Chapter 34
An hour later, I find Arthur in his tiny office off the back of the scene shop. To everyone else, it probably looks like he’s
working, but I see this for what it is—hiding.
“You’ve been in here for a while—is there really that much paperwork?”
“You want to open on time, don’t you?” His bark is back, and I wish I knew why.
“What’s going on?” I ask quietly, knowing he probably won’t give me an answer. “Bertie said you told her you don’t want to
see her anymore.”
He barely acknowledges me.
I dare a step toward him, looking around the small, dank space. “It’s depressing in here.”
“It’s peaceful.” He looks at me. “At least it was.”
I glare at him, but he doesn’t notice because he’s gone back to clicking buttons on his computer. “I’m not scared of you anymore.”
He makes a face at me.
“And I want to know why you told Bertie you don’t want to see her.” I move a stack of books off the only other chair in the
space and sit.
His muscles tense. “None of your business.”
“You like her, Arthur.” I lean in. “And she likes you. What’s the problem?”
“The problem!” He spins toward me but snaps his jaw shut the second his eyes meet mine. I see hurt nesting there, the threat of unshed tears pooling in his eyes. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
I nod. “I understand. As you know, I don’t like to share my feelings either.”
“Good, because I don’t want you to.” He turns back to his computer, but it’s obvious he’s not really seeing the screen.
I cross one leg over the other and force myself not to shy away. Because Arthur told me I have the ability to connect with
people—on a personal level. And right now, I think I’m supposed to connect with him.
“You know”—I lay it on a bit thick—“A very wise man told me that I’m a deep feeler. He said I avoid emotions because I feel them more deeply than other people.”
Arthur stops pecking on the computer keys.
“He also told me that in order to make anyone else feel anything, I have to feel it first.” The second the words are out,
my gaze drops to the chipping paint on my toenails.
If I look at him, I’ll lose my nerve. And there’s something I need to tell him.
“When I was six, my father left,” I say. “I still don’t really know why. When you’re older, and you think back to when it
all happened, your brain sort of... makes up all kinds of things. I know he and my mother were too young to try and raise
a child. I guess I give him credit for lasting that long.”
I wring my hands, then force myself to set them in my lap. “My mother didn’t handle it well—his leaving. I remember she got
really depressed. The house was always dark. I ate a lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. And... I spent a lot of
time alone.”
He glances over at me, but his eyes don’t linger.
“I had big feelings back then too,” I say softly.
“But I knew that sharing them wasn’t good for my mom.
So I learned how to mask them. Cover them up.
Mostly with humor, which came easy to me.
Making people laugh. I would pretend to feel other things, and I got so good at it—the acting—that it turned into a whole career. ” I chuckle, mostly to myself.
He shifts in his seat and folds his hands on his lap.
I continue, “I stuffed the real feelings down, and I did everything I could to make my mom smile. I was intent on not being
a burden—I didn’t want her to leave me too, you know?”
“And these are the memories you don’t use in your work,” he says, more of a statement than a question.
I nod. “I never have. And I’ve had professors and teachers, heck, even friends, recognize that I close myself off. But until
you, nobody made it make sense.” I pause. “I’m afraid of my big feelings. I don’t like that everything seems deep and difficult.”
I half laugh. “I want to be the joy. I just want things to be easy.”
“Things are never easy. Not the things worth anything anyway,” he says.
“True,” I agree. “But if I’m not the happy, upbeat, funny one, then who am I?”
“Be happy and upbeat and funny when it suits,” he says. “But sometimes, you might be quiet and thoughtful—and honest.”
Honest. It’s hard hearing that.
“I want people to like me.” I shift in my seat. “And sometimes I find fiction easier than reality.”
He meets my eyes, questioning, and I’m not even sure why I said that. Except that... I sometimes find fiction easier than
reality.
Easier to escape into someone else’s story than to face everything in my own.
But that’s not what I tell Arthur. Instead, I say, “I made a promise to my mom not long after my dad left.”
“What kind of promise?”
“That I’d get a big dream and go after it. Never let myself be swayed or deterred or stopped. Not by a guy, not by circumstance, not by anything. I think she sometimes wishes she hadn’t gotten sidetracked.” I think but don’t say, Hadn’t had me.
“So the whole pursuit of this dream—it’s all been for her?” he asks.
“I didn’t think so. I don’t think so.” I shake my head. “Actually, I’m not sure.”
“Rosie.” He leans forward. “Why do you want to be an actor?”
His simple question confounds me.
Because I can’t answer it.
I don’t know.
When I meet his eyes again, I can see him read through all the things I’m not saying.
He goes still for a long moment, and then he says, “The first time I ever met my Annie was when she came to audition for Funny Girl .”
My shoulders drop, and I go still.
“She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen,” he says, looking off, and I imagine him picturing her. “In a quirky, sort
of oddball way.” He leans back in the chair and seems to go somewhere else. “When she sang that song”—his eyes flick over
to me—“The same song you sang, I remember thinking, Where has this girl been hiding? ”
My gaze drifts past him to a framed photo next to the computer.
“When you sang it that day in the dining hall”—he looks away, then shrugs—“You reminded me of her.”
“I’m sorry, Arthur,” I say. “I didn’t know—”
He holds up a hand to silence me. “The thing is, Rosie, she made me better. Without Annie, I don’t know how to exist, let
alone work. That superpower she told me I had? I don’t want it anymore. I don’t want to connect with people. Or to understand them. I don’t want—”
“The big feelings,” I say quietly.
He nods, and it’s like placing the last piece of a puzzle I’ve been working on for weeks. Arthur changed when Annie died. They were a team, and he doesn’t know how to function without her. So he doesn’t even try.
“Do you know when I met Bertie, I felt something I hadn’t felt in a long, long time.”
“That’s good,” I say.
He shakes his head. “It feels like betrayal.”
I understand even more how deeply he loved her.
“She’s not my Annie.”
“No, Arthur, nobody can replace Annie,” I tell him with more authority on the subject than I have. “But I don’t think that’s
what she’s trying to do.”
He’s very still for a beat, and then says, “She kissed me, you know?”
My eyes go wide, and I try very hard not to picture that, but I fail.
And now the imagined image of Bertie and Arthur making out on the park bench outside is burned into my brain.
“She kissed me, and I liked it,” he says.
I manage not to wince and shudder and run home and shower myself off with steel wool, though it takes all my energy. “Isn’t
that... good?”
“I felt so guilty,” he says. “Because I made a promise to Annie. To love her forever.”
“To love her until death do you part,” I say gently.
“But I still love her, Rosie.” His voice breaks. “I always will.”
“I know.”
Then realization hits me. If things don’t change, if I don’t change, I’ll never have a love like Arthur and Annie’s. And I want one. A love of my own. It’s never been a priority.
I always played it safe. Focused on my career. Avoided the big feelings. And I told myself it was enough.
I told myself I didn’t want to lose myself in some guy. Or to let anyone or anything pull me off course.
But this summer has cracked me open and made me see that there’s so much more to this life than the singular pursuit of a dream.
“Arthur,” I say. “I believe that our hearts are made to hold a lot of love. Different kinds. Different sizes. For a lot of
different people.”
I do believe that, don’t I?
“It’s not a betrayal to let yourself enjoy someone’s company,” I tell him. “And I have to believe that if Annie had a say,
she’d want you to be happy. She’d want you to live the years she didn’t get to live. Do you really think Annie would be happy
to see you pushing everyone away? Not teaching when there are so many of us who could learn so much from you?”
“No, she would not.” His smile is sad. “Annie would tell me to get my head out of my rear and do what I was born to do.” He
brightens a little. “Only she’d use more colorful language.”
I smile. “Ooh. I like her.”
“You two would’ve been peas in a pod,” he says, shaking his head slightly.
We sit in the quiet for a moment, and without meaning to, I stumble upon the answer to his earlier question. “You know, I
didn’t go after this dream only because of that promise I made. I know why I want to be an actor.”
“Oh?”
I shake my head, letting the revelation form because it’s there, but it’s foggy, like it needs time to completely slip into
place.
“I love to perform. I love that feeling of connecting with a character so much that I almost slip on her skin and bring her to life.” I let myself remember it, all the times I’d been onstage, under the lights, sharing a story in a way that no other medium allows me to do.
I close my eyes. “I miss it when I’m not up there.
It’s not about the crowds or the applause or anything like that.
It never has been. It’s about creating something from nothing, doing the work, then expressing it in a way that allows people to see themselves up there, on the stage.
Or allows them to get lost in the story I’m telling.
.. I know it sounds crazy, but I feel like.
..” Why am I embarrassed to say this out loud?
It’s not a secret. “I feel like this is what I was born to do.”
His steady expression remains. “So it is your dream.”
I nod. “It is. In spite of everything that happened with my mom... I think it always was.” I go still. “But maybe, at some
point, it became about the promise I made. Maybe I forgot all the reasons I wanted it in the first place. Maybe I forgot that
this is the thing that makes me feel alive.”
He sets his hands in his lap but doesn’t meet my eyes. “Sometimes I think we can convince ourselves that a dream has to look
a certain way.” Now he glances at me. “Part of the fun of this stuff is staying open to the unexpected.”
“Like working in a retirement community?” I quip.
“I bet you took this job thinking you were just punching a clock.” He chuckles to himself.
“I definitely didn’t think I’d learn anything.” I sigh. “But I can honestly say, it’s been one of the best experiences of
my life.
He nods. “It’s amazing what you discover if you hold the dream loosely.” He holds up a hand. “I’m not saying you quit on it.
Just maybe... reimagine it. You can pursue this dream in a million different ways. Maybe it’s not the dream that needs
to change but the method of making it come true.”
I frown, trying to wrap my head around it. “I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
“Rosie, my dear, I think you already have.”