The Juliet Spell (24 page)

Globe Theater in San Diego.”

“This is getting out of control,” I said.

“Word,” Bobby said.

“Yea, verily,” I agreed.

“Hah,” Edmund said. “Undone by your own vanity, Will.”

“You behave. Now is not the time to gloat,” Mom said.

The phone rang.

“I’d better get it,” I said. “Maybe Doctor Dee has invented the telephone.”

I went to the kitchen and picked up the receiver.

From far away, I heard Dad’s voice. “Hello, Miri, it’s your father.”

My who? I thought crazily. On top of everything else that had happened tonight, this phone call was almost too much to take in. Then a wave of total happiness crashed over me.

Chapter Twenty.

Nine

“Daddy?” I eeped. “Yes, honey,” Dad said. “It’s me. Did I wake you?” “No,” I said. “Daddy—are you coming home?’ “That’s what I’m calling about,” Dad said. “Can I speak

to my wife? And to you?” “Okay, yes,” I said. “I’ll go get her.” When I told her, Mom walked to the phone. But I knew

she wanted to run.

Our first words were tentative, a little clumsy. But Dad’s voice was like a golden river pouring into my ears, into my heart. And when he and Mom spoke, I could hear the love between them.

“I’ve called to ask if I can come home,” Dad said. “Yes,” Mom said. “What’s the next question?” “There isn’t one,” Dad said. “Then get on back here,” I blurted out. Mom laughed. “Yes. If you’ll have me. I’ll start tomorrow.”

Then we all just listened to each other breathing for a minute.

“You probably want to know why I’m calling in the mid.dle of the night to ask to come back,” Dad said finally.

“Not especially,” Mom said. “It’s not important. What’s important is that you’re coming.”

“I think I need to tell you anyway,” Dad said. “I’ve wanted to ask that question for a long time now. But I couldn’t do it, because all my searching for myself had really only led me to one conclusion. That I was a selfish jerk ever to have left you. And that raised the question of whether you weren’t better off without me. I had a good job now, working as a shrink again. Maybe I should just send money and keep out of your lives. So I decided to wait for some kind of indica.tor of what to do.”

Mom didn’t say anything. Neither did I.

“Then tonight I had a dream that seemed to answer the question for me,” he went on. “You know how I use dreams in my work with my clients. Well, this one felt as important as any I’ve ever had or heard of. Not my usual kind of thing. May I tell you?”

“Go on,” Mom said.

“I was staring into a pot of water looking at my own re.flection. Then my face changed into the face of a woman. She was wearing some kind of old-fashioned cap and she looked strong, noble. She had a long nose, and dark eyes, and she said, ‘Return, fool, to the place ye once called home. Your work is there.’ Then her face went away and I saw an old man with a long white beard. He said, ‘Portentous and perilous is the state of the work. Shakespeare dwells where you should be. Go and tell him—’ and that’s when I woke up. About two hours ago. And I’ve been lying here ever since trying to work the dream out in terms of my anima and my archetypal old man. That’s clear enough. And the Shake.speare reference obviously refers to both of you as actresses. But the intensity of the dream is what’s so significant. It was like I wasn’t sleeping at all. Those two people felt absolutely real—”

“You’d better tell him what’s going on, Miri,” Mom said.

And I did.

When I was done, Dad was so amazed he could hardly speak. “I can’t—” he began. Then, “How on earth—?” Then, “Do you think I can be of any use? Never mind. I’m coming. I’m coming home. Shakespeare. My God.”

“Miri,” Mom said. “Your father and I need some time to talk.”

“I’ll go check on the guys,” I said.

The four of them were lying on the furniture in the liv.ing room asleep or half-asleep. They raised their heads when I came in.

“My dad’s coming home,” I said.

“Then I shall meet the great doctor of souls!” Edmund said. “Excellent!”

“Yeah, pretty excellent.” I threw my arms around Ed.mund, loving him, feeling him wanting to love me back. Then, when he’d disentangled himself—reluctantly, I thought—I hugged Drew like the friend he was.

“Thank you, Drew,” I said. “If you hadn’t started fooling around with Achilles and his turtle, this wouldn’t be hap.pening.”

“Really?”

I told him about Dad’s dream, and about Joan Hart’s scry.ing.

“Wow,” Bobby said. “Friend Drew, thou art a mighty geek.”

Drew shook his head. “I’m glad your dad is coming home, Miri. I’m glad for anything I did to help. But this is serious. If Joan Hart can scry your dad, and Doctor Dee can see him, too—that implies that something’s up with whatever it is that separates our time from theirs. More than I realized. Your mom was right. I am in way over my head.”

He looked so worried that I moved over and sat beside him on the sofa and hugged him again. “Drew, it’s okay. You meant well. It’s not your fault if the time flow or whatever starts backing up like a clogged toilet.”

“What did Doctor Dee say in your father’s dream?” Drew said. “Something about perils and portents? Perils doesn’t sound good…. I sent the plans for wet-cell technology! Doc.tor Dee made a battery following them.”

“Yeah, and if you hadn’t he wouldn’t have been able to answer your messages, right?” Bobby asked, confused.

“Yes. But then William Shakespeare showed up in my room today,” Drew went on. “And I wasn’t even trying to do that. To bring him here. See what I mean? Equation. I send something there, so something from there has to come here. But it’s not an exact equation, which suggests that there’s some kind of balance that’s out of balance—”

“Oh, my God,” I said. “Does that mean somebody from our time ended up in Edmunds’ time when he came here?”

“If I’m right, then, yes,” Drew said. “But we’re probably never going to know.”

Drew’s phone buzzed.

“No, Mom, I’m fine,” he said into it. “I’m at Miri’s with some of the cast. Two in the morning, I know. Yes, of course, sorry. Be there in fifteen.”

He put the phone away.

“Are you in trouble?” I asked him.

“I suppose that depends on how you define trouble,” he said. “On the one hand, my mom’s a little angry with me, and it’s so late I’m going to be dead on my feet at work to.morrow. On the other hand, I may have started the unrav.eling of time....which seems somehow worse.”

Edmund and Shakespeare looked solemn. Drew, hunched on the sofa, looked like he felt completely alone.

Bobby tugged on Drew’s arm.

“Come on, man. You’ll figure it out. Or Doctor Dee will. But you gotta get some sleep. If you don’t you’ll go crazy.”

Drew got up. “If I’m not crazy already. I’m not sure. See you tomorrow, guys. Later today, I mean. See—can’t tell yesterday from today, time problems, ha ha. Anyway, thanks for the hugs.”

“Here. Have another,” I said, and hugged him again. “It’s good to have you for a friend, Drew.”

“Yeah. You, too, Miri. Good night.”

The door closed behind him and I wondered what it would be like to have a brain like that, to live in a world like his. I wondered if that very special brain had anything to do with why I never saw him with a girl.

Chapter Thirty

Dad was coming home. Everything was going to be good again. I couldn’t wait; the three days it was going to take him to get to us seemed like three hundred years. I’d have gone crazy if I hadn’t had the show to do.

Drew’s mom was able to get us the use of the parish hall at St. Stephen’s, the church where she preached sometimes, for our rehearsals. St. Stephen’s was an old church built in a kind of medieval style and the hall went well with the show.

Then there was Shakespeare.

When Edmund introduced him, he said, “Everyone, this is my brother Bill. He just got here from England. He thinks he can act. I told him he could take over a couple of small parts. So if he tries to give you any advice about how to do your lines—Don’t. Listen. To. Him.”

We all laughed. Including Shakespeare.

And the Bard behaved himself. The casual arrogance I’d picked up on the night he arrived was gone. Maybe giving him a show to be in improved his character. He was quiet during breaks, and polite to everyone, even his brother. But he was so good, even in the small parts he was given, that he made the rest of us see how we could do our own roles better. And when we broke for discussions about how to improve a scene or a line, and what it really meant, the one guy on the planet who could have let us know exactly what the author intended stood back and stroked his beard, maybe asking a question or two. And always a good question that led to the best answer for that actor.

Nobody recognized him the way we had. Why would they? In Dad’s clothes, with his hair pulled back in a pony.tail, he looked like a middle-age guy doing community the.ater. After rehearsals, Edmund, Bobby, Shakespeare, Drew and I crowded into Drew’s car and came back to our place. We sat around with Mom, talking about the show until way after midnight.

There was still tension between the brothers, and it could blow up away from the theater. The first night after re.hearsal, Shakespeare said to Bobby, “I like well your Tybalt. Ye bring something to the role I have not seen before. I think it is a secret good-heartedness. I did not write it so, but ’tis charming.”

“Wow, Will,” Bobby said. “Coming from you, that means everything.”

But the remark made Edmund snap. “Will, damn ye—ye gave your word. Do not be gulled by him, Bobby. He likes your playing little and wants ye to change it. ’Tis his way to charm when he cannot command. Next will come a few modest suggestions which ye will be a fool to take.”

“I meant no more than I said,” Shakespeare said. “What a rogue ye must think me.”

“Aye, I do. For ye are,” Edmund said.

And Bobby looked hurt.

But then in a few minutes we were back to the flow of good talk, and after a while, Edmund said, “At least what my brother told ye is true, Bobby. Your Tybalt is something new.”

When it was over and Drew and Bobby went home, I thought, This is what my life is going to be like. Love, and Shake.speare, and acting and theater twenty-four-seven forever. And my dad is coming home.

And on Saturday, Dad drove up in an ancient Toyota crammed with his stuff.

When I heard a car door slam, I ran to the living-room window—not like I’d been waiting or anything—and I called out, “He’s here.”

Mom came in from the kitchen.

Edmund and Will had been waiting with me. Edmund stood up.

“Come, brother. Let us absent ourselves from their felic.ity awhile.”

Shakespeare stood up and followed him down the hall murmuring, “Absent—felicity...”

Which meant he was trying to remember it until he could write it down.

I opened the door. There Dad stood, weary, tall and long faced, looking more like a wet dog than anything else. See.ing him again, so familiar, and so strange, was almost like recognizing Shakespeare had been. But Dad’s portrait was in my heart. It would change to fit this slightly different face.

“Miri,” he said.

“Daddy,” I said.

“I love you,” he said, and embraced me.

And then Mom was there, standing beside me, running one hand through her long ash-blond hair, a little off-balance and looking up at him.

I took a step out of Dad’s arms.

“Ohhh,” Dad said and wrapped himself around his wife.

They stood there a long time, holding each other and breathing things that made me want to say, “Hey, guys, get a room.”

So I went and knocked on Edmund’s door.

“Let me in,” I said. “Mom and Dad need privacy, and so do I.”

“You are come in very good time,” Shakespeare said. “I am seized with an idea for a play. And there is a part in it for you.”

He had a pile of paper in front of him covered with his old-fashioned scrawl in blue ballpoint ink.

“’Tis a piece of old trash he is rewriting,” Edmund said.

“’Twill not be trash when I have worked it over.”

“What do you call it?” I asked.

“The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, I think,” Shake.speare said.

“A fig on it,” Edmund said. “Everyone has seen the old one.”

“No, no, don’t knock it,” I said. “He may be on to some.thing.”

And that afternoon in our spare bedroom, I read some of Ophelia’s lines as they came from Will Shakespeare’s hand. And when Mom finally knocked on our door and said thank you and we could come out now, there was almost half of the first act.

The Shakespeare brothers entered the living room grace.ful and elegant in Dad’s polo shirts and jeans. Together, they bowed to him. Dad offered his hand.

“Gentlemen, call me Paul,” he said.

“We give thanks, sir, for your gracious welcome,” Shake.speare said.

Edmund took Dad’s hand and said, “Tell us, Doctor, for my brother and I are most interested, what is this psychol.ogy ye do?”