Chapter 8 #2
“He sure seems in good spirits,” I say once Dallas is out of the auditorium. “Are we positive he was missing?”
Marlowe ignores me, but she does finally move, hopping off the edge of the stage to sulk toward the exit.
“I’m just saying, he looked pretty radiant,” I continue, trailing after her. “To be honest, you’re the only one acting strange. Maybe this was all a ploy to get me alone in the Memory Machine with you? Quite the long con. You’ve always loved an elaborate game, haven’t you?”
“Don’t do that,” she warns, stopping so fast I almost crash into her.
“Do what?”
“Act like you know me.”
I do know you, I think, even though objectively, it isn’t true.
Other than her job, and the town she grew up in, I don’t know anything about her day-to-day life.
But her emotions feel as familiar to me as my own do.
Dallas scared everyone, including me, and he hasn’t bothered to acknowledge it, much less apologize.
She’s embarrassed that he thinks so little of her as to not mention it, and she’s also embarrassed that her initial reaction has revealed so much of her own vulnerability.
“Marlowe, dear, it’s my job to act,” I say instead.
The dressing room is a short walk from the auditorium.
The backstage wings also connect, but we go the way Dallas did, out the main entrance, down the drama hallway, and in through the side door.
There’s familiarity even in this strained silence.
On any occasion Marlowe and I found ourselves alone together on the way to and from rehearsal, this is usually how it went.
It was never the absence of something to say that made us quiet.
There were so many things we could discuss, but each topic was too loaded to touch without an argument sprouting up.
Despite the name, no one gets dressed in the dressing room.
The space is for hair, makeup, and gossip.
The kids have found their places in front of a long row of makeup-caked vanities with smudgy mirrors.
Bright-bulbed lights shine above them as they put on ungodly amounts of much-better-quality foundation than the stuff we used back in my day.
Yet the air still has the familiar tang of extra-hold hair spray and sweat and sugary-sweet perfumes to cover up the body odor.
This place—minus the smells—was what made me want to come to school every day.
I loved the promise of creation and the limitless possibility that began every time I sat down in one of these chairs and transformed myself from Priscilla into someone else.
I still do love it, somewhere deep down.
But I never feel it anymore, too lost inside the idea that my appreciation for my job must be tied to the money I make from it.
That my worth is defined by the success of the work I put out.
There used to be a time when I didn’t care about any of that.
I didn’t even know to care. Making money off the arts wasn’t so much as a passing thought in my head.
The most important thing in the world was getting to escape reality.
“There you are,” Dallas says, all exaggerated pageantry, as if my delay has been any longer than a single minute. He waves me over to the back, where a very tall boy is using a folding chair to prop up the Aircast on his foot.
This gets Marlowe moving like nothing has yet. She almost trips on a duffel bag as she hurries to reach him. “Billy, what happened to you?” Even her voice changes, all her melancholy replaced with a firm yet empathetic authority that sends an unexpected bolt right to my groin.
This is the Marlowe I know. The one who takes charge without reservation.
“I tripped in gym,” Billy tells her with a shrug.
“We told you not to commit too hard in gym class,” she says.
“It was the kickball championship. My team needed me.”
“We need you, too,” she tells him.
“Since when do you get to play kickball in high school gym class?” I interject.
“We played kickball in high school,” Marlowe replies.
“No, we didn’t,” I say.
“It was a spring unit in PE,” she tells me. “Still is.”
“Well, um, I guess this did kind of happen after school,” Billy admits.
“Thank you, Billy,” I say.
“For sure,” he replies.
“His parents say the doctors were a little confusing,” Dallas explains. “We don’t know if it’s a sprain or a strain. Do you think you could look at it?”
When the silence hangs in the air longer than expected, it registers that he’s asking me.
“I’m not sure what good that would do,” I say.
“I understand,” Dallas tells me. “He’s not your patient. But could you do little old me this favor and give us a sense of direction so we know if we should let him use the foot at all, or if he should back off and we use his understudy instead?”
On Heartbeats, my character wasn’t the one who specialized in matters of the heart. That was Dr. Parker. I played Dr. Lennox Martin, a pediatric surgeon supporting cast member who did, in fact, have a storyline about a kid with a messed-up foot once. It was season one, but I remember the gist.
“Could you take that off for me?” I say to Billy, gesturing to his boot.
He removes it to reveal purplish bruises and squishy swelling on the outside of his right ankle.
“Aha.” I shove my furry coat sleeves up my arms and then squeeze his ankle.
The site is so swollen it feels a bit like a stress ball.
“There is some unusual discoloration between the fourth and fifth metatarsal, and the peroneus longus tendon seems compromised, but that might actually be the retinaculum? It’s hard to know without my equipment. ”
“Your equipment?” Marlowe questions. “Is there something in particular I could get you? A scalpel? A magic wand?”
“I’d definitely want to look at his X-rays if you have them,” I say to Dallas instead of Marlowe, who is rolling her eyes into the back of her skull and up to the front again in some sort of Exorcist-style Ferris wheel of frustration.
I touch the top of Billy’s hand. “Do you know if they did any X-rays or an MRI on your foot?”
“Um, not really,” he says.
“It’s a yes or no question,” I tell him.
“They just moved it around a little bit.”
Mobility. That’s right. I need to test the ankle’s mobility.
“Can you wiggle your toes?” I ask, and he does. “Very good. How about left to right, like a windshield wiper?”
He winces.
“Hmm,” I say, unable to conceal my concern.
Billy shrugs in that disaffected-teenage-boy way, even though tears have started to flood his eyes.
“You love acting, don’t you?” I ask.
Dr. Martin always forged a bridge of personal connection. It’s what I liked best about playing her. She felt for each of her patients like she knew them personally. Her job was more than work for her. It reminded her of her humanity.
“Kind of,” Billy tells me.
“It lets you disappear into another life.”
“I guess?”
“You can slip into the world of being seen for your talent, not for your circumstances. You can be anyone, and it’s not embarrassing to care, because you’re not yourself in that moment.”
“It’s cool that everyone claps for me,” he replies. “I got a standing ovation once.”
“Yes! That attention makes you feel alive,” I say. “Like you have a purpose in this world. You bring people something that matters to them. Joy. You know it’s not everything, but sometimes, a little validation helps you remember you’re on the right track. It hasn’t all been for nothing.”
Marlowe puts a hand on my shoulder, squeezing tight enough to hurt. “Excuse us for one sec. I need to have a chat with my old friend.”