Close to Hugh (46 page)

Savaya smooths her own smooth golden arm over Nevaeh’s, as if she can erase it, the pain or hate or despair. Bending to her shoulder, Nevaeh says, through hiccupping sobs that are still so fucking pretty, “I don’t get how you can hang with him, he’s cold. I hate Orion too, he thinks he’s the shit.”

Savaya doesn’t say anything.

L feels pretty stiff herself. Not that Jason needs defending because he didn’t, he wouldn’t, but Nevaeh can’t keep on thinking that.

“He didn’t mean it like that, Jason didn’t—you overreacted,” L says.

Nevaeh ignores her and sobs on in Savaya’s arms.

Because it’s Savaya she loves.

Well, L can’t sit there anymore, the bed tilting and nobody believing her. She gets up.

“He
did
mean it!” Nevaeh twists to touch L’s leg, not letting her go, all pitiful certainty. “He wants his clothes to look edgy—he was
exploiting
me for the good of—”

L laughs, her loyalty suddenly decided. “If that was true, he’d have painted scars on you. More than a few test cuts.” She lifts up her skirt and shows them the inside of her thigh. “If you were really doing anything, you’d know not to talk about it. Anyway, good luck exploiting
you
. You’re the most self-possessed, self-obsessed person I know!”

She gets up, finds her box, and goes.

That was unfair. Who cares.

Adios, amoebas.

6. MASTER CLASS: GORGON

“A drawing room romance.” Burton tilts his head, thinks deeply. “But vast forces seethe under the surface of this seeming simplicity, this petal-like perfection. Would that the world itself worked as well as the end of
Earnest
! Obstacles removed, love triumphant. Transformation! The cloak-room, the bag, P
rrr
rism herself, no mere educator but revealed as a true artiste, with her failed three-volume romance.” He looks fake-fondly at Ivy, who’d like to smack his smirk on behalf of educators everywhere.

Don’t hate him. Don’t waste effort and energy on an aging acidity with no power.

Now Burton is revealing the hidden meanings, the gay subtext. “Take, for example, Jack Worthing’s ward Cecily: a
Cecily
was contemporary slang for a young male prostitute under the protection of an older man.”

The students are interested, codes being always cool.

“The cigarette case they fight over: Wilde gave silver cigarette cases to lovers, when delicacy forbade outright cash payment. In the darkness of the seats, imagine those silver cases sliding out of breast pockets, proffered to companions … in that audience, imagine the undercurrent of secret smiles and whispers, the thrill of the forbidden.”

Listening to Burton, Ivy feels like she’s been saying “prunes and prisms” to herself for a thousand years: a prim-mouthed, aged and judgemental spinster.

Burton brings out a new cast list. “So! We’ll read the play again, exploring the substrata by judicious casting. Newell will play Jack this time. Jason, raw as he is, will take Algernon. Orion, you will grace us with the urbane Gwendolyn, Jack’s inamorata. Sheridan, the young Cecily, boy-ward at the country estate of Jack Worthing. I myself, Dame Bracknell, and Ivy, stout Ivy, remains in Miss Prism’s service. The girls: Savaya will chance Chasuble, and Mikayla make hay with Lane and his country counterpart. That’s all, I think? Yes.”

Savaya seems sulky, understandably; the others look alert, even keyed up. At first, the reading takes on an extra uncomfortable knowingness. But as the boys settle into their roles, as they see what they are saying to each other, the tension in the room gradually calms, replaced by a different tension, the working out of submerged social patterns. There are moments of good comedy: hipster Sheridan as Cecily, telling Ivy, “I don’t like novels that end happily. They depress me so much.” Ivy has always loved Miss Prism’s reply: “The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.”

Or Newell to Jason, earnestly, “I don’t really know what a gorgon is like, but I am quite sure that Lady Bracknell is one. She is a monster, without being a myth, which is rather unfair.” Burton does not react, but the rest of the company finds it necessary to put hands to mouths for various reasons, a cough, an itch, etc.

As the lovers Jack and Gwendolyn, Newell and Orion are a dream. The little proposal scene suddenly thrums with meaning, buried joy delicately overlaid by spiky, glancing, sidelong wit. Aware that this is one of those transforming moments that make it worth working in theatre, Ivy wonders, a little dismayed, exactly what is going on between those two. Something serious. Watching Burton watch them, she feels faintly sick.

“I hope you will always look at me just like that, especially when there are other people present,” Orion says, his whole heart on display, but laughing at himself too.

And yet, and yet. It is a long, long afternoon.

After the surprising joy of that proposal scene—his own casting, after all—Burton’s worsening temper taints the room. Orion gets paler and paler, Newell recedes farther back into his chair. Burton, eyes darting around the table, seems to have heat-lines vibrating around his form, like those mad cats Wain painted in the asylum. He is horribly good as Bracknell. In the morning reading Newell did Burton-doing-Bracknell, with a faint malicious lisp; Burton simply inhabits her, engorged eyes bulging from his patty-cake face. Ivy has no difficulty paling and quailing as Burton trumpet-calls, “Prrrism!
Where is that baby?
”

Every time Orion speaks, Burton seizes tighter, tauter, his attention pinpointed. False geniality sits like a comedy mask on his face, crookedly hung over rage that darkens as the play winds on. Interesting textual revelations cannot outweigh the strain, which Ivy believes everyone must
be feeling. Besides, the male casting is unnecessary. The play exists in its own miraculous atmosphere, straddling both the hetero and gay worlds, the Victorian and the modern. Ivy doesn’t believe her dislike of the play stems from prejudice, even given her growing prejudice against Burton.

A surprise, then, when he pushes his chair back at the end of this second run-through. His arm goes up in salute, and he says, “Good. Well done. But no. Here is why we would never produce it this way: blatant all-male casting neuters the hiddenness, the closetedness that was in their time so vital to the green-carnation life. It takes the secret mainspring out of the play, and ignores the truth that many gay men in those days married to disguise themselves, including Wilde himself. In approaching a production, it would be our work to enter into the world behind the world of the play: to research and understand that Victorian culture of propriety and secrets, of rigid class distinction—a culture where the worship of class still edged out the worship of money.”

Burton is not an idiot. A clever creature who is the product of his time, of his training, and of the wrongs done to him, no doubt over and over. Ivy cannot hate him. Maybe Orion can.

“We’ve tested out five plays from the canon,” Burton says. “Look up
canon
if you don’t know what I mean. We’ve played rich, poor, clever, stupid, cannibal, German, American, English, Illyrian; that gorgeous brute Stanley, shipwrecked Viola. We’ve read the musical, the domestic tragedy, the drawing-room comedy—each at the pinnacle of perfection.”

The young faces around the table, turned to him like daisies, register various degrees of hope and confusion. Only Orion looks down at his script, thinking his secret thoughts.

Burton surveys them. “All right. On Monday, we go farther back into the canon, to the dawn of the written drama—the Greeks. We will read the original bill of divorcement, the first wronged woman wreaking havoc:
Medea
. With one interesting twist—but I’ll save that for Monday. Away, all of you. Thank you for your energy this week. Total rest tomorrow.”

Orion looks up. “I don’t think so,” he says.

Like a ring has been twitched in his nose, Burton jerks his head. “I beg your pardon?”

“I don’t think we should do a different play,” Orion says, white around the nostrils but calm outside. “No more changing. I think we should stick
with
Earnest
. We’d do a great job, we could really work. I don’t care about the—I mean, cast somebody else—and I don’t care if you can’t stick with the cross-casting, but I think we should work on one play, one project, instead of jumping around so much.”

He stops talking.

Ivy feels faint. Everyone else is quiet. Even Newell, whose cloudless gaze stays on Orion’s face.

Burton’s throat works, Adam’s apple jumping unpleasantly under the wattled skin. But he restrains, contains himself. “Thank you for your input,” he finally says. “I will take that under advisement.” The maestro’s nod, dismissal.

It’s over, no lightning or thunder: Phew.

Anticlimax, in fact. The students gather their wits and papers and begin to drift off.

Terry-She snags Newell to sign some posters for her sponsors. Terry-He and Pink stand chatting at the door. Savaya postures and laughs for them.

Ivy’s phone is plugged in behind the curtain leg. She goes to retrieve it.

“Scripts in the recycling, please,
not
under the table again,” Burton calls. Then, as the others disperse in clumps, he says, “Orion, a word?”

The plug sticks, it has to be wiggled gently to come out. In the wiggling time Ivy hears Burton, very cool, professional. None of the bombast now.

“I don’t want you in my class any longer, Orion.” Simple as that.

Orion makes no sound.

“For
Medea
, which you clearly scorn, Mikayla and Newell will take the leads. All the others will be chorus; I wouldn’t want to demean you by using you in such a minor way.”

Orion still does not speak. Perhaps he is frightened.

Burton huffs. “Your very commercial talent is wasted in this investigative, exploratory work, and your impatience with the class has been crystal clear.” (What?) “I suspect you’ve got a big future, if you learn to submit to direction. You think your working life has already started, but you’re banking on the cheap—
facility
—you already have, rather than deepening your work and digging harder for more truth, more grit. I can’t work with you, and I won’t have your arrogance polluting the group. Your fee will be refunded.”

Ivy looks around the curtain. Orion stands on the black stage straight and tall as a shaft of light through branches.

“Are you going to answer me?” Burton’s voice betrays him. Choking, fat with fury.

“I think this is a fight between the two of you,” Orion says, his voice cool water, undisturbed. “It’s not about me.”

Ivy can’t see Burton’s face, only the purple edge of his cheek.

Silence.

Then Burton gestures at Orion’s still figure, flaring out, “Go, go! The decision is made.”

“All right, old man,” Orion says. As if
old man
is the worst thing he can think of.

He walks away.

(L)

Hugh likes the place cards! L is happy with them: each one the bottom half of an Oreo, icing carved away to make a profile of the person, like a cameo. Camoreo. Her mom, the knot of hair behind her head, and the strong nose; her dad was hard to catch, no hair sticking out, just a plain silhouette, Some Guy. L deals out two more: Ivy looking up, eyebrows raised; Hugh, looking down, another nice nose to cut. Then Ruth. Sad to do Ruth but not Mimi. “I brought the bag of cookies, I can do more. I didn’t know who was coming.”

Hugh makes a face. “I’ve been avoiding thinking about it. But it’s no good, I have to ask Newell, and he has to bring Burton—I’ll call them later. And Ann, I asked her. Maybe more, later, but those are the sit-down dinner people.”

Newell will be easy, the famous profile, hair flying back. Burton too, piece of cake, piece of cookie. All chins, like a Roman emperor on a coin.

Hugh drags out a large, flat package from under the sofa, all proud. “I couldn’t keep this in the framing room,” he says. “Your mom is always bustling in there to help—don’t let me forget to take those damned certificates to the Ace.” He pulls off the masking tape.

Ha! It’s a paint-by-number kit, a picture of her mom and dad. A big canvas with pale blue outlines, tiny pale blue numbers, and an assortment of bad acrylic paints in little pots.

“I sent away for it weeks ago, there’s a website where you upload a photo. It’s them, in 1984. I took it the night they met. All Saints.”

“Cool! They’ll love it.”

Wait—feet on the stairs. Heavy ones. Hugh snatches the brown paper, refastens the tape.

It’s her dad. His head rises above the railing, slowly, as he climbs the stairs. He turns to look at them. He’s got a black eye.

He stares at them standing awkwardly to block his view of the big parcel on the coffee table behind them. “Hey,” he says, after a pause. As if he’s out of the speaking habit.

“Hey,” L says.

“Had a chat with your mom.”

They don’t speak, both too busy looking at that eye.

“Looks like we’re coming for dinner. So, put me to work.” He pulls himself up the last two stairs, using the railing to help. Is he badly hurt?

Just his eye. Black, slashing stripe below the eyebone, purple smudge around it. Wow.

He stands by the kitchen counter. Seeing the tray there, he says
mmm
and goes to grab an Oreo. “No!” L says. “Those are place cards.”

“Neat. Now I see—there’s Della—neat-o.” Oh, the uneasy goofiness. Her dad.

“Do you need an ice pack?” Hugh gestures at the black eye, points at his own helplessly.

“Oh, no, it’s fine now. Hurt a bit when—when I walked into that door, though.”

Sure, they all agree to let it be that way. Hugh turns to his list: “Okay, rice for sushi cake, the crêpes, we’ve still got a lot of work to do.” Then, bright idea, he asks her dad to run down to the basement to check if the buckets need emptying.

The footsteps fade to the basement stairs.

Hugh points down after him. “What the hell?”

“Do you think my mom punched him? He doesn’t seem upset.” Lots of punching these days. Must be some astrological conjunction of Mars with Neptune, planet of surprises.