He jerks with a start from his trance and I see his reflection lit by the blindingly bright bulbs around the vanity—there’s a fleck of spittle at the corner of his mouth, and his eyes are buggy with surprise. He kneels down to yank up his pants. Only then do I see the flushed face of his latest victim: Monica Parker.

  CHAPTER 30

  Once the reading is behind me and the semester’s nearly over, I expect to be filled with intoxicating relief and almost-summer elation, but mostly I’m listless and insecure. I haven’t talked to Clay since our crazy fight over a month ago. I guess that’s not surprising. I still have no idea why I went there—what I was hoping he would say or do. Sometimes I feel like a wisp of lint being tossed this way and that by the random force of my own manic impulses. One second I’m bursting with love and compassion for the hu
man race, the next I’m homicidal. No wonder Clay hasn’t called; I’m the psycho his mother warned him about.

  On the last day of finals, I turn in my grades and try to feel celebratory, but I can’t seem to shake the heavy layer of doldrums weighing me down. It’s a stunning day. The June sky is a vibrant blue and the sun’s pouring gold on everything. Thin tufts of fog clinging to the Pacific have kept the air cool, even up here on the hill. I decide to walk around campus and see if I can absorb the twentysomething party-animal vibe—ecstasy by osmosis. Tomorrow’s graduation, and fresh-faced students are rushing around on bicycles, pulling each other into “will I ever see you again?” embraces, lighting reckless joints in the woods, screaming post-finals screams. There’s a reggae band singing the praises of Jah near the student union, and someone in a red Miata parked in front of the bookstore is playing “Californication” at maximum volume. As I walk, I soak in the familiar landmarks: the sunshine burning gold into the glass facade of the library, the spray-painted wisdom on a concrete slab: This is where natives pissed, where angels spit.

  I walk and walk. The campus, as usual, is so stunning, so pristine and idyllic. Usually, walking around here makes me feel pleasantly light-headed. Today, every postcard-worthy vista makes the dull pain in my head a little sharper. It’s a fragrant, shimmering utopia, and all I can do is feel sorry for myself.

  Maybe it’s better my last days here are melancholy; it’s unlikely I’ll be asked to stay, even as a part-time lecturer, so I might as well start packing up mentally now. Organically Grown won me points with Westby, and my student evals were all pretty good (Ralene Tippets aside), but I doubt these little victories can overcome the shadow of scandal that’s clung to me since day one. I showed up determined to reinvent myself as a sophisticated, scarf-wearing professional. The year is over, and I’m exactly what I was: a scattered, wannabe twenty-two-year-old tart saddled with thirty-year-old crow’s feet, half-finished manifestos and a stunning knack for fucking everything up.

  By the time I get in my car and cruise down the hill to the post office, even the great sweep of ocean laid out before me can’t make me smile. When I unlock our PO box and discover a thick envelope with Aunt Jessie’s return address on it, I cringe with guilt. I had meant to write her ages ago. When did I get her last letter? It was on my birthday—almost six months ago. I’m a self-absorbed beast.

  At home, I use a butcher knife to cut the letter open and accidentally slice my finger in the process. At first it looks harmless as a paper cut, but then blood rushes in, fills the groove and drops in a bright red flower splotch onto the envelope. I curse, wrap my finger in a dish towel, then sink into the pile of cat fur on the couch. Reluctantly, I unfold a daunting thirteen pages of cramped, crazy-looking writing with weird little sketches of toads, lilies and dragonflies in the margins. I’d forgotten about Jessie’s artistic aspirations; once she painted a mural on an old bus someone gave them. It featured dolphins, mermaids and—seeing her doodles reminds me—a family of toads. It was a bit hideous and Day-Glo, but Jessie was bursting with pride over it. Rose was thirteen; I thought she was a saint when she just smiled at her mother indulgently rather than covering her head with a paper bag.

  I was fifteen at the time. They stayed for most of June and July that summer. It was their longest visit. Rose and I went to the city pool almost every day. We lived on Eskimo Pies and greasy buckets of popcorn at the double-feature matinees. I remember it vividly, not just because it was my only summer with Rose, but because it was the longest period of living with my mother since she’d left me two years before.

  It’s also etched in my mind because she and Jessie sometimes fought, and I don’t think this happened during the other visits. They’d start at five o’clock with martinis and end up with cheap red wine at midnight, slurring their words. Rose and I huddled together in the guest room waterbed, listening to their confusing tangle of accusations as the bed sloshed gently beneath us. It was usually something about my grandmother—Claudia Lavelle, the one I’m named after. She died weeks before I was born, so I never met her. I gather she was depressed and not very warm but capable of occasional bursts of creativity. One year, when Mira and Jessie were in their teens, she made an enormous tile mosaic in their garden—a huge sprawling depiction of the zodiac. It sounded amazing.

  Sometimes, when I’m trying to sleep but my mind keeps springing from one fretful, morbid subject to the next, I try to imagine that mosaic and it calms me. I see it sparkling in morning sunlight, surrounded by irises and bluebells, a circle of creatures, some mythical, some real: the golden lion, the ram with curly horns, the scorpion with its twisted tail and the centaur yanking back his bow. I wish I could have seen it, but maybe it’s better this way; the real thing could never be as magical as the one I’ve put myself to sleep with for years.

  I flip through Jessie’s letter, reading snippets here and there: …can’t even eat the food…your grandfather was a stingy bastard…I wanted to shoot myself many times.

  “I just can’t right now,” I tell Medea, who is licking her paw meticulously on the windowsill. “I’ll read it later, I promise.” And then I stuff it between my dictionary and a dog-eared copy of Franny and Zooey on my makeshift bookshelf.

  “Later,” I repeat, when Medea glares at me accusingly. “I’m just not up for someone else’s pathos today.”

  I decide I can face Jessie’s epic letter if I get my hands on some serious caffeine. I wander into the Java House and order a double espresso. I’m in too bitter a mood for the childish sweetness of a mocha; today I want to taste the bean. The barista with red ringlets and blue nails does not disappoint. When I sit down at a sunlit table in the corner and take my first sip, it’s almost too intense for consumption. It makes my lips pucker against the bitter black, but as soon as I’ve adjusted, I want more.

  Maybe this is what crack’s like, I think. Except with crack I hear the top of your head blows off. This is only my mouth imploding.

  I tell myself to stop delaying—time to read Jessie’s letter. Instead, I sit and watch an old man wearing a khaki beret and baggy purple sweats trying to pick up a girl with a crew cut. She’s got dark, liquid eyes—espresso eyes—and a beauty mark so perfectly positioned I wonder if she painted it on. The Beret Guy isn’t getting very far. She’s trying to turn her eyes back to her book, but he keeps prolonging the conversation, and she’s too polite to ignore him outright. The war of the sexes, I think. Sometimes it’s a gentle little struggle in a café, sometimes it’s tooth and nail.

  As much as I try to resist, my mind drifts stubbornly back to the fight I had with Clay. I remember his eyes went from sea glass to navy just before he kissed me. I try to think about other things: the grain of the wood table under my elbow, the Beret Guy and his valiant, annoying efforts, the taste of my double espresso as it burns a hole in my intestines. Nothing works. I just sit there, getting increasingly agitated as the caffeine works its way into my blood, wanting Clay Parker.

  I tote my letter back home, telling myself I’ll be able to concentrate better there. I hear Rosemarie’s scream before I even get to the stairwell. My pulse races and I feel cold, then hot, then clammy, too scared to move. I know it’s some streety freak she’s dragged home and now he’s raped and murdered her in our apartment; when I get there she’ll be dead and then he’ll have to rape and murder me, too.

  I force my legs to pound up the stairs and my arms to throw open the door. But the room isn’t splashed with Rose’s blood, and there’s no stringy-haired, homicidal stranger crouching in the shadows with a hatchet. In fact, the scene that greets me might almost be sweet if you could mute it. Rose is on her knees, clinging tightly to Rex’s mangy neck, sobbing wordlessly into his fur. Her shoulders are shaking and her hair is hectic with static; several strands are clinging to his disgusting, matted coat.

  “Rose?”

  She looks up at me with bloodshot eyes, then buries her face in his fur again, sobbing with fresh conviction.

&nbs
p; “What is it? What’s happened?”

  She just shakes her head and goes on crying. When she gasps for breath, I worry she’ll suffocate in all that ratty dog.

  “Come on,” I say gently, taking her hand and attempting to tug her toward the couch. “Come sit down and tell your cuz what happened.”

  “He’s dying,” she spits out fiercely, yanking her hand away to clutch again at Rex. “He’s dying, okay? Just like everyone else I ever loved. They all fucking die on me.”

  “Who, Tim?”

  “Rex,” she screams, as if I’ve asked the stupidest, most insensitive question ever. I look at Rex, and he glances at me nervously. He’s clearly not sure what to make of his imminent death or Rose’s response to it.

  “Now, Rose, come on. How do you know he’s dying?”

  She wipes her nose on her sleeve and attempts to catch her breath long enough to explain. “Manny—that guy who reads tarot.”

  “A tarot reader told you Rex is dying?”

  “Yes. And he’s never wrong. He told Ian his girlfriend was going to marry someone else, and he told Sandy about his motorcycle accident two weeks before it happened.”

  “Sweetheart…” I look at her tear-streaked face and sit down beside her on the floor. With one hand, I try to smooth her staticky hair into some semblance of order. “Rose, listen. It sounds like this Manny fucks with people.” I search my brain for any scrap of information I’ve gathered about tarot. I remember something my mom’s astrologist told me. “Aren’t the cards really just symbolic? I mean there’s a death card, right? But it doesn’t necessarily mean death. Maybe Rex’s inner puppy is about to die.”