by P. D. Cacek
Four lines, three sentences, and not one asking Ryan to forgive him.
“Jesus.”
Ryan put the envelope with Jamie’s brief suicide note into the back pocket of his jeans, which seemed fitting, and walked out of the room. Aryeh was waiting for him in the dining room entrance. There was no one else around, but Ryan could hear voices and the rattling of pots coming from the kitchen at the back of the house.
“Thanks,” Ryan said, walking to the front door. “Place is all yours.”
“I am sorry for your loss,” Aryeh called after him.
Ryan pulled the heavy door open and felt the cloying dampness in the night air against his face.
“Tell me,” he asked without turning around, “is suicide a sin with your people?”
“‘Thou shalt not kill.’ It is a sin because it denies the divine gift of life and is in defiance of a man’s allotted time.”
“Right.”
“But did not He also give man free will?” Ryan turned around. “And who of us knows what our allotted time is?”
Ryan was getting tired of the man answering a question with a question – time to bring out the big gun.
“Okay, how about this one? Doesn’t the Bible, sorry the Talmud, say it’s a sin, an averah for a man to lie with another man?”
Aryeh shrugged. “You mean, maybe, the Torah?”
“Jesus.” Ryan rubbed the heels of his hands against his eyes and when he stopped and blinked, Aryeh didn’t look anything like Jamie anymore.
“Look, semantics aside, you know what we were, what I am, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Then, according to your faith, do you think Jamie’s burning in hell right now because of it?”
Aryeh sat back in the wheelchair and placed his elbows on the armrests, lifting his clasped hands toward his chest.
“My faith teaches many things, but I am not a rabbi or a learned man. I am a man out of his place in the world and for some that would be a sin too, no?” He looked up at Ryan. “Should I then say what is a sin against another man? No, I cannot judge, but, from the things I have heard on the television maybe if one loves and is loved, regardless of who it is, how can that be wrong?”
It took Ryan a minute, but then he chuckled. “Well, there are a lot of other people who’ll be more than happy to explain that to you.”
“Yes, maybe, but do I have to listen?”
“No, you don’t.”
Ryan reached into his jacket pocket and held out the folded sheets of paper Dr. Ellison had given him. A part of him wondered if he would have done that if the man’s last answers had been different, but it didn’t matter. It was the right thing to do.
“Vos iz?” Aryeh squinted at the three-page list of names, addresses and phone numbers, turning them toward the energy-saving porch light.
“They’re your descendants,” Ryan said. “Grandchildren and great-great-great…however many grandchildren. The ones on the first page, in bold, are members of your family living nearby.”
Ryan saw tears form in the eyes that weren’t Jamie’s and quickly looked away, nodding at the pages.
“The first one is the closest. A dentist. Name’s Joel Rosowsky and he’s out in Norwalk…that’s not that far away.”
“Rosowsky?”
Ryan nodded and backed to the divided front steps: stairs to the left, ramp to the right, handrail in the middle. He stepped down, holding the rail for support.
“Your daughter Esther’s family.” He took another step down. “The number’s there, if you want to call and connect, although I don’t know what you’ll tell him. Good luck. Okay, I better be going.”
“Thank you, Ryan.”
Ryan nodded as he turned and hurried down the rest of the stairs. He didn’t turn around again until he was at the sidewalk. Aryeh was still holding the pages in a death grip, but he looked up and smiled.
“Goodbye, Ryan…I wish you peace.”
“Shalom, Aryeh,” Ryan waved and turned away.
Goodbye, Jamie.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Crissy
“And…lights out! Great. Okay, everyone on stage for notes.”
There were sounds of yawning and stretching as the cast gathered up their scripts and pencils and started moving toward the stage.
Because it was only a rehearsal, the members of the cast who hadn’t been in the scene had taken seats in the house instead of waiting in the wings or downstairs in the basement’s combination greenroom/costume/prop storage/dressing rooms. Most of the cast complained about the cramped quarters and poor lighting, but it seemed to Crissy that they were always complaining about one thing or another and she couldn’t understand why.
Okay, so it was only a reconverted warehouse at the end of a strip mall in Long Beach – so what? It had a stage and lights and a sound booth and a box office and people paid money to see the shows they put on.
It was a real theater and she was part of it.
Maybe not in a major part…not yet…but that would come.
“Come on, people, on stage.” The director, George, a retired electrical engineer, clapped his hands together. “Hustle, hustle.”
“Hustlin’ here, boss,” Kevin, the high school senior who was playing young Ebenezer Scrooge, shouted and lifted himself, one-armed, onto the stage.
Someone applauded, someone else groaned.
When everyone was finally settled – Crissy found a spot and sat along the edge of the stage, legs dangling, pencil poised – George cleared his throat and picked up his notebook.
“First, let me say that you’re all doing a fine job, but let’s keep at those lines, people. I’d love to have full memorization by next week.”
More groans filled the air, but not from her. She’d already memorized her lines and George knew that. She’d always been a fast study, she told him, and he told her how much he appreciated it and how he wished all his actors could be more like her when it came to learning their lines.
Mr. Byrd used to tell her the same thing.
George began with notes to the various kids in the play so they, and their stage mothers, could leave first. Crissy rubbed the back of her neck and tried not to yawn – getting notes always felt like such a waste of time. She knew her lines, she knew her blocking, and she’d seen A Christmas Carol every year on TV since she was a kid, so what could he say that she really needed to know?
Fifteen minutes later, she found out.
“Okay…Mrs. Cratchit – Helen.”
Crissy poised her pencil over her script…for show.
“First, let me say that you almost had me in tears during the Christmas Future scene when Bob is talking about Tiny Tim. The look of loss on your face is perfect… keep doing that.”
There were mutters of agreement and some applause. Crissy hid her face against the teenage girl playing the Ghost of Christmas Past. The girl laughed and patted her shoulder.
“Aww, shucks, sir,” Crissy said as she sat up, “it t’weren’t nothin’.”
George smiled. “Well, nothin’ is somethin’ here. But, aside from that, you’re still playing Mrs. Cratchit too young.”
Crissy felt the blush start just below her eyes.
“I know you have a lot of vitality and energy,” George continued, “but remember…this is a woman of the late nineteenth century who’s overworked and over-worried and has had too many children, one of which she knows is going to die. She’s worn out, both mentally and physically, and you’re playing her like a high school cheerleader.”
The cast laughed and Crissy wanted to crawl into a deep hole and die.
Again.
“Not that energy on stage is a bad thing, people, but get inside your character and act accordingly. Helen?” Crissy looked up. “Just play your age and you’ll be fine.”
Crissy nodded and scribbled TOO YOUNG!!!!! in her script as George went on to the next set of notes.
Just play her age? What did he think she was doing? But he was right; she was still acting too young on stage and off.
The trouble was that she didn’t know how to act like a forty-two-year-old woman and make it look real. Being on stage and pretending to be an adult for a couple of hours was okay, but real life didn’t have scripts or a director to tell you what you were doing wrong.
Real life sucked.
The only good things about it so far were Frank and having gotten to see Mr. Miles Byrd on stage.
The theater was a little black-box set-up that had eighty seats, of which only twelve were occupied the night they went. The set was minimal, the lightning almost nonexistent, and the costumes provided by the actors themselves.
Crissy recognized the blue-knit vest Mr. Byrd wore throughout the play, although it was much more shapeless and moth-eaten than she remembered it back in high school. He called it his ‘vest of leadership’ and wore it to every rehearsal, even in the summer…and she would have recognized it anywhere, which was good, because she wouldn’t have known the stumbling, wheezing, overacting old man on stage was Mr. Byrd without it.
He was awful.
Fortunately Frank hadn’t asked her what she thought of the performance, so she didn’t have to tell the truth. But it did give her a renewed sense of confidence – Christ, if Miles Byrd could get parts, she’d be a shoo-in.
Crissy checked every online audition notice within the Greater L.A./San Fernando Valley area and circled the ones she knew she could get. When Frank, her self-appointed chauffeur, wasn’t available, she bummed rides with Kate or one of ‘Helen’s’ other friends – all of whom had accepted Dr. Stanton’s explanation about her temporary inability to drive.
“It’s the stroke, you see. Helen will have to learn to drive all over again, just like when she was sixteen.”
Right.
She’d auditioned for five shows at five theaters, giving great auditions, in her opinion, but wasn’t called back before landing the role of Mrs. Cratchit.
Which she was still playing ‘too young’.
George closed his notebook and looked up.
“Okay, gang, that’s all the notes for tonight. This is a build weekend, so I hope to be seeing as many of you as can make it here Saturday at ten. If not…I know I’ll be seeing all of you at Sunday’s rehearsal. Call’s a half hour earlier than usual for head shots. Ladies, go easy on the makeup. Gentlemen, please shave unless your character has a beard. Dark colors work best and avoid prints. What else? Oh, right – bios. ASAP people or I’ll write one for you…and I promise it won’t be pretty.” He waited until the laughter died down. “Remember, we open on December fifth and that’s only six weeks away so study, study, study those lines. Thank you all, good work and good night.”
There was a dutiful round of applause and the company left the stage, stopping to collect sweaters and coats and purses before heading out into the damp autumn night.
Crissy tossed her script into her large carryall bag and grabbed her coat off the back of a chair but didn’t put it on. It wasn’t particularly warm in the theater, not compared to what it’d been under the stage lights, but she felt hot and prickly and irritated.
Not that anyone seemed to notice.
Back in high school, everyone, including Mr. Miles Byrd, would have seen how irritated she was and come over to ask if there was anything they could do.
But not here.
Crissy had gone out of her way to get to know most of the cast and they were okay, but most of them had worked with each other in other productions at other theaters and she was the ‘new girl on the block’…in old girl’s clothing. To the cast members she felt most drawn to, the high school kids like herself, she was just another middle-aged nonentity. To the women ‘Helen’s’ age, most of whom had been knocking around the L.A. Basin Theater Scene since they’d been ingénues, she was an interloper with talent – a dangerous combination. To the wives of the mature actors, she was single and therefore desperate. And to the unmarried/divorced actors in the production…?
She didn’t want to know what they thought of her.
“Hey, Helen?”
Speak of the devil.
Crissy pulled her carryall onto one shoulder and turned around to find Arthur Ford, the man playing Bob Cratchit, smiling at her. Tall, pale and skeletal, with crinkly red hair and pug-bulgy brown eyes, he doubled as the Ghost of Christmas Future and was a mortician in real life. ‘Art imitating life’ was one of his catchphrases and he always expected people to laugh at it.
It was all Crissy could do not to grimace every time he took her hand on stage.
Arthur Ford was going through an emotionally wrenching divorce from his wife of twenty-two years and made sure that every woman in the cast – especially Crissy – was aware of the pain and loneliness he was suffering.
Crissy tightened the grip on her bag and started sidestepping toward the door.
“Hey, Art…what’s up?”
“First, I just wanted to add to what George said – you were great…are great. Really. Do you want to know how I got my voice so low when I was doing the speech about Tiny Tim? It’s because I looked over at you and saw your face…you had tears in your eyes. Man, that just blew me away and I got this lump in my throat and could barely talk. It was great…I mean you were.”
Crissy kept moving toward the exit. “Thanks.”
“But I don’t agree with George about you needing to act older.”
She stopped. “Really?”
“No. I don’t see why Mrs. Cratchit can’t be a vibrant, you know, outgoing woman who giggles.”
“I…giggle? When?”
“Huh? Oh, when, you know, Martha comes in and tells you about her day and stuff.”
“I giggle.”
“Yeah, and I think it’s cute. I’ve never seen it done before but I think it adds a whole new dimension to the character.”
Crissy shook her head. She had no idea she giggled.
“Hey, Helen…I was just wondering if you needed a ride home? It’s still early and we could, you know, maybe stop for a drink or something on the way if you’re not too tired.”
“Huh? Oh, thanks, but—”
Arthur Ford backed up two steps and nodded. “Right, your boyfriend always picks you up.”
My boyfriend?
“And that’s really cool. But, hey, if it doesn’t work out, I’m available.” He laughed like it was just a joke. “Seriously though, if you’d ever like to get together to run lines and maybe work on, you know, your delivery, I can do that too.”
He gave her a knowing wink and walked away to ask the light and sound tech – a girl half his age – if she needed a ride home.
Crissy left the theater shaking her head.
“Hey, Helen…over here.”
Frank was parked in his usual spot in the handicap space directly in front of the stage door exit, leaning against the car’s front bumper. He waved and the drops of mist on his coat sleeve glistened under the theater’s security lights.
“It’s raining, you know, put your coat on.”
Crissy glared up at him. “Don’t tell me what to do. I’m fine!”
“Okay.” He stepped back and opened the passenger door for her. “How was rehearsal?”
“Fine,” she said and got in. “You going to keep that open all night? Close it.”
Crissy bunched the coat in her lap and slumped against the seat as he closed the door and walked around to the driver’s side.
“Seat belt,” he said as he got in and started the engine. “You okay?”
“Fine. Why do you always have to park in the handicapped spot? You shouldn’t do that and I know where you are, so you don’t have to shout like I
’m deaf or anything.”
Frank backed the car up slowly then gently put it in drive. “Okay, what happened?”
“Nothing happened. It’s just that you’re not supposed to park there. It’s for handicapped people and you’re not handicapped.”
“No, but I thought it’d be easier for you to—”
“I’m not handicapped! How dare you say something like that?”
Frank eased the car onto Alamitos Avenue. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that you’re—”
“Well, I’m not! And when are you going to teach me to drive? You said you were going to teach me to drive so you don’t have to keep picking me up.”
“I like picking you up.”
“Well…I just want to be able to drive myself places, that’s all.”
Frank nodded and turned on the windshield wipers. It was raining harder now and for a moment the only sounds that filled the car were the soft patter of rain and the swish-swish-click of the wipers. Frank didn’t like to have music on when he drove; he said it distracted him.
He was still a dweeb.
“Well, when are you?”
“When am I what?”
SIGH. “Going to teach me to drive?”
A light caught them on Seventh.
“Crissy, we’ve already talked about this.”
Maybe it was the way he said it or the pitch of his voice or something, but Crissy felt her face get hot. It was the rotted cherry on the puke sundae that had been her too young, giggling night.
“You’re not my father!”
“What? Crissy, I never said I was.”
“Then stop acting like it. You can’t tell me what to do!”
He took a deep breath and Crissy saw his hands tighten on the steering wheel as they passed a street lamp.
“No, but as your doctor I can….”
“Lie to me and think I’ll believe it?”
“What? Hold on a minute, okay?”
Flipping on the turn signal, Frank cranked the wheel hard right and cut in between a van and pickup truck. Crissy’s yelp was joined by the blare of horns that continued long after Frank pulled the car into an empty space in the Vagabond Inn’s parking lot.