Catching Heaven

by Sands Hall

  “I have some news.” Lizzie waited until they all looked at her.

  Jake held his finger and thumb around the stem of his glass. Summer ate the cherry out of her Shirley Temple. “Wait!” Hannah hissed at her. Nessie, sitting next to Theo, quieted the banging spoon by handing him a piece of bread.

  Lizzie pulled her arms out of the sleeves of the flannel shirt. She was wearing a red T-shirt. Jake took in the hand-printed block letters:

  JOIN ME

  BRAID ME

  ENGAGE ME

  INCLUDE ME

  ENJOY ME

  BURY ME

  She turned around, looking over her shoulder, so he could see his own, MARRY ME.

  Jake’s insides melted, spilled. A fire burned within him, cascading lights like divers with torches in the night from a high waterfall. “Oh, wow!” Hannah yelled, and clapped her hands. “Join me!” She almost knocked Jake and his chair over in the onslaught of her hug. Ran to Nessie and hugged her, and to Leo, yelling, “Bury me!” Summer suddenly understood the commotion and screeched. Jake got to his feet, watched Lizzie hug Leo, Nessie. She came towards him, her face tilted up to his, laughing, alight.

  Leo examined Jake with wary, amused eyes. He put out his hand. Jake took a step, holding Lizzie’s, to shake it. “Bury me?” Leo said. For the first time Jake heard that note of disdain.

  But Lizzie laughed. “That’s where Maud gets it from.” She pointed. “From him. There is nothing the slightest bit weird or odd or dark or subterranean about my use of that word,” she said. “It is a joke. It is a reference. It is something I knew Jake would understand, and enjoy, and even though I was tempted not to use it because I knew what you might think, I thought it was more important in the life I’m interested in making with Jake that I let him know that I think burying me is a good idea.”

  Leo raised his eyebrows. “This calls for champagne.”

  “We should wait until Maud’s with us,” Hannah said.

  Nessie shook a finger. “Uh-oh. You’re taking after your aunt. Maud is always telling her father what to do about wine. Bossy, bossy, bossy. Men decide these things.”

  “Why?” Summer said, and Lizzie said, “Not in my household.”

  Leo put up his hands in defeat. “Bossiness, on the other hand, comes straight through Nessie. But you’re right, Hannah. We’ll wait until Maud’s with us, after the show.”

  Lizzie let go of Jake’s hand, went back to her place across the table. She worked her stockinged foot up onto his leg. As he ate his meal, he kept one hand around the small curl of woolen toes, aware of the small pocket of warmth where the arch of her foot rested against his knee.

  CHAPTER 33

  MAUD

  So long as men can breathe or eyes can see

  So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

  —SONNET 17

  Maud blew on the thin strip of glue she’d applied to a false eyelash as Sage, the stage manager, poked her head around the dressing room door. “Fifteen minutes to places.” As usual, Sage wore her baseball cap turned backwards, her face reflected in the narrow mirror that ran like a frieze almost completely around the room. “We’re completely sold out!”

  Bobbie raised a victory fist. “Our highest single-ticket sales ever! And for Shakespeare!”

  “Your parents are in their seats, Maud. You can stop fretting. Summer’s mad because I won’t let her sit up in the lighting booth. But I’ve got too much on my mind.” Sage checked her watch. “We are now officially at thirteen minutes.”

  “Thank you, thirteen,” they chorused.

  Sage went next door to the men’s dressing room to give the same announcement. Ron Bartlett was singing “What I Did for Love” to warm up his voice. “Why can’t a woman be more like a man” vied with “Seventy-six trombones led the big parade” for popularity, along with shouted suggestions to Bobbie through the wall for various musicals that Fable Mountain Stage Company ought to do in its next season.

  Maud straddled her chair, leaning close to the mirror, to land the second eyelash. Bobbie sat to one side of her at the shelf-like dressing-table that ran the length of two walls; Lois—the woman playing Maria—sat on the other. Kelly and Rose, who played Olivia’s ladies-in-waiting and helped backstage, were upstairs, busy with precurtain duties.

  In other professional theater experiences Maud had been provided with a dresser to help her into and out of costume. FMSC could not afford such a luxury. Lois and Maud took turns lacing each other into their corsets, a process that invariably reminded Maud of the few times she’d cinched a saddle onto a horse. She pulled the strings tight at Lois’ waist and then worked upward—as one might with a pair of high boots—tugging and tightening each set of laces. As she often did, she pondered how much this fashion contraption had enforced female dependencies: without a servant, a sister, a husband, it would have been almost impossible to get into or out of clothing without help.

  Bobbie chattered on—she managed nervousness by talking—about season-ticket sales, so far so good, and about the poster, so far so bad, for FMSC’s next production, The Odd Couple. She brushed pale pink along her cheekbones, describing the casserole she was making for the party tomorrow afternoon, after they’d struck the set and taken the lights down.

  Maud stepped into and fastened two petticoats and an underskirt, then slipped over her head the black dress she wore for the first part of the play. Lois laced her into this, then turned for Maud to do the reverse honors. Kelly and Rose rushed in, frantic. “Full house!”

  In the next room, Ron sang, “A hundred and ten cornets right behind!”

  “I’m going up,” Maud said, unhooking Olivia’s black mourning veil from its hanger.

  Kelly hugged her. “I’ll be your lady-in-waiting anytime.” Rose and Kelly reminded Maud of Kathie and Trixie, who no longer worked at the Red Garter. Maud wondered if they’d made it to Hollywood.

  Bobbie waved. “See you out there, fair cruelty.”

  Maud lifted her skirts to climb the backstage stairs. She didn’t have an entrance until the third scene, and that only a slow walk in her veil across the stage while Sir Toby Belch cursed her inconsolable grief, but she liked this time alone. She ran lines, practiced tongue twisters, hummed to keep her voice from growing cold. She stood beside the angled bracing and bolts that held the flats to the stage floor. If she peeked through the crack between flats, she knew the white, leonine head of her father would be visible, eight rows back, and beside him the glint of her mother’s eyeglasses. She wiped her hands along her dress, wondering if she had time to visit the bathroom once more.

  She hadn’t seen much of them, though they’d come by to see her house, complimented the life she’d established for herself. “Quite a community you’ve found for yourself here, Maudie.” Her father, nodding, lower lip out in the expression of approval she craved so much. Her mother offered to take her shopping. Maud wanted new cookware instead of a new dress, and as they prowled the aisles of Marengo’s elegant kitchen store her mother asked, “Do you hear from Miles?”

  In fact, Maud had received a card from him just before the play opened. He was seeing someone else:

  I waited what I felt was a decent amount of time for you to come “home,” but we’ve been silent for months now, and I figure you aren’t going to. The thing that both troubles and gratifies me is that with you, without you, life just keeps going on going on. . . .

  Maud could hear the beginning of the song he would find out of that phrase. She told her mother about the letter.

  “Is that all right with you? That he’s dating?”

  Maud lifted a soup-sized kettle. “I keep waiting to have some sort of reaction. So far, anyway, I haven’t.”

  “So you won’t be going back to that nasty place?” Her mother, holding a saucepan, looked relieved. “Your father and I always felt its values are just so bad, that you’d be infected by them, in spite of your own sweet self.”

  Maud waited for the familiar sensation, the
resistance to judgment that turned her very bones, her musculature, to a tense but bendable steel: Don’t criticize me. It had not come. She shrugged. It had been a part of her life. It was part of what had made her who she was. There was much to regret, if she wanted to start down that road. But here she was, going on, going on.

  She put her eye to a gap between canvas and wood and peered out at the rustle and murmur of the audience, waiting—as audiences had waited for centuries—for the performance to begin, for a story to be told. The hubbub was loud tonight. She thought she recognized her mother’s laughter.

  From the audience’s perspective, she knew the wood and canvas flat through which she peered looked like Tudor paneling and a window. The false fronts upon which much of theater was based had once appalled her. Now she was conscious of the duty she and the troupe had ahead of them: to bring alive a world that did not exist. Theater came out of nothing but thought, and disappeared into nothing but memory. This concept had once disturbed her. Now it pleased her. She stood in the warm womb of the theater, aware of the efficient bustle of preparation around her, turning this thought over and over like a stone from a riverbed: The amazing effort it took, the endless desire that existed, to create something out of nothing—an edifice, a basket, a child, a university, a painting, love, a piece of theater.

  She rocked forward and back on her heeled, jeweled shoes. Around her the stage crew, in their black clothes, made sure everything was in place. Sage stopped by on her way back downstairs. “Thanks for the card. I hope we’ll work together again too. I’m sure we will. Chris says he’s asked you to direct next season!”

  This was news she was holding close. She would tell The Parents tonight, but she wanted to savor the possibility it offered before she let it out into the world.

  The actors in scene one came up the stairs, talking in the voice that was not quite a whisper, picking up props that were, after a month of performances, a little worse for wear: the plate of spray-painted Styrofoam fruit, the goblets painted to look like pewter, the curlicued lute for Curio with strings that produced no notes. They pulled at their tights, yawned, adjusted the hairpins that held their wigs in place. What spawned this effort, this holy desire, to take one reality—people, makeup, cloth, wood—and turn it into another, altogether different one? It was all-encompassing. Except on those nights when it seemed like utter foolishness.

  The music swelled; the lights dimmed. The audience murmured their way into silence, their seats creaking as they readied themselves. “Have a great one, Maud!” Matt, playing Orsino, squeezed her hand as he went by. She felt the vacuum around her as the actors whispered and bumped their way past her to their places onstage. And then the sound she loved so much: the hum of the dimmers, hung on horizontal poles high above the stage. The hum grew; the lights brightened; the music—a simple string piece—ended. Onstage, Maud knew, Curio would be looking up from fingering his fake lute as Orsino lifted a languid hand.

  “If music be the food of love, play on . . .”

  They bid The Parents goodbye on Sunday morning, after coffee and bagels at Lizzie’s house. Maud had slept in Hannah’s bed. A late-night champagne celebration—of Jake and Lizzie’s news, compliments on Maud’s performance, on her potential new career as a director—had left them all a bit subdued. A chill May wind blew. Jake and Leo loaded the last bags into the car.

  Hannah cried as she hugged Nessie goodbye. Summer stood to one side, shivering in short sleeves and overalls. She refused to go inside and get a sweater.

  “It was a good visit, darling, a lovely visit.” Her mother hugged her. “We’re so proud of you both.” Her father patted her on the back, told her she’d been “splendid,” and to “keep up the good work.” They got into their blue rental car and tooled off down the road, Nessie’s hand waving until they turned the corner and were out of sight.

  “Well,” Maud said to Lizzie. “That wasn’t so bad.”

  “You didn’t have them for three straight days.”

  Summer shook her head. “Grandma doesn’t like bagels. Crazy.”

  “Grandpa’s too gruff,” Hannah said. “The way he looks over his glasses at you. Like you’re so dumb.”

  “But better than I expected,” Lizzie said. “Like having friends visit. Jake says people change. Even parents.”

  The distant sound of a door slapping made them look up at the ridge. “Our roommate,” Jake said. Driver came down the hill, carrying something beneath his jacket. He called to Summer. As she ran towards him, he knelt and a black-and-white bundle of fur wriggled out of his coat. Maud felt her heart lurch.

  Summer carried it towards them, eyes gleaming. “Driver says it will be half ours and half his.”

  “What’s its name?” Maud said, going down beside Summer and the trembling, quivering, leaping puppy.

  “He says we can call it what we want but not Luna.”

  “Not Luna,” Hannah said. “Can I hold him?”

  “I’m going to get a kitten,” Maud said. “This week.”

  “Both of Maggie’s cats had litters,” Driver said. “You’d do her a favor if you’d take one. We can go down together, pick one out. Take two, so they’ll have company.”

  “I’d like that,” Maud said. “I’d love that. How’s your dissertation?”

  “Don’t ask. The topic keeps changing on me. Like trying to catch a sliver of soap. I keep thinking I’ve got it, and then there it still is, floating benignly. Some system you whites have devised. Torturous. I prefer sitting at the feet of a medicine man.”

  “Maybe it’s the same thing,” Maud said.

  Jake groaned. “Don’t get started, you two,” Lizzie said.

  Summer giggled when Maud stuck out her tongue at them. “Anyway, I’ve got to go. I’m already late.”

  Summer held up the puppy so it could lick Maud’s face. “Not Mickey,” she said to Hannah. “That’s a stupid name.”

  “Why do you have to strike the set?” Jake asked. “Haven’t you worked hard enough?”

  “Chris made it clear we don’t have to. But I want to. It helps get the play out of my system. Especially when I’ve enjoyed it.”

  Driver nodded. Maud remembered the story of his tipping over gravestones because he was so disappointed he’d lost a role. “You should audition for them sometime,” she said.

  “I don’t know how.”

  “Once it’s in the blood . . . ,” she said. Driver almost smiled.

  She gave the girls a hug, kissed Theo. “Congratulations again,” she said to Lizzie and Jake. “I’m sorry I missed dinner last night. It sounds very dramatic.”

  “It was,” Lizzie said. “But Jake may back out. He’s worried about how Randy will take the news.”

  “He won’t back out!” Summer yelled.

  Maud drove to the theater filled with an irritating combination of fulfillment and melancholy. The play had gone well. She’d be directing next season, something she’d always longed to do. The college had called to say that she was short-listed to teach an acting class for the fall semester, which Lizzie said was as good as having the job. But she was itchy, ready to weep. If she hadn’t just had her period, she could have blamed it on that. It was the puppy. It was Jake. Summer and Hannah. It was that Lizzie’s life had an order and a logic to it that hers did not, would not, never would have.

  As expected, she found some peace in pulling nails, carrying lumber, ripping up carpet, using a screw gun to take apart pieces of the set. The afternoon was filled with bawdy repartee, bad jokes, loud music. The radio was tuned to a station that played sixties and seventies rock and roll: “Desperado, you’d better come to your senses.” Periodically the entire company burst into caterwauling accompaniment: “I’ve got a peaceful, easy feeling, I know you won’t let me down . . .”

  The capable carpenters who’d built the set showed up to help strike it. Men with names like Jim, Harold, Bud, Dave moved things along with a pleasant combination of skill and flirtation. Even Sue’s Willy showed up f
or a while. Maud found herself obsessed with work, irritated when someone made off with her screw gun, glad when she found a steady job: pulling staples out of carpet, sorting reusable screws into empty paint cans. “I really want to know you, my sweet lord,” the cast and crew warbled.

  Maud went downstairs to clean the dressing room. She tucked the cards stored around the edge of her mirror into an envelope: notes from Ginger, Kathie, and Trixie, Elmer at Mountain Music, Barney—a surprise, and Noah’s parents, who had brought him to a matinee. Opening-night cards from the cast, from Summer, Hannah, Lizzie, Bart, the man in her African dance class. She packed her makeup back into its fishing tackle box, rolled up the white towel littered with pencil shavings, powder, blush, and used it to wipe down the dressing table. She threw out a score of dried flowers, most of them long-stemmed roses, perched in tiny paper cups. The radio’s wail, mourning that all they were was dust in the wind, made it all the way downstairs.

  As the afternoon wore on, more and more of the actors claimed exhaustion or family commitments. Maud stayed on, unwilling—unable—to leave. Bobbie hung in, as did Chris and Ron. When a song from Jesus Christ, Superstar crooned its way over the airwaves, Ron used a hammer as a microphone. “I’ve been changed, yes, really changed,” he crooned, eyes closed, swaying. Maud exchanged bad jokes with Dave and Harold and Bud, whose sexuality hung off them like the tool belts they wore. She looked for jobs that would keep her busy, moving around the space as it gradually emptied: props, furniture, set pieces. The blacks—huge wings of fabric—were folded to Chris’s precise specifications. It took two people to carry each of the resulting wads to a storage locker downstairs.

  The man named Bud climbed a ladder that made an enormous ratcheting sound each time he lowered, moved, and extended it to get at another set of lights above the stage. Using a rope-and-pulley system, she helped him lower the dozens of lighting instruments to the floor, shook out the colored gels, organized the instruments in order of size. Chris told her to get on home, take a shower, get to the party. “We’ll finish this tomorrow.”