Sacred Monster

Flashback 4

The theater was small, with black walls and only simple efficient lighting on the stage. Twenty James Deans lurked and posed and fixed their hair in the main auditorium, while another James Dean, script in hand, went through a scene on stage, playing opposite Miriam Croft, a famous older actress, a one-time beauty who was now most frequently called “well preserved.” Miss Croft, working without a script, her manner imperious and demanding, said, “I am your mother, and I do love you.”

“You don’t love me,” the James Dean read, passionately. “You never loved me. You never loved anybody. You don’t know how to love.”

“All right,” called the director from the front row. A tall, thin man with a thick black mustache and waving hands, he was known for his impatience. Of the half-dozen people watching from the front row, he was the only one without notepad or clipboard. “Thank you very much,” he said to the James Dean on stage. “Next.”

The James Dean shrugged and walked off into the wings and Jack entered smiling like someone who wants to be helpful. Jack carried no script. While Miriam Croft watched him, noncommittal, he stepped to the center of the stage and faced front.

An assistant, seated to the left of the director, clutched her clipboard and pen and called, “Name?”

“Jack Pine.”

“Do we have your résumé?”

Easy, confident, self-deprecating, Jack spread his hands and said, “Such as it is.”

The director, edginess in his voice, said, “Where’s your script?”

“Oh, I’ve been hearing the scene,” Jack told him. “I know it now.”

The director shook his head, waved his hand. “Then go right ahead.”

Jack turned to look at Miriam Croft, and at once he altered, he transmogrified, he became someone else. He was taller and thinner, both more closed off and yet more vulnerable. He was cold, mistrustful, in pain. Miriam cocked an eyebrow, watching him.

Jack’s voice seemed nearly closed, half strangling him, when at last he spoke: “Mother...”

Irritably, the director called, “The line is, ‘Mother, I can’t stay.’”

Miriam, quite serious, watching Jack unblinking, said, “He knows the line, Harry.”

The director reared back. “Well, excuse me.”

Amiable, helpful, his former self, Jack smiled pleasantly at the director, saying, “Are we ready now, sir?”

Miffed but professional, the director said, “Of course. Go right ahead.”

“Thank you, sir,” Jack said, and turned back to Miriam, and again underwent that transition to the other person, the unhappy defeated son: “Mother... I can’t stay.”

“But I insist, darling.”

Jack turned, twisted, a caged animal searching for a nonexistent door. “You... stifle me. There’s no air in here, I can’t breathe.”

Miriam’s eyes were fastened like cargo hooks on Jack’s face. “I only want what’s best for you, dear. I am your mother, and I do love you.”

The words were wrung from Jack, blasphemies he was helpless not to pronounce: “You don’t love me. You never loved me. You never loved anybody. You don’t know how to love.”

Miriam smiled.

I smile. The sun slides free, looks down on me. The sun, methinks, looks with a watery eye. But which of us was Titania, which was Bottom?

The interviewer says, “That was your first professional role.”

True. True.

“And Miriam Croft was a great help to you.”

“We were a great help to one another,” I say, and I laugh. But it hurts to laugh. I seem to be nothing but broken ribs from neck to crotch when I laugh, so I stop laughing. I smile. “We helped one another in so many ways,” I say.