Chapter 17
The next day, after Connie worked her magic to get the karaoke machine set up, I’m sitting, then standing, then sitting, then
pacing outside the dining hall, wondering if it’s too late to walk to the bus station. I don’t even need to pack a suitcase.
I’ll happily abandon everything I own to get out of this.
“I thought you were, like, a professional at this.” Dylan is standing next to me, arms folded. “I mean, you were a corpse on a major television show.”
I shoot her a look. “ Way different. This isn’t my normal audience. Or venue. Or... anything. Nothing about this is normal.”
“Well, you heard the old guy. Suck it up.”
“You say ‘the old guy’ as if that doesn’t describe ninety-five percent of the people here.”
“There’s also that hot guy you keep staring at,” she says. “The one who drove you around the first day you got here.”
I glance at her.
Dylan stares back without a hint of expression. Without breaking eye contact, she pulls out her phone, taps a few buttons,
and points the camera at me.
“Dylan, if you even think—”
She cuts me off. “Oh, don’t worry, this is just for me.” I swear that girl doesn’t blink.
I grit my teeth and hit the heels of my hands against my thighs.
The mere mention of Booker has me even more on edge.
I purposely didn’t mention Connie’s little plan last night when he and Louie sat down at our table during family dinner.
Is it too much to hope he might miss the memo on my performance?
I peek into the dining hall where Connie is tapping on the microphone on one side of the room, scanning the crowd for any
sign that the “hot guy” is there, but it’s hard to see the whole room from where I’m standing.
This is what I do. It’s who I am. Why am I nervous about this? Because there’s more riding on it?
“I don’t know if I can do this.”
I turn to go, but Dylan blocks me, still holding up her phone, still recording me. “Don’t be a chicken.”
I smile, reach up, and gently place a hand on her phone, covering the camera, and she gives an “Oh, fine,” and clicks the
phone off.
The door behind her opens and Daisy rushes in. Louie is right behind her. I watch the door for several long seconds and feel
myself relax when it slowly closes and Booker isn’t with them.
“Oh no. What are you guys doing here?” I ask.
“We heard you’re singing,” Daisy says. “Connie sent out a mass email and announced it on the intercom in the clubhouse. ‘Come
see Law this is alive-serious.
She purses her lips for a moment, then says, “This might actually work.”
Her words stop me. Her expression is honest. I half laugh. “Do you really care about this show?”
“No.” She looks away. “But... you’re the first person who’s said more than, like, three words to me since I got here.”
Her gaze hits the floor. “And that includes my grandparents, who, like, live here.”
“Oh.” I go still.
“Whatever,” she says. “I’m fine. I just thought you should, you know, make sure we get a cast or whatever.”
A moment passes between us.
She said “we.”
She brings her phone back up, filming. “At least this will give me something to watch later.”
The door to the dining area flings open and Connie appears. “We’re ready, Rosie!”
She’s entirely too excited about this.
“I loaded up the song you gave me and I tested the volume, so you should be good to go.”
I glance back at Dylan, whose face remains chaotic neutral, and I think it must’ve been really hard for her to admit to me
what she did. Maybe not as hard as performing a musical number for a bunch of retirees who just want to enjoy their lunch,
but still, pretty difficult.
I draw in a deep breath and stand in the back of the dining hall, realizing it’s nothing like a cafeteria. It’s more like
a buffet-style restaurant, which makes this so much worse. There are people up and about, filling plates at a long counter
with a variety of options, and people crowded around tables, eating, playing cards or chess, mingling—not at all asking to
be entertained.
Hey, everyone, put down your applesauce and check out this song!
Connie is at the microphone. She taps it three times. “Yoo-hoo! Families and friends of Sunset Hills!”
Nobody stops talking. The clinking of silverware and conversations continue.
Which is embarrassing, not just for Connie but for me, because can we really expect them to stop talking during their lunch?
They didn’t buy a ticket for this. There’s no theatre etiquette here. Even dinner theatres let people eat in peace.
“People! People!” Connie raises her voice a little louder, pulls away the microphone, and looks at it as if she’s not sure
it’s working.
Still no change in the chatter.
Finally, she reaches down and turns a knob all the way to the right, and much, much louder, she shouts, “Everyone! Listen!”
The mic peaks, causing some feedback, as the chatter goes quiet. Connie’s face morphs from whatever possessed her in that
moment back to her sweet Southern self.
“That’s better,” she says, reaching down and returning the knob to the middle position. “Y’all sure do love to chat, don’t
you?” She giggles, as if that could erase her outburst.
Arthur stomps toward me and hands me a second microphone. I start to thank him, but he grunts and walks away.
Connie starts talking about the last show the Sunset Players put on, and I let the ambient noise of the dining hall drown
her out as I do my best to relax and remember how it feels to perform. Because if I’m going to do it, I need to really do
it.
If we don’t get anyone to audition, they’ll cancel the show, and I’ll have to move into my parents’ basement, where I’ll reenact
my stint as the corpse on Law & Order , lying on a couch in a room with no windows.
I close my eyes and draw in a very deep breath, realizing that I’m not ready to leave this place.
“Ladies and gentlemen...” Connie pauses, I think for dramatic effect? And then she inhales a sharp breath and continues.
“Picture it—you’re up on the stage, under the warmth of the theatre lights, a whole audience full of people who’ve come out
just to see you.” She pauses, and I let the words rest on my shoulders. I know exactly the feeling she’s describing.
“Maybe you always dreamed of acting. Maybe it’s something you did before you found us here at Sunset. Or maybe you want to
do something that scares you, something that reminds you that you’re alive .” She holds out that last word on a long, dramatic whisper. “Well, my friends, I’m here to tell you that you are absolutely
not too old, not here at Sunset Hills. Here, we want to celebrate the life you’ve already lived and help you enjoy all the many years you have left.
“But let’s not take my word for it.” Connie smiles brightly. “I want to introduce you all to our brand-new theatre director,
who is here this summer straight from New York City and who is holding auditions this very afternoon for our next Sunset Players production: Cinderella !”
There’s a collective ooh and a bit of chatter in response to Connie’s dramatic speech.
She continues. “I’m going to let our new theatre director tell you all about that, but first we thought we’d give you a little
preview of the caliber of performer you’re going to be working with if you choose to join us this summer.”
Connie looks out over the expectant faces, now visibly interested in the picture she’s painted, and I have to hand it to her,
she knows how to work a crowd.
“Without further ado, please help me welcome the sensational Rosie Waterman!”
There’s a smattering of applause, and then the lights go out, which was Connie’s idea that Arthur begrudgingly went along
with.
I tell myself it doesn’t matter if I’m performing in a dining hall of a retirement community or on the stage of a Broadway
theatre—the effort should be the same.
I also say a silent prayer of thanks that my initial perusal of this place turned up no evidence that Booker is here right
now.
Never mind that Dylan is still holding her phone up, ready to record.
I’ve had “Don’t Rain on My Parade” from Funny Girl in my portfolio since college. And even though I’d never get the part in real life, that isn’t going to stop me from performing
it now.
I once had an acting professor who, in an attempt to help his students calm their audition nerves, told us not to look at it as a moment of being judged but rather as a chance to perform.
For two minutes, I got to be Katherine in Newsies , Glinda in Wicked , Miss Honey in Matilda , whether anyone gave me permission to be or not.
So that’s what I do.
The music begins, and as I walk toward the front of the room, I hold the microphone up, and I let myself forget all of it.
The years of rejections.
The circumstances that brought me here.
The fact that I’m homeless and this job is not at all what I thought it would be.
I remember why I picked this profession in the first place.
I just let myself feel the character. I let myself become the character. All of Fanny’s hopes and dreams are mine. And I’ll soak up some of her self-confidence too.
The first time I saw Funny Girl , I was ten years old. I came home sick from school, and my mom made me chicken soup and served it to me on a TV tray with
cinnamon toast and ginger ale, and popped in an old DVD from her collection.
The second I saw the back of Barbra Streisand’s leopard-print coat and hat as she stood outside the New Amsterdam Theatre
with her name lit up on the marquee, I was hooked. Completely enraptured.
Here was this woman who’d been told her whole life all the reasons why she couldn’t make it.
Nobody thought she was pretty enough for the stage.
Yet somehow, her belief in herself was enough, and she proved them all wrong.
That was the day I realized what I wanted to do. The day my own Broadway dreams were born. And every time I got knocked down,
I’d rewatch Funny Girl and tell myself that nobody believed in Fanny either.
The first notes of “Don’t Rain on My Parade” wake up something inside me. I shed every trace of Rosie, and I become Fanny. The way I was trained to do.
It doesn’t matter that there are no lights blurring out faces. I put myself in the scene, and I sing like this is the performance
of my life. Like it really, really matters.
And I let myself get swept away, and even though it’s been a few weeks since I’ve sung anything, my voice feels strong. I
feel relaxed. And when I get to the end of the fourth verse, I start to make eye contact with the people in the audience.
It’s all smiles. I lean in. I make my way around the room. At one point, I sit down between two old men who were clearly mid–chess
game, and I sing right to them. They play along, one hitting the other on the arm, both laughing.
The crowd responds. And their energy fills me up.
And it’s fun .
It’s been so long since it’s been fun.
I come up to the big note toward the end, just before the final chorus, and something inside me shifts.
It’s like I can see the note ahead of me, and I falter, hearing that snide, “You really do not have what it takes,” as it melds with all the other similar rejections I’ve gotten over the years, and instead of attacking that note, I find a
way around it.
My audience—this audience—will never know. I close my eyes and fake that last note, wishing like mad that Fanny’s confidence
was easier to hold on to, but I quickly brush it off and I finish, holding the microphone up in front of me.
And unlike my big finishes when I’m in an audition room performing for four people who can’t be bothered to look up from their
phones, this audience responds with cheers and whistles and hollers and applause.
I take a moment and live in it.
This is the one thing in the world that makes me feel alive.
I lower the microphone and smile as Connie bustles over to me, her ample hips swaying as she walks. She pulls me into a tight hug, then draws back and looks at me, a stunned expression on her face.
“Rosie! You’re sensational!”
I resist the urge to ask if she noticed I backed off at the end and lift a hand of thanks toward the cheering diners who are
shouting, “Encore!” and clinking their glasses with their silverware. As I look around, my eyes are drawn to where Arthur
is standing against the back wall.
And I’m certain I see tears streaming down his face.