Chapter 25 Logan #2
“It’s your first show as head carpenter, and maybe even your first time in love.
Go easy on yourself. Life will give you enough splinters,” she says.
“So will work. Take, for instance, what prompted me needing a bit of fresh air. We have no moon backdrop. In every mock-up I signed off on, there was a moon in the background of key scenes. And what do we have now, just days away from the show opening?”
“No moon.”
“No moon,” she emphasizes. “I’d go out there and do it myself, but do you know how hard it is to paint a perfect circle? What ideas have you got?”
“Not sure that I have any,” I say.
“Oh, sure you do.”
I shrug. “I don’t think I can be much help here. I’m doing more harm than good, honestly.”
Mrs. Walker pulls back and shoots me a disbelieving face. “Do you remember for Chicago how we were missing a letter in the sign onstage? The one with the light bulbs?” she asks.
“Yeah. No one could find the I.”
“And what the hell’s a Chcago? You took down one of the dressing room mirrors and did something”—she boxes the air with her hands—“with it to transform it into a usable letter.”
“I lucked out on that one,” I say with a huff. “You know not all dressing rooms have those types of mirrors, right?”
“Luck? No. You made that happen. I think you also enjoy challenges, too,” Mrs. Walker says. “I see a lot of myself in you. You take limes and turn them into key lime pie.”
“Is this your way of making me go out there and paint an oblong moon?”
“You’re very talented,” she says. “But not paint-a-perfect-circle talented. I’m going to figure it out. It’ll be a nice creative break from all the contracts I’ve been reading.”
As we walk back into the theater, there’s a loud thump as the wobbly canoe topples over.
“We’re not going to be ready for previews,” Mrs. Walker says definitively.
“There isn’t a way to get more time?” I try. “Two weeks? Maybe four?”
She laughs. “That’s why it’s called previews. By the time critics come for the real opening night, we’ll be ready.”
Will we, though?
“Or as ready as we’ll ever be,” she corrects. “We rehearse and prepare to make our future easier. Yet, things still go wrong. They also go right. You know how the superstition goes: Bad dress rehearsals mean that opening night will be a success.”
“Have you found that to be true over the years?” I ask.
“Yes and no,” Mrs. Walker says, tilting her head in consideration. “Opening nights are never flawless, but never has one crashed and burned so spectacularly that we couldn’t recover from it. There are mistakes that happen onstage and backstage. You know how many people notice? Very few.”
She lets go of my arm, patting my shoulder in thanks. “When I was in Cats, I would prowl and leap across the stage. Now I can hardly get out of bed.” She shrugs. “It means I’ve lived an active life, right? I’m glad to still be here.”
“Yeah,” I agree, finding comfort in this familiar, positive territory. “But it also kind of sucks.”
Mrs. Walker laughs. “That it does, Logan. That it does.”
The cast and crew file in for an afternoon of more rehearsals.
I turn to face her and, before we have to get back to work, say, “Can I ask you something? When you gave me a chance all those years ago, why did you do it?”
Mrs. Walker looks surprised. “Why do you think I did it?”
“I was in the right place at the right time,” I say, fidgeting with my hat out of habit. “I got lucky meeting you when I did. You gave me my first break in this industry.”
She huffs through her nose. “Luck will only get you so far.” She peers at me. “You don’t remember all the emails you sent me?”
“I think I recall sending a thank-you email, yes—”
“There was that, yeah,” Mrs. Walker says. “But you also followed up with me every month with theater news you thought I’d be interested in and shows you expressed a desire to be a part of.”
“So you helped me so I would stop annoying you, basically,” I joke.
“Certainly that, but also it was your persistence that got you your first break,” she says. “You not only knew what you wanted but you voiced it. It was like you knew something was going to happen at some point. It was a matter of when, not if.”
“I don’t remember it that way,” I confess.
I don’t remember it taking months for me to finally get to New York with a job. I don’t remember the multiple follow-ups.
The process of getting here felt relatively quick, but maybe that’s my mind smoothing over the bumps. I only remember telling Mrs. Walker what I was passionate about, but that’s how I’ve always been.
“Very rarely do things just happen for people, Logan. We have more control than we think,” she says.
“You know what I loved about being an actress in the theater? Each night, everyone gets a chance to do it all over again. Not just the cast. Every single person, on and off the stage. Every show is a new opportunity. So, you, Mr. Wells, need to get back out there and try something you haven’t yet.
Your persistence is somewhere in there. Dig deep for it, because I want that moon. And as they say, the show must go on!”
Windfall was once an idea, and now it’s a world with a set and lines and a cast and music and a whole team of people working invisibly behind the scenes.
And isn’t that really what luck is? Invisible, often unacknowledged work that we put in to make things happen for ourselves? Day after day after day.
Sometimes progress happens in big strokes. It also happens in small bursts, over and over again. When something’s not working, we acknowledge it and try something else.
After my accident, I tried something else. I went in a different direction.
From the moment I said no to who I was, to my father, and to the money, I got closer to who I am today. Because I said no, I could say yes. Yes to opportunities, yes to this new job.
Yes to the lottery.
Yes to Hazel.
Every show isn’t just a new opportunity.
Every day is.
Up until recently, I’ve said a hell of a lot of yesses. It’s possible I really have been making a hell of a lot of my own luck, too.
It’s time for me to own that, and whatever comes with it. Good or bad.
I see the stage and all the set pieces as a new problem to solve. I stand in the wings. I go backstage. I move down to the seats where the audience will sit and analyze it from that perspective. A seed of an idea forms.
I find Richie. “Instead of a canoe, what if we did a rowboat?” I pitch.
“It’ll give us the width we need, and we can add wheels underneath each corner.
That way we can roll it forward from backstage, which gives us more room to work with, and the leads can sit side by side instead of facing each other. ”
Richie considers this. “Fucking finally. Where’s that brain of yours been? That’s great. It’ll be safer for them, too.”
“Oh, and I may have a solution for the moon,” I tell him.
Before our second rehearsal of the day, I huddle up with everyone who’s had a hand in getting this show to where it is now. The rest of the afternoon will be dedicated to figuring out what’s not working, to making progress, to making opening night the best it can be with what we have.
We take it from the top and try again.