by Sarah Willis
Pulling into their drive, Myra notices the quiet right off. There are no signs of life, despite the usual array of rusted farm equipment and cars on blocks. But there’s no car with wheels. There is something more that bothers Myra: an absence of care. The lawn is uncut, and the porch is covered with leaves. On the door of the house is a large white piece of paper. Myra gets out of the car and walks over, feeling like a trespasser. Auction, it says. May 30th. The county is auctioning off the entire farm. Myra looks around. There are no cattle. No chickens. How could she not have noticed before?
She gets back in the car. Just across the road are the Millers. Myra backs out of the Griggses’ drive quickly and turns into the Millers’ drive, as if that were where she wanted to go all along.
Mrs. Miller (Pat?) opens the front door as Myra walks up the steps. Mrs. Miller is about seventy, so Myra calls her Mrs. Miller and doesn’t have to worry about her first name. “Hi, Mrs. Miller,” Myra says. “Remember me? Myra? Your neighbor?”
“Of course I do, sweetheart. How can I help you?”
Myra’s ashamed she’s never been here before, even though Mrs. Miller brought them an apple pie the first summer Myra and Will moved in, and Mr. Miller was the handyman who’d helped them rebuild the side porch. It’s so obvious that Myra isn’t here just to say hello that she gets right down to the business of borrowing blankets. “We have a lot of people staying with us for a few weeks, and I was wondering if you might have any blankets we might borrow. I’ll get them cleaned afterward. It’s just that we don’t have enough. We didn’t think this through, I guess …”
Mrs. Miller laughs. “Oh, don’t worry. I have two wool blankets in the cedar chest, not doing anything. Hold on just a minute. I’ll go get them.” She comes back with two blue wool blankets. “Here you go,” she says. “Hope they’ll help some.”
“Oh, they will. Thank you so much.” Then, because Myra knows she can’t just walk away, she adds, “So how is Mr. Miller? He did such a great job on our porch.”
“Well, since he lost his eye, it’s been pretty difficult for him,” Mrs. Miller says, so matter-of-factly that Myra is sure she misunderstood. Mrs. Miller notices Myra’s confusion and explains. “An accident with the chain saw. A big limb fell and came right through the attic ceiling. Pete climbed up on top of the roof and tried to cut it loose. The chain saw slipped. Cut a huge gash in his forehead, and he lost his eye.”
“How awful!” Myra says. “Oh my god. I’m so sorry.”
“I’m sorry too. Took me a while not to be just plain furious, since I told him to leave that branch alone for someone younger. I guess I have to be grateful it was just an eye he lost. He came pretty darn near to bleeding to death in the process.”
“When did this happen?” Myra asks, holding the blankets in her arms and feeling as if she has stolen something.
“It happened last June. He’s doing okay. He’s up in Buffalo getting a glass eye right now. He says he’s going to have them make it blue. Always wanted blue eyes. He’s still a joker, that’s all I can say.”
“Yes, he is,” she says, as if she knows him. “Well, thank you so much for the blankets. I really appreciate this. It’s very nice of you. Please give our regards to your husband. And if there is anything we can do …”
“There’s nothing you can do, sweetheart, but thanks for asking. Just bring the blankets back when you don’t need ’em anymore. It does get cold here in the winter. But you won’t need them then, will you?”
“No,” Myra says. “We’ll be gone by then.” Somehow these words make her feel like a deserter—as if by leaving Chautauqua each fall, they commit some kind of crime.
Myra’s legs tremble. She is sure she saw Mr. Miller in the store last summer. How could she not have noticed?
Another quarter mile up the road live the Horners, in a white house with pretty blue trim. The Horners’ daughter is about Beth’s age, and during their first summer here, the girl (Netty? Betty?) came over to play with Beth, but they didn’t hit it off, and the next summer she came by only once. Mrs. Horner (Lucy, she’s sure it’s Lucy) seemed like a nice lady. Normal, Myra tells herself, as if maybe the last two neighbors weren’t, and it wasn’t really Myra’s fault she didn’t know them very well. Myra pulls into the Horners’ drive feeling a need to talk to someone who is like her. Lucy Horner answers the door and looks just fine to Myra. She says of course she remembers Myra. Myra asks how her daughter is and is relieved to hear that Netty is doing fine. But Mrs. Horner can’t lend them any blankets because her sister, who was born crippled, was living in a home that burned down just last month, and Mrs. Horner sent all her spare blankets and towels, along with a bunch of clothes and pots and pans, to the place that took all those people in. She wishes she could help Myra, but they don’t have two of anything right now.
Myra’s face is hot. She tells Mrs. Horner how sorry she is about her sister. It sounds awful the way she says it, as if having a crippled sister were the most terrible thing in the world, where what she really meant was she was sorry the home had burned down. Myra backs up and trips on a stone. “See you soon,” she says, and Mrs. Horner nods and smiles. When Myra grabs the wheel, her hands are wet with sweat. She drives all the way to Jamestown and buys ten cotton blankets from Woolworth’s, writing a check that she hopes won’t bounce. She wants to buy ten more blankets and send them to the place that took all those people in, but she can’t face going back to the Horners’.
Driving home, Myra is something more than embarrassed, but doesn’t know what she really feels until she drives by the Griggses’ deserted farm. She and Will didn’t know them at all. They have surrounded themselves with theatre people; everyone else is peripheral. If the theatre closes, could Will get a job as a director at another theatre? They may not want someone his age. Then they would be people who are not in the theatre, in a world where people work with chain saws and lose their eyes. They might have to sell the summer house, they might be poor. They have been wearing blinders. Today her blinders have slipped. She doesn’t like what she sees, but she is glad she sees it all the same. She might be scared, but she knows she wants to be different now. She wants to be someone who would have bought the extra blankets and taken them to the Horners.
She vows she’ll throw a big party at the end of the summer and invite everyone on the road. She’ll give Mrs. Horner all the blankets she just bought. She’ll talk to these people. She’ll get to know them. She promises she will do this, no matter what.
But when she gets back to the house, Will starts complaining before she can say a thing. Norton Frye took a shower, even though he wasn’t on the list since he had one yesterday, and it’s thrown off the whole schedule. The outhouse is just a big hole. No one is working in character. How difficult can it be to be ranch hands as they work?
Myra drops the blankets on the floor. “How in God’s name can you or any of these actors portray people you know nothing about? When was the last time you spent even one moment with someone who isn’t involved in the theatre? You live in a world of make-believe. You don’t know crap about real life!”
Will looks stunned. Good, she thinks. But then, from the corner of her eye, she sees Beth standing in the doorway. Afraid she is about to cry, Myra runs upstairs. Someone’s in the bathroom. “Please hurry,” she says. In less than a minute, Ben comes out, his hair dripping, towel around his waist, his large torso like a gigantic pillow. She imagines putting her head on his chest and going to sleep.
“Myra?” he says, obviously concerned. She can’t bear his kindness. She can’t bear anyone’s kindness right now. She slips around him into the bathroom and closes the door.
Beth can’t believe what a bitch her mom is. What is her problem? She got the role of Curley’s Wife. What more does she want?
Beth goes over to where her dad sits at the small phone table that has become his desk. He looks funny sitting there; the table is polished and fragile and small, and he is big, angular, and rumpled. He looks wrong si
tting there. Miscast, she thinks. This thought surprises her, because it’s the kind of thing her dad would think, and he would be proud of her for thinking the way he does, but she can’t tell him, because she can’t say he doesn’t seem to fit into his own home anymore. He already looks pretty upset.
“Can I help you, Daddy?”
“No, honey,” he says. “Everything’s fine.”
“But she—”
“Shhh,” he says. “It’s nothing. Your mother’s tired.”
“From what? I just did all the dishes!”
“Beth,” he says, his lips tight, “give her a break.”
Right, Beth thinks. In a million years. “Fine,” she says. She’d stomp up to her room, but it’s not her room now. Stomping over to the couch would be just plain stupid. She stomps outside. No one’s around except the dog, who’s deaf anyway. She wonders how she can feel so crowded-in without a soul in sight.
After a while, Beth comes up with an idea. She waits until her father leaves the house and no one else is inside, then calls her friend, Deb.
“Deb,” she says, “I need some LSD. Three or four hits.”
“Since when did you start doing acid?” Deb asks.
“I didn’t start. It’s not for me.”
“But then who’s it for?”
Beth hears someone come in the kitchen door. “Never mind. Just get some and mail it to me. I’ll pay anything.”
“I don’t get it—”
“Just do it quickly. I’m desperate. ’Bye.” Beth hangs up the phone and jumps over the back of the couch, landing on the cushions as if she were taking a nap. It’s just her brother.
“Hey, Mac, how you doing?” she says. She’s feeling generous. She’s going to get back at her mom for treating her dad so bad. And for taking the role of Curley’s Wife. And for getting drunk and lost. And for saying Beth can’t act. Just about everything.
At ten o’clock at night, Beth’s hands are red from hot water, her hair’s a mess, her head’s pounding, her back’s sore from the couch last night, and to top it off, the actors, and her mom, are doing a theatre game out on the lawn, having a great time, and Beth has been left out, worse, ordered to play Monopoly with Mac to keep him out from under Jimmy McGovern’s feet. Thank God someone left a full glass of whiskey on the kitchen counter. She almost puked drinking it, but so far it’s stayed down.
Beth walks into the living room after drying her last dish, ever, and shakes her head. Mac is sitting on the couch, the Monopoly game all set up on the low coffee table.
“Oh, right,” she says. “In your dreams.” She picks Mac up off the couch and dumps him onto the floor. Just the motion of leaning over to pick him up makes her dizzy. She lies down on the couch and closes her eyes. In minutes she’s asleep.
The sun’s setting, and Will thinks, Good, this might work better in dim light. “Okay, everybody, form a circle and sit down.” Will waves an arm in a large circle, hoping to speed things up, but it takes some time for the actors to pick their spots and spread out the blankets on the freshly cut lawn. Frank Tucker has to study the whole group before finding his place, and Jimmy won’t stop monkeying around, tugging Chip’s blanket away just before he sits down. Will has allowed them each one beer, to help loosen them up for this exercise—they would have brought out alcohol no matter what he said anyway. Not being in the theatre building has diminished his authority. This farm has been the place of too many drunken parties, and no one takes him seriously.
Jimmy McGovern runs around the circle shouting, “Duck, duck, duck, goose!”
“Sit down, Jimmy!” Will shouts. “Right there!” Jimmy falls down, almost into Myra’s lap. She seems to have recovered from her funk today. He has no idea what could have set her off like that. He was glad she agreed to join them tonight.
It makes Will nervous, though. He wants her to do great things. He’s just afraid to watch her try.
“Okay, now, listen. The characters in this play have very little privacy, day in and day out. The ranch hands live together. Lennie and George travel together. There’s no room for secrets between these people. So what’s that like? To constantly be exposing yourself? And Jimmy, not one damn wisecrack, do you hear me?” He stares at Jimmy. Jimmy nods, but his freckled face is laughing.
“What I want you to do is, tell us a secret dream. What you have always wanted. See how it feels to be exposed.” Again he looks at Jimmy, who grins, making a zipper motion across his lips.
“Absurd,” says Frank Tucker.
“You are welcome not to participate, Frank,” Will says. “I just assumed that as an actor, you were willing to push yourself, to grow. But if you feel you have hit your pinnacle and have no higher ambitions, you may be excused from what the rest of us are working on to better our art.” Will keeps his face straight, even though he’s grinning inside. He knew Frank Tucker would protest and had prepared this little speech. He’s so glad he got to use it.
“Well,” Frank sputters, “I never said I wouldn’t join in. I’ll go along with it, if the rest agree.”
“I’m willing to try anything Will suggests,” Ben says. “I’ll even go first.” He takes a slug of his beer. “I want to act. That’s it. Plain and simple.”
Will’s glad for Ben’s support, but he’s not going to let him get away with this. “Too easy, Ben. What do you want that you don’t already have?”
Ben’s quiet now for a minute. Will’s sure Ben is going to make a joke to break the tension, but then, quietly, he says, “All I need is love.” He tries to make a silly face, to cover the seriousness of what he said, but he ends up looking so miserable, Will can’t help but look away.
“Hey!” Jimmy shouts. “That’s a song! Can we use songs? Then here’s mine. ‘I want to hold your hand.’” He grabs Norton’s hand.
“Keep your paws to yourself, lamebrain,” Norton says, pulling his hand away.
“Who you calling lamebrain, Mr. Toupee?”
“Stop!” Will yells. Something in the woods scurries for cover. “Ben has expressed exactly what I was looking for, even though he’s hiding his feelings behind a song title.” He looks at Ben, who shrugs. “And because he spoke out, because we got to see a little of Ben that we don’t normally see, it made us tense. That’s what it’s like on the ranch in Of Mice and Men. These guys don’t want their innermost secrets to be known, but they slip out all the same, causing tension. They get in fights, but then they have to work together. See what I’m getting at?”
“Not particularly,” Norton says under his breath.
“Well, how about you go next, Norton,” Will says. “Help us out.”
“Oh, fine.” Norton agrees. “And I won’t stoop to using song lyrics either.” Norton sits up very straight. “It’s actually quite simple. I would like to travel. I’ve lived in the same apartment for fifteen years, and in Pittsburgh for my entire life, except during the war. I’d like to see the rest of America. Experience new places. Meet new people. That would satisfy my soul.”
Will had no idea Norton wanted to travel. The man seems so set in his ways. “Thanks, Norton. That’s exactly what I mean. Who’s next? Greg?”
Greg Henry looks around the circle. “Well, what the heck. I’d like to be … well, it sounds stupid.” He blushes and looks down at his hands. “Taller.”
Everyone’s quiet. Everyone’s taller than Greg. Will’s amazed the kid had the guts to say it. He can’t imagine being short. It’s one of the few things he can’t imagine. “Greg, that’s what I’m looking for. Some real honesty. Lars?”
Lars Lyman is silent for so long, Will thinks he’s not going to say anything, but just as Will decides to push it, Lars clears his throat, looking sheepish but at the same time a bit desperate. “I don’t know. I guess what I want is … is to … well, this lady once told me she loved babies but didn’t want her own. She couldn’t handle the scary parts of being a parent. Bad things happening … So she wasn’t going to take the chance … I understood, what she meant. Bu
t maybe there’s something to not playing it safe. You know? Take a chance, I guess. Try something …” He shrugs.
“All right,” Will says, not sure what else to say. He’s never been sure if Lars’s stumbling words mask a brilliant inner thought process, or not, and he’s still not sure. “Jimmy?”
“Hell, you’re serious, huh? Okay. I want a million dollars. I want to look like Rock Hudson. I want Brigitte Bardot as my personal slave. I want—”
“Jimmy, come on. One thing. One simple honest longing.”
“Chip’s love life would be good enough for me.”
Will grinds his teeth. “Try again.”
“World peace?”
“Jesus Christ, Jimmy! Be serious, just this one time. You are part of this company. I expect you to be honest or say nothing at all.”
“Well, hell,” Jimmy says, almost angrily, the cheery, good-natured voice suddenly gone. “How’s this? I have eleven sisters and brothers. My mom died having me. One pregnancy too many, I guess. So I wish the pope allowed birth control. My mom could have used it. Good enough?”
Hands holding beers freeze in midmotion on the way to open mouths. This isn’t what Will expected from Jimmy, but exactly what he was hoping for—he thinks. The exercise is working, but he bets no one will ask to do it again.
“Good, Jimmy.” Will hears how stupid that sounds, considering what the man just told them. “I mean, thank you. That was very brave. Well now, Victor?”
Victor rubs at his face with a hand covered in age spots. “It’s too easy, Will,” Victor says. “I want Helen back. I know you’ll say that that’s not a secret dream, but I dream about her every night, and day. If pushed, I’d say I’d like to walk on the moon. So I’ve got two dreams, both impossible. Take it or leave it.”