Beaver was our third school in three years. By now Robin and I were accustomed to being the new kids. It was our métier, and any novelty attached to it had worn off for us long ago. The important question had been, where would we fit in? Beaver had three basic cliques: the preppies, the jocks, and the stoners. Robin and I didn’t qualify as members of any of those groups, so we gravitated toward the Drama Club—a kind of artistic catchall for the kids who didn’t belong anywhere else. There was Sally Messman, who had a genius IQ, a mouthful of metal, and an unruly mop of black, curly hair. Neal Burch was a tall, hulking boy who lurched when he walked and had a bad lisp; “Athole,” he would say to the kids who made fun of him. Mitch Hall, who wore the same blue jacket to school every day, was always trying to call the pope or Idi Amin on the pay phone in the student lounge.
This band of social pariahs was ruled over by the drama teacher, Mr. Valentine. A short, ruddy-faced man with flaming red hair, he wore plaid pants and turtlenecks instead of a suit and tie like the other male teachers. Some days he even wore a medallion. Mr. V was rumored to have had a nervous breakdown the term before we’d arrived at Beaver. His hands shook, supposedly because of the lithium he had been put on after the breakdown. This made him seem to us like some kind of tortured, tragic artist. He was a little angry and sarcastic and had a sinister laugh—he definitely had an edge. Mr. V’s classroom was in a little house near the pool, a separate kingdom where he taught theater classes and held Drama Club meetings.
As soon as I started going to V’s theater classes and to Drama Club meetings, I knew I had found my place. Since my first play in London, I had known that I loved to act. But what had started as a way to connect to my long-lost father had developed into something even more intimate. I loved pretending to be someone else; it was so much easier than being me. I could hide inside this other person and, even if just for a short time, inhabit a completely different world far away from the one I had to live in every day. And I was pretty good at it, or so other people seemed to think.
Another attraction Mr. V held for a group of disenfranchised teens like us was that he chose material that was basically inappropriate for high school students. The first play we had staged that fall was Lanford Wilson’s The Rimers of Eldritch, which featured bestiality, adultery, elder abuse, and even had a rape scene. When the lights came up at the end of the play for curtain call, the cast was greeted by silence, as hundreds of parents stared, mouths agape, utterly appalled by the unwholesomeness of what they had just witnessed their little darlings doing onstage. The moment lasted a good fifteen seconds before Mr. V began stridently clapping. Slowly, the parents joined in, putting their hands together and looking at each other with embarrassment as if they all smelled a huge fart.
“Why can’t they do The Music Man or Ah, Wilderness!, for Christ’s sake?” I heard a dad complain after the show. It gave us all a thrill to shock the parents with our bold theatrical choices. I think V felt the same way. He got a big kick out of the dropped jaws at curtain call. He was our leader and a dangerous rebel.
After The Rimers of Eldritch, Mr. V announced that the next play the Drama Club would be performing was called David and Lisa.
“Okay, listen up,” he barked, shuffling the mimeographed scripts in his small, chapped hands. “This is a play about two teenagers who meet in a residential treatment center and form a friendship that helps heal them as human beings.”
“You mean like an insane asylum?” asked Mitch Hall, smiling. Mitch was our technical director; he built sets and always ran the lights. He had recently caused quite a stir by frying an egg on the light board to show it was dangerous and outdated.
“No, more like a high school for troubled kids who don’t get to go home at the end of the day. Neal, you will be playing David, who is obsessed with cleanliness and hates to be touched.”
“I thee,” lisped Neal. His hair always hung in his face and hid his acne.
“Sally, you will be playing Lisa, who has multiple personality disorder and speaks in rhyme a lot.” V handed her a script.
“Excellent,” said Sally as if she had nailed it already. Sally always wore dance clothes to school as if life was just a rehearsal for her big break or something. She looked like a runaway extra from the movie The Turning Point, waiting in the wings in case Anne Bancroft twisted her ankle and she had to go on.
“Wendy, you will be playing David’s mother, Mrs. Clemens, who is domineering, cold, and manipulative.” V handed me my copy.
“Thank you, Mr. V,” I said. Piece of cake, I thought, I could just pretend to be Mother.
Robin’s hand shot up. “What about me?”
“You will be playing the stout Sandra, a sweet girl at the school and friend to Lisa.” Mr. V issued Robin a script.
She started leafing through the pages looking for her lines. “What does ‘stout’ mean?”
“It means ‘fat.’ Ha!” said Mitch, collapsing onto the floor in guffaws.
“You’re a real dick, Mitch,” said Robin.
“Now, now. Remember, there are no small parts, just small actors,” said V.
“There are small parts and that’s what I’ve got,” Robin said, sulkily.
V chose to ignore the remark. “Ronnie and Annette will be playing the other kids at the school. Paul is cast as the doctor.” V handed out the remaining scripts. “We’ll rehearse four days a week after school for four weeks and then perform the play right before Christmas break. That doesn’t give us much time; we might have to have a few Saturday rehearsals, but I think this group can pull it off.”
There was a silence as we all absorbed the enormity of our task: some of us dreaming of taking our bows to thunderous applause, some worrying about forgetting lines, one troubled by the idea of appearing onstage in a fat suit.
“Get off book as soon as you can. See you at rehearsal.”
Robbie and I walked out of V’s classroom into the cold fall air and headed for the parking lot.
“You’ll get a bigger part in the next show,” I said, trying to make her feel better.
“Yeah, maybe.” She shrugged as if it didn’t matter.
A few days after rehearsals for David and Lisa started, Mother, compelled to show that she, too, could be artistic, announced that she was going to start writing a book. It was to be a novel based on her own life, and my sister and I were to be characters in it.
“Of course, when I sell it to the movies, I’ll make sure there’s a special clause in my contract that says you girls will play yourselves.” Mother paced up and down the carpet with visions of limousines double-parked in her head.
“Or how about Jodie Foster? She could play me,” I suggested. I didn’t want to play myself; I already was playing myself. I’d been acting my pants off as the Dutiful Daughter for a long time and it was hard work.
“Don’t you want to be in my movie?” Mother asked, waving her cigarette holder around in the air.
I decided not to say anything.
“I was thinking about who should play me,” she went on. “Jane Fonda or Tuesday Weld. I’ve always really liked Jane, but Tuesday does look more like me.”
“Hmmm,” I said, frowning to show my appreciation of her casting dilemma. My opinion wasn’t really required because Mother wasn’t really listening; she was already at the studio commissary having lunch with Tuesday Weld and Richard Zanuck.
“I’m going to call it Somebody Turn Off the Wind Machine,” she announced with great flourish, striking a theatrical pose worthy of a silent-film heroine.
“Catchy,” I said.
I found this image hilarious but utterly in keeping with Mother’s warped vision of herself. She was an actress in her own life, a Lillian Gish–type character, playing the part of the brave pioneer woman protecting her children from the harshness of the world, putting out the fire with her gunnysack and raisin’ her younguns all alone. Then, at the end of a long day on the set, she could take off her calico dress and her bonnet and retire to her luxu
rious trailer. There she could enjoy a well-earned cocktail and then get dressed to go out dancing at the Mocambo. This was the mirage she saw herself living in.
Soon she was typing away in the little sunroom off the side of the house. We would go off to school in the morning and there she’d be, with a big cup of coffee next to her humming typewriter, clacking away with her cigarette holder stuck in her teeth. The pile of pages grew higher each day as she compiled her version of the truth.
It was the first real work we had ever seen Mother do. She had never had an actual “job” in the traditional sense, unless you counted trophy wife of a man fifteen years her senior or fabulously neglectful mother of two children. We lived on her alimony check from Pop, and, more recently, money that she had begun to siphon out of our trust accounts from Grandfather. If we needed money—and after she’d blown through her inheritance and sold the Mercedes we always did—she would sit me down and have me call the bank in Kansas City to have them wire a few thousand dollars out of my account. Sometimes I even heard her calling the bank and pretending to be me; she’d make her voice all high and wispy. Mother felt that it was really her money anyway and often reminded us that she expected us to turn it over to her when we inherited it. And apparently now it would enable her to properly furnish the house she’d buy in Beverly Hills when the movie of her book hit the big screen.
In addition to her novel, Mother also announced that she had stopped drinking, sworn off men forever, and was going to therapy sessions once a week at McLean Hospital, conveniently located in our little suburb of Belmont. McLean was a blue-blood nuthouse and drying-out destination. Most of its patients came from families who preferred their names on libraries instead of in newspapers, but it had its celebrity patients, too. Sylvia Plath had gone there for a long rest after a suicide attempt; so had the also famously dead poet Anne Sexton. And it was where Joan Kennedy went for her AA meetings. It catered to a better class of crazy people, and Mother’s gyno, Dr. Stander, had somehow convinced her to go. I’m sure the hospital’s high-class guest list of the fantastically misunderstood had helped.
It all seemed too good to be true. Which, in a way, was worse for Robin and me. It was like we were waiting for an explosive device to go off.
Rehearsals for David and Lisa were going well; we all knew our lines and blocking. Mr. V told us he felt confident we’d be ready on opening night. Robin had agreed to wear a fat suit but had negotiated its removal for curtain call so that people wouldn’t think that in real life she was shaped like an oversize beach ball. Mother had consented to let me wear her dark blue suit and high heels, which made me look terrifyingly like her, so much so that I had to be careful not to look in the mirror for fear of scaring myself. We were about two weeks away from the opening when Mr. V asked me to stay after rehearsal. Robin shot me a You’re in for it now look and went out the big double doors of the auditorium to wait for me.
“Am I in trouble?” I asked him after everyone else had left. I always thought I was in trouble.
“Nothing like that. I thought we should have a little talk about your future.”
“Oh,” I said, relieved. Sort of.
“Since you’re a senior, I was wondering if you’d given any thought to acting as a career.” I had but I wasn’t sure how to go about it. All my classmates were filling out applications to Yale and Princeton, and it was almost Christmas. I had halfheartedly filled out applications to Colby and Clark, two liberal arts colleges that weren’t too far away from home—but I hadn’t mailed them in yet. In my experience, the future wasn’t something you planned for; it was something that just happened, like your car spinning out on some black ice and hitting a snowbank, or the telephone ringing with bad news in the middle of the night. Mother’s plan for my future didn’t extend beyond my turning over my trust fund to her and portraying myself in the movie of her life. So I guess you could say that I lacked guidance.
“There’s something called the Leagues. It’s in January in New York City.” V produced a black-and-white brochure from his scuffed-up briefcase. “You can audition for all the big university drama programs at the same time.” He handed me the brochure.
“Gee, thanks.”
“I would look at Carnegie Mellon, NYU, Northwestern, and Temple. Take it home, look it over, and let me know if you need any help.” He sort of coughed, turned, and walked back over to his briefcase.
“Do you think I’m good enough to get into acting school?”
“I do, my talented young friend. But you have to take the situation by the balls, if you don’t mind me saying.” He kept shuffling around in his briefcase while he talked rather than looking at me.
“I could take the train down to New York.” I wasn’t sure the Subaru would make it.
“Yes, you could. If this is what you want to do, you need to be somewhere where you can practice your craft.” He shut his briefcase and locked it. Then he looked up at me. “Sound like a plan?”
“Yes, sir. Thank you.”
“All right. Good work today.” V walked out of the auditorium and I stood there alone for a moment, realizing that the last person who had taken a real interest in me was my English teacher in London, Mr. Jesse. I seemed to be always searching for someone to point me in the right direction, any direction really. And every now and then, someone reached out and took my hand. I put the brochure in my backpack. I had a plan.
Later, during the drive home, Robin asked what V had wanted to talk to me about. I told her that he thought I should apply to acting school.
“Are you going to?” she asked as we drove home in the dark.
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Great,” she said unenthusiastically, but without a hint of her usual sixteen-year-old snarkiness. We both knew what it meant: I was going to get to escape the Snake Pit and she’d be the one left behind to watch over its sole inmate.
During dinner that night I told Mother that I wanted to apply to acting schools. She sat and listened to me talk about which ones Mr. V thought I should try out for and that he thought that I was good enough to get in. She hardly touched her dinner as I spoke, and then lit up a Dunhill.
“Just remember, Wendy, that acting is all very well and good, but you need to have something to fall back on. I suppose with a college degree you could teach.”
“But I don’t want to be a teacher. I want to be an actress,” I said, looking down into my chicken.
“Well,” Mother sighed, “you should at least learn to type so you’ll always be able to support yourself. I’ve known how to type since I was sixteen.” Mother had yet to actually use her typing to support herself, or us for that matter, but I wasn’t going to point that out.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
“One hundred and twenty-five words a minute.”
“That’s a very good idea, Mother. I promise I’ll learn how to type.”
Robin looked at me mischievously, lips pursed, desperately trying to stifle a smile. I tried to look serious.
My mother stared at me for a beat, then extinguished her cigarette, pushed her chair back, and rose to leave the room, leaving her uneaten dinner on the table.
“Then you’ll have a valuable skill, just in case things don’t work out,” she said over her shoulder as she exited.
Robin started to stack the dishes, scraping the leftovers on top of Mother’s full plate. We held our breath until we knew Mother was out of hearing range, then burst out in snorts of laughter.
“Well, Wendy, acting is all very well, but really!” Robin said grandiosely, tossing her hair.
“You need something to fall back on. Just in case!” I giggled, flouncing around self-importantly.
“Yeah, if you can’t find some rich guy to take care of you.” Robin snatched up a dinner fork from the table and mimed smoking it.
“Some sucker!” I said, laughing even harder.
“I’ve known how to type since I was nine,” Robin oozed. “Four hundred words a minute!” She threw he
r arm across her forehead and bulged out her eyes, making herself look like Gloria Swanson at the end of Sunset Boulevard when they come to take her away to the booby hatch. We both collapsed onto the dining-room chairs in guffaws.
Spent from our big laugh, we wiped our eyes, blew our noses in the cloth napkins, and returned to clearing the table and doing the dishes.
“She is so full of it,” Robin said as she washed and I dried.
The next day, we came home from school and there she was, firing away at her typewriter. And next to her on the table was an enormous bouquet of yellow roses. Yellow roses were her favorite.
“Who are those from?” I asked her.
“They’re from Frank. Isn’t that sweet? He loves me and he wants me back.” She didn’t look up as she said this but kept typing and smoking. I hadn’t seen a box, or any cellophane from the florist, and I asked if he had brought them over himself. But she said no, that he’d had them delivered.
“They’re beautiful,” I said.
My heart sinking, I went outside into the driveway and looked through the windows of her car. The backseat was littered with yellow rose petals. She had bought the flowers herself and had lied about Frank having sent them. I felt disgusted by how stupid she must think we were, but I also felt sorry for her.
There had been so many bouquets in the old days. The men would always telephone to make sure their flowers were delivered, and I would often have the thrill of asking, “Which ones are yours?” But the flowers had stopped coming long ago. Looking at the rose petals on the backseat of Mother’s car, I felt that familiar sense of dread. It was a feeling that something was coming this way. Like a tsunami or a meteorite. And there was nothing I could do to stop it.
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