Chapter 7: Performance

After listening to her songs, I started to daydream, cross that line. In my head.

I played that CD more often than was healthy, and wondered if she listened to the same songs. Imagining us both editing papers, working late, listening to the same music. That was part of how it started. I just liked to imagine what she was doing right then. Now she's working on the Shakespeare paper, now she's responding to the red ink I put on Draft 3. Now she's writing those cover letters to Ploughshares, The Atlantic Monthly.

I had kept it light, all through the rest of the play rehearsals. But then the play came, and I found myself slipping back, judging her harshly, more strictly – I had come to expect so much from her, and realized, too, when she looked at me eagerly after that first night, waiting for my personal comment on her performance, no, not my comment, my praise. And I couldn't give it to her, not then. Because… she was less than perfect. Because I couldn't say to her, in all honesty, great job. Oh, she was fine, her performance was nice, most people would have been more than satisfied with it, and it certainly was the best performance in the play, as the school newspaper commented the next day.

But I got mean again. Had I set such high, high standards for her? When finally, after the second night, my deliberate silence forced her to ask me, because she couldn't not have my opinion. I told her, told her I didn't believe her. Tad was doing the best he could. But I knew her best could be so much better.

I knew I expected more from her, expected that that harsh speech would motivate her on some level, if it didn't reduce her to total despair. And I think I knew that despair was not Grace. A core of strength, a stubbornness, if you will, she willed. Not to fall. Not to fail. To live up to and glorify her name. Amazing Grace. And perhaps, a desire to please me. Her teacher.

And she did. She gave the performance of her life. I was humbled. Such raw honesty. Did I cause that? But more than the raw honesty, the pain she truly conveyed, was the ability to do so, the willingness to let that pain show to the world, because that was the pain Rosalind was feeling then, she who had invested so much for Orlando, with such an uncertain return.

I don't think I ever was that honest. Or not so much not honest, but that accepting of how I felt. I distance myself. Safety from pain, don't feel the depth of pain, but don't feel the full extent of any other emotion either. That a 16-year-old girl could express herself so, could move a 40-year-old cynical man to tears himself, myself. I was stunned, moved, touched, overcome. Captivated, captured, swept away.

I had to tell her, had to let her know, had to justify that coldness. Had to see, had to test, had to open a door to see if she would walk through. Had to let her know the door was open, regardless.

So selfish. But she had to know.

I couldn't help it.

It was strange to be in this furnished apartment. Charlotte had thought that by now, six months had passed, she'd be used to it. In six months you establish a routine, and her routine was to come to this apartment after school on Wednesdays and Thursdays, even though her father wasn't always there.  But he made sure she and Bobby each had a room. "It's your second home," he told them. But Charlotte didn't want a second home. She wanted one home with two parents. She knew her father wanted to come back, was just waiting for the word from her mother. Thanksgiving he had to be there. They couldn't have Thanksgiving without Dad there to carve the turkey.

She had come today, a Monday, not a day she usually came, to invite her father. And that was strange for her too, the idea that she had to invite her father to come eat at his own house, and she felt another surge of anger at her mother. Her day consisted of these intermittent surges of anger, annoyance, frustration with her mother. It was her mother's midlife crisis causing this upheaval in their lives. She was so selfish. She had to have it right when Charlotte started high school, of course. Like, a totally new school wasn't confusing enough as it was.

When Charlotte arrived at the apartment she heard music coming from inside. Not the jazz her father usually listened to, but kind of New Agey, piano music sounding like a waterfall. She turned the handle and found the door was unlocked. "Dad?" she called. The music continued, and she heard the sounds of puttering coming from the kitchen. But when she came into the kitchen, the person standing there was too short and definitely too female to be her father. She had spiked blond hair, bleached with dark roots, and a pierced nose. And large breasts accentuated by a tight blue navel-revealing T-shirt.

She was shorter than Charlotte, though older. Though not significantly. "Who are you? Charlotte asked loudly over the music. The young woman looked up. "Oh!" she said. "You must be Charlotte! I thought you didn't come today." She wiped her hands on a dishtowel, then held out her right hand. Charlotte looked at it without touching, and the young woman retracted it. "I'm Amber. I guess you could say I'm you father's girlfriend."

The cast party was at Grace's house. Second time there, her mother Lily distracted again with getting soda set out, plates, the business of having a house full of teenagers. Except for Grace. Grace wasn't there. Which made me realize my whole reason for being there, for bothering with this high-school cast party, was to see her. Though of course I was expected to be there, and they presented me with a director's chair, Jessie did, made a thank you speech without Grace, cheered themselves without Grace, and were all laughing with the relief of performances finished, the exhilaration that follows the end of the play, before the emptiness settles in. No one seemed to feel her absence. I felt her absence, wondered if perhaps I had been too unkind yesterday, that perhaps it was me she was avoiding.

While the kids laughed and played music and went over flubs and missed lines and clever ad-libs, I wondered into the kitchen. Opened the refrigerator and saw a bottle of opened red sitting there. Chilled red – not my favorite, but a cup of wine was suddenly very appealing right then. And right then, as I poured the wine into my empty soda cup, Grace came in. I felt caught off guard. I had had a speech prepared for her, but now I didn't know how to start.

She was wet – had obviously been walking in the rain this whole time. And I was just so, so happy to see her, had thought I wouldn't. But now I said, "Can you keep a secret?" Wanting to confess – what?

But Grace was distracted, and I had to push the door open. "I've…" I've what? Quickly I said, "I've helped myself to some of your parent's wine." Like, I'm a teenager, sneaking wine.

She laughed, softly, and said, "Oh."

"Don't tell anyone!" I cautioned in a big secret voice.

But she took me seriously, as she often does, said she didn't think her parents would mind.

Which made me serious. Enough with the silly wine talk. I took a breath, looked directly at Grace. "You know, you're incredible. You are an incredibly talented person."

"I am?" she looked surprised, pleased, to hear this coming from me.

Confessions. Showing a crack in my façade. "I myself am a fraud. But you are not. You are the real deal. And maybe I've been harsh on you," I had been harsh on her, this sweet, talented, anxious girl with so much going on, she needed me to make her think? She was hardly complacent. "But that's only because the world is harsh, Grace," like she hadn't found that out in the past few years? – "and I want you…" not to feel pain, to be happy,  to be… "to be ready for it," I said.

And Grace, beautiful Grace, said to me, "What do you mean? You're not a fraud."

Was it hiding my feelings for her, or having them in the first place that made me feel fraudulent? But I didn't want to delve into me. "Tonight you let everything inside you actually show. Which I believe is the only thing in the world worth doing," I said. The truth. "Although I've never been willing to do it myself." Right now was the closest I've come in a long while. I moved to sit on a tall kitchen stool. "So how did you do it? Do you know? I mean, what made tonight so different?" Again I remembered the choked up feeling I had as she delivered those lines, "There is no truth in him."

She didn't answer at first, perhaps not sure if I was truly asking, or being rhetorical. But I looked at her expectantly, and, after a pause, she looked at my eyes and said, "You. You made it different. What you said." I? My advice? It had to be more than that, but if that was how she felt, I'd take the praise. I smiled, gratefully, at her perhaps indulgence. "It doesn't have to be a secret," she added. The reason for her success? I was confused. "I mean, I don't think they'd mind. about the wine," she continued.

I looked at the cup, from which I'd taken a few small sips. "Maybe not," I said.

Grace walked over to where I sat. She looked at the wine, then looked up at me, and my attempt at feigning innocence, good intentions, was on shaky ground. I could feel my heart beating, loudly, surprised she couldn't hear it too. "Can I taste it?" she asked. I stood, still holding the cup, and she reached her hand for the cup, and for a moment our fingers touched, and I was speechless. Unable to move, held captive by a single fingertip.

"Oh great! You're still here!" Lily. Grace's mother, entering the kitchen in the whirlwind of activity that seems to surround her. Grace stepped back from me quickly, and I realized how close we had been standing. Lily hadn't noticed, and I immediately confessed to  purloining some wine. But Lily was distracted with the pride of Grace's performance, and thanked me for that. She turned to Grace and said, "You look flushed, sweetie," and felt her forehead. I wondered if I did as well, and Grace met my eyes for a brief second. Lily turned to open the refrigerator and said, "Wasn't Grace just, just so real tonight?"

I looked past her, meeting Grace's eyes again. "Incredibly real," I said, to her. She looked down. I had opened the door wide, and she stepped through with grace. But now what? Lily carried a cake from the fridge to the counter, getting it ready to take in the other room. The kitchen door opened again, and a boy about 18 came in and immediately put an arm across Grace's shoulders. She ducked away as Lily said, "Hey where were you? We saved you a seat."

"I'm sorry," he said. And I realized this must be The Musician, and I felt a dark emotion rise up? Jealousy? Perhaps, but more anger at him for having hurt Grace, for having someone as incredible as Grace feel affection for him, and to have him take that affection so lightly, so for granted.  I felt repulsion toward him, almost, more so when I saw Grace leave the room, followed by Lily with the cake.

"Sorry I missed the play," he said to me, making conversation. "I heard it was good." He was supposed to have been at the play tonight. His absence – Grace must have used that pain tonight. Not my "a real actress would" criticism. And I felt a mixture of embarrassment, that my need to have helped her was so transparent, and hope, that my feelings were important enough that she gave me a less honest answer, but the one she figured I'd want to hear. I suddenly couldn't stand being in the kitchen with Eli any longer, and as he faltered over a small-talk answer to  my small-talk question, I left the kitchen and joined Grace and the other cast members in the living room.

Grace looked up as I came in, and our eyes met again. Each time she looked at me that way, a look of dawning understanding, of connection, my heart gave a small leap, my palms felt sweaty, and I thought I might need several bottles of wine so I could put the logical side of my brain to sleep and just enjoy my heart. Be graceful.

I realized, after, it was a sign of something, a shifting in my life, that I would go to a place I knew was so morally wrong, a place I would never before have considered traveling. Opened a door that should have remained locked. Was it myself, a need for change, using her to help make that change happen? Or was it she, Grace, that made a change necessary, essential, regardless of right or wrong?