Catching Heaven

by Sands Hall

  She wanted to respond to the kindness, and the joke in this, but knowing that his eyes would follow her, that he would see that she was with Rich, made her face hot.

  “Hello, Jake,” she said as her mind sang, searching for love in all the wrong places. She wished she could tell him she was out of her head, out of her heart; could he, would he tell her what to do? He was seeing her, as perhaps the whole restaurant, all of Marengo was seeing her, one more horny lady who clogged the arteries of singles bars, someone who was so desperate that she fucked a twenty-three-year-old she didn’t like or respect, rather than sleep alone.

  “How’s it going?” she said, although she wanted to joke that she was robbing the cradle.

  “I’m alive,” Jake said.

  Maud saw a mourning in those brown eyes, eyes the color of espresso. He had lines in his forehead, as well as around his eyes. She wondered what had happened the night she and Sue had driven Sam to the hospital. Lizzie had never broached the subject; Maud knew better than to ask.

  He folded his newspaper. “Sue tells me you’ve been really good about visiting Sam.”

  She nodded, aware that Rich, who had seated himself in one of the high-backed booths, was looking irritably around its side at her. “I think we should steal into the hospital in the dead of night and whisk him away.”

  A waitress paused, hip cocked, pot proffered, and raked Maud with a glance. Jake lifted a hand. “No more, Tina, thanks.”

  “Well,” Maud said. “See you.” She slid into the seat across from Rich, hoping that the high back would prevent Jake from seeing who her breakfast partner was. Although of course he knew—she was boffing, bonking, rogering Jeep’s ex.

  “So all of a sudden you’re palsy-walsy with old Jake?” Rich jerked a thumb in Jake’s direction.

  Maud dropped her head in her hands. The gesture was melodramatic, but it felt true. The actor in her went to work, recording that fact. “Don’t, Rich. I beg of you, just don’t.”

  “Actresses. So, what’re you having?”

  If she were the person she wanted to be, she would stand up and leave.

  “Maud?”

  “Muffin, tea.”

  He reached for a section of newspaper that had been left on the table. “Eat more than that. I swear to God your hips are like cow bones you might find out in the desert. Put some flesh on ’em. Have anything you want. I’m buying.”

  He buried himself in the sports section. She found the pages with “Dear Abby” and the horoscopes. A woman in Baton Rouge wrote to tell Abby that her husband, the father of her two-year-old child, had cheated on her, had stolen money from her in order to pay for the other woman’s abortion and had been caught and was in jail for stealing but that he’d become Born Again and wanted to come back and should she give him another chance. Abby counseled a very cautious yes, since he’d been Born Again.

  The waitress arrived with the coffeepot. “Hey, Tina,” Rich said as she filled his cup. “I’ll have eggs and hash browns and sausage and toast and a side order of pancakes.”

  “Jeez-loueeze!” Tina wore neon blue workout tights under her apron. “Big night last night, I guess! You want those sunny side like usual?”

  “Atta girl!” Rich grinned. Maud guessed she was being informed that Tina and Rich were not exactly strangers. Feeling unbearably prim, she ordered tea, muffin, no butter, please.

  Rich looked up from a long silence and rustled the paper. “You working tonight?”

  Maud wondered how they would get through yet another meal with nothing except the Red Garter and Jeep to talk about. She read her horoscope, which told her that she should rearrange her office furniture, that she should not expect her relatives to approve of her romance. She received a jolt of pleasure, as she always did when celestial advice and her own activities lined up, allowing her to believe there might be some order in the universe. She’d been planning to move the card table in the bedroom to a place beside the piano, where she could use it for notes while she was teaching. And Lizzie’s opinion of Rich was clear.

  “You know Jeep?”

  Maud must have looked blank.

  “At the Red Garter. Jeep?”

  “That’s the third time you’ve asked me that, Rich.”

  “Calm down. I was just going to ask you something. I didn’t mean did you know her. Jesus.”

  Maud stared down at a section of newsprint, telling herself not to apologize. Tina arrived with their food. She put a hand on Rich’s shoulder as she lowered his plate in front of him. “Enjoy. And here’s your muffin. No butter, like you asked.” She dashed off, legs shapely in their blue leggings.

  “She’s cute,” Maud said.

  Rich stopped with his fork on the way to his mouth. She could see a mush of toast and egg there. “You are so amazing.” He’d stopped saying this as much as he used to, but once again Maud had the feeling that he didn’t really find her amazing as much as incomprehensible. He punctured the top of one egg with a point of toast. “So she’s working tonight?”

  “Probably.” She chewed her muffin, dry sawdust in her mouth, and looked at the want ads, pretending she was a hairdresser, a mechanic, looking for a job.

  “You got a headache?” Rich asked.

  She was massaging the area to the side of her eye, a gesture she’d caught herself doing often recently, a gesture she had come to recognize as an effort to smooth away the wrinkles she felt forming, etching themselves there. “I don’t know why I’m here.”

  Rich pushed his plate to one side, dug in his back pocket for his wallet.

  She folded her section of newspaper and added it to the pile on the table. She looked at her hands, clasped together in her lap. She would let this go, she would, although already she mourned it. He would not again give her that sloe-eyed look that meant let’s go to my bed right now. He would not again thrust into her, giving her some measure of peace with his maleness, his fullness, his weight, and his seed.

  He was watching her. “Richard,” she said, and stopped. There it was again, his full name, tender as a kiss, implying an intimacy he had not granted and did not want.

  A trace of red started up his neck. He rearranged his knife and fork across his plate. “I hate it when they don’t take your plate away,” he said. “It just sits there and you have to stare at all that crap.”

  They both looked at the pool of ketchup on his plate, at the smears of yolk and crusts of whole-wheat toast. Maud felt tears welling. She put fingers to the sides of her eyes, pulling them up and out and stared down at the scarred wooden table, at the dissected, uneaten carrot whole-wheat muffin.

  Tina brought the check. “Have a great day, you guys.” Her ponytail bounced as she walked away.

  Maud followed Rich out the door of the café, glad that Jake was no longer at the counter. They stood for a moment gazing up the street, as if they both expected something to come along. She pulled on her mittens, wishing she could ask Rich to take her, as he might take his dog, Betsy, panting beside him in the front seat, wherever he went this day. “Thanks for breakfast,” she said.

  “Thanks for nothing. What did you eat?”

  She shrugged. He looked at her, the sun dazzling on his dazzling hair. “You’ll be all right,” he said. “You can always go be in a theater somewhere. Look how they found you.”

  She knew he meant this to be kind.

  “Need a ride?”

  “I’ll walk.”

  “All right then. See you.”

  He strolled away. Maud lifted one hand to shield her eyes from the sun and its reflection on a tin roof opposite, which used her tears as an intensifier. His hips swayed high above his heeled boots. He stopped to look at a poster in a window a few stores down, crossed the street, and got into his truck. He drove away without looking back.

  ’Tis not so deep as a well, Mercutio says when he is stabbed, nor so wide as a church door, but ’tis enough, ’twill serve. She remembered the dirty dishes in the sink with a bleak satisfaction. At least she h
ad that to do. And there was visiting Sam. And she guessed she would return Chris Daugherty’s call. She started up the street, glad of the twenty minutes it would take her to walk home, while she figured out what she would do to fill her time this morning, her time this day, her time on earth.

  When she got home she avoided the blinking light on her machine, did the dishes, swept, scheduled lessons with a new student. Finally she sat in the chair beside the phone and punched the rewind button: “. . . wondering if you have some pieces worked up you could show us.”

  She wrote down the theater’s phone number. Of course she had some pieces worked up. All those years of auditions, she had pieces in spades. The best actors in the world, as Polonius would say, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral . . .

  She sat for a moment, watching as a dusty traveling trunk materialized on the wooden floor. She slipped off the chair, kneeling in homage and in joy before the ancient, decal-decorated box, ready to sift through the array of fabrics and textures that awaited her, the jumble of characters she had assembled over so many years.

  She tried on monologue after monologue, shaking out the dusty garments, the velvet cloaks and farthingales, print dresses and faded silks, crinolines and scarves, of Imogen, Viola, Hermione; Nora and Irina; Madge and Blanche and Amanda; the ancient loves of her childhood: Anne, of Green Gables; Alice, of Wonderland. The deflated heroines surrounded her, waiting for life. She briefly considered Juliet’s poison speech, though she would never again be cast in a role so young; Portia’s speech to Brutus from Julius Caesar—Dwell I but in the suburbs of your good pleasure?; and the other Portia, who speaks of the quality of mercy. She lifted out fragile Stella; sturdy Macon; anguished and hopeful Salley Talley; bruised Blanche depending on the kindness of strangers. She brushed them off and tried them on, their words rooted in her memory as if she’d spoken them just yesterday. Within three hours of that galvanizing phone call she was ready. She called the theater. It was an Olivia they were looking for. She scheduled an audition for the following day.

  Fable Mountain Stage Company was located on Sipapu Street, which made Maud think about Driver for the first time in weeks. She pushed through the ornate, gilded, slightly battered double doors of the theater, wondering how his own sipapu was doing, if he’d been digging in the rain.

  Chris Daugherty waited in the lobby. Short, balding, he radiated a palpable energy. His eyes were in constant motion, as if he was looking for something else—something a little more interesting, Maud thought—to come around the corner. He introduced her to his wife, Roberta.

  “Call me Bobbie.” Roberta Daugherty was taller than Chris, her hand cool and firm.

  “Welcome to FMSC.” Chris gestured around the lobby. The walls were covered with gilt fleur de lis against a faded burgundy background; here and there the paper peeled away from the walls. The red rug was worn through to string in places. He led her into the auditorium, where the carpet and the seats were similarly aged. He pointed at the ceiling. “We’ve cleaned those up. Maybe an odd priority, but that’s what we fell in love with. Bobbie paints.”

  The domed ceiling was covered with spectacular murals. Red-cheeked cherubs danced, pranced, played stringed instruments, and sang amidst what Maud guessed were the Muses—Terpsichore and all the rest, breasts and upper thighs trailing wisps of gauzy fabric.

  “I wanted to start with the Muses and work our way down.” Compared to Chris’ enthusiastic boom, Bobbie’s voice was soft. “Then the carpets, the toilets. It’s not practical. But most of the time, neither is art. I like what Thoreau says. ‘You have built your castles in the air. That is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.’ ”

  Chris held a half smile on his lips, clearly anxious for her to finish. “This building’s housed some sort of theater for over a hundred and fifty years,” he said. “Burlesque, Chautauqua, a silent-movie house. Ever since the silver rush brought people to Marengo.”

  “Don’t you love to imagine who it was first brought culture to a town like this?” Bobbie said. “Who imported the first opera singer, the first ballet dancer? How did they get enough support from miners to build a theater?”

  “Women,” Chris said. “Harbingers of culture.” He hustled them down the aisle, apologizing for being in a rush. “I’ve got a mailing list to deal with, marketing needs to get out.”

  Black wings of curtain rose high on either side of the empty and well-lit stage. “We appreciate you coming in so quickly. The woman I’d cast as Olivia decided she needed to spend time with her family—”

  Bobbie lifted a hand. “Well, she’s done five shows in a row with us. As actress, stage manager, props person. We understand she might need some time with her kids and all.”

  “Rehearsals start in March,” Chris said. “Eight weeks, since it’s Shakespeare. Nights, weekends, wherever we can find hours. Everyone’s got job conflicts. You bring your resume?”

  Maud handed him a manila envelope. “I’m impressed you’re doing Shakespeare and Chekhov in the same season.”

  “So are we!” Bobbie said.

  “Charlie’s Aunt was a big success last fall,” Chris said, opening the envelope. “And we printed money on our production of A Christmas Carol. Very successful.”

  Maud nodded. “My nieces loved it.”

  “So we hope that the town will swallow some Shakespeare. It is supposed to be a comedy.”

  Maud watched him scan her resume. “The fellow who gave you my name—Ron?—told me that you guys run a lot of this out of your own pocket.”

  “Bobbie’s great-aunt bequeathed her money with the edict that it be used ‘solely for artistic purposes.’ ”

  At Maud’s expression, Bobbie laughed. “Exactly. Can you believe it?”

  “It’s like a plot from the kind of novel I loved as a kid.” Maud looked around the theater. “How perfect.”

  Chris whistled. “You’ve worked at some amazing places. Ron Bartlett—he’ll be Toby Belch, he was Scrooge in Christmas Carol—told us he’d only met you once but that you were impressive. Your resume certainly is.”

  “Thank you.” Maud was glad for Ron, who’d been so upset about his casting when they’d talked at Farquaarts.

  “Bobbie, look at all this Shakespeare!”

  “He’s my first love.”

  Bobbie smiled. “How convenient. He’s always there.”

  Chris looked up. “And he doesn’t talk back.”

  “A little bit square in bed,” Maud said. “But very wise. And funny.”

  “And the directors you’ve worked with! What on earth are you doing here?”

  “Long story. We’ll swap them sometime.”

  “We’ll do that. So. Let’s see your pieces.”

  She walked up the set of movable stairs that abutted the edge of the stage. The lights warmed her face, blinding her to Chris and Bobbie sitting several rows back in the semidarkness. She introduced her pieces and began, and discovered that the months away from driving the freeways of L.A. in search of always elusive employment had changed something. She could appreciate—for the first time!—that she had stored technique as well as characters in the disk space of her memory: her choice to sustain the ends of certain lines; to build in pitch as well as volume; to inflect vowels in specific ways; to sink with ease to her knees and rise again; to know when to hold a pause and when to press on for the laugh. All of these were things she had studied, fervently; she had not realized that at some point she might have learned them.

  They were effusive, they were kind. “You’re probably more right for Viola than I am.” Bobbie laughed. “But I’ve always wanted to play her.”

  Maud shook her head. “You’re so long and thin. Viola’s dressing up as a boy will be perfect on you.”

  Bobbie shrugged. “I’m too old.”

  “And I’m too old for Olivia,” Maud said. “By the time we have the skill it takes
to do Shakespeare well, we’re all too old. On the other hand, isn’t acting about convincing people we are what we’re not?”

  Maud almost skipped home, delighted that the theater was walking distance from her house. Chris called later that day to offer her the role of Olivia. In addition, he wondered if she would be willing to work with the other actors on Shakespeare’s language. “We’ll pay you.”

  Legs looped over the arms of the large chair borrowed from Lizzie, Maud studied the sheet of paper on which she’d written the particulars of rehearsal time and place, salary. For one moment she caught a glimmer of possibility: in the transitory and amorphous creation that was theater, perhaps she had built something. Perhaps she was building something. Perhaps, as Rich had said, she would be all right.

  CHAPTER 23

  LIZZIE

  NOTES FROM BENEATH THE MAGNETS ON LIZZIE’S FRIDGE

  URGENT

  Parent/Teacher Conference:

  Summer Maxwell

  February 28 4:45 P.M.

  As Lizzie left her office on her way to class she was greeted by Cal and his lopsided grin. Clearly he’d been waiting for the sound of her door to open his. “El Toro for a margarita?” he said. “Sweetwaters for a glass of fine wine?”

  “Oh, Cal, I’ve done it again.” This time Lizzie was genuinely sorry. “I’ve got a conference with Summer’s teacher. Next time I won’t forget. Promise.”