Made glorious, p.4
Made Glorious, page 4
Meanwhile, probably inspired by all that potential hippie cash, someone decided to revive the original musical. They cleaned it up, rewrote a few of the worst bits, and it made its debut this time off-Broadway, at the Martinson in the Public Theater, where it played for a good three years, received some Tonys, and was optioned for a movie.
The movie, another cult classic, was nothing like the original production, of course — nothing ever is, right? But they got Ian Holm as Warwicke, prince of Tillypoo; and Glenn Close cameoed as Lady Bearce, the knight trainer, a real gym teacher Trunchbull type, which . . . well, you can understand the hilarity there, seeing her in this role. It’s still played in old-timey art house movie theaters on the first day of spring, à la Rocky Horror — there’s a live cast who perform the parts in front of the giant screen playing the movie. Audience members play along with their own brown bag of props, the subtitles rolling so everyone can karaoke their way through the surprisingly catchy tunes. There are costume contests. Raffles for charity. Someone from the audience is selected to be the White Knight and preside over the whole show from a saddle on top of a pommel horse.
It’s mysterious enough to the general population to be a wonder, a delight, something familiar but not intimate, and it’s popular enough in the theater world to not be too obscure. The perfect balance must be struck. No one really wants to put on another production of The Music Man.
It’s a good pick. A romantic plot with sword fights and slapstick, which means Pam will have a huge turnout for auditions. Plenty of solos, which means everyone auditioning will delude themselves into believing they could snag one. A strong ensemble, which means everyone bypassed for the solos will still be able to join the cast.
Pam likely has a vision, something she’ll reveal in a grand, sweeping monologue during the first cast reading.
And what a cast there shall be! Students will clamor for the roles offered by this musical. There’s the charming, swashbuckling Thackery, the treacherous Lurkin, the hilarious Harold and Harolda, king and queen of Tillypoo —
But the role that’ll have everyone salivating is Joetta the Fox Maiden.
Let me tell you about Joetta. She’s the center of the show. She’s the Hamlet, the Tevye, the Jean Valjean. She’s the rare female character who gets the bulk of the good songs, and it’s a show-stealing part — usually women are lucky to get a handful of lines. You get a tiny space to make an impression, and that’s it.
Joetta’s the role of every theater girl’s dreams. Every senior would die to play this part. It’s not an old hag, or a sexless mother, or a one-dimensional villain, or a loopy ditz with the worst song in the production. Joetta is simply splendid.
The Elphaba, the Millie, the Blanche DuBois —
And there’s no better senior to play this role than Annie Neville.
There’s just one problem. Annie Neville won’t go anywhere near the drama department. Not anymore.
Because Annie Neville absolutely hates me.
Well, more than one problem, I should say. There’s really a series of problems, and they’re all nested inside one another, a matryoshka doll of dilemmas.
The biggest, most pressing of dilemmas: Annie Neville is in a cast. She broke her leg in three places, had it screwed back together, and is only now shifting to a walking cast. She’s been home since December, since the accident, and she’s due back in school next week — but it’ll be a bittersweet return. The broken leg not only knocked her on her ass; it also knocked her off the basketball team. Annie’s been the star of the Bosworth Princes since her sophomore year. She’s the one who led them to the state championship last spring.
Yes, she loved theater. She played Mary Warren in The Crucible, a casting decision that the rest of us would have taken as a hint from Pam, the carrot undoubtedly leading to a principal role in the spring musical. But Annie was ready to dedicate the rest of her senior year to basketball, since colleges wanted her to be the star of their courts for as long as she could stretch out a four-year education —
And then the car wreck.
It swept her right off the team. Not officially, I suppose. Officially, Annie’s still there, still has the team sweats, still has her number on her jersey, will probably still show up at practice and brood from the bench, because that’s the kind of person Annie is — hopelessly, ruthlessly dedicated.
All that potential, all those visions of Annie’s long blond ponytail swinging from the center of a college court, her bubblegum smile and California-blue eyes twinkling at the buzzer — gone. Gone with the snap of her femur, a concussion, and the smashed-up Dodge Neon that she’d purchased with two summers’ worth of nannying money.
Twist the matryoshkas in half, open them up, and see all that resentment, that shame, that sadness, unfairness, rage, despair, all of it packed inside, packed tight as dirt.
Would Annie even want to return to the drama department? She loved it, loved it as much as she loved anything. Some don’t believe a person can serve two masters, but Annie doesn’t do anything halfheartedly. She has heart enough for both basketball and the theater, and yet perhaps the fractures in her leg also fractured her ability to care about anything like that again.
In the very center of our nesting dolls, small and hard as a bullet, is Annie’s grudge against me, her loathing.
We were best friends. Sleepovers, swapping clothes, swapping secrets.
And I was driving the car that night she broke her leg.
Her hostility toward me is wonderfully logical, which works in my favor. The unhinged angers and fears are the hardest to break, because you cannot fight the irrational with the rational — it’s like throwing fire onto fire.
No, it’s perfectly understandable that Annie should hate me. Why her mother always says she’s sleeping whenever I call. Why she ignored the email I sent (only one email, because sending any more than that would have been unnecessary; Annie does what she wants the first time, with little to no floundering, and if she wanted to respond, she would have answered), asking if she needed me to bring her math book home from her locker. My handwritten letter of apology, too, garnered no reply.
But I need her.
I need her in the play.
Yes, I suppose it would be excellent for her spirits, to turn back to the drama club in the wake of her athletic tragedy, to find solace in her versatility — but I won’t pretend I’m motivated by such goodwill.
I promised you honesty, remember?
Perhaps if I were a better person, I’d let Annie go entirely. I’d stop calling. I’d let her sulk on the bench for the rest of the semester, let her get some pity trophy when the Princes fumble their first round in the playoffs. Let her graduate with some random picture of her in the drama club as her only yearbook presence. Annie Neville, member of the Princely Players, only one leading role, and a thankless one at that. Annie Neville, technically part of the Bosworth Princes but a permanent fixture on the bench, no minutes played on the court at all.
A bleak prospect, but perhaps if I were a good and decent person, I’d do just that.
I’ve never said I was good or decent, only that I am human.
And I need Annie Neville in the play. I need her name on that cast list, or nothing else will fall in line.
Without her, nothing else will work.
So after school today, I am walking the four-and-a-half miles to the Nevilles’ gorgeous, black-shuttered, white-brick Colonial, and I have three aims:
To convince Annie that she forgives me for the car wreck, despite her instincts telling her not to.
To convince Annie that she absolutely wants to audition for this play.
To convince her that the theater is where her passions truly lay all along. Annie, my dear, this busted-leg, broken-basketball-career situation needn’t be such a tragedy! Let me show you: Good Knight! Sweet Lady is a celebration, a revelation, an opportunity!
A hand, extended directly to her.
The role of a lifetime.
ANNIE NEVER EXPECTED A BROKEN LEG WOULD BE THIS PAINFUL.
She’s had injuries before. She’s been an athlete all her life. She’s survived sprains, taped fingers, shiners. The worst part about shattering her leg isn’t the pain as her bones fuse back together, no. It’s the pain of sitting. Day after day. Waiting to heal.
“Rest is a verb,” her well-meaning mother tells her. Mrs. Neville is echoing the coach for the Bosworth Princes, and the coach is a woman who did exactly what Annie hoped to do — starred in high school without peaking, went on to make her college team proud. The coach prioritizes her team’s recovery after tough practices, teaching them to listen to their bodies, know when they’re pushing too hard.
Right now, rest doesn’t feel like a verb to Annie. Neither does heal. They both feel like prisons.
They’re breaking her more than the car wreck did.
Annie sits in her bed. On her lap desk, she’s stacked several of her homework packets, most of them completed. The teachers at Bosworth have been thoughtful and supportive, letting her finish the last semester and begin this new one from her wretched bedroom nest.
Next week, she’ll be back. Back at school. She should be excited.
Her walking cast is a disappointment. She hobbles in it. It’s a hobbling cast. Her walk will never be the same.
Nothing about her will ever be the same.
Annie Neville will be returning to school in name only. The car wreck changed her. Crushed her. Stole her entire life. She can’t think about it without a stultifying rage coiling inside of her, and so she doesn’t.
Doesn’t think, doesn’t move. Certainly doesn’t run or jump or shoot.
Rests. Heals.
Her mother knocks on the door. “You’ve got a visitor.”
The door opens wider, and Rory King advances into the room, slowly, as if she hasn’t been in this very bedroom a thousand times before.
“Do you want a soda?” Mrs. Neville asks.
Rory shakes her head. “No, thank you.”
“Tell your mother I said hello.” Mrs. Neville pulls the door closed, leaving the two girls to suffocate alone in the silence.
What to call them? Friends?
They are still invited to the same social interactions, still locker partners. Mrs. Neville is still Rory’s emergency contact at Bosworth in case the office can’t get ahold of Ms. King. There’s still an association in the mind of everyone at school — you think of Rory, you think of Annie. They are a duo. An unlikely pair who could trace their affinity all the way back to a fateful meeting at a Shakespeare festival their sophomore year — and a two-year friendship in a cutthroat, competitive, academics-centered environment such as Bosworth Academy is a small miracle.
And Rory still knows to bring Annie her favorite Fruity Loops donut from Eddie’s to wave as a white flag.
She opens the paper bag, presenting Annie with the cereal-encrusted bribe.
“What are you doing here?” Annie cuts.
When Annie doesn’t take the donut from Rory’s hand, Rory sets the bag on the bed, the donut on the bag. Then she inhales, long and deep, no doubt summoning courage.
“Listen, I’m sorry. You’ve heard me say it, write it, pass it along through your mother. I’ll send it to you by Morse code or carrier pigeon if I have to. I’m so sorry this happened. I wish I could go back in time and change things. I wish it had been my leg that was smashed.”
Rory’s only injury from the car wreck was a jagged scratch on her wrist, a triangle of glass from the window temporarily embedded in her flesh. It wasn’t even deep enough for stitches.
Her chin trembles now as she surveys Annie, but at some point she can’t stand it anymore and glances down at her feet on the rug. “I wish I could change things so you could still play basketball and I could still have you in my life. That’s what I wish most of all. That I could have my best friend back.”
Annie resists, then exhales, her eyes flooding with tears.
“I didn’t mean to do it,” Rory goes on in a tiny, watery voice. “It was an accident. I can’t tell you how sorry I am —”
“Of course you didn’t mean to,” Annie finally says. “That cat came out of nowhere.”
Came out of nowhere. That’s what Rory kept wailing the night of the wreck. She’d swerved to avoid an asshole of a tabby cat that leaped out from between two garbage cans — and had rammed directly into a spare barrier that had been plunked on the side of the quiet suburban road by construction workers repainting the line.
“Fucking cat,” Rory mutters. “I should have just run it over. If you’re stupid enough to run under the wheels of a car, you’re too stupid to live.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Ror. It’s not your fault.” Annie repeats this — not because she doesn’t believe it, but because she’s had to say it to so many other people that she’s weary of it now and wants to make sure it sinks in. “But . . . my scholarship. My championship games. Senior year — god, Rory, I’ve been looking forward to this since ninth grade. Coach was starting me, those people from Kansas were excited to come watch, and then . . . just gone. My whole world. Gone.”
She’s already cried over this situation, but apparently she needs to cry some more — and suppressing the tears now would only mean a torrent of tears later. It’s as futile as holding a beach ball underwater.
And Rory cries the tears of an apologetic, guilty friend, the hapless girl who has gotten someone else tangled up in the most traumatizing and challenging scenario of her life but still has to live her own life unfettered, like some lazy asshole walking away from a spill he caused in a grocery store.
But this kind of disaster can be endured if you are enduring it with someone else.
So I suppose they are still friends after all.
“Annie, listen. I’m not trying to be pushy or anything.” Rory reaches into her backpack, pulls out a yellow paper. “I know basketball was — is — everything to you. Your whole world, you said. But you’ve always had two worlds, really. Basketball and drama club. And look what we’re doing for the spring musical.”
She sets the paper right on Annie’s lap desk, covering up the homework packets.
Annie scans the flyer. Scans the title. Rory watches for signs of life — signs that Annie might be willing to come to life again for this.
Annie’s game face is impeccable.
Annie the Boulder, they called her on the court. Nothing could bowl her over. Nothing could get under her skin. She was immovable.
Rory flops onto the bed, daring to lean toward Annie, her hand very close to where Annie’s dressed, healing leg rests on the comforter.
But not even Annie the Boulder can resist Good Knight! Sweet Lady. “Isn’t this — ? I mean, Pam usually picks more conservative musicals. This is kind of hip and trendy for her, isn’t it?”
Rory shrugs. “Must be a midlife crisis. Or maybe someone pushed her in this direction. Someone young and hip and trendy.”
Annie rolls her eyes, but hidden in the purse of her lips is a smile. “This is pretty cool, actually.”
“Your favorite,” Rory adds, as if Annie could forget. She doesn’t say what they are both thinking — that this musical is the only thing that could drag Annie out of her sickbed and back to the auditorium.
There it is — a glimmer in Annie’s eye. A spark, a need to challenge this unspoken prophecy, which is how Rory knows she’s on the right track. Annie loves a fight — but she won’t fight if it’s already a lost cause. She’s fair that way.
“I want us to be friends again,” Rory says slowly, “if you can forgive me. I understand if you don’t. But you know what else I want? I want to see you as Joetta.”
Annie’s long blond hair, her statuesque figure, her stalwart regality, so reminiscent of a younger Vanessa Redgrave — the perfect person to play the part of the knighted princess. Joetta has to wear gowns but still armor up, carry a sword and a shield. She has to be heartthrob and heroine. Annie is both of those things from dawn until dark.
“Clarissa will get it,” Annie says. “She’s got her eye on every lead. And it’s senior year — she’ll act like it’s owed to her, and Pam will agree. Plus Pam’s still pissed at me for doing basketball last spring instead of the musical. She’ll never give me a fair chance.”
“Clarissa’s too bubbly for Joetta,” Rory points out. “She’ll be better as Catherine. But she’s been so busy with student council. Maybe she won’t even audition.”
A lie — Clarissa lives at the auditorium. She’ll audition. She’ll be expecting this lead. She’ll try to get Pam to see Joetta as a sunny, peppy Sweet Valley twin of a princess.
“Joetta has to be someone mysterious and wise, someone effortlessly beautiful,” Rory presses. “Meryl Streep. Cate Blanchett. Rachel Weisz. You’re one of them. You were born to play Joetta!”
Annie still stares at the paper, as if brainstorming more excuses.
“You come back on Monday, right? The parent meeting is Tuesday. Auditions are the week after that. Please, Annie, come on! It’s our last show. Senior year. This is the first spring you don’t have a conflict with basketball!” Rory swallows, then says, “Maybe your leg is a blessing in disguise —”
At that, Annie wakes up. Out of her trance. Her mouth twitches. “A blessing in disguise? Really? You think this is a blessing? You think I should be grateful this happened?”
Rory stands up. “That’s not what I mean! I just mean something good could come out of this —”
“Something good? You don’t think the hours of surgery were good? You don’t think it’s been good to watch my scholarships go to Brenna and Lucy instead? And they won’t even play! What a waste of money, bringing those two onto a college team just to fill a spot — my spot. They’re each taking a spot that should have gone to me. And you’re saying I should hobble onto the auditorium stage and end the year with a little song and dance? Go fuck yourself, Rory.”
Rory doesn’t move. Annie is the boulder, but Rory is the best friend of the boulder, and she has learned to be stalwart in her own way.
