Little Red Lies (3 page)

School is a series of low points. Drama club drags, mainly because I haven’t been given a part in the play.
School sports get along better without me. Nothing is happening in my life.

It’s first period, Thursday, English, Hamlet’s soliloquy in act 3, scene 1. I’ve memorized it right down to the last comma. I want Mr. Mackiewitz to ask me to recite it because I want to prove I can act.

Besides being our homeroom teacher, Mr. Mackiewitz is director of the school play. If he sees me dripping with dramatic pathos, maybe I’ll get a part next year.

But he doesn’t even notice me beaming hopefully at him. He stands at his desk at the front of the classroom, his eyes wide with surprise, as if he can’t believe he’s forgotten the opening words
To be, or not to be
.… He falls into his chair and slumps over his
Hamlet
.

For seven seconds, our class of twenty-one students is in a state of total paralysis, until my friend Ruthie screams.

Hazel Carrington shouts, “I’ll go get someone!”

She returns with the math teacher from next door, who checks Mr. Mackiewitz’s pulse. “Somebody run to the office. Get them to call an ambulance!”

Hazel Carrington, the most responsible student in the class, runs to the principal’s office. The math teacher tells us all to leave quickly and quietly and to wait in the lunchroom until our next class.

The lunchroom always smells like armpits mixed with either egg salad sandwiches or overripe bananas. Today it’s
egg. The air hums with the electricity generated by twenty-one nervous teenagers.

“Do you think he’ll die?”

“I think he did. He’s pretty old.”

“Listen!” We hear the ambulance siren getting closer and then stop. We’re quiet, imagining what’s about to happen.

“I guess we’ll be getting a supply teacher,” someone says.

“I wonder if the school play will be canceled,” Hazel Carrington says.

“The poor guy,” someone thinks to say.

It was just after Christmas when Mr. Mackiewitz posted the cast list with no sign of my name on it.

“I know you’re disappointed,” he said to me.

“I thought my audition went pretty well.”

“Sorry, I just couldn’t picture you in any of the roles.”

“But, I know I have great stage potential.”

“Rachel, my dear,” he said, “it pains me to have to say this, but you have a tendency to overact. Do you know what I mean?”

I nodded. Of course I knew what he meant. I just didn’t believe him.

Later, I told Ruthie what he’d said, hoping she would scoff and say,
That’s just stupid
, and make me feel better. Instead, she said, “Yeah, well, he’s right.”

“Ruthie! Why are you saying this?”

“I’m saying it for your own good because you never believe the things you don’t want to be true.”

“Like what?”

“Like somebody saying you tend to go way overboard.”

“That’s just stupid!”

Last time I ask her to stick up for me.

“Next year,” Mr. Mackiewitz said back then, “I’ll look very hard for a script that might work for you. If you believe you can act, then we’ll give you all the encouragement in the world.” I brightened a bit at that. “Right now, however, I need you to be the prompter. The job takes someone with a sharp ear and a quick mind, who can concentrate no matter what.”

Grudgingly, I agreed to do it.

“And later,” he said, “once we’re into production, I’ll need you to apply makeup.”

I warmed up a little. Enhancing faces was something I felt I knew something about, the only bright star in the entire blank sky.

In assembly the next day, the principal announces, “Mr. Mackiewitz has had a severe heart attack. He is being well looked after in hospital, and we are all hoping for his early recovery. We are very lucky that he is still alive.”

Everyone cheers.

“We are not expecting him to return to school for quite some time, if at all. Therefore, starting Monday, a supply teacher will take up his duties.”

The following Monday, a Mr. Tompkins is writing on the blackboard as we straggle into the classroom. He doesn’t turn around until everyone is seated, and
oh, my
! He is extremely handsome. And he’s young—very young—hardly older than us, it seems.

Ruthie looks across at me and wiggles her eyebrows.
Woo-woo
, they say.

Below desk level, I move my hand back and forth.
So-so
. I feel a need to remain true to poor old Mackiewitz, a plump, balding man. No one would ever have wiggled so much as a big toe for him.

There is a general flutter among the girls, a few discreet chest-pattings to show throbbing hearts. The boys stare at us in wonder. One of them snickers.

“Turn to act 3, scene 1 in
Hamlet
, please,” Mr. Tompkins says in a warm baritone.

When we finally move slowly to our next class, Ruthie says, “He’s beyond handsome. He’s an utter dreamboat.”

Hazel Carrington screams, “He’s way more than a dreamboat,” and quickly plasters both hands over her mouth, afraid he might have heard.

I just keep walking. “Yeah, sure,” I say. “I know his type. He puts on a dreamboat act when you meet him,
but once you get to know him, he has as much charm as a cardboard box.”

“Oh, pipe down,” Ruthie says.

I shrug. To me, he’s only a supply teacher, a supply play director who will never see in me the hugely talented actress I know I can be.

Ruthie says, “Those Clark Gable eyes. They really grab me.”

Overhearing, another girl says, “More like Gregory Peck. It’s that jaw.”

“Come on, Rachel,” Ruthie says. “Admit he reminds you of a movie star.”

“He reminds me of a great big question mark.”

“Huh?”

“Besides a cute face, what’s he got?”

“Sex appeal,” Ruthie says, and everyone hoots with laughter as we file into our next class.

“Girls, girls!” Miss Fiddler says. “Control the noise.”

A week later in English, daydreaming, I catch myself gazing at Mr. Tompkins. He has very fine hands. You might even say artistic hands. And his shoulders are … I sit up straight and turn to act 4. Let the other girls go all soft and swoony. I have better things on my mind—my romantic play about war for one, which, for all the trouble I’m taking with it, refuses to fall into place.

Each day after school, Mr. Tompkins—or Tommy, as
everyone soon nicknames him—is surrounded by a gaggle of girls with questions about homework and tests. Not me, though. I observe from the doorway. A good-looking man like this is bound to be conceited, and I can’t stand that in a person, especially in an adult, young as he may be. I do have a question, though, which I long to ask. By the end of the week, the queue for a private audience is considerably shorter, consisting primarily of Hazel Carrington, Ruthie Pritchard, and one or two other girls smitten with love. I join them.

I get right to the point. No woman-of-the-world smile, no eyelash-batting. “Are we still doing the school play?”

“Yes,” he says, giving me the full benefit of his even white teeth and dark serious eyes. “We’ll resume rehearsals at the end of next week, once I’ve had a chance to study it.”

After school the next Friday, play practice, once again, is in full swing. To give him credit, Mr. Tompkins manages pretty well for someone coming to it cold. Sometimes, though, he seems lost in thought, especially when he watches Hazel Carrington, the lead, going through her paces.

Hazel must notice because she has to be prompted many more times than usual. This irks me. If I were lucky enough to be in the play, I’d have my lines memorized, as well as everyone else’s, by the second rehearsal.

I give Hazel her line. “Try paying attention,” I add, sounding a bit surly.

Mr. Tompkins turns to me with his Clark Gable eyes and says, “You’re a hard-hearted woman.”

“Huh?” I say, like the stunned bunny I am. No one has ever called me a woman. No one has ever said I was hard-hearted. “Sorry.” Maybe I should have said it to Hazel.

“No, you’re good. You should have been the director.”

I’m all red and flustered. Hazel is madly searching for her line, but I haven’t been paying attention, so someone else calls it out. Finally, the world starts up again.

Ruthie and I walk home together after rehearsal. This April weather is iffy—sun one minute, rain the next, turning my hair into something like a pot scrubber. The overhead clouds look threatening, but we poke along anyway, gabbing about the play practice.

“Hazel may be beautiful,” I say, “but she can’t act worth beans.”

“If you’re beautiful, you don’t need to be able to act. She has class, she has high cheekbones, and she’s blonde. That’s all you need these days, besides great teeth. She’s also tall and willowy.” Ruthie goes to a lot of movies, so she knows what she’s talking about.

“As far as acting goes,” I say, “her finest attribute seems to be the strength of her voice. It probably carries from the auditorium stage all the way to the second storey of the school.”

“
Ahem!
Are you jealous?”

“No. It’s just that, with Mr. Mackiewitz in charge, the play was all about decibels, not emotion, not style. I’m just hoping Mr. Tompkins will be a bit more lavish in the passion department.”

“He will be. You can tell just by looking at him, his second name is passion.”

“If I were directing the play, I’d give the audience some grand sentiment to take home. I would have them gasp or shed tears or cower in their seats.”

“Wouldn’t that be more or less the playwright’s job?”

“Initially, yes. But then the director has to go to work and wring every drop of emotion out of each word, comma, and period.”

“Well, what about my role as the ding-dong maid? I don’t know how you’d find any emotion in
Will that be all, Madam
? Not exactly high drama.”

I would never mention this to anyone, but Ruthie has about as much acting talent as a dead guppy. “It could be
medium
high drama,” I say. “Personally, I see your character as a vamp. Why don’t you swing your hips a bit and say the lines with some passion in your voice? Maybe with a slight foreign accent.”

“She’s just a girl who answers the door and dusts the furniture.”

“But she could be so much more!” I’m thinking hard. “She could have a little catch in her voice as she says
Madam
.”

“But, why?”

“Perhaps her lover was killed in the war.”

“It takes place before the war.”

“I’m sure there was a war on somewhere. Anyway, you’re playing the maid too flat. It’s highly possible that she has a dead lover. I think you should let her sound as if she’s close to tears.”

“I’ll try it, but I’m afraid Tommy will think I’m ridiculous.”

“Forget Tommy. Consider the audience. It needs to feel immediate sympathy. It needs to wipe a silent tear from its collective eye.”

She doesn’t look entirely convinced. “I’ll do my best,” she says.

She waves good-bye at the corner, and we scurry along our separate ways before the black clouds decide to dump on us.

Granny’s there when I get home. She comes in from the farm nearly every weekend to have dinner with us and sometimes to spend the night, more often now that Jamie’s home. Her old dog, Bounder, prefers to stay with the hired man while she’s in town.

During dinner she keeps staring at Jamie, lips pursed, as he stickhandles his food around his plate, without eating much of it. “That lad has picked up some foreign bug,” she says. “He’s eaten almost nothing. If I were you, Dora, I’d hike him off to a doctor right smart. Who knows what germs are roiling around inside him? Those foreign hospitals, where he had his leg looked after, are nothing but a breeding ground for all manner of diseases. It’s a wonder anybody gets out alive. Look what happened after the last war. Everybody died of the flu.”

“A few were spared,” Dad announces from his end of the table.

Jamie puts his fork down. “Look, I’ve seen enough soldiers’ spilled guts, along with quantities of their blood, to turn me off food for the rest of my life.”

Mother puts her hands over her ears. “Oh, Jamie, stop! You’re spoiling dinner for the rest of us.”

He stares at a spot on the far wall and pushes a few forkfuls into his mouth. He chews and chews, and after every bite, he takes a couple of swallows of milk to wash it down. He’s just trying to make a point. It’s obvious that he’s rebelling against Mother constantly telling him what to do.

“I’m every bit as alarmed as you are at his weight loss,” Mother says. She has an edge to her voice, as if Granny’s blaming her.

“It’s merely excitement,” Dad says. “Let’s not over-mother the boy.”

“I’m hardly a boy.”

Mother brings in the coffee.

“There’s absolutely nothing wrong with me,” Jamie says. “It’s just that I can’t settle down yet. Everything’s going so fast.”

“What do you mean, fast?” Mother asks.

“I don’t know. I don’t mean anything. Just don’t keep at me.” He takes a cigarette package from his shirt pocket.

“You’re smoking too much.”

Jamie leaves the table and lights a cigarette, heading up to his room to smoke in peace. I don’t blame him.