Late Stories

The Vestry

He was going to leave the house. Planning to, he means, around 7:40, to go to the church across the street to see a play being performed there. He felt he had to get out of the house, and it might be interesting. The whole experience of seeing the play, he means. He didn’t know about the play, though. It was by a writer who held no interest for him. Hack works, he thought of them, even if one won a Pulitzer years ago and another won some other prestigious award. He hasn’t read anything about the writer for years and assumes he’s dead. But he had to get out, is what he’s saying. He almost never does, except for the usual things: the Y, markets, post office, an occasional coffee. He had thought he’d go to a few concerts at the symphony hall downtown, but without ordering the tickets first as he used to do when his wife was alive. Just park the car in the hall’s garage, go up to the ticket window and get whatever’s available. Apparently, the hall is never filled. They used to go to about six concerts a year and two to three operas at another concert hall. They also, for the last ten years of her life, got season tickets, which means about six plays, to the best theater group in the city. He meant to go to those too, at least once or twice, meaning one or two plays, though preferably more if the lineup of plays was good, and at least one opera. Sometimes he even got dressed for one or the other of them — for movies too — meaning he took off his sweatpants or shorts and long- or short-sleeve polo shirt. He has no dress shirts and wouldn’t wear one to one of those events if he did. But a few minutes before he was to leave the house and drive to the theater or symphony hall or place where the opera was to be performed, he said to himself, and sometimes, maybe the first part of this, out loud to himself, Does he really want to go? He does. He wants to get out, to do something different and perhaps be entertained or moved or whatever would happen. But he doesn’t like driving at night, and if it’s an afternoon performance or showing, especially around this time of year, then chance driving back at night. He also doesn’t much like sitting in a concert hall or theater or opera house, he’ll call it, for two hours and usually more. A movie theater he doesn’t mind, and also movies are almost always much shorter. He also doesn’t like going alone, and he doesn’t know anyone to go with, not that he’d ask anyone if he did know someone who’d want to go. That wasn’t always what he was like. So he went back into the house, if he was outside and got that close to getting in his car and driving to one of these places, and went back to his bedroom and changed into the clothes he took off to put on the dressier ones. Sometimes he never even got that far. He’d go into the bedroom to change his clothes, as preparation for going to one of these events, and think Why bother? He knows he’s not going anywhere, so he should stop fooling himself and wasting his time getting dressed when he’s just going to get back into his old clothes again. One time, he now remembers — it was to a concert that was playing one of his favorite pieces, Mahler’s Third Symphony — he was in the car, had started out maybe a half hour earlier than usual because he thought for this concert—Das Lied von der Erde was also on the program — the hall will be filled — and said to himself, Where does he think he’s going? He knows he’d rather stay home and have a drink or two and some snacks and read and listen to music on the radio or CDs than drive to the hall and go through the hassle of parking the car and standing on what he’s almost sure will be a long ticket line and maybe not even be able to get a ticket, and so on. And it’s getting dark, so it’ll be dark when he drives back and he’ll probably be tired then, since it’ll be an hour or more after he usually goes to bed. And he’s seen this symphony performed twice already, both times with his wife. Once here in the same hall about ten years ago and the other time almost thirty years ago at Carnegie Hall, maybe a few months after they first met. So he turned around and drove home. That was as close as he got, far as he can remember, to go to one of these things since his wife died. Or really, since she got sick — very sick; had to have a trach put in and other serious procedures done to her, and they didn’t want to risk going to anything like a concert or movie again. “You go,” she once said. It was about an hour before the concert was to begin. “Two late Mozart piano concertos and the Jupiter Symphony? You love them. I’ll be all right by myself here.” “You kidding?” he said. “No way.”

But tonight he’s going to a play. It’s being performed by a group calling itself “The Good Shepherd Players,” which could mean it’s affiliated in some way with the church of the same name across the street or just calls itself that because it’s being performed there. It could be, for all he knows, that if this group performs in other places, it calls itself after these other places, but he seriously doubts it. He’s never heard of a theater group or opera company or music ensemble or any kind of performing troupe like that that changes its name to the place it’s performing at, and he doesn’t know how he could have even thought that. This group puts on, for two consecutive weekends — Friday and Saturday nights at eight, Sunday afternoons at three — a play every year, it seems, or has for the past three. Someone once told him it’s a pretty good acting company, a cut above being amateur. Sort of between professional and amateur, so semiprofessional. Maybe it was his wife who told him, having heard it from someone else. He seems to remember that. He knows she never went to one of its plays. He first saw a sign advertising this year’s play in front of the church about a month ago. The sign was professionally done. Tickets were fifteen dollars, it said, ten for children sixteen and under. He wrote the dates and times in his memobook when he saw the sign and transferred them to his weekly planner when he got home. Today’s the first Saturday the play will be performed. He didn’t want to go to the Sunday matinee. It’d break up his day, or just change it too much, though he’d be less tired after than if he went to an evening performance. But he likes to spend Sunday reading the Times and then writing for a few hours and then going to the Y and then after that to either one of the two markets he does most of his shopping at and then to a small restaurant he likes about two miles from his house. He goes there with a book, the only time he does anything like that during the week, and reads for about half an hour while he eats a sandwich or salad and has a medium-sized latte or Americano. So Sundays were out. And Friday he thought would be the first performance in front of a paid audience, so maybe not the best one to go to. Let them get the opening-night jitters and kinks in the production out of the way. The next night would be better. He also thought he might see someone he knows from the neighborhood at the performance. That’d be nice. Someone to talk to, however briefly. If he sees an attractive woman with an empty seat next to her, he might sit in it, first asking if it’s taken. Oh, what’s he talking about? Forget women. Just try to get an aisle seat, if there’s a middle aisle, so he can see the stage better, though of course if nobody tall’s sitting in front of him. He doubts the seats are reserved, if they’re all the same price. And there’ll be refreshments there, he’s almost sure. In fact, he remembers now the sign saying so, the proceeds from it going to some medical research organization. No, a soup kitchen. But the point he’s making is he has to get out. He means, not doing just the same things every day. No, he doesn’t mean that. He means he has to stop giving himself excuses not to go to things. And the play’s right across the street. What could be more convenient? A two-minute walk. Doesn’t have to drive to it. No problem about coming home at night. And it’ll break the ice, sort of. If he goes to this, maybe he’ll go to other things like it. The theater downtown, and its Sunday matinee, if he has to. Opera, if the season isn’t over. He stopped subscribing to the local newspaper months ago, so he doesn’t know what’s going on in town. Concerts at the symphony hall he knows will be going on another four to five months, all the way into May. So it’s settled for tonight. He’s going.

He looks at the time. A little past six. Plenty of time to change his clothes. He’s through writing today, been to the Y. Dinner? What he calls dinner, he’ll have when he comes back. He sits in the easy chair in the living room, takes the book off the side table, opens it to the bookmark and finds the place where he left off. Should he have a drink? It’ll relax him for the play. But also might make him tired, which could end up being an excuse not to go to the play. Maybe around seven, seven-fifteen, a short one. Better, nothing to drink till he gets back home. Less he drinks, less chance he’ll have to pee during the play, another reason for getting an aisle seat. So he reads for a while and then goes into the kitchen and prepares a salad for the next two days and puts it in separate bowls and turns the radio on and listens to music while he reads the newspaper spread out on the dryer. At seven, he pours an Irish whiskey on the rocks and sits in the easy chair and reads some more of the book and drinks and around seven-twenty he goes into the bedroom to change his clothes. He intends to get to the church about twenty to eight and buy a ticket and find a seat. He’ll have the same book with him, so he’ll read while he waits for the play to begin and maybe even during the intermission. And plays never start on time. He’ll also look around to see who else is there. He’s curious what sort of people come to something like this. Of course, friends and relatives of the people involved in the play, but others. How they’re dressed and what they’re saying. He hopes, though, there are a number of people going to it. He hates being just one of a few people in the audience. Feels the actors are looking at him, and it makes him want to look away from the stage. He changes his clothes, looks at his watch on the night table—7:35, so time to get moving — and he gets his wallet and keys and puts on his jacket and cap and gets his book and turns on the outside lights, leaves only the kitchen light on in the house, and locks the door and walks across the street to the church. So he’s doing it. No big deal for anyone else, but for him? — something. For a while he didn’t think he’d do it. That he’d give himself an excuse not to. For instance: He’ll go next Friday or Saturday night, when the performances should be even better than tonight’s. And after all, he’ll have nothing to do those nights, just as he has nothing to do tonight but go to the play. Other excuses. He’d think of them. If there’s anything he’s good at, it’s that. He walks through the church parking lot to the church entrance. Well, how about that, he thinks. You made it. Congratulations. You deserve a medal. Now, if only the play will be good and not too long. But the important thing is you’re here.

He goes inside. A man’s selling tickets at a card table in the lobby, or whatever it’s called in a church. Not the “nave,” though that came to mind. It has a name. “Vestibule” will do. Or just “the entrance.” But what’s he going on about? Three people are on line for tickets, and he gets behind them. Other people, maybe ten, stand around or are seated in chairs against the walls, probably waiting for somebody or just to go into the theater. So, already a fairly good crowd. His turn comes. A sign on the table says “Cash or check only.” “One, please,” he says. He gets a twenty out of his wallet. The man gives him a ticket—“No. 116,” it says on it; that can’t be the number sold just for tonight — and a five-dollar bill in change. “Now where do I go?” “Oh? Your first time with us?” the man says. “Wonderful. It’ll be a surprise. Walk straight through the lobby, then left down the stairs to the vestry, where the play is being performed. Take any seat you want. The play started promptly last night, so I see no foreseeable reason it shouldn’t start on time tonight. Enjoy.” “Thank you.”

He goes straight, left, down the stairs. Coat hooks line one wall of what seems to be the anteroom to a much larger room with rows of unfolded metal chairs in it, which must be the vestry. Several coats are on the hooks. He stuffs his cap into a side pocket of his jacket and hangs the jacket up on one of the hooks. A young girl hands him a program when he goes into the vestry. “Enjoy the performance,” she says. “Thank you.” Though maybe the vestry is both this room and the anteroom he hung his coat in. He’ll want to look up “vestry” when he gets home. Will he remember? Should he jot it down on his bookmark or the program? He forgot his memobook but has a pen in his jacket. Not worth the trouble. And he’ll remember. About fifteen people are already seated, most near the front. Nobody in the first row, though. Probably too close to the stage, which is only a foot or so off the floor. He takes a middle aisle seat, about halfway from the stage, no one in the seat in front of him. There are about ten rows. He counts them. Twelve. Ten seats to a row, five on each side of the middle aisle, so a total seating capacity of more than a hundred. So maybe a hundred-sixteen was the number of tickets sold, up till then, for tonight. But can’t be. Play’s going to start soon and more people would be here. Maybe it’s the total of last night’s sales and tonight’s, or else they’re not selling the tickets in numerical order. It also could be a lot of people bought tickets in advance for tomorrow’s and next week’s performances. He looks at the program. Two acts, it says, with a fifteen-minute intermission, five to six scenes in each act. “Morning.” “One hour later.” “Three hours later.” “The next morning,” and so on. In the second act: first scene is two weeks later, morning. The program has several local businesses advertised in it. Realtors, the market and liquor store he usually shops at, the flower shop he used to go to a few times a year when his wife was alive. Her birthday, their anniversary, a number of times when she was very angry at him. Flowers or a new African violet plant always seemed to make her feel better to him. An ad for the church’s pastoral counseling. There’s no stage curtain. Actors, he just now notices, are lying on cots and supposed to be sleeping or resting. Mosquito netting covers three of the four occupied cots. One cot is empty and has a rolled-up bare mattress on it. More people take seats in the audience. Still nobody in the row in front of his. He doesn’t recognize anyone. Must be past eight now. He saw no reason to bring his watch. He opens his book and starts reading. A couple come into his row from the other end and the woman sits next to him and the man on the other side of her. Minute later the woman whispers something to the man and they each move one seat over. Could it have been something about him? There was nobody in front of them. She probably just felt more comfortable not sitting next to anyone. He puts the book down on the seat she left. More people come in. About fifty seats are taken. Music comes on. “Waltzing Matilda.” It must be around ten after eight. The lights dim in the audience and brighten on stage. The door to the room is closed. The music fades out. A woman dressed like an army nurse might be dressed sixty years ago walks on stage. She raises the bamboo blinds of the one window in back, which looks onto what seems like a jungle, and then pulls the mosquito netting away from one of the cots and ties a cord around the middle of it. The men in the cots start stirring: scratching their faces, yawning, stretching their arms out. “Rise and shine, mighty warriors,” she says, pulling the netting away from another cot, “rise and shine. It’s a special day.” The program says the play takes place in a military hospital in Burma for British, Canadian and American soldiers in World War II.

The play’s terrible. Everything about it: acting, writing, characterizations, laugh lines that aren’t funny, romantic and tender scenes and one tragic one — a soldier learns his brother has been killed in battle in Europe — that are cloying, boring, totally unconvincing, something, but they’re awful. Fifteen minutes into the play, he wishes he hadn’t come to it. He’d leave but thinks that would disturb the actors: walking up the aisle, opening the door and trying not to make a sound. If he’s lucky, he thinks, it’ll be a short act.

The first act lasts for about an hour and a half. Maybe it only felt that long because he was so bored by it and it was a half hour or so less. The audience applauds at the end of it. He doesn’t. The actors leave the stage. Lights come on. Three teenagers immediately start rearranging the furniture on stage — letting down the blinds, removing one cot. He hurries up the aisle, gets his jacket and puts it on in the lobby. He seems to be the first one there. The girl who gave him the program is sitting behind the card table with a woman — they look like mother and daughter — selling candy bars and what seem like homemade brownies and cupcakes with pink and white frosting and fruit juice in paper cups. He was wrong. The money will go to some children’s group of the church, a sign on the table says. “Would you like to buy a refreshment?” the girl says as he’s putting on his cap. “No thanks, sweetheart,” he says. “Maybe some other time,” and he leaves the church. Outside, he thinks she looked disappointed when he said no. And that was so stupid what he said about some other time. He was in too great a rush to get out of there. He should have bought something even if he didn’t eat or drink it. She probably even made the brownies and cupcakes with her mother. Well, others will buy. He can’t always feel bad for everyone. There’ll have to be some sales. Others might even buy just because they don’t want to disappoint the girl by saying no. And it’d be silly and seem peculiar to go back and buy something, though something in him wants to.

He gets home, changes into his bathrobe, sits in the easy chair in the living room and reads the op-ed articles in the newspaper. He has a drink, then a second. Place is nice and warm. He makes himself a tuna melt with tuna salad he made the day before and sits in the easy chair and eats it. So. Was it worth it going to the play? He feels no pride, or relief, or whatever it is, that he finally got out of the house to go to a performance of some kind. Because what did it prove? He now feels even worse than before he went. Why? He just does. Oh, damn, why does it always have to be this way? He feels even less willing now to go alone to some future concert or movie or a play done by professionals in a real theater in the city. He doesn’t think he’ll ever get in his car to go to one if it means he has to go alone. He didn’t feel good sitting by himself in the vestry, and it wasn’t just the boring play. Though there were, though he only got quick looks before the room went dark, a couple of attractive women there with women friends, it seemed. Who knows? If he had stayed he might have been able to start a conversation with one of them during the intermission in the anteroom or the lobby while he had a refreshment, the fruit juice, probably; he’s not much for candy or cake. But what is he thinking? From what he saw, they were too young for him. Thirty years younger than he at least. That will always be the case, it seems. Ah, don’t be so down on yourself. It doesn’t always have to be the case. He might meet someone somewhere accidentally, or a friend could set up something or introduce him to her, and things could start up between them. “This was fun. Like to meet for coffee someday?” That sort of thing. He doesn’t have to think it’s too late for him. Just stay in shape and be ready to say the right thing to get or keep things going. Someone to go to a play with and later talk about it, even the awful plays. Someone who might do the driving-home after, if she’s staying at his place that night, or he at hers. All of that could happen. He has to think it can. Oh, dream on, dream on.