There was a contractor at the office a few days back telling us about some businessmen in
“Just tell your professor you don’t want the part.” Derek shrugged over his hearth-baked turkey sandwich. Derek and I had started eating at the Legends Grille every Monday at one so we could plot his next move to get Marianne. We also talked about me sometimes.
I shook my head. “I don’t think so—she could throw me out of the play completely.”
“Well, if I were you, I wouldn’t want to be on the same stage with that maniac. By the way, how can he just saunter in in the middle of the semester and get a part?” He bit his sandwich viciously and chewed halfway before speaking again, “Anyway, tell her about his anger problem. Say you’re scared or somethin’.”
“I don’t know, Derek. I can’t just . . . oppose her like that. Maybe you could talk to her for me!” I waited for an answer, but Derek had frozen—sandwich in midair—and was staring at something through the window behind me. His oval lids were rigid around his dark eyes. I turned in my seat. Chris had joined a group of the small semipolitical, pseudorebellious, tight-jeans-and-black-plastic-glasses-wearing contingent at BYU. They were heading en masse past the Fieldhouse towards
When they were out of sight, Derek blurted, “So is it true?”
“Yes, it’s true: God exists, Jesus lives, and he loves you.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. What I mean is, did the new kid try to beat Marianne with a statue of Jesus last week?” Derek stuck out his pointy chin and puffed out his chest.
I gulped. “You’ll have to ask Marianne; I wasn’t there.” I took another swig of my caffeine-free Coke Zero.
Derek frowned, but then he saw a gaggle of his many, many friends. He shifted his attention to them for a while—congratulating the guys on their latest hand-holding victories and listening to the girls’ inane stories about their hair. When he got up to clear his place, Derek motioned for me to join him.
“I’ve got an idea,” he began as we weaved around tables full of huge football players taking up two chairs a piece.
“Good for you. You’re finally thinkin’.”
“No, I mean I have an idea to get Marianne.”
“Oh?” I murmured as I ducked below a ball of foil flying towards the trashcan. “What’s the big idea this time?”
“The Miss 37th Ward pageant next month—what are Marianne’s chances of winning?”
“Nicholette might challenge her, but she’s too mean. Not enough people like her. Marianne hangs out with you and me, so she’s got the geeks on her side plus the straight arrows in the ward. If I help her do the cooking part, she’s a shoo-in.”
My best friend and I disposed of our garbage in the proper receptacles. Derek caught my pop can in midair as it tumbled towards the trash can and redirected it into recycling. “What about Trevor for Mister 37th Ward?” he asked as we navigated through a churning sea of young adulthood and reached the stairs.
“The only reason anyone’ll vote for him is ’cause they’re voting for Marianne, and he’s her boyfriend. Can you imagine how he’ll botch the comedy section!”
Derek stopped near the Swicket[1] and looked straight into my eyes. “What if I enter the pageant?”
I smiled, “You’ll win.”
The famous pearly Derek Wu grin took over my friend’s face. “All right, then,” he declared, and he marched into his poly sci class texting pageant ideas to his supporters all the way.
* * * *
“Olá, Pai!”
“Hello, my Beki pequena. How are you doing?”
“Pretty good. I just got the role of Masha in Three Sisters, but—”
“Is Graça well? Does she . . . fit in at BYU?”
“Um, I’m not really . . .”
“You need to take care of her, filha minha. She is in a bad time right now.”
“I’ll do my best, Pai, but I’m just not sure what she needs. In fact, . . .”
“Did you talked to your brother recently?”
“He lives in
“Yes, and tis is very close to
“So you and Mom are together? She’s not at Dr. Freidman’s this evening?”
“Beki, please don’t bring tis up. Tis is not your problem. You are to keep your family in
“And Ruth? We’re just going to forget her in
“Um, Beki, your mother is home now. I need to talk to her.”
“I didn’t hear the door.”
“I love you, Beki. Até logo.”
“’Bye, Pai. I love—“ the line went dead.
* * * *
Rehearsals post–Chris event was not as easy or as fun as it had been. For one, he rubbed the rest of the cast the wrong way. Perhaps his marching in from nowhere to score a role in the production was too unfair for them to handle. He didn’t try to make friends, either.
One unusually warm Thursday, Jeff Danielson (junior from
“I’m sorry,” I offered, following him into a small room in the labyrinth of the H-fac. “You just can’t settle things—like that—here.”
“Yeah,” Chris released his fists, though his knuckles were still white. “I know.”
I crossed my legs and settled on the floor. “I know you’re a member and all, Chris—at least you were,” my hair tumbled in my face and I raked it back with my fingers, “but here you just seem so—I don’t know—out of your element.”
Chris grunted and slammed the door. “One thing’s for sure: I never thought I’d be here at BYU.”
“Did you ever think you’d live with your sister again?”
He sat on the floor beside me and opened his script. “I never imagined I’d be performing such a watered-down Chekhov. We might as well work on act 3.”
Offstage Christian’s back was made of armor; he shrugged off veiled insults and blatant slights at church and school with a jerk of his straight shoulders. Marianne had initiated all the animosity towards him she could muster, but she was never less than civil to Chris in person, nor did she even appear to approve when others attacked him and his character. Overt hostility she left to the less sophisticated. One late night during our senior year of high school, she had admitted to me that she sometimes imagined herself a porcelain doll. She smiled an innocent, painted smile at the other dolls, but she pulled their strings behind their backs. Never had her string-pulling more of a purpose, and she was wildly successful.