My heart is like a wonderful grand piano that can’t be used because it’s locked up and the key’s lost.—irina prozorova
On Sunday evening I ate my last packet of instant oatmeal and realized that I was also out of pasta, spaghetti sauce, chicken, tuna, bread, butter, mayonnaise, lunchmeat, cheese, vegetables, fruit, Ramen noodles, and brownie mix. In fact, my cupboard only contained one can of Kroger condensed tomato soup and an envelope of microwave kettle corn. The fridge yielded one nearly full jar of plum jam and two open bottles of mustard with ric scrawled on them in purple Sharpie. The consequence of this unexpected dearth was that I spent the evening stuffing the contents of my change jar into little paper tubes so I could exchange them for paper money at the Wilk[1] Wells Fargo on Monday morning before acting class. However, I forgot all about my famine in the morning and hiked up to campus without my $12.50 in change.
The theater was in chaos—members of Professor Lautaha’s costume design class scurried about with costumes, and actors were disappearing behind curtains and emerging as members of
“Um, well,” the boy tugged on my arm, his lashless eyes expectant, “I play Masha.”
He reached out his other hand and shook mine as he led me to a curtained dressing booth, “I’m Kent MacGiry. You’re Rebekah Cardim—and I’ve seen every play you’ve done here at BYU!”
“Really?”
“Uh huh, my family lives in Spanish Fork. We love BYU’s productions, and my dad says you’re the best actress to come through our program since Summer Naomi. And I think so too—you killed in Much Ado about Nothing.”
I undressed and pulled the thing over my head, continuing the small talk through the curtain. “Are you a freshman then?” I was suddenly not sure he was even old enough to be that.
“Yep. But I started early, so I’m only seventeen.”
“Um, cool.” I ventured out, fingering the thin muslin, “I feel naked.”
Petulantly, I rolled my eyes when he was gone, This preemie’s[2] going to make my costume?!
In a burst of orange energy,
I exhaled;
“He’s really great, huh? But how’d he get added to this class in the middle of the semester? I heard he had a letter from Elder Packer. And you’re so lucky to be working with Jared—he played the best Œdipus I’ve ever seen two years ago.”
“Are you done?” I gasped.
“Almost . . .” With one more vicious tug on the corset strings,
I twisted and smiled, “Wow.” My waist hadn’t been so thin since seventh grade, and the corset created a marvelously comfortable shelf for my breasts.
“Wait ’til you see your dress!” In another moment, my world went dark as
“
“Uh huh.” He tied a black velvet ribbon with a deep blue cameo hanging from it around my neck.
“You’re—you’re a genius!” My costumes had never felt this heavy, this real. The woman smiling at me in the mirror, her neckline a perfect medium between slut and prude, was not me. She wore heavy black dresses every day, and she needed help buttoning and unbuttoning them.
“Oh, you did.” I leaned down and kissed his freckled cheek.
“Y’know, I could be jealous right now.”
“Chris!” I whirled away from
Chris was dressed in a squareish dark-blue suit with a school crest on the chest pocket. On his head was a worn grey-twill fedora. “You look amazing,” he told me.
“All right, I need the full cast on stage, now!” Professor Allred’s voice carried over the general din. Our director was explaining the procedure for that evening’s dress rehearsal while screaming orders at the light technicians, who were doing their best to induce seizures in the entire population of the theater.
“Break!” she yelled. Twenty-three college students collided with each other. Professor Allred stomped her feet, threw her clipboard on the floor, picked it up, and threw it back on the floor. “Class is over in five minutes, and we haven’t had a second of organization!”
Five minutes later, the organization still had not arrived. In the general rush for the changing booths, I smiled at Chris. He smiled back.
I stumbled, hyperventilating, into art appreciation four minutes late.
* * * *
That afternoon, the sun reflecting off the white concrete hurt my eyes, and I sweated for the first time in months. On my way to Legends Grille, I felt a cool hand touch the space between my shoulder blades. “Bekah,” Chris asked, “some friends and I are heading to Sonic for lunch. Would you like to come?” Nyx Hastings, Jeremy Delacruz, and several people in square plastic glasses stood behind him in a clump.
“Well . . .”
“C’mon, you can’t pass up a lemon-berry slush on a day like this!”
I pulled on the ends of my hair. “Actually, I’ve already got an appointment to meet Derek for lunch.”
The Wu-Andersen love fest was already in full swing when I arrived at Legends Grille. Furthermore, my money situation forced me to sip a cup of tap water while Derek and Marianne ate and praised each other to me. While I sat with them, I decided to skip intro to anthropology and relax at home until the dress rehearsal.
* * * *
Evening in the theater saw a great calm—the morning’s panic was replaced by doggedness. Quickly and silently, we dressed. Quickly and silently, we assembled in front of our minimal set and awaited the first call. The curtain rose on Olga, Irina, and me. I whistled under my breath as my sisters spoke to Tuzenbakh and Chebutykin about happiness—about
“Knowing three languages like we do is a useless luxury in this town,” I told Vershinin as I walked around the party table, running the edge of the lace tablecloth through my fingers. “It’s not even a luxury, but a sort of unwanted appendage, like a sixth finger. We know too much.”
Vershinin laughed and began to move around the table in the opposite direction. “Oh, what a thing to say, ‘We know too much’! I don’t think a town exists that has no place for intelligent, educated men and women. Even if among this town’s hundred thousand inhabitants—oh, I know it’s a backward place—there’s no one like you three sisters. Well, you obviously can’t hope to prevail against the ignorance around you. As you go on living, you’ll have to give way bit by bit to these hundred thousand people and be swallowed up by the crowd. You’ll go under, but you won’t sink without a trace—no, you’ll have some effect. Maybe when you’re gone, you’ll leave six people like you, then twelve, and so on. In two or three hundred years, life on this earth will be beautiful beyond our dreams, it will be marvelous. Man needs a life like that, and he must feel he’s going to get it; he must look forward to it, dream about it, prepare for it. That means he must have more vision and more knowledge than his father or his grandfather ever had.” We met at the other end of the table. Vershinin laughed and leaned towards me—his closeness burned—“And here you are complaining because you know much too much!”
I took off my hat. “I’m staying to lunch,” I announced.
When my husband arrived at the party, Vershinin was talking about second chances: “I often wonder what it would be like if we could start our lives over, knowing exactly what we were doing. Suppose our lives now were just the rough draft, and we could start the new one on a fresh sheet of paper. Then we’d all try hard not to repeat ourselves, I’d imagine. We’d see we had somewhere to live like this place—with these flowers and all this light.” Vershinin walked to the window, and I followed a few steps behind him. He turned, looked at me, and then stared back out the window. “I have a wife and two little girls; my wife is always ill and so on and so forth, and, well—” He lowered his voice, speaking more to himself than to anyone else, “If I could start my life again, I wouldn’t get married.”
I stared at Vershinin staring at the window while Chris bustled about: he gave Irina a nameday present, introduced himself to Vershinin’s back, and kissed my cheek. Finally, Vershinin left the room, and I was free from his spell. I rubbed my eyes.
Chris clapped his hands and addressed the remaining guests, “My friends, today if Sunday, the day of rest. Let us therefore relax and enjoy ourselves—as the Romans did, who had a mens
A small giggle escaped my throat as we spun, “C—Theodore!”
He stopped spinning me for a moment, “We must put the carpets and the curtains away for the summer.” The spinning restarted. “I’m happy today! I’m on top of the world!” Chris announced. He spun me to a corner of the room and stopped, speaking only to me. “We’re expected at the headmaster’s at four this afternoon, Masha. He’s hosting an outing for the teachers and their families.”
I folded my arms in the stiff poplin and tossed my head, “I’m not going.”
Chris’s smile faded, “My dear, why not?”
“I’ll—never mind,” I snapped. “Fine—I’ll go, but leave me alone!” I stomped away.
“Cut!” yelled Professor Allred. She massaged her temples and climbed onstage, “Stop. Please.” Her forehead creased as she stared into Chris’s eyes. Chris planted his feet, squared his shoulders, and stared back. Next, my acting professor studied my face—her eyes threatened to tear. Slowly, she walked downstage until her heels hit the edge. “It’s over,” she dropped her clipboard on the stage, turned around, and jumped off.
I ran to the edge of the stage and called after her back as it retreated up the aisle, “But Professor Allred—”
Face darker than blood, Professor Allred turned around and pointed—“you!” She pivoted to point at Chris, “And you!”
Chris stepped forward with his shoulders back and his fists clenched, “If you’ve got a problem, then say it. Don’t just quit!”
“You and Sister Cardim have lost your edge! Your performance is flatter than ten-year-old pop! You’ve started doing more than rehearsing together, haven’t you?!”
A collective gasp echoed from the stage into the cavernous theater. My face burned, “N—no, we haven’t done anything.”
“Is it too much to ask that BYU students take their acting careers as seriously as they take their dating careers? Is professionalism too much? Is controlling your sexual frustration for one stupid play too much to ask? Oh, my heck, it’s like Vikki Ferguson and Sam Waters in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof all over again!”
“Professor Allred,” I began again, “please. We didn’t—it’s not like that—we’ll do better next time.” My knees were knobs of lead; they buckled. Chris grabbed me under my armpits and held me up. The cast moved away from our island of despair with malice in their eyes.
“What can we do?” Chris asked our professor. He let go of me and stepped back when I was stable again.
She slowly ascended the steps to the stage. “No kissing, no hugging, no parking at
“That’s easy—we’re not doing any of that right now,” Chris muttered. I shushed him.
Professor Allred glared at him, “I don’t care. Your performance must improve somehow. Can you promise me no physical contact?”
My turn to defend Chris: “But we’ve haven’t—”
“promise!” the director demanded.
I saw a crowded theater, my parents, all the way from Jacob’s Ravine, sitting together in a middle row with Rock smiling in spite of himself. I saw Ruth and Aaron fly in from
“And you’re not going to try anything?” Professor Allred looked down her nose at Chris.
Chris laughed and held out his palms with a shrug, “Bekah is completely safe from my hormonal machinations; I promise.”
Professor Allred clapped her hands, “Alright, then. From the top!” We scrambled to our places and began a dress rehearsal that was more like a cold pancake than a Russian masterpiece.
* * * *
A text message from Derek was waiting for me after practice: Is it tru bout u and Chris Miles.
I replied as quickly as my thumbs allowed: We're not dating. We're just friends. Platonic friends. Has Marianne told you anything about Chris?
Derek’s reply came as I plodded past Smart Cookie in the dark: Ya, Chris is her bro and he abandond her.
So you know that Chris isn't a psychopath?
Bek Marianne needs space. Shes at my sis' tonight and tom.
I shut my cell phone.
A long silver low-rider made a U-turn in the middle of 700 East and pulled up to the curb next to me. “Get in,” Chris beckoned from the driver’s seat.
“Do you wanna go home, or do you feel like some Beto’s?” he asked as he flipped another yooey in the middle of the street.
My elbow was on the armrest so I could prop up my head. “I don’t even care. There’s no one at home.”
In silence, we drove down Bulldog to
“Dos tacos con pollo,” Chris asked her. He looked at me expectantly.
“Actually, I,” I felt my empty pockets, “I don’t really want anything.”
Chris rolled his eyes at me. He turned back to the cashier. “Y uno más taco con pollo. Y dos . . . o sea . . . dos horchatas. Y una porción de flan, por favor.”
“Okay. Tres tacos con pollo, dos horchatas, y un flan, ¿es todo?” the cashier asked.
“Sí, gracias.” Chris paid with a ten-dollar bill and a few Sacagaweas.
We took our fragrant food, in a white plastic carrier bag, to the car and drove back to the condo. Though his driving was certainly not as reckless as Derek’s, Chris kept his foot on the gas pedal almost the entire way. The speakers were blasting Spanglish hip-hoppy dancehall music. I picked up his CD holder and flipped through the pages. “You should talk to Derek about reggaetón sometime—he loves this stuff.”
“But you don’t?” Chris swerved into the oncoming lane to pass a dark green minivan and swerved back to dodge the semitruck that was barreling towards us.
“Talk to me about bhangra, and we’ll be here all night. Reggaetón—I can take it or leave it.”
“So, you think you’re Punjabi, white girl?”
“So, you think you’re puertorriqueño, white boy?”
We both looked at each other and laughed.
* * * *
“You haven’t had Beto’s before?! And you’ve been here, what, almost three years?”
Savory chicken juice dribbled down my chin. I wiped it with my hand and defaulted to a waxy paper napkin from the napkin holder on our kitchen table. It tore, so I used another one. Once I heard the Provo Beto’s categorized as “late-night Mexican,” and now I knew why. Steinbeck was right when he said clean restaurants sanitized the flavor right out of their food. Beto’s was dirty, and the food was realer—realer as Amélie is realer than The Holiday. Whilst I chewed, I also decided that Beto’s was pretty bad for the forests if all their food required this many napkins.
When I had swallowed my bite of deliciously earthy chicken taco, I answered, “Marianne doesn’t like ‘foreign food,’” I air-quoted, “except for Café Rio, which—”
“Isn’t really Mexican anyway,” Chris finished for me.
I laughed and blushed at once, looking down into the juicy, lettucey mess in my white styrofoam box. “You’re—” I shook my head, “you’re terrible.”
“You were thinking it,” he held up his hands in mock innocence.
For a while, silence reigned, broken only by quiet chewing and the occasional satisfied sigh. The chilies and fat and protein and horchata went to my head—I was giddy with invincibility. “Chris?” I asked, twisting my hair around my index finger.
“Yeah?” He leaned back with his hands behind his head.
I stood up and walked around the table until I was behind him. He tipped his chair forward again and sat very, very still as I put my hands on his shoulders, leaned forward, and rested my chin in the hollow between his neck and his shoulder. “How should we end our date?” I spoke low in his ear.
Chris sprung from his chair—I barely missed being hit in the mouth with the back of his head—and crossed to the opposite side of the dining area in two long strides. He held his palms up, “Bekah, I didn’t mean . . .’cause I don’t . . . and we’re not . . . um . . . this is a bad idea.”
My feet were clad in thin flowered socks that I didn’t remember putting on that morning. “Of course,” I shrugged, “you’re right.”
“I’m sorry.”
Chris looked like I had slapped him. I tried to smile, “Well, we did promise Professor Allred just this morning.”
He smiled back, his lips stretched too far across his face, “Yes, we did, but . . . com’ere, Bekah.” He took my hand and led me to the couch in the living room. “Have you ever been in love?”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “I’ve had a couple boyfriends. I still love Charlie Ramirez, I’m sure.”
Chris ran his fingers through his short hair. “No, I don’t mean have you loved someone before, like Jesus-said-love-everyone loved someone. A pure soul like yours probably loves the whole world when you think about it hard enough.”
“I don’t know if I love Saddam Hussein . . . or Hitler,” I offered.
“Whatever. I’m asking whether you’ve ever been in love—in so deep that you can’t climb out. I mean jealous, painful, drowning-in-him, dedicating-every-breath-to-him, slowly-dying-when-you’re-apart, completely hopeless love.”
“That sounds terrible!”
“It is terrible. It’s terrible and beautiful, like cutting yourself just to watch it bleed. And once you’ve tasted that kind of love, Bekah, you’re in constant withdrawal from it.”
What is he telling me? I wondered. Aloud, I answered the original question, “Well, I’ve never felt like that about anybody.”
He patted me on the knee. “Just—don’t expect too much from me, Bekah. I don’t know if I can . . . oh, I don’t know.”
My hand rested on his hand on my knee. “That’s okay. Everything’s just insane today—I’m so sorry I . . . I don’t even know what I was trying to do.” I got up and went to my bedroom. I stared at my computer screen, clicking through articles about Zodiac-sign personality trait without reading them until Graça came home. We turned off the lights and went to bed.