Chapter 59 Tilley - The Show Must Go On
TILLEY The Show Must Go On
This is just opening-night jitters, Tilley kept telling herself in the makeshift dressing room that, even though it was just white-painted cinder blocks with someone’s old worn-out couch and a rusty rolling rack of costumes and a zillion-year-old makeup desk, she had been able to convince herself was glamorous.
It was one of her greatest strengths, making the mundane feel magical.
It was, perhaps, part of what made her such a great actress.
But now, she couldn’t act. Not even to herself.
Her breath was shallow, and her hands were numb, and if Mason had knocked before he came in, she hadn’t heard him.
She didn’t realize he was there until she felt his big, strong arm around her thin shoulders. “Till?” he whispered. “Are you okay? Do you need a doctor?”
She shook her head. “I can’t go out there, Mason. I just can’t do it.”
When she looked up at him, her eyes were shining with tears.
He smiled supportively and squeezed her hand, which helped a little bit of the feeling come back. “Tilley, it’s normal to have opening-night jitters. You wouldn’t be an actress if you didn’t. But you know as well as I do—better than I do—the show must go on.”
Tilley tried to catch her breath, but it still wasn’t quite as full and deep as she needed it to be.
“It isn’t that,” she said. “It isn’t opening-night jitters.
” She looked over at the rack of costumes, slightly tired but fitted just so for her.
“Mason, I need to get something off my chest, but I’m afraid you might judge me. ”
Mason laughed a big, hearty laugh that took Tilley back.
It reminded her that he wasn’t that little boy throwing the baseball in the yard.
He was a man now. “Tilley, if we made a checks-and-balances sheet of the ways I have screwed up versus my successes, I can tell you which column would be longer.”
She smiled, feeling herself relax just a tick. She ventured a smile. “But you’re so handsome.”
He laughed and squeezed her tight to his side. “Don’t look at me when you say it. It makes it easier.”
“Have I ever told you what I was doing when Robert died?”
Tilley could see Mason shake his head no in the mirror across from them.
“I was onstage,” she said. She sighed deeply. “I was in New York trying out for a play—an off-Broadway play, mind you, but one that would have been the biggest break imaginable for a lot of girls, especially one from Cape Carolina.”
Mason squeezed her again.
“Robert didn’t want me to go to New York,” she continued, feeling her heart clench.
“He said that if I went, I would get a taste of stardom and never come back. He was ready to get married, to start a family. And I swore to him that was what I wanted.” She finally looked up at Mason. “But maybe I was lying.”
Mason nodded.
“I got the part. Robert died, and I got the part, and all I could think was that if I had just stayed home, he wouldn’t have died.
” Tilley’s voice cracked as she tried to continue.
“If I had just stayed home and let him propose to me and gotten married and had children, he would be here, and I would be happy.”
Mason was still for a moment. Then he pulled away from Tilley and turned toward her.
“Till, I spent a lot of time thinking after I got hurt about all the things I could have done differently. If I hadn’t gone to the bar that night, if I hadn’t said what I said to Parker about Amelia, if I hadn’t been so drunk…
on and on and on. I don’t know if things are meant to be or if they just happen, but I do know that we can’t change them.
And I think what we have in common is that we have both spent a lot of years ruminating on what could have been.
We let what could have been different steal years and years of our lives. ”
Tilley nodded, sniffling, and wiped her eyes.
“Till, your singing didn’t kill Robert. Now, mine might have, but yours did not.”
She smiled just a little. He was a sweet boy.
“Honest to God, Till, I thought you were going to say you were screwing his best friend when he died or something. You were pursuing your passion! Living your dream! You don’t have to apologize for that. Especially not to people who love you.”
She shrugged. “Maybe not now. But it was a different time.”
“Well, it’s not a different time now.” Mason looked at her seriously. “Tilley, you know how you feel when you’re onstage, when the lights are on you and the audience is in the palm of your hand and you hit just the right high note?”
She nodded, feeling the joy of that well up in her.
“I can’t say for sure, but I’m pretty positive it’s the same way I felt when I would throw my famous Southern Slider, and it was strike three, and the crowd would go wild, and I felt like I could run the world.”
Tilley rested her head on Mason’s shoulder briefly. “I’m sorry, honey.”
“Don’t be sorry,” he said. “But don’t take for granted that you can still do that thing that makes you feel most alive.”
She suddenly felt guilty. He was right. He had had this thing he was so superlative at stripped away from him. She still had a chance to pursue her passion.
“We both lost one big thing that we loved. But there are other things we love, and we can still have those. Right?”
Tilley shrugged. “But what if I go out there, and I perform, and something bad happens?”
He grinned. “But what if you go out there and something good happens?”
She could tell from his face that he was scheming. And, well, even panicked and sad, Tilley loved a good scheme. “Something good?”
“Maybe a gesture? A big one? The grand kind?”
Tilley gasped delightedly, finally feeling back to herself. “Oh, sweetheart! I had almost forgotten!” All her cells were back and delighted and dancing for joy. “I have the perfect, perfect plan.”
As Tilley explained Mason’s part to play tonight, she knew she wouldn’t be able to forget Robert when she was out on that stage, that she would think about the last time she had felt so wonderful and something so terrible had happened.
But Mason was alive and here and hers. She had the chance to change his life for the better with just a little song and dance.
And that was an opportunity, Tilley knew, she would never say no to.
The show must go on. And Tilley knew then that she would too.