My Life: The Musical (12 page)

Dreamgirls

1981. Music by Henry Krieger,
lyrics and book by Tom Eyen

Emily grabbed her persuasive essay from the printer—God only knew what she’d written, she didn’t even bother to read it over—and raced, only a few minutes late, to Mr. Henderson’s class. She slapped the paper on his desk and slid into the nearest empty seat.

“Emily Pearl! Give me an example of
literary symbolism,
” Mr. Henderson said. He had a very resonant voice. Emily thought it would be a good voice for an actor, assuming Mr. Henderson had any talent.

“The great white way,” she said, with hardly a moment’s hesitation. “From
Moby-Dick
.”

Emily was surprised to hear titters from her classmates.

“Really?” Mr. Henderson was far from the meanest teacher at Eleanor Roosevelt, but Emily knew he wasn’t above using sarcasm as a teaching tool, either. “The Great White Way is a nickname for Broadway, Emily. Broadway—perhaps you’ve heard of it? I believe they have
musicals
there?”

“I meant whale,” Emily said, annoyed. Obviously she’d meant whale; what was he, stupid? “Way, whale. Whatever.”

“Ah,
whale
. That’s better. Thank you, Emily.” Mr. Henderson continued his lecture about symbolism, and Emily snuck a look at her watch. It was 12:55. She took a few deep breaths and let out a soft moan, but no one noticed.

“I have an idea,” said Mr. Henderson. “I’ll throw an A, weighted as a quiz, into this marking period’s average for the first person who can tell me the correct etymology of the phrase ‘Great White Way’ as a nickname for Broadway.”

Emily moaned loader. Then she winced and raised her hand.

“What’s the matter, Emily?” Mr. Henderson said. “Don’t tell me you have the answer already? Or perhaps”—and here he turned to the class—“you’re going to ask me what ‘etymology’ means?”

Emily willed her face to go pale. “Sorry, Mr. Henderson,” she said, in a tremulous voice. “I need to be excused. I think I’m going to—to—”

She gagged. She leapt to her feet, swayed drunkenly, and clutched the desk for support. Nearby students recoiled in horror.

Then Emily clapped her hand over her mouth and ran out the door of the classroom. Not a single person tried to stop her.

“Grandma? Grandma Rose?”

Emily and Philip stood in the doorway of the tidy downstairs bedroom. It hadn’t occurred to Emily that Grandma Rose might not be home. Was Monday the day she had lunch at the diner with her girlfriends? Had she mentioned a doctor’s appointment? Emily wished she paid more attention to these things.

“My mom usually leaves some grocery money. We could take that,” Philip said nervously, knowing it might not even be enough for one pair of tickets.

“I know where she keeps her cash.” She moved to the dresser. “I’m sure she won’t mind. I’ll just leave a note.”

Emily tried not to look as she opened Grandma Rose’s underwear drawer, gingerly pushing aside some lacy black garments to find the wooden cigar box. She opened it and quickly counted.

“Two thousand dollars.” Emily was determined. “It’s not enough, but it’ll do.”

“Could we at least call her or something?” Philip asked. Standing in the Pearls’ empty house and taking Grandma Rose’s money without permission was feeling very, very wrong to him. On the other hand, Philip was a person who lived with both a purveyor of fake IDs and (when she was home) a lawyer, so he was used to moral uncertainty.

Emily was already writing. “It’ll be fine,” she said through her teeth.

Dear Grandma Rose,

I’m so sorry I didn’t get to ask you in advance, but I know you won’t mind. There’s an emergency with “my show,” and I have to go buy tickets today or I’ll never see it again! Think of Zero Mostel and you’ll understand.

I have taken the remaining cash from your cigar box. Hope I didn’t mess up the drawer too much!

I really, really, REALLY appreciate all the money you’ve lent me and as soon as I get hold of my “college” money I will pay you back.

Your loving granddaughter
(& fellow theatre lover),
Em

Even with Philip standing and pedaling Emily’s bike like a madman and Emily hunched down and clutching the seat in the most aerodynamic position she could manage without falling off, they barely made it to the train station in time. When they arrived, the warning
clang-clang-clang
was sounding and the train was already within view, huffing and whistling into the station, so they didn’t even have time to lock Emily’s bike to the bike rack.

If it’s gone when we get back, it’s gone,
Emily thought as they raced up the stairs to the platform. She’d walk home if she had to. She couldn’t very well ask her parents to pick her up at the train station.
No, nothing’s wrong, I just cut school and stole money from Grandma’s room and went to the city without permission, so can you pick me up?

Of course, if the bike was stolen that too would require a story of some kind—
I’ll tell them it was stolen from school,
she thought—but then they might feel it necessary to call the principal and file some sort of report. She still hadn’t decided how she was going to justify her absence from the dinner table tonight, though she could always call and say she was eating at Philip’s. But what about all the nights to come over the next two weeks, when she’d be seeing
Aurora
again and again and again?

Emily looked at Philip with envy. He never had to lie, because nobody in his family paid attention to anything he did. Emily had a fleeting wish that she were an orphan (not a real one, with dead parents or anything like that, of course, but a cute singing-and-dancing orphan, like from
Annie
or
Oliver!
. Or away at college, where she could come and go without this constant explaining, explaining, explaining.

College! Would she have enough money to pay for it, after all she’d spent on
Aurora
tickets? She’d never bothered to add it up—

“All aboard!” the conductor yelled, waving them onto the train. “Move it, move it!”

Two thousand dollars. Ten pairs of tickets. It would be a final fling, a Broadway binge, a two-week
Aurora
spree paid for with ill-gotten funds and concealed with lies, but that’s the way the Aurorafans of Rockville Centre intended to go down: in flames, like Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly from
Chicago,
or any of those other infamous criminal partnerships that ended in a defiant, musical bloodbath as the lights faded to black.

If my life were a musical,
Philip thought,
the next two weeks would be one of those elaborate sung sequences where a lot of time passes in the course of a single number.

There were many examples of this kind of number, but his favorite was in the second act of
Gypsy
, after awkward, shy Louise is pushed unwillingly onto the stage by her ferociously ambitious mother, Rose. Louise starts out an awkward teen, nervously singing “Let Me Entertain You” to a crowd of catcalling men, yet with every cross of the stage she gains confidence until finally she’s transformed into the legendary stripper Gypsy Rose Lee. All in a single song! How did musicals do that?

First refrain: Philip and Emily are nervously buying tickets at the box office, pushing that big wad of bills through the little hole in the box office window.

Second refrain: Now they are blithe ticket holders, sauntering past their former rush line peers and greeting the ushers by name.

Third refrain: Caution is thrown to the winds! They see the show from every vantage point. From high up they look into the orchestra pit and wave at the brass players, who wave back. From all the way left or right they catch glimpses of the actors in the wings just before they make their entrances, nervously stretching and swigging from their water bottles and trying to make the onstage actors laugh by arranging themselves into ludicrous tableaux.

The finale: A madcap montage of Emily and Philip seeing
Aurora,
again and again and again. They skip school and spend every day in the city hanging around the theatre, soaking it all up, missing nothing. Mrs. Nebbling never notices Philip’s absence, and the Pearls—

“Em—” Philip said, dropping abruptly back into reality. They were about to enter the tunnel to Penn Station; out the window he could see Long Island City’s tall, gleaming Citibank building looming ahead of them, as if Queens were giving Manhattan the finger. “What are you going to tell your parents?”

Emily smiled a mischievous smile. “I just figured it out,” she said. “I’m going to tell them I got into the show.”

“What—you mean
Aurora
?” Emily could carry a tune, sort of, but surely her parents were not that gullible.

“Fiddler on the Roof,”
Emily explained. “At school! I’ll be the third peasant from the left. Rehearsals every night and all day Saturday. It’s the perfect excuse.”

It was, he had to admit, but there was one flaw in her plan. “Won’t they want to come see it, though?” he asked. “You’ll be totally busted when they notice you’re not in it.”

Emily pointed at her throat. “Laryngitis,” she wheezed dramatically. “It’ll hit me right before opening night. What a shame.”

The two of them laughed very, very hard at that.

Despite the urgency of their mission, Philip and Emily walked calmly, in a nearly normal fashion, from the Forty-second Street subway stop, past the usual array of handbag vendors and hot dog carts and apocalyptic preachers, all plying their trades beneath the cacophony of billboards and looming JumboTrons of Times Square.

Something was bothering Philip. Not Ian; he and Emily had resolved that ethical dilemma already. They knew Ian was in nonstop rehearsals for a show at LaGuardia and wouldn’t be available to see
Aurora
for the next two weeks anyway. Breaking their “don’t tell” promise to SAVEME would make no practical difference in Ian’s case. Besides, Ian was a rush line friend, not a friend friend. The strict no-cutting-and-no-holding-places-for-friends ethos of the line seemed to apply here.

As for Stephanie . . . well, what could they do? It was horrifying that you could be in a show and not realize it was about to close, but in Stephanie’s case it was a professional matter and they hardly knew her well enough to interfere. That was Emily’s argument, anyway, and Philip went along, though he did feel sorry for Stephanie.
No wonder actors are obsessed with gossip,
he thought.
Their jobs could be on the line.

No, what was bothering Philip had to do with him and Emily, and he had to say it before they got to the box office. He sucked up his courage and blurted it out.

“You don’t have to buy tickets for me, you know.”

“What?” Emily said, genuinely surprised.

His voice stuck in his throat. “With this money you could go to all sixteen performances yourself and still have enough—” He was going to say “to take me four times,” but he didn’t. Seeing
Aurora
four times in two weeks would be twice as much
Aurora
as he was used to; it should have felt like a lot, but the rhythm of his heart was beating
Four times will never be enough, never be enough, never be enough.
If only he had some money of his own—a college fund to borrow against, a grandma to float him a loan, a second parent to help support the family, pancakes for breakfast instead of cold pizza or sometimes nothing . . .

Emily, meanwhile, was reeling. The option of going to the show by herself had simply not occurred to her before, but now, of course, it had. Talk about an ethical dilemma!

If my life were a musical,
Emily thought in a rush,
I would do what Aurora would do,
and before she could change her mind she said, “I would not want to go without you, Philip.”

It sounded incredible. It sounded like the kind of thing someone would say right before bursting into song.

“Emily, don’t be dumb,” Philip said bravely. “Of course you should go.”

“And I am telling you, I’m not going,” Emily said, straight-faced.

“Dreamgirls.”
Philip looked deep into her eyes. “1981. Music by Henry Krieger, book and lyrics by Tom Eyen.”

Emily grinned, though she felt shaky inside. “It wasn’t a show question,” she said. It was 2:43, and they were about to make their final approach to the Rialto Theatre.

Philip had made a last sweep of the Broadway message boards as well as the official
Aurora
blog before leaving the school library, and though the morning’s Internut rumors had grown both more numerous and more outlandish—the idea of
Beauty and the Beast
closing to make room for a musical version of
Napoleon Dynamite
seemed farfetched, even by Broadway logic—none of the rank-and-file gossipmongers was pinpointing
Aurora
as the show whose head was on the block. As far as Philip and Emily knew, they, Lester, and apparently SAVEME were the only people who knew—or at least, believed—that
Aurora
was closing.