The Rehearsal

by Sarah Willis

  Norton has to understand what has been said. He hasn’t been turned down. It’s the situation. Maybe in a different place? “I understand. I guess it’s just that suddenly I have found the temerity to ask, and I’m afraid if I don’t do something right now, I might not ever. But I do understand, although I don’t think anyone would walk in. Still, if you’re agreeable to consider another time. Is it possible you might? But couldn’t we maybe, just a bit—something?”

  Greg shakes his head, but he’s smiling. “You’re making me blush, man. I can’t resist a come-on like this. But Norton, I’ll break your heart. I never said that to anyone before, and it goes to show I respect you, but I’m not in this for the long run. It’s me. It’s just the way I am. If you can handle that—”

  “I don’t have a clue. But I’m willing to find out. Thank you.”

  “Well.” Greg shrugs.

  They both just sit there.

  “Could I kiss you?” Norton says. “Would you kiss me? I could get up then. I could go wash out this bowl.”

  “Sure, Norton,” Greg says. “That’s cool.”

  Norton leans over, expecting Greg to just sit there, to let himself be kissed, but then Greg moves toward Norton, putting a hand on his shoulder. They meet together, in the middle.

  “Yes,” Will says. “I’m not disagreeing with that, but Artaud’s ideas wouldn’t play in America. Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty, no matter how you define it, is simply too bizarre for people in this country to accept. No one would come as soon as word of mouth got out that it made people uncomfortable.”

  Will paces back and forth across the length of the bed. Melinda sits on it cross-legged, leaning forward on her elbows. He knows he’s waving his arms around like a madman in this small room—he’s already hit the bureau on the upswing twice and can feel the bruise growing on the back of his hand—but he can’t help it. Melinda’s got him all worked up. She’s too bright to dismiss. She’s making him sweat.

  “They came to see Godot,” she says simply.

  “But that’s only a step in the direction you’re talking about, Melinda. You’re talking about performing plays without scripts, with shouts and cries and music and motion. It will confuse an audience. It will offend them.”

  “Artaud is not saying no scripts, but to move beyond our dependence on simple literary translations. Theatre is more than words, it is movement and cries and shouts, but we’re afraid to go there, yet Greek theatre, which we admire, is closer to the New Theatre than what we have right now. The time for our dependence on realism is at an end. Why are you afraid?”

  “People just won’t get it.”

  “No, Will, your generation won’t. Give us a chance.”

  Will’s about to explain what there is about the classics that her generation should look to, when he hears a scream. Beth’s scream.

  “Oh, my, god! Oh, my, god!” There’s a thud in the hallway outside the door, something heavy falling on the wood floor. Not a body, not that kind of thud. Will thinks of the prop gun. It would make exactly that sound. He opens the bedroom door to see Beth running down the steps and a camera on the hallway floor. As he runs after her, Will notices Greg and Norton standing in Beth’s room. He has a pretty good idea what might have made Beth scream. He’s angry at Greg and Norton, but just as annoyed at Beth for causing such a commotion. He shouts her name as he chases her. She’s screaming obscenities. Where has she learned such language? He’ll ground her for a year, after he catches her.

  Beth spots the keys to the car on the kitchen counter, lying right there, like a ticket. She’s got a ticket to ride, she hears in her head, but turns it off. Songs are her mother’s thing. Not hers. Beth will never sing another damn song in her life! She grabs the keys and keeps running. She can’t believe it. Greg Henry and Norton Frye! She tries to tell herself maybe they were rehearsing some weird play, but even her confused mind isn’t buying that. Bells go off in her head. Huge loud bells, badly tuned. She has to get away. She has to get away from here. “Damn them,” she shouts. “Damn them!” With each shout she’s spitting out the images of Greg and Norton, of her mother and Ben. It’s a lot to get rid of. She would vomit, but it would hold her back. She tells herself she can vomit all she wants along the roadside somewhere. First, she has to get out of here.

  Her father runs out of the house, yelling her name. Beth thinks she’ll change her name, once she gets away. She can’t stand the sound of it anymore. Greg Henry and Norton Frye stumble out of the house. Others emerge from the barn. The actors must have known about Greg and Norton. Everyone knew but her. They must have had a pretty good laugh watching her eye Greg. They must have talked about her in the barn at night. That poor, stupid girl. Beth opens the car door and yells, “Fuck all of you!” then jumps into the driver’s seat and slams the door. She’s causing a scene. The idea makes her laugh, a bark that sounds like it came from someone else. She’s in a scene! Finally! How am I doing, Daddy? Pretty damn good, huh?

  Beth has the foresight to lock the doors before doing anything else. By the time she has crawled back behind the wheel, her father is outside the car. The windows are already rolled up. She’s going to drive away and never see any of these people again. As her father bangs on the window, she starts the car.

  Victor Peters is trying to say something through the window on the passenger side. Inanely, Beth waves to him, and steps on the gas. The car jerks and takes off, slaying pebbles under the tires. Glancing in the rearview mirror, Beth sees her father running behind the car, yelling at her. Beth turns away, driving as fast as she can down the lane that will lead her to someplace where love isn’t as fucked up as it is here. It’s hard to see clearly because her eyes are full of tears, but she can’t stop to wipe them away. She blinks, then yells, “Oh, shit!” Shakes is sitting in the center of the lane, looking the other way. She swerves to the right, just in time to miss Shakes, but now she sees Mac, straight ahead of her, standing in the ditch. What? she thinks. What is he doing there? She yanks the steering wheel the other way. Much too hard. She can’t see Shakes. She must have run right over him. The car goes off the left side of the drive as she hits the brakes. It nosedives into the ditch, and she smacks her head on the steering wheel. When the car comes to a stop, it’s angled across the lane, the front tires stuck in the ditch and her father only a few steps from her window. He kicks the door. “Roll down that window. Roll down that goddamn window right now!”

  Beth doesn’t know what else to do, so she rolls it down. She’s so scared that she’s killed the dog, and damaged the car, that it takes a second to realize that now she can’t get away, and all the people who thought she was stupid are standing in the lane watching her, thinking she is stupid and a really bad driver. She’s not stupid. She just liked Greg Henry. And she wants to be an actress, and she doesn’t want her mom to be screwing her dad’s best friend. Or anyone! And she wants her dad to love her, and …

  He reaches into the window and grabs her upper arm, squeezing it so hard she can’t move. She wants to collapse, fold up, disappear. Her forehead hurts, but her father’s grip on her arm hurts more.

  He turns to Melinda, who’s cradling Shakes in her arms. “Goddamn it! Is the dog dead?” he says. “Did she kill the dog?” Beth breathes through her mouth. She’s too afraid to cry out. She closes her eyes against the pain.

  “The dog is fine,” Beth hears Melinda say. “Just fine.”

  “Well, thank God for small favors,” Beth’s father says. Then he pulls her arm, and her eyes open. “Get out of the car,” he says. He steps back to allow her room to open the door, but not far enough. Maybe the door won’t open, Beth thinks. But it does. She gets out and closes it gently behind her, like an apology.

  “Jesus Christ, Beth,” her father says, his face contorted, actually twisted with anger. “What the hell were you doing? You could have killed your brother, or the dog. What the hell were you thinking?”

  That no one loves me, she thinks. “It’s not my fault,” she says
.

  “Who the hell’s fault is it?” he yells.

  He hates her. She can see it in his eyes. But he should love her. She’s been loyal to him all along. She can prove it—and get herself out of trouble.

  “It’s Mom’s fault! She was screwing Ben Walton in the woods! I took their picture. Just get the film developed if you don’t believe me!” She wishes right away she hadn’t said it, and her hand covers her mouth. She wants to tell him she didn’t mean it, but she can’t. She’s shaking so badly, she can’t speak. What did I do? she thinks. She doesn’t want him to know. Her father looks at her as if she hit him.

  This will change everything.

  Will doesn’t believe what he’s heard. How could his daughter say such a thing? Then, just as something in his gut begins to answer, he sees Myra and Ben running across the yard, coming from the field, not the house, not from somewhere they could have been doing the dishes. Ben slows, stopping well behind all the actors, who have run down the lane but now stand about looking embarrassed by what they have witnessed. They all watch as Myra runs up to the car. Will thinks, The actors are now the audience. He’s queasy. Everything is wrong.

  “Are you hurt?” Myra asks Beth, reaching out to touch her cheek. Beth, whose forehead now has a pink lump the size of a walnut, jerks away from her mother’s touch, and in that one motion, Will knows that Beth has told the truth.

  There’s movement now from the actors, who silently turn and walk away, each one separately, as if they are afraid of being too close to one another. Melinda carries Shakes. Nate speaks to Mac in a low tone, and with his arm around Will’s son, he leads Mac away. They pass Ben, who just stands there, where he is, as if it doesn’t matter where he goes now, as if there is nowhere he can go. Unable to help himself, Will realizes the blocking is spectacular. His stomach turns and he’s afraid he will be sick, but then that feeling goes away and he feels nothing. His anger at Beth is all gone, and anger at Myra hasn’t come. He has been other people in his life, characters that have been betrayed by their wives, and he has imagined their rage, their pain, but never this complete emptiness. He raises his hands which were lying limply at his side, and looks at them as if he has never seen them before. He can’t shake the feeling that this is not really happening to him.

  He looks up at Ben, who still stands there—it has been only a minute since Myra asked if Beth was hurt, although that’s just as impossible as everything else—and he catches Ben’s eyes for a brief moment before Ben looks back down at the ground. It’s the last time I’ll look in his eyes, Will thinks, and it’s a loss he thinks he can’t bear.

  The reality he was searching for has struck him in the face and left him blind.

  Myra saw the accident. She saw the car swerve toward Mac, then veer away and plow into the ditch. All this as she ran across the field. She shouted, but there were other cries, and no one heard her, except Ben.

  As the car careened toward Mac, she imagined the impact, felt her heart stop. Then she heard, in a split-second, the snap of her daughter’s neck. Myra is so relieved her children are not hurt that she thinks everything is all right. But with relief comes room to remember the rest: her love for Ben almost killed her children.

  Beth must have told Will what happened. Why else would the actors walk away like that? Why else would Will not look at her? Couldn’t Beth have kept her mouth shut? It’s an awful thought, but she can’t help it.

  “What am I supposed to do?” Will asks, looking at the car. “What am I supposed to do?”

  Pretend it never happened, Myra thinks. She pretended he didn’t have an affair. Why can’t he pretend she didn’t?

  Because the car is in the ditch, and everyone knows what she has done.

  “I don’t know,” she says.

  “I can’t talk to you right now, Myra,” Will says. “You might want to go somewhere.”

  “Where?”

  “Away. Just away. I have to get the car out of the ditch. I have to go back into the house and ask those people to help me. I can’t look at you right now. Do you mind?”

  Myra can’t breathe from the hurt in her chest. “I’ll go to our room” she says. “I’ll wait for you.” She won’t leave this place. There are things she has to say. Nothing that she can think of right now, but she won’t walk away from her family.

  “All right,” Will says. “Fine. But tell Ben to leave. Will you do that?” There is an absence of all feeling in his voice, and Myra knows exactly how badly she has hurt him. She knows him so well. He must know her too. Why didn’t he see what was happening to her? Why didn’t he stop her?

  “Yes,” she says. She’s ready right now, after almost losing her son, and possibly her marriage, to forget Ben completely. But even as she thinks that, she can feel Ben’s hand cup her breast. Bile runs up her throat like a live thing trying to escape. She wants to ask, once again, if Beth’s okay, if she has been hurt by the accident, but she can’t; she has lost that place in her daughter’s life.

  Ben knows Myra is walking toward him, even though he’s still looking at the ground. He thinks he should stay and say something to Will, but he can’t, and he can’t walk away and not say something. So he waits. If he could move backward in time, that’s what he’d do. Other than that, there are no choices he can see.

  “He says you should leave,” Myra says quietly, passing him.

  “Okay,” he agrees. He’s relieved to know what to do, and to not have to face Will. Although he wants to defend himself. He wants Will to hit him. He wants Will to forgive him. And he still wants Myra.

  Ben turns away and goes to the barn. Victor Peters is inside, with Chip and Melinda. They have been talking but stop when he comes in. They avoid looking his way. He is packed in a few minutes. His toothbrush and razor are in the house, but he won’t go and get them. Myra will throw them away. Myra. How could he have done this to her? Give me another chance, he thinks. He wants to rewrite the whole week. He’s ashamed even by that thought, because given the chance, he’d fall in love with her all over again. I wouldn’t let her know, he tells himself. The thought doesn’t give him the solace he had hoped for.

  When he walks out of the barn, he realizes the station wagon is blocking the drive. He can’t go back in the barn. He can’t go in the house. Ben sits in his car and waits to leave.

  He has failed terribly. Failed Will. Failed Myra. And himself. He will go home and pack up. He’s going to move to New York City, where the disappointments are expected. He should be able to get some parts. He’s a decent actor. Shit for a friend and a lover, but a good actor.

  One minute he was bending over to wash off a pebble, and the next, everyone was screaming and Beth was driving the car right at him. He was pretty sure he was going to be dead, but the car turned away from him and ran over the dog and into the ditch. Nate came up and put his arm around Mac’s shoulder, and Mac was real glad Nate was there, ’cause he had been pretty scared. Mac isn’t exactly sure what happened, but he thinks his mom did something bad, even though it was Beth who messed up the car. His dad looks angry and sad. His mom just looks sad.

  “Come on, kid,” Nate says, turning Mac with a bit of pressure on his shoulder as they head up the lane.

  “What happened, Mr. Johnson?” Mac asks. He doesn’t call him Nate, mostly because he’s worried about so much right now, it doesn’t seem right. The way his mom and dad were looking at each other, it was like somebody had died.

  “Not sure, Mac,” Nate says. “But it’s not our business. Not right now, and we ought to stay away, okay? Give them some time to figure it out themselves. Didn’t you tell me about catching crayfish in the creek? I never even saw a crayfish in my life. Think you could show me one?”

  “Well, I think so,” Mac says.

  “Good. Then let’s go do that.”

  “Well, okay,” Mac says. His chest moves in and out as he breathes, as if his lungs were taking in more air than they usually do, and his heart beats right there in his chest, hard and flutter
y. It’s like when he’s looking for spiders and sure he’s going to find one. The bad thing, though, is that what makes him feel this way now is thinking about his mom and dad.

  They cross the backyard and head through the field to the creek. “How come you never saw a crayfish before?” Mac asks.

  “Because no one ever showed me how to find one,” Nate says. “But you will, right?”

  “Sure. It’s not too hard.”

  “That’s easy for you to say. You can do a lot of things I can’t.”

  Mac looks up to see if Nate is joking, but his face is soft and thoughtful, and Mac can tell he’s not kidding.

  “What did you do when you were a kid?”

  “Oh, nothing much. I lived in an apartment in the city. Played marbles and stickball, that kind of stuff.”

  “I don’t know how to play marbles,” Mac says.

  “I’ll teach you sometime.”

  Mac can tell, just by the slow, careful way they’re talking, that they are talking about marbles so they won’t be talking about what just happened. Mac kind of wants to know what just happened, and he kind of doesn’t.

  They bend down to walk under the apple trees near the creek. “This is the place where they sleep under the rocks, Nate,” Mac says, glad he remembered to call him Nate. They are both quiet for a minute, just listening to the sound of running water. There are different shades of green all around them, and some browns. The soft colors make it easier to breathe, and Mac can’t feel his heart doing that fluttery thing anymore.

  “I don’t see any crayfish, Mac.”

  “They’re hiding,” Mac says.

  “I used to do that too,” Nate says, rubbing a hand through Mac’s hair. “So let’s find them.”

  Slowly, Mac moves a hand out over the water, holding it there so the crayfish will think it’s just a shadow of a leaf. Then he reaches down quickly and flips over a piece of shale. A crayfish scuttles backward in a puff of muddy water.