As I drove close to Wellington Avenue where the social hall was, parked cars crowded both sides of the street. I didn’t think that could possibly have any connection with the play. It was Wednesday night, and many churches held services then. There’d be a large group of worshippers in the sanctuary and then a small cluster of family members supporting the kids in their performance in the hall.
The church’s parking lot was full, so I turned the Miata around. An open spot didn’t come into view until I was more than two blocks away. I parked gratefully under a huge, spreading cedar elm that was stubbornly hanging on to a few of its leaves, and then I started walking back toward the church.
Perspiration prickled the back of my neck, but not because of the weather. It wasn’t that warm, even if the night had turned unexpectedly balmy with the back-and-forth typical of weather in west Texas. Next week it might snow, but tonight the kids could have hosted the play outdoors without much problem.
No, I’d broken out in a sweat because Kevin was going to be at this performance. I was as nervous as a bridegroom and with far more cause. After six days of mourning and drinking and finally grappling with my memories, I still didn’t know how much I could give him. As much as he’d asked for? In my isolated house, I couldn’t imagine it. But being with Kevin had always changed things for me, and after each of our times together, I’d moved further along the path that brought me closer to him.
I shook my head and walked around a bushy, six-foot-tall pampas grass plant that had overflowed its landscape box. I needed to see Kevin and talk with him, of that I was sure. I owed him that. I’d dumped the sorry story of my life on him, shoved him out the door, and since then refused to answer his calls. Even I thought that was churlish. But Kevin had last called on Monday morning; maybe he’d changed his mind, and my desperate search for courage tonight would go for nothing. He’d ridiculed me Thursday night when he’d mocked how I’d insisted on leaving town for our dates. His patience had worn thin, and maybe it was still thin. I couldn’t blame him. God, who would want to take up with a weak sister like me? All I’d accomplished over the past years had been securing my own safety. That wasn’t much to offer a man like Kevin.
As I crossed the street, I reminded myself that he’d also said he loved me. The exact way he’d said it played through my mind—“Damn it, Tom, I love you. Listen to me, please”—and a sense of wonder tingled across my shoulders and down my arms. Even my bad arm felt the force of Kevin’s words. He was the kind of man who meant what he said.
For the first time since I’d willfully resurrected the rape, I’d awakened this morning not obsessing about Sean but longing to see Kevin instead. Nothing had changed since then.
The social hall was on a little side street that could have appeared on a postcard for the town with its neatly trimmed bushes, edged walkways, and freshly painted walls. A small steeple announced the hall’s affiliation with the church, and a few steps led up to the entrance. I paused and wiped my hands on my pants. There was a lot of noise coming through the double open doors. Voices rose and fell, but there was only one I wanted to hear.
Here goes.
The room was packed. Tightly spaced rows of folding chairs took up most of the hall; the fire marshal would not have been pleased to see all the people milling in the aisles. At least twice the number of people than had attended the board meeting crowded the room, far more than families of the cast alone could account for. The kids, peeking out from wherever they were waiting, had to be beside themselves with excitement.
But my heart sank. Maybe I wouldn’t be able to find Kevin in this mess after all.
“Tom! Hey, Tom, over here!”
George was calling me. I scanned the room from where I’d entered from the side and finally saw his unmistakably beefy hand waving at me from the first row.
“Tom!”
“I see you!” I hollered, but I didn’t know if he heard.
I began to make my way to him. It was slow going. Half the people there seemed to know me, but that wasn’t surprising for a teacher who’d stayed with the school as long as I had. I endured pats on the back, acknowledged introductions—“Hey, Mom, this is Mr. Smith, my history teacher”—and fielded questions—“Do you know what play Mr. Keating has decided on for the spring?”—all the while searching for an athletic, dark-haired man.
As I got closer to George, I was able to see how the performance area at the front of the hall was set off by masking tape that defined a large rectangle, maybe twenty-five feet by fifteen. It was backed up by what appeared to be a typical church-hall kitchen with a long serving counter. The kitchen was blocked from view, though, by what looked like simple white bed sheets hanging down over the pass-throughs. That was the closest to our auditorium back at school that the kids were going to get: a makeshift curtain. The space certainly wasn’t ideal for putting on the play.
I came at last to where George and his wife Jenny were standing. George looked like he was about to burst, like a proud father who’d been handing out cigars for the birth of twins.
“Can you believe this?” he asked me with a grin.
“There must be three hundred people here at least.”
“I stopped counting at three hundred and fifty-seven,” Jenny said. “There’s probably a hundred more than that. This is wonderful. I’m so proud of you, George.”
She clutched his arm and beamed at him, and then she turned his cheek so she could give him a quick kiss.
“It’s not me,” he said. “Just wait until you see—”
“Oh, start taking credit where credit is due. All these people,” her arm swept to encompass the hall, “they’re vindicating your choice of Rent. Enjoy it, George.”
George looked at me and spread his hands. “What can you do with a woman like this?”
“Be glad you married her,” I told him. “Listen, I’m going to try to find a seat. I’ll see you at—”
“Oh, no, you don’t,” George said. “We saved one for you. You’re right over there next to Kevin.”
My mouth went dry as George gestured over his shoulder, to the rest of the row that he and Jenny had blocked from my view. Kevin was sitting there, looking at me with all his concentrated attention, and next to him was my seat.
Jenny gave me a little shove; she was as excited as her husband. “Go on, get going, it’s only five minutes to curtain.”
“They’ll be late,” George predicted. “Besides, we need to pack everybody in here that we can. I’ll go tell the kids to hold off a while. They probably don’t know about things like that.”
He hurried off, Jenny sat down, and Kevin’s gaze reeled me in. One moment I was with Jenny and the next I was settling in next to him, unaccountably unable to meet his eyes. We were too close, and I felt too much. I struggled to find the right thing to say.
I was saved by the man sitting on my other side. He held out his hand. “Sandy Patterson. I’m Marie’s father.”
I shook with him. “Pleased to meet you. I’m Tom Smith.”
He nodded and then looked away, giving the impression of a man who’d said all he needed to say. Exactly the opposite of me.
“Hey,” Kevin said.
“Hey.” I glanced over at him and then away.
“Here’s a program.” He thrust it into my field of vision. “Layne was giving them out a little while ago, so I got you one before they ran out.”
I took it but didn’t even pretend to be interested in it. “Thanks.” We were surrounded by parent volunteers. Anything we said would be overheard; any move I made would be observed.
His knee so close to mine filled my vision. He was wearing that sharp black suit I’d seen him in before, which worked with his fair coloring and dark hair. A slight imperfection in the fabric caught my eye, a nub on the outside of his left thigh. Under other circumstances—those weekends that had changed everything—I would have run my thumb over it and felt the solid strength of the man beneath. I still wanted to. Kevin was the sexiest
man I’d ever gone to bed with. I could be happy making love with him for years and years to come. His masculine, finely controlled body, the way he looked at me, the way I was happy when I was with him…. Even though he hadn’t told me Channing knew he was gay. Even though my situation at school was difficult. Even though Sean had crippled me both inside and out. None of that changed how my body responded to him. How my heart responded to him.
I shifted uncomfortably against the hard metal of the chair. How to get from here to there when so much was in between, and when I wasn’t even sure where there was? “Uh…. How long have you been here?”
“I brought Channing, so I got here pretty early,” Kevin said. “I wanted to get a good seat, so that was okay. But I was beginning to worry that you wouldn’t make it.”
“I wouldn’t have missed this. I had to be here.”
“Good,” he said, and his voice was low and warm for all its habitual scratchiness. “I’d hoped you would. Did you see that your principal is here?”
“Hiram? You’re kidding.”
“No, I’m not. And you’ll never guess who he’s with. Mayfield.”
“The president of the board?”
“None other.”
I shook my head. It felt like an awkward gesture, staged and artificial. “That is strange. I don’t understand it.”
“The world’s a crazy place, that’s for sure.”
“Yeah.” I shifted forward so I was leaning with my forearms on my knees, my hands clasped between them. Kevin copied me. Our socially approved, suit-covered knees splayed out closer to one another; my elbow was an inch from brushing against his. We must have looked like we were deep in personal conversation, trying to establish a small zone of privacy. But we weren’t private, and I was blazingly aware of that. Still, it felt so good talking to him that I needed to keep it going. “Uh, I know it’s none of my business, but how is Channing doing? Okay?” I sounded so normal. I wondered if Kevin thought that too, and if he wondered if I were completely unaffected by sitting next to him. Maybe he thought I was the one who didn’t care anymore.
Kevin shrugged where he sat hunched over. “She’s all right, I guess. You know. And she’s nervous about tonight, of course. When it’s only one performance, one chance to get it right, that’s nerve-racking. If she screws up, she can’t fix it the next time.”
“They’ll do fine,” I said without really thinking about it. I’d hardly focused on the fact that we were going to see the play tonight. Everything had been aimed at Kevin instead.
“I hope so.”
I pretended to examine the piano set off to the side of the stage area. Carefully not looking his way, I asked, “How are you doing?”
I heard him take a measured breath. “I… don’t really know,” he said slowly. “It depends. More important, how are you?”
“I’m… okay. Better.”
I watched his leg jerk a bit, as if he were restraining a larger movement. “That is really good to hear,” he said with obvious relief. “Of course, Channing told me you gave a great lecture in class on Monday. And then again on Tuesday. You haven’t lost your touch.”
He’d been asking her about me. If he’d said that to me three weeks ago, even two, that news would have sent me into paroxysms of fear and anger. Now, it warmed me.
“If you believe that,” I said ruefully, “there’s a bridge I’d like to sell you.”
He chuckled, a very small sound. “I haven’t closed a single loan for the past week.”
And then I looked over at him, and he was looking at me, and we didn’t turn away from each other. I couldn’t turn away from him. His lips parted, and then his tongue wet his lips, and then—
“Hello, ladies and gentlemen.”
We both jerked upright and away from each other as if we’d touched a live wire. Having that moment of connection with Kevin destroyed was almost disorienting, and I blinked a few times to see who’d spoken.
Johnny stood in the center of the stage, wearing one of the headset mikes so his words were amplified. The crowd quieted slowly, people who’d been standing found their seats, and then finally silence took over, except for the wild rush of blood in my ears.
Somebody in the back started clapping before Johnny said another word, and of course everyone else followed. I was grateful to have something to pour my nervous energy into. I clapped loud and hard, and next to me Kevin was doing the same. Poor Johnny didn’t quite know what to make of it, but he stood there taking it with an uncertain smile.
Finally everybody stopped expressing their opinion about the controversy that had surrounded Rent—because that’s what the applause was really all about, even if Johnny didn’t realize it—and Johnny was able to go on with his introduction. He thanked all the right people in the right way without saying anything negative about the cancellation of the show, and I saw his mother Danielle’s fine hand in his words. I could imagine her typing furiously at her computer, creating the speech for her son. I’d come to understand she was one smart lady.
He announced that the show was different from how it would have been if presented on a real stage, and that he hoped everybody had brought their imaginations with them tonight so they could fill in the details of settings, costumes, and props. “We aren’t really acting the play out,” he explained. “We’re mainly singing our way through the script, but we hope you’ll like it anyway.”
He took a step back and opened his arms wide. “And now, here’s Rent.”
The rest of the cast emerged from the door to the kitchen as everybody applauded again. Each carried a high wooden stool. Johnny and Sam, who would portray Mark and Roger, put theirs in the center, while the other kids went and sat on their stools off to each side.
“Relax.” Kevin had leaned close and was whispering to me. “They really will do fine. You have a lot to be proud of.”
I hadn’t known I’d tensed, but it would be better to watch this without my hands crushing the program into a ball. I whispered back, “You have a very talented daughter,” instead of saying, “You are the most amazing man.”
The pianist started the music, and the play began.
It couldn’t compare with the production of the show I’d seen in Dallas. It couldn’t compare with what the show might have been if George and I had been able to finish with the last two weeks of fine-tuning, or if we’d gone through the refinements of tech week and dress rehearsals. It was ragged at times, off-key at times, a little confusing at times, and absolutely splendid all the time.
The kids put their hearts and souls into it. Knowing them as I did, and sitting as closely as I was to the stage, I could see in their eyes the regret when each number passed—“One Song Glory,” “Tango Maureen,” “Will I?” They knew they’d never sing that song in performance again.
They’d come up with a workable way to change scenes; the kids went everywhere with their stools. When one scene finished and the characters would normally have exited the stage, they picked up their stools and carried them to the side, arranged them in a neat row, and sat down to watch. The characters who would play in the new scene came onstage, arranged their seats, and sang through their lines and the songs. Rent was one of those shows where one scene often flowed into another, so sometimes there were awkward stops and starts. There wasn’t any blocking, no walking around, though they did the best they could to act from where they sat. I didn’t know how effective it was in the back of the hall, but the kids were doing great from where I was.
I held my breath as Robbie and Steven took the center seats and began “I’ll Cover You,” the show’s controversial love song. With the intricate blocking that George and I had come up with stripped away, it was just the two boys, turned toward each other, singing simply and powerfully. The audience went still, though a stir went through the hall the first time the boys sang the line “a thousand sweet kisses.”
There was no doubt in my mind how Robbie and Steven would end the song: exactly as they had rehearsed it f
rom the beginning. They came together in a sweet, soulful kiss and parted only to keep their hands clasped between them as they smiled at each other. It was either real or they were very good actors indeed. I would likely never know for sure.
Nobody got up and left. Kevin was perfectly still beside me. We’d kissed like that.
The big show-stopping group number, “La Vie Boheme,” worked surprisingly well, with lots of energy flowing. The girls kissed in that scene, a quick peck, playful and amusing more than anything else, and I hoped JJ was there to see it. It could have easily been cut in this version of Rent the kids were giving us, but I imagined that Channing had insisted. After that, act one quickly came to a conclusion. The poor pianist, who had played for more than an hour straight, stood up and announced, “We’ll have a twenty-minute intermission now. We’re selling soft drinks and snacks from the kitchen if you’re interested.”
The typical between-acts chatter began, people stood up to stretch their legs, and Kevin looked over at me. “See? Nothing to worry about.”
“Channing was excellent,” I said sincerely.
“Thanks.”
A line was forming for the intermission sales directly in front of us. There was no way we could talk meaningfully. Abruptly, I stood up and looked down at him. “You want to go outside and get some fresh air?”
He got up right away. “Lead me to it.”
We managed to walk right past George because he was surrounded by well-wishers. Mostly smokers went with us outside, and they congregated on a grassy plot immediately to the left of the doors. I stuck my hand in my pocket and walked further down the street to the right. Kevin, for once, followed me instead of the other way around. I stopped next to a row of crape myrtle trees that were dormant and bare for the winter. Nobody else had gone so far away from the hall, and we had privacy. Maybe it would look peculiar, the two of us apart from the crowd, so intent on each other. Undoubtedly it did. Maybe it looked… suspicious. But I couldn’t help that, could I? I had to talk to Kevin.
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