Shenandoah Summer

by John Muncie

  And after the accident, he was even grateful to the place. Alyssa had become so withdrawn that he thought she might disappear into herself. He couldn’t reach her—not that he’d tried so hard. In his most painful moments of reflection he might admit he was glad she’d closed herself off from him. The magnitude of her grief scared him; he felt like he’d be swallowed up by it if he got close. So he stayed away.

  When, little by little, Alyssa began to open up, it wasn’t to Darryl. She turned more and more to Limespring and the farm. At first, he was relieved she had something that gave him the space to heal. But over the years, he had felt more and more the outsider. Limespring and the farm became like pieces of grit in his eye that he couldn’t wash out.

  Last summer, he’d had it. Packing up on Fridays and fighting the I-66 traffic to Markham was bad enough. Some nights it took him two hours to make the fifty-five miles. But when he got to the farm, either Lissy would be at Limespring, or, worse, Limespring would be there. The farm would be overrun with artistes, eating dinner or drinking coffee on his porch. They were loud and disruptive, particularly Nattie, the small redhead, and her fat, obnoxious boyfriend who created “installations.” By mid-August, Darryl had stopped coming.

  He had come to the Follies this year only because he’d promised Roz. “You have to take pictures for me since I won’t be there,” she’d said. “Promise you’ll go?” He knew the pictures were a ruse. She really wanted him to go because she was trying to keep her mother and father together.

  The candle-lined path took Darryl under the stone arch. As he pushed aside the ribbons dangling from the imperious granite, he wanted to tell the whole effete Limespring crowd what he really thought of their solstice party. But that would have given them something else to be ironic about. Besides, he didn’t want to have it out again with Lissy about the farm.

  He followed the path into the woods, ending at the top of the amphitheater. In another lifetime, he’d helped repair those benches. Down below on the stage he saw a backdrop of Baghdad storefronts, a four-foot-tall papier-mâché genie bottle that he knew would wind up in the farm’s living room, a bed, and a piece of plywood painted to look like an oriental carpet. On the left side of the stage stood an oversized hat rack, its arms covered with outlandish headgear: four turbans, a fez, a fedora with peacock feathers, a sailor’s cap, a bonnet with plastic fruit, and several wigs. Stage lights hung from two portable scaffolds and were powered by a portable generator, which hummed like an irritating insect just out of view.

  Darryl sat down at the end of a row and was immediately joined by three Limeys, all women and all writers, judging by their conversation. “Yeah, but she got a $150,000 advance for it from Random House,” one of them was saying as she squeezed in next to him. “God, I’ll be glad when this whole memoir thing goes out of fashion,” said another. “I don’t believe them, anyway. Why don’t they just write novels?”

  He noticed that the one next to him was wearing miniature typewriter earrings. Why didn’t she just wear a sign saying “I’m a writer”? He looked away.

  Soon Alyssa appeared on stage to the chants of the crowd, “Al-lis-sa, Al-lis-sa . . .” She was wearing diaphanous purple harem pants, a pink midriff top crisscrossed with chains of glass baubles and yellow pop-beads, jingle bells around her ankles, and a cone of turquoise posterboard on her head, its tip erupting in a long stream of polka-dot silk that fell halfway down her back.

  She held her hands up in front of her as Darryl had seen her do at the start of every production; smiling, nodding, waiting for the noise to stop. When it did, she thanked the crowd, the Limeys, the farmers, everyone for making this night possible. Darryl had heard it all before.

  He noticed that his wife had grown even prettier over the years as her face hollowed out, accentuating her bones. She was poised and gracious on the stage, as if she were standing in her living room, greeting friends for dinner. Her talent was undeniable. Even after watching so many of her productions, it still surprised him to see her transform bits and pieces of junk into exotic stage sets.

  He felt a small swell of pride as he looked at the stage. But the very things Darryl had found so alluring in Alyssa twenty years ago now rubbed against him like an itchy wool sweater. She was all flourish and curlicues. Why couldn’t she have some straight lines?

  The lights went out and when they came back on Alyssa was kneeling by the side of the bed, looking up beseechingly at a man in a sultan’s outfit and a ridiculously large orange turban. “Please sire, no more,” she said. “I am so very tired. Can I not satisfy your desires with a back rub this time? I’m well versed in the arts of shiatsu, Swedish, Reiki, reflexology, and the Barbara Brennan Hands of Light school of massage.”

  The Sultan crossed his arms imperiously and an exaggerated frown spread across his face. Darryl recognized him as the artist Alyssa had accompanied earlier in the evening. He boomed out, in the worst fake accent Darryl had ever heard, “No, I want to know what happened to Ali Baba. Finish his story or off with your head.”

  “Okay, okay, keep your pantaloons on,” said Alyssa. “Get comfy, O great and munificent Sultan. Ready? The story begins like this: Once upon a time, in a town in Persia, there lived a poor woodcutter named Ali Baba . . .”

  With that, Alyssa and the man—Doug? Tug?—jumped off the bed and bounded to the hat rack, where they joined four other actors wrapping their heads in turbans.

  For the next forty minutes, the Follies troupe zoomed through The Thousand and One Nights, telling stories at breakneck speed, flinging costumes to the audience as they changed from character to character. In the Aladdin segment, a bare-chested Marius sprang up from the big bottle to the gasps of the crowd and nearly stole the show with a Jewish genie routine. The actors read their lines from large posterboard cue cards set on two artist’s easels, one facing the stage, the other facing the audience. Jackie turned the cards for the actors, and Abbi, wearing her usual gypsy clothes, which for once looked in place, turned the cards for the audience. When someone forgot or flubbed a line, Abbi rapped a pointer against the cue card and the audience—Darryl excluded—shouted out the correct line. For the finale, four Limeys in sheets tied up as harem pants ran across the stage with the plywood magic carpet and dumped Alyssa, who was riding on top of it like a surfer, back onto the bed and into the waiting arms of the now softhearted Sultan.

  There was a boisterous standing ovation. Even Darryl applauded for a while. The cast and crew, hands linked, took some collective bows. After calls of “author, author,” Abbi joined the line and more bows were made. And still the crowd wouldn’t quit. As the applause continued, the curtain call choreography began to break down. Company members stood around, unsure of what to do. Finally, at Alyssa’s urging, they lined up again for one final collective bow. But not before Darryl realized that the only two who hadn’t let go of each other’s hands were Alyssa and Tug.

  CHAPTER 21

  It was 2 A.M.; the solstice day was done. When the sun returned in four hours, it would make a different arc over the Limespring silos, it would miss the center of Beodog’s arch.

  The revelry and rococo was over, too. The Follies stage, stripped of its Arabian clothes, had become just a bare circle of concrete again. The storefronts of Baghdad, the giant genie bottle, the magic carpet—all were gone, turned back into wood, wire, and cloth and stored away until next year, when Alyssa’s incantations would rematerialize them into something new.

  As usual, the crew, the cast, and half the audience had stayed long past the standing ovation to strike the set and keep the midsummer spell from breaking. Guided by votive candles and lights from Limespring buildings, helpers walked back and forth between amphitheater and barn, pieces of disassembled sets and scaffolding balanced on their heads or tucked under their arms.

  Outside the storeroom, a table was laid with reception food. Someone had brought a boom box and CDs of Beethoven, Björk, R&B, and the Dixie Chicks. Trips to the amphitheater were interrupted by glass
es of wine and Texas two-steps. Somebody put on the peacock-feather fedora and soon costume hats were everywhere. Around midnight Don, the expat Greek poet, a shot glass of tequila balanced on his head, his arms outstretched, stepped off a slow zembekiko to the rhythmic clapping of the crowd. The June air, night-sweet and mild, danced a little, too, energized by the charge of performance electricity and James Brown wailing, “Please, please, please.”

  At one o’clock, Jackie Burke walked up from the amphitheater, blowing out the candles and putting the glass holders in a bag. At two o’clock, the only flame left was on a tiki torch burning by the barn entrance, a primeval memory of midsummer bonfires and Celtic fire festivals. The torchlight revealed only five people—Alyssa, Tug, Marius, Abbi, and Nattie—and one of them was about to break the spell.

  “It’s late, guys,” said Alyssa, who was still wearing her Scheherazade hat. “I really have to go home.”

  “What happened to Darryl?” Abbi asked.

  “He left hours ago,” Alyssa said. “Now it’s my turn.”

  “Not without us,” said Tug, who was still wearing the orange turban with the glass ruby dangling to his forehead. He grabbed Alyssa’s hand and, holding on to her, made a low bow to the others. “Citizens of Baghdad,” he announced in his Mexican-Arab accent, “thee night eeess foooll of theeeves. We must eeesscort Scheherazade back to her palace.”

  Alyssa shook her hands free and pressed her palms together before her face. She turned to Marius and knelt on one knee. “O great and benevolent Genie,” she said, “you must grant me one last wish, please.”

  Marius crossed his arms in front of him, each hand locked on the other elbow. He swelled his chest and lowered his voice. “Your wish is my command,” he said, accenting the “command” this time. “What is it, Princess?”

  “Restore Tug’s New York accent,” she said.

  “With my deepest pleasure,” Marius said and thumped Tug on the head.

  Soon after, the little band of Baghdaders headed off to Finally Farm with Tug sounding like Tug again. Still, there must have been some lingering midsummer magic in the air or midsummer liquor in their heads. What else could explain why Nattie spun around like a dervish every so often, or why Alyssa and Tug spontaneously broke into a James Brown-inspired duet of, “Huh! I feel good! I knew that I would, now!”

  The moon was low in the sky, and when they turned off the pavement, Alyssa’s dirt road wound ahead of them, a gray stripe in a charcoal landscape. The little band fell silent for a moment.

  “Where the hell are the starbugs when you need them?” said Nattie. “I can’t see a damn thing.”

  “What’d you do, Lissy,” said Abbi, “run them over with your tractor?”

  Alyssa rubbed her foot against the gravel, searching for the familiar green glow. “Not a one of them,” she said. “Well, don’t blame me. I happen to be very careful with my tractor. I’m practically a Jain.”

  She went a few paces ahead, and in the gloom the group could just make out that she was facing them, walking backwards, the top of her pointed hat nodding back and forth like a conductor’s baton. “Blame it on Tug. They all fled to Loudoun County because they thought he made them look fat in his drawings.”

  “Ah-ah, girl starbugs, vanity is thy name,” Marius said. He paused, then singsonged, “Starbug, so bright. First bug I see tonight. Wish I may, wish I might, tell the starbug she looks skinny tonight.”

  This bit of doggerel brought a round of applause and cries of “Brilliant!” and “Bravo!”

  “Next time you apply for a Limespring fellowship, I think it should be as a poet,” said Nattie. “Give us another.”

  Marius made some humming noises for nearly a minute and then said:

  There once was an artist named Tuggy,

  Whose art was driving him buggy,

  He said, “Dear Miss Brown,

  Can I hang around,

  And draw while the weather stays muggy?”

  If the group had been sitting down they’d have risen for a standing ovation. As it was, they whooped and cheered. “Marius, you’re a genius!” exclaimed Abbi. “While the weather is muggy?” laughed Tug, who tried, futilely in the darkness, to high-five their newfound laureate.

  Marius declared that the limerick was even funnier in his native language, and on the spot he translated it, though the words “Tuggy,” “buggy,” and “muggy” could still be heard among the formidable Slavic consonants.

  But the ensuing hilarity was cut short when Alyssa gave the group a loud and dramatic “Shhhh!”

  She gestured toward the house. “Uh-oh,” she said. “We’re almost there and I don’t see any lights. Darryl must be asleep. Let’s try to be quiet, okay?”

  “Yeah, you guys,” said Marius, “try to be quiet. Shhhhhhh.” He said this at the decibel level of a chainsaw, prompting the rest of them to say “Shh!” as loud as they could.

  “Okay, knock it off you guys,” said Alyssa, trying to sound severe and failing completely. “You got me home safe, now off you go, shoo.”

  There were hugs and good-nights, and Tug, slipping back into character—and bad accent—said, “I have geeeven you back your life, Scheherazade, now use it well.” Then the four revelers turned back toward Limespring Hollow Road and disappeared into the remains of the midsummer night.

  CHAPTER 22

  Alyssa leaned against the wall and tried to take off her tap shoes—there’d been a tap number in the Follies, “Oh Abdullah,” to the tune of “Oh Susannah.” But she’d had too much wine to balance with one hand and undo the straps with the other. So she sat down on the front steps, clicking her soles against the planks.

  She hadn’t wanted the evening to end. She’d almost suggested they make a campfire by the stage and tell ghost stories or roast marshmallows or sing “Kumbaya,” anything to keep the night alive. But Darryl had come for the show and she couldn’t leave him at the farm alone too long.

  She knew she should go inside. Instead she sat on the steps, her feet softly tapping the wood, and replayed the night, humming the songs and remembering the moment of exhilaration as she slid off the plywood magic carpet onto the old bed. She’d missed her mark and fallen on top of Tug instead of next to him. The crowd loved it, erupting in applause. The cast loved it, too, especially Tug. Thinking about it now, she could almost feel his chest heaving up and down as he laughed.

  Finally, she stood up, shoes in hand. Slowly she eased the screen door open, trying to keep the hinges from squeaking. As quiet as a tipsy woman wearing baubles and carrying tap shoes could, she made her way through the dark house and upstairs to the bedroom.

  The French doors to the balcony were open, letting in a small breeze but little light. By then the moon was down. Alyssa could barely make out Darryl’s shape on the bed. She took a step closer to see that he was on his side, his back to her. She watched the ghostly outline of the sheet rise and fall with his breathing as she slipped off her costume and put on a T-shirt. Then she lifted the sheet and, with exaggerated care, slid her legs down the cotton, trying to make as few ripples as possible in the still waters of their bed. She laid her head on the pillow.

  “Nice of you to come home.” Darryl’s voice stabbed the darkness.

  “Oh,” she said. “You’re awake. I thought you were asleep.”

  “Little chance of that with you and your friends outside shouting like a bunch of four-year-olds.”

  Alyssa didn’t respond for a moment. She was caught between guilt and anger. Anger because she knew Darryl was about to launch into a Limespring rant, and guilt for waking him up, for wishing the Follies hadn’t ended, for not wanting to come inside, for not wanting to join him in their bed.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice as neutral as she could make it. “You’re right, we were idiots. It’s just that, well, you know how it is after we close a show. It’s hard to stop the energy. Once it takes over it—”

  Darryl cut her off. “Spare me the theatrical energy speech,” he s
aid, his back still to her. “I’ve heard it before. I’m sick of it. Sick of Limespring. Sick of the Follies and all those pretentious assholes. Tell me, Liss, does ‘theatrical energy’ explain why you and your co-star were so goddamned chummy on stage? Just how much ‘theatrical energy’ is there between you two? Are you sleeping with him?”

  Alyssa felt like a cartoon character, her heart pounding right out through her chest. All she could hear was the blood rushing in her ears; her face felt like it was on fire. She was grateful for the darkness, so Darryl couldn’t see her flush.

  She sat up, hugging her knees to steady herself. “Sleeping with him? Sleeping with who? Marius? What are you talking about, Darryl? This goes way beyond your normal Limespring bullshit.”

  “You know exactly who I’m talking about. Tug or Bug or whatever phony name he goes by. The one you were holding hands with through the whole fucking curtain call. Everyone else dropped their hands, but no, not you. Not my wife. You were up there smiling and holding hands with that guy like you’ve been fucking him for months.”

  Alyssa tore the sheet back and jumped out of bed. “Jesus Christ, Darryl, this is crazy.” She walked to the open balcony, searching for oxygen. “Just more of your crazy Limespring talk. I’m not fucking anyone. Not Tug and certainly not you. You made that pretty damn clear when you said you were staying in D.C. all summer.”

  “I have work there, and a life,” Darryl said.

  “Yeah, well I have work here, and a life,” Alyssa said.

  “So I see,” Darryl said. He got out of bed and stepped to the wall where Tug’s farm drawings were tacked up. “These his?” he asked.

  Alyssa faced him, but in the darkness it was like trying to look up from the bottom of a murky pond. She could only make out the pale shapes of Darryl’s T-shirt and jockey shorts against the dark wall.