Only in the Movies (13 page)

Petruchio/Chad began his short soliloquy. “
I’ll attend Katherina here, And woo her with some spirit when she comes …
”

Alba knew her cue and didn’t need a signal from me. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her raise her skirt off the floor in preparation for her entrance.

“
But here she comes
,” said Petruchio/Chad. Alba/Katherina was, according to her own directions, supposed to enter the room nonchalantly, as if she couldn’t care less that a man
who said he wanted to marry her was waiting to meet her for the first time. Instead, she stomped into the room, aiming herself at Chad like a torpedo. There was more energy in her entrance than there ever had been in rehearsals, and Vanni’s words popped into my mind. Alba had found Chad with Snowy.

“Oh oh,” I said.

“That’s not in our notes,” came Vanni’s voice in my earpiece.

“
Good morrow, Kate—for that’s your name I hear
,” Petruchio/Chad said. Katherina/Alba launched herself into the scene with the fury of a tornado, giving a snappy reply, every word bristling with anger. Shakespeare’s witty verbal fencing between the dominant, overconfident suitor and the shrewish woman sparkled back and forth. Katherina/Alba called him a piece of furniture, a stool. “
Come, sit on me
,” he shot back, and pulled her onto his lap. She struggled to free herself; he hung on tight, mocking her. The audience laughed. Katherina/Alba called him an ass, and the play-by-play continued.

If you knew the actors, and if you were aware of the fact that Alba had discovered Chad and Snowy making out, you could see the personal war between the wronged woman and the guilty man going on like violent background music behind Shakespeare’s lines. Chad was desperately trying to get back into Alba’s good books as Petruchio was fighting to dominate Katherina verbally and physically.

The scene went on, the energy snapping and popping like high-tension wires in a hurricane. The audience roared at a dirty joke. Katherina/Alba finally freed herself and jumped from Petruchio/Chad’s lap. She turned to leave.
Petruchio/Chad grabbed her, spun her around and urged, “
Good Kate, I am a gentleman—
”

Katherina/Alba snapped, “
That I’ll try!
”—in other words, “We’ll see about that!”

And she clouted him.

The script called for a smack, and in rehearsal Chad and Alba had practised the slap over and over to get it perfect, so that it was noisy and dramatic but didn’t sting. But today Alba hauled back and delivered a blow that knocked Chad off his feet, and he toppled over, sprawling with his purple-clad legs in the air. Alba stood over him, fists clenched, chest heaving. Chad struggled to his knees, shook his head, cringing, waiting for another punch. A trickle of blood ran from one nostril.

But he stayed in character. “
I swear I’ll cuff you if you strike again
.”

Watch it, Alba. He means it, I thought. She seemed to read his mind, and took a step back.

Petruchio/Chad hauled himself to his feet. More one-liners zinged back and forth between them, the volume increasing with each verbal shot as Alba and Chad followed their own agenda as well as Shakespeare’s. Petruchio/Chad stalked Katherina/Alba, hands out to clutch her as she backed away. The script instructed him to lay hold of her. But when he drew close, Katherina/Alba screamed, “
I care
not
!
” and tried to ward him off with a roundhouse punch.

Chad ducked the blow and grabbed her, pinning her arms, his face inches from hers. “
In sooth, you ’scape not so
,” he said triumphantly.

She wrenched her torso one way, then another, to free herself. “
I chafe you if I tarry
,” she hollered. “
Let me
go
!
”

And, ignoring the script, she spat in his face. The gob hit him on the forehead and dribbled into one eye. He blinked.

“
No, not a whit
,” he replied, spit running down one side of his face and blood down the other. “
I find you passing gentle
.”

The audience was hugely enjoying all this. They were right into what they thought was simply a superbly acted, funny, farcical scene. Even the teachers were laughing, although Panofsky had a horrified look on his face and Locheed seemed a little troubled. I could imagine him saying to himself, I don’t remember
that
in the play.

The frantic, angry dialogue continued to flash back and forth at high volume as the two characters traded barbs and wrestled, Katherina/Alba fighting to free herself, Petruchio/Chad obviously terrified to let her loose. But the script demanded her release, so he complied—then dashed around to the other side of the table, keeping it between himself and the raging blonde banshee opposite.

They shouted their lines across the table, Katherina/Alba circling first in one direction, then another, as Petruchio/Chad retreated. She picked up a chair and hurled it at him. He ducked to the side just in time, and the chair clattered across the boards and into the wings. Then Katherina/Alba feinted left. Petruchio/Chad responded; she darted right, caught him and whacked him on the chops. His head snapped back. Half-blind from the sting, he grabbed her arm. “
And will you, nill you
,” he shouted, “
I will marry you!
” Then he gave her a mighty shove, sending her tumbling onto her backside and sliding backwards across the floor. She tipped over. Her head thumped the boards and her hooped gown flew up over her face, revealing very un-Elizabethan blue denims and white canvas shoes.

Katherina/Alba scrambled to her feet. Petruchio/Chad
kept talking, backing away as she relentlessly crept toward him like a mountain lion stalking a rabbit.

He shouted, “
For I am he am born to tame you, Kate, and bring you from a wild Kate to a Kate conformable—
”

Alba screamed her reply. “Like hell you will, you two-timing son of a bitch!”

“Cue curtain! Cue curtain!” I hollered, and the curtain began to descend, but not fast enough to hide a pair of purple legs rushing into the wings with a forest green blur in hot pursuit. The scene was supposed to end with Petruchio saying, “
But here comes your father
,” but this was good enough.

The audience roared, jumped to their feet, applauded thunderously. I hopped off my stool and ran backstage in time to see Chad dashing for the stage door.

“Wait!” I yelled uselessly. “Your curtain calls!”

“He’d better keep going if he knows what’s good for him!” I heard from behind me. I turned and saw Alba—her clothing rumpled, her hair a tangled mess, her eyes on fire—struggling to free her gown, which had snagged on the edge of Vanni’s control panel.

Out in the auditorium, the crowd continued with their applause. “Somebody has to make a curtain call,” I told Alba. “Chad’s gone. You have to go out there.”

Alba’s professional bearing slowly returned. She lifted her chin, picked up her skirt and glided to the front of the stage, taking up her mark at the curtain.

“Cue curtain,” I said into my mike.

The curtain rose. Alba took her bows, then stepped back.

“Cue curtain,” I repeated.

The curtain fell. Alba turned on her heel and disappeared backstage.

“Cue music,” I said, and through the auditorium speakers, Daneale’s voice and Instant’s saxophone began to mellow the crowd. After the last bar was played, I said, “Stand down. That’s it, everybody.”

“Didjever see the like?” Vanni said when I dropped into a chair beside her.

“A truly unique experience,” I sighed.

“It’s a good thing the scene was short. Otherwise Alba would have beaten him up, right there in front of the audience.” Vanni laughed. “It sounded hilarious. It must have been fun to watch—from the audience, I mean.”

“They seemed to enjoy it,” I replied, trying unsuccessfully to hold down the thought that Alba and Chad were no longer together, that maybe this was my chance. Should I go and find her right away? I wondered. Console her? No, better to let her cool off and see her tomorrow. Maybe she’d realize she had picked the wrong guy. Maybe—

My phone vibrated in my pocket. Somebody has a great sense of timing, I thought as I checked the screen. I didn’t recognize the number.

“Hello?”

“Jake.”

It was my mother, and the way she said my name—with a ton of fear jammed into that one syllable—told me immediately that my life was about to change.

“I’m at the hospital,” she cried. “It’s your dad. His heart. You’d better come quick.”

I
SAT IN THE BACK SEAT OF A TAXI
, terrified, staring at the driver’s blue turban, trying not to think. But it’s amazing the crazy things that go through your mind sometimes. I’m not religious, but as the car wove through traffic I muttered the same prayer over and over. And the father I whispered my desperate words to wasn’t the one Up There, but the one I imagined lying on a gurney, knocked over by a heart attack. “Please, Dad,” I chanted, “don’t die.”

I was still mumbling when the taxi slowed for the hospital access road, turned in and pulled up at the Emergency entrance. Two ambulances idled by the doors, their exhausts sending white plumes toward the sun. I yanked out my wallet and handed a ten to the cabbie. “Keep the change,” I said.

He turned and smiled sympathetically. He had a black beard and turned-up moustache. “It’s good to pray,” he said. “It will help.”

I dashed through the sliding doors and scanned the Emergency waiting room for my mother. There were a lot of people sitting around on the institutional plastic chairs, sniffling, holding damaged limbs, flipping through magazines, fretting. Then I saw her, perched on the edge of a couch below a window. She was wearing her slouch-around-the-house outfit—mauve tights that made me think briefly of Petruchio/Chad; one of my dad’s tartan shirts, baggy on her slender frame; powder blue slippers with satin bows; her hair piled up on her head. Her appearance reminded me it was Wednesday, when she closed the salon after 11 a.m. and spent the afternoon relaxing.

“Mom, what’s going on?” I said. “Is—” I couldn’t complete the sentence.

“Oh, Jake!” She began to cry. I sat down beside her and put my arm around her. In a few minutes she calmed down a bit and blew her nose. “He’s in there,” she said, pointing with a shaking hand toward double doors.

“What happened?”

“The microwave broke,” she wailed, swept away by another gale of sobs.

“The micro—Mom, take a few deep breaths.”

She did as I asked but still couldn’t force any words past the sobs.

“How about a nice cup of tea?” I suggested.

She nodded. I got up and followed the blue footprints painted on the hospital floor indicating the route to the cafeteria. I bought two teas, loaded one up with milk and sugar, and turned to go back.

“You can’t take those cups away from here,” the cashier said.

I ignored him and returned to my mother. She took the tea, tried a smile that came out like a grimace and sipped the hot liquid. It seemed to do the trick.

“The microwave broke,” she began again. “I called your dad—he was working on Chestnut Street near our house—and he came over. It was the fuse.”

She stopped and drank some more. “He was drinking coffee while he worked on the microwave, and just after he finished up he got this pale, stricken look on his face—you know, sort of surprised and pained all at the same time. He put down his cup and sat down, rubbing his chest and groaning. I called 911 for an ambulance. They took him in there”—she pointed again at the double doors—“and I’ve been waiting here since.”

“Nobody came to speak to you? They didn’t tell you anything?”

She shook her head.

I walked across the crowded room to the reception. A woman sat behind a glass partition at a long desk littered with forms and files and equipment. She was typing.

“Can you tell me anything about Mr. Blanchard?” I asked.

She didn’t look up. “Someone will come and speak to you.”

“Can you tell me where he is?”

“I don’t have that information.”

“Can you call someone to ask?” I said, pointing to the telephone.

“I—”

“You just pick it up and push the appropriate numbers.”

Her face blanked. “You don’t have to be—”

“I’m making a simple request,” I said. “Do me a favour. We don’t know whether he’s alive or—We just want to know what’s happening.”

“What was the name again?”

After I repeated our name, she advised me to take a seat and lifted her telephone handset. Instead, I returned the cups to the cafeteria and went back to the waiting room. Mom twisted her scarf between her fingers, breaking into tears every few minutes. I didn’t know what to say. I sat there trying not to ask myself what I would do if I didn’t have my dad in my life anymore. I pushed away images of our kitchen without him in it, sitting at the table, hunched over a mug of coffee. I tried to recall the sound of his voice—and failed. What would Blanchard and Son, sole prop., be without Blanchard? I bit back my own sobs, taking deep gulps of air, and took a walk down the hall.

I got back in time to see my sister, Janine, swoop down on Mom like an overly enthusiastic guardian angel. She looked as if she had just flown out of a business meeting—power pantsuit and low heels, briefcase, trench coat over the arm. I was glad to see her, and hugged her hard to show it.

Janine took after my mother. She had the same small, light build, the same barely contained vivacity. Her academic training had made her self-possessed, calm and methodical, but in times of stress her high-energy genes elbowed their way to the front of the line and asserted themselves.

“What do we know so far?” she asked, sitting beside my mother. She set her briefcase on the floor and draped her coat over it.

Mom shared what little information we had. “Jake just
asked that nurse over there to find someone to talk to us.” A fresh gust of tears hit her. “I’m afraid of what they’ll say!”

“Mom, don’t assume the worst,” Janine soothed. “I’m sure—”

Then the doors opened and a man in green scrubs appeared. It seemed every eye in the room focused on him. He had a mask hanging from his neck and a file folder in his hand.