Illyria (11 page)

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together, whispering. If I were backstage I'd peer from behind the curtains and vainly try to decipher what they were saying. Were they happy with the box tree scene? Did Malvolio caper too gaily in his cross-gartered yellow stockings?

Mostly they seemed to focus on Rogan. Mr. Sullivan would lean back, pencil at his lips, with the same stoned smile he had every time my cousin sang. Aunt Kate's expression was more difficult to read: tight-mouthed, keen-eyed, unsmiling; but was it disapproval or sheer amazement?

It could have been either. And I was afraid to ask.

Rogan didn't seem to care. It was all one to him: if the auditorium was empty or if a few parents and students wandered in to watch, if we were in costume or still wore our uniforms, if someone else missed a cue, or if the followspot failed to pick him out from the darkness. Rogan moved and sang and spoke as though it was always opening night.

Until, at last, it was.

On Thursday, we had a spectacularly botched final run-through, upholding the old superstition that a bad dress rehearsal portends a successful show. Sir Toby blew his lines and improvised with a series of obscene couplets and Firesign Theater routines. Andrew Aguecheek's sword poked me squarely in the stomach, knocking the wind from me so I couldn't finish the scene. An amber gel on a followspot melted and the stage reeked of charred plastic. Olivia giggled uncontrollably through her love scenes. I forgot my lines, not once but over and over again. The entire rehearsal felt like the quintessential Actor's Nightmare.

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That night Aunt Kate was
not
in the audience, an absence that should have been a relief but instead struck me as slightly ominous. Rogan sang his final song, "Hey, ho, the wind and the rain," and the stage at last went dark. Mr. Sullivan made us practice a curtain call, and this, too, made me uneasy.

"Don't worry," he assured us. "Tomorrow it will be fine. You'll see. Now everyone go and get a good night's sleep."

Olivia looked stricken. "Don't you have any notes?"

"Yeah," said Rogan. "Tomorrow night, don't fuck up."

Mr. Sullivan smiled. "Get some sleep. Rogan, give your voice a rest. No Rolling Stones, okay? And no cigarettes."

"Yeah, sure," said Rogan.

Outside, in the school parking lot, no one hung around. Mr. Sullivan had already left. The tech guys stayed to clean up the mess left by the burned gel. Toby and Olivia and Fabian and Malvolio and Maria all clambered into Toby's car to get dropped off at their respective homes. Duncan Moss's father picked him up as he always did, along with a few other grumpy-looking parents--the dress rehearsal had run even later than usual.

Rogan and I walked home together. He still wore Feste's makeup, a Pierrot mask of white with two crimson spots on his cheeks. The red had rubbed away from his mouth, but the kohl around his eyes remained, smudged so that his eyes seemed enormous, like those of some nocturnal frog or bush baby. He looked beautiful and deeply, strangely androgynous; unearthly, almost inhuman.

"We should have gotten a ride," I said, shivering.

The previous week's snow had turned into a gunmetal soup of

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slush and ice. The air was clear and so bitingly cold that Christmas lights and traffic lights and street lamps all seemed to shiver and dance, even though there was no wind. The smoke from Rogan's cigarette clung to us long after he'd tossed the cigarette aside. As we approached Arden Terrace his hand found mine and held it, tightly.

"It'll go well," he said in a soft voice. His hand felt as though it had been carved from granite. "It'll be great, Maddy."

"It'll be the first time we're onstage together," I said. I felt my heart open at the thought. "Everyone will see us. Everyone will hear you."

"They've already heard me," said Rogan.

"But not like this."

"No," he said, and turning to me he smiled.

It was like my own reflection in a black mirror, only a mirror that stripped the flesh from my skull so that what grinned back was not the self I showed the daytime world, not the girl who woke and walked and struggled and laughed but the terrible me, the true me; the mad girl inside Maddy. I stared back at him but said nothing, only clutched his hand even tighter, until it felt as though his fingers cut into mine. For the first time in years, I thought of the word Aunt Kate had always used to describe him--
fey--
and my mother's blunt retort.

If I ever had a red-headed child, I'd strangle it.

"Maddy."

He stopped in the street in front of my house and put his arms around me. Even through our jeans and heavy coats I could feel his cock pressing into my groin. I shut my eyes and tried to summon snow, the icy glitter of footlights, and a sun the size of a thumbprint through pink and amber clouds.

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But all I saw was ash and a tangle of broken masts, and all I tasted was smoke, a warm spurt of salt where Rogan's chapped lip split beneath mine and blood stained both our mouths until he pulled away, laughing, and walked down the darkened path toward Fairview.

***

THE HOUSE WAS THREE-QUARTERS FULL FOR OPEN
ing night. My parents were there, and Rogan's; two of my sisters and his brother Michael, as well as Aunt Kate and a thin scattering of aunts and uncles. Aunt Kate had dressed as though we were making our Broadway debut, in her lizard-skin boots and a beautiful, embroidered Russian peasant skirt and blouse of jade-green silk. She sat a few rows behind Mr. Sullivan, near a group of St. Brendan's staff, her hands demurely crossed in her lap and her emerald ring casting a green flare from the overhead lights. There were other parents, of course, and numerous children, siblings of the other cast members; as well as students.

Not just the usual Drama Club boosters, either: there was an impressive, rather intimidating block of football players and assorted jocks, as well as cheerleaders, JV and Varsity, and even a few kids from the local public school.

"Shit!" said Orsino. His eyes had the wild white gleam of a spooked horse's, but he sounded exhilarated. "Look at these people!"

I gritted my teeth and gestured at him to shut up. I was doing my

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best
not
to look at anyone. I stood just offstage and stared resolutely at the ropes and suspended weights that held backdrops and curtains in place. I'd peeked out earlier and seen the audience, and now I could hear them, along with the excited whispers and muffled laughter of the other actors around me. I felt so sick I thought I might pass out. I
wanted
to pass out, even though that would mean the show would be canceled.

I no longer cared. The horror I felt every time I looked at the stage, that brightly lit array of furniture and fake shrubs and cardboard scenery, was so intense it overpowered any other emotion.

"Hey, Maddy. You ready?" One of the boys who handled the curtains looked at me in concern. I nodded. "You sure?"

I took a step backward and knocked against the sand-filled canister that was a safeguard against fires; then bent and vomited into it.

"Uh, guess not." The boy grimaced. He pushed the can out of the way and grabbed one of the ropes. A minute later I heard the stage manager's voice.

"Places, everyone."

I wiped my mouth and looked across the stage. In the shadows stood Rogan, clad in his loose white Pierrot tunic and pantaloons, his feet bare, hair a loose halo around a ghostly face. He was singing to himself, soundlessly, staring at the stage floor and moving as though he saw his reflection there and danced with it. After a moment he glanced up and saw me. Very slowly he raised his fingers to his lips and kissed them, then extended his hand to me, palm forward. His head sank to his breast as though he had fallen asleep, so all I saw was that cloud of fiery hair.

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"... lights and--
curtain?

I waited, mouth dry, through Orsino's opening scene, the welcoming wave of laughter as he paced the stage with a golf club and knocked over the plastic geraniums, one by one. He seemed less lovesick than drug addled.

But the scene worked, just as it had in rehearsal. Better, even.

And faster. Before I could blink, Orsino exited, giddy from the scattered applause that followed him. The lights darkened to red and indigo. Someone shook a thunder sheet. A spotlight flickered. The Captain walked on, a tall blond jock who looked like a rock star in his pseudo-naval costume, along with two sailors. They took their places front and center and gazed expectantly at me in the wings. I drew a shuddering breath and raked my fingers through my hair, then stumbled on to fall at the Captain's feet and gaze up at him imploringly.

"What country, friends, is this?"

"This is Illyria, lady."
The Captain looked past me, to where Rogan stood offstage.

"And what should I do in Illyria?"
I turned to stare at my cousin, and began to cry.
"My brother, he is in Elysium ..."

I recall almost nothing else of my performance, though I remembered all my lines, all my entrances. People applauded when I walked offstage. They laughed at the right places. I took my pratfalls during my duel with Sir Andrew and praised the countess so that the very babbling gossip of the air cried out "Olivia."

But it was like being stone-cold drunk in a darkened room. Only when Rogan was on did the stage suddenly seem to shake and blaze, as though lightning struck it: his flaming hair, his white costume

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irradiated by the followspots, his bare feet kicking up a shining haze of dust and rouge and face powder that followed him like a bright shadow. When he first opened his mouth and sang I heard a gasp go through the audience, as though everyone had at the same instant touched a burning wire.

Then the house fell silent.

It was as though I were alone in the attic. Only now, the toy theater had grown to the size of a real one. I watched my cousin, his slender form pacing in front of the footlights, the scrim behind him backlit so I could see the faintest suggestion of tree limbs and the outlines of a wrecked ship, the moon rising above distant mountains, and the blue shadows of the other actors. His voice echoed from the rafters, so piercing and full of heartbreak I felt as if that burning wire had been thrust into my skull. When he finished, he stepped backward and gave a small, plaintive bow, then straightened as, slowly at first, then with the sudden irrevocable rush of water flooding a broken building, the place erupted into applause.

"Holy fuck," someone behind me breathed.

I couldn't speak. I stood beside the curtain and peeked out into the audience.

People were still applauding--jocks, mostly, all fired up with the beer they'd snuck into the auditorium. I saw Mr. Sullivan with Sister Mary Clark beside him, whispering in his ear. A few rows behind them were my parents and sister, who seemed to have reverted to some sort of racial memory of how to behave at the theater. They held their mimeographed programs and clapped and appeared enthusiastic, if bemused: as though they'd suddenly awakened here, fully dressed,

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and were trying very hard not to draw attention to themselves.

But Rogan's mother looked strained and unsure how to react. I saw her glance furtively at the people sitting next to her, who beamed and nodded, while Aunt Pat kept her hands poised just above her lap.

Meanwhile, Rogan's father stared stony-eyed at the stage, not even looking at Rogan but beyond him, as though someone else were to blame for what he'd just witnessed. My skin prickled and I took a step backward, then told myself that was stupid, there was no way he could see me through the curtain. I continued to search the audience until I found Aunt Kate.

"Don't miss your cue," someone hissed at me.

I nodded but didn't move. My mouth went dry; I felt as I had in those terrible moments before the curtains first parted.

Because Aunt Kate was weeping. Not wiping at the corners of her eyes, as I'd seen her do during a performance of
King Lear,
or crying demurely as she did at a sad movie, or even staring stoic and wet faced as she did at Tierney funerals.

Now she was bent almost double as her body heaved with sobs. Even from backstage I could see how her face had gone dead white. Her eyes and mouth were red slits, like the openings in a mask. She looked as though she were having a seizure or a heart attack; but before I could move, the stage manager grabbed my arm and pushed me toward the stage.

"For chrissakes, you're on!"

It was all a blur after that. Love scene, swordplay, mad scene, reconciliation: all flickered around me, a slide show glimpsed through a fever dream--until the play's last moments.

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Everyone exited, save Feste. He stood alone, the stage dark except for a single thin followspot that picked out his face: the white makeup smudged, the rouge gone from his cheeks and lips. Only his eyes were more brilliant than ever, blazing aquamarine as he tilted his chin toward the light and sang.