Pushing Upward (16 page)

The conversation was a little awkward as we moved around the table filling our plates—at least for me. I didn't know these neighbors. I'd never more than bumped into the mailman or ventured onto another floor. I had to admit, even to myself, that I didn't care to expend the slightest bit of effort to
get
to know these people. They hadn't made movies or produced any Broadway shows. They were ordinary folks, with ordinary concerns and plebeian occupations.

It wasn't until we were all sitting in the living room, dipping our bread into our spaghetti sauce and the olive-oil dressing from Emma's endive salad, that I realized that these people had all somehow connected to this eighty-year-old woman, just as I had. And as I sat there, chewing on the toasty crust of the garlic bread, I realized what the connection was.

We were all in need of this woman's approval, dependent on her support and encouragement. We were all the same.

“Suzanne is a marvelous flutist,” Emma said, as she filled Max's glass with wine. “She will be performing at the University of Southern California next month.” Suzanne turned pink at Emma's announcement, but mustered the courage to provide us with the precise date and time of the performance. Tending to Louise's request for more sparkling cider and Max's need for another napkin, Emma drew in Joe by asking him to repeat the ludicrous mailman joke he'd told her the other day.

As she played hostess to each guest, catering to his or her needs, filling cups with liquid love, I watched, fascinated. She seemed to be teaching me, showing me how to tend to people's hearts, no matter who they were, no matter what their social status or profession was. As closely as I watched and as hard as I listened, I could feel a fire inside me, burning away my ego and my ignorance. The more I realized how consumed I'd been with my previous expectations—convinced of how superior I was and disappointed that these friends of hers were so, well, pedestrian—the more I burned.

What was implicit in Emma's teaching that afternoon was how one word could transform an emotional interior, how the smallest gesture of thoughtfulness could lighten someone's heart. How giving was a better trade than taking. And … how this was a lesson I needed to remember—and a lesson I continually forgot.

Chapter 14

… in such times of progress and successful development
it is necessary to work and make the best use of the time.

Over the next few weeks, LaPapa's troupe members read tons of scripts sent to us by playwrights from around the world. After reading each submission, the company was to decide if they liked one of the plays enough to produce it, in which case they'd invite the author to come to Los Angeles and watch the actors from LaPapa present a staged reading. If the author was happy with the direction thus far, we would cast the parts and prepare for a live performance. Since LaPapa had a significant presence in L.A. and New York, the author would be guaranteed a full house and lots of media coverage. While searching for the ultimate script, Ginger had us warm up each day by doing improvs.

I'd attended many theater classes and weekend clinics where I'd been asked to do improvisational theater games to stretch the mind and emotions. Improvs that were thought out with intelligence and foresight that helped me go beyond set parameters, go beyond any mental limitations. And I did them because I'd felt safe, protected under the directors' guidance.

Yet, Ginger dared each member to go onstage, one at a time, and re-create an extremely private moment—a moment that revealed something we would, under normal circumstances, be too embarrassed to share in public, something we did by ourselves when no one else was around. She told us it was an exercise in fearlessness. Now, if Ginger were the kind of director I felt safe with, I wouldn't have minded, but I didn't trust her as far as I could throw a Ping-Pong ball.

One actor put himself in front of an imaginary mirror and dressed up in drag. Another actor made us believe he was home, pulling down the shades in his living room, dimming the lights, lying down in his bed, and masturbating under a blanket. One of the dancers did leg stretches while she sensually massaged her breasts and other body parts. When it was my turn, I went through the motions of taking off my clothes, walking into a small stall shower, turning the water on, and singing “Let It Be” at the top of my lungs. Our director made no comment. Everyone else seemed to like it.

Two troupe members, the Carolina twins, refused to do the exercise, and Ginger flipped out. She took their refusal as a personal insult: “You think you're too superior to do this exercise?” she screamed. “You two better get off your high horses and join the little people. What the hell are you doing here if you can't execute what you're asked? Wasting my time, and everybody else's! How do you think you're going to make it in this town without humility! When you're hired as actors, you do what you're asked. You think because you're from a ritzy section of Charleston and have that …
hair
… that you're beyond reproach?”

She went on and on, getting hoarser and hoarser, until she sputtered out and sent everyone home, except me. I was the chosen one to stay. I wasn't sure I appreciated the honor. Trailed by the tail of her cape, Ginger made a grand pirouette, and in her Queen of Sheba voice pronounced, “Follow me, Sandra Billings. I want to show you why actors must be cautious in my presence.”

Dubiously, I followed her around the corner to another room she called “home.” Home was dismal and smelled of mildew. Even with the lights turned on, the room was dark and spooky. The windows were covered with black cloth. Pieces of velvet fabric were draped over a queen-size waterbed. Frayed shawls hung on the walls. Everything was musty. Ginger sat down on the oversize gray velvet chair and offered me the option of the floor or the bed. I somehow felt exposed, vulnerable, standing in the empty space before her chair. Warily, I chose the rippling waterbed. I sat watching her while she clutched the arms of her chair tightly and worked herself back into a heavy fume.

“Who the fuck do these actors think they are? I don't have time for their arrogant bullshit. I have a company to run, a tight ship to steer.” She stood up, dramatically, and paced the floor, her arms flailing, her cape flying. “I'm not asking them to do anything Peter Brook and Stanislavsky wouldn't have asked
their
companies to do. Great directors expect unflinching obedience.”

Is she out of her mind?
Placing herself in the same sentence with these directors!

Ginger reached under the chair and pulled out a box filled with colored powders and tiny brown bottles. She began to mix and measure pinches of powder from one bottle into the other, muttering. Adding a gooey glue-like substance to one bottle, scented oil to another. One of her potions, no doubt! She added a splash of yucky green liquid to top them off. “This will show those Southern crackers who they're playing with.”

She placed the mysterious mixtures on top of the bureau and began to recite unidentifiable incantations, moving her hands around and around in small semicircles above her head, chanting in some strange language, dancing to a bizarre, primal rhythm. All this to activate the magic potion, I guess!

“There are good spells and bad spells,” she said, after completing her dark, mysterious worship. She approached the bed. “You just have to know the right amounts to create the right chemistry. The liquid must solidify before the spell takes effect.”

Ceremony completed, she plunked down next to me, sliding her heavy body close to mine. Before I could move away she began massaging my shoulders with her masculine hands. I froze. One hand slowly, deliberately, made its way to my breast, the other massaged the back of my neck. Her thick, muscular body exuded an odor I could barely bear to inhale.

“Ginger,” I said, edging away, desperately reaching for a verbal diversion, “how long does the liquid take to solidify?”

“About two hours.” She moved closer.

“Uhm …”
I tried to sidle sideways again, an awkward maneuver on the rising and falling waterbed. “What's going to happen to the twins as a result of this mixture?”

“You'll see, my
naïf.
” She crowded even closer.

“I, ah, think you have me all wrong. I like you and everything, but I'm not a … you know.” I shifted, to edge farther away. But her fingers reached for my hair and twirled a few strands.

“That's too bad. We'd make quite a team. I like you,” she continued in her low-pitched tone, probably meant as seductive. “You have so little ego. Most people don't let me in. But you do. You're open and trusting. It's why I picked you. Your face is young, your eyes are old, and I can feel your rage. It's a great combination. I could make you a star, if you'll let me. If you'll have me.”

“Look, ah, I live with an older woman who is waiting for me to make dinner,” I said nervously, trying to wedge myself off the bed, “like I promised.” I looked at my watch. “Oh my God, it's seven-thirty. I really do have to go.”

I leapt from the floating bed and headed toward the door, while she sat there swinging a feather boa around her head, threatening me in booming tones with a terminal curse—I think it was loss of hair—if I left.

I left anyway.

Emma jumped when I walked in the door, and pretended to look busy—she must have been sleeping in her high-back—and hurriedly picked up the script lying open on her lap. Newspapers and crossword puzzles were piled on the table next to her. She'd already eaten, she told me, but there was some chicken soup on the stove.

“What a day!” I blew out a sigh.

In her childlike voice, she replied, “Come sit down; tell me about it.”

Emma wanted to hear the minutiae of my day. So I sat down and began to pour it out. From the time I walked into the theater early that morning down to Ginger's potions and the threat of losing my hair. She loved hearing the stories and asked questions about every member of the company. How I felt about each one and how they reacted to Ginger's direction. She asked about the overall climate of the company and if the New York LaPapa was different from the L.A. LaPapa. I didn't know the answer to that, but promised to ask. She
would
have made a great journalist. She was all about the details.

It was clear that she needed to be pried away from the high-back she had been glued to the last few weeks, so I said, “Hey, Emma, we have the day off tomorrow. How would you like to take a trip to the farmers' market?”

She turned to me and smiled. It was heartwarming and instantly melted my heart.

Now there are farmers' markets, and there are farmers' markets. This particular one was by far the most extraordinary ethnic enclave in the U.S., as it served the Conservative, Reform, and Orthodox Jews in the L.A. area. Sidewalks for two city blocks were jam-packed with short men wearing
yarmulkes;
zaftig
women clad in ankle-length billowy skirts; and children with long, corkscrewing side curls. Everyone was rushing, bumping into each other, for what seemed to me no apparent reason. The scene was frenetic. People crowded around store windows, pushing and shoving … yelling at the top of their lungs, even when they stood right next to you. It was a microcosm of the Big Apple, where it seemed most of these people were from. Perhaps, on these tiny side streets off Fairfax Avenue, they were able to re-create the city they loved and missed.