Chapter 32
I’m annoyed by the interaction with my father.
I feel a little deflated. I look around for Will, but he’s surrounded by the fairies, and I get the sense that he is getting a similar talking-to.
Pulling him away from them will start a whole other thing.
I feel a headache coming on. Too much coffee, not enough water.
I root around in my bag for an Advil but don’t have any.
My parents keep some in the office. It’s locked, but I have the key chain my parents gave me with the house and theater keys.
The lights are out down the back hallway.
I turn the key in the lock and flick on the light .
. . and gasp at the scene in front of me: my mother, flat on the desk, moaning, with Arthur between her legs, pants around his ankles, his tiny pale ass pumping away.
I shriek, and he jumps up, fumbling for his glasses as my mother throws her gown over her knees, sitting up.
“What are you doing!” she screeches at me. “No one is supposed to be in here!”
“I had a headache.”
“Get out!” she barks at me, her eyes wild and frantic.
“Get out!” I stand there for a moment longer than necessary, staring her down.
“What, you’re judging me? When you nearly ruined the show with all your drama?
” Her face is twisted. In the corner, Arthur makes a show of adjusting himself.
I have a feeling that my intrusion has added to the thrill for him.
“I don’t know what this is,” I say evenly. “And I actually don’t care.” I pause. Where does my father fit into this? Clearly not at all. Do I tell him? “But make no mistake, Mother, I am not the person putting the show at risk.” I turn to leave. “Arthur, your dick is out.”
I shut the door behind me and take the key from the door.
Will finds me at the far end of the hallway. He slips his arm around my waist and kisses my cheek.
“Hey! I was looking for you.” He catches my expression. “What’s wrong?”
“Um.” I debate not telling him, but there’s no way I can tell no one. “I just found Arthur inside . . . my mother.” I will the image to leave me, but it’s probably branded there for life.
“Oh, wow,” says Will. He glances at the office door. “In there?” I nod.
“And then she tried to slut-shame me.” I sigh so heavily it’s practically a growl. “Fuck. What do I do? Do I tell my dad? Do I just pretend that didn’t happen? Ugh.”
Will can’t help but chuckle. “Gotta give it to them, on a thirty-minute break between acts . . .” He sees my face. “Sorry.” He puts his hands on my shoulders. “Right now, you should eat something . . .”
“Ew. I’ll never eat again.” The memory makes me gag.
“Fair. But we have a show to finish. We have, like, ten minutes before break is over. Do nothing. Just get through act two, and then we’ll figure this out.” I smile at “we.” I lean my head against his chest.
“I’m traumatized.”
“Poor baby.” He pats my head. “Let’s get out of here.” He throws his arm over my shoulder, and we get the hell out.
Act 2 opens with Titania and Bottom in their love nest: I am not looking forward to watching my mother and Arthur in action after the preview I just got.
The lights are in blackout, and it isn’t until the lights come up, and I feel in my pocket not one but two keys to the office, that I realize what I’ve done.
“Titania and Bottom,” calls Sally, in her dress rehearsal voice. “Wynnie, Arthur?” Silence. “Does anyone have eyes on them?” Everyone looks around. Across the stage, Will catches my face, eyebrows raised. We race backstage.
“Shit! I think I locked them in!” I whisper. “There was already a key in the door . . . Mom must have left hers in it accidentally. I was distracted when I left and . . .”
“You took it?”
I nod urgently. We run down the back staircase together, around the corner, and down the hall to the office door, but we are too late.
We arrive just in time to see my father use his own key, turn the lock, and open the door.
I watch him step inside. I see Arthur scurry out a moment later.
My father slams the door. Arthur meets us in the hallway. He looks incredibly awkward.
“I. Uh. We . . . You see . . .” he stammers like a child. “Good show!” he bursts out, and slips away back up the stairs. I hear my father’s voice; he knows exactly what’s going on. I turn to head back upstairs. I don’t need to hear this.
I catch Sally in the theater.
“Where are they?” she asks. She’s flustered. We are behind schedule.
“Um. They are detained?” I say. “Something came up.”
She sighs and shakes her head. “He found them, didn’t he?”
“You knew about this!”
She sighs heavily. “I can’t discuss this with you.” She storms off toward the office.
Theo jogs up to me. “Hey, what’s going on? People are getting restless.” He wiggles his fingers in a cute way, but I grab his hands.
“Theo. The show is fucked.”
He laughs.
“You can’t tell anyone.” He mimes zipping his mouth, locking his mouth, swallowing the key, re-zipping his mouth. Actors. “I caught my mom and Arthur.” He looks at me blankly. “Like . . .” I can’t even say it. “Sexually.”
Theo nods. “Yeah,” he says. He avoids my eyes.
“Wait, you knew too?” I look around. “Does everyone know?!” He shrugs. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Do you think your life would have been better with this information?” he asks.
I can scarcely remember life before this information. But he’s right.
“You had enough going on this summer,” he says. I think back to the party at Nick’s cottage, my mother’s tinkling laugh as she rubbed Arthur’s bald head. I thought she was being ironic. Apparently not.
“Fair,” I say. “So, who knew?”
“Sally told me. She’s been so stressed, keeping it a secret.”
“How long has it been going on?”
“Since the party, for sure. Maybe longer?”
“Ugh.” I slump into a seat. “Here I thought I was going to be the one to let it all come crumbling down.” I laugh to myself. “To that end, this is a relief.”
“Lord, what fools these mortals be!”
“Jesus, Theo, not now.”
Another theater superstition is that a bad dress rehearsal means that the opening will go well.
To that end, my parents are really taking one for the team.
We can hear them screaming at each other all the way from the office.
I go to the back doors and pull them shut, but I sit on the other side of them so only I can hear.
“—that you’ve done this again! I told you last time—”
“—why do you even care? You don’t notice anything—”
“I didn’t want him to come this summer, and You insisted—”
“I thought it was over this time!”
“I saw this coming a mile away—”
“How could you? All you care about is the show—”
“All either of us care about is the show.”
“Thou drivest me past the bounds of maiden’s patience!”
“Don’t you quote my play at me!”
“It’s our play, Ross, our play.”
The shouting turns to loud, angry talking, and I can’t tell what they are saying. Finally, I hear the door open, and they come up the stairs. They see me and stop suddenly.
“You told him!” my mother shrieks.
“You knew?” My father’s face is a tempest in and of itself.
I stare at them in disbelief. “Are you two serious right now? You have an entire cast and crew waiting for you.” My mother looks aghast that I have dared to speak.
“Mom, I did not tell him. Dad, I did not know. I found out five minutes before you.” I stand up and face them.
“I could not be less interested in your personal lives, but this show is opening in two days, so pull your shit together and get in there.” They look at me, stunned. I hold the door open. “Please.”
Act 2 is a hot mess. My mother is robotic, pretending to make love to Arthur in donkey ears.
Every time she is onstage, my father leaves the room completely.
The fairies get turned around and keep jumping lines in their scene with Arthur.
If I didn’t know better, I’d think they were doing it on purpose to throw him.
In the big lovers’ quarrel scene, I accidentally clip Bailey on the side of the head doing a fake slap, and Max trips and grabs the closest thing to steady himself, which is a whole wall of greenery, which comes down with a loud rip.
I can hear Sally sighing backstage as she tries to call the show.
Whoever is on lights is a cue behind, so sometimes we are delivering lines into darkness.
I am relieved when the wedding comes and we can just sit there until it’s all over.
After, my father runs through notes, but they are rushed and he skips parts. He pointedly ignores my mother.
“Any questions?” he asks at the end, closing his script with finality.
“Don’t you have any notes for me?” asks my mother.
“I do,” he says, looking over the top of his glasses. “If you could conduct your infidelity outside of my production, I’d be much obliged.”
In the back row, one of the high school kids says, “Oh, snap.”
My father likes to do an inspirational speech at this point in the week, but tonight he says, “Get some rest, people. Big week,” and walks out. I feel for him.
My mother passes me on the way out. “You might want to stay somewhere else tonight.”
“No shit,” I say. I know that what we heard downstairs today was simply the prologue for my parents’ fight, which will resume the second they get home.
Will comes up behind me. “My place?”
“Oh, yes. Please.”