Goodbye trees. Helloo-oo! Goodbye echo.—lieutenant
“Chop the onions please.”
“How ’bout I separate the eggs?”
“I’ve got that; right now I want you to chop the onions.”
“No.”
Sigh. “You wanted to help me make breakfast, so please chop the onions.”
I woke confused, hearing a man’s voice in our condo early in the morning. Was the woman Sister Andersen? What was she doing down in
Graça was already at the library, so I had our room to myself. I brushed my long hair into a low ponytail, traded my nightgown for jeans and a loose sweater, and ventured into the kitchen. Marianne was leaning against the cabinets, made-up and ready to go. Chris and Sister Andersen poured and flipped pale quarter-yolk omlets.
Karen turned around and glanced at me, “Sleep well, Bekah?” Chris started and poured a viscous stream of raw egg and onions into the well beneath the burner. Karen gasped, and Marianne rolled her eyes.
I glared at Chris. “I slept fine.”
“Bekah an’ I are gonna go,” Marianne proclaimed.
Sister Andersen protested weakly, “But I was hoping we could all have breakfast together, hun, since you missed dinner last night.”
“Well, that won’t work ’cause Chris dumped it all.”
Chris’s eyes darkened as he scooped egg out of the range. I cleared my throat, “Marianne’s just taking me to work, so she’ll be back soon.”
As we pulled out of the driveway in her jeep, Marianne growled, “You didn’t have to tell them I was taking you to work.”
* * * *
By Monday I was about to jump out of my skin with anticipation of the auditions. I woke up early enough to curl my hair and apply a little makeup. When Marianne’s jeep skidded into the parking lot by the
The theater was throbbing with tension—it radiated off the actors’ taut muscles and bounced off the padded walls. I dabbed at the nervous perspiration on my hairline. Over and over I had the same conversation:
“Hi, Bekah.”
“Hi, how are you?”
“Fine, I mean, nervous. Which part are you trying for?”
“Irina.”
“Huh, I thought Masha was more you.”
“Uh . . . which part are you trying for?”
By some mistake, I was BYU’s onstage icon of the empowered woman. Every worthwhile play had one, and I could act her with a tilt of my head, a set of my chin, a pose of my body. If only I could be so confident away from the lights. Janice Wilburn (junior from Independence, Missouri; majoring in acting; returned from the Italy Rome mission), a vivacious new addition to our acting pool, was trying for Masha, and I was banking on her great physical presence to win me, through contrast, the elusive part: the delicate and unempowered female pawn.
Professor Allred emerged from backstage and looked over our anxious faces. She frowned, “For those of you who don’t understand this play, I say, ‘Have fun arranging sets this season!’ But I will give a brief overview of the characters as I see them so you can act them correctly. If you do not know your character, you do not know yourself onstage.” She rubbed her wrinkled hands together and little specks of dry skin floated away in the spotlight. “First, the three sisters: Olga is the spinster oldest sister, the mother figure; Masha is the passionate woman trapped in a marriage with a dull man who isn’t as brilliant as she thought; and Irina is the youngest who always dreams of Moscow and who attracts scores of suitors, though she loves none of them. Andrei is their brother; he gambles his money and wastes his life. Natascha is the ignorant country woman whom Andrei loves and the sisters hate—she’s got a maniacal streak, though. Vershinin is the newly arrived lieutenant colonel from
One of the newcomers to the class had raised his hand. “How come Chebutykin may be Irina’s father? Do they say that in the play? ’Cause I don’t remember it. Why can’t he just be an old friend? Why do we have to pretend there might be adultery in it? Isn’t that cheapening our art?”
Professor Allred coughed. “Let’s move on. Kulygin is Masha’s kind and patient schoolteacher husband. Rodé is a schoolteacher and a soldier. Anfisa is the sisters’ elderly nurse. Ferapont is an old doorkeeper for the town council.
“Now, we’ll try for Masha first. Who’s up to the challenge?”
Janice Wilburn and a few other women queued up on stage right. Professor Allred frowned at me, but she conducted the auditions in near silence. Most of the Mashas read well, but none did spectacularly. Next was the trial for Vershinin. Jared Washington (senior from
“I’m a bit thirsty, I could do with some tea,” asked Vershinin.
Janice looked at her watch, “They’ll be bringing some in a minute. I got married when I was eighteen, and I was scared of my husband because he was a schoolmaster, and I’d only just left school myself. I thought he was terribly clever, and oh so learnèd and important. But things have changed since then, I’m sorry to say.”
“Yes, I see.” Jared was perfect. He looked bored, as if Masha was a slightly-more-interesting-than-usual picture in a magazine. He listened to her because he saw something adventurous might come from it. But there was something off about Janice. She looked too . . . sexless. She repeated her lines like she were writing her personal history for an assignment; she did not look like she longed for Vershinin to purge the awful, heavy loneliness from within her.
Vershinin bent to kiss Janice’s hand and looked up, “It’s dark in here, but I can see your eyes shining.”
“There’s more light over here,” Janice continued, helpful and virginal.
Professor Allred interrupted, “Okay, okay, that’s fine.” Applause echoed in the dark. “Now for the youngest sister, Irina. I’m looking for an Irina who’s helpless, hopeless, and unintentionally coy, so the actress who takes this part must be very good at these three things.”
I skipped up the stage steps and joined the line of prospective Irinas on stage right. We were to perform Irina’s monologue from act 3, after a fire destroys the town. With a last absent thought about those lingering fifteen pounds, I stepped onto center stage and let loose a few tears:
“What’s become of everything, where’s it all gone? Where is it? Oh my God, I’ve forgotten, forgotten everything, my head’s in such a whirl. I can’t remember the Italian for ‘windows’ or ‘ceiling’ either. I’m always forgetting things, I forget something every day. And life is slipping away, it will never, never come back again, and we shall never go to
The theater door opened and from the sea of black below the stage, a rectangle of light appeared. Silhouetted in that light was a tall figure with a halo of messy blond curls. I continued Irina’s lament as the newcomer ambled down the steps to the well in front of the stage. There was a snap—Marianne stabbed her mechanical pencil into the back of the seat in front of her and little bits of white plastic and grey lead rained onto the floor. Chris, the tardy apparition, handed Professor Allred a sealed letter as I finished the monologue:
“I’m not crying, I’m not. I won’t.” I brushed tears off my cheeks. “Look, I’ve stopped now. I must stop, I really must.”
Professor Allred’s eyebrows raised, then furrowed, then raised again as she read the letter on nice linen stationary. She composed her face and stepped in front of the stage, “Fellow thespians, we have a new member of the company.” She paused for the shocked murmurs to peter out. “I know this is highly irregular, but according to this letter, we’re in for a treat,” she could not have sounded less credulous if she tried. The professor gestured towards Chris like Vanna White, “This is Christian Miles.”
The friendly theater was silent as a morgue. Marianne had a lot of friends, and many of them had passed the gossip about Chris to theater geeks. Chris shivered even though he was wearing a grey sweatshirt under his worn denim blazer.
Professor Allred pivoted to face me on the stage, “Sister Cardim, I apologize that I could not pay full attention to your audition. I was distracted.” She glared at Chris, who took a furtive step back. “Let us move on to the next part,” she folded over a script and shoved it at Chris. “Get on stage. You are Tuzenbakh, Sister Cardim is Irina. Read!” No doubt Professor Allred was planning on Chris failing so completely that she could send him back to wherever he came from.
Chris raised an eyebrow and climbed onstage, avoiding my eyes. “What page?” I ventured at the irritated director. Professor Allred grunted that Chris could show me.
My scenemate leaned down and spoke low in my ear, “Act 1, page 20, I’ll start after Andrei.” As I frantically flipped pages, he added, “Nice hair—it looks like the hair of someone else we both know and love.” The sarcasm in his voice was a worn-down blade.
“Had any good dreams lately?” I hissed over my shoulder.
“A few.” Chris suddenly stepped in front of me and took one of my straight elbows. He was too close—close enough for me to smell a faint—some kind of commercial scent—cool and pleasant. “What are you thinking about?” Chris’s version of an anxious, solicitous Tuzenbakh asked Irina.
I shrugged, but with exasperation instead of with resignation, “Oh, nothing much. I don’t like your friend Solyony, he frightens me. He says such stupid things.”
“He’s a strange man. I’m sorry for him.” Being so close to Chris, or Tuzenbakh, or whoever, was making me nervous. I tried to step away unobtrusively. “Don’t go in yet,” Chris pleaded, catching my arm again, “let’s wait till they’ve all sat down. Just let me be with you for a bit. What are you thinking about?”
I rolled my eyes and sighed. My hopeless, helpless Irina has evaporated in a puff of Christian Miles’s sarcastic deference. He was playing Tuzenbakh all wrong! He was teasing Irina instead of capturing her.
“You’re twenty and I’m not yet thirty. What a lot of years we have ahead of us—so many, many days, all full of my love for you.”
I almost choked. “Don’t talk to me about love, Nicholas dear.”
Professor Allred stood up with a shout, and I pulled my arm out of Chris’s arm again. I turned my back on Chris defiantly, but he no longer looked at me.
Our professor paced below the stage, looking at me and at Chris and at Jared down in the audience and back at me. “You—” she began twice, but she arrested her thoughts before she spoke them. “I’ve never seen it this way, but it’s right. Oh, what am I going to say to the dean? Never mind.” She climbed onstage, grabbed my shoulders, and looked me in the eye, “Bekah, you are Masha—no, no protests, I’m in charge here.” Next she turned to Chris, “And you’ll be her longsuffering husband, Kulygin.”
A seat in the back slammed shut as Marianne exited the theater.
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