Penelope (25 page)

“When you whip the piano with your belt,” said Henry Wills-Mather, “I want you to really destroy it.”

“But it’s a Steinway,” said the Caligula with the rattail.

“I don’t care if it’s a Steinway. What I care about is that you fully channel Caligula’s destructive personality.”

“You’re right,” the boy said with a sigh. He was wearing a belt on his head. Eventually his costume would consist entirely of strategically placed belts.

The cast was rehearsing Act 2, Scene 5, one of the most harrowing scenes in all of
Caligula
, particularly noteworthy, Penelope thought, because
Caligula
was a play chock-full of harrowing scenes. In this scene, Caligula killed a senator and then subsequently destroyed all the pianos in the room by beating them with belts. The latter stage direction was an invention of Henry Wills-Mather, who, when he saw there were two Steinway pianos sitting in the theater that could not be moved, said to the cast, “The piano is a bourgeois convention. This is the theater of the absurd! The only thing to do is to destroy them with belts.” Then he stuck to this idea, which was the truly amazing part.

The rehearsal was sparsely populated. Only Penelope, Rattailed
Caligula, and Lan, who was sitting in the lighting booth refusing to do any lighting, were in attendance. All the other cast members had made some excuse and were studying for final exams in the library.

Final exams at Harvard took up an extraordinary amount of time. All told, it took nearly a month and a half of constant testing to finish them. There were final projects before Christmas, a brief vacation between Christmas and New Year’s, and final exams that lasted the entire month of January. In an extremely unpopular decision, Henry Wills-Mather insisted on having play practice throughout this period, causing most of the cast to not attend rehearsal in favor of studying. As a result, Penelope had been playing more and more parts. She was wondering if she would eventually have to star in a two-man show with Rattailed Caligula.

“Where is Bitty?” cried Henry Wills-Mather, apropos of very little. Bitty had missed the most rehearsals of anyone in January, but Penelope heard it wasn’t because she was studying but because she was still on vacation in the Seychelles. Everyone remained silent in response to this question. Bitty was Henry Wills-Mather’s favorite member of the cast, and whenever he was feeling querulous, he asked where she was. This could only be interpreted as a bad sign.

“Well, I would like her to be here to run this scene,” Henry Wills-Mather continued. “I think it’s very important for her to get the cues exactly right on how to hit the piano. You have to choreograph it.”
Why?
thought Penelope.

“OK,” said Henry Wills-Mather. “Let’s start from ‘Well, I see you have become intelligent.’ ” Penelope and Rattailed Caligula got into place in the middle of the stage.

“Well, I see you have become intelligent,” said Rattailed Caligula as he pretended to nibble at an olive. “Soldiers, I am pleased with you. Is not it, Helicon?”

“Sure! What an army!” said Penelope in a low voice, because Helicon was usually played by a man named Justin. “But if you
want my advice, they are now too smart, and they will not want to fight. If they are still increasing, the empire crumbles!”

“Perfect. We shall rest. Come, let us randomly,” said Rattailed Caligula.

“Stop, stop, stop,” yelled Henry Wills-Mather. He looked upset. “Lan, what did I say about the black spotlight? I don’t want it now. I want it in the third act!”

“I know,” yelled Lan from the lighting booth. “You said that. But you are just so wrong.”

Currently, the black spotlight was hovering over the features of Rattailed Caligula. If Lan did one piece of lighting design during rehearsals, it consisted of shining a black spotlight in the face of Rattailed Caligula expressly at points when Henry Wills-Mather did not want it to shine. Henry Wills-Mather and Lan argued about the spotlight at least twice a rehearsal, and sometimes more.

“Can you just turn it off?” said Henry Wills-Mather.

“No,” said Lan.

“It’s not until the third act that the spotlight can represent the black hole of Caligula’s personality!” yelled Henry Wills-Mather, who ran up to the lighting booth to start fighting with Lan. Rattailed Caligula and Penelope sat down on the floor underneath one of the Steinways.

“Hey, Penelope,” said Rattailed Caligula. He took a book about extraterrestrials out of his backpack. It was hardbound and laminated and had a very colorful photo on the front.

“Oh, hey,” said Penelope. Penelope was a little afraid of Rattailed Caligula. One time she saw him wearing a floor-length cape to class. Every Sunday he played the bells in the Lowell bell tower. He had very strange but not necessarily bad taste in bell music. One Sunday, Penelope awoke to the Darth Vader theme played by bells. She imagined this was his doing.

“What is that book about?” asked Penelope.

“Aliens,” said Rattailed Caligula.

“Oh, cool,” said Penelope.

“Do you believe in UFOs?”

“Sure,” said Penelope.

Rattailed Caligula smiled but said nothing. He went back to reading his book. Penelope scraped the floor with her fingernail and got dirt under it.

To everyone’s surprise, Bitty swanned in a couple of minutes later. She was wearing a coat that looked like a series of oatmeal-colored cashmere scarves stacked on top of one another and expensive-looking gray boots. She was drinking a latte. She looked very tan and well rested.

“Hi, guys,” said Bitty. Rattailed Caligula and Penelope stayed where they were under the Steinway.

“Hey, Bitty,” said Rattailed Caligula. He waved at her spastically. “When did you get back?”

“Oh, me? I was back like two days ago. I would have come in sooner but my friend Gustav—do you know Gustav? Anyway, Gustav had a ridiculous party two days ago, and I have been so hungover.” She said the last clause in a whisper: “I have been barely able to walk.”

“Bitty!” cried Henry Wills-Mather from the lighting booth. He seemed quite pleased. “Is that you? Are you back from the wilderness?”

“Indeed! Although I can’t stay for long! I just came to say hello.”

“We can run the pianos scene!” said Henry Wills-Mather, oblivious.

It had been three weeks since Gustav kissed Penelope and then told her he would contact her “at some point in his life.” During the interim, Penelope had gone home briefly for Christmas, where her mother bought her a book about how to apply makeup as well as other instructional presents. After she came back, she rehearsed the play even when others did not and wrote two final papers. Not once had she heard from Gustav. At first Penelope
was relatively sanguine about this. She figured Gustav went on some sort of epic vacation for the Christmas holiday and thought, his being a man of his word, he would contact her on his return to the continental United States. This new information from Bitty was very troubling. The fact that Gustav was not only back on campus but also having parties that he didn’t invite her to seemed to her very bad signs.

And so, on the walk back from play practice, Penelope decided to call her mother for advice. In her past, Penelope’s mother had been quite good with men. In the eighties, she had broken off four engagements in the space of a year, two of which hadn’t even involved her.

“Hey, Penelope,” said her mother when she picked up on the third ring. “I’m in Sam’s Club!”

“How is it?” asked Penelope. She was outside Lamont Library. She made her way over to the front steps and sat down on them.

“Oh, it’s really good,” said Penelope’s mother. “I am buying some industrial-sized waters.”

“That’s awesome,” said Penelope. Two people walked into the library carrying toothbrushes because they were going to sleep there.

“When are you coming home again?” asked Penelope’s mother. “Have you made a bus reservation for the end of finals?”

“No,” said Penelope.

“Penelope, you have to do that. I bet the buses are all sold out.”

“I don’t think that route to Hartford is usually a crowded thoroughfare,” said Penelope.

“A crowded thoroughfare?” said Penelope’s mother. She sighed a long sigh. “How are your finals going?”

“Oh, good,” said Penelope. “I am just about to take an exam in this class called Counting People.”

“That sounds like a great class,” said Penelope’s mother. “What is it about?”

“Counting. And, so, well, actually, in the class there is this guy.”

“Oh, really? A guy! See I told you you would meet someone! You said to me that you would never meet anybody, but, of course, I knew that you would! Who is he?”

“He is just this guy named Gustav. He’s really handsome.”

“Does he have long hair or something?” Penelope’s mother loved men with long hair. She was always talking to Penelope about Fabio.

“Um, no, not really. I guess it is a little long. It’s sort of chin length.”

“Hmm,” said Penelope’s mother. “Wow, Penelope! That’s pretty exciting. But you don’t sound that excited.”

“Well, it’s kind of a hard situation. Because we went for drinks with a group of people, but then it kind of turned into a date. And then he said he would call me for a real date.”

“And has he called you?”

“No! And then he had a party the other night that he didn’t invite me to it. I just found out today at play practice.”

“What a jerk!” said Penelope’s mother. “Well, don’t invite him to the next party you have.”

“OK,” said Penelope. When Penelope wouldn’t get invited to parties as a youth, which was often, this was always something her mother would say. Penelope imagined this sort of reciprocal revenge would be very satisfying if you were the type of person who had parties. The punishment really fit the crime, etc.

“But wait. Tell me more about this. How did he ask you on a date again?”

“He was just like, ‘I will call you.’ ”

“How did you react to that? Did you say anything?”

“Yeah,” said Penelope.

“What did you say exactly?” said her mother. Penelope’s mother often said that if she had to do it all over again, she would be a detective. Perhaps this was the original source of Penelope’s respect for the profession. It was at times like these when Penelope realized how much her mother’s natural skills
could have lent themselves to this career choice. She was indefatigable as a questioner.

“I think he said, ‘Let’s go out sometime,’ and I was like, ‘Sure, let’s get ice cream.’ And then he said, ‘Ice cream in the winter?’ and I really didn’t know what to say then.”

“Huh,” said her mother. “Well, I don’t know, Penelope, I think I would text him or something. What is the harm? Ask him what he is doing tonight. He may have just been confused by that ice cream in the winter conversation.”

“What? No,” said Penelope.

“Penelope. You asked for my advice and that is what I think. I think you should call him. Or at the very least text him. Imagine if someone said that to you? You probably wouldn’t know what to think.”

“I would know exactly what to think,” said Penelope.

“I really think you should text him. Anyway, I am at the checkout line, so I have to go, OK? But make your reservations for the bus home! Bye!” said Penelope’s mother.

After Penelope’s mother hung up, Penelope sat on the library steps for a while, even though it was cold. Was Penelope’s mother right about this? She was usually right about things and Penelope was usually wrong. But Penelope also felt there were certain inalienable social facts about life at Harvard that she couldn’t really communicate to her mother. If she tried to explain why Emma was producing the play, for example, her mother would never believe her. “Why would producing a play make anyone like you?” she would say. Anyway, it was a lot to think about, and Penelope didn’t really want to be alone, so she went to the library.

Penelope often went to the library when she wanted company, because that was where everyone else was, studying for their exams. She usually sat near the café and stared at people doing their homework. Today she was going to try to read a book about whether Shakespeare was really Francis Bacon, instead of just a man named Shakespeare. She had to write a paper about it.

Penelope sat down on an uncomfortable brown armchair in the café and tried to read her book. Apparently, Francis Bacon’s life was the exact plot of
Love’s Labour’s Lost
, and that was why he was Shakespeare. Should she text Gustav? Suddenly, Penelope was filled with the conviction that there was absolutely no harm in texting at all. It was just something people normally did in their lives. If Gustav construed texting as rude and invasive, then he was the crazy one! It did behoove her to write something completely neutral, however, in case he did. So she texted him “Hi.”

After five minutes, Penelope felt her phone buzzing. She had a new text. Her heart started to pound rapidly and she almost felt like she couldn’t breathe. Then she calmed down, because she opened her phone and it was a text from Emma.

“Hi, Penelope,” it read. “I was wondering if you were in our room and you could check and see if my book about political society is there. I thought I saw Lan put it in Raymond’s crate the other day.”