The History of Great Things (13 page)

I
n scenario two, after I die, you also decide there's no time to waste, but this time you focus on a career path. You still want to write, but don't have the drive to make it happen, so you stick with teaching, taking a job at a preschool that eventually earns you some good raises and a promotion to assistant director, which is fine, if not anything more than fine, and after a decade or two of dating with poor results, despondent about not having found the right person, you decide to give it up altogether and become celibate. The end.

—Oh, come on. That's a third as many words as the first scenario and in this one I'm alone and in a job I don't really love.

—Do you want to be married or don't you?

—I want you to imagine a life that I might really want and actually be able make happen. Loosely based on the information you already have.

—Just let me think about it for a while.

—Plus, do I not even grieve for you? I grieved for two sentences in scenario one and not at all in scenario two.

—I thought I covered it. But what is there to say about that?

—Are you kidding? People write entire novels about it.

—About grief? I wouldn't want to read that. Who'd want to read that?

—People. Me.

—But why?

—Mom, why do we read anything?

—To escape.

—That's only one reason. Not that I wouldn't mind doing that right this minute.

—That's my reason.

—Look, why do you suppose I wanted to be a writer?

—Because you were good at it.

—I was good at other things. As you know.

—I don't know what you want me to say.

—Mom. Didn't you ever read a book that made you feel . . . like someone who didn't even know you understood you?

—Pfff. No one in real life has ever really understood me. How could I possibly get that from a book?

Y
ou've been combing the auditions in
Backstage
for years, finally decide to actually go to one, for the role of Graziella in the touring company of a Broadway revival of
West Side Story
, and after two callbacks you are given the part. It's your childhood dream come true, all these years later. You have been practicing your
ooo-ooo-oooblieooos
since you were nine. (You've been practicing all the parts, failing most noticeably while trying to sing them all simultaneously for the “Tonight” medley.) By the time you're done rehearsing in New York, you're already close with the cast, and by the end of the second week of the tour, in Kansas City, you're calling yourselves family. It is agreed that your real families are not nearly as much fun, and that they're messed up in similar ways, about which you talk late into the night on the bus to the next city. One dark night, six of you, high on pot brownies in the back of the bus, decide to stumble out to Cracker Barrel for munchies. All agree that Cracker Barrel high is the funniest thing that ever happened. You forget that Cracker Barrel is not someone's house party where you're invited to help yourself to whatever and grab a seat on the floor with several boxes of crackers and three types of cheddar, but this detail is overlooked until you
decide to dance on top of a barrel—there seems no other reason for it to be there—at which time the police arrive, and you're arrested for trying to get them to dance on the barrel with you. Fortunately, your high lasts just long enough to hold you until morning, when you're released from jail, and after considering that you made it through this escapade without throwing up, you call it a win. Everyone should be arrested once. Box checked.

You are the newbie (though not the youngest by a lot) so the others make certain things known to you. One of them is that it isn't always like this. It is, as often, exactly unlike this. Diva behavior, bitchy queens, personality clashes—most of you have big ones, which on a tour bus means that there is almost literally not enough room to accommodate the magnitude of the sounds (vocal exercises that range from bizarre chicken squawks to simple scales sung by five different people in five different ways at five different intervals), and the things (hair accessories, undergarments, a drugstore's worth of products), everyone scheming to skirt the one-suitcase-per-person limit (people need options!), and the opinions (political, artistic, religious—remarkable, really, that there hasn't been a documented murder on a tour bus), and the assorted pre-performance rituals (prayers, meditations, chants, bells). But this doesn't concern you now, here in Tulsa or Omaha or Wichita; what concerns you now is your castmate who plays Anxious, who stops by your motel room at midnight with a bag of Krispy Kremes and a quart of milk from the gas station next door. You're about two months into the tour now; the nightly group hang has taken the predictable toll, and most of you over twenty-four are retiring a little earlier now, though you still get plenty of socializing done earlier in the day. No one misses who gets with whom, that's impossible, so you make
your peace with it, and it is noted by all that you and Anxious are often in a corner by yourselves, and bets are taken as to when the sexy festivities will ensue; the girl playing Anybodys wins by picking the earliest time slot.

Anxious—he knows you. He says things to you no guy has said before; that he feels like he hit the lottery; wants to know where you would live, if you could live anywhere at all; if you'd be interested in quitting everything and sailing around the world with him and a couple of dogs, maybe make some kids; he has some ideas for kids' names, Adeline and Mabel and Billiam—which cracks you up,
Billiam?
you say, and he says
No one will make fun of our kids on our boat
—and you are more and more sure he's the one. You like this idea very much.
Let's do it
, you say.
Yeah?
he says,
Yeah
, you say.

So you and Anxious jump off the bus right that minute, laughing hysterically. You have no idea how one goes about buying a boat, but you've just hit Tampa, as good a place as any for that. You hitchhike to the nearest shore, giddy, thank the old couple who picked you up, jump out, ask some random guy where to buy a boat, he asks what kind of boat you're looking for, you say an easy one, you're new boat people, he says he's got one for you, takes you to a nearby boat dock and shows you a boat.
Mint Chris-Craft Roamer, 1965, sleeps ten. Practically drives itself.
You don't ask the price, or for any more details.
We'll take it
, you say. Naturally, it's perfect, room for the dogs and kids, so you jump on board, initiate the master bedroom, conceive.
Where should we go?
Anxious asks. You suggest going through the Panama Canal and then up to Alaska to ride some whales. He tries to explain that that may not be an option, but that you can go look at them; you say
Well you don't know, maybe we'll find some open-minded whales when we get there. All right. Whale-riding it
is
. Your first stop: New Orleans. You get off the boat, eat beignets and pralines and listen to music on the street and dance in someone's funeral, but then you worry whether that may not be a hundred percent cool, so you dance out of it just as quickly; wandering New Orleans you find a little dog roaming around, one of those ones that's like a hairless Chihuahua but with a head of floppy hair in his face and ridiculous ears, ears that say
I belong to you guys
, and you pick him up and get him all checked out at the vet and name him Flavio and jump back on the boat and Flavio goes right to the front of the boat and perches himself on the bow like a little hood ornament, wind blowing his ears back like ear sails, like the power from his little ear sails could take you to wherever your destiny might be.

You discover that you're having twins, a boy and a girl, because why not, and when they're born they just pop out, it's not like my pregnancy at all, it's painless, like
shoop
, two beautiful babies, Adeline-Mabel and Billiam, done, next. You home-school Adeline-Mabel and Billiam, heavy focus on life experience and the arts, you were never all that good at math or science, but there's plenty of science out there on the boat, and you sing songs, play guitar, and then you reach Alaska and a whale swims up next to the boat to let you on for a ride and it's spectacular, whale-riding, you feel like this is what it all led up to, this whale ride, you, a giant mammal, the salt water, the sea air, the waves, the sky. The whale brings you back to the boat so you can pick up the rest of the family, Adeline-Mabel and Billiam and Anxious, Flavio in front, and you whale off into the sea and that's it, the end.

—That's good, Mom. Graziella doesn't actually sing in
West Side Story
, but whatever, I guess.

—Seems like that makes it the perfect part for someone who's scared to sing in public.

—Good point. FYI, though, you can't get high when you're in AA.

—You still have to go to that?

— . . .

Y
ou return home to Baton Rouge energized and excited. You tell Dad every detail you can remember about the trip: the few sights you saw (
I went up in the Empire State Building! I went to Macy's and Gimbels! Oh, I've never seen such a thing as Macy's! Of course, the only thing I bought was a scarf on sale at Woolworth's
); every single word Carolina said about your singing (notable adjectives including
facile! bewitching! like molten silver!
); what you did with Audrey when she came to visit; your trip to the Automat (
Great fun! Food behind little doors!
); how you reunited with another friend who recently moved to the Upper West Side from Binghamton, a mezzo, who knows about an apartment you might share with her for the times when you return. Dad tries so hard to share your enthusiasm—he truly believes in your talent and is happy to see you so excited—but he feels this pulling you away from him, all of it, and that it's not in his power to hold on tight enough to keep you. A small part of you wishes he would, it would be so much easier, safer, but though you will travel back and forth for two whole years, you sense early on that you're putting off the inevitable. You continue to practice every day for hours, according to Carolina's instructions; you do fewer and fewer of the typical wife
things, but you also do the typical mom things, make supper, more sewing, reading to me (though at one point you are displeased with what you feel is my overly dramatic interpretation of Mother Goose:
It's not an opera, Mommy. You don't make your voice go up unless there's an exclamation point. Do it like how Daddy does it, just normal
, I say, which provokes in you a desire to swat me on the behind that you thankfully resist). And you think about New York City, and what's there for you, always, every minute of every day, no matter what you're doing.

On the next trip to New York, you call the handsome married tenor from the pay phone down the hall at the Barbizon just as soon as you put your bags down. He was hoping you'd call. He wants to know if you can meet right away, but the Barbizon has a curfew, which is in about an hour. He doesn't live far, tells you to meet him at Schrafft's and he'll have you back home on the dot; you freshen up your lipstick and run right outside into the New York night and this is without a doubt the most thrilling moment ever, more thrilling than your wedding day, more thrilling than your first opera performance, more thrilling even than what happens next, though that is up there too. You dash to Schrafft's, a couple of blocks away, you're Holly Golightly in your kitten heels, New York belongs to you right now, and frankly, no less than owning an entire city in this way will ever be enough. Which will be a problem later, but right now is yours. Handsome married tenor says all the right things in the first five minutes, holds your hand under the counter, you talk about the last few weeks, but this is all just time-filling, you share a milkshake that doesn't get finished, he glances at his watch at five past ten, your curfew, you don't know it but he's done this utterly on purpose, and even if you did know, you would not care one whit, all
cares about anything outside of now, this night, you and this man, simply do not exist.

In the morning, there are, of course, regrets. You play the evening over in your head: earlier it had felt like this was what life really is; there are still currents of it in your body, the city and the man; but right now all that's left is shame. You haven't forgotten what you learned in church and Sunday school, about good women and bad ones, or what was said when rumors went around Muscatine about the one or two loose women in town, and the payment due for this type of behavior (though the specifics of that were always vague to you, it seemed to have something to do with being spoiled for the right man); these weren't crimes, but it doesn't matter what the Christian punishment is, because you have now commenced the portion of your life in which you will punish yourself plenty. You try to call up Carolina's words, what were they, she had said this was okay, didn't she, you're sure of it, it doesn't feel okay today, but it will have to be okay, and thus ensues an endless amount of configuring in your head in which it is okay. It's happened in New York. A different, distant city. Your husband will never know. You've fibbed before, about a purchase here, a lateness there, and he never knew. It won't happen again. And it
won't
happen again, not with this man, not on this trip. You do not feel your very best, this morning, you did not get your beauty sleep, and you have a lesson later and you missed an extra hour you could have spent practicing this morning, and you want nothing, absolutely nothing to come between you and your future as an opera star, and you tell this man so. He claims he is crushed, that he would leave his wife and children for you; leaves messages upon messages at the Barbizon for you, flowers, gifts. You send the gifts back and are about to trash the flowers, but instead you give
them to the girl at the desk. You don't want to look at them, but they're too pretty to toss.

—You're very good at this. I bet maybe you did become a writer after all.

—I'm noticing that it's extremely uncomfortable but also way easier for me to write as you than to write as you writing me.

—I don't know what to say about that. Are you blaming me again?

—You don't have to say anything about it. I don't blame you for anything.

—Hah! You don't blame me for ruining your life. Right.

—I might have, when I was twenty-five and miserable. But my life isn't ruined. There's nothing to blame anyone for.