“There are people who can only see the roles we play, and there are people who can only see the actors pretending. But it’s a very rare and strange thing that a person has the power to see both at once: this kind of double vision is a gift. If your daughters are beginning to frighten you, then it is because they are beginning to acquire it. I am speaking mostly to the woman beneath Mrs. Winter, Mrs. Sibley, Mrs. Odets, and the rest,” she adds, “the actor I pretend not to see, the woman who plays all women, all the women but never the girls, never the daughters. The role of the daughter is lost to you now, as you know.”
She is gesturing with one hand cupped and empty and upturned. The mothers are nodding.
“Let me introduce my first student now,” she says, “a student of St. Margaret’s College who has been studying with me for almost four years. Please let’s put our hands together and welcome to the stage Briony-Rose.”
October
“Stanley?” the boy Felix says, pausing at the door of the Green Room and looking in with an air of officious concern. “Are you all right?”
“I’m going to bail,” Stanley says into the mirror. His face is white. “I can’t do this. The girl’s parents are in the audience. I can’t do it. I’m going to do a runner. I don’t want to be an actor anymore. I can’t follow through. It’ll bugger up the production, but I can’t do it, I’m sorry. I can’t.”
“You’re nuts,” Felix says in what he believes to be a soothing voice. “Think of all the money we’ve spent. If we don’t get box office it’ll come out of everyone’s pocket. Everyone will hate you. You can’t pull out now.”
“I’ll move,” Stanley says. “I’ll move away for a while until everyone has forgotten.” He wants to put his face in his hands, but he has already been through the makeup line and he knows his lipstick and powder will smudge. He howls suddenly and slaps the vanity with both hands. “Why are they here? Why? What kind of sadist parents actually want to see a play about their daughter getting physically abused?”
“What?” Felix says, listening properly for the first time. “You mean the parents of the actual girl? The Victoria girl?”
Stanley moans in reply and kicks the radiator hard. He feels a stab of welcome pain shoot up his calf and linger there.
“Rubbish,” Felix says. “How would they even know about it? Nobody knows what it’s about. It’s opening night. Not even the tutors know. Where did you hear that?”
Stanley turns doleful eyes to Felix and then shakes his head. “I’ve seen them,” he says. “In the foyer. With her little sister.”
There is a pause. Then Felix says, “What kind of sadist parents—”
“She’s come to see me,” Stanley says. “Isolde’s come to see me. As a surprise.”
“Who?” Felix says, by now thoroughly bewildered.
“Isolde,” Stanley says. “Oh, God. And she brought her parents. She doesn’t know what it’s about, she doesn’t know about Victoria or any of it, and they’re just about to—oh, God. I can’t do it. Not in front of them.”
There is a glimmer of panic in Felix’s eyes as it dawns upon him that Stanley might really make good his word and run away. He looks quickly over his shoulder down the dressing-room corridor, and then says, “Your parents here tonight?”
Stanley gives another howl. “My dad,” he says. “To make matters a whole fucking lot worse. My dad.”
“Mine too,” Felix says. Then he says, tentatively, “If the girl’s parents really are here, Stanley, they’ve got to be prepared to be shocked. You can’t actually buy tickets to a show like this and expect to keep your… your innocence. You can’t. They must know what they’re in for. And they’re not kids.”
“But they don’t know what it’s about yet,” Stanley says. “It’s opening night. Where in the fucking program does it say that this is a play about their daughter? It doesn’t. They’re coming to see me, as a surprise.” He looks again at himself in the mirror. The makeup artist has done a good job, powdering over his blond eyebrows and drawing in black arches that are higher and more angular than his own. He has a little red pout, and all the natural shadows of his face are thickened with gray: the creases around his mouth, the hollows of his cheeks, under his chin. His eyes are ringed with black.
Felix is still looking thoroughly confused. “On the bright side,” he says, trying hard to reclaim the situation, “you’re absolutely unrecognizable in your costume and everything. If that’s what you’re worried about. With the parents.”
“Yeah,” Stanley says. Underneath his makeup his jaw is set and his eyes are red and his face is pale, but in the mirror the pouting caricature that is Stanley’s reflection twitches his head and even seems to smile.
Saturday
Isolde and her parents are already on stage when the lights come up, Isolde on the far end of the settee and leaning still further outward, over the arm, every inch of her body craning away from the other two figures on stage: a stout mustached father and a bony mother who buttons all the way to the top.
“What you need to understand,” Isolde’s mother says, “is that this little taste of what could be is inside you now. You’ve swallowed it up, like candy from a brown paper bag.”
“What you need to understand,” Isolde’s father says, “is now that we know about it, it won’t happen anymore.”
“Remember that the only difference between you and any of the others,” Isolde’s mother says, “is at what price, and under what circumstances, you are prepared to yield.”
Stanley and his father enter, through the frosted French doors in the middle of the false backdrop, preceded by Victoria who has her palm out like she is showing the way.
“He’s here,” she says unnecessarily, making more of the line than she ought to, because it is her only one and she wants to be seen. The mother makes a flapping motion with her hand and Victoria exits, walking with the pursed self-conscious walk of an actor who has too small a part and so has practiced a single move to excess.
The group stand stationary for a moment, Stanley and Isolde looking at each other with an intense smoldering glare that is lost to everyone in the upper circle and in the restricted-viewing sections of the stalls.
Then Isolde’s father says stiffly, “I was just about to say, now that we’re here, let’s sort this out in a civilized way, like adults. But just as it was on the tip of my tongue I realized that the word adults wasn’t entirely appropriate, given the circumstances.”
There is a silence. Stanley’s father is the first to sit down.
Saturday
“The purpose of this recital,” the saxophone teacher says, “is really to let the students speak for themselves, as it were. It is really just a vehicle to let them voice their own growth, their own awakening, lay it bare like a virgin at an altar for all of you to see. While you are watching tonight, a good question to ask yourselves might be, What is this performance telling me about the performer? What naked shape emerges out of the rarefying mist of this girl’s music? What private things are being offered, and what private things are being betrayed?”
Julia is sitting in the second row with her sax held loosely on her lap, waiting for her cue to rise and take the stage.
“I mention this,” the saxophone teacher is saying, “because my next student has had a very difficult year. Many things have happened to complicate this girl’s life this year, and if we are very lucky we will see some of these tragic and beautiful things reflected in her performance tonight. Through her misery, every note she plays for you will become a lyric, and she will conjure up much more than a sense of longing and of loss. If we are very lucky, and this is my hope, then we will be able to see the vast extent of the hardship she has endured this year: we will see the unspeakable incest of two women together, played out before us like a rare recording stolen from a vault. You will have to listen carefully.”
Julia’s palms are cold and sweaty, and she wipes them roughly on the knees of her trousers.
“
And just before I welcome Julia to the stage,” the saxophone teacher says, “can I just thank all the mothers here tonight for allowing me the strange satisfaction that is got by saying something that nobody hears.”
October
“You didn’t say he had the main part, Issie,” Isolde’s father says. He points to the program. “Look, his name’s right at the top.”
“He hasn’t told me anything,” Isolde says. “He even said don’t bother coming. I guess he was nervous.” She is looking up at the stage, tense with vicarious pre-show nerves. The lights are on in the orchestra pit and she can see the musicians emerging from the hidden half-door in the wall to take their places in front of their instruments. As they sit down they disappear from Isolde’s view.
“Queen of Spades,” Isolde’s father reads out loud, and then takes his reading glasses off and says “What about this, eh?” and elbows Isolde in a jovial sort of way.
“Maybe we shouldn’t have come on opening night,” Isolde’s mother says, tucking her knees sideways to let a young couple pass. “If he’s nervous.”
“I told you, he doesn’t know I’m coming tonight anyway,” Isolde says. She is craning around to look at the crowd. She watches a throng of senior students from the Institute flood into a wedge of seating in the rear of the stalls and suddenly feels foolish that she has brought her parents with her. The acting students are all clasping each other and hugging and gesticulating madly as they talk amongst themselves. Isolde imagines pushing her way backstage to surprise Stanley at the end of the night, knocking on his dressing-room door and waving shyly as she stands on the threshold with the actors shrieking and shouting up and down the corridor behind her, and all at once she suffers a horrible feeling of dread.
“We don’t have to go backstage,” she says out loud, to reassure herself. “I can just call him tomorrow.”
She hasn’t spoken to Stanley since the fight on the side of the road.
“Isn’t it posh,” Isolde’s father says. “Look at that plasterwork on the arch. That’s a beautiful job.”
The band starts up and the house lights begin to fade.
“I wish I’d got some mints now,” Isolde’s mum says. “I hope there’s a half-time.”
October
“It’s always—and only—vicarious,” the Head of Movement is saying, drumming his fingers impatiently on the glossy cover of the program that is lying on his knee. The cover shows a caricatured girl in pigtails and a school uniform, and the title of the play: The Bedpost Queen. The Head of Acting is craning around to look out over the crowd, and isn’t really listening, but the Head of Movement is speaking with a strange tight urgency that cannot wait for an audience, and anyway the words are mostly for himself. He says, “You never get around that aspect. Even at your most effective, your most vivacious and inspirational, you’re always just… looking on.”
September
“Do you know something?” Stanley’s father says, leaning down the couch toward Isolde. She turns her head, so they are profiled there against the cream: her delicate upturned pout, his sunken cheek and lantern jaw.
“When I do a group therapy session,” Stanley’s father says, “for my work—say if I have six or seven or more clients in a room, maybe a whole family if that’s what I’m working on—my policy at first is to say absolutely nothing. I ask questions, invite people to speak, bring up issues, but I say nothing about what I think. I don’t even hint. I do this for the first session, and the second.
“By the end of the second everyone’s itching. They want to know who this guy is, this psychologist who only listens, sits and listens and sometimes asks a question, always a mild question, never provocative, never acute. I cost too much, I’m too well known, just to listen. They become wary of me. They bicker among themselves and then look sideways, daring me to act.
“I leave early, always. I never stick around. I never invite them to know me better. I hold them apart, away from me, and by the third session when I walk into the room they’re like mice. All their dissension has melted away and their attention is focused entirely on me, on me absolutely. And then—” Stanley’s father pinches his fingertips together and then releases them like a puff of smoke. “After that, I can say anything,” he says. “The third session is golden. They listen to whatever I say. They hear me.”
“Does this story have a moral that has something to do with virginity?” Isolde says, a little nervously.
“No moral,” Stanley’s father says. “I don’t do morals. I do dirty jokes, and I do stories to pass the time.”
“Good,” Isolde says. She turns away, and the shadows on her face disperse as she is swallowed by the glaring fog of the footlights and beyond.
Stanley’s father looks at her with compassion and says, “Virginity is a myth, by the way. There is no on–off switch, no point of no return. It’s just a first experience like any other. Everything surrounding it, all the lights and curtains and special effects—that’s all just part of the myth.”
Isolde turns back to look at him and all the shadows return, flooding back to fill the dark side of her face so she is once again halved, like a waning moon.
Stanley’s father smiles. He says, “Stop believing.”
Saturday
“But still the counseling sessions persisted,” Julia is saying, “clinging to the school calendar like a baked stain that nobody was willing to chip away. Still we met to discuss the dubious rape of the girl who unbuttoned her shirt collar right down to the central white rosebud of her bra. We sat together and talked about the girl who sucked on a red lollipop at lunchtime rehearsal and let the boiled candy ball tug her lower lip down ever so slightly, so her mouth opened and you could see the moist rolling of her tongue.
“And Mr. Saladin,” she continues, relentlessly. “Mr. Saladin, who need only have waited for the midnight stroke in five months’ time, the stroke that would transform Victoria from a child into an adult as surely as a carriage into a pumpkin, or a saddled horse into a dirty common kitchen mouse. It could have even been a birthday present, if he had only waited. At our counseling sessions we learned that Mr. Saladin’s crime was, first and foremost, impatience. We learned that the moral is: They stumble that run fast.”
The mothers are captivated.
“No, we didn’t,” Julia says. “We didn’t learn that at all.”
She speaks like a magician or a ringmaster.
“We learned that everything in the world divides in two: good and evil, male and female, truth and falsehood, child and adult, pleasure and pain. We learned that the counselor possessed a map, a map that would make everything make sense. A key. Like in a theater program where you have the actors’ names on one side and the list of characters on the other—some neat division that divides the illusive from the real. We learned that there is a distinction—that there is always a distinction—between the performance and the performer, the reality and the lie. We learned that there is no middle ground.”
Julia surveys her audience.
“Only those who watch,” she says, “and those who suffer being watched.”
The mothers don’t dare to rustle.
“But the counselor lied,” Julia says. “You lied. You lied about the pain of it, the unsimple mess of it, immeasurably more thorny and wretched and raw than you could ever remember, with the gauze veil of every year that passes settling over your eyes, thicker and thicker until even your own childhood dissolves into the mist.”
The saxophone teacher is watching Julia from the side of the stage. She has a lump in her throat and a tight aching feeling in her chest. It might be pride.
“Just think,” Julia is saying, “Victoria is probably with Mr. Saladin tonight, right now, laid out in an adolescent flush of pleasure somewhere, while her sister and her parents sit in the bruising dark of an auditorium on the other side of town. She is probably naked and crooning and stretched over him with her body limp and butter-slick. He is probably whispering into her hair the dw
indling number of days until she becomes her own self, the day when her body becomes her own, the day when her body becomes his own. He is probably stroking her with the callused heel of his weathered adult hand.”
She looks at the mothers.
“And you wish you were there,” Julia says softly. “You wish you were there.”
Saturday
Isolde and Julia are alone against the black cloth of the stage. There is no set or scenery. They are both wearing their school uniform, but differently: Isolde’s is clean and pressed, and Julia’s is limp and darned and grubby and artful. They look across at each other.
Isolde says, “Is it because I didn’t learn to love myself that I chose to bury myself instead in the reassuring strangeness of a body that was without that essential similarity which would force me to compare? With you I would have been doubled, intensified, mirrored back. With him our differences canceled out to nothing.”
“Yes,” Julia says. “But that’s only part of it.”
Isolde says, “Is it because I was scared, then? Is it because there wasn’t a template for it, and the unexpected hugeness of my innocence, the sheer and terrible abyss of my unknowing, was simply too alien, too frightening? It was just too big for me—too big for me to hold inside myself, like something perfect or tragic or sublime.”
“Yes,” Julia says.
“I’ve never felt like that before, Julia,” Isolde says. “Scared like that.”
“Don’t worry,” Julia says. “You never will again.”
The lights change.
“I remember being in your car outside my house,” Isolde says, “both of us sitting there in the pale gray of the streetlight with our seat belts holding us apart, our seat belts crossed over our chests, strapping us against the crocodile vinyl, holding us flat. And you turned to look at me and gave a little bit of a laugh, like you were really nervous, and you bit your lip and let some of your hair fall across your face and you didn’t tuck it back. And then you said, Can I just…? and you let the question die and you reached up your hand to cup underneath my chin, reaching right over, straining against your seat belt that was pulling you back, reining you in, holding you there. I was so scared. I remember licking my lip. I remember my mouth was dry. I remember you kissed me.”