Heartache and Other Natural Shocks (28 page)

Geoff blinks. “You’re joking, right?”

“She says it’s platonic.”

“So, maybe it is.”

“She’s lying. I can tell by the way they look at each other.”

“They, who?”

“My mom and her boss.” I explain about Dr. Katzenberg. “I thought she was going to end it with him, but instead, she invited him over for dinner. He sat in my father’s chair.” I gulp. “I think she’s going to leave my dad.” It feels weird to say it out loud.

Geoff looks horrified. “What are you going to do?” he asks.

And suddenly it comes to me. It’s like the answer has been there all along, just waiting for me to see it. “I’m going home, to Montreal,” I say.

“You’re not!” Geoff exclaims.

“I have to,” I say. “When my dad finds out about this, he’s going to be shattered. He’ll need me.”

“I need you,” Geoff says. “You and me, we’re like a team. Without you, I’d be like Tracey without Hepburn, Gilbert without Sullivan, Rogers without Hammerstein—”

“I get it,” I interrupt.

“But who am I going to have lunch with?” Geoff asks. “And you’re not going to miss
Hamlet
, are you? Jules! You promised you’d help me with the fencing! Ian hates me. He keeps trying to kill me.”

“He’s Laertes. It’s his job to try and kill you.”

“Well, he’s very convincing,” Geoff says. I laugh, but Geoff doesn’t. He says, “Clarissa already bought the champagne. Who am I going to celebrate with?”

“You’ll drink with your other friends,” I say.

“I don’t have other friends.”

“Yes, you do. You’re Hamlet. Everyone wants to hang out with you.”

Geoff sighs dramatically. “They’re just fair-weather friends, my dear. They’ll drink my champagne, and then they’ll be gone. You’re only as good as your last show. One failure, and they won’t come around anymore. Next thing you know, I’ll be washed up and broke, like Frances Farmer. Where were her friends at the end?”

“Who is Frances Farmer?” I ask. Geoff rolls his eyes, and we both laugh. “Geoff, I have to do this,” I say firmly. “I’m finally on the right path.” I stare out the window at the sooty snow and the soulless streets of suburbia. Very soon I’ll be leaving this place, and Toronto will be just a detour I took on the highway of my life. “It’s a good thing I didn’t get a role in
Hamlet
,” I say. “Maybe this was meant to be.”

I turn back to smile at Geoff, but there are tears in his eyes. And suddenly I feel selfish and mean. Why is it always like this: one person leaving and the other person left behind?

“Eve of Destruction”

Deb and Mar are mad because they say I’m too busy to make time for them. Well, duh, it’s true. I am too busy. They don’t seem to understand that when you have rehearsals every day, a boyfriend with a strong sex drive and homework to do, there’s not a lot of time left over. I’m exhausted! This play is a lot of work! I mean, sure, the first two weeks of rehearsals were fun, but it’s one thing to block scenes with a script in your hand, and it’s another thing to memorize the whole entire play. Especially Shakespeare. It’s not like those words stick in your mind. And they certainly don’t stick in
Ian’s
mind. Mr. Gabor is furious with him.

On Saturday night, when Ian’s parents go out, I sit in his basement and broach the subject. “Look,” I say as he lights up a joint, “Mr. Gabor is losing patience with you. You really have to learn your lines.” Ian ignores me. I sigh. “Ian, we’re supposed to be off book. We only have three weeks left.”

“Stop bugging me, okay?” he says. He sucks on the joint and holds it out to me.

I shake my head. “Why don’t we run lines right now? We
can turn it into a game. Strip poker! It will be fun. For every line you get right, you get to take off a piece of my clothes. And at the end, we get to fuck like bunnies.”

“Let’s just fuck,” Ian says.

After sex, Ian and I go to the Pickle Barrel for something to eat, because God forbid we should eat something at his house in case his parents walk in and actually meet me. They probably don’t even know I exist. We order smoked-meat sandwiches and Coke. I say, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could spend the whole night together and not have to sneak around all the time?”

Ian says, “Yeah. We should leave town.”

“Yeah.” I laugh, but then I see he’s not joking. “What do you mean?”

“We could take off on my bike and go somewhere warm, like Arizona, or Mexico.”

“Like a little road trip?” I ask.

“Like leaving and never coming back.”

“Oh,” I say. We both bite into our smoked-meat sandwiches. Suddenly I have a fluttery feeling in my stomach, because maybe he’s actually serious about this. Is he asking me to run away with him? Does this mean he loves me? He’s never actually said those words, but maybe he does. After all, you don’t ask just anyone to run off to Mexico. I bet he never asked Kimmy to run away.

I sip my Coke and practically shiver with excitement. I picture Ian and me, like Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper in
Easy Rider
, biking across America with the open road ahead of us, meeting cool people, camping under the stars and making love in the moonlight. I imagine how great we’d look on his bike with our hair blowing in the wind as we tour the Grand Canyon and Yosemite National Park. So free, so romantic, so spontaneous, so alive.

But then I think about what happened to Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper at the end of
Easy Rider
, when those rednecks shot them, and maybe this isn’t such a fun idea after all. Maybe we’d end up driving for hours and hours across the burning desert, and I’d get sand in every crevice of my body. My bum would be sore from sitting on that bike all day, and I’d be absolutely bored to death. I’d get heatstroke, and Ian and I would have a stupid fight in some dumpy, run-down roadside café because, by that time, we’d be sick and tired of each other and grumpy from sleeping in campgrounds and fleabag motels. Ian would have one of his little temper tantrums, and he’d toss my bag into the dirt. Then he’d leave me sitting in a dusty booth in the middle of hick-town nowheresville. I’d be broke. So I’d have to get a job as a maid at Motel 6 in Death Valley. And the owner would be a fat, greasy, alcoholic pig who would jump me, get me pregnant and then fire me. I’d have to hitchhike with a trucker all the way to San Francisco to have an abortion, which I couldn’t afford. In the end, I’d probably bleed to death in the back room of some flophouse, with no one to hear my dying words, which would be
Ian, you are such a selfish prick!

I look across the table at Ian. He is a prick, but he’s my prick. And I don’t always like him, but I think I love him. I reach across the table and rub my finger along the worn cuff of his leather jacket. I tug at his sleeve. “Would you really like to run away with me?” I ask.

He looks across the table at me. “You’d never do it.”

“Maybe I would.”

He chews on his sandwich, watching me. Then he says, “Girls like you don’t leave home.”

“What do you mean, ‘girls like me’?”

“Girls who are used to getting everything they want.”

“Are you saying I’m spoiled?” I ask.

“I’m saying you don’t have the guts to do it, that’s all. You don’t want it badly enough.”

“How do you know what I want?” I say. “I happen to be a very complex person.”

Ian reaches for our two glasses of Coke. He slides one glass in front of my plate, leaving a sloppy, wet trail across the vinyl tabletop. “Okay,” he says. “This one is freedom.” He slides the other glass beside it. “This is your family, friends, university, holidays, nice clothes, parents who pay for everything.” He looks at me. “Drink one.”

I look at the glasses and back at Ian. “Maybe I’ll drink both,” I say.

“You only get one. That’s how it works.”

“Then I’m not playing.”

Ian smirks. “That’s what I figured.”

I feel set up. Why does it have to be either-or? He’s always putting me on the spot. “Look,” I say, “even if I wanted to go with you, I’m not quite seventeen, I have no money, and we’re both doing
Hamlet
. You have to be realistic, even when it comes to love.” I actually say that word out loud. For a second, it hangs between us like a thought bubble. Then Ian throws some money on the table, reaches for the freedom glass and downs it all in one long gulp.

In school, just when I think rehearsals cannot get any worse, they do. How? Well, as that poet says,
“Let me count the ways.”
Number one, there’s Ophelia. If I have to listen to her sing
“Hey, nonny, nonny”
one more time, in that grating, high-pitched psycho voice, I’m going to wring her scrawny neck.

Number two, there’s the duel scene. Geoff fences like a gay pirate, and he makes the fight look ridiculous. And if we have a crappy duel scene, this whole play is going to sink like the
Titanic
. Yesterday, in the middle of the fight rehearsal, Ian lost it and sent Geoff sprawling across the floor. Mr. Gabor read Ian the riot act, and now Ian’s walking around like a ticking time bomb.

Number three, there’s my dress. Madame Grenier, the French teacher, is in charge of costumes, and you’d think that a person from Paris would understand a thing or two about
fashion. But no. Today, she and her little troupe of sewing elves finally bring in the costumes, and when they pull out mine—it’s hideous. First of all, it’s olive green. Who looks good in olive green? Only an olive. I look good in lots of greens: lime green, kelly green, hunter green, even chartreuse—but
not
olive green. Couldn’t Madame Grenier have noticed that? Out of all the fabulous colors in the world, couldn’t she have picked something pretty?

Well, I take one look at that monstrosity and I say, “Mr. Gabor, I will not wear this dress.”

He says, “Go try it on.”

I say, “What’s the point? I’m not going to wear it.”

He gives me the Gabor glare, so I snatch up the dress and drag it into the girls’ gym change room, where Ophelia is trying on her gown. Ophelia’s gown is a soft, flowing, pink chiffon number with a low neck and a tightly fitted bodice. It’s elegant and flattering. And I’m jealous. I’m green with envy—make that
olive
green—because she looks great, and as I climb into my heavy, bulky gown with the chin-high collar and the long trailing skirt, I know that I look like a big fat olive with a frilly white neckline. I want to scream.

Ophelia looks at me and says, “Whew!” And then, scrambling for words, “That’s a lot of material. Can you move in that dress?”

“Can I move? Just watch me,” I snarl. I grab fistfuls of leaden cloth, charge out of the change room and head straight
for the auditorium. The guys are wearing tights and tunics, laughing and making fun of each other—except for Ian, who is refusing to put on his tights because he doesn’t “want to look like a fag.” Claudius’s crown keeps falling off his head. Horatio’s tunic is too big. Madame Grenier and the sewing elves are taking notes and snipping threads. Everyone is trying to get Mr. Gabor’s attention.

Jeremy sees me and nearly chokes with laughter. I say, “One word, nerd face, and you’re dog food.” So he shuts his trap. I elbow my way to the front of the line. “Mr. Gabor!” He looks at my dress and frowns.

He says, “Turn around and let me see.”

I try to turn, but some idiot is standing on the train of my dress, and I hear this little ripping sound. “Oops,” says the girl behind me. “That can be fixed.” She bends over and examines the dress. “It’s just the hem.”

“Fuck the hem,” I say.

Mr. Gabor glares at me. “Carla! This is Mary.” He gives me a warning look. “Mary is the student who sewed your dress.”

Well, I whirl around and come face-to-face with the numskull who’s ruining my life—a piggy-faced girl with bad acne and obviously no taste in clothes.

“
You
made this dress?” I say.

She nods proudly. “It’s a French brocade.”

“I don’t care what the hell it is. There’s too much of it, and it makes me look fat. I am
not
fat!”

Mary gulps. “I can take in the waist.”

“And what about the neck?” I say. “It’s choking me. It’s too tight. And the dress weighs a bloody ton. It’s like wearing a tank. I’m sweating bullets, and I’m not even onstage yet. And who chose this awful color? No one looks good in olive green!” At which point, I notice that Mary is wearing an olive green turtleneck sweater. And even she doesn’t look good in it.

Mary squeaks. Madame Grenier steps in to defend her quivering protégé. “Mary worked hours on zat dress! How dare you speak to her like zis!” she says in her huffy French accent.

“I dare because I am Gertrude,” I snap. “I’m the one who has to wear this dress. The dress has to work for
me
. I am the queen of Denmark. Not an old hag. Not a virgin. A powerful, lusty, sex-driven queen who’s humping King Claudius like a lovesick rabbit. So wouldn’t you think that a queen like that would wear a stylish, hot, red number with a bit of cleavage, instead of this ugly olive green piece of shit?”

Mary bursts into tears. Everyone in the room stares at me. I grab the collar of my dress and rip it right out of its seams. I fling it to the floor like a dead animal. I say, “I want another dress.” In the change room, I claw my way out of that sticky, clammy gown, and when I walk back into the hall, Mr. Gabor is waiting for me.