Weeping Underwater Looks a Lot Like Laughter Read online

  “What year is that girl?”

  “Junior. Future class of nineteen hundred and ninety-five,” he answered, in a professorial whine, which I supposed was his way of suggesting that he’d only shown up for the extra credit, and that this theater crap had dragged on long enough. “What year are you?”

  “Junior,” I said. “When does this thing end anyway?”

  “Quarter to titty,” he replied, suddenly smitten by the performance and therefore upset by my interruption.

  A recording of wailing winds and flashing thunder screeched through the auditorium. The actress’s fear was so real I was tempted to storm the stage, grasp her by the shoulders, and inform her that there was no place in this pubescent world for such honest and precise emotion. I swore I detected Zach’s voice among the band of idiots hooting and hollering a few rows back, but even they couldn’t break the performance. (While I can’t claim to have initially recognized how to interpret this play, after having seen it performed several times since in various theaters throughout the Midwest, I now judge it as either a dramatization of the fallacy of theocratic faith, or, conversely, the potential of atheistic hope. Either way, I considered the St. Pius production of Into the Night a brave and ambitious undertaking, especially in consideration of the venue.) In the final scene, as the heroine led the singing schoolboys to the safety of a convent, I experienced the dizzying notion that if I traced my personal history I’d find Emily Schell back in Davenport, crowding the memories of my childhood.

  In less time than it took for the auditorium lights to warm up, most of the audience had already shoved their way out the rear exit. While the cast gathered at the front of the stage to receive the congratulations of their teachers and friends, I wandered the penny-and-gum-wrapper perimeter. My lackadaisical floor perusal soon drew the attention of a beady little priest and part-time administrator I’d met during my admissions interview (which was conducted as if St. Pius were a competitive institution that chose its students based on criteria above their ability to reduce the burden of its perennial financial crises). After pressing me to admit to whatever contraband I was obviously searching for, he asked my opinion of the performance, then skipped over my response in order to relate anecdotes of his own lovely acting days. He was midway through an animated description of an autistic prop master when I noticed Emily Schell emerging from backstage in jeans and a form-friendly T-shirt that claimed ELVIS GIVES. She shared a fast laugh with a few fellow actors but kept moving along, all the while rubbing her glazed eyes with the butt of her palms, appearing much more worldly-wise than her persona onstage. Whatever compliments she was offered over the next few minutes were received while she folded and stacked chairs alongside the stagehands, a few of whom shot me glances suggesting that if I enjoyed the performance enough to attempt mingling with the cast, I might at least lend a helping hand. The priest, obviously exempt from such labors, was soon pacing alongside the actress, offering her a long-winded criticism of the auditorium’s poor acoustics. She took his comments in stride, inserting a polite affirmation here and there, but hardly saying a thing. Despite having just watched her perform for two hours, I was already desperate to hear her speak again, to gather as many clues as I could about the girl behind the mask. To this end, I decided to encounter her at the chair racks near the storage room, where we’d inevitably end up stacking two chairs at once, and they’d bang together, at which point one of us would say, “Excuse me,” and the other would say, “No, really, excuse me,” and soon we would be conversing. But after more than a dozen ill-timed trips, I lost my patience and saddled up next to the priest—interrupting prattle about his favorite playwrights—and improvised.

  “Who was your muse?” I blurted out, much louder than I intended.

  “Are you asking him or me?” she asked, glancing over to the priest, giving little hint of an initial impression beyond confusion. I was certain she didn’t realize that I was a new student, which is to say a foreigner and a person she’d never laid eyes on until that very moment. But I was getting used to this sort of treatment and proceeded more or less undeterred.

  “Muuuuse?” the priest groaned, loud enough to share his doubt with the entire cast and crew. “A muse is a Greek goddess. A muse is a myth.”

  “So if it’s not a myth, it can’t be a muse?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Did Homer have a muse when he wrote myths?”

  “What could you possibly be talking about?”

  “The theater,” I said, as though reaching a grand philosophical conclusion. “It really is a whole other world. A magical one.”

  At that, I thanked him and made a beeline for the farthest row of unfolded chairs, realizing along the way that I hadn’t given the actress even the slightest glimpse of attention beyond my initial approach. For the next fifteen minutes I folded and stacked chairs at twice the speed of the stagehands, several of whom went missing and later resurfaced reeking of menthol. Then Emily left and I realized that I was basically the only person still working and I quit. But on my way out of the building I discovered her plopped down on an old church pew next to a willowy guy with long gesticulating fingers, likely waiting for her ride. (I guessed Zach had driven home without me, an action he’d likely excuse by the fact that I’d befriended the theater crowd, which signified it was time for me to fly on my own.) By then the lobby had mostly thinned out, though there were still patches of students huddled in circles, mostly arguing over where to waste the rest of the evening. Without breaking my stride, I looped around in the direction of the actress, picking up the odd scrap of paper or pen cap, unsure if it was even me cleaning up or some obsessive new personage developed instantly for the task of industrious loitering. I continued for the trash bin just past the pew. By the lull in their conversation I sensed that one of them was nearly on his or her way. I stalled at the water fountain across from them, drinking and waiting.

  “Are you new or something?” the gesticulator asked. I took my time turning around and wiping the water from my mouth, feigning a pleasant aloofness when I finally nodded in affirmation. “We’ve got janitors here,” he said, chuckling to himself, clearly aiming to co-opt the actress. But she was squinting at the clock down the hallway, appearing less in the process of checking the time than decoding it. Soon enough the gesticulator dragged his way back into the auditorium. The actress turned to me, still squinting, rubbing her eyes, and waiting.

  “Where did you transfer from?” she asked.

  “St. Boniface. It’s in Davenport.”

  “What’s Davenport like?”

  “You don’t have to lock your doors,” I said, wishing I’d mentioned the nighttime riverboat tours, but feeling it was too late and I ought to balance the comment with something more critical. “Everyone says we need a flood wall. Apparently we’re the biggest city on the Mississippi without one.”

  “The floods only get serious every fifty years. What’s the point of living on the Mississippi when you can’t even see it?”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” I said, taking a seat next to her, just as casually as if we were both waiting for the bus downtown. “Actually, I’m really sick of people giving us so much trouble about it. I was just saying that because . . . well, you know.”

  “To beat me to the punch?”

  “I guess,” I said, shrugging, perhaps even blushing. “I’m George.”

  “I’m Emily,” she said, pushing herself against the seatback and out of her slump. Her gaze wandered to the pink paper-thin scar over my right eyebrow. Her eyes were no longer white and blind but soft hazel palettes—eager, intelligent eyes with big volcano centers. “You don’t meet too many teenagers named George.”

  “It was my grandpa’s name. He drank a lot of whiskey and crashed a lot of tractors. He died of liver failure a few years back.”

  The actress nodded along, rubbing her eyes again and taking my queer confession in stride. I had the feeling that she sensed my estrangement in the most exact wa
y, understanding in a few words that I was a generally confident teenager suddenly friendless and questioning the purpose of his existence. Perhaps she sensed these things because I wanted her to sense them. But then I realized that she was only rubbing her eyes because she was smirking and didn’t know what to say. She was still smirking to herself when her mother arrived, nearly as frantic as the schoolboys in the first act of Into the Night. Mrs. Schell apologized for getting caught up at the hospital, then back-tracked by explaining that she wasn’t that sorry because she really had no choice in the matter. While her dainty black purse and matching pumps lent the impression of a cutthroat businesswoman much more than a doctor or nurse, she clearly acted like a nurse, wasting no time pressing her thumbs to Emily’s cheeks to better check the whites of her eyes.

  “Did you use the dropper?” she asked, her tone suggesting grave doubt.

  “They’re fine,” Emily said, struggling to her feet in spite of her mother’s pressing thumbs.

  “They’re not fine. They’re bloodred. I still don’t see why you can’t act blind like everyone else.”

  “I’m not the only one. Woody wore the contacts, too.”

  “Woody doesn’t even show up until the third act. Woody doesn’t even have a line.”

  “This is George from Davenport.”

  Mrs. Schell turned to me, forgoing the customary smile or handshake in exchange for a brazen visual survey that started at my scuffed boots and ended on the red curls bunched up over my ears. “Hello,” she finally said. “Hello,” I said back, then returned her visual survey, though with much greater tact. My first impression was that Mrs. Schell was untrustworthy, despite being matronly attractive, particularly in terms of her high cheekbones and a long swan neck. She was digging in her purse for a dropper when two dapper junior girls—I slightly recognized them from various B-track classes—turned the lobby corner and circled in, congratulating Emily and greeting her mother. I was almost out the door when Emily broke from them and caught up to me. She handed me the plastic container for her blinding contacts.

  “If you feel like it, you can try them for yourself. I’ve got a couple of sets. Those ones have never been worn, so you don’t have to worry about conjunctivitis or whatever.”

  “Your performance was really exciting. I won’t forget it for a long time.”

  “You didn’t show up just to see if I’d march off the front of the stage?”

  “I don’t know why I showed up,” I said, feeling that I was finally starting to make sense. Emily looked over her shoulder to where Mrs. Schell was listing options for dinner restaurants, getting the girlfriends riled up. She turned back to me and sighed.

  “I’ve got to go. Be careful with those, okay? I got pretty banged up during rehearsals.”

  “See you at school?”

  Emily smiled, and might’ve even bowed slightly before walking away.

  I rolled out of bed early the next morning to test the contacts while the house was still quiet. Almost immediately I felled a standing lamp that woke everyone up banging against the fireplace brick. But I didn’t quit and next thing I was on all fours, bumbling my way into chairs and walls, petting empty patches of air, feeling more vulnerable than ever.

  Three

  My next sighting of Emily Schell came the following Monday morning through a smudged attendance office window imbued with spidery shatterproof wire. She was standing in the middle of a long line, fanning herself with a stationery note. The time after that she was leaning out of her idling matchbox Volvo, sizing up one of the last remaining parallel parking spaces along the main entrance. It was a hot, muggy morning, the pavement afloat in its own blacktop reflection. I was taking a shortcut over the grass, having just reached the peak when I stopped to watch from my bird’s-eye perch as she made her sharp, minimalist maneuvers. It must have taken her five minutes to cut the rear end against the curb. At that point she began systematically nudging the Chevy Blazer behind her, then the Ford Escort in front of her, rolling forward and backward inch by inch, confidently, as though this method was in perfect accordance with the parking diagrams in the driver’s manual. By the time she cut the engine there was hardly enough space to slide a ruler between the bumpers at each end. I continued down the far side of the hill as she stepped out to survey her work, soon shrugging and nodding to herself as if engaged in an inconclusive debate. Just about the time I caught up to her, she turned around and headed for the main entrance, where she ended up holding the door for several seconds longer than common courtesy demanded. When I thanked her she smiled congenially, though with no sense of recognition. A month later she would deny this exchange ever occurred, which was somehow sweet considering her visit to my chemistry class that Friday, when she poked her head through the door at such a peculiar downward angle that the unseen portion of her body must have been balanced on her left leg while her right leg stretched waist-high across the hallway. After twice referencing her clipboard, she informed my teacher of an urgent message for George Flynn. I stepped outside to find her looking stern, with her lips pursed and a pencil behind her ear. Our second conversation was a beautiful, seamless act that couldn’t exist twice.

  “Need your address, Flynn,” she said, pushing a pair of invisible glasses up the bridge of her nose. I noticed an Irish Claddagh ring on her right hand, but given our close quarters and her quick hand movements, it was nearly impossible to determine whether the crowned heart was facing inward or away.

  “It’s near the hockey arena,” I said. “One hundred thirty Arling ton Street.”

  “And your phone number? Just in case.”

  “I’m not sure,” I said, digging for my wallet where I’d placed a r ipped-off matchbook cover with my new number. Emily let her clipboard fall to her hip. As soon as I start reading it to her, she snatched the matchbook cover, clucked her tongue, and wrote the number down herself.

  “Tino Gomez will be picking you up for a party tonight at eight. Hadley will likely be riding shotgun and his car will likely be low on gas and I wouldn’t be surprised if he asks you to chip in. You might want earplugs. Tino is very proud of his stereo.”

  “Who’s Tino Gomez?”

  “The guy picking you up.”

  “Are you going to be there?” I asked, getting ahead of myself, my giddy adoration echoing in each word. She dismissed the question with a no-nonsense flick of the wrist.

  “I was informed that you were never contacted by your student ambassador. Is that correct?”

  “I don’t know anything about a student ambassador.”

  “There’s supposed to be someone to make sure you know your way around. Your ambassador is a lazy little guy named Marcus Panozzo. He’ll be in the car tonight, even though he normally wouldn’t.”

  “Marcus Panozzo? Maybe I did meet him, on the first day. He told me there was a secret sauna for the wrestlers.”

  “Shhhh. Whadareyoutryintado? Getusdisqualified?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Eight o’clock.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, as she raised the clipboard to her mouth to cover a delicate yawn. I’m pretty sure the yawn was only a gesture of the secretary character she was playing, who was much less tolerant of my mis steps than the girl I met in the lobby outside the auditorium.

  “A final suggestion,” she said. “You don’t have to like everyone. But you have to like Tino and Hadley, and Lauren and Ashley, and of course Smitty, whose real name I won’t bother telling you because he never goes by it. Marcus and everyone else are up to you.”

  “Thank you,” I said, feeling I’d just received what would prove the most intimate tidbit of the exchange. “I meant to ask, were you really crying during the scene where that schoolboy wandered off on his own? Usually when actors cry it seems so fake, but for a while I thought, she’s really crying.”

  Emily tucked the pencil behind her ear. I don’t think the way she pushed onto her toes and then down again was part of the act. (It could be argued that this movemen
t was a precursor to her imminent and total break of character.) “The last time I cried was probably 1959, back when JFK got shot.”

  “I thought he got shot later on. I thought it was in the mid-s ixties.”

  “I’m pretty sure it was ’fifty-nine,” she said, repeating the up-and-down motion. “And I would know because I’m an actress. It’s our job to know pretty much everything about everything.”

  “Were you a child actress or something?” I said, as Emily stroked her chin and sharpened her gaze, as if on the verge of deciding that there was something very off about me. “I mean, it’s obvious that you’ve found your calling, but it must take a long time to get to the point where you look like even you forgot that this is all a play, and these lines aren’t real, and you’re really just pretending.”

  I still don’t know why I followed this statement by offering her both hands as though pleading for a Middle East peace accord, but in all likelihood it was only a reaction to the great pride I felt in having won Emily’s startling, and completely denuding, disbelief. She eventually shook my hands, during which time her expression changed from that of a frightened first-time small business loan recipient to that of the banker who’s just issued the loan, whose day was finally yielding the results she’d expected of it. I smiled but Emily did not. Apparently there were still a number of compatibility issues to assess, unknown chemical elements to add and subtract, human factors that deserved a firm and honest attention.