A Tender Thing

by Emily Neuberger

  Soon the rest of the cast joined them. Even the stage veterans shared a moment of reverence as they took in the theater for the first time. No matter how many shows they’d been through, all the cast members were united in their devotion to the art form. These people would surround her in the most important moment of her life.

  She’d known their names in New York, but as rehearsals commenced, individual traits began to peek out. Penelope was skilled with makeup and lent Eleanor a hand in this subject where she was unfamiliar. Duncan, playing Molly’s father, introduced her to an entirely different dynamic than she’d ever known: flamboyant, middle-aged, insolent. Freddie was gruff when he gave notes on the dance numbers, but preserved the actors’ humanity with more care than Harry, and turned out to be funny as well. He could even make Don laugh, and often did, before rehearsals, as they talked near the piano. Though Harry still kept Eleanor and Charles away from the rest of the cast in Boston, the fact that they spent their days in the same rehearsals, restaurants, and hotels as their peers naturally softened the restrictions.

  Several times throughout rehearsals, she stopped to take in the moment. She received a dressing room—her very own, with her name on the door. The cast spent an hour learning the spacing in the theater. The stage was larger than their rehearsal studio, so they spent most of the day tweaking the blocking and dancing to use the extra space. It could have been tedious, and was to other actors, but something so mechanical was entrancing to Eleanor.

  While in the rehearsal there had been room for experimentation and play with the characters, their time in the theater was limited. Eleanor found that she had even less freedom for creative expression. Once, Harry and Don needed to solve a problem and asked her and Charles to run their meeting scene repeatedly. In between, Eleanor craned, trying to hear what they were saying. The behind-the-scenes work was so fascinating to her that she wanted to switch places with them. But most of the time, she was too busy. They had three weeks to space the production, run it with lights and microphones, introduce costumes, and then run dress rehearsals. Each day Eleanor rehearsed in a wig—real human hair!—so she’d be used to the thing. It was hot and so tight she could whip her head around without its budging.

  Casual relationships became close. They began changing costumes backstage. When they ran the first act, Eleanor had to do her first quick change. A dresser named Franny helped her. The woman had a pack around her waist with necessities like needles, tape, water, and bandages. Eleanor would make her exit from the stage and stand with her arms out like a scarecrow while the woman stripped her of her dress. She was uneasy standing in her brassiere, stockings, and slip, but the other actors didn’t seem to feel that way and walked right by. The sight of a naked chest or stockinged leg was part of the furniture.

  Eleanor was spellbound by the theatrical professionalism of the crew. If she hadn’t had so much to do onstage, she could have sat back and watched them work. The men who climbed the scaffolding without a glance down, operating the spotlights; black-clad runners who nipped out to dress the stage between scenes; Dan, the sound designer, who treated microphones with as light a touch as a violinist tuning his instrument; and Otis, the props master. He was a heavy, bald man who’d been working with Harry for three decades. He knew what every actor needed at every moment, handed it off, then replaced the pieces in numbered sections on a table. Everything was accounted for and prepared. Eleanor never worried about forgetting something; Otis handed props to her just before every entrance. The crew was so good at their jobs that Eleanor didn’t have to worry about her costume, her shoes, her props—all she had to do was perform.

  The best day of the entire process came the week after they arrived in Boston. It was the sitzprobe: “sit and sing.” It was their first rehearsal with the orchestra.

  They ran through each number so that Frank Taliercio could calibrate tempos and the actors could get a sense of singing with more than the piano accompaniment. Frank was good at his job and anticipated when she wanted to sing faster or slow down. She’d imagined she would have trouble hearing the musical cues, but Frank knew how to watch singers, and Eleanor had no trouble finding the melody.

  Don’s music was incredible. When played by a full orchestra, layers and details that had been absent in the piano accompaniment revealed themselves. The score blended Chicago jazz with classical orchestra sounds. Many of Molly’s songs had a heavy brass section with a driving piano and rhythm section—fast, tough music. Luke’s music was softer, woodwinds and strings, soaring legato lines. It was disarming, hearing such delicate beauty come out of a man. Eleanor wondered if any woman could watch this show without falling in love with him.

  When the cast sang as one—near the end of the first act and a number early in the second, and the finale—chills ran down her spine. Their voices blended into a rich texture. The mix of sopranos, mezzos, tenors, and basses, and the cross-section of light and heavy voices, produced a thick, vibrating mass of phonation.

  Standing in the middle of the cast, Eleanor heard the sound differently than the audience would. From where she stood, she identified individual voices and could distinguish the harmonic lines. In the seats, the audience would hear the fully blended finished product. For a moment, Eleanor felt a pang—she would not be able to enjoy Don’s music in its full magnitude. But then she heard Charles beside her, and Penelope behind him, and she felt a shiver. No one else in the entire world would hear Don’s music as she did. In the finale, a trumpet soloist whined a lonesome countermelody beneath the cast’s voices, and Eleanor was in tears. She and Charles sang over the top of the rest: “My love, with you / Forever now, with you / For every night and every day.”

  “Take five,” Harry said when they finished.

  Don approached. Things had been tense since that night in her room, but when he saw her face, he smiled.

  “This day gets me every time,” he said.

  “How do you do this?” Eleanor gestured to the orchestra. He’d written every instrument’s line, every harmony. “Do you hear it all in your head?”

  “I don’t hear it,” he said. “I know what it should feel like, and I write that.”

  “Then you can’t be the monster you say you are. Not if you felt this score.”

  Don held her gaze. She noticed gray strands on his head, illuminated by the houselights. He kept his hands in his pockets like a boy. The contrast made her want to rumple his hair.

  Don made a noise in his throat. “You adjusted to the orchestra brilliantly.”

  His compliment felt as precious as a pearl. She sucked her lips into her mouth, unsure how to continue. But she should not be so meek; she had worked hard and earned the praise. She slipped her score into her bag. “Thank you, Don.”

  * * *

  As they approached dress rehearsals, Eleanor dreaded the crowd outside the theater more and more. With her red hair, she was easily discernible. The protestors knew she was the star. Every morning she stopped a few blocks away to take in the situation before gathering the strength to pass them. The moment they saw her coming, they would call out to her. Connor Morris, the Herald reporter, was there every day, offering coffee from his thermos to other protestors, handing out markers to add more cruel phrases to the signs. She took to using the box office entrance instead of the stage door to avoid them, though she had to pick her way through the administrative wing on her way to her dressing room. One night as she was leaving, she encountered a slew of horrible words scrawled on the stage door, which she tried to rub out with her sleeve. She was afraid that one night, one of the protestors might follow her home. Something about Connor Morris’s charm frightened her more than the rest put together. Part of her wanted to mention this to Charles, but she wasn’t sure what to say. They had formed a good friendship, but mentioning that the crowd was singling her out for her whiteness might jeopardize that. She felt implicated. She didn’t want to be likened to those people.
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br />   The day of their first dress rehearsal, she applied her makeup and wondered whether denouncing the protestors was better than keeping silent. She wished she had someone to talk to about all this. Since their fight, her only communication with Rosie had been a few bills stuffed in an envelope for rent. After a few weeks, she had sent her a postcard, inviting her to visit with a ticket to the show. Eleanor did not receive a reply.

  A knock came on her dressing room door. She glanced at the mirror—she looked ridiculous, clad in a wig cap, stage makeup, and fake eyelashes. But this was the theater.

  “Come in.”

  Harry strode through and leaned against her dressing table, riffling through a pad of paper.

  “Do you think we’re ready?” she asked.

  “Could be in worse shape,” he said, then looked up. “You’re doing well.”

  Harry’s compliments were even rarer than Don’s—especially when she felt that he meant them. She let it hang in the air a moment, ears warming. “Thank you.”

  Harry looked around the room, his eyes stopping on a box of tampons she’d set near the mirror. He wrinkled his nose. “Put that away. Everyone doesn’t need to know your sordid issues.”

  Eleanor’s mouth fell open. Before she could think of a response, she scrambled to grab the box. It slipped from her hands, but she caught it and stuffed it in a drawer. She could not look Harry in the eye. Normally when he corrected her, she apologized, but this time she did not find the will.

  Harry had already moved on. “Yesterday, your entrance in the first act came a moment too early. Listen for the cue and don’t move until you hear it.”

  He continued for a few more minutes. Eleanor wrote down his critiques. He told her to get something to eat before they ran the show again in the evening, and left.

  Eleanor waited until he was gone and then opened the drawer and retrieved the box of tampons. She put them right in front of her vanity mirror. This was her dressing room, after all.

  * * *

  A few minutes later she knocked on Charles’s door. A tall young woman with a round face and a rounder belly opened it.

  “You must be Gwen,” Eleanor said.

  “Sure am.” She held out her hand. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  “You ready?” Charles was powdering his face so it wouldn’t shine under the lights, a towel around his neck to protect his costume. He wore just a white shirt, blue jeans, and sneakers.

  “I think so,” Eleanor said. “As I’ll ever be.”

  “Charlie says you’ve got real chops,” Gwen said.

  Eleanor shrugged but inwardly glowed. “Even if that’s true, it’s still my first show.”

  “We should go down,” Charles said. He looked at Gwen. “How are you feeling, babe?”

  “I’ve been better.” She looked at Eleanor. “Whoever said nausea only happens in the first trimester hasn’t met my baby.”

  Charles leaned forward and kissed his wife on the temple.

  “Are you going to watch the rehearsal?” Eleanor asked Gwen.

  Charles laughed. “You think Harry would allow anyone’s eyes on this before he’s deemed it perfect? No way in hell.” He looked at Gwen’s belly. “Sorry, Baby.”

  Gwen shrugged into her coat. “I think I’ll go for a walk. Fresh air helps.”

  As she watched Gwen pull on her gloves, Connor’s face came into Eleanor’s mind. “Don’t go out through the stage door,” Eleanor said.

  Gwen looked up at her. “The protestors?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  With Gwen’s steady gaze and pregnant belly, she looked powerful. Eleanor felt like a little girl, crying about bullies. “Eleanor, I’ve dealt with bastards like that my whole life.”

  Eleanor shook her head. “But there’s one in particular—I got a bad feeling.”

  “They all give you a bad feeling,” Gwen said. “That’s the point.”

  “Please don’t go that way.” Eleanor was still shy around Gwen but wanted to be sure she made her point. She suspected that if Gwen met Connor Morris, she would know exactly what Eleanor meant. “There’s something off about him. Please believe me.”

  Gwen looked her in the eyes. “All right then.” She looked at Charles, and Eleanor caught something private in their eye contact. “That goes for you, too, Charlie. You be extra careful tonight.”

  Charles promised and took Gwen’s arm as they went down to the stage.

  The cast and crew scurried around backstage, animated by anticipation. The theater still smelled like sawdust from the construction of their set. The orchestra was warming up. Everyone wore costumes that resembled street clothes in their simplicity.

  Eleanor expected a speech from Harry to kick off the dress rehearsal, but he was all business. He was onstage with the stage manager, testing the doors on the set himself to make sure they worked. The dancers gathered for fight call, practicing the lifts and stage combat to avoid injury. At ten o’clock, Harry nodded at the stage manager, who went to a microphone on the side of the stage. “Places in five.”

  The cast dispersed. The commotion electrified Eleanor. She felt like she wanted to do a backflip. A man went to the front of the stage and checked all the microphones on the floor. Franny, Eleanor’s dresser, zipped her dress—a pale blue A-line—and retied her sash. In her fantasies, she’d imagined her Broadway debut would involve dazzling costumes, but she had only the one she was wearing, a nightgown during “Morning ’Til Night,” and a cream sheath for the elopement scene. The simplicity made her feel more focused. It was all about the story. Nearby, Charles shook out his muscles, closed his eyes, and prepared mentally. Dancers stretched. Otis, the props master, checked over everything on the table backstage: Molly’s house keys, the flowers that Luke gave to her in the elopement scene, a picnic basket, and a safe that housed the gun she held in the finale. No one knew the combination except him. It was a real gun, filled with blanks.

  “Union rules,” Charles had told her back when they started working with the props. Eleanor was excited to learn this; any theater-industry detail was fascinating to her. “No one touches it but Otis, until it gets handed to you.”

  Eleanor watched everyone prepare all around her. She hadn’t yet found what she needed to do to ready herself for a performance and made an exaggerated show of touching her toes and rolling her shoulders. She felt a hand touch her back. Don.

  “You look like you’re preparing to run a race.”

  She shrugged. “I like to loosen my muscles.”

  Don’s mouth twitched. “Break a leg today.”

  She longed to hug him, and since it was such an important day, she gave herself permission.

  “It’s been a hectic few weeks. I’m sure you’re tired, but I know you’ll push through. It’s everything we’ve worked for.” He twisted out of her embrace. “You never stop surprising me.”

  “Don.” But she didn’t know what else to say. “Thank you. That means so much to me.”

  “Show Harry what you’re made of.”

  Eleanor smiled, hoping to prolong the moment.

  “Places, please.” The stage manager’s voice came over the microphone like a god’s. The lights went down. All was black until the lights went up onstage. The first notes of the overture came from a solo trumpet, lonely and true. The hairs on her arms rose up.

  * * *

  Eleanor might have lived weeks in the following days. The long rehearsals were packed with last-minute costume changes and line edits. The show would continue to change daily, until the Broadway opening. It was ever elastic, so their brains had to be as well. On breaks, she and Charles ran lines over and over. With this many rewrites, even Charles made mistakes.

  At night, Eleanor returned to the hotel and soaked her feet in ice. After their second dress rehearsal, she woke up in her room with the lights still on, her feet dunked
in tepid water. She was struggling to keep up with all the changes. As they approached opening, everyone else in the cast seemed to step into a professional mode, where they could both play and present good work. Eleanor went farther into herself. Her anxiety ratcheted up to a point where she could hardly even talk to Charles during rehearsal.

  They had one more dress rehearsal before they began preview performances, which ran for a few weeks before the show opened officially, to give the cast time to perform before critics could review the show. Despite the protests, or—perhaps Don was right—because of them, the tickets were selling steadily, and they expected most of the orchestra seats to be full, along with the best rows in the balcony.

  “Why don’t you go out and enjoy the city?” Charles asked on their last day off while they ran new lines. “Gwen and I were going to walk to the water, maybe get something to eat. Come with us.”

  “It’s freezing.”

  “Wear mittens. I have to do something other than rehearse or I’ll go nuts. Come on. You can’t come to Boston and not even eat a cup of clam chowder.”

  “Clam chowder? Are you insane?” Eleanor gaped. “You know we can’t have that stuff on a show day. Have you ever tried to sing after a cup of that sludge? Phlegm city.”

  Charles laughed—she was right, every singer knew it—but didn’t relent. “If your whole world is this show, you can’t be a good actor. Molly is a human being, you know, not a costume.”

  “Screw you.”

  “Have a delightful day, Eleanor.”

  Eleanor delivered a terrible final dress rehearsal. Maybe it was exhaustion, perhaps it was anxiety, but she missed an entrance. She was in her dressing room, thinking she had a long break, when a stagehand banged on her door.