Chapter 22 #4
Clotho let the thread unreel, as I underwent an instantaneous growth spurt.
My bones expanded as I rose two inches, which felt like an extra few feet, as if I towered over the room, peering down at the mini-creatures far below.
I was indisputably over six feet tall, not some quibbled-about five ten or five eleven and a half.
My height hadn’t obsessed me, except when I stood beside Brock or auditioned right after some giant whose size-twelve Adidas haunted me.
I was a colossus, an exaggerated statue of myself—but had my other body parts blossomed as well?
I stretched out my arms, which were ganglier, but I’d hold off on inspecting anything else until I was in the shower.
Would these fresh proportions boost my fate?
Would a slightly taller Andrew be more in demand, professionally or on Grindr, where I’d post photos with the top of my head out of the frame, because I couldn’t be contained?
Should I have requested additional favors, or submitted a Chanukah list of self-improvements? Had I abandoned my one-shot opportunity, like someone buying a fruit pie at a convenience store who almost gets a lottery ticket, but tosses a second fruit pie (apple cranberry) onto the counter instead?
“I am Lachesis,” said Clotho’s sister, as the ruby heated my forehead.
While there was a just-starting-out innocence to Clotho, who was definitely the youngest sister, Lachesis was calmly self-assured, with my thread draped across both her hands, the skein still attached to Clotho’s spindle.
“You’re born,” she continued. “You’re taller.
But your life itself—what are your dreams?
If we gird you with talent and drive—how will you implement such things? Who will you become?”
I wanted to argue, “I’m twenty-five, I have no idea who I am yet, let alone what I’ll become!
” But of course I had goals, such as paying my rent with my earnings as an actor.
Also, when I tell someone, “I’m an actor” and they ask, as everyone does, “Have I seen you in anything?” it would nice to be able to reply, “Well, did you see the latest Jurassic Park movie? Do you remember the backpacker who got eaten by the T. rex during the opening credits?” I mostly toy with half-formed notions of where life might take me, but I’ve noticed something, exemplified by an actress I’d run into at an audition, a total sweetheart, but as we waited together she’d introduced me to her favorite game, called “Who’s having your career? ”
This had been unnerving. The actress had postulated that someone else, from Meryl to a competitor two folding chairs over, owned a career she envied, or patterned hers after, or had been denied.
“Meryl’s the impossible dream,” she told me.
“High art with commercial success. She gets Oscar nominated practically every year and she’s won three so far.
She’s not the most glamorous star, because that would be tacky, but she’s the most respected.
She can do anything. But only Meryl gets to be Meryl.
“So I’m also thinking about Tilda Swinton,” she confided.
“A slow build, quirky indies sliding into mainstream hits. There’s no one else like her, and she doesn’t have to worry about aging because she was never an ingénue.
When I was twenty I was going to be Scarlett Johansson, major hot stuff but smart enough to work with serious directors.
But now that I’m, I can’t say the word, but I’m circling thirty, I’ll settle for Tilda.
Best Supporting, but she still gets invited to the Met Ball.
And if Tilda doesn’t happen, well, maybe I’ll be one of those great New York theater actresses who only insiders know about.
Guest shots on Law & Order to foot the bills, along with Cherry Orchard in some Obie-winning modern-dress production with robot servants at the Public, and during the day I go out shopping in shapeless cotton dresses and Birkenstocks with thick socks.
Half cat lady, half secret genius, so I’m beloved. I can live with that, if I have to.”
This actress was consumed with her prospects, which she cheerfully analyzed for over forty-five minutes.
This completely nice person had scared and depressed me: there was an intimation that those other actresses had stolen her future, and shoved her out of the race.
She was twisting her fantasies of fame and wealth into formulas—should I be doing this, too?
Up until right this minute my future had been so unpredictable that I’d never bothered envisioning it, because my mind would blur and my anxiety burst its thermometer, as I’d fulminate: What if I never get jobs?
What if my sell-by date keeps getting adjusted?
What if everything is too hard and my parents start gently murmuring phrases like “fallback career” and “we’ll help you fill out the application”?
I should ask Lachesis only for world peace and an end to hunger, but those weren’t the realms she was supervising: on the most selfish, dear-Santa, in-my-dirtiest-most-despicably-greedy-little-heart level, what did I want?
To do good work, to improve as a performer, to challenge myself, all the true-enough boilerplate Zen that young skyrockets cite in their earliest interviews, after their $280 million opening weekend as Young Ironman.
I love acting, because it can swallow me, activating everything I’ve got, for a buzz like no other.
But would asking Lachesis for a just-between-you-and-me jump-start, for some ancient Greek foot in the door, be shameful?
Would I forever regret the results, no matter how sensational, because they hadn’t been unimpeachably deserved?
Or was I being a consummate, high-minded jerk, spurning a golden ticket anyone else would kill for?
Lachesis was studying me, as if she’d read my every hesitation and convoluted thought as I grappled for not so much my trajectory, but a worldview, some quasi-coherent personal manifesto.
“What do most people ask for?” I inquired, as Lachesis twirled the thread of my life, like a jump rope or a cat’s cradle.
“Oh, you know, gold beyond compare, round-the-clock adoration, and multiple homes,” she said. “And occasionally a perfect partner and well-mannered children. So mundane. Mere happiness.”
For a second I thought about asking for superpowers, maybe just enough strength to lift a one-story building, or modified X-ray vision, so I could see how much cereal was left in the box without dragging myself into the kitchen.
“No. You’re not getting superpowers. We don’t do that. Not since someone wanted to shape-shift whenever his wife was yelling at him. He told me, ‘I’d like to see her tell a polar bear to stop drinking.’ ”
I’d only be twenty-five for what was left of the year, so if I didn’t make the ballsiest moves now, then when?
I’d work as hard as humanly possible, but—what if I let myself be surprised?
By whatever the Fates would come up with?
Maybe this was the meaning of life, or at least my life—saying yes to everything, for example the Tuxes.
Putting myself out there, even if a slap was imminent.
Keeping Reggie’s progression in mind, how he’d pinballed from discouragement and disgust to a great idea of his own.
This was the most perilously daredevil route, and maybe after a few more years of little to no acclaim or income, I’d get way more practical, and start teaching or join a government-funded improv troupe in Patagonia, or squirm my way into law school and graduate as the world’s worst lawyer (while still being able to do a multitude of accents and ride a unicycle).
“I’m good,” I told Lachesis. “Let’s see how it goes.”
“Are you sure about that?”
Of course not, but it was a foolishly lovely notion, and I was wearing a bejeweled crown and bargaining with the Moirai—what the fuck did I know about anything?
“So you’re choosing to be yourself? Without a single bonus coupon?”
Lachesis was skeptical.
“Except…”
“Yeah?”
“I want to go to the Tony Awards. I can be nominated or someone’s plus-one or an usher, whatever. But I want to go. And I want to get on camera for at least a half second, maybe as a winner runs past me on their way to the stage, but enough time so my aunt Libby can see me.”
“Done.”
Had I just made an unthinkable mistake? Should I have said, quoting every casting director since the beginning of time, “Can I get back to you?” The cathedral was still in darkness, with its population on hold—the world had stopped spinning, for my college-dorm-stoned-bullshit what-if session with the Moirai.
“Things end,” said Atropos, the final Fate and the oldest. She was reminiscent of Sondra, my grandma on my mom’s and Libby’s side.
Sondra was a real estate broker who’d hawk a burnt-out fridge as “vintage character” and neighboring high-tension wires as “a landscape plus.” Sondra loves her family, and pesters us unequivocally: “Are we sure about the neckline?” “Which of your genders am I speaking with?” “You can let your child play in the street and if I hit him with my car we’ll all learn something.
” Nana is also my staunchest advocate, railing against the drama schools that rejected me (“Yale? I’ve never heard of it”) and posting selfies of us on Facebook, captioned “My gorgeous and so talented grandson Andrew and his favorite nana, who he got his good looks from. Obviously.”
“Let’s talk death,” said Atropos, with Sondra’s enough-already-with-the-nose-ring frankness. “Your life will begin, and become whatever you make of it, but it can’t last forever. People die, and that’s my job.”
She raised the thread that linked the sisters while holding a pair of gleaming silver shears in her other hand, jovially remarking, “Snip, snip, Andrew!”