Chapter 34
One day until Opening Night
The next morning with Will is even better.
As soon as I stir, he reaches for me, kissing my forehead gently, then my mouth when I tilt it up to his.
I feel him, hard against my leg, and this time I slide my hand down freely.
Something has unlocked, a new ease between us.
I bury myself in him. It’s real, whatever it is, it’s so real, and I haven’t felt that maybe ever.
After, Will makes coffee and strawberry pancakes.
We sit in the sunlit kitchen, a sweet, hazy filter on everything.
I’m wearing a button-down flannel shirt he gave me, big woolly socks, and a pair of his boxer briefs, and I feel sexier and more myself than I have ever felt.
I inhale the pancakes like they’re oxygen, and Will watches me, pleased.
“You were hungry.”
“These are amazing,” I say. “I’ve never had pancakes.”
“What?” He’s shocked. “What do you . . . I . . . How is that possible?”
“My parents don’t cook,” I say. “They do grazing boards. And then, you know.” I gesture at my body. “Carbs.”
“Uh-huh,” he says, looking away.
“What?”
“Is that a thing you’ve worried about? I mean, obviously I think you are perfect, so . . .”
I laugh. “I’m a TV actor. Yes. It’s very much something I’ve worried about.
” I spear another strawberry. “In the past.” He’s eyeing me carefully.
“It’s not great, I know. It’s a thing I’d like to change.
” It’s not until I say it that I realize it.
I have been hungry for years. I have been out in the desert, starved for nourishment, for art, for love.
“You know The Velveteen Rabbit?” I ask him.
“The kids’ book, yeah? Remind me.”
“Well, basically there’s this toy rabbit, and the love of the child who owns it turns it into a real rabbit, or something. It’s about becoming a version of yourself that is fully realized. Just—real.”
“Are you a real rabbit, Mira?”
“Any day now.” I smile. “But really, it’s like, I don’t know, the city, the show, the money, the people.”
“The men.” He winks.
“Sure. Just a lot of things that are all the things you’re supposed to want. But they kind of . . . reduced me?”
He smiles. “You’re safe now, city girl. I’ve got you.”
“Yeah.” Something about that unsettles me, but I smile.
Our phones ping at the same time. I read the email that has just come through.
“Oh, shit.”
My father has called an emergency rehearsal. He has Big News, his email proclaims. I was really hoping our one day off before opening could be spent in bed, maybe a bath, maybe some lazy afternoon sex. Running lines by the fire on a bearskin rug. But no. We are to report to the theater Posthaste!
At the theater everyone looks around nervously. Several people look notably pissed, being here on their day off. My father bursts into the room. He clearly hasn’t slept or bathed. He is carrying two mugs of coffee, which, I learn, are both for him, and not his first of the day.
“Thank you for coming.” His energy is frenetic.
“I would like to announce that after twenty-nine years, Tempest will be closing its doors. Midsummer’s will be our last show.
” Around me, people are looking at each other in shock.
“As such”—he takes a large pull from his coffee mug, and it occurs to me that it’s probably not coffee—“in the absence of any further input from our producer”—I look around, realizing my mother is noticeably absent—“I have decided to up the ante, as it were. We happen to have a little disposable income, as we had enthusiastic donors this year, although Mr. Nolan is no longer with us.” There is a general gasp from the group.
“He’s alive.” Sally steps in. “Calm down.”
“Quite,” says my father. “As such,” he tries again, “I am adding a few production elements.” He then proceeds to tell us, animatedly, how there will be dry ice, how fog colors will be added as the lovers become more entangled under Puck’s spells.
There will be flowers that fall from the sky at certain points in the fairy scenes.
“I am presently installing hydraulics under the risers so they move, bringing the lovers together naturally. We will have to review some blocking, and”—he rubs his hands together—“there will be fireworks.”
“I hope he only means emotional ones,” mutters Theo next to me.
“I have a feeling not.”
“At the end of the play, after the mechanicals’ play at the wedding, and before Puck’s monologue, there will be fireworks.” He explains how they will shoot up, then shows us, running around onstage, how they will explode.
Beside him, Sally adds in safety details, deadpan, but I can see her panic.
When he is finished speaking, my father goes to refill his “coffee” and everyone takes their places for the top of the show. I run up to Sally.
“Sally, what do we do? He’s lost his mind.”
She sighs heavily. “Yup.” She takes a sip of coffee, which also might not be coffee. “He can’t be stopped.”
“Have you tried?”
“I’ve been here since seven a.m., trying.” She takes another long drink.
“Right, shit, sorry.”
She is quiet for a moment. “Your mother doesn’t know.” She looks at me meaningfully. “He won’t let me tell her. He’s hoping to . . . surprise her with the, er, updates.”
“You can’t just text her?”
“He hid my phone.”
“That’s insane behavior.”
“Yeah, well.” She shrugs. She pauses for a moment.
“This happens every year, the Arthur thing. A flirtation, anyway. And every year, your dad threatens to shut down the theater, and every year, your mom acts like it’s no big deal.
” She sighs. “So, we’re actually right on schedule.
But . . . I would say that this time seems worse. Much worse.”
“Oh, Lord. Okay.” I pick up my phone to call my mother. There’s no answer. I text her.
You need to get to the theater. 911.
She writes back:
There’s no rehearsal today.
There is Now, I reply. Get Here
My mother waltzes in twenty minutes later with Arthur trembling on her arm. She marches up to my father.
“Ross, you’ve lost your mind. What are you thinking, bringing all these people here? They have a show tomorrow.”
“I’m fixing it!” he bellows. “It’s shit! I’m making it better.”
“It’s not a shitty show.” She looks beatifically at her rapt audience. “It’s a beautiful show. Everyone has worked very hard!”
“It’s my last show. I’m done with this. I’m done with your games. I quit.”
“Oh, Roscoe, what do you mean, you quit?”
“I Quit!”
“My love, why don’t you go home and”—she leans in and sniffs him—“sober up. And we’ll tidy everything up here and all have a nice rest and come back tomorrow fresh. Mmm?”
“No!” my father shouts. “Stop trying to placate me, woman!” He waves his arms angrily, not seeing the young stagehand walking behind him with the pyro flash box.
My father knocks it out of his hand, activating the pyro with a loud bang.
A huge white cloud of smoke goes up ten feet in the air.
A few people scream, especially my mother.
“Stop acting like a maniac—you’ve completely lost your mind!”
And then someone yells the magic word: “Fire!” The bottom of the backdrop is indeed smoking.
My father staggers back, smoke billowing all around him. He falls into the backdrop, which comes down with a crash and immediately bursts into flames.
“Darling!” shrieks my mother, rushing toward him.
The quick-thinking stagehand has grabbed a fire extinguisher, but my mother’s scream startles him. He drops it with a hard thud, setting off another explosion of fine white powder in every direction. The fire is out, but my dad lies crumpled on the stage.
“Call 911!” someone screams, but Sally is already on it. We wait in stunned silence until they come.
My dad will be fine. He’s shaken and took a bad fall when he stumbled back, and he has some superficial burns, but the paramedics take him in for a once-over anyway.
The scrim is in shreds, and the beautiful, layered forest art is burned to shit.
The fire extinguisher has left a fine dust over absolutely everything. The stage is in shambles.
The show, it would appear, is ruined.
People are crying. A few sit stunned; a few just leave. Sally sits with her head in her hands. I join her. I put my hand on her shoulder.
“Never,” she says. “Never, in forty-six productions, never have I dealt with so. Much. Shit.” Her voice cracks bitterly on the last word. Whatever calm she mustered this morning is long gone. “I—I can’t. I’m . . .”
“I know,” I say. “I don’t blame you. They are absolute assholes.” She laughs a little. “Listen. What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, technically, it’s your show now. We open tomorrow.” She looks at me in horror. The adage that the director hands over the show to the stage manager upon opening doesn’t usually entail so much damage control.
“We have no set. We have no stage. We have no curtains. We have no director. We have no Titania.”
“She’ll be back.” My mother won’t pass up this plum role for anything. I’m racking my brain for ideas. “Do we cancel?” She shrugs. “Can we postpone?”
Sally sighs. “People have bought tickets. We’re sold out tomorrow. And if we cancel”—she looks around the room—“it would be such a disappointment.” She sighs again. “Your family . . .”
“I know.” I sigh. “We’re such assholes. We ruin everything.”
“No.” She looks at me, surprised. “Your family has done so much for this town, for the arts. It can’t end like this.”
“Oh.” We sit there in silence for a moment.
There is a fantasy version, the Hallmark-movie version, where I figure out how to fix everything, where I save the show, the town, the whole world—all without breaking a sweat or messing up my hair. But right now, all I see is chaos.
The kid who dropped the extinguisher comes up to us, head bent. “Sally. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay, hon. Shit happens.”
“Um, right. Um, Sally, I hope it’s okay, but I called a few of my buddies to come help clean up.” He nods toward the stage, where a group of teenagers is already arriving with brooms and cleaning supplies. Before Sally can even reply, one of the mechanicals appears.
“Sally, the backdrop artist is a friend. I called her, she’s coming over . . . She says if we can get some helpers to cut the pieces out, we can do a quick, simpler version of the installation.”
“Oh, wow,” says Sally. “Okay. Yes, thank you!”
I’m frantically googling how to replace a scrim in twenty-four hours. It’s not possible. “It says we can stretch muslin over a frame? Hopefully the trees hide the seams?” She nods, thinking. “Can we get that much muslin?”
“I’ll call around,” she says.
Will appears beside me. “How hard is it to build a large frame for a makeshift scrim?” I ask.
“Are we saving the day?”
“We are going to try.”
“Okay, people.” Sally leaps to her feet. “We have a lot of work to do.”
It isn’t easy. We do not fix everything.
By the end of it, we are covered in sweat and dirt and paint.
But eight hours later, we have cleaned up, and we have four giant flats covered in stretched muslin, painted in a gentle green wash.
We have rebuilt the art installation. The artist found some fabric with a slight shimmer that is actually better than the original, and it catches the light in a way that brings the magic levels up significantly.
A couple of high school girls spend all day getting fake flowers at every dollar store and removing their petals to rain down on Titania, and we decide to keep the dry ice, the two best ideas in my father’s fever dream.
I order pizza for everyone—my parents can pay me back later. Eight hours later, our set is a new, humbler, heart-filled version of itself. We are reset, we are exhausted, filthy, and sore, but the show is still on. I feel foolish for even doubting. But the show must go on.
What surprises me most is the urgency I felt today, my desire to save this thing that three months ago I nearly turned down. It is a new feeling—community, investment. It has been so long since I cared this much about anything.