Dorothy on the Rocks

by Barbara Suter

  “Do I have lipstick on my teeth, Dee?” Helen asks in a backstage whisper. She peels her lips back in a chimpanzee grin.

  “No, none at all, dear, you look lovely,” Dee-Honey whispers back as we line up for our entrance.

  In the final scene, Randall, the prince’s manservant, tries the glass slipper on the ugly stepsisters in a desperate attempt to find the mysterious woman who left it behind. Oh, you know the story. Gladiola goes first. After much jamming and cramming she gives up and then it is my turn as Tilliebelle. Of course this takes some mighty fine acting from me because Gloria’s foot is much larger than mine because she is much taller but there is no rationale in the land of make-believe. So I push and grunt and Randall turns his back to me and straddles my leg and tries to get the shoe on my foot. I put my other foot on his buttocks for leverage and, of course I fall on top of him, which gets a big laugh from the audience. Then I grab the shoe and attempt to try it on myself and at this point Randall is supposed to wrestle the shoe away from me, but at that moment one of the kids in the audience has an accident (euphemism for vomits) and there is scurrying around and a run up the aisle by the kid and the kid-wrangler. Randall loses his place for a moment and forgets to get the shoe back. So when Cinderella sits down to try on the shoe there is no glass slipper to try on. I have it hidden in my pocket. The children know I have it and I know I have it, but no on else does. The show comes to a standstill. I look at Randall who is blustering about. I can’t believe he doesn’t know where the damn glass slipper is. I have to admit I’m enjoying this immensely. He blusters a while and I wink at the audience and finally they can’t contain themselves and give me away.

  “She has it! She has it!” they scream pointing at me.

  “Give me that shoe,” Randall booms in his best baritone. And the audience squeals with delight and bursts into applause.

  I hand the shoe over and we maneuver our way to the end of the show. I think the bit is very funny and suggest we keep it in. Randall is not amused.

  “Dammit, Mags, the show is long enough as it is,” he says the minute we get offstage.

  “Yeah, but it was funny. The audience loved it and you should have seen your face.”

  “Funny for you, my dear,” Randall snaps.

  “Yes, Mags, it wasn’t humorous for the rest of us,” Helen says, stepping out of her hoop. “Not at all. Some people get piggy when they get in the spotlight, don’t they?”

  “Piggy, indeed,” Eddie agrees and snorts a few times for effect.

  “I thought it was hysterical,” Pauline says. “I loved it. You were very in character. Feel it, I say, let the moment take you.”

  “Well thank you, Pauline, I appreciate that. And fuck the rest of you if you can’t take a joke,” I say heading for the dressing room.

  “Temper, temper, Mags. It’s not pretty,” Randall calls out after me.

  There is an hour between shows. I get out of my costume. Gloria comes into the dressing room with a big grin on her face.

  “I just checked my service. I got a callback. I got a callback for a big national TV commercial!”

  “That’s great,” I say, pulling off my wig. “Good for you.”

  And since Gloria is in such a good mood, I ask if I can borrow her cell phone to check my messages since I have misplaced my own phone again. I’m sure it’s here somewhere, but why waste time looking when I can use Gloria’s minutes instead.

  “Sure, no problem, I’m going to be rich.”

  Little does she know how short-lived that feeling can be, but I’m not going to tell her. I dial my number and then punch in the code.

  “Hey, Maggie, just wondered how you are doing? Call me,” Jack’s voice says. My heart almost stops. It’s him. He called.

  I decide Gloria is going to be rich enough to afford me another call so I quickly dial Jack’s number and take a deep breath to steady my voice.

  “Jack Eremus, here.”

  “Hi, it’s me, Mags.”

  “Hey, where are you?”

  “I’m on Cape Cod doing Cinderella. I have another show in about forty-five minutes, then we’re driving back.”

  “Oh, I called you last night and when I didn’t hear from you . . .”

  “Well, I just got the message.”

  “Look, I’ve got a meeting with my boss in a few minutes. Can I call you later?”

  “You don’t have to,” slips out before I can stop myself.

  “I want to,” Jack says.

  “I want you to,” I say, abandoning my comfortable state of abandonment. “I miss you.”

  “Look, why don’t I just come by tonight.”

  “All right. I’ll be back around seven.”

  “Great. I’ll see you then, Sweet Pea.”

  We say goodbye. I sit and let the sound of Jack’s voice saying “I’ll see you then, Sweet Pea” pass through my brain and travel straight down to the center of my heart. I return Gloria’s phone and go to the greenroom in search of sugar. I pour some coffee and take a glazed donut and stroll out behind the theater. The scene shop is about fifty yards away and the sound of buzz saws and staple guns emanates from its doors. The crew is building the set for the next production. Loretta Swit of M*A*S*H fame is going to be starring in Driving Miss Daisy. I sit down at one of the picnic tables on the side lawn.

  My first experience in summer stock was as an apprentice, which meant I sewed costumes, painted sets, built props, sold tickets, pulled the curtain, ran the spotlight, and anything else that had to be done. And then in the last show of the season, South Pacific, I got to play the lead, Nellie Forbush. The actress they hired fractured her ankle the second day of rehearsal and I had to jump in. It was the perfect end to the perfect summer. And I did it all for nothing but room and board because I loved the theater. I loved it unconditionally. And it was the summer I met Randall Kent.

  As that thought pops in my head, Randall pops around the side of the building with a McDonald’s bag.

  “I was just thinking about you, Randall. About the summer we met. Remember?”

  “How could I forget? I was playing Tevye.” Randall sings the first few bars of “If I Were a Rich Man.” “That was some season. I also played Don Quixote in La Mancha. Now there’s a role. I’d love to do that again. I love the score. Remember the girl that played Aldonza? She had webbed feet. Did you know that? Oddest thing. They were completely webbed.” Randall sits down across from me.

  “I didn’t know that, but I do remember that her mother made all of her underwear. She had never bought a pair of underpants in her life. I mean who makes underwear?”

  “Funny what you remember about people.”

  “Yeah, it is. I remember you were wonderful as Tevye.”

  “You’re a dear,” Randall says. “Look, I’m sorry, Mags, about the shoe thing. I didn’t mean to be an asshole, but you really threw me for a loop. If there is no glass slipper there’s no damn show.”

  “You have to admit it was funny. I mean the kids loved it.”

  “All right. It was funny,” Randall says opening his McDonald’s bag.

  “I’ll forgive you being an asshole if I can bum a cigarette.”

  “Hmmm. I don’t know that I can go that far.” Randall smiles, then hands me his pack of Marlboros. “Take two, they’re lethal.”

  “Thanks.” I light the cigarette as Randall bites into his hamburger.

  “I don’t know which will kill me first, smoking or eating fast food,” he says chewing a mouthful of poison.

  “Half hour,” Frank calls to us from the back door of the theater. “And don’t forget the throne this time, Mags. Helen almost fell on her butt when she went to sit down and it wasn’t there.”

  “Oh, is that what happened?” I ask, innocent as a baby. “Sorry, Frank, I’ll remember.” Randall catches my eye and winks at me.

  “You’re wicked, darling.” He snorts with glee. “You’re wicked as hell.”

  12

  That night Jack and I walk o
ver to Broadway and get Chinese food. We drink tea and eat shrimp with broccoli and rice. The fortune cookies arrive at the end of the meal. Mine says, Friends surround you. And Jack’s says, Be open to opportunity. I smile when he reads it.

  “That’s a good one,” I say. “Be prepared, isn’t that what the Boy Scouts say?”

  “I don’t know, I was never a Boy Scout. I just know that when opportunity knocks be ready to open the door. Don’t get caught with your pants down.”

  “What?”

  “That’s what my grandmother always said,” Jack says. “She had a real fear that something great would happen and she’d miss it because she was in the bathroom.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No, I’m serious. She was a little crazy. She always kept the bathroom door ajar so she could hear what was happening.”

  “I do that, come to think of it.”

  “I’ve noticed,” Jack says with a smile. Gosh, he has good teeth. How does someone get such good teeth?

  We walk back to my apartment. Jack comes in and we sit on the couch. Bixby jumps in my lap.

  “So,” I say. “What’s next?”

  “I don’t know,” says Jack. “I wanted to see you to make sure you were all right.”

  “So this is just a courtesy call.”

  “No. Well . . .”

  “Thanks. I’m fine and now you’re free to go.”

  “Look, you’re the one—”

  “I know. You don’t have to say another word. I’m the one that asked you to leave before and I’m asking you to leave again. So go . . . and thanks. Thanks for checking up on me.” I wish I could cut my tongue out.

  “All right . . .” he gets up. The back of his neck is moving out of my reach and I love that neck.

  “Wait,” I say. Jack stops and turns. I get up and put my arms around him.

  “Please wait,” I say.

  He bends his head to mine and I place my face next to his. “I love you,” I whisper into his ear.

  He picks me up in his arms and carries me to the bed. He lays me down and then lies on top of me. Very gently. His body feels weightless on me, like a warm goose down comforter. He folds me in his arms and kisses me. It’s like oxygen, vital to my existence, like something I’ve always needed and have finally found.

  “I love you, Maggie. I think about you all the time,” Jack whispers in my ear.

  “I think about you too. I love you, Jack, I really love you,” I say it so quietly that only the consonants are audible. I feel tears on my cheeks and I’m not sure if they’re mine or Jack’s. I love you, I love you, I love you, our bodies say in perfect harmony.

  Sometime during the night, I wake with a start. Jack is beside me. I have dreamed my old recurring nightmare. I open my front door and in front of me is an impossible journey, a swinging footbridge over a large chasm, then a steep, forbidding path up a glacier of ice, but this time, as I step on the bridge, a man appears. It’s Jack, but it’s not Jack. It’s a middle-aged, more rugged Jack. He stands at the edge of the chasm and reaches out his hand to me, and that’s what wakes me.

  I get out of bed and go to the kitchen for a drink of water. As I pass my little fireplace I hear something lightly fall down the chimney. I squat and see a small pile of soot as more sifts from above. That’s odd. I haven’t used the fireplace for months. I wait a moment and all is still. I stand up and go back to bed.

  I curl myself up next to Jack. He turns slightly and kisses me and then drops back into sleep. Bixby nestles against my back. I am surrounded by friends, like the fortune cookie said, and I’m in love with a wonderful guy, like Rodgers and Hammerstein said.

  THE NEXT EVENING I’m sitting across from George, the therapist that Brian recommended. He’s agreed to work me in when he has time. I’m leaning forward with my elbows resting on my knees; the cup of coffee in my hand is lukewarm. It’s a hazel-nut blend with whole milk in it, not skim. I hate skim milk in my coffee. It looks weak—ambiguous.

  “Lately,” I confide in a hushed tone. “Lately I’ve been feeling invisible.”

  “Invisible how?” he asks.

  “You know, when I’m walking down the street and people bump into me and they look surprised, like they hadn’t seen I was there. I think, my God, I am invisible. And I wonder if they see me even after they bump into me, or do they just pretend to see me because it’s too disconcerting to bump into something that isn’t there. So they act as if I’m there but I’m not. I mean, I am there, but they don’t know I am. Like for instance, I think this is your dinner break and you don’t know I’m here.”

  George wipes his mouth and clears his throat. “You know we worked out a lower rate if you came at this hour. But if it bothers you, I’ll —” He starts to push his sandwich aside.

  “No, no don’t stop eating,” I interrupt, not wanting to get into discussion again about being lucky to get the odd hour here and there. Apparently George is a busy man. “What is that? Ham and cheese?” George pulls the sandwich apart and offers me half.

  “No, thanks. I don’t eat red meat and ham is red meat, isn’t it? I’m never sure. For a long time I thought red meat was meat from animals that bleed and the blood made it red. But, of course, chickens bleed and that’s what? White meat actually. I wonder, do fish bleed?”

  I find a perverse pleasure in discussing animal blood while George eats his dinner. I notice a vague look of discomfort as he considers his next bite.

  “I know they’re amphibians or reptiles or something, and of course they bleed, but is it red? The blood? Because blood is really blue until it’s exposed to oxygen, so then fish blood would still be blue ’cause they’re in the water and there is no oxygen or rather . . . yes . . . there is oxygen, it’s H2O, so it’s hydrogen with some oxygen. God, isn’t it amazing how ninth-grade biology comes rushing back into your brain.”

  I take the last gulp of my lukewarm coffee. George folds the rest of his sandwich into the wax paper and pushes it aside.

  “But you know what I’m really concerned about?”

  “What?” George asks.

  “I’m really concerned about the fact that I’m paying you seventy dollars an hour to discuss the color of meat,” I say smiling. George doesn’t appear to be amused.

  “What’s really going on?” he asks, very businesslike. Geez, I think, can’t we have a little friendly banter? I don’t feel like getting into it right now.

  George is midsixties with a trim figure and a handsome face. Brian told me that before he was a therapist, he was a photographer’s model and lived mostly in Paris. His apartment is a floor-through in a renovated brownstone on West Tenth Street. He conducts his sessions in a cozy living room with overstuffed chairs, ottomans, and an abundance of silk flowers.

  He is looking at me with his head tilted, waiting, ready for me to spill the beans. Goodie is now sitting primly on the mantel of the fireplace, also waiting. Well here goes, I think. If you want beans, I got beans.

  NOTE TO SELF . . .

  Just because your therapist eats lunch during your session doesn’t mean he isn’t listening.

  “What isn’t going on?” I say with a self-conscious giggle. “I’m in a relationship with a guy who is much younger, and I don’t think there is much chance that it’s going anywhere, but I’m absolutely crazy about him. The fellow I was seeing before, who lives in Texas, called me recently to tell me he had married his dentist girlfriend. He’s been sort of an insurance policy for me. I knew that no matter what, I could always move to Texas and marry Joe, and now that’s gone, I mean, because he married someone else. He loved me. And I loved him.” I take a breath. Shit, I can feel it. I’m going to start crying. But I can’t seem to stop this litany.

  “And I was attacked in Central Park and Mr. Ed got hurt and it was all my fault because I was drunk and shouldn’t have been there in the first place and my career is going nowhere and I have a club date coming up and I have to sing for grown-ups and I’m not sure I can because my acc
ompanist died and I don’t know if I can work with someone else and I’m over forty and I haven’t done anything exceptional in my life and I want to disappear and maybe that’s why I feel invisible all the time. Oh, and I’ve been hallucinating.” I take a breath. “Do you have any water?” I ask. “My throat feels really dry.”

  “Of course.” George gets up and heads toward the kitchen. Goodie flies off the mantel and perches on my knee.

  “Good, Mags,” he says. “And don’t forget to mention the baby.”

  “What baby?”

  “The one you dream about.” He places a tiny kiss on my cheek and then disappears in a cloud of fairy dust.

  George returns with a large glass of water.

  “Thank you,” I say and take a long drink. “Ah, there is nothing better than a tall drink of cool water. There is a song by that title or something like that from a musical based on A Streetcar Named Desire. Do you know it? It’s beautiful.”

  “Let’s try to stay right here in the room,” George says picking up a little notebook.

  “Are you writing down what I say?”

  “Not every word, I take notes. Jot down the details. It helps me help you.”

  “Oh.”

  “Now, you were saying . . .”

  I take another drink of water. I look at George and then I notice the Georgia O’Keeffe print on the wall behind his head. It’s one of her cloud series. Beautiful. Tranquil.

  “I love that print,” I say. “I’m a big fan of hers. I went to see the retrospective of her work at the Metropolitan a few years ago. It was amazing. You could see her whole life in her work, in her exquisite colors and compositions and brushstrokes.”

  “Yes,” George agrees. “Why don’t you let me see your story, Maggie? What do your brushstrokes look like?”

  Corny, I think to myself, but before I can stop it my mouth opens and I hear myself saying, “When I was in tenth grade, there was this guy, his name was Danny Panther. He was an artist. In fact his nickname was Picasso. He was a senior. And in the yearbook under his picture it said, “To create is to breathe, this I believe.” When I read that, it hit me like a bolt of lightning, and I knew that I felt that way too, but had no idea what I wanted to create, and every time I remember that phrase it makes me cry.”