Aftercare Instructions

by Bonnie Pipkin

  When I see him, it takes everything inside me not to jump up and wrap myself around him. We lock into a long, warm hug. Separating feels like peeling off layers of staticky laundry. We barely talk as we head down First Avenue. Maybe he’s nervous. Maybe he’s preparing himself. I haven’t done this in so long, I don’t even know how to prepare myself.

  He leads me to a bar, not a theater. It smells like stale booze, and my stomach quivers again with the reminder of the other night. I’ve never seen a bar in the daytime before. Not that I’ve seen many at night either. The space is drenched in red. Red furniture. Red neon signs. Red curtains. Like we’re in an old-fashioned den or speakeasy. A place that swallows light and spits out dust.

  A kind of freakishly tall lady wearing all gray, with burning, bright red hair, hands out paperwork. But even with the heat from her hair, I feel cold around her. Her gaze is hard. Her expression is unforgiving. A bald man wearing mismatched plaid and round, vintage spectacles sits in the corner, concentrating, and scanning with an intense, scrutinizing gaze. My first instinct is to duck into the opposite corner. Out of sight.

  There are more people here than I expected. Everyone in the room is a little tattered, a little frayed around the edges. I see another teenage-looking girl in the room and relax a little. I sit next to Seth on a black chair with a ripped vinyl seat cushion and start filling out the audition form.

  Name.

  That’s easy.

  Address.

  Hmm. Should I put that I live in New Jersey? I guess it doesn’t matter, but I feel weird about it for some reason. Like there would be a prejudice or something. So I lie and put down the address for Planned Parenthood. Is that weird? I can only think of two New York addresses right now—that, and Delilah’s. And I don’t want to put an NYU address. Seth seems to want to separate himself from the school, so I do too.

  More statistical questions follow: e-mail, phone number, etc. And I fill those out accordingly.

  Height.

  Also easy, five foot eight.

  Weight.

  Geez, that’s a little personal, isn’t it? But okay. I weighed one twenty-five at the clinic when I was pregnant. Too skinny, the nurse told me. I bet I weigh less now. A lot has left my body since then.

  Age.

  I’ve got to put another lie in here. I peek over at Seth’s form to see if he’s put nineteen or twenty-one. He covers his paper like I’m trying to cheat off a test, and then laughs.

  “What’s the matter?” he says.

  “Just wondering about age.”

  He opens up his hand. Twenty-two. I shake my head and put nineteen on my own sheet.

  He laughs again, but nods his approval.

  Voice type.

  Singing? Alto. Like Mom.

  Attach CV or write down your past three productions.

  Shit.

  It’s been so long, surely that can’t look good. Can I fill in a space for the past few years that says:

  Grieving father’s death.

  Too dramatic?

  What about:

  Rejected past until it snuck back up on me one drunken night in Brooklyn.

  I could put the show at Point Shelley Community Theater. With the chicken-bone death-scene director. I can’t remember his last name, though. And it was so long ago and in New Jersey. I could put the productions I did at school after that. But that’s high school, and I don’t think I should call any attention to that. I think I’ll just leave it blank.

  Formal training?

  Shit again. Why am I here exactly? Will they see right through this? Okay, I did take piano lessons. I put down classical piano. This doesn’t bode so well for me, I think.

  Then there’s this:

  PLEASE LIST ALL CONFLICTS YOU HAVE BETWEEN NOW AND THE PERFORMANCE DATES AND WHETHER THEY ARE FLEXIBLE OR NOT.

  I look over the schedule. All the rehearsals are at night, so that’s good. Maybe I don’t have to tell them I go to high school during the day. High school. That totally happened today, and I am totally suspended. Peter was there. And he knows I’m suspended. And I haven’t been in Advanced Writing to see if he and Vanessa will now sit with each other like we used to. I look around the room again. It’s full of people scratching out their forms. There aren’t any more chairs, so some people sit on the splintered black floor. I see a few people have finished and returned their forms to the fire-headed lady.

  I write down I have a daytime conflict on weekdays up until the performance date, but that it’s flexible. It is, right? If they really needed me. I don’t want to be inflexible.

  Then it hits me that I really want to do this.

  I want in on this scene. It may be fraying and tattered, but it’s charged. I get that itching feeling again that my dad is somehow responsible for this afternoon, but shake it off.

  The form asks me if I’d be interested in any other aspect of this production if I’m not cast: stage crew, lighting, sound, set construction, makeup, ushering, advertising, tickets/concessions. I don’t want to seem ridiculous, so I just check stage crew and set construction. Even though I’m pretty sure I’d do whatever they wanted me to. Not that I have any experience with any of it. Then I check makeup. Just for fun.

  Fire Lady collects the forms from people who haven’t already turned them in. Some people have headshots. Seth does, but he tells me not to worry. I see not everyone has them. The other teenager does. She tries to smile at me, but I ignore her. I don’t know why. Fire Lady tells me to stand, and gestures toward another guy across the room to do the same, then gives us a piece of paper with a scene to prepare. Sides, they’re called. I look to Seth, who gestures for me to move. Peter would never believe it if he could see me here now.

  Seth’s the type of guy Mrs. Sage would call a hoodlum because his hair is long. Or this guy about to read a scene with me—he has a tattoo of a dagger on his forearm in thick black ink. I don’t think hoodlum would be a strong enough word for Mrs. Sage.

  “Hi, I’m Toby,” my hoodlum scene partner says.

  “Genesis.”

  “I guess you’re reading Ruby.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “And I’m Felix.”

  “Do you know what this play is about?”

  “Love. What else? And sex. And violence. That’s all I really know. But Casper Maguire is a fucking genius.”

  “That’s the bald guy?”

  “You don’t know him?”

  I shake my head.

  “Where have you been?”

  “Uhhh … New Jersey?”

  Toby laughs. I wasn’t actually trying to be funny. And I realize I shouldn’t have said that, since apparently I live at Planned Parenthood.

  We run through the scene four times before we’re called to the area marked as the stage. In the faint light slipping out from under the black-curtained window, there’s the trace of a dried puddle of liquid. I press my toe into it, and it sticks. Red lights shine into our eyes.

  “You are in hell,” Casper (apparently, the Great) says.

  Casper is a head floating in smoke. Like the powerful Wizard of Oz when he’s all big and green and loud. Only, Casper whispers. I haven’t seen Casper speak to anyone since I entered this room, except Fire Lady. Ms. Karen would call his behavior brooding. She says I do it too. She says sometimes I should just smile and it might change my mood.

  “Excuse me?” I say.

  “Ruby. She is, you are, in hell in this scene. You are completely ruined. You just lost the only man you ever loved. Can you imagine that?”

  I swallow hard. And nod.

  He nods back. I look down to make sure my feet are firmly on the ground. They are. And that’s not because they are stuck to dried liquor. I have to think. I have to understand what’s behind these words I’m about to say for anyone to care. For anyone to feel anything. I close my eyes and think about that while I breathe in and out. In. Out.

  “Whenever you’re ready,” Casper says gently. But also sort of growling. G
entle growling.

  I look up to see Toby standing patiently. I’m really an actor right now, and it fills me with electricity. I raise my head and he starts.

  “Ruby, it’s too late. It’s like we’ve already died and we’re ghosts now.”

  Then Toby, I mean Felix, turns into Peter before me, and I stop for a second. I stop, then remember the words, the answers, are on the paper in my shaking hands. I blink, hard.

  “So why can’t we be ghosts, then? I’d be anything to stay with you. Anything. Here, take my heart. Take my skin. Take my hair. I don’t need any of it if I’m not with you. Take me back, Felix. I don’t want to be alive if you walk out that door. I don’t care about anything else. I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care I don’t care I don’t…”

  Then Toby/Felix/Peter is holding me by my upper arms as I let my weight drop. I could cry, but I’m fighting it. Because I know that’s what Ruby would do. At least in this moment. And I only just met her.

  The rest of the scene flies. I fight against the man who’s leaving me. I rip myself open and I bleed.

  When we get to the end of the lines, we’re both panting.

  I click back into myself, into this red room. With the bald man scribbling notes into a notepad smaller than his palm.

  Toby and I look at each other. Then back to Casper Maguire, who closes his notepad and sets it on the chair next to him.

  “You stay up there,” Casper says, pointing to Toby. Then to me: “You are done.”

  “Done?” I say, struggling because I think all the breath has left my body.

  “Done.” Then he’s calling another girl up to read with Toby.

  Fire Lady stops me to make sure she has my phone number down correctly, then tells me they will post the cast list tomorrow afternoon in front of the bar, or I can wait for the call. I look around for Seth. But he is deep into his scene practice, and I decide to slip away without saying good-bye. Maybe I won’t even come back to check the cast list. Maybe I won’t answer my phone. Maybe I imagined too hard that I belong here, and I’m just a dumb girl from New Jersey who needs to play with kids her own age.

  Slipping away doesn’t work. Seth is in front of me like magic.

  “Where you going?” he asks.

  “They said I was done. I think I blew it.”

  “Blew it? No way, Gen. I saw you up there. That was…”

  I don’t let him finish. “Well, he doesn’t want to see any more, so I’m done.”

  “Will you wait for me?”

  I look to the door. My escape. Then to a clock on the wall. It’s just about six now. Shit. My grandparents and sister will be at my house in an hour. If I leave now, I’ll only be a little bit late.

  “Come on. I’ll be done soon. Wait for me. You have something better to do?”

  Um.

  Something better to do?

  It’s hard to believe any place but right here exists. It’s hard to imagine there are people expecting me at home, even though I know it’s true.

  “Don’t go.”

  Maybe Casper will look my way one last time and remember me. Maybe I’m still auditioning by sitting here and waiting. Seth’s partner calls him back.

  Ms. Karen would call this justifying. Fine. I’m justifying. But I’m also letting go. I start to text my family but I’m interrupted by Seth’s voice and his audition piece. I turn to watch. He’s paired with a tall girl with long, wavy black hair and a slight accent I can’t place. Her lips are bright red and so is her sweater. He squeezes her cheeks together in his hand, pushing her lips out like a fish; tilting her head back in a way I’m sure will snap her neck. She bends backward, looking frightened. A couple of tears appear in the corners of her eyes.

  “You will never understand how much I love you,” he whispers into her mouth. So close to her I can barely hear him. His voice like a hiss. Then he lets go and she drops to her knees.

  “Please,” she begs. “Please don’t leave me.”

  I haven’t had a chance to beg Peter yet. He hasn’t given me that. Seth spits on the floor.

  Casper stops them.

  How could he? It was just getting good.

  Everything stalls. We are caught in this moment of loss for the couple onstage.

  And then Seth breaks. His face morphs back into itself or out of itself or something supernatural, because I swear he wasn’t Seth just a moment ago.

  “Thanks so much for the opportunity,” he says to Casper.

  Shit. I didn’t thank anyone.

  “Yes. Next please,” Casper snarls.

  Seth shrugs, and then gathers his things. Fire Lady checks his phone number too and then we’re outside again. He’s howling into the air.

  “That was amazing!” He hollers and laughs and scoops me up to spin me around. “Let’s run!”

  “Run?”

  “Yeah! Let’s run! Have you ever run through a crowded New York City sidewalk? It’s the best!”

  I don’t have time to think, time to question, time to doubt.

  We’re running. Running toward something.

  Anything.

  Nothing.

  Everything.

  The world around us blurs into streaks of gray and lights as we run. The city floats up into the blue-black-orange of dusk. When Seth stops abruptly, I run straight into his arms. Just when it can’t seem any more like I’m in a movie or a play or a dream.

  I look into his face. I can see his breath. Even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t be able to detach from his hold. We’re just here, letting the vaporized city around us solidify into frozen buildings and sidewalks and trees.

  “I’m not going to kiss you,” he says, and his voice is all breath and ice.

  “Okay,” I say.

  “No protest?”

  I don’t know how to protest. I don’t even know where I am. I don’t even know if I’m made of flesh and bone or air and dust.

  I put my head down into his chest and breathe in. Lemon soap. Laundry. Smoke.

  “I need to go home,” I say.

  He doesn’t protest. Maybe he forgot how to as well.

  We walk to the train without touching each other even though it would be so natural to put my hand into his. I’m trying to remember what Peter’s hands feel like. I’m sure he held mine on the way into the clinic. Didn’t he? I can’t remember.

  I look over to Seth, who also seems to be deep in thought. The air hovers heavily around us.

  At the station entrance, he takes both my hands.

  “I’ll call you,” he says with a half-smile. “Okay?”

  I nod and say okay.

  “Good.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “Good.”

  “We find out tomorrow.”

  “Yes, we do.”

  “Bye, Seth.” He lets me go. “Thank you so much.”

  “You did it yourself.”

  He blows me a kiss, and I walk down the stairs. When I reach the bottom and look back up into the light of the outside world, he’s gone.

  ACT II

  SCENE 5

  (This scene takes place in a church. At rise, PETER and GENESIS follow MR. and MRS. SAGE and JIMMY down an aisle, but at a good distance.)

  PETER

  You really didn’t have to come.

  GENESIS

  I wanted to.

  PETER

  It means a lot to my mom.

  GENESIS

  Does it mean a lot to you?

  PETER

  Yes.

  GENESIS

  That’s what I care about.

  PETER

  She’s not all bad, you know.

  GENESIS

  I know that.

  PETER

  Give it time. She’ll let you in.

  (They sit down. Take out hymnals. Music starts and the choir sings. GENESIS watches PETER as he sings along. Her eyes well up and he takes her hand.)

  PASTOR

  God grant me the serenity

  To accept
the things I cannot change;

  Courage to change the things I can;

  And wisdom to know the difference.

  (Blackout.)

  A PERIOD OF EMOTIONAL PARALYSIS CAN OCCUR

  On the bus ride home, all the post-audition elation twists and turns itself into knots. I am not the person I said I was. If they knew my real age, would they think I was just a kid? Not take me seriously? I haven’t felt like a kid in so long. I haven’t felt like a kid since my dad died. Before that, really. When he’d disappear and my mom would need me not to be a kid. She didn’t know what to do with kids. Ally was the kid. I was some limbo age. I was the one who did the grocery shopping and wheeled our food home in a granny cart. I was the one who washed our clothes and our sheets and made sure Mom kept her prescriptions filled.

  I’ve always been in that limbo. But I couldn’t take care of my mom and another kid. And when my mom ended up in the hospital that day and we had to assure everyone she didn’t try to kill herself, that the doctors gave her a bad combination, that no heart could take what she had been prescribed, well, we were just too broken to hold on to Ally anymore. The grandparents took her. And I kept washing our socks and signing the checks to the utility companies.

  She didn’t try to kill herself.

  Grandma was insistent.

  I don’t want to go home right now. Going home is going backward. If I don’t stay on this wave, I’m afraid I’ll sink to the bottom of the ocean.

  I know the right thing to do would be to text everyone and let them know I’m on my way. But something is stopping me from even pulling my phone out of my bag. Ms. Karen will have a lot to say about this. More justifying. More detachment. But what about just holding on to what feels good? What about pushing forward with all your might?

  Why did I leave Seth? Was it really the night before last that we met? It had to have been years, oceans, universes ago. Maybe that’s why I can’t remember.

  And then: an image. Spitting. Spitting vodka like a fountain out of his window and laughing so hard and pushing a pile of clothes off the bed, and then tumbling into it with him and wrapping myself up in him.