Pushing Upward (7 page)

Hester, my character, had to walk ten miles from the train to her house. There was no other way to get there. To prepare for the scene, I stuffed clothes and toiletries into two suitcases and walked ten miles around Westwood Village, just to see where the soreness would be, where Hester would be hurting when she arrived. The pain settled into the back of my shoulders, the right side of my neck, and in the joints of my fingers. I had to remember each one of these discomforts and bring them to the surface, seamlessly, in class. That was my job as an actress: to be aligned with the body, the emotions, and the intellect of the character.

I drove to Inglewood, a high-crime area in L.A., and closely watched one of the prostitutes walking up and down La Brea. Sitting in my Fiat across the street, I studied how this woman walked, how she spoke to the men driving by, walking by—half-smiling, keeping her head and eyes down. I watched her insecurity, and the limp in her right leg that she pretended didn't exist. I named her Claire and imagined that she'd been born in Alabama to a poor single mother … she had been made fun of and beaten up by classmates every day after school because she was poor and because of her height, now six feet. Her bitterness moved her to California, where she thought she could improve her life, climb a make-believe ladder, only to find that the rungs kept breaking. Here she was now, in Inglewood, walking at night, hungry to please the cannibals of the street, just to have something to eat herself.

I brought the stuffed suitcases to Walter's class. Before presenting the scene I played “Stairway to Heaven” by Led Zeppelin on a friend's cassette player, to set the mood. When I reached the perfect emotional pitch, I picked up the suitcases and walked to the center of the room, put the suitcases down on the imaginary dirt road, and brought back the discomfort of carrying the bags for ten miles. I surveyed the imaginary house Hester had grown up in. The one she hadn't seen in years. And as she walked, and as the class and Walter observed, I saw the ivy crawling up the side of my childhood home. While I repeated her words—“Please let it be different, and strange, even if I get lost and got to ask my way. I won't mind. But to think of it all still the same, the way it was, and me coming back to find it like that … ! Sick! It made me sick on the stomach”—I reconnected with the prostitute from Inglewood, and how she might have felt going back to Alabama and finding out nothing had changed in
her
neighborhood.

When Hester spoke the words “Those windy days with nothing to do; the dust in the street! Even the color of things—so clear, man, it could have been yesterday,” I imagined her sitting on a cement step when she was young, having nothing to do but follow the dust. And as the wind blew the particles into the foam frothing from the river, I imagined her breathing in the heat, smelling the oppression. I felt each beat, without rushing a moment. I became Hester from South Africa, and nailed the accent.

When the scene was over, I stood there, waiting for Walter's critique. Instead, everyone stood up and applauded. Calvin, this guy who had a major crush on me and had loaned me the cassette player, gave me a paper flower. Walter gave me an
A++
.

I'd promised Larry Santino, a guy I was kinda dating, that I'd watch
his
scene, cheer him on as he presented an excerpt from David Rabe's play
The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel.
The play was a good choice for Larry in that Pavlo Hummel was close to his age. In addition, both came from New York, and both were graced with low intelligence. It could have been a terrific character study for Larry had he taken his craft more seriously, developed the subtext, the provocation for the character's actions, researched the Vietnam War, or taken time to speak to veterans who'd experienced firsthand the psychological effects of war. If only he had embraced Pavlo's heart, studied Pavlo's gait, grasped the significance of Pavlo's hopeless stare. But he hadn't. The only thing we saw was Larry Santino, dressed and pressed in a soldier's uniform, pretending to be Pavlo Hummel. I knew I was going to have to varnish the truth when he asked me about his performance; otherwise his ego would be bruised and our evening would be ruined. As cute as Larry was, as great a body as had been bestowed upon him, he was extremely insecure about his acting, and he had every reason to be.

We'd met the first day of Walter Sheldon's class. It was only seconds after I'd sat down that this cute guy in a white T-shirt, cutoffs, and a Yankees baseball cap took the seat next to me. By the time his thirty-five-second introduction was over, I knew his name, where he was from, the teachers he'd studied with, and that his wink—the one he made with his right eye—was a sign of affection and a prelude to an invitation to have coffee with him after class.

Larry wasn't very bright or well mannered. These flaws in his character assured me of how short-lived the relationship was going to be. Nevertheless, Larry did have other attributes that made getting involved romantically an easy decision. He had the greatest lips on the planet; thick, dark wavy hair; and an exceedingly hairy chest. To me, there's nothing better than burrowing into a mound of hair when I'm depressed, or diving into a mass of hair when I'm horny. I once mentioned my hair fetish to Rachel. She told me I must have been a female ape in a past life, searching for my hairy male counterpart. She might have been right.

Most of all, I loved the way Larry kissed. His plump tongue always knew just what to do inside my mouth; his succulent lips and long, expressive fingers knew just what to do everywhere else—a quality that more than made up for his acting deficiencies. Which is why, when Larry invited me to his apartment after class, I graciously accepted and looked forward to proceeding with … what he knew best.

A joint was smoldering in the ashtray on the floor by the bed, burning its last embers. Our bodies were naked, snuggled beneath the covers. Giggling rippled out from under Larry's sheets, and only if you were lying next to us or if your head was directly above ours could you have heard him whisper the words: “I was great, wasn't I?”

“In class or in bed?” I replied.

“Very funny, bush hair.”

“You were
great
in bed.
Okay
in class … why do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Look out into the audience when you're supposed to be in character. You break the fourth wall every time you look out. You lose the audience's trust.”

“I sucked, right?”

“You didn't suck. There were a couple of lines where I really believed you. Like, when you described how the cops couldn't catch up to you and the sirens were screaming, and how you jumped out of the Porsche and walked away, cool-like. You were really into it.”

Larry lay there gloating, as if he'd just contributed something significant to a nation of needy people. I lay there next to him witnessing the swell of his unjustified ego, wondering how anyone could walk through life and remain so unconscious. As my conflicting thoughts about Larry drifted back and forth, I suddenly stepped into my own reality and stumbled upon an alarming idea that shot me bolt upright.

“I'm moving in with a stranger on Saturday. What am I doing?”

Larry took hold of my shoulder and pulled me down. It was his Italian Brooklyn accent that always ruined the ensuing moment or made me laugh out of context. “Why don't you move in here? We got plenty a room.”

“Are you serious? You've got two roommates and one bedroom. You don't even have a dresser. Where would I put my clothes?”

“We could put 'em under the bed.”

“Your mattress is on the floor.” I reached for the ashtray for one last toke, but the joint had burned out. “I'm just feeling paranoid.”

“What if she's schizophrenic? In the daytime, she's warm and loving, but when the sun goes down, she becomes a gargoyle, and flies around your room in the middle of the night, nests on your head …”

“I have no sense of humor right now!” I jumped off the bed, picked up my clothes off the floor, and bolted into the bathroom.

“How big's her place?” he hollered through the door. “It could be one room, for all you know.”

“She told me her husband was a famous artist from New York. I'm sure the place is very palatial.” I emerged from the bathroom. “I'm leaving. Are you going to help me move or not?”

Larry didn't answer. He pretended not to hear me, and intentionally slipped his head under the covers.

“Well?”

“I guess.”

“Never mind.”

“All right, all right. I'll help you move.”

Chapter 6

If one clings to the strong man,
one loses the little boy.

Larry was only thirty-five minutes late when he sauntered into my apartment wearing his cutoffs and a pink T-shirt. I opened the door and found him leaning against the frame, Jimmy Dean–style. An unlit cigarette dangled from his luscious lips. He was expecting me to kiss him. Was he kidding? By the time he'd honored me with his presence, most of my things had been packed, crammed into every crevice of the Fiat. Since early that morning I had been lugging suitcases out to the trunk, stacking boxes in the backseat, laying clothes over taped boxes. Pillows and bedcovers were shoved in wherever they could fit, and the bags under my arms full of toiletries … I wasn't sure where they were going. No doubt squished between the bucket seats. And he wanted my
lips?

I looked at his tanned, muscular arms and legs, and wondered why God hadn't finished the job and given him a functional brain. I asked him to wait while I made one last apartment check. He leaned his back against the Fiat, happy to oblige, as long as he could enhance his tan and not expend any effort.

As I headed back to the apartment for the last time, I knew I wasn't going to miss this place. I wasn't going to miss the torn rug that smelled of cat piss or the six-inch-square freezer that only had room for two Creamsicles and a chicken potpie, or the blotchy yellow walls, or the toilet that never completely flushed. I might miss the times I'd spent learning lines, pacing the living room as I rehearsed monologue after monologue, and sitting in the bathtub trying to get rid of my Michigan accent. I had to admit, I'd grown as an actor here. A tear fell, and it surprised me as I took my final glance.
I guess I
will
miss this place
.

Larry and I squeezed our bodies into the two tiny spaces left in the Fearless Fiat's front seat and drove to Emma's apartment building. Hardly able to see out the back window, I endured the slow lane for the first time in my life. It wasn't bad. I guess there
was
a reason for the lane. Larry barely said a word, which was a pleasant surprise. Perhaps he knew more than I gave him credit for.

Curson Avenue, Emma's street, was located in mid-city L.A. It was lined with garden apartments and condominiums, oak trees and maple trees, and real green grass. There were only a few small houses scattered on the street; the rest of the block was mostly five-and six-story buildings with people in their seventies and eighties sitting on their front balconies talking, laughing, rocking away the hours. As we drove down the street, two kids played Frisbee on the grass, and the passing friendly mailman tried his hand at throwing the disk. It was a real neighborhood, and it'd been a long time since I'd lived in one. I welcomed the unaccustomed sounds.

Emma's building was in a gray square stucco structure. There were balconies attached, but no interesting curves or tiers. Symmetrical rectangular windows lined the front of the edifice, exposing identical off-white curtains in every frame. And each tenant had the same boxes of tulips sitting on their windowsills. I couldn't tell if they were plastic or real. That was the least of my worries. I maneuvered the Fiat as best I could, close to the curb, and sat there for a moment, flashing back on why I was making this daring move. And then I remembered.

Fortunately, Larry remained silent as I breathed in my new street.