MARCH 1993 #2
I broke away before I could break down, heading outside for air. I sat on the steps of the lodge, the forest sprawling out before me, but it wasn’t enough. I felt the angst written in my bones, so I climbed back to my feet just as the door swung open once more. Harper, fumbling with a lighter.
“Were you about to wander off into the woods alone?”
“Were you about to light a cigarette in the middle of a highly flammable forest?”
Harper flicked her thumb against the lighter’s edge and took a quick inhale—a bright flame catching. She breathed out a light plume of smoke. “There, that’s enough risk for us both. Let’s go.”
She walked past me, jumping the final step before sauntering toward the tree line. I did not want company, did not want a stroll in the woods with Harper—but I could not linger either. Reluctant, yet still propelled, I followed her.
“Were you sulking?” Harper asked.
“Spiraling,” I admitted. There was a strange safety with Harper—I did not like her or care what she thought of me, so there was no need to pretend, appease, or lie.
Harper nodded, the hand that wasn’t holding a cigarette reaching to toy with a necklace settled in the hollow of her throat. I noticed how short Harper’s nails were, and they were still stained with chips of purple polish.
“My mother’s,” she said when she saw me looking, as though I cared about the hunk of turquoise and not the hands upon it.
“Got it from her grandparents in Chongqing and claimed it would bring me luck. Bullshit. If it were lucky, if it had any value whatsoever, she certainly wouldn’t have given it to me.
” That wry smile was back, and she added almost confidentially: “Greta’s not really into acts of charity. Or acts of ‘anyone but herself.’”
Harper didn’t stop clinging onto the pendant, though.
I wondered what prompted the admission—after last time I’d certainly be making none of my own.
Maybe she wanted to tell someone who vaguely understood.
Or maybe making herself vulnerable was the only way she knew to lure people in.
Or maybe my isolation made me her safety too—she did not have to be perfect Harper for a girl who didn’t have all that many people to tell about it.
“You’re anxious too?” I asked.
“We’re all anxious, Nadine,” Harper said, letting an edge of irritation slip through. “We all want this. I know you think you can somehow prove that you want it more, but—”
“That’s not true.”
“Isn’t it? There’s a difference between working hard and the performance of hard work.”
“I’m aware,” I snapped. “That’s not what I do. I’m just interested in this, Harper. I can’t turn it off like you lot do, immersing yourself in the play and then grabbing beers the moment the clock hits five—”
“Sometimes. Yeah, Nadine. Sometimes we do have a drink. Do you think the greats burn themselves out, or do you think they treat their talent like a precious resource to be considerately spent? It astounds me that you can award the characters you play such complexity but think so little of us—that we can’t be fun and serious about all this.
It’s not a fucking sacrifice you make to prove you’re deserving of it all.
So yes, sometimes we party and do all those other things you think are such a waste of time.
But sometimes we go to the library. Or the theater. Or part-time jobs.”
“What? We’re not allowed those.”
Harper laughed, a puff of cigarette smoke accompanying it.
“I know. You think that stops the people who need to work? Look, I know you have it tough in that regard—I’m not trying to make it a competition.
It’s just worth noting some people are burning themselves out working night shifts and weekends just to survive.
What a ridiculous place, making it something to be hidden. ”
I’m sure at the time I had a dozen excuses, but of course Harper had struck precisely where she meant to.
I thought myself some scrappy underdog. And it was true; there were those richer than me, better connected than me, with more family support than me.
But not everyone wore their struggles plainly—and there were plenty who did not have inheritance to fund them or who weren’t white or pretty or skinny enough to fall into the narrow bracket of ’90s Hollywood desire.
Harper was right, and that was the last thing I could allow her to be.
So, like a child spitting back an insult, I countered with: “You don’t need a job.”
“No, no I don’t. But I talk to people, Nadine. I’m curious about their lives. I don’t just see them as props I act against on a stage.”
I stopped walking, a twig crunching underfoot. This didn’t feel like our occasional petty sniping. This was pointed. “I don’t know when I invited this character assassination or what I’ve done to deserve it.”
“Try a dozen passive-aggressive comments about how none of us deserve to be here like you do.” She tapped the ash out into the air. “Or implying you’ve worked hardest to be here.”
“Why? Do you think you have?”
Harper shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe I have. Probably not, if I’m being honest. But I think that hurts you more.”
I felt trapped, caught off guard. I did not like confrontation, especially not when sudden and unprecedented. And it didn’t help that amongst all this greenery all I could smell was her pear and freesia perfume, sweet and cloying and surrounding me—as inescapable as her words themselves.
“You think if you work hard enough,” Harper continued, “you’ll get it. But there comes a point where working for it doesn’t make up for a lack of talent.”
My jaw clenched so tight I could barely speak, could only hiss out from between my ground teeth: “Excuse me?”
“Oh don’t take it like that,” Harper dismissed, finishing her cigarette and stubbing it on the ground before pocketing the butt. “I’m not saying you’re not talented. I’m saying whatever fear you have of not being talented enough isn’t going to be assuaged with extra office hours.”
“Is yours assuaged by fucking the professors?” I spat.
The fact that Harper did not laugh was testament to how taken aback she was. Her laughter was normally a default response.
She looked me up and down before smiling as she had when we’d explored the character of Lady Macbeth: with vindictive coolness. “That’s quite an accusation.”
“Is it false?”
“I’m not even going to justify it with a response, Nadine. Frankly, if I were—so what? I could fuck every staff member. I could be the best shag of their life. And if you can’t outperform that, if your talent isn’t more than my cunt, then what the fuck are you doing here?”
Harper stepped as though to storm off, exit pursued by abject misery. But then she hesitated, glancing between trees.
I did the same, and when neither of us spoke, it was evident we both feared voicing it aloud.
We had not been following a path, but the way through the trees had been so clear we hadn’t exactly realized there wasn’t one, either.
Now the trees pressed in close, looming above in silent judgment of the scene playing out below.
And an audience not entertained was an audience turned hostile.
“Well, this is macabre,” Harper deadpanned, staring at the forest ahead.
“Oh no, did getting lost in the woods ruin your dramatic exit?”
“It did actually, yes.”
I said nothing, and not merely because I suspected it would irritate Harper more.
I felt too shocked, too thrown. I couldn’t say just anything—with Harper it had to be the perfect retort, the sort of line I might think of when I couldn’t sleep.
I was certain days after this argument, I would think of something suitable.
But for now, I just started walking in a direction I hoped was back toward the lodge.
“I had no idea you hated me so much,” I finally said. But what I meant was: “I had no idea you thought about me so much.”
“I don’t hate you,” Harper said, surprised. “God, me? I don’t care enough to hate you—”
“Well, that’s the issue, isn’t it?” I whirled on her for a moment before realizing this was a waste of my time and continuing ahead, Harper hurriedly following so that I felt emboldened enough to add: “You don’t care about anything enough to hate it. I’ve never met an artist with less passion.”
Harper shook her head with an amused smirk.
“Oh darling, I’m passionate. It just doesn’t fit into your neat little definition of what a true actress is.
And to come back to your original point—I don’t hate you.
I admire you. And that’s my problem. You’re good.
You know you’re good. The whole fucking class knows you’re good, Heywood.
You don’t have to work yourself into the ground to prove it.
You’re talented, and you keep covering it with this studious little workaholic mask.
It’s exhausting to watch. You don’t need to justify why you want this. Own it. Want it because you want it.”
I could feel my teeth grinding—but I was too scared she might be right to give voice to my anger. I didn’t want to spend another second with Harper, whose condemnation of my entire existence seemed planned and formulated and—
I looked at her sidelong. Was this a way of putting me off my rhythm?
I was Harper’s real competition for the Wilfred Allen Award, and that was before we’d both chosen the same play, tightening that net of ours all the more.
Telling me I didn’t deserve this, worse that I should relax and take a step back.
Well, I could think of one very good reason Harper might want me to stop trying so hard.
That malicious little bitch.
“Was getting us lost in the woods just preparation for the Bride?” I asked, testing my theory. “Running off with Leonardo into the deep dark forest?”
“Oh no,” Harper said. “I’m going for the Mother. You should definitely use this though if you’re trying out for the Bride.”
“I’m undecided,” I said. “But I very well might.”