Chapter 41
My parents call. I sigh deeply before accepting the call. It has been a week since I left North Lake, and here I am again, jobless, loveless, directionless.
“Hello? Is it on? Darling, can you hear us?”
“You mean see you.”
“It’s both, darling. Can you hear us and see us?” Their faces are very close to the screen.
“Back up,” I say.
“We haven’t even said anything!” My mother is, as ever, indignant.
“Back up from the screen,” I say. “I can see your tonsils.”
“Rude,” huffs my mother, but they both lean back and come into clear view. “Oh! Oh, I see.” She leans in again. “Oh, you don’t look well, darling. You—”
“Yes, I know, I gained weight.”
My mother shakes her head. “No . . .”
“Well, she has, Wynnie.” My father, blunt as ever. “But it suits her.”
“I was going to say you look tired,” says my mother. “Your glow is gone.”
“Is there another reason for this call?” I ask. “Or is this just a routine assessment of my appearance?”
“No.” I can see my mother is trying. “No, we wanted to say that we . . . Well, we just wanted to see how you were. You left so suddenly.” I wait for the slew of accusations headed my way, but they don’t come.
“We missed you at strike,” my father says.
“Yes,” I say impatiently, “I know, I was expected to be there. I’m sorry, okay?” My parents look at each other. “Theo already gave me shit and told me how disappointing I am, so if that’s what this is . . .”
“It’s not,” says my father. “Quite the opposite, in fact.” They glance at each other again.
“We didn’t get a chance to thank you.” He clears his throat awkwardly.
“You were a great help this summer, with all the, uh, casting . . . adjustments. You showed a lot of leadership.” My mother nudges him.
“And your performance . . . was truly lovely.”
“We are very proud of you, darling,” says my mother. “It was very special for us to do that show with our daughter.”
I’m a little stunned. This is as great a display of affection as I’ve ever had from them. “Oh,” I say. “Thank you.” We sit in a brief awkward silence as I hold the fact that this might actually be a nice family phone call. “Me too,” I say awkwardly, a little too late.
“So,” my mother presses on, “there’s something we would like to discuss with you.”
“Are you getting a divorce?” I blurt out, surprising myself with how much like a child I sound. “Are you really ending Tempest?”
They look at each other and chuckle. “Not as it were,” my father says. “This play—”
My mother cuts him off. “This play nearly broke us, and that was very much my fault.”
“It was a mutual effort,” my father adds, patting her arm. “It was a long time coming and brought up some, ah, dynamics that required, er, addressing.”
“But it also brought us back together,” says my mother. For once, she sounds completely sincere. “We have decided to take a break from the theater. It’s been our greatest joy—”
“Uh, aside from you,” adds my father a split second too late. We all know, deep down, that it’s not completely true.
“But it’s such a constant worry,” says my mother. “It takes all our time. We love it, but we need a break. We need to spend some time together, just us, to reconnect. To rest. And we were wondering, well, noticing . . .”
“Are you coming back or not?” blurts my father. “You don’t really mean to stay there in the city?”
I have given them no reason at all to think otherwise, but it’s not until this question is put so bluntly to me that I know my answer. “No,” I say. “I’m not staying.” A small gateway of relief opens in me.
“Well, thank goodness for that,” my mother says. She and my father eye each other. “That’s good news.”
“So, uh, what did you want to ask me?” I ask.
“Well, as we said, we need a break. Three shows a year is a lot. We feel that our life in recent years has revolved around the theater, and we would like to open our life up a little . . . We have decided to do some traveling over the winter and . . .”
“We wanted to offer you the winter show.” My mother beams. “To direct it. You can even choose it, pending board approval.” We all know that the board is just the two of them. “You could cast it—it would be your show, completely.”
“Huh,” I say. I am not repelled by the idea.
“I mean, it’s an idea, for sure.” My life, my future, is so amorphous these days that the idea of anything concrete feels almost terrifying.
Especially something that could be so loaded.
“That’s only, like, three months of the year, though,” I say.
“What would I do with myself? I need work.”
“There’s a teaching job at the university, the acting class,” says my father. “I’m friends with the dean—I know it’s open.” I don’t love the idea that my entire future could be choreographed by nepotism. Which is rich for someone who used to work in television.
“Yeah,” I say. “Maybe. I mean, yes. I would need to figure some things out.” I am deliberately vague, peeking through a door to the future. The idea is foreign, but it also appeals to me.
“Well, think about it,” says my father.
“Oh,” says my mother. “You heard about Barb.” She says this like an obvious fact.
“No.” My chest tightens.
“Oh! We thought you would have been speaking with Will,” she says lightly, and my stomach drops in shame. “Barb had a stroke.”
My stomach drops. Will. “Oh, God, is she okay?”
“She’s in the hospital. It was just two days ago, so I think it’s hard to say what’s next . . .”
“Is she—is he . . . I haven’t talked to Will.” I haven’t said his name out loud in a week, but it surges in me like a giant wave.
“Oh!” They are surprised. “We thought the two of you . . .”
“We were.” I realize with sudden clarity that any chance of bringing that back to present tense depends on my next move. “We are. I’ve got to go, guys, but, um, I’ll see you soon.”
“All right, dear. Think about—”
“I’m coming home.”