All's Well(8)

I hate that I want Briana to like me even though I hate Briana and I hate that I hate Briana because what is Briana’s future going to be, really? A few years in the big city pursuing her acting passion to no end because there will be no mother or father to open the doors to those gilded places. She’ll be forced at last to stare her own mediocrity in the face. She’ll marry a stock broker, start a vegan mommy blog. Enlist her future spawn in ballet.

Grow up, I tell myself. Be the adult. Be the teacher. Lie to this long-haired child and tell her the reason we are doing this play is because it will stretch her and her fellow cast members to take on a play that is disturbing but not in an obvious bloodbath/orgy way; that is witchy without the cackling hags; that is funny-sad rather than simply sad; that is dark-light, rather than just dark, just light; that is problematic, provocative, complex, and mysterious; a hidden mountain flower growing in the shade of Shakespeare’s canon that hasn’t been put on by a million fucking schools already. And is timely too. Socially relevant.

“Miranda,” Briana says.

Briana always calls me Miranda, never Ms. Fitch, let alone Professor. She looks at me now, and I cower, can you believe this? I brace myself. Brace myself for—

“Couldn’t we warm up first?” She already begins to stretch her body in anticipation. Stretches her arms high above her head. See how much my body needs and loves this?

I have a vision of killing her. It’s not the first time.

“We really need to get a move on today, I’m afraid,” I tell her.

I always forget their warm-ups. I can’t help it. I hate the warm-ups. Leading them through that. It pains me to watch them. How their movements are so easy, so quick, how their movements lubricate their already lubricated bones. Give oxygen to their already oxygenated musculature. Make their faces grow flushed. Really, it’s like watching them all fuck. But Briana warming up is the worst. The sight of Briana’s lithe body moving beneath the stage lights actually hurts my eyes. Causes them to water. It’s like staring directly right at the sun. It’s like willing yourself to go blind.

“I’ll do a quick one for them, Miranda,” Grace says quietly into my ear.

I turn to her, standing beside me now.

“Fine,” I say. “Fine.”

I dissolve into the dark wing. There, I watch their bodies bend and sway. I grab a bottle from my pocket and pop another pill. I don’t even bother to check which bottle.





CHAPTER 3


THE CANNY MAN with Grace. A Scottish pub in our neighborhood where we go after class or rehearsals to discuss the production or if neither of us can face going home. Grace is eating a burger and fries with a vigorous appetite. As if no rebellion has occurred. Just another post-rehearsal night. All’s well. I watch her drink a monolith of dark beer with a thick, creamy head that would slaughter me to imbibe. Beside the beer is a tumbler, which she’s nearly drained, of Scotch. Healthy as a horse. Utterly unkillable. I’m sitting hunched over a white wine spritzer and a green salad. My entire body a throbbing, low-grade ache. Hip to knee in full-on spasm. Back full of fists. On vague fire in various places, all over, all over. Burning too with humiliation and rage.

“You okay?” Grace says.

Okay? How can she even ask me that? Was she not there? Did she not see? I want to protest. To rage at Grace.

“Fine,” I say.

Grace looks at me hunched crookedly over my food. “Haven’t touched your… what is that anyway?”

“Salad.”

Grace wrinkles her nose. Returns to her burger, which appears to have cheese, even bacon, it looks like. Possibly a fried egg. Why isn’t Grace dead? But I know this meal won’t kill Grace. Grace will belch once, quietly, about an hour from now in her living room while watching Netflix. She’ll pat her obediently digesting stomach lightly as though it has been a good dog. She will retreat to her bedroom, which is uncharacteristically feminine in decor, every surface cluttered with tiny, ornate jewelry boxes, each fit for only one ring, each wall foaming pale rose drapery, and there on a cushion-bedecked bed, she will sleep the sleep of angels. Her heart will not drum perilously into her ear. She will not lie awake plagued with visions of her own imminent demise. She will sleep and then wake at a decent hour, and go for a run in the morning. Reinvigorated. Ready to take on life.

She made a face when I ordered my white wine spritzer and salad, then ordered her rich meal and drink, as if to atone for my lameness.

I really shouldn’t drink with these pills, I explained to her.

Grace nodded. Sure. Whatever.

But it’s true that I shouldn’t drink with these pills. I shouldn’t even be taking these pills together, let alone washing them down with wine. Got them from two different physiatrists who, unlike my golf-shirted physiotherapists, have the power to dispense drugs. One was suspicious of me, the other unusually merciful, smiling with the whimsical benevolence of a trickster god I’d happened to catch on a good day—Now why don’t we give these a try, Ms. Fitch, hmm?

Yes, I cried. Yes, let’s!

Now, you don’t want to take anything else with these, Ms. Fitch.

Oh, of course not, I told the good doctor, shaking my head again and again. No, no, I would never. His white coat shone before me like the robes of God. The white so bright I shed tears.

Now I sip my spritzer and stare at Grace, guzzling her beer contentedly as she watches the hockey game on the small TV screen above my head. Oblivious, completely, to this evening’s disaster. Well, she can afford to be.