Elizabeth the First Wife (2 page)

But on an unusually hot and smoggy Tuesday in April, even Lydia couldn't have cared less about
The Taming of the Shrew
.

God, I hate this play.

Which is why I taught it, to make my point that even a writer as brilliant and timeless as Shakespeare can miss the mark. But apparently, not a single student in my class was interested in my reverse (perverse?) psychology. Not Morgan, the spectacularly beautiful private-school girl who spent one semester at NYU then fled back to Pasadena after discovering that college in NYC was not at all like shopping in NYC. Not George the Ukrainian (his moniker, not mine), who wanted to become a teacher after driving a truck for ten years. Not Emilia, the young single mom who was somehow putting herself through school and working at Bed Bath & Beyond. My usually lively class was otherwise occupied. It was the last week before spring break and, clearly, they were all mapping out the quickest route to the frozen yogurt emporium post-lecture.

“So no one has an opinion on one of the most famous relationships in all of Shakespeare? Kate and Petruchio. Fire and Ice. Sexist Pig and Cold-hearted Be-yotch. You read this scene and you thought, what? Fine, great. I gotta get me a guy like that.”

Laughter rippled throughout the classroom, reminding me why I get up in the morning. “Professor Lancaster, I have no idea what's happening in this play,” Nico Andregosian piped up. Nico faithfully wore his high school letterman's jacket every day to class, despite the heat and without irony. Nico wasn't headed to Berkeley anytime soon, but he did help me change a tire last week. Another reminder of why I got up in the morning. “I don't get this at all.”

“Did you actually read it, Nico?”

“Yeah, kinda. But it's crazy, about the sun and the moon.”

This is where the class gets good, I thought. Where I, Elizabeth Lancaster, community college English teacher and theater enthusiast, feel most in my element. “Okay, let's do this. Let's read it together, Nico. You and me. Like I always say, Shakespeare's words are meant to be spoken, not studied at arm's length. It's living, breathing dialogue. And in this scene, the sexist pig is trying to convince the cold-hearted be-yotch that the sun is actually the moon. It's his way of exerting
power, and she is employing her own manipulative techniques to shut him down. Raise your hand if you've done this in your own relationships. Who's played mind games in a romantic relationship?”

All the hands went up except Sahil's, whose closest personal relationship has probably been with his PlayStation controller. “That's what I thought. Get up, Nico. You're Petruchio and I'm Kate. Let's go.”

He heaved his squat body out of the chair, as his classmates hooted. His buddy from high school, Aron, hissed, “Duuude.” Nico's reluctance was skin deep. He was a ham at heart. “Please, don't make me do this.”

I took a swig of Diet Coke and did my best faux-ghetto “Oh, it's on.” The students whooped, like I knew they would.

Nico began haltingly, adding several more syllables than in the original.
“Come on, a' God's name. Once more, um, um, toward our father's. Good Lord, how bright and goodly shines the moon!”
He inserted a dramatic hand gesture for emphasis, then gave me a triumphant look.

Oh, it was on. I tapped into my Inner Shrew, which wasn't hard. I was a single, mid-30s woman with emerging bunions, a leaking roof, and a love life that had been in decline since the early aughts. Not to mention that I had a mother who kept setting me up with every divorced dad in Pasadena and a sister who insisted I needed to keep “putting myself out there” even though she has no idea how rough it is “out there.” Why couldn't they just leave me alone with my books, my vegetable garden, and my growing collection of European comfort shoes? I happened to like my life. Why didn't my family? Oh, yes, at that particular moment in time, I was feeling extremely shrewish. Watch out, Nico.
“The moon! The sun—it is not light now.”

Nico rose to the challenge, playing his Petruchio with a touch of
Jersey Shore. “I say it is the moon that shines so bright.”

The classroom door creaked as it opened. I didn't bother to turn to see who'd arrived thirty minutes late to class. Besides, the audible
gasp from a dozen young women told me it was Jordan. He was easily the best-looking boy in the room and a star baseball player who was hoping for a decent transfer offer. Jordan slid in late most days, hoping for attendance credit and a chance to flirt with Shiree. But I paid no attention to the rumble from the other students, because I was in the zone.
“I know it is the sun that shines so bright.”

Nico's jaw dropped open, apparently stunned silent by my confidence. But the scene wasn't nearly over, so I gave him the universal “it's your turn” sign with my hands. He stammered, unable to get out the next line. And then I heard the next lines come from behind me.
“Now by my mother's son, and that's myself, It shall be the moon, or star, or what I list. …”

I turned to face the owner of the familiar voice. Good God, just what I needed.

No wonder the girls gasped. There, resplendent in jeans and a black T-shirt that probably cost more than my car, was Francis Fahey. Or as the world knew him, FX Fahey, the third-highest-grossing action star behind Harrison Ford and Tom Cruise. His
Icarus
franchise had spawned video games, fast food tie-ins, and a legion of fans that believed the laid-back actor to actually be the futuristic-cop hero. Clearly, FX was used to being the center of attention, and he owned the classroom the minute he entered. He strode up the center aisle, grinning effortlessly, like he was just returning from the grocery store with a six-pack of beer instead of invading my workplace after a decade with no face-to-face contact. Oh, he was enjoying the moment.
“Or ere I journey to your father's house. Go on and fetch our horses back again. Evermore cross'd and cross'd, nothing but cross'd.”

I wanted to kill him.
“Forward, I pray, since we have come so far, and be it the moon or sun, or whatever you please.”
Now he was close enough to touch, and I was tempted, because his T-shirt, stretched poetically across his chest, appeared to be made of the softest cotton ever spun. I needed to physically stop myself from petting him. Be
the shrew. Be the shrew.
“And if you please to call it a rush-candle, henceforth I vow it shall be so for me.”

FX leaned in, his chin barely grazing the top of my head. He smelled like lime.
“I say it is the moon,”
he whispered for all to hear. The students responded with catcalls and an “Oh no, you didn't.”

I stepped back, a gesture of stagecraft and self-preservation.
“I know it is the moon.”

FX closed the gap.
“Nay, then you lie; it is the blessed sun.”

“Oh, snap, Professor,” Nico interrupted from his seat, where he had returned to watch.

“Then God be blest, it is the blessed sun. But sun it is not, when you say it is not; and the moon changes even as your mind.”
I brushed away a lock of brown hair from his forehead, in what I believed to be a saucy fashion. That was a mistake.
“What you will have it nam'd, even that it is, And so it shall be for Elizabeth.”

FX broke character, beaming, “Don't you mean,
‘So it shall be for Katherine'?”

Busted. “What did I say?”

“You said Elizabeth. That's you. I think you meant to say Katherine, because while Kate might agree with Petruchio to shut him up, Elizabeth Lancaster would never agree with me for expediency's sake.”

Oh, snap.

“You haven't changed a bit, Lizzie,” FX said, looking around my tiny office, taking in my decorating style, which I referred to as Oxford in Southern California. Basically, my look included a couple of walls of leather-bound books, some gold-framed flea-market oil paintings, and one of those good-luck Chinese bamboo plants that a student had given me years ago and I didn't want to tempt fate by tossing out. He wandered around, touching everything like a five-year-old
at Target. “You look good.”

Compared to whom? The Brazilian supermodel he'd been living with, or the supermodel's nanny he was sleeping with, according to
Stun
magazine?

“Thanks. So do you, Francis.” His amused look told me that only his mother still called him Francis. “Sorry, FX. Or is it really just X now? That's how Matt Damon referred to you on
The Daily Show.”

“On set, it's X. Short, simple. Kinda boss. Remember when you helped pick my stage name? The X was your idea.” Of course I remembered. We were lying on a futon, the only piece of usable furniture in our tiny, oven-like apartment on the Lower East Side, just before the gourmet cheese shops and a John Varvatos boutique invaded the dodgy neighborhood. It was the summer FX landed his first professional acting gig with the Public Theater, and I followed along, as an intern to the artistic director. There was already a Francis Fahey and a Frank Fahey registered in the union, so I suggested replacing his actual middle name, Christopher, with the more traditional match to Francis: Xavier. FX Fahey was born. That was a name, I declared, that made him sound like a member of the IRA. Back in those days, terrorists were cool.

“I remember,” I answered, but I didn't want to remember all of it, so I moved on. “What are you doing here? How did you find me at work?”

“I have people, Liz. That's their job.”

“You couldn't have just Facebooked me, like everybody else I haven't seen in a decade?”

“I'm an actor. I like to make an entrance.” He smirked. “Plus, I was in Pasadena for a photo shoot, so I thought what the hell? I'll swing by.”

Ah, I was convenient. Got it.

FX was studying my framed diploma collection: BA from
Wesleyan; MA and PhD from UCLA; First Aid/CPR certification from the Rose Bowl Aquatic Center. He turned, “You have to admit, we were good in there. I think your students were impressed.”

“They've seen me do Shakespeare. Pretty much every class.”

“I meant with me. I think I impressed them.” Was FX Fahey seriously looking for props from a classroom of nineteen-year-olds and George the Ukrainian? Still insecure about his talent, I noted. He carried on, “Remember the last time we did that scene together? I think we were better today.”

I did remember, and it filled me with embarrassment and a touch of nausea.

FX picked up a silver-framed photo of my family taken several years earlier. There was my father, the man of the hour that night, Dr. Richard Lancaster, in white tie with decorations, standing stiffly next to my mother, Anne, who was flashing a triumphant grin. My mother was clearly at her spousal zenith that night, taking her victory lap wrapped in peach silk taffeta and her grandmother's diamonds. Next to my parents stood my two sisters, Sarah and Bumble, as different as night and day, but both in black sequins, flanked by their husbands, solid citizens each. And then there was me, on the end, in a vintage Lanvin gown and excruciatingly painful heels, posed next to the King of Sweden. FX didn't seem to notice the royalty. “How is your dad? He gave me all that grief for years because I didn't know who that famous science guy was, what's-his-name?”

“Feynman. Richard Feynman.”

“Yeah. Wasn't he the founder of
Popular Mechanics
or something?”

I thought for a second. “You must be thinking of
quantum
mechanics. And actually, Feynman worked on quantum electrodynamics. He was a theoretical physicist and a friend of my father's.”

“Quantum Mechanics! That's a good name for a movie. Does your dad still talk about me?”

“FX, my dad won the Nobel Prize in Physics a few years ago. He never talks about you.” I snatched the photo out of his hands with a little too much impatience.

FX threw up his hands in admiration, “See, nobody puts me down like that anymore! I've missed you, Lizzie. Wow, a Nobel Prize. That's pretty impressive.”

Yeah, kind of. I didn't have the heart to tell him that the last time my father noticed an ad for one of his movies on the side of a bus, he pointed at it and said, “Isn't that what's-his-name?” My father exists in a world without TMZ and always has. When your day job involves determining the origins of the universe, you simply can't be bothered with the mundanity of pop culture. Or a boy your daughter used to know. “Did you just stop by to run lines, or did you need something?”