Circles (3 page)

“Romeo’s shallow,” her mother said. “He’s a typical, macho teenager. At the beginning of the play, he’s madly in love with Rosaline. Then he goes to a dance, sees Juliet, and in a few seconds, is even more madly in love with her, just because she’s prettier. He’s got no character. But Benedick ...”

Beebe didn’t want to hear about Benedick. It was bad enough that her mother had insisted on naming her Beatrice—her father had preferred Miranda from
The Tempest,
a much prettier name as far as Beebe was concerned—but the two lovers in
Much Ado About Nothing
just yacked and yacked like middle-aged adults. They lacked the passion and ferocity of the lovers in
Romeo and Juliet.

“People change,” Beebe always said, defending Romeo. “You said you liked somebody in your acting company until you met Dad.”

“Yes, but I fell in love with Dad because of what he was, not for what he looked like. Ted Ritter, the guy in my company, was very good-looking, but he was kind of shallow too, just like Romeo.”

“People change,” Beebe repeated stubbornly. And maybe Dave would change too. Right now, he and Jennifer Evans/Juliet were going around together. They’d been together since last year when both of them had gotten the leading roles in
Twelfth Night.

Now they were both up on stage, rehearsing scene 5, the big one where Romeo sees Juliet for the first time. Beebe clenched her fists, and whispered the words along with Dave:

“What lady is that which doth enrich the hand

Of yonder knight?”

“Don’t mumble,” Mrs. Kronberger said, “and remember to keep your chin up. We’re losing half the words out here.”

Dave nodded and smiled good-naturedly at her. Beebe’s heart beat faster. How good-looking he was with his short, curly brown hair, his large, dark eyes, his slim, graceful figure. And how nice he was—for such a boy, such a star. He wasn’t at all conceited or mean-spirited. Just the other day when she met him in the hall, and dropped her notebook and all the papers had gone flying, he’d helped her pick everything up, laughing and making her feel almost good about dropping it, almost as if she’d finally done something right, something to get his attention and approval.

His voice wasn’t really projecting well, but there were a couple of kids horsing around over on the left side of the auditorium. She shot them a ferocious look as Romeo mumbled:

“O! she doth teach the torches to burn bright.

It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night

Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop’s ear;”

“Louder and slower, louder and slower,” Mrs. Kronberger repeated. “And get a little more feeling into it. You’re not reading a shopping list.”

“Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!”

Jennifer Evans/Juliet walked over to the front of the stage and called out, “Mrs. Kronberger, I’m going to have to go in fifteen minutes.”

“I know, I know,” said the teacher. “You have to go to the dentist. I know.”

“Well, can we just move ahead to my part?”

“We purposely moved on ahead to scene five and skipped the first scene so we could accommodate you,” Mrs. Kronberger said crankily. “I thought your appointment was at four-thirty.”

“No, it’s at four,” Jennifer said gently.

“I don’t know why there’s always a bunch of people who have to go to the dentist during rehearsals,” Mrs. Kronberger said even more crankily. “What is it with this generation anyway? I never went to the dentist when I was your age.”

“So would it be okay to do the end of the scene now?” Jennifer coaxed. “I’ll try to make my appointments later from now on.”

“No, it’s not okay,” Mrs. Kronberger said savagely. “I just don’t want to rush through this scene. Especially since everybody else is here for a change. Where is your understudy?”

Beebe stood up immediately. Her legs were trembling, but she stood up. It was going to happen, finally. Now. She was going to stand up there on the stage with Dave, and hold the part in front of her, and pretend to read the lines that she already knew by heart:

“Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,

Which mannerly devotion shows in this;

For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch,

And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.”

And he would take her hand, and he would pull her close to him, and after a while, he would say:

“Then move not, while my prayers’ effect I take.

Thus from my lips, by thine, my sin is purg’d.”

And then he would kiss her, and she would ...

“I really will try, Mrs. Kronberger, to make my appointments later. Honestly, I will. And you know this is only the first time it’s happened,” Jennifer said.

Mrs. Kronberger mumbled something and waved a hand impatiently. But then she told the others to sit down while Romeo and Juliet went into their big introduction scene.

Beebe sat down too. She was bitterly disappointed but relieved at the same time. She watched as Jennifer and Dave moved together to the center of the stage. Mrs. Kronberger started to cough, and while she was coughing, the two leading players turned towards each other smiling. Beebe jealously saw how Dave leaned over and put an arm around Jennifer’s shoulder as he whispered something to her. Jennifer moved into the circle of his arm, and settled comfortably against him.

There was a deep sorrow inside of Beebe as she watched the two of them together—Dave with his handsome, bright, humorous face so close to Jennifer’s long blonde hair. And Jennifer looking up at him, out of her large blue eyes. She was such a pretty girl it hurt Beebe. Such a pretty girl and, yes, such a nice girl too.

Why did she have to be so pretty and so nice? It wasn’t fair that some people had everything. No wonder they always got the leading parts.

Mrs. Kronberger stopped coughing. “Well, if you two can separate yourselves and concentrate on the play ...” she said, trying to sound severe but not really succeeding. How could anybody be severe with Dave and Jennifer? “... perhaps we can begin.”

Beebe leaned forward and listened. The day she had had the crying jag she had said, spitefully, to her mother that Jennifer was a big, stupid girl with a loud voice like a yodeler. As Jennifer read her lines, Beebe knew it wasn’t true. Jennifer was lovely, and not stupid at all. Her voice was rich and clear, and she spoke her lines with a sweetness and a playfulness that penetrated Beebe’s sorrow and made her want to clap her hands. She knew, without wanting to admit it, that Jennifer was much more talented than Dave. When Jennifer spoke her lines Beebe felt as if she were hearing them for the first time.

“My only love sprung from my only hate!

Too early seen unknown, and known too late!

Prodigious birth of love it is to me,

That I must love a loathed enemy.”

Yes, yes, Beebe thought, wrapped up as she was in her knotted feelings for Jennifer. She was—she should be—a loathed enemy because Dave liked her, but yet Beebe couldn’t hate Jennifer just as Juliet couldn’t hate Romeo.

It was all so complicated. There were times nothing made sense at all. If Dave hadn’t taken care of Mr. Ferguson when he had that epileptic seizure down in the lunchroom last year, she probably never would have developed a crush on him. Oh yes, she probably would have admired him in the drama group, but the memory of him, leaning over the purple-faced, foaming Mr. Ferguson, loosening his collar and gently turning his head to one side ... Dave’s bright, handsome face so kind and competent. If she hadn’t been down in the lunchroom that day, a warm, clear, lovely October day ... She had even brought a sandwich to school and planned on eating it outside with Wanda, and just because Wanda asked Leslie Cooper, who laughed all the time, to join them, she changed her mind. She couldn’t stand people who laughed all the time over nothing. So she didn’t go with them. She said she was in a hurry, and she went down to the lunchroom, and there he was, as she entered, surrounded by a circle of bit players, and poor Mr. Ferguson foaming and purple-faced lying on the ground and Dave occupying center stage. Ever since then, he had occupied center stage in her daydreams.

“Okay, okay, not bad,” Mrs. Kronberger said. “Now, scram—you Jennifer, only you! And let’s all take a few minutes’ break, and start up from the beginning. I want all the kids in act one, scene one, to take their places up on the stage. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Beebe rose and began moving towards the stage. If she had eaten her sandwich outside with Wanda and Leslie, or if he hadn’t been in the lunchroom just at that moment when Mr. Ferguson had his seizure ... so many ifs.

The cast was assembling on the stage—the two Capulet servants, the one Montague servant, Benvolio, Tybalt, assorted citizens, police, Capulet and Lady Capulet, Montague and herself, Lady Montague (with only two speaking parts—even Lady Capulet had more than that), the Prince, and, finally, Romeo.

He was clowning around on the stage with some of the other boys. A few of them were whirling their wooden swords around, and Dave dove across the stage, chasing Fred Gee/Tybalt and nearly bumping into her.

“Oops,” he said, steadying himself by putting a hand on her arm.

She laughed nervously.

Dave’s face was pink, and his eyes shone. “I nearly knocked over my mother.” He bowed to her. “Forgive me, my dear Mother,” he said, already focusing on Tybalt, who was jabbing him with his sword, “while I go take care of this cursed Capulet.”

This was one of those times that Beebe should have been ready with some funny or charming words that would attract his attention.

“Oh, that’s okay,” she said, and watched as he chased Tybalt across the stage.

Chapter 4

His father handed him a broom. “The first thing,” he said, “is to sweep out the toilet. Every new worker gets broken in that way.”

Joe and Kelly, the two part-time college boys who worked for his father on Saturdays, laughed, and Kelly said, “That’s why I’m so glad you’re low man on the totem pole, Mark. Now I’m off the hook.”

Mark smiled and tried to look pleased. Not that he liked the idea of sweeping out the toilet. But he didn’t dislike it either. And he liked having his father treat him just like any other of his workers.

He took the broom, and went off to the back of the store. The floor of the toilet looked pretty clean to him, but he started sweeping anyway. His father came and stood at the door. ‘That’s the first thing I had to do when I came to work here. The boss, Mr. Altobelli, he said to me, ‘You’ve got to sweep your way out of the toilet before you learn anything else.’ “

“That’s okay, Dad,” Mark said, moving the broom behind the door to show his father he intended to be thorough.

“Attaboy,” said his father, patting him on the back. “We’re going to have a great time together—you and I.”

“Sure thing, Dad,” Mark said, trying to sound enthusiastic. And he did feel enthusiastic, he thought, pushing the broom behind the toilet. There wasn’t much room there, but he poked at it with the corner of the broom and managed to dislodge a clump of dust.

“Garden hoses?” he heard his father say behind him. “You passed them on your way in. Come with me, and I’ll show you where they are.”

Mark finished sweeping, and then began wandering around the store. His father had told him to start learning where everything was.
Paints and painting supplies over on the left-hand side in front of the electrical supplies. Housewares in the front. Plumbing supplies in the back. Pipe threader in the center …

“Mark,” his father called out, “will you give Kelly a hand carrying out the cans?”

He and Kelly carried some green plastic trash cans outside the store, and then Kelly showed him where he should display them. “We need to bring out the galvanized cans, too, some garden chairs, and the carpet-cleaning machine.”

But then Joe had to go deliver some paints, and Mark’s father called Kelly inside to make a set of keys for a customer. So Mark carried out the other trash cans, the garden chairs, and the cleaning machine by himself. He wasn’t sure whether the cleaning machine was supposed to go next to the trash cans or on the other side of the garden chairs. Kelly hadn’t said, and he felt foolish about asking. He wandered back into the store and waited for further orders. Kelly was busy at the key machine making up some duplicates for an older woman. She was telling him why she needed extra keys, and he was trying to look interested.

“... so my son thinks maybe he’ll stay with me now for a couple of months until he finds a job. I don’t mind. It’s nice to have the company. But then he tells me this morning that a friend of his is coming down from Portland who wants to be an actress. A girl, you see. He says she’s just a friend, but he wants me to have a whole set of keys made up for her. I said to him, ‘Why don’t you have them made up. She’s your friend. I’m your mother, not your slave.’ So then he says ...”

Mark’s father was in the back, showing window shades to another customer. Mark began walking up and down the aisles again, trying to memorize where things were.
Weather stripping, water beater blankets, nuts and bolts...
His father, carrying a couple of shades and followed by the customer, smiled at him and headed towards the front of the store. “Just look around, Mark, and later I’ll show you how to work the cash register. As soon as things quiet down.”

It took a while before they did. Mark kept wandering up and down the aisles.
Towel racks, two-by-fours, power tools ...
He never realized one small hardware store would carry so many different items.
Doorknobs, paintbrushes, light bulbs ...
Well, right now it seemed overwhelming but his memory was excellent. Didn’t he know all the principal constellations and all of the important stars in the solar system? Probably, in a few weeks, he’d know where everything was in the store.

Wire, locks, hand tools, pot holders , , ,
You had to be patient, and soon everything would fall into place. School, for instance. It had taken him nearly a week to find his way around. All of his classes seemed to be so far apart, and there were so many kids, and he didn’t know a single one of them.
Saws, ant killer, window sprays
... A hard tug of homesickness rocked him, and he put out an arm to steady himself against a shelf of cookie tins. He thought of Gilbert Jennings and Jim Turner. He’d never thought of them as close friends, but now he missed them. And he thought of Cindy Rhinehart.