by Sarah Willis
From the woods there comes a pitiful sound. If Beth didn’t know it was only people calling for her mother, she might think it was a herd of sick cows. She watches from her bedroom window as Ben walks out to the pasture to call them all back.
Her door is closed, but she can hear her parents arguing in their bedroom. Beth’s eyes are already red from crying—she was so angry when she saw her mom get out of Greg Henry’s car that tears just burst from her eyes. Her father says her mom smells like spoiled grapes and looks like she was trampled by a pack of mad pine trees. Her mom says she’s put up with him being drunk plenty of times, and it’s just her damn turn. Beth can’t bear to imagine what the actors must think. Opening her door a crack, she listens to what is going on downstairs. The conversation is muted, not lively, like last night. Her mother has spoiled everything.
Monday
Beth wakes to sparrows chirping madly just outside her window. Her eyes will hardly open, sticky from dried tears. Her pillow is damp. It will take a long shower to wash away last night. She lets the water run until there is nothing left but cold, then stands with her face turned up, the chilly water tightening her skin, pulling her face back together. In her room, she dries her hair and brushes it until it shines. She will act as if nothing happened at all. A great actress could do this.
There are men asleep all over the living room: on the couch, on all three chairs, and on the floor. Greg Henry is in a tan sleeping bag beneath the front window. His eyelashes are thick, like fur. She imagines them fluttering against her cheek before they kiss. She is breathing in rhythm with him now. She could fall asleep standing here, with her eyes open, just watching him.
She hears footsteps. Her father walks downstairs in his white terrycloth bathrobe and says in a whisper that rattles the windows, “Why is there no hot water?”
“Sorry,” Beth says, lowering her head. Without a doubt, she sides with her father on this stupid mess her mother’s made. Imagine embarrassing him when the people he works with are here. Going off and getting drunk all by herself, then having to be rescued by Greg Henry. How pathetic.
“Take short showers from now on.” He looks around the room, pointing out the fact that there are people here who will need showers.
Beth makes a face like Oh, right, I forgot and nods. Her father goes back upstairs, while she heads for the kitchen. Maybe the smell of coffee and eggs will gently wake some of these people. One in particular.
After she brews the coffee, cracks some eggs, chops green peppers, melts the butter, and pours the mix into the frying pan, Norton Frye walks into the kitchen, wearing a hideous maroon satin robe. He thanks her for making coffee and asks if he could take a bowl of milk upstairs to Betsy. It takes Beth a whole minute of awkward silence before she realizes he means his cat. He’s so weird, and his toupee is awful, but at least he doesn’t mention last night, and for that she’s grateful. She couldn’t bear talking to some guy in a maroon satin robe about her crazy mother right now—or ever.
As Norton Frye walks out of the kitchen carrying a bowl of milk, Jimmy McGovern, with red eyes and a red face, stumbles in saying, “Coffee, coffee, my kingdom for a cup of coffee.” Beth gives him a slight smile, as if she thinks he’s funny, even though he’s not, except for the fact that he slept in his mismatched clothes and looks like a rumpled clown. Then Frank Tucker comes in and drifts right past Beth to the coffeepot without even a hello, followed by Nate Johnson, whose kinky salt-and-pepper hair is flattened on the right side of his head and who does say good morning, but not cheerfully at all. A few minutes later Will enters, dressed but not showered or shaved, and Ben, who at least offers to help cook. By this time, Beth is on her second batch of eggs, and the kitchen is getting crowded. Chip Stark, shorter by a few inches without his boots, arrives, and then Mac, who must have slept in the car and seems to have sweated right through his pajamas. All the eggs are gone now, and Greg Henry is still sound asleep. To top it all off, Myra comes down the stairs, showered and wearing too much makeup. She looks at Will, just a quick, sharp glance, then turns to Beth.
“Beth, is it true what I just heard? You made breakfast for everyone?”
There is something odd about Myra’s voice. Pinched and too sweet. Her smile looks really strange.
“Yeah?”
“Oh, that is so wonderful! What a sweet girl you are to have made breakfast!”
“Well, there’s nothing left,” Beth says, thinking that if her mother expects Beth to make her breakfast after last night, she’s way wrong.
“Well, then, we should go to the store and get more food!” her mom says brightly. “There are going to be a lot of hungry men around here!” She glances at Will again. Ben Walton makes a movement with his head toward the living room. One by one the actors file out. Beth wants to die of embarrassment.
“Will you accompany me to the store, Beth? I sure could use your help. Maybe the men will wash the dishes while we’re gone. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
Before Beth can say there’s no way in hell she’s going to the store with her mom, who is obviously having some kind of mental breakdown and might drive them both into a tree or something, her dad says, “I’m sure Beth will help you, right, Beth?” His stare dares her to object. “Especially since you’re all showered and ready.” Then he looks at Myra, who is pulling the sugar-coated knife out of the peanut butter and wiping the ants off with a napkin. “Thank you.” In a long silence, her mother and father look at each other, their faces changing expressions like that stupid speechless exercise her dad had them practice. It’s like a mime show, and Beth doesn’t know what’s going on. Finally her mother nods.
“Come on, Beth.” This is not said with the same bright cheerfulness, and Beth realizes something is over. She wants to yell, “What? What? Who won?” but the way both of her parents look right now, she better keep quiet.
Just as they are about to leave, her father says, “And honey, could you go to the supermarket in Jamestown this time? Just get a whole lot of everything. Please?”
“Sure,” her mom says. “You betcha. Let’s go, Beth.”
The trip to the store and back takes two and a half hours. Beth doesn’t say even two and a half words to her mother the whole time. When they arrive home with eighteen bags of groceries (which includes a half-dozen bottles of wine), there is a long truck pulled up in front of the barn, and a new car in the drive.
“Over there,” Will says, trying to fit the familiar set of Of Mice and Men into the new dimensions of the barn. He needs to keep the barn door stage left, the bunk beds—not real bunks, just single metal beds with thin mattresses—along the back wall, the heavy wood table a little left of center, and nothing too far right, so there will be room for the hay, and nothing along the front, where the apron would be. Frank Tucker and Jimmy McGovern carry in a bunk, then go back to the truck to get something else. Chip Stark and Ben bring over another bunk. “Right here, next to this one,” Will tells them.
Lars Lyman, who plays George, carries a box of props and tries not to trip over Shakes, his dog, who follows Lars so closely, it’s like the man has a third foot. Lars found Shakes (short for Shakespeare) at the pound. They didn’t need a real dog for Of Mice and Men; they could have referred to it as if it were just out of sight, but Will wanted it, and Lars had found this poor feeble mutt moments away from being put to sleep. It was the perfect dog—if you needed a blind, rickety, flea-bitten mongrel that looked like it really ought to be put down. No one even expected it to last the six weeks of rehearsal, or the six weeks of production, but here it is, Lars’s best friend. For the most part, Lars carries the dog, figuring Shakes has only so many steps left in him, like a car’s starter.
Will had asked Lars to lead the truck here just to make sure it arrived. The truck driver, some guy named Horace or something, will leave as soon as the truck is empty. He doesn’t carry anything off the truck. That’s not his job. He’s a union truck driver.
Will’s psyched. The props and furniture
are here. The next problem is going to be cash. The executive director of The Mill Street Theatre doesn’t even know that the set was shipped out a month early; he’s currently in Minneapolis hobnobbing with other executive directors. This whole project of Will’s is on the Q.T., until, of course, the invitations go out, inviting all to come see the extraordinary new production of Of Mice and Men. So over a bottle or two of bourbon tonight, Will will broach the subject of everyone kicking in for food. The actors are receiving unemployment until the summer season starts; they can afford to pay for some of the food. But still, they’ll need more money. He needs to ask Myra to appeal to her parents for a loan, even though they haven’t paid off the last two loans. Maybe they should call it a grant.
Almost everyone is here. Victor Peters should arrive sometime today. He’ll be the last, except for Melinda, whom Will won’t think about right now. Victor, sixty-nine, is slow as molasses, drives like an old lady, and walks like a duck with his feet pointing outward and his knees bent. If he gets here by midnight, it will be a miracle. Melinda is another story, but he won’t think about it. He tells Lars Lyman to leave the prop boxes for Beth to check off the master list. Will’s dying to open the boxes and set the scene, but he’s pretty sure that if he doesn’t leave that job for Beth, he’s going to regret it.
Will watches Lars nimbly step over Shakes and go back to the truck. The man is so ordinary looking, so average (thirty-five years old, five ten, one hundred and sixty pounds), that he can play almost any role. He’s not too tall (like Will himself) or too big and heavy (like Ben) or too old (like Victor Peters) or too short (like Greg Henry, who at five six is going to play young boys until he’s playing old men). Lars is so plain American, with his sandy brown hair, sandy brown eyes, and almost featureless face that, if he held up a bank, no one could describe him. Lars Lyman can play the bad guy, the good guy, the fool, or the prince. His only annoying habit, Will thinks, is that he mumbles and doesn’t finish sentences. Thank God, when given a script, the man can project with the best of them.
Will directs the traffic of bodies moving crates and metal beds and old mattresses, thinking about the way a simple genetic trait will close options—like Nate Johnson, who simply because of the color of his skin will never get to play George, or Romeo, or Hamlet. Will’s also thinking about how to set up Nate’s stuff in the small front room of the barn, and wondering when Beth will get back so he can open those boxes, and why Greg Henry had to accompany Norton into town so Norton could get some simple gym shoes, a task Norton could have done all on his own. Then, for the last time, he swears it will be the last time, he wonders what happened to Melinda and what he’s going to do about her not being here.
“Hi, everyone!” Beth says, coming into the barn. She looks around as if something is missing.
Will waves to her. “The props are over there, Beth. Why don’t you open them up and check them off the list? Lars can help you.”
Beth looks around the barn again, frowning. Finally, she walks over to the boxes along the wall and says hi to Lars, and they begin pulling the props out. Well, at least Myra is back with the food, Will thinks. Then he has an idea.
It makes perfect sense. After Myra puts the groceries away, she’ll go find her backpack. It’s a good backpack, and she can’t afford to leave it out in bad weather.
The kitchen is half-cleaned; an attempt was made but probably abandoned when the truck with the scenery pulled up. Maybe she should finish cleaning the kitchen as a sort of apology for yesterday, but damn it, why should she have to apologize? Did Will apologize when he tore off the screen door last year because it got locked and he was so drunk and angry, he didn’t even bother going around to the back? No. It just got turned into a good story. And did Jimmy McGovern apologize when, dead drunk, he tried walking around in high heels and fell on the phone table and broke it? No, he did not. Or when—oh, hell, she could go on and on! So screw them, she thinks. How dare they come here and take over the place, expecting her to play the pretty little hostess. The groceries are only partly put away, and Myra is already seething. She slams the can of baked beans down on the counter and decides they can do the rest.
And just to prove she doesn’t have to worry about what the actors think, she takes a bottle of wine out of the pantry and puts it in a bag with a can of sardines. Cradling the bag under her arm, Myra walks out of the house. The truck is pulling out of the lane, and Myra stops to watch, feeling as if it is the land pulling away, that she is on a ship that has cast off its ropes and is moving into choppy waters.
Will walks out of the barn. “Myra! Come here. I want to ask you something!” Then, toward the barn, “Okay, okay, I’m coming!” He motions to Myra to follow him.
Myra doesn’t want to talk to Will right now, but how can she just walk off into the woods, ignoring him? She hasn’t even left a note. Well, she’ll tell him she has to go get her backpack. He’ll understand. They both believe the world is too materialist, too disposable. He will have to let her get her backpack.
Let her. The words stiffen her spine. She can’t believe she thought those words. She will simply tell him what she is doing. She doesn’t need his approval. She puts the bag with the wine and sardines next to a peony bush, the stems bending almost to the ground with huge globes of pink flowers. She pushes the bag with her foot, and it slips under the bush. She’ll get it after she talks to Will.
As she enters the barn and sees the furniture and props from Of Mice and Men, Myra has a funny feeling, a fluttering of longing. She feels as if she might actually want this to be happening—the actors here, the energy of theatre—but she also feels something inside her say, don’t you dare get excited about this. Still, for a moment, she sees what Will has seen, the possibility. It’s not like this could really be the real bunkhouse at a ranch in California forty years ago, but with just a bit of imagination, it would be so easy to pretend.
Will turns from talking with Lars Lyman (who always annoys Myra because the man can’t finish a simple sentence) and comes over to Myra. He puts his arm around her shoulder. “See?” Will says. “What do you think?”
“Nice,” she says, the word a bit tighter than she meant it to be, but she is holding in a lot right now.
“Listen, Myra, I’ve been thinking,” Will says. He says this not just to her but like an announcement, and Myra wants to roll her eyes. He’s so dramatic. He’s probably going to tell her he’s going to sleep out here with the men, something she’s been expecting. He’ll be one of the ranch hands—one of the guys.
“Since we can’t find Melinda, how would you like to fill in for her? Just for the rehearsal, unless something terrible has really happened to her, then you can decide if you want to go on, or if we should replace you with Sandy. But you might have fun, just rehearsing, no pressure. What do you think?”
I’m going to kill you is what she thinks. How can he ask her this in front of all these people? She doesn’t hate him for having the idea but for the ignorance and carelessness of asking it publicly. There is an answer inside her, but it needs to be worked out by talking with someone she can trust—to understand the fumbling this answer will take. Years ago that would have been Will. She and Will on the couch after the kids had gone to bed, discussing the idea of maybe just getting involved in a rehearsal, being an understudy. But this subject, of her on the stage again, has been a closed book, and just the thought of opening it up makes her throat raw. And now, after their fight last night, he throws this at her like a fastball out of the blue. She almost laughs with the absurdity of what she expects of him: consideration. He’s done this publicly in order to look benevolent. She wants to spit.
In her silence, he must realize something has gone wrong, like a man asking a woman to marry him in front of his family and suddenly seeing she might say no. He looks so utterly confused. People confuse him. He only understands fictional characters. She remembers his dismay about his own children, so many times. Why did Beth want to go to Debby’s instead of to the
zoo with him? Or why doesn’t Mac want Will to wash his hair anymore? That look of “what happened to the world I knew” has always softened her, and it does again, so that instead of slapping him across the face, she says, “It’s something to think about. We’ll talk about it later, all right? I have to go turn off the stove.”
No one speaks as she leaves the barn and walks right past the peony bush and into the house and up the stairs to her bed, where she curls up on top of the covers and pulls the pillow to her chest and doesn’t think about the part of Curley’s Wife, the thrill of memorizing lines, the possibility of acting again. She finds, oddly, and thankfully, that she can curl up with her pillow and not think at all.
Will doesn’t know what to do. Last night, every time he went upstairs to talk to Myra, it turned out to be a big mistake. Only when she was asleep did he dare crawl into bed, her small curled shape reminding him how scared he’d been that she might have been lost in the woods. He’d wrapped himself around her from behind, and in her sleep she had moved in against him, and they had slept like that the whole night. But what should he do now? Words didn’t work last time, and it’s too early to climb into bed. Should he follow her out of the barn or let her have her space? Let her have her space sounds best to him.
The actors are suddenly busy studying the walls of the barn. Beth is sitting on the ground holding a bullwhip, her mouth hanging open. She looks like she might cry. What is up with his daughter anyway? Jesus, his family is making him nuts. “Okay, Nate,” Will says, a little too loud, which means everyone turns his way, “Let’s get you set up in the front room. That bunk’s yours, and that nail keg, right? Let’s move them in.”
Nate shakes his head slowly. “You’re serious? I’m sleeping by myself in that little room?”