The Mirrors Page 15
“I can be at one with him,” a hipster goth girl said. “Like sex, without the sweating!”
They picked over the body, looking for whatever shred of cerebellum might have flown off in this direction or that, and they did that for hours. Until they passed out. On the floor. In their vomit. In pools of Mervyn’s raspberry-red blood.
I turned to my melting daiquiri. By then, it had become sloshy. I tried convincing myself that the melted ice would dilute it. That it wouldn’t be like drinking at all.
But I couldn’t.
I shuffled away from the bar. Out the door. Into the night. I gripped my cell phone tight, knowing my sponsor wasn’t up this late but contemplating calling her anyway.
I’d tell her I’d come close to drinking, but hadn’t. That I’d learned that now, more than ever, I couldn’t. I’d tell her I’d learned my lesson: that if I drank I’d end up like Mervyn. Or perhaps, even worst, his fans.
I never read or wrote another word of fiction.
Youth to Be Proud Of
REVIEW OF THE RILEY HIGH SCHOOL
LITTLE THEATER GROUP’S FRIDAY NIGHT
PERFORMANCE OF OUR TOWN
by Narvin Glasgow
If this is the best our children can give us, then our children’s children are doomed.
Even when compared only to other student productions, Friday’s performance of Our Town left quite a lot to be desired. A student director—Natasha Ogden (daughter of Riley Funeral Home owner Oscar Ogden)—perverted Thornton Wilder’s masterpiece with the use of various special effects bells and whistles which the Director’s Notes indicated were intended to make the play more relevant in the era of text messages and Twitter.
Originally supposed to take place nearly a century ago, Ogden set the play in the time span between the late 1970s and the mid-’90s and dressed her cast up in white leisure suits, gauzy Stevie Nicks–style dresses, and cords of corduroy. In scenes where there is a death or (SPOILER) where the dead speak, she had that character climb a stepladder and spin a suspended disco ball (“to symbolize the shining brilliance of each and every soul,” her notes said). She then had a squad of stage mothers hoist the actors into the air using a system of pulleys and very thin stage wire. “That way the audience knows they’re in heaven,” the notes explained.
As if this wasn’t horrendous enough, pandemonium broke out during intermission. The actress playing Young Emily (Meghan McElroy, daughter of Buddy’s Pharmacy owner and operator Buddy McElroy) wriggled past the closed curtain, burst onto the gymnasium stage, and announced to a soda-sipping, cookie-nibbling audience that a pee test had just confirmed her pregnancy.
The few students who bothered attending (all weirdos— boys wearing eyeliner, girls decked out in combat boots) failed to restrain their laughter at this ill-timed disclosure. But a fair number of the farmers, bikers, waitresses, and hospital maids in the gymnasium that night assumed the speech was part of the show, and had no clue Ms. McElroy was breaking character. This changed when she hollered how she suspected Mr. Richardson, the sensitive—and honestly, hitherto-assumed-homosexual— guidance counselor, to be the father. A close review of the program verified there was no presumably gay school guidance counselor in Our Town, let alone one who meandered across boundaries with enough gall to impregnate a student. And speaking of homosexuality, when Meghan McElroy spilled the beans about her pregnancy, Todd Blankenship (son of Superior Court Judge Howard Blankenship) and Joey Bancroft (son of Grace Presbyterian Church’s junior pastor Craig Bancroft)— both youths of fifteen—began tongue-kissing each other right next to her. In between slobbering gasps, they announced their undying love and threatened to elope.
At that point Luke Emerson (son of Riley’s only private practice psychotherapist, Emerson Emerson, Ph.D.) walked up next to Young Mr. Blankenship and Young Mr. Bancroft and explained to the audience that he’d long been an aficionado of self-mutilation. He then removed his shirt to reveal a torso criss-crossed with scars and a cavity of crusty muscle where his belly button should have been. He screamed he had eradicated his navel in an attempt to erase every trace of evidence that a connection ever existed between himself and his “controlling (expletive)-mother.”
Emerson Emerson reportedly expressed relief afterward that his son “at least wasn’t like those two kissing boys.”
It took some time for Ms. Ogden to settle down her charges and get the second act going.
But the damage proved irreparable. The special effects (that is to say, the pulleys and the wire) did their job well enough, allowing the “actors” (a term I use loosely for this gaggle of maladjusted youth) to float in mid-air, inducing a sense of crude wonder. Director Ogden deserves the mildest of kudos for at least making sure the machinery worked well enough. And her inclusion of musical effects—such as how the first bars of Thus Spake Zarathustra played whenever a character died and began levitating off the stage—kept things interesting.
But even that success was not enough to overcome the deficits of the actors and their transformation of a classic piece of American stagecraft into a tawdry confessional. The only “drama” in Riley High School’s production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town was of the trite, histrionic rumor-mill variety. There is no place for this sort of thing on the Riley High School gymnasium stage.
This production is pollution.
I call on all Rileyite parents to come together and take a stand against this onrush of oddity. I call for our youth to once again be guided by the wise steering of their elders. I call for consequences: immediate and severe.
RILEY REBOUNDS FOR SATURDAY
PERFORMANCE OF OUR TOWN
by Narvin Glasgow
Like many of our readers, I have heard the rumors of rampant drug use on the set of Riley High School’s production of Our Town. How else can one explain how things fell apart, how the center would not hold? Fortunately, our own Riley Police Department has apprehended nineteen-year-old Maxwell McElroy (see page A1, “Pharmacist’s Son Nabbed for Pill-Pushing”). Authorities arrested McElroy-the-younger for distribution of unprescribed Xanax and Oxycontin to the rest of the Our Town cast. An initial hearing before Superior Court Judge Howard Blankenship has been scheduled, and a cash-only bond set at $10,000.
Perhaps Young Mr. McElroy only pushed the pills in an innocent attempt to “mellow the troupe out” (as my own daughter, Katie, a box office volunteer and in no way involved in Friday night’s scandal, informed this journalist Saturday morning). If that were the case, Max McElroy should be informed that by Saturday night the cast apparently lost their case of stage fright without pharmaceutical assistance and pulled off a sensational—one might even say thought-provoking— performance.
If the Tonys gave out awards at the high school level and one of the categories was “most improved performance,” I’d be the first to nominate Riley High’s production of Our Town.
For starters, the play suffered none of the embarrassing, character-breaking confessions that marked Friday’s show. One had the sense the actors felt dutifully ashamed of their missteps. They were, in fact, as quiet as cornstalks throughout the entire evening.
This was to be a night at the theater like none ever seen. Even before the performance, one had the sense that the evening held a certain … gravity. A low, musky, sweet-sick scent permeated the air. As Riley’s most influential critic of the arts, I have to admit that I am catered to and spoiled by venues that reserve a seat in the front row for me. However, at this performance I discovered no reservation was necessary as the chairs in the Riley High gymnasium were devoid of parents. The only other audience members were a handful of young people—the most garish and awkward of the proto-freaks who had attended the show the night before. They sat in the back of the gym, snickering and whispering to one another as I walked past them. I paid the ruffians no mind and placed my camera and notepad in the empty seat next to me, settling in for what I assumed would be another long evening.
As with Friday’s show, pulleys and sta
ge wire were an integral part of the production. Even more so Saturday than Friday, come to think of it. As noted in my previous review, there were moments Friday night when the actors moved about freely by foot. On Saturday, however, the pulleys animated the cast throughout the entire performance. Wheels squeaked overhead, and the wire lifted the youths to just the right height so their legs seemed to gallop across the stage. The actors were at ease with the arrangement, and I could not detect any sign of discomfort, even when the pulleys sometimes jerked to and fro with a bit too much force.
Given the actors’ Friday night debauchery, it makes sense that they appeared not-quite-themselves on Saturday. One couldn’t put one’s finger on it. They looked more pale and waxen than when I’d last seen them. Riley Funeral Home makeup artist Sarah Ogden (noted in the program as a last-minute addition to the crew) did a splendid job, though. The youths had none of the untamed nastiness that had been on outrageous display Friday night. They looked, in fact, rather at peace. As though they were all in a better place now, both mentally and morally.
The lips of the actors did not move, but I could hear lines of dialogue nonetheless. They were bellowed by voices residing in the rafters above the stage. The voices were not those of the teens, but instead a more haggard—some might say, more mature—echo of those voices. Older voices, but similar enough to the youths themselves. More skillful voices, delivering the dialogue in a far more snappy, even melodic, fashion when compared to the stammering and giggles on Friday.
There was no sign of the corduroy, the leisure suits, or the nipple-suggesting gauzy dresses that had embarrassed the entire town of Riley on opening night. Each youth wore classic black. The boys wore black suits adorned with a white carnation, white shirts, and black neckties. The girls wore calf-length black dresses, adorned with a white bow at the neckline and a white carnation pinned to the chest.
There was no sign of the disco ball; but there were flowers in many places, and a guest book had been set next to the box office. There was no more Thus Spake Zarathustra. Instead, old Ma Ogden sat at an organ I’d never noticed in the gymnasium before. At the end of each scene she played a few bars of “Amazing Grace.” I don’t know about you, but this Rileyite will take “Amazing Grace” over Thus Spake Zarathustra any day of the week.
Whereas those in attendance on Friday night had noted that the allegedly “dead” characters could be seen flinching— even smirking—I could not observe even a stray breath among that very same cast on Saturday.
I found myself moved by the Riley High Little Theater Group as they’d never moved me before. At the performance’s end, one of the ushers (I think Zeke Ogden) must have noticed the tear rolling down my cheek. He offered me a tissue, and I gratefully accepted.
While momentarily distracted I took the opportunity to glance back at the other members of the audience seated in the rear, to see if they shared my appreciation for the Little Theater Group’s 180-degree turn.
It seemed as though they were at least as moved as I’d been, if not more so. Even in the dimly lit theater, I could see them lurched over, shaking and sobbing. They must have felt self-conscious (they looked more nervous than cats in a room full of rocking chairs). As soon as they became aware of my backward glance they made a beeline for the exit.
The premature departure of so many audience members created some awkwardness, but at least there was none of the nonsense from Friday’s performance—none of the missed cues or sloppy costume changes. Only cold precision.
At the show’s end, the curtain fell. Modest to a fault— and perhaps gun-shy about breaking character as they had on Friday—the cast did not take a bow. Theater veterans may find this to be the one inexcusable breach of etiquette, but I considered this newfound reserve a welcome change. There was no unscripted chaos in Saturday’s performance. There was only Our Town.
After the show concluded and the last note of “Amazing Grace” was played, I asked Ma Ogden if I could have a word with her granddaughter, Natasha. I wanted to know how she’d pulled off (literally overnight) such a swift revision in so many areas of production.
Ma Ogden paused for a second and looked embarrassed. But when she realized I wasn’t going to let the matter drop, she looked up to me and smiled. “The difference, Mr. Glasgow, is prayer. You can go back and see her, but I wouldn’t expect her to be too talkative. She’s still praying. We convinced Natasha to pray long and hard about what she’d done last night, about letting all those unspeakable things be said and making a nice student play all weird. After some time speaking to the Man Upstairs she accepted our suggestions without talking back.”
I went backstage and verified this was, indeed, the case. In the green room, Natasha Ogden wore the same black dress the actresses had. She knelt rigidly on the floor with a tattered family Bible resting on a chair in front of her. She looked expressionless—as if she’d somehow fallen asleep in that posture—so I called out her name. I tried, oh, I don’t know, three or four times with no response. I can only reason that she was in deep contemplation of the scriptures. Her eyes were shut so tight, as though they’d been sewn shut. If only we could all remain that focused on God’s word, the world would be a better place. This Rileyite rests assured our community will stay in good hands.
Yes, if Saturday’s show is any indication, Riley can look forward to quite the bright future. One day made all the difference, it seems. On Friday, the cast was the most undisciplined array of fringe freaks our town could ever assemble. But by Saturday, they were youth to be proud of.
Subcontractors
In the eighth month of the plague (the month all the pills stopped working) the funeral homes started deputizing subcontractors. This was a great boon to Mama and me. It allowed us to afford little extras, like ice cream.
Morticians still insisted on doing the embalming themselves. They weren’t about to give away any of their trade secrets. They divulged no details about the incisions and drainings and infusions and makeup tricks that preserved the appearance of the dead (and, more importantly, preserved their monopoly, their raison d’être).
No, the only aspect of their services they bid out to subcontractors was the hosting of various visitations, viewings, funerals, and memorial services. With all the bodies streaming into them, they no longer had room for such affairs. Areas of funeral homes previously reserved for the accommodation of these events were remodeled into additional embalming facilities. Only the very wealthiest citizens of our small Rust Belt city were afforded the luxury of a service held “on location” (if you will) at the funeral parlor. The rest were farmed out to any member of the populace who took a one-hour certification course in “grief management,” and who was willing to encumber the risk of taking a body that died from God-knows-what into their home.
(I say “God-knows-what” because fibbing about the cause of death was rampant, as no one wanted the stigma and shunning that followed the revelation that a family member, friend, or acquaintance had been infected. Our local coroners, in fact, were rumored to falsify death certificates if they’d had even the most fleeting association with the body. After all, they too had wives and mistresses who would have bolted if they’d known the truth. As a result, reports of death from “heart attack” and “stroke” skyrocketed. Surely, a sizable number of these cases were actually plague victims.)
Despite all the risk, my mother rushed at the opportunity and signed subcontracts with not only one funeral home, but three. It mattered little to her (or to the funeral homes) that we didn’t own any of the biohazard suits that had been mandated for handling the plague-dead (and had become requisite, indeed, for simply navigating the post-plague world). “I already work at a laundromat,” Mama explained. “And I ain’t got sick yet. Don’t you think that’s somethin’ special? All my coworkers keep comin’ down with somethin’ or other and havin’ to stop work. Some people even think we should just close the business. But me? Totally unaffected. You see, I think it’s all in the Good Lord’s hands.”
To her, it mattered little that we lived in a two bedroom apartment with only a small living room and smaller kitchen, possessing barely enough space to house the deceased themselves, let alone any mourners. I brought this to her attention. “If you think there’s not enough space in here,” Mama countered, “why don’t you stop takin’ it up and go off to the park? Pick me some wildflowers. People expect bouquets an’ shit at a funeral. Here, take these scissors with you and cut some for Mama.”
So I grabbed the scissors, tucked them away in the little plastic purse I took with me everywhere in those days, and jogged out of the house to the park. Whenever I’d gone to the park in the past, the only threats I had to brace myself against were bumblebees. But that day I took scissors to cut flowers— the worst day of my childhood, I suppose, not counting the day Dad left—I faced the tinny taunts of older, wealthier kids bullying me through the speakers of their designer biohazard suits. The boys’ suits were gray or blue, squarish and simple, the girls’ were pink or purple and tight in the butt and where boobs would have been if they’d been old enough to have much in the way of a bosom. The sun made a glare across the plastic face shields, making it difficult to identify my tormentors at first.
“I’ve heard your mom’s turned into a body-borrower,” one of the older boys said in his metallic-speaker-voice. (It took me a while, but I eventually placed him as Joe Pipken, a charismatic bully from one block over. He must have only recently acquired the biohazard suit. When he’d last teased me, a week before when we’d passed on the sidewalk, he’d been without one. He’d also been suffering a terrible case of “allergies” and had been coughing up a storm.) “Body-borrower! Body borrower!” his lemmings chanted, joining in with the teasing. Then Pipken let loose with a volley of sneezes. I heard a stray cough from one or two of his followers. A metallic sniffle rang out over the park, followed by more put-downs. “How many bodies is your mom going to borrow to pay rent this month?” Pipken hollered. “What are you doing out in the open air with decent people? Don’t bring your death-cooties near us!”