The Juliet Spell (25 page)

“Ah,” Dad said. He stood up straight like he’d just forgot.ten he was tired. And by the time Dad had finished answer.ing him about four hours later, the Shakespeares had heard all about Freud, Jung, Adler, gestalt, archetypes, repression, suppression, the collective unconscious, the id, the ego and a few hundred other things.

Dad asked them a million questions about England, what they dreamed about, and had their dreams changed since they came here, and what had that been like, flying through time from Doctor Dee’s secret chambers to our kitchen, and to Drew’s room.

They were at it until midnight while Mom and I watched and smiled at our guys, as excited with each other as if they’d discovered buried treasure.

The next day, Dad started having counseling sessions with the Shakespeares. It was their idea.

“If it can be that my brother and I may be better friends—” Shakespeare said at breakfast.

“—or friends at all,” Edmund said. “We would be so. Do ye think your psychology may make the world big enough for both of us?”

“I’ve seen much worse,” Dad said, and took them into the room he used as an office.

Sessions like that are supposed to be private, of course. The thing was, the Shakespeares wouldn’t stop talking. Wher.ever they were, whatever else we were doing—except for the show—they were rehashing everything they didn’t like about each other.

For instance, Edmund hated the way Will was always quoting him in his plays.

“Ye are a thief,” Edmund shouted one afternoon. “A jack.daw rogue who hasn’t an idea or a word in his head that someone else didn’t put there. As I know better than most.”

“Thief? I do but take in all that crosses my path, a thing I can no more change than the color of my skin. And I give back all, transformed!”

“Bah.”

“And by the bye, your acting is not near as good as you want the world to think,” Will said.

“Okay,” Dad said. “We’re getting somewhere.”

And somehow or other, they were. Dad could always ask the questions that took the brothers deep into their words to find the feelings that lay buried beneath them.

And because they were both actors and both brilliant and both Shakespeares, they were moving fast. It was only a few days before Edmund shouted out, “I know what ’tis, Will—”

And before he could finish, Shakespeare answered, “’Tis that we are too much alike!”

And they laughed long and hard.

“Ye will always be a rogue and a scoundrel,” Edmund said.

“And ye will always wish to be more of one,” Shakespeare said.

“We’re making progress,” Dad concluded.

It was a crazy time. Drew and Bobby were in and out, Mom and Dad were reconnecting. There was so much going on at once that I could feel my life flying toward something new. My life was changing, finding a new pattern, moving forward to something I wasn’t sure of, but knew I wanted. You could say it was chaotic—but in a good way. The old Mom, Dad and Miri dynamic that Dad had walked out on was only a memory—but memory is very important stuff. But each of us was working toward this new family idea

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which seemed to fall naturally on all of us as soon as Dad hit the door.

As for Edmund and me, we were together every night, but always in the middle of a crowd. It wasn’t perfect—I defi.nitely wanted to hear more of what we’d been talking about that day when Mom had come home so inconveniently— but on the other hand, we were in each other’s arms every night, with his brother’s words to say to each other, and we meant every one of them.

And Dad didn’t have any more dreams about Joan Hart or Doctor Dee. It gave me hope that the past was starting to heal up, as Mom had thought it might. I was sure Shake.speare would get back to England eventually, somehow, and Edmund would stay. And we would be together.

Chapter Thirty.

One

The play was taking on its shape. We were all getting better.

Phil Hormel had been playing Friar Lawrence as a goody-goody. It’s easy to do it that way—I mean, he’s a friar, right? And he speaks in couplets and talks about flowers. But what kind of goody-goody knows so much about poisons and knockout drugs? So Friar Lawrence has something about him that isn’t quite in focus, like maybe being a friar had been a career change and before that he’d been something else, like a professional assassin. Edmund helped him to see this, and to act it. And Phil was good.

Bill Meisinger was becoming less of a mellow-voiced stick. Ann Millard was relying less on playing the nurse for laughs and finding her way toward the real character—a loving old woman. I had to admit, even Vivian was beginning to shine. She found things to do in the party scene, on the streets of Verona, and even in the role where she had to play a really stupid servant with a message to deliver—and a boy servant at that, so none of her sexiness was useful there.

As for me, I got what was probably the ultimate compli.ment from the author. “Your Juliet is most believable,” he told me one night. “I do not think any boy could play it bet.ter.”

Things were getting busy behind the scenes, too. Tanya Blair was drowning in work, trying to get the tickets printed and some publicity done. And, since no one was in charge of costumes, she had those on her, as well. When she heard about it, Mom stepped in to help, dragging Dad with her.

“It’s not like you have any paying clients right now,” she told him. “You might as well make yourself useful.”

To keep costs down, we all dressed in rehearsal clothes, with something red for the Capulets and something blue for the Montagues. Almost the only things we needed to rent were the swords.

Edmund was completely happy with that.

“In London we most often provide our own costumes,” he told me. “Piece them out with such weapons and bits of armor as we have in store. It works well.”

Tickets, on the other hand, were a complete surprise.

“Tickets?” Edmund said when I told him, like it was the first time he’d heard the word, which as it turned out, it was.

“Playgoers give a penny or two at the theater door,” Shakespeare said.

“No, no, no,” I said. “Nowadays people pay for their seats in advance. They get little pieces of paper with the date and time and even their seat numbers on them. And they pay a lot more than a penny.”

“We could pass a hat, perhaps,” Edmund said.

“No,” I said.

But it worked out, the same way everything was working out. Tanya Blair and my mom and dad got some printed, put up a website and sold them online and out of Drew’s mom’s yoga studio. And people bought them.

On the Wednesday before opening, our set started to go up. Gerry and Lou trucked it in at seven that morning, and by the time the stores closed that night, fair Verona where we lay our scene was looming over its fake Italian streets.

And it was beautiful. Much more elaborate than anything we had talked about. There were details like fake stonework around the doors and windows, and shields with the crests of the Montagues and Capulets hanging from two of the houses. Between the houses, helping to steady them, was an arch that worked as a central entrance, a street and, at the end of the play, the way to the Capulet tomb. There was a skull and crossbones on it throughout the play. Perfect.

All the actors walked around the set in awe that first night. We tried to look like we were being total pros, just figuring out how to inhabit this new space, not really overwhelmed at how beautiful it looked, and how much we hoped to shine in it. But we were blown away.

“We never throw anything away,” Lou said when I told him how amazing it was.

“Hell, tell her the truth. We scrounge from other the.aters,” Gerry laughed. “As soon as they strike a set, we show up to rescue it from the Dumpsters. I’ll bet we could stage four Oklahoma!’s at once.”

“There’s still some work to do,” Lou said. “We have some banners and stuff. And the lights to move in.”

“Even so,” Edmund said. “You’ve done everything you said you’d do and more. I’ve never seen better, not even in England.”

It would have been nice if there’d been some way to stop the looky-lous from stopping by for an eyeful of free theater. Shoppers walking up and down the mall saw what we were doing, and stopped and stared, surrounded by their bags, kids and dogs, blocking the streets, which made the drivers start honking their horns. Not something actors had had to deal with back in the 1590’s.

“To be or not to be, is that the question?” some guy in a motorcycle T-shirt shouted at Edmund.

“Hey, Juliet, baby, over here,” hollered a guy in a Raiders cap. “I’ll be your Romeo.”

It was hell. People were shouting at each other, shouting at us. Little kids were screaming. Two dogs started to fight.

After that night, Elizabeth Castillo came down from her office and told us we’d have to hire at least two extra secu.rity guards for every night we were in the mall.

“Two be damned,” Edmund said. “How much for a dozen?”

“They’re two hundred dollars a shift,” Elizabeth Castillo said.

“Get me six, and I want them at once,” Edmund said.

“Edmund, there’s no way the show can make that kind of money,” I said. “Not even if we sell out every night.”

“A fig for the cost,” Edmund raged. “We need those dog-berries and we will have them.”

Elizabeth Castillo put her hand over her mouth like there was something she was trying to keep herself from saying. Then she said it. “We’ll cover the cost of one guard out of special-event funds.”

“Bless ye, milady,” Edmund said.

Elizabeth Castillo smiled. “Some nights we might be able to stretch it to two.”

Things were better the next night, with our own pair of giants to keep people moving and quiet. Nothing like a three-hundred-pound weightlifter asking you to move along to make you want to do it.

And the trouble on that first night actually helped. A guy came down from the paper to find out more about it, and did a nice article on the show. It ended up on the first page of the local section, and a lot of people who hadn’t known we were doing the play read it. They wanted tickets.

But the pedestrian problems were tiny compared with the lights. It was the only time I ever saw Edmund really upset with the way things were going.

Setting lights brought things to a crawl, starting and stop.ping while Gerry and Lou scrambled around on the rig of pipes and lines that they had rented to us and which, one by one, erased the unwanted shadows from the set. We were there past midnight three nights in a row because of all the work it made.

The whole lighting thing fascinated Shakespeare. As the Fresnels went up, he watched with the same amazing inten.sity that Edmund brought to whatever he wanted to know. When Gerry finally called down from a pole he was hanging on, “Hey, Bill, you wanta help?” Shakespeare almost flew up to where he was and started learning to aim and mask the lights. He was so happy he started whistling, and the work went a little faster at least.

Edmund still fumed.

“I swear, Miri, these damned lights will keep us from opening on time,” he said. “Hell’s cullions, they may keep us here till Doomsday waiting. No one needs them. We have the most glorious sun here in California. We can play in it, as they did in London.”

“Look, Edmund,” I said. “People don’t go to the theater in the middle of the day anymore. They go at night. And believe me, light is worth all the trouble it takes. Wait and see.”

“I like them well, brother,” Shakespeare said. “Burbage owns an old church which we might light by candles and

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perform shows at night there. If I ever get home to England, I will talk him into it.”

Thursday we had final dress rehearsal. And it went so well I was worried. Because you know that old saying that a bad dress rehearsal means a good opening night? It’s usually true. There’s something about having one last chance to make a bunch of mistakes that sets you up to do well the next time.

Anyway, we were going to find out. Opening night was Friday.

Chapter Thirty.

Two

One of the worst things about being an actor is the day of opening night. You are worthless. You can’t think about anything but getting onstage, and whether you’re going to screw up in front of a thousand people. You try to avoid every other human being, because if anybody talks to you, they’re almost certain to get snapped at, or ignored, at best.

Mom and Dad kept out of my way.

I could have worked with Edmund, but he wasn’t there. He and Shakespeare had promised to help Gerry and Lou with some of the last setup items.

I tried to rehearse my part by myself, but that was just re.citing, not acting.

Finally, when it was still an hour before my call, I headed down to the theater anyway, because there was nowhere else on earth for me to be.

And when I got to there, I stopped, gasped, smiled, cried. Because Gerry and Lou and the guys had been busy.

Lou had mentioned something about banners a week ago, and I hadn’t really paid attention. But they were there now.

On one side of the mall hung red banners for the Montagues. On the other side, all around the area of the theater, were the blue banners of the Capulets. The expensive apartments and stores surrounding the stage had become part of the scene. I was in Verona.