Just One Day (15 page)

Twenty

S
tepping into the classroom for Shakespeare Out Loud is like stepping into an entirely
different school than the one I’ve attended for the past four months. Instead of a
giant lecture hall, which is where all my science courses were located, or even a
large classroom like Mandarin, it’s in a tiny, intimate classroom, the kind we had
in high school. There are maybe twenty-five desks arced into a U, around a lectern
in the middle. And the students sitting at them, they look different too. Lip rings
and hair dyed colors not found naturally on the human head. It’s a sea of well-manicured
alienation. The arty crowd, I guess. When I come in and look for a seat—they’re all
taken—no one looks at me.

I take a seat on the floor, near the door, for an easier escape. I may not belong
in chemistry, but I don’t belong here either. When Professor Glenny strides in five
minutes late and looking like a rock star—shaggy graying hair, beat-up leather boots,
he even has pouty Mick Jagger lips—he steps on me. As in, literally treads on my hand.
As bad as my other classes have been, no one has ever stepped on me. Not an auspicious
start, and I almost leave right then and there, but my way is now blocked by the overflow
of other students.

“Show of hands,” Professor Glenny begins after he has dropped his artfully worn leather
satchel on top of the lectern. “How many of you have ever read a Shakespeare play
for the sheer pleasure of it?” He has a British accent, though not the Masterpiece
Theatre kind.

About half the hands in the class shoot up. I almost consider raising mine, but it’s
just too much of a lie, and there’s no point in brown-nosing if I’m not staying.

“Excellent. Ancillary question: How many of you have fallen asleep while attempting
to read a Shakespeare play by yourself?”

The class goes silent. No hands go up. Then Professor Glenny looks right at me, and
I’m wondering how he knows, but then I realize he’s not looking at me but the guy
behind me, who is the only person who’s raised a hand. Along with everyone else in
the class, I turn and stare at him. He’s one of two African American students in the
room, though he’s the only one sporting a huge halo of an afro covered in bejeweled
barrettes, and bubble-gum-pink gloss on his lips. Otherwise, he’s dressed like a soccer
mom, in sweats and pink Uggs. In a field of carefully cultivated weirdness, he’s a
wildflower, or maybe a weed.

“Which play bored you to sleep?” Professor Glenny asks.

“Take your pick.
Hamlet
.
Macbeth
.
Othello
. I napped to the best of them.”

The class titters, as if falling asleep while studying is so déclassé.

Professor Glenny nods. “So why, then, please—sorry, your name . . . ?”

“D’Angelo Harrison, but my friends call me Dee.”

“I’ll be presumptuous and call you Dee. Dee, why take this class? Unless you’re here
to catch up on your sleep.”

Again, the class laughs.

“By my count, this class costs about five grand a semester,” Dee says. “I can sleep
for free.”

I attempt the math. Is that how much one class costs?

“Quite prudent,” Professor Glenny says. “So, again, why take this class, given the
expenditure and given Shakespeare’s soporific track record?

“Well, I’m not actually in the class yet. I’m on your wait list.”

At this point, I can’t tell if he’s stalling or parrying with the professor, but either
way, I’m impressed. Everyone else here seems eager to give the right answer, and this
guy is stringing the professor along. To his credit, Professor Glenny seems more amused
than annoyed.

“My point is, Dee, why attempt it even?”

There’s a long pause. You can hear the fluorescent lights humming, the throat-clearing
of a few students who clearly have a ready answer. And then Dee says, “Because the
movie of
Romeo and Juliet
makes me cry harder than just about anything else. Every damn time I see it.”

Again, the class laughs. It’s not a kind laugh. Professor Glenny turns back toward
the lectern and pulls a paper and pen out of his satchel. It’s a list. He stares at
it ominously and then checks off a name—and I wonder if this Dee just got himself
kicked off the wait list. What kind of class did Gretchen Price put me in? Gladiator
Shakespeare?

Then Professor Glenny turns to a girl with weird pink Tootsie Roll twists who has
her nose in a copy of the collected works of Shakespeare, the kind of girl who probably
never deigned to watch Leo and Claire’s version of
Romeo and Juliet
or fall asleep while reading
Macbeth
. He looms over her for a moment. She looks up at him and smiles bashfully, like,
oh-you-caught-me-reading-my-book. He flashes a thousand-watt smile back at her. And
then he slams her book shut. It’s a big book. It makes a loud noise.

Professor Glenny returns to the lectern. “Shakespeare is a mysterious character. There
is so much written about this man about whom we truly know so little. Sometimes I
think only Jesus has had more ink spilled with less fruitful result. So I resist making
any characterizations about the man. But I will go out on a limb and say this: Shakespeare
did not write his plays so that you could sit in in a library carrel and read them
in silence.” He pauses, lets that sink in before continuing. “Playwrights are not
novelists. They create works that need to be performed, interpreted. To be reinterpreted
through the ages. It is credit to Shakespeare’s genius that he gave us such great
raw material that really could survive the ages, withstand the myriad reinterpretations
we throw at it. But to truly appreciate Shakespeare, to understand why he has endured,
you must hear it out loud, or better yet, see it performed, whether you see it performed
in period costume or done naked, a dubious pleasure I’ve had. Though a good film production
can do the trick, as our friend Dee has so aptly demonstrated. And Mr. Harrison,”
he looks at Dee again. “Thank you for your honesty. I too have fallen asleep while
reading Shakespeare. My college textbook still bears some drool marks. You’re off
the wait list.”

Striding back to the whiteboard, Professor Glenny scrawls
English 317—Shakespeare Out Loud
on it. “The name of this class is not accidental. It is quite literal. For in this
class, we do not
read
Shakespeare quietly to ourselves or in the privacy of our bedrooms or libraries.
We
perform
it. We
see
it performed. We read it aloud, in class or with partners. Every last one of us will
become actors in this class, interpreters for one another, in front of one another.
For those of you not prepared for this or who prefer a more conventional approach,
this fine institution offers plenty of Shakespeare survey courses, and I suggest you
avail yourself of one of them.”

He pauses, as if to give people a chance to escape. Here would be my chance to go,
but something roots me in place.

“If you know anything about this class, it’s that I coordinate our readings to go
with whatever Shakespeare is being performed during the term, be it by a community
group or professional theater company. I expect attendance at all the plays, and I
get us excellent group rates. As it happens, this winter and spring bring a delightful
selection of plays.”

He starts handing out the syllabus, and before one gets to me, before he finishes
writing the order of plays on the board, I know it will be among them, even though
Shakespeare wrote more than thirty plays, I know this one will be on our list.

It’s midway through the syllabus, after
Henry V
and
The Winter’s Tale
and before
As You Like It
and
Cymbeline
and
Measure for Measure.
But there on the page, it seems to jump out at me like a billboard.
Twelfth Night.
And whether I want to take this class or not is irrelevant. I can’t stand up here
and read those lines. That is the opposite of tabula rasa.

Professor Glenny goes on for a while about the plays, pointing to them one by one
with his hand, erasing the ink in his enthusiasm. “My absolute favorite thing about
this class is that we, in effect, let the themes choose us by letting the plays choose
us. The dean was skeptical at first of this academia via serendipity, but it always
seems to work out. Take this sampling.” He points to the list of plays again. “Can
anyone surmise this semester’s theme based on these particular plays?”

“They’re all comedies?” the girl up front with the Tootsie Roll twists asks.

“Good guess.
The Winter’s Tale,
Measure for Measure
, and
Cymbeline
, though all have much humor, are not considered comedies so much as problem plays,
a category we shall discuss later. And
Henry V
, though it has many funny bits, is quite a serious play. Any other takers?”

Silence.

“I’ll give you a hint. It’s most obvious in
Twelfth Night
or
As You Like It
, which
are
comedies—which isn’t to say they’re not also quite moving plays.”

More silence.

“Come now. Some of you fine scholars must have seen one of these. Who here has seen
As You Like It
or
Twelfth Night
?”

I don’t realize I’ve raised my hand until it’s too late. Until Professor Glenny has
seen me and nodded to me with those bright, curious eyes of his. I want to say that
I’ve made a mistake, that it was some other version of Allyson who used to raise her
hand in class who temporarily reappeared. But I can’t, so I blurt out that I saw
Twelfth Night
over the summer.

Professor Glenny stands there, as if waiting for me to finish my thought. But that
was it; that’s all I have to say. There’s an awkward silence, like I just announced
I was an alcoholic—at a Daughters of the American Revolution meeting.

But Professor Glenny refuses to give up on me: “And, what was the main source of tension
and humor in that particular play?”

For the briefest of seconds, I’m not in this overheated classroom on a winter’s morning.
It’s the hot English night, and I’m at the canal basin in Stratford-upon-Avon. And
then I’m in a Paris park. And then I’m back here. In all three places, the answer
remains the same: “No one is who they pretend to be.”

“Thank you. . . . ?”

“Allyson,” I finish. “Allyson Healey.”

“Allyson. Perhaps a slight overgeneralization, but for our purposes, it hits the nail
right on the head.” He turns to the board and scrawls
Altering Identity, Altering Reality
on it. Then he checks something else off on his sheet of paper.

Professor Glenny continues, “Now, before we part ways, one last piece of housekeeping.
We won’t have time to read each play completely in class, though we will make quite
a dent. I believe I’ve made my point about reading alone to yourselves, so I’d like
you to read the remaining sections aloud with partners. This is not optional. Please
pair up now. If you’re on the wait list, find a partner also on the wait list. Allyson,
you’re no longer on the wait list. As you can see, class participation is rewarded
in here.”

There’s bustle as everyone pairs off. I look around. Next to me is a normalish-girl
with cat-eye glasses. I could ask her.

Or I could get up and walk out of the class. Even though I’m off the wait list, I
could just drop the class, leave my spot for someone else.

But for some reason, I don’t do either of those things. I turn away from the girl
in the glasses and look behind me. That guy, Dee, is sitting there, like the unpopular
and unathletic kid who always wound up the remainder during team picking for grade-school
kickball games. He’s wearing a bemused look, as if he knows no one will ask him and
he’s saving everyone the trouble. So when I ask him if he wants to be partners, his
arch expression falls away for a moment and he appears genuinely surprised.

“Just so happens my dance card is none too full at the moment.”

“Is that a yes?”

He nods.

“Good. I do have one condition. It’s more of a favor. Two favors, actually.”

He frowns for a moment, then arches his plucked eyebrow so high, it disappears into
the halo of hair.

“I don’t want to read
Twelfth Night
out loud. You can do all the parts, if you want, and I’ll listen, and then I’ll read
one of the other plays. Or we can rent a movie version and read along. I just don’t
want to have to say it. Not a word of it.”

“How you gonna get away with that in class?”

“I’ll figure it out.”

“What you got against
Twelfth Night
?”

“That’s the other thing. I don’t want to talk about it.”

He sighs as if considering. “Are you a flake or a diva? Diva I can work with, but
I got no time for flakes.”

“I don’t think I’m either.” Dee looks skeptical. “It’s just that one play, I swear.
I’m sure there’s a DVD for it.”

He looks at me for a long minute, as if trying to X-ray my true self. Then he either
decides I’m okay or recognizes he has no other options, because he rolls his eyes
and sighs loudly. “There are several versions of
Twelfth Night
, actually.” Suddenly, his voice and diction have completely changed. Even his expression
has gone professorial. “There’s a film version with Helena Bonham Carter, who is magnificent.
But if we’re going to cheat like this, we should rent the stage version.”

I stare at him a moment, baffled. He stares back, then his mouth cracks into the smallest
of grins. And I realize what I said before was right:
No one is who they pretend to be.

Twenty-one

FEBRUARY

College

F
or the first few weeks of class, Dee and I tried meeting in the library, but we got
dirty looks, especially when Dee broke out into his voices. And he has lots of voices:
a solemn En-glish accent when doing Henry, a weird Irish brogue—his take on a Welsh
accent, I guess—as Fluellen, exaggerated French accents when doing the French characters.
I don’t bother with accents. It’s enough for me to get the words right.

After getting shushed in the library one too many times, we switched to the Student
Union, but Dee couldn’t hear me over the din. He projected so well, you’d think he
was a theater major or something. But I think he’s history or political science. Not
that he’s told me this; we don’t talk aside from the reading. But I’ve glimpsed his
textbooks, and they’re all tomes about the history of the labor movement or treatises
on government.

So right before we start reading the second play,
The Winter’s Tale
, I suggest that we move to my dorm, where it’s generally quiet in the afternoons.
Dee gives me a long look and then says okay. I tell him to come over at four.

That afternoon, I lay out a plate of the cookies that Grandma keeps sending me, and
I make tea. I have no idea what Dee expects, but this is the first time I’ve ever
entertained in my room, though I’m not sure what I’m doing qualifies as entertaining
or if Dee is company.

But when Dee sees the cookies, he gives me a funny little smile. Then he takes off
his coat and hangs it in the closet, even though mine is tossed over a chair. He kicks
off his boots. Then he looks around my room.

“Do you have a clock?” he asks. “My phone’s dead.”

I get up and show him the box of alarm clocks, which I have since put back in the
closet. “Take your pick.”

He takes a long time choosing, finally settling on a 1940s mahogany deco number. I
show him how to wind it. He asks how to set the alarm. I show him. Then he sets it
for five fifty, explaining he has to be at his job at the dining hall at six. The
reading usually doesn’t take more than a half hour, so I’m not sure why he sets the
alarm. But I don’t say anything. About that. Or about his job, even though I’m curious
about it.

He sits down on my desk chair. I sit on my bed. He picks up a tube of fruit flies
from the desk, examining it with a slightly amused expression. “They’re Drosophila,”
I explain. “I’m breeding them for a class.”

He shakes his head. “If you run out, you can come get more in my mama’s kitchen.”

I want to ask him where that kitchen is. Where he’s from. But he seems guarded. Or
maybe it’s me. Maybe making friends is a specific skill, and I missed the lesson.
“Okay, time for work. See you later, my dropsillas,” he says to the bugs. I don’t
correct his pronunciation.

We read a really good scene at the beginning of
The Winter’s Tale
, when Leontes freaks out and thinks that Hermione is cheating on him. When we get
to the end point, Dee packs up his Shakespeare textbook, and I think he’s going to
leave, but instead he pulls out a book by someone called Marcuse. He gives me the
quickest of looks.

“I’ll make more tea,” I say.

We study together in silence. It’s nice. At five fifty, the alarm goes off and Dee
packs up to go to work.

“Wednesday?” he says.

“Sure.”

Two days later, we go through the same routine, cookies, tea, hello to the “dropsillas,”
Shakespeare out loud, and silent study. We don’t talk. We just work. On Friday, Kali
comes into the room. It’s the first time she’s seen Dee, seen anyone, in the room
with me, and she looks at him for a long moment. I introduce them.

“Hi,
Dee
. Pleasure to
meet
you,” she says in a strangely flirty voice.

“Oh, the pleasure is all mine,” Dee says, his voice all exaggeratedly animated.

Kali looks at him and then smiles. Then she goes to her closet and pulls out a camel
coat and a pair of tawny suede boots. “Dee, can I
ask
you something? What do you think of
these
boots with this jacket? Too
matchy
matchy
?”

I look at Dee. He is wearing sky-blue sweats and a T-shirt with sparkly lettering
spelling out
I BELIEVE
. I’m not clear how this reads Fashion Expert to Kali.

But Dee gets right into it. “Oh, girl, those boots are fine. I might have to take
them from you.”

I look at him, sort of shocked. I mean I figured Dee was gay, but I’ve never heard
him talk all sassy-gay-sidekick before.

“Oh, no, you won’t,” Kali replies, her strange ways of KO’ing words now blending with
some latent Valley Girl tendencies. “They cost me, like,
four
hundred
dollars. You can
borrow
them.”

“Oh, you’re a doll baby. But you got Cinderella feet, and ole Dee’s like one of them
ugly stepsisters.”

Kali laughs, and they go on like this for some time, talking about fashion. I feel
kind of bad. I guess I never realized Dee was so into this kind of thing. Kali got
it right away. It’s like she has some radar, the one that tells you how to pick up
on things with people, how to be friends. I don’t really care about fashion, but that
night, when the alarm goes off and Dee packs up to leave, I show him the latest skirt
my mom sent me and ask if he thinks it’s too preppy. But he barely gives it half a
glance. “It’s fine.”

After that, Kali starts showing up more often, and she and Dee go all
Project Runway
, and Dee always switches into that voice. I write it off as just a fashion thing.
But then a few days after that, as we’re leaving, Kendra walks in, and I introduce
them. Kendra sizes Dee up, like she does with people, and puts on her flight-attendant
smile and asks Dee where he’s from.

“New York,” he says. I make a note of that. I’ve known him for almost three weeks,
and I’m just now finding out the basics.

“Where in New York?”

“The city.”

“Where?”

“The Bronx.”

The flight attendant smile is gone, replaced by a tight line that looks penciled on.

“Oh, like the South Bronx? Well. You must be so glad to be living here.”

Now it’s Dee who gives Kendra the once-over. They’re eyeing each other like dogs,
and I wonder if it’s because they’re both black. Then, he switches to a different
voice from the one he talks to Kali or me in. “You from the South Bronx?”

Kendra recoils a little. “No! I’m from Washington.”

“Like where they got all the rain and shit?”

Rain and shit?

“No, not state. DC.”

“Oh. I got some cousins in DC. Down in Anacostia. Shit, those are some nasty-ass projects.
Even worse than where I came up. There’s a shooting at their school every damn week.”

Kendra looks horrified. “I’ve never even been to Anacostia. I live in Georgetown.
And I went to Sidwell Friends, where the Obama girls go.”

“I went to South Bronx High. Most wack school in America. Ever heard of it?”

“No, I’m afraid I haven’t.” She gives me a quick look. “Well, I have to go. I’m meeting
Jeb soon.” Jeb is her new boyfriend.

“Catch you later, homegirl,” Dee calls as Kendra disappears into her room. As Dee
picks up his backpack to leave, he is quaking with laughter.

I decide to walk him to the dining hall, maybe eat there for a change. Eating alone
sucks, but there are only so many microwave burritos a girl can stomach. When we get
downstairs, I ask him if he really went to South Bronx High School.

When he speaks again, he sounds like Dee. Or the Dee I know. “They closed South Bronx
High School a year ago, not that I ever went there. I went to a charter school. Then
I got snagged in Prep for Prep—scholarship thing—by a private school that’s even more
expensive than Sidwell Friends. Take that, Miss Thang.”

“Why didn’t you just tell her where you went?”

He looks at me and then, reverting to the voice he’d used with Kendra, says, “If homegirls
wanna see me as ghetto trash”—he stops and switches to his lispy, sassy voice—“or
big-ass queer”—now he switches to his deepest Shakespeare voice—“I shall not take
it upon myself to disabuse them.”

When we reach the dining hall, I feel like I should say something to him. But I’m
not sure what. In the end, I just ask him if he wants chocolate chip or butter cookies
next time. Grandma sent me both.

“I’ll supply cookies. My mama sent up some homemade molasses spice ones.”

“That’s nice.”

“Nothin’ nice about it. She’s throwing down. She wasn’t about to be outdone by somebody’s
grandma.”

I laugh. It’s a strange sound, like an old car being started after a long time in
the garage. “We won’t tell my grandma that. If she accepts the challenge and bakes
her own cookies, we might get food poisoning. She’s the worst cook in the world.”

_ _ _

It becomes a routine then. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday: cookies, tea, alarm
clock, Shakespeare, study. We still don’t talk much about ourselves, but little things
slip through the cracks. His mother works at a hospital. He has no siblings, but five
zillion cousins. He’s on a full scholarship. He has a rather huge crush on Professor
Glenny. He is double-majoring in history and literature, and maybe a minor in political
science. He hums when he’s bored, and when he’s really into his reading, he twists
his hair around his index finger so tight, it turns pink. And just as I suspected
from that first day in class, he’s smart. That he doesn’t tell me, but it’s obvious.
He’s the only one in the entire class to get an A on Glenny’s first assignment, a
paper on
Henry V
; Professor Glenny announces it to the class and reads snippets of Dee’s paper to
the class as an example of what the rest of us should strive for. Dee looks mortified,
and I feel sort of bad, but the Glenny groupies regard Dee with such looks of naked
envy that it’s almost worth it. I, meanwhile, get a very solid B on my paper about
Perdita and themes of lost and found.

I tell Dee little things about me too, but half the time, I find myself censoring
what I want to say. I like him. I do. But I’m trying to make good on my tabula-rasa
promise. Still, I sort of wish I could ask Dee’s opinion about Melanie. I sent her
the very first piece I made from ceramics class, along with a note about how I’d completely
upended my schedule. I sent it Priority Mail, and then a week went by, and I didn’t
hear anything. So I’d called her up to make sure she’d gotten it—it was just a crappy,
handmade bowl, but it had a beautiful crackly turquoise glaze—and she apologized for
not responding, saying she was busy.

I told her all about my new classes, and about the crazy lengths I was going to so
my parents wouldn’t find out: sending them biology tests with improving scores (Dee’s
and my lengthy study sessions are paying off) but also sending them my old chemistry
lab partner’s tests, with my name on them. I figured she’d get a good laugh about
this, but instead her voice had stayed flat, and she’d warned me about the kind of
trouble I’d be in if I got caught—as if I didn’t already know that. Then I’d switched
gears, telling her all about Professor Glenny and Dee and reading out loud and how
mortifying I’d thought it would be to read in front of the class but how everyone
does it and it isn’t so bad. I’d expected her to be excited for me, but her voice
had been practically monotone, and I’d found myself getting so angry. We haven’t talked
or emailed in a couple of weeks, and I’m both upset about it and relieved too.

I’d kind of like to tell Dee about this, but I’m not sure how to do it. Aside from
Melanie, I’ve never had a really close friend, and I’m unclear how you make one. It’s
silly, I know. I’ve seen other people do it. They make it seem so easy: Have fun,
open up, share stories. But how am I supposed to do that when the one story I really
want to tell is the very one I’m supposed to be wiping clean? And besides, the last
time I did open up to somebody . . . well, that’s precisely why I’m in need of a tabula
rasa in the first place. It just seems safer to keep it like it is—friendly, cordial,
nice and simple.

_ _ _

At the end of February, my parents come up for Presidents’ Weekend. It’s the first
time they’ve been up since Parents’ Weekend, and having learned my lesson, I go to
elaborate lengths to keep up the image they expect of me. I put my clocks back out.
I highlight pages in my unused chemistry textbook and copy labs out of my old lab
partners’ book. I make us lots of plans in Boston to keep us off campus, away from
incriminating evidence and the Terrific Trio (who now have become more of a Dynamic
Duo anyway because Kendra’s always with her boyfriend). And I tell Dee, with whom
I now study on weekends sometimes, that I won’t be around and that I can’t get together
Friday and Monday.

“You throwing me over for Drew?” Drew is the second best Shakespeare reader in the
class.

“No. Of course not,” I reply, my voice all pinched and panicked. “It’s just I have
one of those trips with my ceramics class Friday.” This isn’t entirely untrue. My
ceramics class does go on field trips occasionally. We’re experimenting with glazes,
using different kinds of organic materials in the kiln, and sometimes even firing
our pottery outside in earthen furnaces we build. I
do
have field trips, just not in the next couple of days.

“And I’ll probably work on a paper this weekend.” Another lie; the only class I have
papers for is Shakespeare. It’s amazing how good at lying I’ve become. “I’ll see you
Wednesday, okay? I’ll bring the cookies.”

“Tell your grandma to send some more of those twisty ones with the poppy seeds.”

“Rugelach.”

“I can’t say it. I just eat it.”

“I’ll tell her.”

_ _ _

The weekend with my parents goes decently enough. We go to the Museum of Fine Arts,
the Museum of Science. We go ice skating (I can’t keep my blades straight). We go
to the movies. We take tons of pictures. There’s an awkward moment or two when Mom
pulls out next year’s course catalog and starts going over class schedules with me
and then asks me about my summer plans, but I just listen to her suggestions like
I always have and don’t say anything. By the end of the weekend, I feel drained in
the same way that I do after a marathon session of reading Shakespeare aloud and trying
to be all those different people.