“Maybe we should move a little,” Lizabett whispers. We move down a few feet. It’s not like he and I are that close as partners.
“That reality show has everyone acting strange,” I complain. “I bet the producers just start these rumors and then never even show up. They’re just hoping that, if they torment enough people, someone will watch their show if only out of spite.”
I still don’t think it’s right for all of the attention to be on this mysterious reality show instead of the astonishing real story our play is trying to tell people. If God wanted to, He could show these people a reality show or two.
The lights in the church are dimmed and it’s time for the dress rehearsal to begin.
A man at the side of the stage plays a little jazz music on a saxophone and before long the curtain will slowly open. A soft spotlight is supposed to focus on Mary. She will be wearing a mud-colored dress and her hair will be bound up in some khaki scarf that’s made of stiff cotton. I guess there wasn’t any fabric softener back then, either. Anyway, she will be looking at the scorched ground of a wheat field. The stage set will show a run-down farmhouse in the distance with a forlorn gray sheet on the clothesline.
I know what will be there because I’ve seen the pieces of this play being put together. I look at my watch. The director is running late. He should have already raised the curtain.
By now there should be a flash of lightening and the angel should have appeared.
Instead, I see two arms part the curtains and the director comes out in front. He shields his eyes from the spotlight.
“Understudies!” he calls out. “Where are the understudies?”
Lizabett squeals and grabs my arm. “Here! She’s here!”
The director looks down at the rows close to the stage and searches the faces as though he’s trying to decide which ones belong to his understudies. I raise my hand. Joseph’s understudy gives a wracking cough.
“Get up here,” the director says.
“Yes!” Lizabett screams again.
I walk right up onstage and Joseph’s understudy comes along with me. The guy doing the spotlight shines it on us and the other light is dimmed.
The Joseph understudy coughs as we stand on the stage in front of the curtain.
“What’s wrong with you?” the director says to him.
“No voice,” the understudy croaks out so weakly I can barely hear him.
“You can’t talk?” the director says as he runs his hand over his hair and starts to pace in front of us. “What next? First the real actors get snowed in up at Big Bear and then the one producer calls and cancels for some half-brained reason which I don’t even understand. Just because his kid had to go to the hospital. Can’t his wife handle that? He probably had a bigger play to go see.”
I wish the director would back up. “The other Mary got snowed in?”
“I—” the understudy starts to say something, but his voice dies altogether and only air comes out.
The director turns to me. “You’ll have to feed him his lines.”
“But—”
“Yeah, it could work. You say your lines and then you step to the side and say Joseph’s lines as well.”
The man on the saxophone hits a deep, melancholy note on his instrument as he shakes his head.
The director turns to the saxophone man. “I suppose you have a better idea?”
“I need to go home,” the understudy manages to say. His dedication to the play obviously ended when he heard the producer dropped out.
The director looks around blankly. “Well, we have to at least have a body walking around. People could deal with an invisible angel, but we can’t have an imaginary Joseph. A silent Joseph is better than that.”
The understudy backs away.
The director watches the understudy walk off the stage. “Coward. Just because the play is going to bomb, that’s no excuse for abandoning it no matter how sick you are.”
“It’s not going to bomb,” I say. This is Mary’s story. It’s the greatest story ever told. “I know someone who can play Joseph. He knows all the lines.”
The director looks at me like I’ve just announced the Messiah is going to be born on his stage, after all. Which I guess, in a way, is what I have announced.
“Really?” the director asks. “We’ve got three hundred tickets sold for tonight.”
“I’ll ask this guy if he’ll do it.”
“No, you’ll beg him to do it. What am I saying? I’ll beg him to do it. What’s his number?”
The director whips out his cell phone and has Randy called before the rest of us can take a deep breath.
“Yes!” the director shouts as he snaps his cell phone shut. “We’ve got a show to put on!”
The cell phone rings just as he puts it back in his pocket and he answers it.
“For you?” he says as he hands the phone to me.
I think it’s going to be Randy, but it’s not. It’s the butterfly woman who was supposed to play Mary.
“Is it true?” she asks me. “That the producer cancelled and isn’t coming to the opening?”
“That’s what I heard.”
“Then I’m not going to bother trying to get a ride down the mountain. He’s probably going to come to the second showing then.”
“Probably,” I agree.
There’s a moment’s silence. “I hope you didn’t think you were going to be able to perform in all of the productions.”
“I’m happy just to do the opening.”
And I am.
I must admit there is something electrifying about getting ready for the opening. Everyone is scurrying around getting more costumes since the other Mary wore a different size than I do. Fortunately, there’s no shortage of mud-colored dresses that look like tents.
“But your hair,” the costume designer frets. “Mary can’t be a blonde. We’ll need to dig out a wig for you. The hair has to be brown. Black might be okay, but not blond.”
“I don’t need a wig,” I say. “I’ve been meaning to go back to my natural color anyway. Brown.”
The costume woman leaves the stage to go back in her room to find out what she has for me to wear. The director is off talking to the saxophone player. The shepherds are taking a coffee break.
Lizabett has moved up onstage next to me and she looks at me. “Are you sure? Dying your hair? This isn’t just some spur-of-the-moment idea?”
I shrug. “It’s no big deal. I’m not cutting it off. My hair is already dyed. If I don’t like it, I’ll dye it back. Besides, I’d like to see what I’d look like if I looked like me.”
Okay, so maybe I’m not making the most sense I’ve ever made in my life, but the play’s going to go on and I’m going to be in it.
Lizabett and I are the only ones left on the stage so I lift my fist in the air and bring it down with a resounding, “Yes!”
The saxophone player looks up from where he’s sitting on the stage steps and plays me a very nice full note of congratulations.
Now that I see the play is going forward, I am anxious to get myself ready to play the part of Mary. I pinch myself. I can’t believe it. I’m going to be Mary.
“I’ll need to get one of those home dye kits,” I say as Lizabett and I walk down the aisle so we can start heading back to Pasadena. “Maybe you could stop on the way home.”
“Are you sure you should dye it yourself?”
I shrug. “Who else has time? Marilee is getting everything ready for the party. I don’t think Randy would want to do it. And you need to track down Becca and tell her I’m going to be in a play!”
Lizabett nods. “She’d never forgive us if you went onstage and we didn’t let her know. And she hasn’t been answering her cell phone.”
“Anyway, I’ll just get a plain brown. No big deal.”
“You’re going to be Mary!” Lizabett squeals again like she can’t keep it in.
I grin at her. I can’t quite keep it in either.
It’s no
t until Randy calls me on my cell phone while Lizabett and I are driving back to Pasadena that I realize we have a problem.
“Did you say the producers aren’t coming?” Randy asks. I can hear the sounds of the kitchen in the background. “Your aunt has been calling all afternoon adding to the menu for the party because she wants to impress these producers.”
“Oh. Well, maybe one of them will still come.”
“Maybe?”
I nod even though Randy can’t see me. “She’s going to be mad if she spends all this effort on a party and there’s no important people there.”
“Well, the party is really for the actors,” Randy says.
I grunt. “My aunt won’t think so. You’re not important in my aunt’s book unless you’re on television or in the news or—”
“Does sports news count?”
“I guess so.”
“Then we’re covered.”
Randy doesn’t tell me what his plans are, but I feel better knowing someone is sharing my worries about my family.
Chapter Fourteen
“If you give an audience a chance, they will do half your acting for you.”
—Katharine Hepburn
I can’t remember why I brought this quote to the Sisterhood. Maybe it’s just because I always liked Katharine Hepburn. One thing I noticed when I had cancer: I found a great deal of comfort in watching old movies. I liked to see the actresses when they were in their twenties and then later when they were sixty or seventy. It’s like I got to see their lives from young to old. I wasn’t sure my life would go that way and it was nice to see someone who had run the full course before they died.
My mother wasn’t home when I got there. I figured she was out shopping at Bristol Farms. They have the best imported fruit around and, even though they are in South Pasadena and not San Marino, that’s where my mother always heads when she thinks we need groceries.
It was just as well my mother was gone. I was jumping with excitement. The lines of the play kept going through my mind as I stepped into the shower. I had four hours until showtime and I had a lot to do. Lizabett was going to come back and pick me up so we could drive down to the play together. Marilee might come with us or she might drive her own car. I know Randy will want his Jeep, so he’ll drive by himself. We have it all worked out. Marilee even got one of the waitresses to oversee the delivery and set up of the food for the after-play party so everything is arranged.
The shower steams up the mirror in my bathroom, but that’s okay. I don’t need a mirror to towel myself off or to read the directions for the brown hair dye. It’s not the heavy-duty dye; it’s that wash-away kind so I can’t go too wrong. I figure I’ll put the dye on and then, with that plastic little cap on my head, I’ll give myself a manicure. I think a nice set of French-tipped nails would look good in Mary’s century, too.
Before I do my nails, however, I decide to look in my closet, just in case I have something that would be suitable for Mary to wear. I liked that dress made out of flour sacks that the first Mary actress had, but I know there’s nothing like that in my closet. I do find a brown beach cover-up, though. It might look like something a migrant worker would wear. Not to the beach, of course, but it’s a coarsely-woven thing with no shape to it. It looks like something that came from a potato sack instead of a flour sack, but I pull it out just in case and lay it on my bed.
I put that old flannel robe on because it won’t matter if a drop of dye falls on it.
I decide to sit out on the balcony while I do my nails. My cat comes with me. It’s overcast out, but if I look north I can see the snow on Mount Wilson and, since snow is giving me my big break, I want to look at it a little. It takes me longer than I expect to put the white tips on my nails and, by the time I let my nails dry and I go back inside, I see that forty minutes have passed.
I’m only supposed to keep the dye on for twenty minutes so, after I bring my cat inside, I hop right into the shower again so I can start rinsing the stuff out of my hair. I hear the door open downstairs and know my mother is back from the store.
My mother will be so excited that I’m really going to be in the play. I towel my hair off and pull my robe on so I can go tell my mother the good news.
I step into the hall and my mother turns around.
“What’d you do?” my mother says in shock. She’s holding a brown bag of groceries and it slips a little.
“I got the part!”
“No, I mean with your hair. What did you do with your beautiful hair?”
My mother is looking at me like I’d shaved my hair and had a frog tattooed on my forehead.
“I dyed my hair for the play I’m going to be in—the first actress left so I’m on!”
“But your hair was so beautiful.”
I walk over and take the grocery bag out of my mother’s arms. I know she wouldn’t want to bruise any imported fruit and she might do that if the bag slides any further.
“Blond hair wouldn’t work for the play, Mom. There weren’t any blondes in that part of the world when Jesus was born. Besides, I’m naturally a brunette.”
“Your hair was chestnut. That—” my mother points to my hair “—that’s not chestnut.”
“I know. It’s brown.”
I walk down the hall and set the bag on the table at the end. When I come back, I see my mother has gone into her room and is sitting on a chair. That’s where she sits and watches television, but the television is not on. She’s just sitting there.
“You can come to the play if you want,” I say. “Lizabett is going to pick me up. You can come with us.”
“I always took you to that place on Huntington Drive to have your hair done. They were the specialists. That’s what they called themselves.”
“I know, Mom.”
I miss my dad.
I go back into the bathroom and dry my hair. My mother is right. The color is not chestnut. There’s no auburn in it or any blond highlights. It’s just brown. Plus, I left the color on a little too long and now my hair looks dry, like it needs a deep oil conditioner just to have some shine to it.
I go into my bedroom and get dressed in the oldest pair of blue jeans I own. I do wear a little mascara, but I don’t wear any other makeup. My mother is lying on her bed with her eyes closed when I check on her before going downstairs to meet Lizabett.
At the bottom of the stairs, I stop and wrap a wool scarf around my head.
Lizabett has her radio turned up and Christmas carols playing. It’s just turning dark when she comes and the temperature is starting to drop. We have the windows on her car up and her heater is on low. I notice she brought the Sisterhood journal with her. It’s sticking out of her purse.
There are only Christmas decorations at a few of the houses as Lizabett turns the corner to drive onto Huntington Drive. Most houses in San Marino just have poinsettias lining the driveway and don’t have any outside Christmas lights unless they’re tiny white ones. Everything is so understated; it’s the San Marino way. I wish there was more exuberance with Christmas here. I like houses that have the twinkle lights in red, green and yellow.
Lizabett waits until she’s at a stoplight and then she turns to me with a big grin. “Guess what?”
“What?”
“Becca’s coming to the play.”
“Really? Becca? You’re sure?”
Lizabett nods and there’s no denying the look of triumph on her face.
“She doesn’t have to come if she has other things she needs to do,” I say.
Lizabett snorts. “Like anybody has anything more important to do when one of the Sisterhood is in a play for the very first time in her whole life.”
I grin. It’s getting a little warm in the car so I unwrap the scarf that’s been around my head.
“You did it,” Lizabett says, with a glance at me as she turns onto the freeway.
“Do you think it’s too brown?”
“I don’t think something can be too brown. Brown i
s pretty much it. I think it looks like Mary’s hair would have looked.”
“Me, too.” I sit up a little straighter.
“And the brown hair makes your eyes stand out more.”
I smile at Lizabett. “It’s okay. The hair is just for the play. I’ll try another brown for the real thing. Maybe something like chestnut since that seems to be the color my hair used to be.”
“Chestnut. That sounds pretty.”
There are cars in the parking lot of the church when we get there. During the week when the play has been rehearsing, there have always been some cars. But there are definitely more now. I see Randy’s Jeep.
“You’re going to still sit up front, aren’t you?” I ask Lizabett as we walk to the door of the church.
She holds up her cell phone. “I’m even going to take a picture of you when you take your bow, after it’s all done.”
“Really?” I hold the door open for Lizabett.
Lizabett nods as she walks inside. “Then I’m going to print it out and paste it in the journal. This is your big day. I’m even going to write the exact time of the play in the journal.”
“If you write something in the journal, make sure you say that I couldn’t have done it without your encouragement.”
Lizabett grins. “Thanks.”
I leave Lizabett in the front row of the audience section and start backstage to find Randy. Just before I go behind the stage, I look back and see that Lizabett has pulled the journal out of her purse and is opening it up.
This is Lizabett. I’m so excited. This is as close as I’ve ever come to a star in the making. I wonder if someday a reporter from Entertainment News will want to interview me because I was there when Carly Winston got her big break. If they do, I want to have all of the facts right. That’s why I’ve already written down what happened this afternoon. This is going to make a great story on how Carly got discovered. The reason I know she’ll be discovered is that the producer who has the reality show isn’t the only producer who was going to come and watch the play. The guy who does the lights said that the bigger producer is still coming. The one who has the prime-time comedy show.
A Dropped Stitches Christmas Page 13