Balance of Fragile Things (11 page)

V
ic looked out the window of the car as they drove to the airport. His mother had forced him to wear a periwinkle embroidered tunic that she believed his grandfather had given him years earlier—the shirt had traveled the world in order to arrive on Vic's doorstep—and it was too tight. His grandfather had passed it to his neighbor in New Delhi who had a son who was visiting America to interview for a position as an engineer. This neighbor's son, whom the Singhs had addressed as
cousin
, arrived in New York City and drove over three hours to their home in Cobalt. Cousin didn't realize how far the Singhs lived from Manhattan, or even that there was a state connected to the city, but when he arrived he was rewarded with a lengthy conversation with Maija and Paul about their relations, whether it was marriage or blood, and a mention of American girls who they knew would love to meet an
Indian
Indian. He filled his belly with plenty of tea and fried, sugary things and finally delivered the long-awaited package of gifts. Inside the brown paper was a set of glass bangles for Isabella, a tea cozy for Maija, a small chess set and tie that was made in China for Paul, and this most desirable shirt for Vic. The shirt didn't fit his shoulders, and the Nehru-style neck was a little tight. But still he wore it, and along with his
patka
, Vic looked more Indian than American.

Though it had been difficult at first, he'd finally come to grips with idea that he would be sharing his room with his sister to give Papaji his own space. In addition to the duct tape he'd adhered poorly to the carpet, he tacked a sheet to the ceiling with Isabella's help so they couldn't see each other undress. He also didn't want his sister to see the artifacts he'd found underground. He'd moved most of his findings back into the hole in the ground and put the rest under his bed. He could only look at the bits of metal and rock when she was at rehearsal.

He'd managed to go back to the hole several times and even figured out how best to descend into the shaft without hurting himself. Armed with a fluorescent lantern hanging from his teeth, a slingshot, and rocks in his pockets, Vic climbed carefully down the ladder for what felt like a solid five minutes. He continued downward, with his eyes squeezed shut until he finally felt his feet arrive at a level surface. It took a few moments for his eyes to adjust, but when they did, he was glad he'd followed his adventurous side. His feet were on sandy mud, and above him was a low ceiling of curved rock. A tunnel stretched in two directions. He bent down and entered.

The ground was damp. Vic rubbed his fingers along the cold walls. Veins of different minerals made jagged patterns in the sandstone. He walked in both directions for a few steps until he felt more of the same. To make the cave more inhabitable, he'd brought a rain tarp, a blanket, a box of crackers, a milk crate, a bottle of water, and a few comic books he didn't mind getting wet. He'd also brought cans of food he didn't think anyone would miss, like navy beans and baby corn, though he didn't have a can opener yet. Vic built a shelf out of a pile of rocks and hardened soil. On it he kept his most prized possession: the shadow box with his blue butterflies.

He would never have killed to peruse a butterfly like other collectors; he felt fortunate to have found them so close to their natural deaths. Some collectors paid tens of thousands of dollars to smugglers for rare and endangered species of butterflies and moths. He thought those villains should all die by the same torture they inflict on the butterflies—impalement. He looked at his shadow box. There they sat, almost glowing blue in the dim light as though their wings were phosphorescent and still living.

Though he'd agreed to have
time with Papa
once a week, when his father continued to train him in the finer points of combat, he still didn't feel comfortable enough to tell his father of his new fort. Vic wondered how their small three-bedroom home would change with Papaji in the house. He hoped he wouldn't have to have
time with Papaji
, too. At least he had somewhere else he could be if things got to be too much at home.

At the airport, Vic fiddled with the matches he'd grabbed from the market. These, too, would end up in his underground palace. He noticed that he still had a pile of rocks in a pocket in his trousers, which made him feel closer to his adventure even while fulfilling his filial duty in his light-blue collared shirt.

T
hey all stood shoulder to shoulder at the gate, as her father specified, but it was too close for Isabella's taste, so she shifted back and forth and finally went to the bathroom for the third time. She dropped her water bottle into the recycling bin en route. It was in the restroom that she discovered she actually enjoyed ocean-scented air freshener, though that all porcelain in public bathrooms reminded her of doctors and their exams. She saw a quarter on the ground and picked it up for her collection.

Isabella had moved her found treasures to her locker at school. She didn't want her brother to find her pilfered things. She wasn't a thief. She was a collector. She organized her collection in her locker with plastic bags, jars, and boxes and arranged the items in a tidy manner according to area of memory: medical (things she grabbed from doctor's offices), organic (things found in nature), Homo sapiens (objects belonging to people), strange (antiques), and things of unknown origin. There was bag of nails and a box with pieces of glass, a rainbow pencil topper with the name
Courtney
etched along side, and a new collection Isabella designated to all things pertaining to the play. So far these weren't particularly exciting: a receipt from Friendly's that she'd found onstage, dated January 12, 1987, for a fishwich; a piece of a chain probably having belonged at one point to a gold-plated necklace, which she'd found dangling from a Christmas tree prop; and the first page of a play with no title. The only words on the page had something to do with stealing a car and the good heart of a man named Thomas. It was, in general, melodramatic writing, she thought.

This reminded her that she still had to memorize her lines. Every time she opened her script she felt burned by Tewks's title page:
1,001 Cries
by Harry Tewkesbury. She wondered if he'd plagiarized the text from some unknown author, changed the title, and pasted his name on the title page. He made Isabella nervous. The way he spoke to the cast was a precise kind of condescension, as if he didn't realize they were older than sixth graders. When people were overly particular, they were built to pop, Isabella thought. Something was going to send him over the edge one day.

As she left the restroom, she took the script from her purse. Joining her family again, she read the cast of characters. Her name was first. The lead. The star. She blushed. Her name was written in pen on top of a mound of Wite-Out; it was obvious she hadn't been the first Samantha. She read the scene while they waited for her grandfather. It wasn't half bad. It began, like the work of Aeschylus, with a cryptic message from the chorus. The monologue belonged to Samantha; she had the distinguished role of the daughter of the President. After her short piece, in which she said something about the fragility of humankind and the ferocity of the horses of war, the play began with an intense scene of action.

“Multiple explosions and people screaming wildly” was the specific direction. Isabella imagined how she might design the stage. If she could freeze the opening scene, she'd light the stage delicately with floor lights shining upward to the scaffolding and ask the cast to freeze in their most uncomfortable positions. The shadows would become as large a presence as the four people in the scene. The audience would want to hear gunfire, helicopters, bombs, cries, though there would be none to hear. It would be like staring at
Guernica
through a microscope; one had to be patient and swallow the tragic images and moments, careful not to choke on it. To the right would be a large leather chair tipped on its side. All the books would be scattered at the base of the bookshelf. White papers that once held top-secret memos about the encroaching Third World War would be strewn across everything, crunching underfoot like yesterday's trash. Two half-destroyed walls would partition the room that had once been the Oval Office. High against the corner of the partial wall would be a shadow of the doomsday clock with its hands set at one minute to the hour. The cast would bustle about, papers would fly, bombs would explode, and Samantha would then throw herself at the Vice President's feet. His hand would reach for a button, red as a hot poker, ready to stab the earth's core. She would beg him not to press the doomsday trigger—and with this, the action again would slow and Samantha would drag the Vice President into the bomb shelter. The scene would freeze once more; stagehands dressed in black would rearrange the props like phantoms.

The previous day, she'd gone to rehearsal filled with curiosity.

All right, people—places
. Tewks had come in wearing a strange, thrift-store knit scarf around his neck, so tight that Isabella wondered if he might cut off the oxygen to his brain and faint.

Butterflies had soared in her stomach. Erik, playing the Vice President, had smiled at her, and she'd tried to smile back but only managed to curl one side of her mouth into a smirk of sorts. Erik was skinny and tall and had longish hair that slipped into his field of vision every few minutes. In other words, he was cute.
You look nice
, he said.

Isabella hadn't been able to handle the compliment, as awkward and benign as it was, and her stomach flipped. She excused herself from the stage, with one hand over her mouth and the other waving a
hold on
, and ran to the nearest bathroom to throw up. Her stomach hurt in the same place it had in Dr. Gott's office. But she was not about to go back to see her again. She rinsed her mouth out in the green sink, read what had been written in marker on the mirror—
It's not nice to write on school property
—
wiped the tears from her eyes, refilled her water bottle, shoved an Altoids mint into her mouth, and returned to the theater.

Sorry. Stomach bug.

Tewks had not been pleased, and he'd raised his hand in protest.
We have to learn to overcome these things in theater. You might have to get through a scene without running to the bathroom, Isabella.

And hope that no one minds the throw-up all over my shirt?

The show must go on. Plays are about synergy, and if you can't manage to get through a scene in rehearsal without throwing up, then what are we to do?

Tracy Finch had stared at Isabella with her vicious eyes.
If you can't do it, I can
. She stretched the word
can
to wicked lengths.
I've already memorized your lines
. Tracy had just been killing time until her scene, hassling everyone and threatening to take their parts away from them like a director's hound.

Begin again
, Tewks said.

The first attack took us by surprise—
Isabella coughed.

Isabella! What do you think you're doing?
Tewks leapt to his feet.

Huh?
she asked.

Do you call that crying? You need to work on your believability. You can break the audience's spell if you remind them that they are watching a play.

At this Isabella had sighed, her hate for Tewks growing inside her heart like a blossoming, billowing balloon—ready to explode. She'd swallowed her pride and thought of the worst thing she possibly could. She saw flames rising from a house, her family trapped inside. The lump in her chest moved into her throat—and
voil
à!
A tear. It rolled lazily from the corner of her eye. She felt its cool trail crossing her cheek to her lips and delivered her next line:
Is there anyone besides us left?

Okay, cut! Well done. That's good. Maybe next time you can wear less mascara?

Isabella's hand went to her eyes; rivers of black ran down her face. She probably looked like Tammy Faye Bakker. Well, at least no one could deny whether she was crying or not. It was real. She actually felt a pit in her stomach and wondered for the first time how real actors did this for a living. How could they channel a different life for a period of time and then return to their own? Did the other world knock on their doors, like a doppelganger trapped behind the mind's transparent wall, and demand attention? She'd decided then and there that if she were going to act in the future, she'd only do comedies.

On their way out of the theater, after an hour-long lecture from Tewks on the importance of stage presence, which he described as something innate, Isabella and Erik had reentered the world of Cobalt High. The school in all of its concrete glory seemed dimmer and grimier than usual; the hallways were covered in old gum, and the tags of last names no one could read tattooed the lockers, walls, and, yes, even the ceiling, as if a marker or can of spray paint had been all it took to claim ownership of something inanimate. Isabella found that she preferred the world onstage: Though she and Erik had walked together, a wall resembling reality had grown once more between them; they couldn't touch or look at each other with longing eyes because no script directed them to do so. They did not speak. They were on their own. It had been awkward, but they'd continued on through the halls as though they were betrothed—until they reached the end of the front hall. Isabella thought she would act professionally, as she did this acting thing all the time, and she'd waved goodbye to Erik with an open hand, even though she wanted to touch him.

Hey
, Erik called, and she'd turned.

Yeah?

Um
—he moved closer—
Tewks is a total freak.

Yeah, total freakazoid.

You wanna go to a movie or something, sometime soon?

Yeah, sure, okay.

Okay, well, see ya.

Remembering the moment, Isabella shivered and looked around at her surroundings in the airport. Her stomach turned.

“Isabella, put that play away. Your grandfather will be here soon.” Her mother's eyebrows slanted down.

“Mama, he's late. What am I supposed to do?”

Her mother did not respond.