The Me You See (26 page)

I hated Granite Ledge.

My eyes darted across the stage; I needed to identify the
shooter. I needed to find my target.

An actor who appeared to have already been shot once limped
across the stage cradling his bleeding, broken arm and called out, “You don’t
mean to…you don’t want to…” before a second bullet ripped through his face.

And then, I saw my target.

Shit.

A woman nearby, frantic at hearing another shot fired,
hurled herself closer to me. She grabbed at the waist of my pants, setting all
her weight near my midsection as though she was trying to climb over me to
safety.

“Keep your head down!” I hissed, pushing her face towards
the floor. Then I moved with calculated starts and stops, slinking my way from
aisle to aisle, hiding behind chairs until finally I made it to the quarter
wall near the orchestra pit. There was too much happening on stage for anyone
up there to realize that’s where I was headed.

But I couldn’t screw it up. I needed a good shot. It wasn’t
like Hollywood. In Hollywood the perfect shot presented itself, the hero took
it, the music swelled and the credits rolled. In real life, civilians stood up,
got in the way, chaos erupted and the good guy lost sight of where he had
aimed.

I needed a good shot.

We trained for how to make split second decisions—because every
decision mattered. I racked my brain for all the black and white, logical, no
nonsense training I’d sat through since before I’d even worked an actual day on
the street. It was all there in my brain. I needed each piece of it now.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something move within
the curtain fabric on stage. Someone was hiding inside it. I could see the
bottoms of their shoes; I could tell it was a woman from the glossy white leather
flats. I wanted to get to her. To tell her to stop moving. To stand still so
she wasn’t seen. I wanted to tell her…

Pop.

Pop.

Pop.

Within seconds, the young woman body’s slumped to the
floor, the white lace from her costume slowly turning as red as the curtain
she’d tried to hide behind.

In training they tell you that once you have identified the
suspect in a mass shooting situation, you don’t negotiate. It’s not like the
movies. You don’t try to talk to them. You don’t try reasoning. You see them
and you take them out.

Finish.

Them.

Off.

I turned.

I had my shot.

I took aim.

But there’s a millisecond there to think. There’s a minuscule
fraction of a moment for something to go through your mind. And my last thought
before I squeezed my trigger three times was that all the training in the world
would never have prepared me for Stefia, with her impenetrable eyes, being the
one I’d have to shoot.

There is magic within the molecules of theater air. It is
easier to breathe. Each gasp fills your lungs to bursting; your brain springs
alive with the tingle of unleashed creativity.

Theater animates you. It grows you. Theater helps you know
you exist.

If real life were like theater, you would write the script.
You could choose your setting and your props. If a mistake was made, you could
start over.

Take a break.

Run the scene again.

If someone would have handed me that evening as a script,
it would have been easier. If someone could have blocked the scene, I’d have
known what to do. If I could have been directed where to put my hand and turn
my face when his eyes questioned me, how to react when Niles asked if something
was wrong, the moment would have been beautiful. But instead I heaved, retching
out the news like it was poison.

“Pregnant?” he said slowly, like the word was sticky on his
lips. He combed the fingers of one hand through his hair, blurting out
something like a laugh.

I forced my lips to bend into a smile. It was a pathetic
attempt.

“Wait. You’re serious?” he asked. “You’re for real?”

“For real.”

I couldn’t read him. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking.
He sat up from his reclined position on the couch and sucked air through his
closed teeth; it sounded like a leaky tire, only the air was going the wrong
way. A volatile stillness crept into the house. It was so quiet all I could
hear was the bubbler on the exotic fish tank in Niles’ office.

“How long have you known?”

“Long enough.”

He kept his face guarded. He grazed the pad of his thumb
back and forth across the leather of the couch we sat on and focused so hard on
the window above us I thought he was trying to separate the panes of glass in
his vision.

By all rights, it should have been a lovely scene—the warm
glow of the fireplace reflecting off the red of the couch, the clink of two ice
cubes in his snifter of brandy, sultry jazz standards playing through his iPod.
It was how I would have planned the scenery if it were up to me to write the
scene.

But it wasn’t up to me to write it, and it wasn’t a lovely
scene. I stood from the couch and moved towards the fireplace, fingering the
framed publicity shots he’d crammed like trophies on his mantle.

“So, then,” I breathed out. “What are you thinking?”

Niles sat on the edge of the couch, elbows on his knees
with his hands cupped around his snifter.

“I’m thinking
darling, the things we go through together
…”

I put my hands out in front of the fireplace, soaking up
the compassionate heat of the flames in my palms.

“I’m also thinking,” he said, rising from the couch, “that
I need more brandy.”

He padded to the kitchen to half fill his glass, and then
poked his head back around the corner.

“You want some?” he asked.

“Want some what?”

“Brandy.”

I stared at him, unsure of why he would offer.

“No?” he said. “Just me, then. Okay.”

My news had lit his nerves and complicated his behavior. He
took a sip of brandy and set what was left on the mantle. He stood next to me
and watched the flames etch into the cedar log that filled the room with the
smell of woody goodness.

“So,” I started, wishing again that I had a script to
follow.

“Yes?”

“Niles, what are we going to do?”

His steely eyes searched mine. Maybe he was hoping I would
answer my own question. Then he slowly pulled me into his chest and kissed the
top of my head. He wrapped his arms around me, keeping his chin settled in my
hair.

“Now, Stefia,” he said. “You know we can get through this,
right?”

I settled my face on his chest and nestled into the scent
of him. I breathed in who he was; older, wiser, warmer. My head spun in circles
coming to terms with the idea that part of that—part of him—lived within me
now.

Pastor Walter was right. Everything was going to be okay.
Why had I second guessed it? Why had I doubted at all?

The embrace Niles held me in swayed ever so slightly, and
when I looked up into his eyes, his lips played out what I could only describe
as a serious smile. I knew it was not the alcohol causing him to rock; his
tolerance was much higher than what he’d sipped on that night. No, the movement
was actually an invitation to dance. And so we swayed in time to Ella
Fitzgerald’s
Someone To Watch Over Me
and the snap of the cedar log in
the fireplace.

It was beautiful. And for that single breath of perfection,
I was glad I hadn’t written the scene of how the night would go because I never
would have captured it with such restoring grace.

The song ended, signaling our dance was over and Niles gave
a sweeping bow. And I didn’t yet know it, but he’d disarmed me by the upturn at
the corner of his mouth, all the while keeping something hidden behind his
eyes.

He grabbed for another sip of his brandy and then patted at
his pockets like he was searching for car keys. Finding nothing, he stepped to
the kitchen, checked the top of the refrigerator, and found what he was looking
for.

His wallet.

He opened it and set five crisp hundred dollar bills on the
mantle, fanning them out where they laid.

“That should be enough to take care of it,” he said. “If
not, let me know.”

My mouth went dry.

“Take care of it?” I asked.

He swallowed his last sip of brandy.

“Let yourself out,” he said, kissing my forehead. “Okay?”

Then he walked up to his bedroom with his empty snifter and
quietly closed his door.

**

We didn’t talk for two weeks. I went to rehearsal as
normal, but he stayed away from the theater. I knew we needed to clear the
air—opening night was only a week away. So on a chilly evening after rehearsal,
I called him from the theater and said my car wouldn’t start and I needed a ride.
He showed up fifteen minutes later and found me sitting alone on the edge of
the stage.

“No one else could drive you home?” he asked, blowing the
chill from his hands.

“My car is fine. I wanted to talk to you.”

“I figured as much.”

“Here,” I said, sliding off the stage to place a coiled wad
of cash in his hand.

He eyed me curiously, and then counted the money.

“But…this is five hundred dollars.”

“Were you expecting change?” I asked.

“I wasn’t expecting you to bring me anything back.”

“I didn’t need the money.”

“You paid for it yourself?”

“No,” I said. “I’m not having an abortion.”

He didn’t smile. He didn’t laugh. He didn’t move a muscle.

“Tell me you are joking, Stefia.”

“I could,” I said, rubbing at my elbow in a nervous habit,
“but then I’d be lying.”

“This isn’t funny.”

“I didn’t mean for it to be.”

He slapped his hand up to the winter hat still on his head
and ripped it off in one swoop.

“Damn it, Stefia, don’t do this!” He balled up the hat and
tossed it at the ground. “You’ll ruin your future. You’ll ruin this theater.”

“This theater?” I laughed. “How does me keeping a baby ruin
this building?”

“Not the building, the
theater
,” he said, stressing
the word to show I’d missed the difference. “We are the theater; don’t you get
that by now? My brains and money, your beauty and talent…you’re just going to
throw that away for a kid?”

“Trust me, Niles. I know what I’m doing.”

“You have no goddamn clue what you’re doing!”

His eyes spun wildly around the room, first up to the
flies, then across the stage, then around him in the aisle. Dragging his hands
through his hair and messing it up more than his hat already had, he exhaled
forcefully and muttered something I didn’t fully hear.

“What?”

 “I said if you keep that kid, it’s not mine.”

If I would have written the script, I’d have known he was
going to say that. I would have prepared a witty response to follow his line.
But I hadn’t written the script so his words were like a blade pulled from
nowhere and twisted into my gut.

“No one will ever know it’s yours...” I finally said,
swallowing a hard, dry lump. But he wouldn’t stop. Taking him out of the
picture and removing his responsibility only further irritated the situation.

“You keep that kid and I guarantee you’ll never work in any
theater around here again,” he said and scowled. His eyes glared with intensity
and turned the skin of my face hot. “I know people, Stefia. I’ll make sure you
never make it on stage anywhere.”

“Niles…”

“I’m not joking, Stefia. You can’t keep this kid. You can’t
do theater with baggage. You can’t…”

“Baggage?” I screamed. “You mean someone you care about?”

“I mean something that holds you back,” he spit out.
“Something you’re putting before the theater. Something that distracts you…”

“You don’t have anything holding you back? You don’t have
anything you’re putting before the theater?”

“Nothing.”

“Really, Niles?”

“Really.”

“Then what am I?”

My question smothered the room in silence. Time seemed slow
and fat, sloshing through like humidity, as I lingered for the answer Niles
held on his lips.

“You, Stefia, are an amazingly talented, beautiful
seventeen-year-old girl who fucked up.”

I felt him at my center, cutting through the mess of
everything that had tangled us together. His face was completely emotionless
and hard as he deflected any blame that was his to take. He plucked his hat
from where he’d thrown it and pulled it down over his ears. He adjusted his
coat, pushing the collar up around his neck.