by Emma Scott
A blush burned my cheeks as I whispered. “Aye, my lord.”
Isaac turned to prop his chin on my thigh. The scene called for him to show mocking disdain hidden under false humor, but his delivery bordered on flirtatious.
“Do you think I meant country matters?”
I already knew from Spark Notes that country matters = sex.
My flush deepened and I sat up straighter. “I think nothing, my lord,” I said, my thoughts full of his thick brown hair and wanting to sink my fingers in it.
“That's a fair thought to lie between maids' legs.”
God, another flush of heat swept through me, settling between my legs, as if his voice had commanded it.
“W-what is, my lord?” I asked, stammering Shakespeare’s words.
“Nothing,” he said.
I tried to remember Hamlet was toying with Ophelia, but my line came out on a small, provocative laugh. “You are merry, my lord.”
Isaac smiled knowingly. “Who, I?”
“Yes, merry indeed,” Marty said, breaking the moment like a sledgehammer. “A little too merry, methinks. I’m going to give a little direction here.”
Isaac lingered a moment more, then lifted his head from my lap and sat in the empty chair beside me. I put my hand where he’d been, to touch the warmth there a little longer.
Martin rubbed his chin with one hand. “I love the progress you two have made. I can feel the difference in how you relate to each other, the familiarity.” He turned to Isaac. “But you’re too nice.”
Isaac sniffed. “I’m nice?”
“First time for everything,” I said.
He shoved his shoulder against mine playfully, not looking at me, but his Oedipus curtain call smile slipped out, and it put a crack straight across my block of ice. A sliver of light in the dark. I knew he forgave me for not showing him my house, while I hated even more that I’d had to hide him.
I don’t want to hide him. I feel good with him.
“Last time, Isaac, you were too pissed off,” Marty said. “This time, too nice. Go back to pissed off and layer it over the feelings you have for each other. Build on what we worked through last Saturday.”
Isaac nodded. “Yeah, sure.”
Martin turned to me. “Willow, I love the nervousness. Ophelia’s a proper lady and Hamlet is being quite inappropriate for a prince. Your initial stiff, shocked reaction was brilliant. But later, you… How do I put this delicately? You looked turned on.”
My eyes widened and a tingle of electricity shot down my spine.
Martin turned to Isaac. “You look smitten too, come to think of it. Right now, this scene plays like something out of Romeo and Juliet.”
Unable to look at Isaac, my eyes sought refuge in the audience. They found Justin sitting in the front row with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—two college actors he’d become friends with—watching me blankly.
“If you’re building an emotional castle in this scene,” Martin said, pulling my attention back, “the foundation is the love. The ruin of that love is the ground floor. Upstairs is his madness. And in the attic, a healthy dose of sexual tension. Okay?”
Martin checked his watch. “Damn. The Equity actors need their break.” He clapped his hands. “Okay, everyone. Take five.”
Isaac and I were left alone on the stage, a thick silence between us where words whispered.
The feelings you have for each other…
You look smitten…
More like Romeo and Juliet…
“Well,” I finally said. “Martin’s a very…colorful director, isn’t he?”
Isaac rubbed the back of his head. “Yeah, he gets some wild ideas.”
“I like his ideas,” I said. “I mean, him. I like him.”
Isaac met my gaze. “Yeah. Me too.”
The moment shimmered. His gray-green eyes so warm in mine and the yellow stage lights shining down. Then Martin clapped his hands to call attention, making me jump in my skin.
“Martin also likes to clap,” Isaac said. “A lot.”
I laughed. “I noticed.”
“Just a friendly reminder about memorization. It’s been two weeks.” Martin said. “How is everyone doing getting off-book?”
A few murmurs and nods, a few groans. Len Hostetler grabbed his own throat with both hands and mimed being choked to death. Then he smiled brightly and gave a thumbs up. “Going great, Marty.”
Justin raised his hand. “I have a question. Willow and I are going to the Spring Fling dance next Friday night at the school. Are we going to be able to get the night off?”
An icy cold bloomed in the pit of my stomach and spread out. I looked at Isaac. He stared back. For half a second, the hurt was evident in his eyes. A little boat floating in the green-gray waves, then swiftly sinking. His face closed up and he looked away.
“You have to say yes, Herr Direktor,” Len said in his booming voice.
“Indeed,” Lorraine said. “A spring dance is a milestone in any high school experience.”
“I will make an exception this time,” Martin said, frowning a little. “But one night is all I can spare. Anyone else? Put your hand down, Len.”
Everyone laughed and Justin looked pleased with himself. The weight of my guilt and embarrassment was so heavy I couldn’t lift my eyes to meet Isaac’s.
Why do you feel guilty? He’s leaving town. He said he’s done with high school…
“Okay,” Martin said, with a clap of his hands. “Let’s get back to work. Willow? Isaac?”
We ran the scene again, this time with no flirtation. No niceness. Isaac delivered his lines with barely-concealed disdain. A wounded prince mocking the lover who betrayed him. His head in my lap was a heavy stone. We weren’t playing roles now. We were just being ourselves.
It had only taken one Saturday afternoon to make a connection. Isaac shared private information with me. I let him come closer to my story than anyone. The time we spent together was the foundation of the scene. My going to the dance with Justin was the betrayal. Hamlet’s pain was Isaac’s. Ophelia’s regret was mine.
When it ended, Martin clapped again and this time it was applause.
“Perfect,” he said. “That was perfect. It adds so much more dimension to the scene. Good work everyone. Moving on…”
At the end of rehearsal, I hurried to grab my stuff and get out. Then I remembered Justin was my ride home. He was waiting for me at the theater entrance, looking smug and triumphant. I hated him a little for that.
I tried to jam my script into my bag too quickly, dropped it and the three-ring binder busted open as it hit the floor. Pages spilled out and I kneeled to gather them up. A figure crouched beside me and I smelled gasoline, aftershave and cigarette smoke.
“I thought you said you weren’t going to go,” he said, muscles showing in his clenched jaw.
You said you were done with high school, I wanted to shout.
“I changed my mind,” I said, thrusting my own chin out. “I’m allowed.”
He sniffed a short, hard laugh. “Yeah, you are.”
He started to hand me the stack of papers, then froze, his brow furrowed over the crawl of little black X’s in the margins, like an infestation of insects.
“Are rehearsals that boring?”
“They’re not. It’s just doodling.”
“You said you doodle when you’re bor—”
“Give me those, please.”
The hard angles and lines of his expression softened as he handed over the pages. Almost reluctantly. As if he didn’t want to give all those black X’s back to me.
“Night, Willow,” he said softly, and rose to his feet.
“Good night, Isaac,” I said, but he’d already walked away.
Isaac
“What the fuck was that, Marty?” I asked, when the last cast member left for the night. “Smitten? I looked fucking smitten?”
Martin just regarded me placidly. “I’m not going to change how I direct my show,”
he said. “I call it as I see it. But I was hoping…”
“Cut it out with the hoping. Direct the show however you want, but keep your matchmaking bullshit out of it.”
His eyes hardened and he crossed his arms over his chest. “I call it like I see it,” he said again. “If you give it to me, I’m going to incorporate it into the scene.” He took a step toward me. “Nothing you can do about that, but there’s something you can do about her.”
“It’s too late, Marty,” I said, the anger draining out of me. “I’m moving out of Harmony. Whether your talent scouts take me or not.”
“I hope you find whatever you’re looking for when you do. But I also hope you don’t miss what’s right in front of you.” He clapped my shoulder. “It’s never too late. Those two words are the greatest, most powerful killer of hope mankind has ever invented for itself.”
I opened the door to my trailer and found Pops passed out on the couch, a lit cigarette still smoldering in the ashtray on the coffee table. A pile of unpaid bills served as a coaster, stained by beer and whiskey and the remnants of his fast food dinner. If hopelessness had a smell, it was stale beer, grease and an overflowing ashtray.
“It’s not too late to get the fuck out of here,” I muttered.
But instead of packing my shit and heading over to Marty’s place, I stubbed out the lit cigarette and turned out the lights.
The following morning, I poured milk into a bowl of cereal and ate it standing at the kitchen counter. Pops eventually snorted awake and sat up, blinking at me with bleary eyes and scratching the stubble on his chin. “You going to work?”
“I have the day off.”
He sat back on the couch. “You’re taking a day off?”
My body tensed, every muscle and sinew going on high alert. He was in a fighting mood and hadn’t even gotten off the couch yet.
“I’m not taking the day off, Pops,” I said evenly. “I don’t work Tuesdays.”
The body shop I worked at in Braxton wanted to give me full-time, but I alternated working there and helping Marty in the theater. No way in hell Pops needed to know that.
I ate my cereal faster.
“What are you going to do all day? Rehearse that stupid play? Prance around in tights and breeches while spouting off a bunch of bullshit no one understands.”
“Yeah, Pops, that’s exactly what I’m going to do,” I said.
He stared at me for a moment and I stared back.
“Don’t get smart with me,” he said in a low voice, like the rumbling of thunder that warns of a storm.
He stared me down for another moment more, then grunted. He found his lighter and began rummaging around the cluttered coffee table for his pack of smokes. Frustration mounting, he scrounged faster, knocking over empty bottles and beer cans. Finally, with a muttered curse, he upended the entire table, sending cigarette butts, ash, bottles and cans across the floor.
“Jesus, Pops.”
I set my bowl aside and grabbed a trash bag from under the sink. I kneeled beside the mess and began to clean up, putting cans and bottles into the bag.
Still sitting on the couch, Pops bent down for an empty beer can and tossed it into the sack. Then he took one of the bottles by the neck and slammed it into the side of my face.
“You don’t get smart with me,” he bellowed, brandishing the bottle.
I stared, my heart crashing against my chest. My breath came fast and I felt the right side of my face start to swell. With every heartbeat, hot pain throbbed on my cheekbone and under my eye. Blood trickled down my cheek.
With a cry of rage, I knocked the bottle out of his hand, grabbed his wrists and pinned them to his chest. I pressed him back against the couch, leaning over him with all my weight, my face inches from his. The blood streamed down my cheek dripping onto his plaid shirt.
“Never again,” I yelled between clenched teeth. “Never fucking again.”
He’d hit me hard, a lifetime working with heavy steel behind the blow. But my guard had been down. I was stronger than him now. He didn’t bother to struggle and a glint of fear touched his eyes.
I gave him a final shove and stood up. I stared down at him for a few more minutes, trying to remember a time when he didn’t look at me with contempt. A time when he and my mother and I were together and happy. I had a photo in my mind of the three of us, but now it showed only my mother and me. The man who’d been my father had faded out of the picture.
I headed toward the bathroom. Behind me, Pops gasped and caught his breath, muttering curses. I shut the bathroom door and looked at my reflection.
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
My right cheekbone was swollen and puffy, the skin split by a half-inch gash still streaming blood. An alarming patch of red stained my white T-shirt.
I grabbed the hand towel by the sink, ran cold water over it and cleaned up my cheek. I probably needed stitches, but I wasn’t about to incur a bunch of Urgent Care charges. I had a stockpile of butterfly Band-Aids for just such an occasion. It took me three tries to get one on fast enough before the blood made my skin too slick. I put a second one beside the first and a regular Band-Aid over both.
My whole face throbbed now. The swelling would probably last another couple of days. Another couple of rehearsals where the cast would stare at me with pity, but no one would ask me what happened because they already knew. Marty would pull me aside and tell me, yet again, his door was always open. His hospitality there for the taking.
As I stared at my reflection I wondered why the fuck I just didn’t take it.
When I left the bathroom, I understood why. My father sat on the couch, his hands in his lap, staring at nothing. Sad and lost. Splotches of my blood dried to maroon against the green of his plaid shirt.
He looked up and his eyes went immediately to my wounds. I saw the pain and regret fly across his face before he looked away quickly.
I put my Hamlet script in my backpack, grabbed my car keys, my Winstons and my jacket. I went back to the coffee table to grab the TV remote and he flinched as if I were going to hit him. That hurt almost as badly as my face.
“You want the news?”
He nodded. I turned the TV on and went out.
I walked to the eastern edge of the scrapyard, toward the overturned truck by the chain link fence. I lit a cigarette as I walked and took a deep drag. I let it out slowly, willing my nerves to calm down. I stopped when I heard Benny’s low singsong voice.
“Goddammit, Benny.”
I heard a bonk followed by a curse. Benny came out rubbing his head.
“Damn, you scared the crap out of me.”
“Why aren’t you in school?”
He shrugged sheepishly at the ground. “I don’t know,” he said. “Don’t want to go.” Now he looked up from his shoes and his eyes widened. “What happened to you?”
“You know what happened to me,” I said. “I want to know what’s happening with you. You can’t not go to school.”
“Why not?” he spat back. “You don’t go to school.”
“I stayed in school until they kicked me out and now I’m taking a test to finish. You are in the eighth grade. You’re fucking up your future if you don’t go.”
“Okay, okay,” he said, no commitment in his tone. I hadn’t gotten through to him. I didn’t know how. I didn’t know what to do or what to say. I didn’t have the words. I wasn’t his dad. I was just the neighbor with the drunk father.
And suddenly I was so fucking tired. Weary to my bones.
“You want to help me run lines?”
“You’re not going to take me to school?”
“I can drive you there every day of my life, Benny, and it won’t matter if you don’t know it’s important. This play I’m doing right now? It’s important to me. So yeah, I could use the help.”
“Yeah, sure.”
I handed him my script and he sat down on the semi-truck tire. “Where are you at?”
“I have it marked.”
>
He found the dog-eared page and flipped it open. “To be or not to be?”
“Yeah, that’s it,” I said, taking a final drag off my cigarette. I dropped it, ground it out with my boot. “I’m not acting it, just running it for the lines.”
“I’m ready,” Benny said.
I stood in the middle of the scrapyard clearing and closed my eyes.
“To be or not to be, that is the question.
Whether t’is nobler in the mind to suffer
the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
or to take arms against a sea of troubles
and, by opposing, end them?”
My shoulders sagged. “To sleep. To die,” I said my voice low. “To die, to sleep perchance to dream.”
“You skipped a bunch of stuff.”
“I know.”
“What does it mean?” Benny asked, his voice hushed now.
“He’s asking if it’s worth it. To keep going or not.”
“Is it?”
I don’t know, I thought. Sometimes I just don’t know
“What’s the next line?” I asked.
“Ay, there’s the rub,” Benny said and wrinkled his nose with a small laugh.
I went through the rest of the monologue, Benny stopping me now and then to correct my mistakes. I got to the end, where Ophelia entered, and fell silent. My thoughts filled with Willow, imagining her stepping onto this stage with me—this crappy junkyard—looking beautiful and fragile, but strong and resilient too.
Benny thought I had forgotten my lines. “In your orisons, may all my sins be remembered.” He wrinkled his nose again. “What are orisons?”
“Prayers,” I said. “She can’t hear him yet, but he’s asking her to remember him in all of her prayers. Like saying goodbye.”
“Is he going away?” Benny asked.
“Yeah, he is,” I said, the words dropping from me like stones. “And he can’t take her with him.”