Falling for Hamlet

by Michelle Ray

  Two actors stepped forward wearing crowns, the “king” seeming to be stuck to the “queen.” To remove the unwanted “king” from her back, the “doctor” suggested poison, at which point al the actors sang a lul aby and the “doctor” pantomimed pouring poison in the ear of the sleeping “king.” Once the poisoned “king” had fal en to the ground, the “doctor” took the crown and put it on his own head. Then he asked the “queen” to marry him, at which she squealed in delight, knocked the “doctor” to the ground, and kissed him passionately.

  “Enough!” roared Claudius, rising.

  The actors froze.

  “Turn on the lights! Let’s go. And take them away!” he bel owed, pointing at the comedians who looked ready to piss themselves.

  “Lights, lights, lights!” shouted my father, and the house lights popped on.

  I slipped out the side door in time to hear Claudius shouting at Gertrude, “I told you Hamlet was trouble. I told you to get him out of here, but you insisted on keeping him close. Enough is enough. He goes to England tomorrow!”

  Gertrude might have argued against it, but I don’t know. The elevator doors opened and they were whisked away.

  I stuck my head back in the side door of the theater to see what was happening. There was an intense commotion as the rest of the audience rushed down the aisles, some chatting excitedly, some nervously, about the bizarre situation they’d witnessed. Tara’s mother had her daughter by the arm despite Tara’s protest that she’d left her pink canvas bag.

  Hamlet leaped onto his velvet seat and cal ed out to Horatio, “Did you see that?” He crossed the theater by walking on the armrests. “Did you see Claudius’s reaction?”

  “I did. He total y freaked out at the poison part,” I heard Horatio say.

  “No doubt about it. He kil ed my father. I knew it!” Hamlet shouted as he leaped onto the stage. He checked his back pocket, and he and Horatio disappeared behind the curtains.

  As I exited, I was nearly knocked over by a crowd of royal guardsmen running in. I ran for the elevators, but al were ful and moving to other floors. I put my fingers in my ears to drown out the sound of the col ege comedians being dragged roughly down the back stairs.

  After al was quiet, I decided to look for Hamlet. I know. I should have just gone home. But I wasn’t making the wisest choices at the time, so this idiot move should come as no surprise. The way I figured it, if Hamlet real y was leaving town, I ought to say good-bye. I didn’t think he wanted to see me, and I wasn’t sure I real y wanted to see him, but it seemed like the right thing to do. I couldn’t leave things the way they were. Maybe I should have, but how could I turn my back on someone with whom I literal y had a lifetime of history? Claudius hadn’t said how long Hamlet would be in England. It might be long enough for us to forgive each other. Maybe not. Either way, I spent the better part of an hour searching.

  I had been looking everywhere I could think of for Hamlet and final y stopped at a conference room door, convinced I heard his voice. He sounded angry, so I was afraid to go in. Then I heard what sounded like a chair being thrown, and I found myself propel ed inside to make sure Hamlet wasn’t in danger. When I entered, I saw he was standing alone by the large window. Rol ing chairs were al over the room, some pushed away from the table, some overturned, like cockroaches stuck on their backs.

  “Hamlet?”

  He spun around to face me. “Get out of here. Haven’t you done enough damage already?” I considered walking out, but my guilt kept me rooted. Checking on him was the least I could do. “Where’s Horatio?” I asked.

  “Why? You gonna screw him, too?”

  I crossed my arms forceful y and gritted my teeth. I had gone in there to check on him to be a good friend, and this was how he repaid me? His words were as powerful as a slap, and I wanted to hurt him back. “What do you care what I do or who I do, Hamlet?” The shock and deepening anger on his face egged me on. “You’ve made it pretty damn clear that you hate me. And apparently, you never loved me. So why would I wait around? I’l screw whoever I want whenever I want. You did.”

  “Liar.” He growled.

  Hamlet climbed onto the conference table and sat down. He stared at me like a vulture, his chin low, glowering from under his brow. But I stood my ground. Then he reached behind his back, lifted his shirt, and pul ed out the gun, the one he’d had in my room weeks before.

  I froze, wondering if I was going to get shot for tel ing the truth. “Jesus, Hamlet,” I managed. “Are you stil carrying that around?” He laid it on the table between his feet and stared at it, then rubbed his face hard and shook out his hair. Tapping at the gun with one finger, he said to himself as much as to me, “I had the perfect chance to use it.”

  I opened my mouth to speak, but a soft gasp was al that came out.

  “But I didn’t,” he said. “I couldn’t. Claudius was right there, right in front of me. After the show, in the chapel. No security. No secretaries. On his kneeeees. And I thought, Well, he’s alone. Just get it done.

  “But then I,” Hamlet continued, tapping the gun harder, “I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t shoot someone who was praying. It was too disturbing. As if shooting someone isn’t disturbing, right? Maybe I just don’t have the bal s to kil someone.” Hamlet picked up the gun and pointed it at his own heart. “And I don’t know if I have the bal s to kil myself. But someone’s gotta go.” My heart pounded, and I wasn’t sure if I should run for help or keep talking to him. I didn’t want to leave him with a gun pointed at his chest. “Hamlet,” I said, forcing my dry mouth to speak, “kil ing Claudius… or yourself…” I couldn’t think. “I don’t want to lose you.”

  “Liar,” he said, but he lowered the gun and rested it on the table. Then he began spinning it. Every time it slowed down, he’d spin it again.

  I couldn’t make my body walk closer to his, not with that gun between us. “Hamlet, don’t.” He slammed his palm onto the gun. “Maybe you should take this,” he said, and slid the gun across the table at me.

  I shook my head, unable to speak.

  He kicked over another chair as he jumped off the table, then rounded the corner and came toward me. Standing so close I could feel his breath on my face, he whispered, “You should’ve taken it while you had the chance.” He reached across me, his arm grazing mine, grabbed the gun, and shoved it under his shirt. Then he walked out without another word.

  He was right. I should have taken it.

  Barnardo: You said Hamlet wouldn’t speak to you, but, in what’s left of the surveillance tape from before the show, he’s seen whispering to you. Part of his plot again?

  Ophelia: He wanted to humiliate me.

  Barnardo: By doing what?

  Ophelia: Suggesting I—do lewd things with him in front of everyone.

  Barnardo: And did you?

  Ophelia: Are you always this rude, or do you just hate women?

  Barnardo: Watch it.

  Francisco: What did you think of the show?

  Ophelia: Funny.

  Francisco: It’s pretty insulting to the queen and the king.

  Ophelia: Yeah.

  Barnardo: You don’t seem too upset.

  Ophelia: They deserved it after what they did, don’t you think?

  Barnardo: What else did they deserve?

  Francisco: (pause) Again with the silence. (pause) Take her back to her cell.

  18

  “What happened after the improv show?”

  Ophelia looks down. “I’d rather not talk about this.”

  Zara tilts her head and croons to the camera, “We’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors.” Later that evening, I was making dinner when the elevator doors opened. Marcel us and a guard I didn’t recognize were standing inside. Marcel us stepped forward while the other man remained. “Ophelia, you need to come with us.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say. Please come now.”

  I put down the knife I was using to cut tomat
oes and turned off the burner for the pasta. My heart quickened, but I tried to tel myself that it was nothing.

  Since the king’s death, however, nothing seemed like nothing anymore. I fol owed Marcel us into the elevator, and he pushed the PH button. So we were going to Gertrude. Ugh, I thought. What now? I looked up and saw my pinched face in the mirrored ceiling. The guards looked straight ahead. I wished they would say something.

  When we emerged, the entry was quiet, which I took as a good sign. Marcel us al owed the other guard to open the door to Gertrude’s chambers, and he took me by the elbow. He leaned in and whispered, “Signal if you need me,” before he pushed me ahead of him.

  My eyes were instantly drawn to a smal cohort by the window, which had been shattered. One of the curtains had been pul ed down and left crumpled in the corner. Gertrude and Claudius were together across the room. He looked pale and sick, and she had mascara tracks down her face like on the day her husband, her first husband, had been buried. Lastly, I saw Hamlet, flanked by two guards. When he saw me, he tried to stand up from the overstuffed burgundy chair, but they forced him back down and he hit his elbows on the carved wooden armrests.

  Everyone turned to face me, and the group in the corner whispered furiously. I shoved my hands into my pockets, my muscles tense. VanDerwater, head of security, came forward and said, “There has been an incident.”

  Hamlet was there, Claudius, Gertrude. What could have happened? I looked at the fal en curtain and noticed shining black shoes sticking out from underneath. Unable to imagine whose they might be, I looked back at VanDerwater for more of an explanation.

  He removed his hat slowly, letting it rest across his heart. He cleared his throat and began, “Your father—” I gasped and clapped one hand over my brow. “No, no, no.” My brain hummed with this solitary word. No, no, no, I thought. No, no, no. Choking on my own breath, my chest heaved. My other hand flew atop the hand covering my eyes. Together, the palms pressed hard, and red and blue lights danced in the darkness. The pain forced thought away and was welcome relief, brief as it was.

  “I’m sorry,” I heard Hamlet cal out. “It was an accident.”

  My legs began to buckle, and my stomach dropped. Stil shielding my eyes from the sight too horrible to comprehend, I turned away from Hamlet’s voice and cal ed for Marcel us. “I need—” I pul ed in more breath, but it stopped at the top of my throat. I heard his handcuffs and flashlight jangling together as he stepped forward to touch my back. My jaw was chattering, so I could barely whisper, “I’m gonna be sick.” He guided me swiftly across the room and opened the door of Gertrude’s bathroom. He flicked on the light and closed me in the room. The confined space was soothing, though I had to keep my eyes closed to shut out the golden poodles she inexplicably had painted everywhere. I leaned over the toilet and waited, but did not vomit, so I lay down on the cool marble floor. Outside I could hear chatter and the clacking and thudding of feet hurrying around, but no single sound, voice, or word came through.

  My nausea subsided, but my head continued to throb. Thoughts swirled so fast, they ceased to make sense. What kind of accident had there been?

  Was it possible that my father was dead? Would he be buried with my mother? Was my mother in heaven? Who would take care of me now? Would I be able to stay in the castle? Did I want to? What had happened? What was Hamlet sorry for?

  I focused on the chil of the marble seeping into my skin. I could think of no reason to ever open the door again, and even if I did think of one, I did not believe I had the wil to do it.

  Sooner than I would have liked, a gentle tapping came at the door. I didn’t answer.

  “Ophelia?” cal ed Gertrude. “Are you ready to come out yet?”

  I didn’t answer again.

  “Ophelia, they are going to move your father’s body. We have some things to discuss.” At the word body I felt il again. He wasn’t a body. He was my dad. My dad who liked blueberry pancakes but only if the blueberries were cooked inside.

  My dad who knew every employee in the castle by name, even the waiters who worked the occasional banquets. But had he ever been more than just a

  “body” to Gertrude, a person necessary to fil a job? Or was he as disposable to her as a tissue or a paper cup?

  I pushed myself to a sitting position, al owed the dizziness to pass, checked to be sure I was not going to puke, and then stood gradual y. What I knew after al my years living in the castle was that, no matter how nicely she asked, Gertrude was, in reality, giving an order. I had to hold on to the cream-colored vanity with one hand while I reached for the poodle-shaped doorknob with the other.

  Everything got very, very silent in my head. It was the absence of thought and sound that al owed me to step out of the bathroom. Arms rigid at my sides, I did not feel my own steps as I walked into the middle of Gertrude’s bedroom. Marcel us drifted next to me, but I did not acknowledge him. I vaguely noted the overturned ful -length mirror and stopped next to the burgundy comforter, which lay strewn at the foot of Gertrude’s four-poster bed. There had been a struggle and my father had died. Again I wondered how.

  No one spoke, so I had time to take in more of the room. The window was not exactly shattered, as I had original y thought. There was a single hole in it from which cracks spiderwebbed outward. Blood had sprayed on the window, on the ceiling, on the stil -hanging curtains, and more blood had seeped and pooled around where my father lay. The most distant part of my brain realized that the blood belonged to my father, but it was too awful to register, too awful to feel. On the floor next to the disheveled comforter, I spotted a gun, a handgun that looked just like the one Hamlet had been spinning on the conference table not two hours before.

  My eyes flicked to Hamlet, who was stil flanked by guards. He was watching me with dread. “You?” I asked in a strangled whisper, hoping I was wrong.

  “I didn’t mean to,” he wailed, trying to rush past the guards, who caught him instantly and held him in place.

  I stood with my mouth agape. I blinked several times as everyone watched me. The silence gripped me again. Without my even realizing it, my legs gave out and, if not for Marcel us, I would have fal en.

  I wriggled out of his hold and stumbled toward my dad. The sheet covered only his torso and head. His hands rested stil and soft, and just next to his violet-shaped cuff link, a single drop of blood stained the pure white shirt. My eyes could not leave that spot of red. That spot, which he would have insisted on treating right away, pushed the truth into my silence. My face crumpled and I fel to my knees.

  A gurney rol ed up beside me, and the side rails clanged into place. Workers in blue booties surrounded my father and hoisted his body onto the sheeted stretcher. I looked up as they rol ed him away but said nothing, as nothing was said to me. The pool of blood left behind was dark and thick, and I would have been unable to look away if someone had not thrown a new blue sheet over it. I turned my head as the stretcher was wheeled out of the room.

  Part of me knew I should be fol owing the stretcher, but I couldn’t force my legs to cooperate.

  My head snapped toward a new sound, and my breath grew more irregular. Officers were bagging the gun, and the plastic crinkled noisily. They whispered to one another, then hurried out of the room. I watched Hamlet watch them leave. He yanked at his hair, his face turning red.

  He looked at the ceiling and then shut his eyes tightly as he muttered, “Oh God. Oh God.” Standing suddenly, he begged, “Please let me talk to her.” The stil -alert part of me thought he would be denied. Claudius nodded, and the guards let Hamlet go. I froze as Hamlet knelt beside me.

  “It was an accident. Someone was eavesdropping on my mother and me. I didn’t know who was hiding behind the curtain. I thought”—he looked over his shoulder and, putting his hand on mine, whispered even more quietly—“I thought it was Claudius.” Fury swept over me, and my mind snapped into clarity. I jerked my hand out from under his. “And that makes it better?”

  “No
t exactly,” he replied. “But it does change things, right?” He put his hand on my knee, and I leaped up.

  “You must be joking.” My pulse was so fast, I could feel the veins in my neck throbbing. I was light-headed but determined to stay on my feet, and damned if he was going to soothe me into forgiveness.

  He stood, too, and his eyes bounced between me and the group huddled across the room watching us. He leaned in to whisper, “I confronted my mother about Claudius, told her I knew about the poisoning. I begged her to see Claudius for what he is and to admit her part in bringing down my father.

  She cried, Ophelia. She actual y cried. And I think she—”

  “Hamlet, I don’t care.”

  He stopped. Blood drained from his face, and he wrung his hands. He looked over at the group again, then met my eyes. My body tingled with hate, and my lips curled into a snarl.

  He winced and added, “And I saw my father.”

  It was like having cool water poured over my head. How many times in the past months had we talked of suicide, revenge, fear, and hate? My efforts to stop his plans were halfhearted at best and cowardice-driven denials at worst. I knew I had al owed this catastrophe to happen by not insisting he stop the pursuit of his father’s kil er… if there even was one. But I never thought it would come to this. Or maybe I did. Maybe I’d just hoped the body being wheeled out would belong to Claudius.

  I breathed deeply and paused. With al the calm I could muster, I explained quietly, “Hamlet, I have been trying to understand what has been happening with you lately. I know this has al been a shock, but at what point wil it end? Your father is dead. Now my father is, too.” I swal owed hard and rubbed my forehead. “Your mother wil continue to be married to your uncle no matter how many times you claim to see ghosts, or do skits, or kil . You can’t change what’s done. Now please, please leave me alone.”

  I turned and planned to walk away, but he caught me forceful y. Gertrude gasped. Everyone present turned to look at us, and Marcel us stepped forward.

  Hamlet let go and put his hands up. I stopped Marcel us from continuing toward me, torn between sympathy and hatred.