All's Well(6)

“We were just getting started,” I say to the students. “Weren’t we?”

They still just stare at me. Briana smirks now.

“Ms. Fitch?” Trevor says at last, raising his hand as though we are in class. Trevor. Long, layered brown hair. Terribly tall. Not quite in control of his body or his charms. Before he opens his mouth, you think Byron. You think George Emerson in A Room with a View climbing a tree and screaming about beauty and truth. But Trevor will deeply disappoint you. Last year he played a lukewarm Romeo who touched his sword too much. Trevor has his moments though, mainly because of his hair. Trevor’s hair is very expressive.

“Yes?”

“I had a question about the play.”

Oh god no. “Yes?”

“Well. I was reading through it again.” He flips the pages around as if to demonstrate to me the act of reading. “And I’m not really connecting with it?”

Not a question. I close my eyes. Smile at the black space.

“What is it that you’re not connecting with exactly?”

“Honestly? Just the whole thing?”

Inner red webs blinking more quickly. Concrete leg crumbling. I open my eyes. I stare at Trevor in all his handsome, breathtaking idiocy.

“Can you be more specific?”

“Well, like the premise?” Trevor says. “And the story line? And the characters seem, I don’t know. I can’t relate to them at all?”

I gaze at his hands in their fingerless gloves, mildly clenched at his sides. His poetic hair that too often compensates for his lack of a soul. Beautifully, ludicrously tanned in January. Cowrie-shell necklace around his young throat. Though he has no real innate charisma, he’s tall enough that if he declares mutiny, they will all follow.

“I see. Well, Trevor—”

“Like that main woman?” Trevor continues.

“Helen.”

“Right. Yeah, her I really don’t get.”

“What don’t you get?” Careful, Miranda. Careful.

“I don’t know.” He shrugs. “She’s just not a very compelling heroine to me. She’s just… sort of pathetic, isn’t she?”

He gazes right at me now. How I’m leaning wildly to the left because all the concrete on the right has crumbled. Beside him, Briana appears neutral, merely interested in this confrontation, not at all complicit. Not at all the stirrer of the pot. Just an innocent spectator of the show.

I look over at Hugo, who’s still busying himself with the planks of wood. Not looking over, not paying attention at all. For once, I’m grateful.

I try to smile at them. I try not to accuse them, even with my face. I try not to say, You don’t fucking understand anything. My face says, I’m indulging your candid youth, the brute stupidity that you are trying to pass off as charm. I play the romantic soul, the misty-eyed art teacher.

“She’s in love, Trevor. Aren’t we all a little pathetic when we’re in love? Have we not all been there before? Aren’t some of us there now?” Like you? Who is so obviously Briana’s puppet?

Trevor looks at me like he doesn’t compute my words. He shrugs again.

“Honestly? I don’t get that guy she loves either.”

“By ‘that guy’ you mean Bertram. You mean your character.”

“I mean I get why he doesn’t like her back,” he continues. “Because she’s lame, obviously. But he’s an asshole about it. And then he suddenly likes her in the end? In one line at the end?”

He shakes his princely head as if this were impossible. As if such impossibility wasn’t the whole point. Wasn’t the magic of the play itself.

You’re a fool, I think.

“Sorry?”

“I said that will be your great challenge, won’t it, Trevor? As an actor,” I lie. I almost laugh out loud when I say as an actor. Trevor an actor. The idea is suddenly hysterical to me. Yet I remain straight-faced. Perhaps I’m not as bad an actor as I thought.

“I think you’re absolutely ready for it,” I tell him.

“I guess I just still don’t get the whole thing,” Trevor insists.

Beside him, Briana now openly beams. Perhaps she’ll give him a hand job later, in his Saab, as a reward.

“Well, it’s January. Plenty of time for you to get it. In fact, that will be the work of rehearsal. We will all be discovering the play in rehearsal, including me,” I say. “Now—”

“Actually, Ms. Fitch—” Trevor interjects.

“What?” I say, but I’m still smiling. Or trying to. Am I smiling? The pills make it hard to feel my face. I’m gripping the back of the chair.

“Well, I was wondering…” He looks over at Briana, who continues to stare at my body, eyes sweeping up and down, observing my hands clenched on the chair. “We were all wondering, actually, if it wouldn’t be too late to change?”

Dumb. Play dumb. “Change?”

“Well, we all talked about doing the Scottish Play this year. Instead. I don’t know if you remember?”

Hugo’s turned to look at me. He’s actually looking right at me for once. With pity, I see. I feel my face catch fire now. I can feel my face after all, it seems. I look around at the other students. All turned toward Trevor as though he were some sort of god, even the boys.