Jenna & Jonah's Fauxmance (20 page)

The cast is dead silent during intermission. We are a superstitious bunch, and just like nobody talks to a pitcher while he’s in the midst of a no-hitter, nobody here wants to break the spell by talking.

This is the really cruel part of acting. We don’t want to break the spell, because we have no idea how we’re weaving it. Yeah, you have to be competent, know your lines and your blocking and all of that, but a really good performance is just magic. Since we don’t know where magic comes from, we don’t want to do anything that might make it go away, which is why I don’t run over to Charlie and say we have to talk about this right now, I can’t sleep and I can’t eat and it’s getting almost impossible for me to deny how I feel about you.

I see Charlie backstage. She looks up at me and then looks away. Is she blushing? Am I?

Act 4, and Kyanna/Hero is falsely denounced as having cheated on Claudio. I swear Al/Leonato has real tears in his eyes as he cries, after his daughter’s wedding and reputation are ruined, “Hath no man’s dagger here a point for me?”

I turn away because I can’t stand to see him in so much pain. I mean, Benedick turns away. He’s never done that before.

And then, soon after, Beatrice and I are alone on the stage. I know the whole thing was a setup, and I’m sure Don John was involved. I feel bad for Hero, and for Leonato, and yet I can’t keep my mind on their problems. My heart is racing like I’ve just had a triple espresso as I look into the eyes of the woman who drives me nuts more than anyone else, the woman I can’t stand, the woman I can’t help loving.

And then something happens that’s never really happened before. Benedick goes back to the back of my brain and watches Aaron use his words to talk to Charlie.

“I …” Suddenly my throat is dry, and I’m sure the pounding of my heart is distracting to both Charlie and the audience. “I do love nothing in the world so well as you. Is that … is that not strange?”

Charlie looks at me. Beatrice is not here. She’s got tears in her eyes. “I was about to protest I loved you!”

Our blocking calls for us to be delivering these lines from across the stage, still playing coy. Flannery was very clear that we’re not to so much as touch during this scene, because we have to leave the audience wanting something in Act 5. She even cut my line “I will kiss your hand” at the end of the scene after I’ve agreed to kill Claudio, insisting that even that relatively chaste kiss would undermine the end of the play.

Screw that. My brain is going to explode if I don’t touch Charlie right now. I run to her and take her hand. “And do it with all thy heart.”

The tears are streaming down Charlie’s face, her mascara making black trails down her cheeks that can surely be seen even from the cheap seats. “I love you … ,” she starts, catches her breath, and starts again, her voice quiet, breathy, and heavy with feeling. “I love you with so much of my heart, that none is left to protest.”

She looks at her feet and I see a tear splat on the stage. Gently I place a hand under her chin and lift her face up. Against the director’s orders, throwing professionalism to the wind, and happier than I’ve ever been, I pull Charlie to me and kiss her hungrily for a long time.

23
FINALLY FOUND YOU

Charlie

I haven’t traveled on my own much. With the grueling
Jenna & Jonah
taping schedule and the built-in travel, I never got the chance. Plus, it was easier to just get on the plane someone else had booked and float from one country to the next, singing the same songs to crowds I couldn’t even see with the harsh stage light. I hardly noticed the changing landscape because all the hotel rooms looked the same. I still slept by myself and left the video channel on all night for company.

Now, when I see the stage from the sidelines, I can also see glimpses of the audience. Real faces. Real people waiting to see a true play, an actual performance. And the stage itself feels bigger than a continent. The only thing that makes it seem at all crossable is the fact that Aaron’s on the other side. He looks at me and any distance is swallowed up. All those moments when we had the double spotlight on us in fake moonlight, with poorly painted sets behind us; all the crushing crowds in Japan; the sappy songs and strained dialogue—they all rush out at me and it’s easy to think about the future, even though I should be focused on what’s happening right now.

I imagine years have passed, and though I’ve gone on to win a Golden Globe for my portrayal of a formerly slutty teen who befriends a boy with Asperger’s, and produced a single album that went on to achieve critical and cult status if not commercial acclaim, and adopted a half Newfoundland, half flat-coated retriever named Moo (gracing the cover of the dog issue of
O
magazine), and even though I’m now bicoastal with a large town house in Chelsea and an even bigger house in Santa Monica, I’m in town to film the Big Reunion Show the Network has been plugging nonstop for months. Of course I don’t want to retread on old
J&J
ground, but, lo and behold, Martinka, my ex-agent, had neglected to inform me of a rider clause to my ancient contract stating “the actor named herein is obligated to reprise this role now or in the future for digital media or rebroadcast packaging.” That pretty much meant I’d have to do commentary on a couple more shows, which I did via satellite from New York, and now appear on the live reunion show. I’m not happy about all this, of course, because it takes me away from my work and from Moo, who needs daily brushing, but mainly I’m not thrilled because it means I have to come face-to-face with Aaron Whatever-his-last-name-is-now, the screenwriter of the straight-to-DVD must-miss
Call Me Intellectual
and its even worse sequel
A Real Man,
based on his novel
Just a Cincinnati Kid
, which I never read, even when I found it in the dollar remainder bin at the Strand. I’ve avoided his gracefully aging face, the products he hawks, and his low-point arrest/addiction caught on some tween’s phone. But I can’t avoid him forever.

Or maybe I’ll have a different future. I don’t have a Golden Globe and I never made an album because no record studio would take a chance on me after I ditched the Family Network and ground my career to a halt when scathing reviews were posted online from critics watching
Much Ado
, Twittering in the seats as they watched. And maybe I have to live in two cities because I’m so busy chasing down auditions even for kitty-litter ads and regional shoe stores and, even worse, I have to appear at conventions with other used-to-be-famous people from old sitcoms or bad movies. I do things like open Big Mitch’s Used Auto Lot in Branford, Connecticut, and cut the ribbon on the new multiplex in Culver, Indiana, and even in Culver only a handful of people show up to have me sign their old
Jenna & Jonah
mugs or T-shirts.

Or maybe none of this happens. What does
Acting from Within
say?
Imagine the present as you want it, create the future as you need it to be, act from within.

Maybe a different future is just beginning as I step onstage now. The lights flare and suddenly I’m not me anymore, I’m Beatrice. Her hand motions are not my own, so when she gestures for Benedick to back off, I don’t feel as though it’s purely my doing. And when I dance with a stranger at the masked ball, I actually forget the stranger is Benedick. I forget this and allow this because when the lights came up and the audience hushed themselves, part of me clicked on and that part is an actor. Someone more than capable of slipping into another person’s skin and finding her feelings. And I’m only able to do this because I have finally, finally found my own feelings. What did Al say? The best actors are self-aware; they know their limitations, their foibles, and are open to surprises. My years on television might not have given me the ability to cry on command, but my work ethic is intact. And the news scandal might not have made me look like the most bankable, honest star, but it showed I was able to pull a fast one on millions. That my costar and I were good fakers.

But now I’m not faking.

So while Beatrice and Benedick spar their way through the scenes on the huge stage, causing laughter to spurt from the audience in audible waves, Aaron and I are locked in more than just a battle of wits. We are locked in the present day with our true feelings. He says his line about his horse and I can’t do anything but stare at the artfully painted fake sky, because I know if I look at him he’ll know. And I can’t have him know, because it’s ridiculous, really. To want someone you’ve already kissed hundreds of times to kiss you for the first time.

When he moves forward toward me, I know we’re supposed to end the scene, but I don’t want to do it. I see why actors want to do the same play every night for months at a time. Each night you find yourself living the role; each time your skin stretches just a little bit.

I’ve been acting for real—giving my best-ever performance tonight—and I inject another life into Beatrice, give her a present she never had. The gift of being able to go after what I feel and what fits. But before Aaron’s character and mine cling together, I feel something else. My eyes fill and, before I can control them, tears come spilling down my cheeks. Benedick asks why the sadness comes forth and I have to tell him. And when the play ends, I’m sure he’ll know. But where he might have made fun of me for it before, he’s gentle with me now as I wipe my eyes with my fingertips.

“Who knew you were capable of tears?” he whispers during our bow.

I turn to him and address him in my regular voice. “It turns out I can cry after all. I just never had anything so terrible to picture that made me go to that dark place.”

Aaron smirks, caught between reaching for my hand and worrying that this whole thing is a gag for the nonexistent cameras. But it couldn’t be any less of a joke. “And now you do?”

I whisper to him. “All I could picture was, what if after this scene or act or play ends, I never see you again. I pictured being away from you, or being pulled away from you, and it felt like I was being torn in half.”

The audience quits their clapping, falling completely silent to hear us.

“I was acting Beatrice,” I say.

“And doing a brilliant job!” shouts someone from the audience. The people who have already left their seats stop moving toward the exits.

“But it isn’t just because I’ve always loved this play. Or because I got whipped into shape by you, Al. Or by the biggest director in the smallest shoes.” I take Aaron’s hand and look into his eyes. “All this time I thought there was the Jenna me and the regular me. And the me that did crummy commercials for shoes that made kids’ feet hurt. Or hocked power bars that contained things like dextramethalizionanese, and then another self that stood on tiptoes to kiss you at the farmer’s market. And another one who could put on a corset and say words that have existed for hundreds of years. But it turns out those are all the same person. All me. All aspects of who I am at any given time and how being a good actor means knowing yourself—knowing that you have a whole person to go back to.”

“And where is that person going?” Aaron asks, withdrawing his hand as a question.

“Yeah, where are you going, Jenna?” shouts someone from the darkness.

Cameras rush to the stage for a close-up and a microphone is thrust into my hand by a tall guy with a press pass. Bret Huckley’s evil cackle and multiple camera clicks invade.

“Can you address rumors about your relationship?”

“Is it true that
Jenna & Jonah’s How to Be a Rock Star
is being made into a motion picture with younger stars to launch a whole new cast for a future show?”

“Where exactly are you two headed after this? Will you do a reunion show?”

But this play hasn’t been a reunion show. And we haven’t been apart for years. And a reunion show, if we ever do one, is years and parts and travels away. For now, all I know is that I can act. I can cry. I found love and, with it, found myself. And Aaron, the man standing next to me, is my old friend and my new love wrapped into one. Whatever he does next, and whatever part I get when I leave here, the roles we want aren’t necessarily together on-screen. But offscreen, facing the crowds and cast, with our past piled up in episodes and our futures uncertain, we’re just like that Jenna and Jonah song that got cut from the closing credits. Aaron and I pushed for it—it was acoustic and real, just us singing “Starstruck with Each Other” with no background singers or amped-up effects—but the powers that be yanked it, said it was too simplistic to work. It is simple, isn’t it?

I turn to face Aaron and he puts his hand to his heart, the ultimate gesture of love, and I don’t fight the smile that slicks itself across my face. He pulls my hand to his lips and then I pull him close to me so we can kiss until midnight or morning, until the lights fade out and the audience goes home.