Part 3 (1/2)

Spring fever is a real thing. At the end of the fall term, when one is equally sleep deprived and exam addled, pa.s.sions are quelled by the shorter days and, perhaps, the genetic knowledge that it will only get worse and it's best just to burrow in. But in spring, with its rampant downpours and mud and bouts of warm air, antic.i.p.ation is everywhere. It sparks and snaps off the pavement when you least expect it.

On a day when the forsythia raged and daffodils cluttered the s.p.a.ces between stones and the white slats of fences, I had my first fight with John and it was about food. I was graduating in less than a month, and like everyone else in the cla.s.s of 1982, I was in a state of acute scramble before commencement. There were exams, papers due, parties I didn't want to miss, goodbyes that had to be said and said well. My mind was in a quandary over whether to go to ACT or Juilliard the next year. I had gotten into both, and the deadline loomed. I was also in rehearsals for Twelfth Night Twelfth Night as Viola, a role I adored: besotted, cross-dressing, and protective of her brave and tender heart. as Viola, a role I adored: besotted, cross-dressing, and protective of her brave and tender heart.

My friend Tom, Feste to my Viola, was coming for dinner that night. I was making ratatouille and cheese calzones, and he was going to be my chopper. We had an enjoyment of each other that shadowed the roles we played. We walked through the backyard, running lines, and dropped our bags in the dining room. Chris and John had done the shopping earlier, but no one was home yet. Tom settled himself on the windowsill and opened his script. As I took out the cutting boards and knives, he began to quiz me on the ring speech. ”'For such as we are made of, such we be,'” I said, opening the refrigerator. No eggplant. No tomatoes. No zucchini. No mozzarella. Only a case of beer, a drab head of lettuce, and steaks, b.l.o.o.d.y on a white plate.

I began to pace, and Tom watched as I fumed. The unfairness of it all. The countless times they'd done this. In an instant, I'd come undone because of a bare cupboard.

”I'm so mad I could break something.”

”Do it.” Tom's eyes twinkled.

”No!”

”Why not? Break a plate. Throw it against the wall. Who cares?” He spoke like a Zen master.

From the corner of my eye, I saw turquoise plates glaring from the drying rack. I picked one up; it quivered in my hand. Then I closed my eyes and let it drop. The look on my face sent Tom into peals of laughter.

”Oh my G.o.d, that was so much fun,” I said. And because it was, I broke another. There is a reason why people break plates, I told Tom. Whether it was the sound of shattering, or the pleasure of doing something completely out of character, or the fact that the plates were just plain ugly, breaking them had made me feel better. My anger was gone, and my sense of freedom went further. I'd been bold enough to break things, and now I didn't want to cook either. I hadn't eaten red meat since I was fifteen, and I'd be d.a.m.ned if I was going to sizzle it in a pan for someone else! Tom proposed that the two of us go have a nice meal and a bottle of wine at the French restaurant on Hope Street. Why not, I said, as I scribbled a haughty note. Let them fend for themselves. I was becoming a whole new person, and I felt high with it.

Before we left, I reached for the broom, but thought better of it. As I stepped over the pile of shards, Tom held the screen door open, and we let it slam behind us.

When I returned, the house was dark and the broken plates were gone. So was my euphoria. I snuck into the dining room. A five-foot ebony mask of John's stared at me from a corner. Empty pizza boxes were scattered about, and I could hear my roommates upstairs talking, the sound m.u.f.fled through closed doors. John's bike was gone, but by the phone he'd left a two-page letter filled with exclamation points. The next morning, I apologized to everyone, and after a few days things around the house got back to normal.

But John wasn't having any of it. He spent most nights at his girlfriend Sally's. When he was home, he refused to speak to me and left the room when I entered. As one week rolled into the next, nothing changed.

It was late and I was in bed. I loved reading in that room on Benefit Street-soft gray walls, tall windows over the garden, and furniture I'd inherited from my friend Nancy, who had moved to Berkeley the year before: an art deco armoire and, covered in clothes, a small veneered desk I never used. The shades on the windows were rolled as high as they could go, their silk ta.s.sels dangling. I could see a few lights on in the houses up Court Street. I lay under the comforter, curled into my book.

There was fumbling at the back door. A pack thrown down. Then, ”s.h.i.+t.” ”s.h.i.+t.” The back buzzer had never been fixed, and John's entrance through my window had been a common occurrence throughout the year. But that night he continued up the fire escape to the floor above. As he pa.s.sed, he made sure not to look in my room. He rapped on Chris's window, called his name, rapped again. I heard him jiggle the lock, then stop. There was a long silence before he lowered himself back down the metal rungs to the landing outside my window. It was cold that night, and he was wearing a wool cap pulled low over his forehead and a black sweater with leather patches. His face was close against the gla.s.s, and his breath made widening circles with its heat. The back buzzer had never been fixed, and John's entrance through my window had been a common occurrence throughout the year. But that night he continued up the fire escape to the floor above. As he pa.s.sed, he made sure not to look in my room. He rapped on Chris's window, called his name, rapped again. I heard him jiggle the lock, then stop. There was a long silence before he lowered himself back down the metal rungs to the landing outside my window. It was cold that night, and he was wearing a wool cap pulled low over his forehead and a black sweater with leather patches. His face was close against the gla.s.s, and his breath made widening circles with its heat.

I got out of bed, slid a cardigan over my nightgown, and walked barefoot to the window. I unlatched the lock and held the bottom sash up as he stepped through. The cold air rushed in and we stood there eyeing each other like animals.

Then I began to laugh, so hard it hurt. I knew I was making things worse, but I couldn't stop. John frowned-he didn't take to being laughed at.

”You look like...a burglar,” I said when I could get the words out, then kept on laughing.

”That's not very nice, you know.”

”A nineteenth-century burglar. A d.i.c.kensian one.”

He gave me a withering look. ”That's a very silly thing to say.”

”Look.” I pointed to his reflection in the window. ”Look!”

He turned, and when he saw himself in all his woolen ruffian glory, he pulled the cap off and ran his fingers several times through his hair. With his eyes fixed on the floorboards, he shook his head. He was trying valiantly to keep the corners of his mouth down, but soon he was laughing, too.

”Shh...they're all asleep.”

”Okay,” he whispered. ”I don't want to be mad. I don't want us to be mad. But you were were a jerk!” a jerk!”

”It's true, I was,” I said, smiling.

”You were totally wrong!”

”I know. Shh.”

”And childish.”

”Can we be done?”

He said nothing.

”Can you just...please...forgive me?”

He nodded, his face suddenly tender, and reached out to hug me. I stood on my toes. His arms were around me, his face in the crook of my neck, buried. The smell of wool and rain.

We stepped apart.

”Okay?”

”Okay then.”

At the door, he stopped and looked back. I was sitting on the bed, cross-legged, covers around my waist. ”You were still still a jerk,” he said after a moment, but this time there was a trace of a smile at his lips. I let him have the last word-he liked that-and he closed the door quietly. a jerk,” he said after a moment, but this time there was a trace of a smile at his lips. I let him have the last word-he liked that-and he closed the door quietly.

After he was gone, I tried to read but couldn't. I put the book down and shut off the light. Outside, rain had begun. Seven years I'd known him, and I felt closer to him that night than I ever had. There was a kind of intimacy in our silly fight. And risk. He cared enough to show me how he really felt, how I'd disappointed him, how he wanted me to be better than I was. In the dark, I smiled to myself. I'd never imagined that anyone could out-sulk me, but he had. He had won.

I decided on Juilliard not with a coin toss, but with a shuffle of colored cards. My friend had a Rider-Waite tarot deck she kept wrapped in a silk scarf in the bottom drawer of her bureau. On one of those harried nights before graduation, when I was careening between ACT in San Francisco and Juilliard in New York, she made us tea and told me to keep a question in mind as I held the cards. I thought of Juilliard, the tomblike building where I'd gone to ballet school, and of the old Russian dancers who'd flicked our s.h.i.+ns into alignment with their long tapered sticks. Then I imagined ACT and the sunlit cla.s.srooms where I'd been so happy the summer before. The cards told a different story. Those for ACT were ominous: the Tower, the Devil, crossed Swords. For Juilliard: Pentacles, the Magus, and a Wheel of Fortune well-placed. Only the last one, the Two of Cups reversed, was inauspicious. decided on Juilliard not with a coin toss, but with a shuffle of colored cards. My friend had a Rider-Waite tarot deck she kept wrapped in a silk scarf in the bottom drawer of her bureau. On one of those harried nights before graduation, when I was careening between ACT in San Francisco and Juilliard in New York, she made us tea and told me to keep a question in mind as I held the cards. I thought of Juilliard, the tomblike building where I'd gone to ballet school, and of the old Russian dancers who'd flicked our s.h.i.+ns into alignment with their long tapered sticks. Then I imagined ACT and the sunlit cla.s.srooms where I'd been so happy the summer before. The cards told a different story. Those for ACT were ominous: the Tower, the Devil, crossed Swords. For Juilliard: Pentacles, the Magus, and a Wheel of Fortune well-placed. Only the last one, the Two of Cups reversed, was inauspicious. Lovers will part Lovers will part.

A year later, after I had finished my first year at Juilliard and was living in New York, the cards proved true and my relations.h.i.+p with the French Canadian ended.

The Juilliard School, a conservatory for the performing arts, lies on the northern end of the sixteen-acre tract of concert halls, fountains, and stages that Lincoln Center comprises. Unlike a university, the school's Dance, Music, and Drama Divisions are separate. Musicians take up most of the building, but in the early eighties, the third floor was the province of the actors on one end, the modern dancers in the middle, and, in its own enclave far to the front, the School of American Ballet, training ground for New York City Ballet. Late afternoons, small girls with book bags in hand and pink tights under street clothes filed by just as I had done years before, their hair already twisted and pinned in place and a dream in their eyes of someday becoming a sylph or a swan or, the real prize, Clara in The Nutcracker The Nutcracker. One night in their young lives, they had sat transfixed in the darkness and watched as the velvet curtain opened on a world of inarguable beauty, and in that instant, they were smitten. Undone. It was a look I knew.

The Drama Division, inaugurated in 1968, was the newest addition to the school. Conceived by John Houseman and Michel Saint-Denis, the training had a European bent, with an emphasis on cla.s.sical plays, the idea being that if you could tackle the Greeks and Shakespeare, you could do anything. The walls outside the drama theater attested to this. They were lined with photographs of alumni-Kevin Kline, Patti LuPone, Val Kilmer-in Restoration garb and long flowing robes.

When I arrived in the fall of 1982, Juilliard was still the tomblike building I remembered. With ma.s.sive columns and stark stone steps, it was an airless place, lacking whimsy or adornment. None of the windows opened. Even the floor-length wool rehearsal skirts issued the first day with name tags sewn tight at the waist were of a dour, lifeless shade. MS. HAAG MS. HAAG, mine said, and we were referred to with the same formality on the rehearsal call sheets posted on the main bulletin board.

The severe design was meant to impress, not inspire, and as excited as I was to begin, I also wondered whether I would survive. In the first days, members of the cla.s.s ahead whispered what I'd already guessed-that acceptance to the school was no a.s.surance that you remained. Our cla.s.s, Group XV, began with twenty-six members but would dwindle to half that by the time we graduated. In the second year, there were warnings and cuts, and at any time the possibility of not being ”asked back.” Even the first play we did, referred to officially by the faculty as the discovery play, was secretly known as the test. The first two years focused on training, and the last two were geared toward performance. I already had an agent, and my covert plan was to stay two years and leave.

As imposing as it all was, there were pockets of warmth. Beyond the double gla.s.s doors and down a wide corridor was Nora, an ancient Irish sweetheart who manned the desk and always saved you a smile and a piece of fruit or candy. At the Greek coffee shop across Broadway, now a Barnes & n.o.ble, Chris wrapped up a bagel in tinfoil and ladled out thick navy bean soup, and if his boss wasn't looking, he'd push your money back and wave you out. And the teachers-Michael Kahn, Eve Shapiro, Liz Smith, Marian Seldes, and Tim Monich among them-were not overly interested in your opinions or ideas. What they were pa.s.sionate about was pa.s.sing on what they knew. They insisted on your attention, and proposed to give you the means and the freedom to rise up to the words and the story. This alchemy would occur, they promised, through repet.i.tion and discipline. Like the violinists and pianists we rubbed shoulders with in the elevators-those who numbed their instruments with endless scales and drills-so we began to play our bodies and push our voices.

I wasn't sure on most days whether I was exhilarated, exhausted, or infuriated, whether I was prisoner, combatant, or acolyte, but one thing was certain: I was being changed. And it was happening from the inside out. Submit Submit, the walls seemed to say, submit and be changed. Lengthening and widening submit and be changed. Lengthening and widening, the Alexander teacher hummed, her weightless hands guiding stubborn bodies into ease. Down to go up Down to go up, we were persuaded in movement cla.s.s. Find neutral Find neutral, a voice teacher demanded, her meaning a mystery. Once a week in Room 304, we met with John Stix for sense memory, an exercise codified by Lee Strasberg to elicit emotional responses. With eyes closed, we slouched in metal folding chairs and conjured to life cups of coffee, lost objects, past hurts, childhood joys. Concentration and relaxation Concentration and relaxation, Stix intoned, as he navigated the room.

Some days, I chose a bath-heat rising up, steam grazing my lips. Other days, the coffee. But most of the time, I picked the necklace I'd lost near water long ago. The braided chain was from a watch my father's father had received for fifty years of service on the Pennsylvania Railroad. The religious medallion had come from county Cork, worn around my great-great-grandmother's neck on a sailing s.h.i.+p as she crossed the Atlantic. ”Tell no one,” my grandmother had murmured, snapping the clasp around my seven-year-old neck. ”You're my favorite grandchild.” Careful not to wear it around my cousins, I loved the heavy feel. The metal was soft, and there were marks on the saint's halo made by a baby's teeth as her mother held her.

I can still see it. Bright gold in blue water.

Cla.s.ses began at nine in the morning, and rehearsals were usually from six to ten at night, but one particular autumn evening, I was free. John was meeting me at an Italian restaurant on Amsterdam Avenue-a crowded place I knew, with a narrow aisle and tables pushed close, each done up in a s.h.i.+ny checkered cloth. It was cheap with great lighting: an actor's hangout, where ten bucks got you a salad, the house red, and a huge plate of pasta. Candles in Chianti bottles covered with layers of red and green wax lit the room.