When Good Wishes Go Bad

by Mindy Klasky

  Hal nodded. As Kira started to distribute her ill-gotten goods, my boss turned to Ryan. “Are you okay with this?”

  Ryan sighed. “Am I happy that the Popcorn King is shaping the appearance of the play? Absolutely not.” He raised his chin. “I understand, though. I know that theater is a cooperative art. I have to compromise. You don’t have to worry about me.”

  Hal took him at his word, jumping back onstage and continuing with the scene that had been interrupted. But I’d heard the underlying uncertainty in Ryan’s tone. I knew that he wasn’t happy. I knew that he resented Ronald J. Barton, the Popcorn King. And I worried about Ryan for the rest of the day.

  A week later, Teel was tugging at her tangerine and gold T-shirt, stretching the hem around her dark, wiry fingers. “Hal, I don’t understand my motivation,” she said. “I just don’t think Anana would walk upstage there. There isn’t justification in the lines.”

  This was our seventh try blocking this particular scene. The action occurred at the end of the first act; it was the emotional high point of the play’s first hour. The audience had watched Fanta go to the market, had ached with her as she bargained for a scant bag of cornmeal. The show had demonstrated the strict family hierarchy at home, the way that Fanta’s husband ate the lion’s share of the meal, the way she fed her children next. There’d been the possibility that Fanta would enjoy the luxury of a full portion, enough food to silence her aching stomach, but then Auntie Lehana had arrived.

  Fanta was left with a single palm-full of mush. Three bites, and the need to say that she was happy. That she was content. That she was loved and honored and respected.

  Starving, exhausted, Fanta went to her mother, seeking counsel. Fanta had decided to run away, to make her way to Ouagadougou, the distant, mystical capital city of Burkina Faso, where she hoped to find a job, any job, even one that would shame her before her family, just so that she could earn enough money to eat.

  Anana was supposed to protest. She was supposed to deny her daughter’s dream. She was supposed to declare Fanta dead to her, if Fanta dared to leave the village.

  But Teel had other goals in mind.

  “In fact,” she said, “this speech doesn’t really make sense at all.” Her dark eyes were serious beneath her crinkled cap of gray hair. The lines between her nose and mouth deepened as she shook her head. “Anana has never seen Ouagadougou. She could never talk about the streetcars. She’d never mention the Grand Mosque. She may be old and experienced and the voice of reason, but she’s still a villager. She’s still an innocent.”

  I glanced at Teel’s wrist as she spoke. At my direct command, she was keeping her tattoo covered in rehearsal. I could sense, though, that she was still using its power. A minor hypnotic spell drifted over the room whenever she spoke aloud. That magic was part of what gave her performance so much power, but it also gave her an unfair advantage when she argued for more time onstage, or for different blocking, or for a change in the reading of her lines.

  I sighed. At least the flames weren’t glinting in the theater work lights. I didn’t have to worry about some newcomer walking in, questioning what was going on, asking why an elderly African American woman had a wreath of fire tattooed around her wrist.

  Hal pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. The speech that Teel was questioning was the emotional linchpin for the entire first act. If audiences didn’t buy her words, they’d never accept Fanta’s ultimate choice, they’d never be drawn into the horrors of the second act, to the play’s devastating catharsis and emotional finale.

  “Becca?” Hal asked. “What do you think?”

  The thing was, Teel had a point. Ryan had, by necessity, written his play from an outsider’s perspective. As a white man, he had walked the broad streets of Ouagadougou. He had ridden in the city’s green cabs. He had visited its museums, strolled through its university campuses.

  The city was part of the magic he wove through his script. It held the shimmering seduction of the unknown, the unknowable. It symbolized change and advancement, even as it stood for loss and alienation.

  But Anana would not know those things. Anana’s strength came from her life in the village, from the decades that she had spent surrounded by tradition, by family, by the known and familiar.

  I looked at Ryan as I answered, drawing out my reply by testing each word in my mind before I said it aloud. “I’m not certain that there is a textual basis for what Anana says. Nothing in the script tells us how she knows about the city.”

  Ryan protested, “She’s heard about it since she was a little girl! Travelers come to the village all the time! They share stories!”

  Teel replied before anyone else could. “But that’s not what the words say. The words make Anana’s experience much more immediate. Too real. Too personal.”

  Before Ryan could spit out a reply, Kira interrupted. “Sorry, folks. We’re going to have to take a quick break here. The set designer has the theater reserved for an hour, to take some final measurements.”

  I flashed the stage manager a relieved smile. She met my gaze, barely shaking her head in a secret message. Teel’s behavior was exactly what she’d warned me about, the precise type of interference that had nearly destroyed Kira’s previous production. I needed to act quickly, to keep things from getting out of hand.

  As Teel shuffled offstage, I hurried to her side, determined to buttonhole her before she could structure yet another round of argument. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ryan make a similar beeline to Hal, obviously starting to plead his own case.

  Even as I reached out to tug at Teel’s tangerine-colored sleeve, I couldn’t help but watch Ryan. He was speaking too quietly for me to hear his precise words, but I recognized the tension that set his shoulders. I’d massaged those same shoulders the night before, doing my best to rub away a day’s accumulated stress. My fingers had kneaded, probed, pushed deep into muscles set as firm as cement.

  When a concerted half hour of uninterrupted attention had done nothing to ease Ryan’s body, we’d retreated to the couch in the living room. I’d collected a bottle of wine from the kitchen and poured two generous glasses. We’d sat at opposite ends of the sofa, our legs covered by a cashmere-soft blanket, and we’d talked. And talked and talked and talked.

  I’d learned more about Ryan’s life in one night than I had in all the previous time we’d spent together. I’d heard about how his father had died when he was eighteen. How he’d settled into being Dani’s friend more than being her son. How he’d worked as a consultant to the finance industry, making plenty of money but never finding a second’s fulfillment. How he’d spent his free time tinkering with computers, creating software that made his day job easier. How he’d realized he had to leave town, leave the country, join the Peace Corps and try to make the world a better place.

  The night had felt more like a popcorn-and-pajamas overnight with a girlfriend than a soul-baring revelation from the man I was becoming (had become?) firmly, completely infatuated with. Well, it had felt like a girlfriend gossip night until Ryan had started to tickle the soles of my feet. Until I’d warned him to stop. Until he’d refused, letting his hands cascade over my calves, finding the sensitive hollows behind my knees. Until I’d had no option but to capture those hands, to put them to good use exploring other parts of my anatomy, until I’d dragged him back to my bedroom and thoroughly distracted him from his riotous inventory of everything that could make me squirm.

  His shoulders had been a lot more relaxed after that. His shoulders, and every other inch of his body.

  But the tension had returned. It radiated from his back, like a giant exclamation mark suspended over his body.

  First things first, though. “Teel,” I whispered harshly. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  The old black woman in front of me blinked slowly, as if she couldn’t believe I was asking my question. “I’m rehearsing the role of Anana.”

  “Why are you sug
gesting changes to the script? What do you care about the play, anyway? You’re going to leave us as soon as I make my last two wishes.”

  My genie looked around, conspicuously making sure that no one could overhear us. “That doesn’t seem likely to happen any time soon, now, does it? You’ve got other things to focus on.”

  “I—I’ve been busy,” I said.

  Teel’s gaze cut across the room, dissecting Ryan as if he were a fetal pig pinned to a wax tray. “So I’ve noticed. Nine out of ten wishers delay wishes when they’re involved in fulfilling physical relationships.”

  “Teel!”

  “Hush!” The old woman pursed her lips in disapproval. “No one here knows me by that name. You’re going to raise a lot of questions that you don’t want to answer.”

  I wasn’t in a mood to be lectured. “Is that your plan? Make my life so uncomfortable that I’ll make my wishes just to get you to go away?”

  Those placid coffee eyes hardened. “If I wanted to make your life uncomfortable, we wouldn’t be chatting about it onstage.” She drew herself to her full height, ignoring the fact that she was still a full head shorter than I was. “You make your decisions, and I make mine. I have decided to enjoy being an actress. I have decided to make Anana the strongest character I can. And making her strong means making her real. She wouldn’t talk about Ouagadougou.”

  I hesitated. As much as I wanted to challenge my genie, as much as I knew part of her protest was a rebellion against my failure to complete my wishes, I also knew that she was right. I knew that an old village woman wouldn’t speak the wistful poetry that Ryan had put into her mouth. She’d find other words, use other images, but the big city wouldn’t be the core of her argument.

  Nevertheless, I set my jaw. “You just watch yourself, Teel. I won’t let you ruin this production.”

  “Have I done anything wrong yet?”

  And she was right. She hadn’t. She’d made the show better. If only I could make Ryan see that.

  I turned away without answering. Dragging my feet, I approached Ryan and Hal, wedging my way between them as they huddled in the aisle. I set my weight carefully, leaning slightly toward Ryan, showing him the merest hint of favoritism. I didn’t touch his side, but I could feel the heat of his body through his clothes. The same heat that had blazed against my Egyptian cotton sheets the night before…

  I shook my head and thrust myself back into the present discussion. Hal helped, pinning me with his blue searchlight eyes. “So? What do you think, Becca? Does the speech make sense?”

  “It’s one of the most beautiful passages I’ve read, ever,” I said. I felt Ryan relax a little, spinning out a tiny fraction of the frustration he’d been banking. “But I don’t think it works for the play.”

  “What?” Ryan looked as if I’d trampled on his favorite guerilla seedlings.

  “I just think that—” In my rush to explain myself, I couldn’t remember Teel’s assumed name, couldn’t remember the lie that my genie had told in auditions. I stumbled over my words, anxious not to lose the thread of my argument. “I think that Anana is right. She wouldn’t know those things. The power in this play comes from the compounding of simple images, the construction of simple thoughts.”

  Ryan answered with heat. “The power in this play comes from the facts! Villagers hear about life in the city!”

  Hal said, “Maybe you can write another scene for us, something to give us that perspective. We can drop it into the first half hour. You can show us how the women talk, how they dream, what they know about Ouagadougou.”

  Ryan sighed in exasperation. “There isn’t anyplace to put a scene like that. The entire first act is set up to separate Fanta, to show that she is alone, that she doesn’t think the way the others do.” I heard the anguish in his voice. The play was his child, his creation, and we were criticizing it, asking him to change it. I felt terrible.

  And yet, I knew what I had to do, as dramaturg. I knew my responsibility to the production. “You’re right,” I said, taking care to keep my voice soft. Agreeable. My psychological training shone through; Ryan relaxed again. “But Hal’s right, too. You can rework Anana’s speech. You’ve built the images around the city. You can shift them a little. Show us the same themes, but use family as the anchor. Use Anana’s character, as we’ve already seen it revealed.”

  His first instinct was to refuse. He shoved his hands deep into his pockets, hunched his shoulders, looking exactly like the nervous, awkward man who had first stood in the Mercer’s offices, begging, hoping, praying that I’d look at his manuscript. I had to give him something more, some additional reassurance.

  “You can do it, Ryan. I know you can. I know you can rework the scene, and it will be stronger than it already is. It will show us even more about the people, about the land.”

  “I—” He was going to refuse. But then he closed his eyes. He took three deep breaths, holding each for a solid count of five before exhaling. He took his hands out of his pockets, unfolded his fingers from his tight fists. He glanced at Hal, but when he spoke, he directed the words to me. “I’ll try,” he said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Wonderful,” Hal said, clapping a hand on his shoulder. “That’s all we’re asking for.”

  Before he could say anything else, Kira called from the stage, asking Hal to check out some detail regarding the set design. Ryan barely watched him go, focusing instead on me.

  “Are we okay?” I asked.

  He managed a shaky grin. “Yeah,” he said. “Of course we’re okay. I’ll figure out a way to rework the scene.”

  The wave of relief that crashed against me was terrifying.

  Somehow, against all odds, Ryan and I managed to stay “okay.”

  The set started to take shape, rustic planks that formed the walls of Fanta’s home, with a corrugated iron roof that slanted toward the audience, drawing onlookers into the dilapidated property. Ryan protested that he’d never seen a metal roof in the village where he’d worked. I pointed out, though, that iron castoffs were common in Burkina Faso, that the designer had used legitimate sources to structure the set, that the audience would be able to see and understand better, when the general design was familiar. Ryan gave in.

  The Popcorn King stopped by again, surprising us all with his explosive ringtone. He fell in love with the stage design, demanded that the roof sport the logo of his shops, etched in orange and lemon yellow. Hal shook his head at the idea, but Ronald reminded us that his second check still hadn’t been delivered. Hal looked pointedly at Kira, ordering her to call an impromptu afternoon break in rehearsal. I took Ryan for a walk around the block, explaining that we could age the logo, make it look ancient, decrepit. The audience would hardly recognize the thing; it would be a subliminal message at most. And we could keep our funding. Ryan gave in.

  The actress playing Fanta struggled with her West African accent, slipping out of the proper dialect into a Jamaican drawl with disconcerting ease. Hal began to tug at his beard, his frustration transparent. He considered performing the show without the verisimilitude of any accents at all. Ryan insisted that the rhythm of the speech was vital to the success of the play. He spent one night tossing restlessly in bed; both of us were yawning the next day. He spent the next night pacing in front of my windows, muttering lines of the play out loud, testing them in a legitimate accent, then repeating them in a nasal New York twang. The third night, he stayed at Dani’s, giving me a chance to get some desperately needed sleep. I figured out a solution as soon as my mind was no longer tethered by exhaustion: I located an expert dialect coach and convinced Hal to free up some of the Popcorn King’s largesse to pay for one-on-one tutoring for the cast. Ryan was relieved.

  Everything should have been fine. Everything should have been easy. But a constant scoreboard flashed in my mind. I was always aware of the concessions that Ryan had made, the arguments that he’d lost.

  I knew how to do my job. I knew how to shape a production. I knew how to
measure a show, to adjust it, to make it appear more true.

  But every tweak I suggested, every change Hal implemented, every modification the cast absorbed, echoed in my personal life. Every couple of days, Ryan left the theater frustrated, and I walked back to the Bentley alone. Every few nights, he helped Dani with guerilla gardening, making more seed bombs, distributing the cabbage and onion seedlings that had finally grown enough to leave the shelter of my sunny window.

  I tried to talk to him. I tried to reassure him. I tried to tell him that every new play was modified, every production was worked and reworked and re-reworked.

  But some things were too difficult to talk about, even with Ryan. Some things were easier left unsaid.

  Unsaid, that was, except in conversations with my mother. Ever since she’d found out that Dean was out of my life, she’d been calling me regularly. Every other day, my cell announced her presence with the piano prelude to Christina Aguilera’s “Oh Mother.” Whenever I answered, I got a full dose of San Diego gossip. I spent the better part of each call, though, engaged in emotional fencing, squirming to avoid giving away too many details about my personal life.

  I obviously mentioned Ryan once too often, though. My mother clicked her tongue in exasperation, and I could picture her rolling her eyes as she took a deep drag on her cigarette. “Becca, Becca, Becca,” she said. “You just showed that Dean character the door, and you’re already involved with someone else. Never could bear to be alone, could you? Never could stand not having a boyfriend.”

  “Mom, this is different.”

  “I’m certain that it is, dear.”

  I manufactured an excuse to get off the phone, and then I refused to answer the next three times that she called.

  As if that weren’t enough, Detective Ambrose continued to call on a regular basis, casting out his gloomy questions. Was I, Miss Morris, aware that Mr. Marcus had maintained a credit union account? Did I, Miss Morris, know about Mr. Marcus’s disability insurance, about apparently fraudulent claims for some spinal injury? Was I, Miss Morris, aware of Mr. Marcus’s failure to pay individual income taxes for the preceding three years?