The Rehearsal

by Sarah Willis

  Norton thinks the whole thing is dopier than Donald Duck, but damned if he’s not enjoying himself. Each night as he fills his journal, he finds himself grinning. He’s written more in the last few days than he would have in a month of Sundays. Road trips to small, quaint towns suddenly sound dowdy, and he wonders if that was really what he was planning to do. His cat, Betsy, sits in the open window, pleased as punch to be looking out at new scenery. Norton’s even thinking of letting her out. The road is far enough away, but didn’t someone say something about bears? Last night Nate offered him ten bucks for his room, and Norton laughed so hard, his sides hurt.

  And all he has to do is walk around and tell people what to do, because he’s The Boss. They’ll do whatever they darn well please, but the charade is working for now, and it’s rather fun. Sometimes he just sits and reads. He’s got a lawn chair and a crate for a table set up out behind the house. Betsy can see him from her perch in the window. Getting paid for this isn’t such a bad idea.

  Beth’s going to kill her mother. If it weren’t for her, her dad would never have sent her to this stupid movie with her stupid brother. Not only is she being sent away from her own home, but she’s being forced to watch In Search of the Fucking Castaways! She would just die if anyone she knew saw her at this little kids’ movie, but luckily she doesn’t know a goddamn person in the whole town. Woodstock is playing right now in Pittsburgh! But not here, you could bet your life on that. Her mother even said she couldn’t wear her cut-offs, the ones she had spent hours fraying the ends of and drawing peace signs on the back pockets.

  She has already written Deb and asked her to please, please, buy some acid and mail it as quick as she can. She knows exactly what she’ll do with it: spike her mom’s drink right before a rehearsal. She can just see it. Her mother acting like an idiot, no one knowing why. They’d think she was drunk again. If Deb can’t get the acid, Beth will have to think of something else.

  She leans over to Mac, and just as the giant condor grabs the little kid, she whispers loudly, “There’s a big hairy spider on your head.” She smacks him, harder than she means to. His pop spills in her lap.

  It takes all day to fix the roof, build the table, and make the garbage enclosure. Will couldn’t be happier. Everyone’s getting into his idea now. He’s decided to mix in some rehearsals tomorrow, fit the improvs in between. Equity won’t allow the actors to work more than seven hours in an eight-and-a-half-hour time period, five days a week, but who’s going to tell?

  Beth comes back from the movie like a wraith from hell, smelling like a bucket of warm Coke. She stomps up to the bathroom, and even though it’s not her scheduled day, takes a shower. Will shakes his head. The girl is all elbows recently.

  Myra and Ben make barbecued chicken and baked potatoes for dinner. Will had no idea Ben liked to cook so much, but he’s cracking jokes and singing songs with Myra as he flips chicken on the grill. Learning to cook, that’s what happens to single guys, Will thinks. Thank God he’s got Myra.

  Greg Henry has convinced Will to let him build a bonfire pit between the house and the barn, and Greg and Chip Stark dig up the grass in a large circle. Everyone else (except Frank Tucker, who’s reading a New Yorker magazine in the living room—although Will imagines he’s just looking at the cartoons as most people do) drags dead branches out of the woods. The branches are piled seven feet high before Will can convince them it’s big enough. At least there’s no wind. Victor Peters says the lack of rain this spring is really hurting the farmers, but Will thinks the weather couldn’t be better. He feels blessed. This is meant to be. He knocks three times on the newly built picnic table, which is very sturdy and takes four men to move.

  They eat dinner off paper plates while sitting around the raging bonfire (not at the picnic table, which bothers Will just for a moment). Mac roasts marshmallows for everyone, even the dog, who is one helluva a sticky mess. Victor Peters, whose skin has been ruined by forty years of makeup, holds a flashlight to his face and tells ghost stories. Mac scrunches over even closer to Jimmy McGovern. Will tries to convince everyone to be quiet and listen to the sounds of the night, but this lasts less than thirty seconds before Jimmy McGovern lets out a fart that sounds like a broken trumpet, and there’s no quieting anyone after that. By midnight, Mac and several actors are asleep in the chairs around the fire. Will carries Mac to the car and eases him into the backseat, making sure the windows are cracked, and then nudges the rest of the sleeping actors until they wake and crawl into bed. Still at the bonfire are Beth, Greg Henry, and Victor Peters, talking about life on other planets. They promise to douse the fire, which is a pile of glowing cinders, when they go to bed. Will mentions they might want to get some sleep before the rehearsal tomorrow, which will start at nine-thirty sharp, and they all say, sure, sure. Heading for the barn, Will changes his mind. Myra went up to bed only a half hour ago. She might still be awake. If not, he’ll rouse her gently. She used to like that. She’s been acting a bit more like her old self—or he should say, young self—since the reading. Maybe he could push his luck.

  Myra moves from sleep to being touched, from a dream of acting class in college to the smell of her husband’s flesh. He strokes her back, long waves of pulse and pressure from shoulder to rump, lingering, of course, lower down. She doesn’t speak or turn over. She will take whatever caresses she can get first. When she turns over, it will become sex.

  Finally, his hand stays on her rear, then curves down between her thighs, and she arches backward. And even though the rest is good, even though she wants him, there is something common about it. They know what works. She does what she should, and does it well, but she’s thinking more about it being over, not because it’s not good, she thinks again, but because she wants mostly the part that comes after: the holding, the way their bodies press into each other, worn out, warm; when they are past all embarrassment and comfortable with who they are.

  “It was a good day,” he says softly, after a while, after long enough, and she is grateful he has waited, but she wishes the first thing he said wasn’t about the day, or the rehearsal, but about the two of them, as if maybe they are what’s important here. She believes, each and every time, during the silence that follows making love, that he can hear her think; she whispers to him with her mind, hoping that he will answer: I hear you, you are in my mind. She won’t give up this possibility. She has given up other things, but not this.

  “It was,” she says. “A good day.”

  “I was worried,” Will continues. “I have to admit it. Things got a little crazy, but we’re on track now, I can feel it.”

  She nods against his chest. Why not? What good would disagreeing do?

  “I’m tired,” he says. “I’ll go to sleep here, but I might get up in the night and go into the barn, just to wake up with the guys, keep this thing going. Okay?”

  She nods again. A small nod.

  “I hope they douse that fire,” he says, then gives her a kiss, turns over.

  She doesn’t fall asleep for a while. She is waiting to be left.

  Will has left her in too many ways to count, each one small and forgivable on its own—except the affair he had, which she has sworn to put behind her. But it is the small leavings that hurt most, because they make her feel small, easily forgotten, when he runs off to the theatre or loses himself in an idea, a script, a set design. But how can she hold these things against him, when his passion for theatre, his brilliance in directing, are what attracted her in the first place? How can she say I love who you were, but not who you are to me now, because, really, he hasn’t changed at all?

  But oddly, when Will carefully gets out of the bed and leaves the room, thinking she is asleep, Myra doesn’t feel alone. She has company. She has another woman inside her, a friend, a companion, a character. Curley’s Wife grows inside Myra like a fetus, like the vision of a painting before color is put to canvas. She will name her Lyla. Myra falls asleep, comforted by a role, and looks forward to tomorrow.


  Friday

  Friday morning brings a cold fog that sticks to skin, dulls sound, quiets color. The actors, stepping out of the barn to piss against the nearest tree and light cigarettes, move slowly, talk softly. Some stay shirtless, the way they slept, because no one wants more of anything touching them, especially their clothes, which are damp and heavy. By nine, seven men sit around in the kitchen and living room thinking about dryers and warm flannel. Beth is sleeping on the couch, her mouth hanging open as if unhinged, her right arm dangling crookedly off the couch, her legs spread open like broken scissors. Ben is the first into the living room and picks up the quilt off the floor to cover her as best he can. Still, she looks like a puppet that fell off its strings, and there is something raw or naked in that look, battered and uncomfortably sexual. The men who come into the living room tend to find something in the kitchen they have forgotten, then stay there, leaning against counters. Will is sound asleep. It is the calm before the storm.

  Will wakes up groggy, having dreamed all night about staging the rehearsal, his dream so real, he is confused by the idea that it never happened. He’s not upset by the idea of doing it all over again; the rehearsal in his dream did not go so well. There was something about actors missing, and lines flubbed, and a flood. Will walks out of the barn and yawns, trying to shake off the dream, only to see Jimmy McGovern, Nate Johnson, and Mac, over by Jimmy’s car, looking at a fishing rod. Will turns to Ben, who is walking by. “What exactly is going on?” Will asks.

  Before Ben says anything, he hands Will a Viceroy and lights it for him. “Jimmy convinced Nate to go fishing with him, can you believe it? They’re not in the scene you said we’d rehearse this morning. They said they’d be back by one.”

  Even though Will can’t think of a single reason to say no, he wants to. There is something about this running off to go fishing that’s driving him crazy. Will walks toward the car, just in time to hear Jimmy invite Mac along. Mac says sure so fast, Will does a double take. This is the kid who took ten minutes, just last week, to decide between vanilla and chocolate ice cream, until Will just got him both? For the first time, Will wonders if he may have been had that day.

  “We’ll bring back some fish for dinner,” Jimmy says, then drives off. Will shakes his head, trying to loosen his jaw. The word fish makes him grind his teeth. Damned if he’ll eat any.

  “Everyone in the barn!” Will yells a little too loud, bringing on a headache. Frank Tucker is nowhere in sight. I’m going to cast him as the rabbit in Harvey next year, Will thinks. If there’s a next year. “Go find Frank,” he tells Norton.

  As they head to the barn, Will asks Myra if she called her parents. With a nod, she says they agreed to send one thousand dollars, no problem. Will watches as she walks into the barn. Her pants are pretty tight, and that T-shirt, isn’t it Beth’s?

  “Okay,” Will says, when everyone’s inside. “Listen up. No scripts. We did the line reading to get us back into the mood of the play, but I don’t want you carrying scripts today. I don’t want you tied down to anything. If you feel something come over you, let’s see it. Then we’ll figure out where it came from, if it’s important, and if so, how we can go back to the script, adding what you found—through something physical, or tonal, or maybe in the timing. We’ll do it stop and go. Remember what we discussed, the feeling of innocence, the need for something better in life. Beth, you’ll have to stay out of the barn today.” He almost asks, Any questions? but he doesn’t want any questions. “Okay, let’s go!” He almost cries out as everyone leaves the barn, forgetting that act 1, scene 2, begins with an empty stage.

  Beth can’t believe her dad has kicked her out of the barn. How is she supposed to be his right-hand man if he keeps telling her to get lost? What is lost, she suspects, is the whole idea of being his right-hand whatever. She should have known, but it still hurts.

  Outside the barn Greg Henry, Frank Tucker, and Chip Stark are whispering to each other. Last night she and Greg had talked by the bonfire until two in the morning. Once she even moved her leg so it brushed against his, but he moved his leg away. Of course, Victor Peters was there. Greg had to be careful.

  Beth keeps waiting for Greg to look her way, so she can walk over and join in, but the actors are bent head to head for the longest time. Finally, when they stop whispering, Greg turns her way and grins. She grins back, but then freezes when he says, “Hey, Myra, come here. We need a woman’s viewpoint on this.” Beth turns away before anyone can see her eyes start to water. She goes inside the house.

  The place is a mess. There are glasses and shoes and sweatshirts and stuff everywhere. She knows it would make her dad happy if she cleaned up. Too damn bad. Sending her out of the barn! Making her do dishes! She should be Curley’s Wife! Her mother is old. Are they blind?

  The phone rings. It’s the most annoying ring in the whole world, and Beth says, “Oh, shut up,” but answers it.

  “Hi? Who’s this?” the voice on the phone asks.

  “Beth. Who’s this?”

  “It’s Melinda. Hi, Beth. Trent Kane said your dad was looking for me. That he’s doing a rehearsal, right there, at your farm. Is that true?”

  “Yeah,” Beth says, her heart beating. “He’s rehearsing Of Mice and Men. Right now. He called you a million times.”

  “That’s what Trent said! He said your dad was going to live the play! That sounds so far out. I’d love to come. I was in New York City for the last week. They’re doing all sorts of stuff like that. It’s so exciting! Tell your dad I’m leaving now and I’ll be there by twelve-thirty. This is so cool! Your dad’s a genius, you know?”

  “Yeah,” Beth says.

  “See you soon. Peace!” Melinda hangs up.

  Beth’s hand is shaking as she hangs up the receiver. She knows just what she’s going to do. Nothing. She was told to stay out of the way. So she will.

  Myra’s nervous about the rehearsal and excuses herself from the group of actors to do relaxation exercises, breathing slowly and letting her shoulders sag. It’s so bloody stupid, she thinks. This is a rehearsal of a role she will never get to perform, but her heart takes it seriously: what if she stuns them? What if she has in her a new, mature, intelligent talent she doesn’t even know she possesses? What if she is the best damn Curley’s Wife—Lyla—anyone ever saw and … Stop it! she tells herself. Relax.

  She can hear the actors inside the barn, and she listens for her cue to speak. At this moment, Candy, the oldest ranch hand, is explaining to George and Lennie why Curley was so mean to Lennie, how he’s always looking for a fight. Myra wonders if Curley hits his wife. She doesn’t think so, but they’ve only been married a very short time, and she bets he’s raised his hand more than once. But it’s not being hit that scares Lyla; it’s that this marriage has become the end of something, not the beginning. She feels just as if there is a limited amount of air left to breathe, and it’s nowhere near enough.

  It’s almost Myra’s cue to walk into the barn when she hears Will speak. “Okay, wait. Let’s stop here a minute. Lars, you’re playing it very tense, and that’s right, but you’re pushing it. There’s some serious thinking going on in George’s anger. Show me that thought process. Do you see what I mean? Let’s go back to where Candy exits. And Ben, when George sticks his hands in his pockets, watch him do it, then do the same thing.”

  Myra rolls her head from shoulder to shoulder. She breathes slowly and thinks, please don’t stop again. Please don’t let anything get in the way of my dream. They don’t. She steps into the barn on cue.

  “Hi there. I was wondering … have you seen Curley?” she says. She’s glad Will has given the actors the freedom to improvise the lines. It makes her so much more comfortable. She wonders if Will thought of that, did it for her. She grins, putting herself back into the character of Curley’s Wife. Lyla. Lyla’s not really looking for Curley. She’s just looking for someone to talk to, and she heard there were new ranch hands in the bunkhouse. One’s big and goofy
looking, but the other one’s nice looking. He tells her Curley’s not here.

  “You’re new, right? You just got here, huh?” she says, feeling bold.

  George frowns at her. “So?”

  Lyla tilts her head. “Well, I’m just looking for Curley, that’s all.” She says it too defensively, then shrugs it off.

  George snaps at her. “You see him here?”

  He’s mad at her, but the big guy is staring at her like all get out. She smiles at him. He’s kinda sweet looking. “Okay. He ain’t here. I can see that.”

  “I’ll tell him you were looking for him, if I see him,” George says.

  She turns back to the little guy. “You can’t blame me for looking.”

  He holds her gaze. “Depends on what you’re looking for.”

  He’s so mean. All she wants is someone to be nice to her. Just talk to her for a minute. From outside the bunkhouse, she hears Slim yell to someone to put the horse in a stall. Then Slim comes into the barn and looks at her disapprovingly. Lyla feels her face get hot.

  “Curley’s up at the house,” he says to her.

  “Oh! I gotta go.” Curley won’t like it if she’s not in the house. “Bye!” She turns and runs out of the bunkhouse.

  Her heart is still beating hard, but she loved it! Five minutes, and she feels like a new person. She’ll have to tell Will it was a good idea, having the rehearsal here.

  During lunch—tuna sandwiches and chips, not Norton’s idea of a satisfying meal (he wishes he’d added ripe pineapples to the “to get” list)—everyone is talking about how well the rehearsal went, and it certainly did, but something is not quite right. It’s the daughter, Beth. She’s uncommonly quiet and polite, staying out of the way, bringing out the platter of sandwiches then going back inside, not eating with the rest of them. Norton, sitting next to Greg Henry (whom Norton thinks is turning out to be quite a pleasant fellow), was expecting the child to wedge her way in between them and monopolize the conversation, but all she did was ask if anyone needed anything else, then disappear.