To The Power Of Three

20

Peter knew it was a bad idea to go to the high school Monday morning, but he just couldn’t help himself. He was bored out of his mind. Television was all girly stuff, even on pay cable-clearly no self-respecting man was supposed to be watching television before noon. The Glendale pool didn’t have weekday hours until later in the summer, and the early-June days were too cool for swimming anyway. Besides, he wasn’t sure how the producers would feel about him tanning. Guy Pearce was a pretty pale guy, although there was a hint of olive in his complexion. With all those self-tanners on the market, Peter could always go darker fast if need be, whereas if he overtanned, there was no makeup in the world that could take it down. Too bad, because Peter tanned beautifully.

A year ago, even as recently as Christmas, Peter might have found some of his old compadres hanging around Glendale, but college graduation had changed that dynamic. People had jobs or internships, or else they were doing big trips before they plunged into grad school. There were no students at the high school who knew him, although the real drama geeks might remember him from his community-theater work.

But his drama teacher was still on the faculty, and Peter couldn’t resist going up there, sharing his big news. Old Giff would be so happy for him. Really, it would be a favor to him, letting him be the first to know that one of his former students was succeeding at such a high level.

Vans from the local television stations were parked on the shoulder along Glendale Circle, and Peter had a hunch some security guy would be posted at the front door, making sure that all visitors reported to the office. But these were his old stomping grounds. He knew tricks that no reporter, no stranger, ever could. Instead of heading to the front doors, he ambled to one of the breezeways, losing himself in the crowd of students during a class change. The kids glanced his way-they weren’t fooled by the twenty-two-year-old impostor among them-but didn’t challenge him, just kept up their own manic chatter. It took him a second to tune in to their frequency, and when he did, he realized that all the buzzing was about the shooting. Of course.

Old Giff was sitting in a chair on the stage, and in the split second before he realized he was being observed, he reminded Peter of a particularly poignant Malvolio from a Lincoln Center production of Twelfth Night, and it wasn’t just because he wore bright yellow trousers. Giff had a rubbery, comic countenance, the kind made for Neil Simon’s earlier plays, but left to its own devices, Old Giff’s face sagged into melancholic lines and folds. He looked lonely and unloved, and in full knowledge of the fact that he was lonely and unloved. In high school Peter had refused to think about Giff’s sexuality, not that he had a problem with people being gay or whatever. Peter had even threatened to beat up an oafish freshman who threw the word “faggot” around a little too carelessly. It was just that if he conceded Giff was gay, then he would have to wonder if the older man’s devotion to him was based on Peter’s talent or some latent attraction.

But of course he was gay, Peter thought now.

“Lasko!” the teacher cried out, his face truly lighting up. “What a welcome surprise at such a sad, sad time. Did you come back for Kat’s funeral?”

The question shamed Peter a little. But it wasn’t his fault that he had planned his trip before Kat was killed, he reminded himself.

“Yeah,” he said. “Of course.”

“Isn’t it horrible?”

“Horrible doesn’t begin to approach it. What happened anyway?”

“No one knows. Perri lost her mind, I guess. Lord, I feel terrible about it. She was in my homeroom, you know.”

“Hey, just because she was your student doesn’t mean you could have seen it coming.”

The stage had been set with chairs, and Giff began loading them onto a wheeled cart.

“I’m not being melodramatic.” Giff allowed himself a half smile at his choice of words. “Perri was very angry with me over something that happened last fall. She and a few other students persuaded me to stage Anyone Can Whistle as our fall musical. I cast her and Kat in the leads, and we started rehearsing.”

“That’s pretty cool, actually. Doing a show like that at the high-school level.”

“Well, it’s dated, and the problems in the book have never been resolved, but it feels powerful and sophisticated to high-school students. And the chorus is huge, just utterly expandable, which is always a good thing for us.”

“So what was Perri’s beef, if she got the play she wanted and the part she wanted?”

“Three weeks in, we had to give up on Anyone Can Whistle and sub in Oklahoma! There were some complications with the rights-turns out that Everyman wanted to do it. You know an Equity company within a certain-mile radius had bumping rights. To be fair, I told the leads they could have comparable parts-Kat as Laurey, Perri as Ado Annie.”

“Most girls would kill to be Ado Annie.” Peter regretted the wording, but Old Giff didn’t seem to notice.

“That’s what I thought. But Perri wanted no part of it. She accused me of selling out, of bowing to pressure from Kat’s father, so his daughter could have a bigger part.”

“Crazy.” The word echoed a little in the empty auditorium, and Peter realized he had sounded insensitive.

“Well, between us, a lot of parents were upset, once they began reading the script. The Everyman Theater gave me a graceful way out of a tight spot. The mental institution! I mean, half the kids in this place are on Prozac or Wellbutrin. It’s a kind of sensitive topic. And when Hartigan read the lyrics to his daughter’s little seduction number, ‘Come Play Wiz Me’-well, the guy was on the phone trying to rewrite Stephen Sondheim. And my Hapgood was no good. Now, you-you would have been extraordinary in the role. Sexy and a good singer.”

While Peter had come here in hopes that his old drama teacher would gush over him, this was more affection than he had bargained for.

“Do you honestly think choosing Oklahoma! over Anyone Can Whistle is a reason to shoot somebody?”

Giff rubbed his cheeks, massaging them in circles, forward and back. “People have killed over the cheerleading squad, why not the school musical? But-no, no, I don’t think this is a case of cause and effect. Perri may have had some resentment of Kat. You know I always saw my classes as-”

“A repertory company, like the Old Abbey,” Peter finished. It was one of Old Giff’s more repeated riffs, and Giff repeated a lot of his riffs. Yet Peter had never been relegated to spear-carrying. He had been too good to waste on the chorus, for even a single production.

“Yes, exactly. And Perri had played by the rules, taking parts large and small, doing a lot of behind-the-scenes work. The year after she was the lead in The Lark, she did chorus in Brigadoon with no complaint. It was one thing to cancel Whistle-I think even Perri knew it was a stretch-but to see Kat, who had never auditioned for a school play, waltz in and end up with a plum lead in a show that her father had lobbied for…well, I’m sure it stuck in Perri’s craw. She didn’t even try out for the spring play this year-Our Town, which I chose because I thought she would be a wonderful Emily. She was mad at me. She was mad at everyone, it seemed, this past year.”

“Well, that explains it, doesn’t it?” Peter didn’t see how he could ever lead the conversation back to himself now, not in a graceful way.

“Maybe,” Giff said, rubbing his cheeks again. “Maybe. You know what you should do?”

“What?”

“You should speak-or sing, yes, sing-at today’s assembly. We should pick an appropriate song. For Kat.”

“I don’t know…” Peter was thinking of the songs he had sung to Kat three years ago, made-up songs that he would be mortified to re-create for anyone, ever.

“Not a show tune, just something sweet and simple. A hymn-well, not a hymn-hymn, someone would complain, and it would be so Madalyn Murray O’Hair all over again. But you should sing. Or speak.”

“I don’t think so, Giff.”

“Oh, you must. You must, Peter. For me. For Kat.”

And so it happened that Peter Lasko stood before the assembled student body of Glendale High School after a series of presentations-by the principal, by the county executive, by a pretty young guidance counselor who encouraged students to come talk to her about anything, absolutely anything, with the promise of absolute confidentiality.

Like any actor worth a damn, he had stage fright, but he’d never had it in such overwhelming proportions before. Willing his legs not to shake, Peter clasped his arms across his chest and leaned into the mike, singing the song that Giff, the principal, and the guidance counselor had finally agreed was appropriate: “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” It was, ironically, a show tune and a hymn. Peter sang in a clear, unaffected tenor, although it is doubtful that anyone heard the final, powerful build, for the girls in the auditorium began to cry so hard and so lustily that they drowned him out, almost as if he were starring in Bye Bye Birdie. Suffer indeed.

Peter, who had been Billy Bigelow in Carousel, realized he’d never had a chance to sing this particular song before, given that it’s first performed over Billy’s dead body. And in the reprise, at the play’s end, Bill just stands to the side, a ghost, praying for his daughter to hear the choir’s words and heed them, to know that she is loved, that he would always be there for her even if he was dead.

The last note, while not the highest, was a bitch, even transposed to a friendlier key for his tenor range, but Peter nailed it. You’ll never walk alone. You’ll never walk A-LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONE.

He absolutely nailed it, not that anyone heard.