by Sarah Willis
Will, Ben Walton, Jimmy McGovern, Chip Stark, and Will’s son stand in the front yard watching Nate’s car drive up like it’s some great moment in history. He swears they’ve stopped breathing by the sheer excitement of it all. These people are all nuts, he thinks, but at least none of the actors are prejudiced—they’re all too busy thinking they’re so damn special to worry about someone else’s skin color. Nate’s just another actor to them. Means he’s part of the club—probably just as nuts as the rest of them.
Will’s daughter, Beth, comes dashing out of the house, stumbles on the top step, and almost does a back flip trying to straighten herself out before landing on her knees. By the time he’s out of the car, Beth has gone back into the house. Nate wasn’t who she was hoping to see. He wonders who she is waiting for. Nate hopes Will knows what he’s doing.
There are hellos all around, people asking how the drive was, if he’s eaten, if he wants something to drink. He’s got two bags, and there’s actually some sportive fighting over who’s going to carry them. Then they all head to the house; Nate follows, limping slightly. His knee has locked up on him after driving two and a half hours. He’d blame it on the weather, but it’s a pretty nice day. Seems like his knee thinks it’s gonna rain every day now.
Inside, he’s offered a glass of lemonade, and his bags are placed in the living room. Mac follows Jimmy McGovern around like a baby duck. The kid’s a bit odd, Nate thinks. Always looks at Nate like he’s gonna pull a knife on him. Looks at everybody that way, except here he is, practically holding Jimmy’s hand. God knows what happened here in the last two days. He’s not gonna ask.
Will’s explaining that Myra has gone hiking for the day, when Beth comes downstairs. Her shorts are so short, Nate can see the curve of her butt sticking out under the fringe of blue jean. Will looks like he wants to say something to his daughter, but he’s still in the middle of his story about Myra, and before he can finish, the daughter’s out the door and walking down the lane.
They make lunch, then go outside and stand around on the lawn, waiting for the next guy to show up. Nate’s pretty sure the next one to pull up the lane is gonna get the same red-carpet treatment for about the same hour Nate got. Will’s great with the charm, when he wants something. Doles out affection with a purpose in mind, then moves on. Nate doesn’t mind that so much, long as he knows what to expect. Long as nobody expects too much.
By early afternoon, two more actors have arrived: Frank Tucker, who plays Slim and is so full of himself Will half-expects the man to swell up and float off on his own hot air, and Norton Frye with his cat. Norton hasn’t quit complaining about the sleeping conditions yet. Will told him to come early. The bunks will come tomorrow, then Norton can have the room Ben’s sleeping in.
“So where’s the wife?” Frank asks, interrupting Will as he’s trying to explain what he thinks was wrong with the production last winter of Of Mice and Men. “She must be ready to shoot you for inviting all these people here during your vacation.”
“Taking a walk,” Will says, his jaw tight.
“A long one, I bet.” Frank tosses his head back in that way he does when he thinks he’s said something funny, and smooths out the corner of his mustache, using his right index finger. He’s so vain, he actually had the nerve to ask Will to reblock a scene so he could enter from stage left, to show his good side. Will told Frank he didn’t have to enter at all. Frank just threw back his head, patted down his stupid mustache, and said, “Can’t hurt to try.” There must be a role he could cast Frank in that would require him to shave his mustache, but Will hasn’t found it yet.
Will is about to get back to the subject at hand, the rehearsal, when he sees Jimmy McGovern getting in his car with Mac and Ben.
“What’s going on?” he asks them.
“We’re going fishing again!” Mac says, already in the backseat.
“Huh?”
“Yes sir!” Jimmy says. “Chip, Ben, Mac, and I are going to go out and catch us some dinner. Your food’s all gone, Will. Tell Myra not to fuss, we’ll bring some potato salad back with us. Think you can catch us some potato salad, Mac?” Jimmy says, tousling the kid’s head. Mac laughs like it’s the best joke in the world.
“But—” Will sputters. “But—”
“It’s two-thirty,” Jimmy says. “We’ll be back by seven. Do we need beer?”
“No, we have plenty of beer,” Will says.
“Then we’ll get more,” Jimmy says with a grin. “Hey Frank, stay out of the booze while we’re gone.”
“Screw you, McGovern,” Frank says. Will shakes his head. Is this how it’s going to be? The two of them argue in an almost genial way, night and day, the genial part getting thinner and thinner as time goes on, and it pisses off Will more and more. He’s got sibling rivalry enough at home.
And this is his home.
“Think I’ll go call the wife,” Frank says, as Jimmy drives away.
“I should check on my cat,” Norton says. They walk off.
Will throws up his hands. He had something important to say, and now his thoughts are left hanging in the air like laundry left to dry. He goes into the barn.
It’s empty, which is a bit of a jolt; he’s described the props and furniture so often, they have become real objects in his mind. He goes over to where one of the bunks will be and sits on the ground, trying to get a feel for what will come. It’s idiotic, sitting here on the dirt floor, but damn it, he’ll do anything to save this theatre. If he can. He feels like that kid with his finger in the dike. Except he’s no kid anymore. He’ll be sixty in a few months. He doesn’t look sixty, not nearly, but he’s been in the theatre long enough to know how flimsy an image can be, even when you’re looking in the mirror. Makeup doesn’t make him King Lear. Black hair dye doesn’t make him young. But he’s trying. Damn it, at least he’s trying. Theatres all over are doing plays in the woods, rewriting scripts. Some of it sounds ridiculous to Will, but he admires their chutzpah. He wishes someone would acknowledge that he, too, is trying something brave (maybe a bit late in the game, but that doesn’t mean it won’t work). They’re all off fishing, or fussing with a cat—or taking a walk in the woods. He’s out here in the barn, believing it’s a bunkhouse. For them. He does all this believing for them.
Beth stands at the end of the lane and counts to sixty. She’s tried this counting trick already—she’s tried all sorts of things, like reciting the monologue from Our Town, and walking up the lane without turning back. Nothing has worked. She’s back to counting to sixty; she can’t help it. There is nothing else to do to pass the time until Greg Henry gets here. Even if her father allowed them a TV, she couldn’t sit still to watch it. Each time a car turns onto the lane, her heart pounds. She knows exactly where her heart is now; she can touch the ache in her chest.
And, her mother has walked off. Not that Beth cares, except that every now and then, when she’s finished counting to sixty and there’s no sign of Greg Henry, she thinks she’ll go find her mom, for distraction. Her dad is around somewhere, but he’s acting all edgy. He’s not usually like that when they’re here at the farm. Usually he’s quieter and moves more slowly, and plays checkers with them. Well, sometimes. But right now he’s just a director and not a dad. For one second Beth understands how that might upset her mom.
Fifty-nine. Sixty. No sign of Greg Henry. She kicks a stone, and it plops into the ditch on the side of the lane. She’ll go crazy, waiting for Greg Henry to come. She can’t help thinking that he must be thinking about her too. That they’re meant to be. And if they are meant to be, what’s another sixty seconds? She starts to count again. As soon as she sees his car, she’s going to head back up the lane, as if she were just out for a walk. He’ll see her glossy chestnut hair and her long legs, and wonder who the good-looking woman is. Then she’ll turn, startled, and he’ll think, Beth. That will be the moment they’ll remind each other of, sometime in the future that is theirs.
Myra’s lost in the woods, but sh
e doesn’t care. She has found this beautiful spot where a creek winds through an old pine grove, the forest floor a beautiful dun color of thick pine needles. In the air, golden-breasted birds flitter from branch to branch, and a lone monarch butterfly floats about like a musical note. She didn’t eat any of the bread or cheese, but she drank all the wine. She left the backpack about a mile back, next to the huge old oak, which she can’t possibly miss on the way home. She is free of encumbrances, at one with the woods.
Myra decides that if she sits very, very still, a deer will come to drink from the creek. If she were a deer, she certainly would. There is a special stillness to this place, even with the golden-breasted birds trilling out their song; a special glow from the sun that finds its way to the forest floor. One spot, right under the pine tree, has the exact shape of her bottom worn into the earth. She sits down and watches the creek bubble. In a few minutes, she is asleep.
Mac grins so widely he can feel the wind against his teeth. They have caught a dozen fish, cruised at high speeds, and pissed off the side of the boat. (Mac had to close his eyes when Ben Walton stood on the side of the boat, because Mac thought they’d tip over for sure.) He rubs his cheeks; they won’t go back to their normal position, and his mouth aches. But he’s not complaining, even though his forehead is hot from the sun, even though the guys teased him about drinking a beer, handing him one, then pulling it back, and even though Jimmy really scared him with the story about the boy who had a second head growing out of his chest—which will probably give Mac nightmares forever. It’s such a good day, he’s even sure he’s going to eat the fish he caught.
They get home at eight. The sun has gone below the tops of the trees, and the shadows are long and sharp against the grass. Mac feels taller when he gets out of the car. His shadow is ten feet long. Beth comes out of the house as they pull up, but she walks right by the car and goes down the lane.
Mr. Johnson, the black guy, whom Mac doesn’t know very well (and is a little bit scared of—his skin is that real dark color like the pictures of those tribes in Africa, and it makes Mac think of cannibals and men with bones through their noses), stands by the grill. The pasture behind ripples in the shadows, and Mac suddenly feels tired beyond belief. He wants to show his mom the fish he caught, and he wants to go to bed. His forehead is hot and it hurts.
“Hey, Nate!” Chip Stark yells as he carries the bucket of fish over to Nate. “Where the hell is everyone?”
“Out looking for Myra,” Nate says.
Then Mac hears it, a low, hollow sound coming from the woods: Myra. Myra. Myra. The woods are calling for his mother. His legs give out. He sits down on the grass like a puppet whose strings have been cut. Luckily no one sees. They are too busy looking at the howling woods.
Myra awakens to find the sun perched on a low branch of a dead tree, a yellow ball with no warmth, the Cheshire Cat without a smile. Oh, shut up, she thinks, because the sun seems to be saying, “You’d better get moving.” She shakes her head; she’s not thinking too clearly. It’s getting chilly. She should go home.
It would take hours to go back the way she came, and it will be dark soon. She’d get lost in the woods. More lost than she is right now. This creek must be the one that comes out on Old Timber Road, about a mile from where it crosses her own road. If she follows it out to Old Timber, then at least she’d have a road to walk on, even in the dark. Bending over the creek, Myra splashes cold water on her face and drinks out of cupped hands. She’s incredibly thirsty. She moves off, following the creek, looking back with longing at the spot where she slept against the tree; she imagines staying there, nourished by nature alone, never going home. She is sick of doing dishes. Feeding people. Making lists and grocery shopping. And it’s just beginning. A line from The Fantasticks comes to her, and she can’t help singing it out: “I want much more than keeping house, much more, much more, mu—ch more.” She walks along the bank of the creek, sudden tears streaming down her face like rain.
Less than an hour later, she finds the road and knows where she is. She turns left, in the direction of dishes and laundry. The Girl in The Fantasticks learns that love is more important than fame, and suddenly Myra wants to be saved by love, she wants to be in love blindly, without doubt. She wants no choices. Let me love, she thinks with each step she takes. And, Love me. She feels that unless she falls back in love, just as in those first years, no, more in love than even then, she will fall apart, lose herself. She can feel it, a loosening, as if meaning and voice and care were simply things to be left at rest-stop trash cans, to make the load lighter, the car less messy.
Love me, love me. Let me love. She turns the corner onto her road, and a minute later a car drives by, then slows, stops, and backs up. The driver’s door opens, and Greg Henry leans out. “Myra?”
Myra wipes quickly at her face with the palm of her hand and says, “Yep, it’s me.”
“Want a ride?” The sun has gone beneath the horizon, and the sky casts a gentle pink light on Greg’s young handsome face. Myra nods and waits until he leans back into his car so she can wipe her face again and run her fingers through her hair, hoping he won’t be able to see that she’s been crying.
Once she’s in the car, he asks her if she’s okay. He looks concerned. Worried. He’s a sweet kid.
“Yeah, I’ll be okay. Don’t worry about it, Greg.”
“All right. But if you want to talk …”
“No. But thanks for the ride. I think everyone’s probably looking for me. We’d better go.”
He nods. “Okay.” They drive on.
“So you’re here to join the greatest rehearsal of them all?” Myra asks.
Greg laughs, his white teeth flashing. “How could I refuse?”
Then they’re there. Beth is walking up the lane and spins around as she hears the car. She stops in the middle of the lane, framed in the car lights, squinting at the car. She looks confused. Then her eyes get big, and her look turns to one of horror and disgust, and she turns and runs up the lane.
Oh hell, Myra thinks.
Just as Ben and Will are standing in the field discussing whether to call the police, Ben sees Beth stop, look at the car that has just come up the lane, then turn and run into the house.
Ben nudges Will. “That’s Greg Henry’s car. And there’s two people in it.”
In the twilight, it is impossible to tell from this distance who is in the car. Ben wonders if Will is thinking the same thing he is, that Greg may have brought a friend with him, some stagestruck kid Greg wants to impress. Every now and then Greg brings some young, always innocently cute college guy to the theatre to watch a rehearsal. Ben believes that people’s choices should not be food for fodder, but the last time Greg pulled a stunt like that, Ben and Will locked eyes, acknowledging the fact they knew what it was all about.
No one gets out of the car, even though the engine has been turned off. The darker-than-twilight shape of Nate crosses the front lawn. Everyone else is out in the woods, yelling for Myra, except Norton, who has forgotten to bring any gym shoes or boots.
Nate walks over to the passenger door and opens it. Out climbs Myra. Ben couldn’t be more surprised if Barbra Streisand had stepped out. He and Will both shout, “Myra!” at the same time and run to the car.
Myra stumbles, and Nate grabs her arm. Ben is close enough now to hear her say, “Thanks, but I’m fine.” There are pine needles in her disheveled blond hair, and a thin twig. Her eyes are swollen and red, so swollen she seems to be peering out as if blinded by bright sun. Will takes Myra’s arm, and she attempts to pull it away from him, but Will’s long thin hand fits around Myra’s upper arm like a cuff, and he won’t let go.
“Myra,” Will says, “where were you? Jesus! Look at you! You’re drunk!”
Myra looks at Will, and suddenly her eyes are wide, like a child’s, and Ben sees something that he’s afraid Will is going to miss. That Myra is asking for something. It is the same, exact, wide-eyed question Ben remembers asking his
wife when she left him. He couldn’t say, Please love me. I love you. He’d expected her to know, just by the way he looked at her, that he loved her, that he needed her. She had walked out the door as if he weren’t even there—which he hadn’t been, many times before, and maybe that was what she had gotten used to seeing: nothing.
But now, Ben watches the hope on Myra’s face disappear while Will stares at her with anger and embarrassment.
“I went for a walk. I left a note.”
“It’s almost ten o’clock at night, Myra. We were just about to call the police, for God’s sake. We thought you were lost. Your own son is out there looking for you, imagining you torn in two by a bear. What the hell were you thinking!”
There is a flash of concern in Myra’s eyes as she glances toward the woods, then it’s gone. “Let go of me, please,” she says, with a flat, dull tone that makes Ben wince. Will does, but not before giving a short, quick twist to Myra’s arm. She opens her mouth to gasp, and he lets go. Myra heads toward the house, and Will follows. You stupid fool, Ben thinks, the thought as quick as the twist of an arm. Maybe she was lost. Maybe she is hurt. For just the briefest of moments, Ben despises Will, but then that goes away, and he is left feeling only sad for both of them.
In the silence that follows, Ben wants to just up and leave. The whole living-the-play idea feels wrong. He’s emotionally drained already. The last thing he wants to do is begin a month of delving into the innermost feelings of a needful, slow-witted man.
“Guess we better go get everyone out of the woods,” Nate says.
Ben nods. He’s not leaving. Who’s he kidding?