Chapter 37 2012
In a quiet thicket of Regent’s Park, a sign advertises tonight’s outdoor entertainment: Twelfth Night.
“Oh look, a nice trash can for me to hide in.”
“I’m not forcing you to go.”
“You absolutely are.”
It’s a quintessential London experience, Viola had told Sebastian in the affectless voice that was the only one she could muster. I thought it would be nice.
Somehow it seemed important that they went together.
It felt like they had been avoiding it their entire lives.
She had bought the tickets before he came, in a gesture that she had written off as a generous surprise, a thank-you-for-coming gift.
But she can see now in his squeamishness about the whole thing (here!
in this languid, gorgeous everyone park!) that it had only been something that she wanted.
Perhaps the idea had been a way of managing her anxiety about the visit, of what to do with him.
But it will be nice, just sitting next to him in silence for a while. Letting the story go by.
“Lola, you are sad, and if this is going to make you feel better, then this is what we’ll do.”
“It will make me feel better.”
“I can’t promise I’m going to like it.”
“You are entitled to not like it.”
“Am I entitled to think it’s pretentious bullshit?”
“Sure.”
“And that their accents are stupid?”
“Don’t push it.”
The set is lush, and thickened by a dense soundscape of crickets, tropical birds.
In the general settling, a small band begins to play.
Breathing next to her is her brother, and she can feel the quieting of his mind as he looks around the amphitheater at all the people coming in, little children and a woman in a wheelchair and some too-loud Americans and a pair of German girls.
She can see him unfurling in this rough assembly of people just here to listen to a story about a boy named Sebastian and a girl named Viola.
Gradually it grows quiet, and a woman trundles up to the stage.
Here she is: herself but not herself. Mannish, commanding, wide-faced, and broad-shouldered. Her voice is a surprise, all delicacy and enchantment:
“What country, friends, is this?”
She slips into the spell. A memory. Thick red curtains, the ceiling painted with a false sky, people talking and then silent and dark, the stage lighting up.
What country, friends, is this? Her mother’s voice: That’s you, attention directed toward sentences she couldn’t understand, her mother’s voice explaining the motions, the turmoil, the mistakes.
Cold ice cream on her tongue. Just the two of them. Bliss.