Starry-Eyed (15 page)

Sterling zips around like a firefly, his face beaming bright in the twilight. He looks like how Gale feels, her internal pinball machine
clanging
and
dinging
inside her ribcage. Amanda pretends to smoke and drink shots because everything is funnier in a nun's costume. One of the prepubescent Nazis does a card trick for the von Trapp children. On the other side of the flats on which she personally painted an Alpine vista, Gale can hear the fustery rustle of the gathering audience, the unmistakable sound of Expectation. She steps out the back of the Drama Shack for one last deep breath, perhaps a prayer to the Holy Nose.

And then she sees them. Standing close. His hands cupping her face. French kissing. Barbie. Aaron.

Even worse, they see her.

The pair part, wiping their mouths.

Stupid, stupid, stupid
, Gale thinks, not narratively, just smacking herself with her thoughts. How could she ever think that Aaron would want to kiss her that way? They don't even look guilty, so it's obvious Aaron had no idea how Gale felt.

“Break a leg,” Gale says, and does a little time-step the way Fanny does when she says good-bye to Nicky Arnstein for the first time in
Funny Girl
. Then she wheels around and heads straight for the Alps.

. . . . .

Onstage, alone, singing the opening number to Joni's folky accompaniment, Gale feels safe again. She understands better than ever why Maria goes to the hills when her heart is lonely. The stage lights are warm on her face and she can feel the audience listening. It's molecular. She doesn't understand the physics, but she knows that something chemical is happening. Her voice floats into the air and onto the ears of the audience and into their bodies, filling them up until they release it back to her with applause. A scientist could fill a chalkboard breaking down the process.

The show goes on.

No one's sure why the audience finds everything Amanda says funny. Maybe it's because she delivers the Reverend Mother's lines like she's heading to the last round-up. But it's okay. Both actors and audience are having a good time. Gale has confidence in sunshine, rain, and the campers of Camp Algonquin.

Then the von Trapp children march in. They all look appropriately stern, with the notable exception of Sterling, who's practically vibrating with excitement, the corners of his mouth twitching upward like there's a bumblebee trying to get out. It's obvious to Gale in an instant that he's deliriously happy to be there. And repressing his enthusiasm is not his strong suit.

Gale moves down the line, interviewing each child: Liesl, Friedrich, Louisa, and . . .

“I'm Kurt. I'm INCORRIGIBLE!”

To Gale's surprise, the line gets a laugh, perhaps because Sterling screams it like he's yelling “Fire!” in a crowded movie theater.

But there's an audible scoff from a red-headed, freckle-faced kid down front, plainly visible in the stage light. In a microsecond, Sterling's jaw tightens and Gale feels her gut clench.

Gale continues down the line to talk about pink parasols with Marta, but out of the corner of her eye she sees that the boy in the front row hasn't let up and is mouthing the words “I'm incorrigible” for his sniggering bunkmates, batting his eyelashes and flapping his hands limp-wristedly.

Gale moves on to the youngest, Gretl, determines that she's five, then delivers Maria's line about how Gretl is such a big girl.

From the audience, the freckle-faced boy says, “So's Kurt.”

Gale's whole body tenses, an animal in the wild sensing a predator. But before she's had a moment to respond, it starts.

Laughter. Excruciating, sweat-inducing laughter. The cast stands there, prisoners lined up for a firing squad, von Trapped. Down front, the freckle-faced demon smiles, pleased with himself as his two companions punch him in the arm approvingly, rolling backward with laughter. A cicada-like buzz moves through the crowd. Those who didn't hear it are asking those that did, and the laughter burbles up again. Sensing that no one is putting out the spreading wildfire, Gale speeds through her lines, trying to end the scene as fast as possible.

By the time the von Trapp children have exited, Jerry has lumbered down to the front of the crowd, asserting his authority by placing his hands on his hips and rocking on his heels like a prison warden.

The show goes on.

Barbie and Conrad perform “Sixteen Going on Seventeen.” Conrad turns out to be surprisingly good—he even sings with vibrato. But Barbie can't carry a tune in a bucket. Her grasp of the melody is so tenuous she seems to be inventing her own microchromatic scale, singing notes that lie right between pitches. But what she lacks in musical ability she makes up for by looking winsome while tossing her hair.

Gale searches for Sterling backstage, but the only light in the Drama Shack comes from the rising moon. She doesn't see him until he runs onstage for “My Favorite Things.”

The entrance of Kurt and Friedrich is supposed to be a laugh, the cue being, “Boys aren't afraid of thunder and lightning.” But the fact that Sterling runs on wearing—to the untutored eye—a nightgown only arouses another round of sniggers and mutters from the audience. The sparkle in Sterling's eyes has gone out, replaced with grim determination.

As Gale sings about dogs biting and bees stinging, she flicks her glance
toward the heckler in the front row, desperately trying to thought-balloon to Sterling that Oscar Hammerstein has a solution to his troubles: he just needs to think of his Favorite Things. But Sterling has fallen deep inside himself, his dream come true now a waking nightmare. Gale says a silent prayer of thanks to the Holy Nose that they didn't have fabric to make playclothes out of floral pattern drapery or else they'd lose all control of the show. Still, the prey is wounded and is suffering a painful, lingering death.

Sterling moves through “Do-Re-Mi” joylessly, robotically, his wings clipped. And he doesn't sing his Kurt's show-offy high note in “So Long, Farewell,” but gives a clipped “Good-bye” and runs off like he's afraid someone will throw something at him.

During intermission, the cast is united in their condemnation of the heckler. Amanda even rolls up her nun's sleeves, promising to “beat the snot out of that kid.” But the talk quickly turns autobiographical:
Did you see how I slipped during that number?/How did I sound?/Couldja tell I sang “Lonely Goat Turd”
?

Gale risks witnessing Aaron licking Barbie's tonsils again by looking for Sterling on the back steps of the Drama Shack. Just above the blackened trees, the rising half-moon shimmers, the stars seeming to multiply by the second.

“Can you believe the astronauts are almost all the way to the moon?” she says. “It's like science fiction.”

Sterling doesn't look up. Gale sits down next to him. “That kid is a jerkoff Don't pay attention to him.”

Sterling turns to her, his eyes like mirrors. “EVERYONE paid attention to him. You know they did. I wish I'd never come here. I wish I wasn't born.”

Without thinking, Gale thrusts her arm on him, the way her mother does when she makes a sudden stop in the car. Since her mother's a lousy driver, that happens a lot.

“Don't say that,” Gale says. “Don't
ever
say that. If you weren't born, how could I do
The Sound of Music
without you?”

“I wish you had.”

He rises and leaves, taking a piece of Gale's heart with him.

The show goes on.

Gale's love scene with Aaron feels nothing like she thought it would be. When he takes her face in his hands to kiss her, all she can think about is Barbie Bittman—not just Barbie herself but all the Barbies in the world, girls who have lives waiting for them on their doorsteps, instead of the Barbras, who have to beat the doors down.

The audience goes “
oooooh
” when they kiss, and Gale just wants to scream. They're so immature, they deserve
The Haunting of the Sandwich
. Particularly after how they treated poor Sterling.

She thinks about Sterling as she sings “Something Good” and the lyrics about the wicked, miserable past suddenly come into high relief, as if she were carving them into her brain. He has no idea the good he's done. Not just making the show better, but for Gale herself. For getting the cosmic joke. For getting her. For the first time in her life, she feels like someone understands her, instantly, intuitively. For the past two weeks, she's come down to breakfast and been greeted by a boy who can cross his eyes and imitate Barbra Streisand saying, “Hello, gorgeous.” It's sort of like love, but better. It's being seen.

And now half the camp just took a crap on him.

While the Jewish Nuns Chorus makes a stately procession onstage to kill time, Barbie Bittman helps Gale into her wedding dress. Gale wishes she didn't, because it just makes her more self-conscious of how poorly she compares to the aptly named Barbie. Like the universe, Gale's hips and thighs are continually expanding while her boobs don't seem to get the message from below. But when Barbie steps back after she adjusts the veil on Gale's head and whispers, “You look beautiful,” Gale knows exactly what to do.

Stuffing a pillow under her dress, she makes Maria von Trapp a pregnant bride.

Just as it does for Barbra Streisand in
Funny Girl
, the audience goes ape
with laughter, particularly since the nuns are singing the reprise of “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?” It's a true roar, a palpable quake that shakes the molecules in the air, a sonic boom. It rolls in waves onto the stage as Gale continues to work the bit, walking a few steps, then stopping and clutching her side as if she's had a labor pain. She bends over, hyperventilating and crossing her eyes for maximum comic effect. Another thunder clap of laughter.

Gale's internal pinball machine
dings
and
bings
, flashing feelings ricocheting throughout her body. The laughter feels like approval, even love, but how can she enjoy it when it comes from those cruel mouths?

She crosses to Aaron, who's staring at the ground, trying to remain composed, but all she can see is Sterling quivering behind him. The child almost appears to be in pain as he clutches his sides, tears streaming down his cheeks as he barely suppresses an epileptic fit of laughter. An hour ago, they were dying onstage, now she's killing them, slaughtering them.

Then, like a volcano erupting, a geyser of blood red snot explodes out of Sterling's nose. The audience lets out a horror-movie scream and for a split second it's like the Zapruder footage of President Kennedy getting shot.

That stops the show—literally. Jerry steps up onstage and says, “Okay, that's enough. Show's over.”

The audience groans in disappointment.

“C'mon, everybody back to their bunks.”

The more obedient rise, but a contingent of appreciative teens in the back start the applause, forcing Jerry to step aside and allow the cast to take a ramshackle curtain call.

By now the camp nurse has rushed to Sterling's side and is holding his head back, yelling for ice. Gale moves toward him, but is stopped by Jerry.

“In my office,” he says.

“But—”

“Now.”

He takes her by the elbow, as if he were arresting her.
Just like Ziegfeld
does in
Funny Girl, Gale thinks. But her sacrifice is worth it.
Just like Nancy in
Oliver!

For the next two days, all anyone can talk about is Gale's stunt—whether she will be sent home or not (she's not)—and the carnage that exploded out of Sterling's face. The boys of Bunk Two, who have a deep appreciation for disgusting bodily functions, spend the rest of the summer trying to make him laugh in hopes he'll spring another leak. He doesn't.

The subject changes. Astronauts walk on the moon, Barbie dumps Aaron for Conrad and rallies a group of counselors to quit early to take off for “an Aquarian exposition of Peace and Music” in a field in Woodstock, New York. The comments of one rude red-headed heckler are forgotten, never mentioned again.

Neither Gale nor Sterling return to Camp Algonquin, but in the years to come they meet in the city to see a show. They LOVE
Pippin, A Chorus Line, Nine, Sunday in the Park with George, Miss Saigon, Rent, Ragtime, Wicked, The Scottsboro Boys
. . . .

But they're still waiting for a revival of
Funny Girl
.