... Continued from the magazine ...
*
Cynthia races to work after class. Speeding down the narrow, New England road, she rationalizes the need to stop for something that a inner urge relentlessly demands. Technically, she tells herself, she is not late for work, she is taking on extra hours because; her charge has vacation. The mother should be grateful to her; instead, it is the mother who acts like she is the one who is truly extending herself by remaining home for a “singing” class. Further down the curvy street is a pharmacy drive-through window, built for the crippled, the rushed, and the lazy. Cynthia feels all three and turns sharply into the lot.
With the small purchase tucked away in her coat pocket, Cynthia lingers outside her employer’s door. Trough the side window, she spies the boy packing away his violin. There is the relentless melody in her head; one she wishes to protect. She’s avoiding the ticking clock inside the house. The ticking clock owns her. The mother pulls the door open.
“We agreed to eleven o’clock; it’s nearly quarter past.”
“There was a special guest singer today,” aware that her announcement of a fact presents as a rude argument-ender. On T.V. the children’s scientist explains friction. The front door slams closed. Cynthia walks to her room, looks out the window, watches the mother’s car get smaller while winding down the length of the driveway. She takes the small box out of her pocket, peels it free from its seal of plastic, and finds two soft cotton and wax saviors inside. She stuffs them in her ears.
Cynthia soon hears a muffled question from the boy, “Will you play Drac-oh cards with me?”
“No, I will not play Drac-oh cards with you.” She drops 500 cardboard puzzle pieces on the floor. She and the boy fall to their knees and silently spins fragments of brown and gray into a medieval castle image. The melody is safely locked away in her head, yet the fathom violin harmony grows more pronounced.
The university campus turns grey. The trees are fierce skeletal armies awaiting orders. Every step towards her class causes Cynthia’s courage to wane. Today she will sing. Words “Like a Red Rose” run rings around the gray matter of her brain. Schubert’s melody burrows somewhere in there, but can’t be found, much less matched. She frets over the words: tune and June; their note variation goes against her instinct to match them as rhymes match.
Once inside the classroom Cynthia settles down to review her music sheet, she silently converses with the black frown above the varying note in question. “Why differ musically when the words rhyme? How do I unknot rhyme?” The teacher asks if there are any questions and Cynthia nearly passes out from not asking.
“Okay, don’t forget to clap after. This isn’t teen idol; we are all stars here. We’ll begin with Elena. Pay no attention to the video recorder. It’s simply for review, to make you conscious of your presentational quirks.” Elena, the school’s leading lady, takes her place in front of the class. Cynthia has seen Elena butterflying around campus, showy, beautiful, and always kind. Cynthia predicts a performance none of them could hope to compare with. The begin-time is passing; the awkward moment stretches. Elena is not acknowledging she’s ready. The audience stirs, Elena finally nods to the pianist, then misses her start. She stumbles to catch up. Even when her words are on track, she’s all over the place, and, worst of all, she withdraws inward. She’s hiding, her voice chirps as fear constricts the cords, she mixes verse lines, she switches lines entirely until the music reminds her that she on the wrong path. Then it’s a stumbling rush to get back on track. The piano finishes well before the singer’s last line.
Cynthia springs up in relief that Elena is finished, has survived such a horrible experience. She finds herself clapping in earnest. Everyone else follows and Elena transforms into the actress curtsying with slow deep regality. Cynthia hears her name; she feels overwhelmingly grateful to follow such a lousy performance, yet the question nags at her. She stands before the blurring mass, but also cannot bring herself to begin. In suspense, Cynthia wavers. Her eyes find comfort in the solid instrument.
“Just listen to the piano,” the professor plays the lines over and over. “Get this melody in your head. When the melody is both in and outside your head you will make an ear, brain, voice connection.” She plays those lines over and over, “Do you have it? Do you have it in your head and outside as well?” She does. Out of nowhere, an opera persona possesses her, and out pour the notes that were in sync with piano and decorated with intuitive dramatic gestures. Nothing was held back and the pure fun of the performance flooded through her and pour out to the audience in great waves.
Driving to work still high from the singing experience, Cynthia finds a classical station and weaves slowly towards her job, arriving twenty minutes late. As soon as she is inside, Cynthia shuts the T.V. off, puts the classical music on, and sits on the floor with the child. She focuses only on him, ignoring the flabbergasted mother.
Cynthia asks,“ Teach me, Drac-oh?”
Drac-oh cards depict the most amazing images of knights and dragons and plays like a fantasy quest. She quickly learns the simple rules, but feels there is some underlying adventure at work. She holds characters in her hands. The rules are story-steps: a call to adventure, the meeting of the mentor, passing the threshold, the big doom, and some form of death and resurrection. She, the boy and the deck collectively weave a story while snatches of images guide a waking dream: vivid enemies, noble deeds and real danger lurk in the trance. As she waits for him to make his move, while she ponders his options, and her counter-options, a multitude of possibilities loom, and the deck presents ever more twists. The two say very little, but together they create an elaborate story. All the while a tension matching melody weeps and soars.
That night she dreams of falling through a portal of images. The deck dragons and demons blend into her own version of the cards. The sound of violin blends with the spiraling blend of images. She manages to harness herself to one of the many dragons and soars out of the tornado and over rolling green hills. A familiar clan in scruffy sheep wool vests waves for her to return to them. In the morning she vaguely remembers the boy, her charge, Jonathan. In her dream they ride home together, and the closer they get to his house, the sicker Jonathan looks.
In the morning, she eats breakfast alone. Usually she and Jonathan get ready at the same time. The mother comes down in a huff. “Listen, he is sick today and I have a nine o’clock meeting; would you?”
“No.”
“Did you let him have sweets yesterday? You know he sleeps poorly when…”
“No, I did not give him sweets.”
“It is just a lecture; surely you can miss one…”
“No, but I’ll come straight home after.”
“Well, I see we can expect the very least from you!”
Cynthia can’t finish her cereal.. She leaves the house under the mother’s glare.
In class,Cynthia has picked out a new song just because the words cheer her up, but once again she questions the music-sheet. Standing in front of a looming audience, she can only worry about Jonathan. Cynthia sings and speculates about a connection between the real and dreamed sickness. Without thinking, she climbs the scales higher and higher with so much gusto. The word “hope” blasts out of her, yet she exceeds the climax, momentarily leaves the room through the ceiling and is flying on a dragon’s back over green hills with strings. The teacher stops the students from laughing by applauding vigorously.
“This is it. This is what someone going all out looks like. I applaud you in earnest.” The professor points to the music. “See the note here at the highest word ‘hope’? Where’s the next word?”
“At the bottom.”
The teacher lines the bottom word up with an earlier word on the same line. Then she bounces the note on the piano a few times. “After the high note ‘hope’,” she bounces the high note, “come down.” She bounces the low. Addressing the class, “This is an introduction course. You’re expected to learn, and to learn, we need to take chances. So Cynthia, from the top!” The teacher claps an order of silence and dramatically re-poises herself at the piano. Cynthia is off and singing again, “They say the human race, is falling on its face, and hasn’t very far to go, but every whippoorwill is selling me a bill and telling me it’s just not so…”
Once home Cynthia sees the chess game set upon the kitchen table. The mother knows Cynthia is an abominable chess player.
The mother orders Cynthia, “fill in for me, I’ve given you a fair lead. Mustn’t make it too easy on him.” She whisks herself triumphantly out the door. Cynthia plops herself in the chair; Jonathan smiles. “She’s just pissed.”
“Don’t say pissed.”
“You just said pissed; I’m telling Mom you said pissed,” he jokes.
“Monster! Where did you learn that word?”
“ Mom said it to Dad on the phone. She missed her meeting because of you.”
She missed her meeting because of you, Cynthia thought.
Jonathan's face drops, so Cynthia shifts to a cheery topic.
“You know something? It’s good you’re home; listen to what I learned today.” Cynthia smashes over the chess pieces, stands on the table, and begins a solo. Jonathan joins her on the table and pretends to violin. The glowing two applaud each other and humbly bow and curtsy for their millions of viewers. Jonathan gasps, “I thought we were going to go soaring through the roof.”
“Today I learned how not to.”
“Too bad.” His face suddenly matches the ill Jonathan from her dream, and a parental concern is born. She rubs his fever-controlled head and makes a note to keep a closer eye on him.
The next day, it is a borderline blizzard. Some schools cancel and others do not. In the driveway, Cynthia’s car is a small igloo near two larger ones. Her classes haven’t been canceled. She shovels the driveway and her car, but leaves the two larger piles untouched. She enters her cocoon. The mother hurries down the cleared path just as Cynthia hears the repeating radio announcement: Jonathan’s school has been canceled. Cynthia enthusiastically waves good-bye at the mouthing mother.
In class, the professor doesn’t show. In the waiting moments, the chapel elements of the room once again seem more pronounced. It is a sanctuary from the harsh elements. She has craved such a sanctuary her whole life. If only she could find a way to carry this feeling around with her, if only….The loud drama students in the class begin an impromptu rehearsal of their up-coming play, “A Christmas in Wales”. Elena plays the poet Dylan Thomas’ mother. The mother and son flirting between the lines causes an incestuous element that colors the performance.
“You,” Dylan calls, “teacher’s pet.” They all laugh gently. He springs suddenly, stomps over tiers of table tops, as though they are elongated stairs, and hands Cynthia a script. “When someone calls line, you give it to them.”
Before her eyes, Cynthia sees scenes from the past. She sees the frozen Swansea River and celebrates a traditional Christmas in Wales. Like a starved person, she devours young Dylan’s imagination-enriched childhood, hunting red-eyed Indians, singing songs in adoration of candy, and snowball fights. Jim, Dylan’s best friend, even with a hacking cough steals the show with his visions of the impossible: building a catapult from wishing it, speculating at seeing hippos strolling down the street, or tigers pouncing in the snow. Scenes from the play permeate her. Elena asks if she’ll be assistant stage manager: make sure props worked, rehearse lines, and go out drinking with them.
“Sure, just don’t ask me to act. It’s everything in me to stand in front of people for a three-minute song.”
Elena chimes, “You wouldn’t know it. You shine when you sing.”
“Shake is more like it, almost out of my skin. It helps if I pretend to be people. I’m thinking of conjuring the late great Janice Joplin.”
“See, you’re a natural.”
“No, really, I’d vomit if I was forced to perform.”
Jim hacks so loud, he leaves for water and doesn’t come back.
The next week the teacher whisks in with a question, “These last weeks, I have limited your song choices to the carol. Any one guess why?”
“Because it’s almost Christmas?”
“Not entirely.”
“Because you’re doing the music for the play?”
“Bingo, Dylan Thomas’s A Christmas in Wales. It opens next week, so do all mark your calendars.”
Some students scribble a note while the teacher continues.
“We have run into a hiccup. Simon has pneumonia, so we need a quick study to replace him.” The teacher locks looks with Cynthia. Cynthia shrinks to invisible. She already knew about sick Simon, having attended the rehearsals every night, assisting with lines, set design, singing carols, and goofing off in the pubs till past her curfew. She does not see how she can help.
“We need someone who can learn lines quickly, someone with endearing enthusiasm…” The Professor is zooming in, the bow is being pulled further and further back, “to play the role of Dylan Thomas’ best friend, Jim.” Cynthia recalls the pile of homework and stacked books on her desk. She feels the weight of it all burying her.
A gum chewer perks up, “You need a guy, right?”
“Yes!” thinks Cynthia, safely sitting up. Until this moment she has never been happier to have breasts.
“Not necessarily.” There is a resonating twang. “It’s a historical 180, and a necessity of amateur theater. Young women now often are assigned the role of boys.” The arrow has a rather large target to hit. Cynthia instantly deflates. Intuitively she knows you do not say no to your university professor, you do not whine or act incompetent, you do not complain of physical illness. It is just an unspoken New England rule. She makes a silent agreement: if the professor asks directly, just act honored; otherwise, you are safe.
With some ease she slips out of class unnoticed. She spends the weekend doing all her homework for the upcoming week. At rehearsal, when the professor comes walking up to her, she knows she will do the noble thing.
The pre-ordered costume comes with a series of problems. She is taller than Simon. The knickers come below the knee only if she doesn’t bend. When she bends to crouch through the forest on a hunt, a large gap where the socks end exposes a clearly feminine leg. The director asks about a sports bra. She shakes him off. Her face warms.
“They just make one large mound in the center.”
“Bandage, then?”
“I’m willing to try.”
Dylan’s mother, Elena, helps her. Together, with effort, they bind them as flat as possible. Elena cuts Cynthia's bangs in a blunt straight line over her eyes. Then she pins the back hair up and covers her head in a cap. The stage becomes the landscape of Wales as she walks along the edge of the Swansea River, imagining, of all things, seeing a hippo.
At work Cynthia and Jonathan spend the afternoon stomping through the woods acting like cowboys and Indians and chanting the play’s warrior song. When the parents return home late, Jonathan squeals, “We were scouting Indians.”
“Native Americans,” the mother looks disapprovingly at Cynthia. “In this age of political correctness it is important not to raise children in ignorance.”
“Are you calling me ignorant?”
The father tenses and gives Cynthia a look to say, don’t start, you’ll only lose. Out the window, the mother sees two crossed sticks on the ground. “Encouraging violence again; I thought we talked about this.” The mother walks over to the CD player, and presses it open. “My son has also informed me that he has listened to this Sir Gawain, knight nonsense. Do you feel it is age appropriate?”
“Whatever is age inappropriate goes over his head, so I don’t understand why he can’t …”
“You are not qualified to make such choices. I see two sticks on the ground. Now if Jonathan wants to pick up a stick and pretend it’s a gun or sword, I can only try to discourage him, not pick up another and fight back.”
Cynthia laughs slightly.
“Sorry, I don’t see what’s so funny.”
“The image of you actually pretend-playing with your child.” The dig is worth it, You think after botex injects the mother’s face wouldn't be able to convulse through so many expressions: shock, anger, vengeance. Cynthia's shift should have ended a half hour ago, so she feels justified in walking away from the argument, but honestly, Cynthia doesn’t know what has come over her. Possibly it is all the drama around her, all these fine and noble lines. It seems a shame they are only used in literature and plays.
Days pass by, Cynthia continues to avoid the mother. She rushes out the door as soon as the woman’s car enters the drive. This night Cynthia isn’t so fast. There is a knock on the window of her car.
“We need to talk.”
“On your time, not mine.”
The window closes on a gaping mouth; for Cynthia it is a double win: rattling the Ice Witch and buying more time. Yet her nights are restless with all the tension in the house, and the anxiety about the upcoming play. The stalking violin music enters her dreams; something is coming to shred her to pieces.
Days later, after building a giant snow castle from bread-tin formed bricks, Jonathan and Cynthia hide inside it, lobbing snowballs at imagined tigers.
“The speeding orange is cool!”
“What?” She is distracted from what he is saying. She can feel something coming.
“The orange, they are like flames leaping around the snow,” he says.
As the mother’s car arrives home early, the snowball falls from Cynthia’s hand. Tonight is opening night and the mother knows it. Mentally Cynthia screeches “Bitch!” s
“You shouldn’t say Bitch,” laughs Jonathan. Cynthia stands doubly stunned.
“I didn’t say bitch.”
“You said bitch.”
“I didn’t say it out loud.”
“I heard you say bitch.”
The mother is in front of them. She surely feels victorious, firing Cynthia on such an important day.
“If your things are not packed tonight, they will be on the lawn in the morning!” In the nanny's room, Cynthia packs her books and some clothes. She has a hot water bottle and a sleeping bag, if it comes to spending the night in the car. She meets the mother on the way out.
“I have what I need, and will be back Sunday for the rest. If you want to litter your lawn, it will just be a mess. I hope to say good-bye to Jonathan then.” Walking away from the house, she feels the band that connects her to Jonathan stretching to a breaking point. Somehow he has stopped being a job and started being a companion. There is ten years between them, but all that drifts away as soon as they begin to play.
On stage, it is her line about the tiger in the snow that snaps her back to reality. Before that second, she might as well have been a ten year old in Wales for the last hour. At the evoking line – a tiger in the snow – orange flickers like a flame in front of her. She gleans what Jonathan was trying to say to her just before she was fired. With the memory comes the awareness of the audience. Cynthia is horrified to see them in front of her, horrified to realize she can’t share her thoughts with Jonathan, horrified she is going to be sleeping in her car. Yet the audience is convinced that she is horrified at the approaching tiger in the snow. Dylan notices a delay and improvises. He throws an invisible snowball at her. Her brain acknowledges Dylan as her childhood pal, and she instantly responds.
After the play, the cast and crew go out to the pub and cheerfully sing, “It was sad, so sad, it was sad, too bad, it was sad when the great ship went down, to the bottom, husbands and wives little tiny babies lost their lives, it was sad when the great ship went down.” They are all underage and drunk. “At least she didn’t have to drive,” Cynthia thinks and laughs at the absurdly comforting thought and at the others’ joy at singing such depressing lyrics.
“ No curfew tonight!” she boasts to her partner in bondage, Elena.
“You’re drunk!” pronounces Elena with the authority of an expert.
“Yes, yet I’m reasonably sure the circulation has returned to my breasts.” In the haze of alcohol they are both amused.
“Why don’t you sleep it off on my couch?” Elena offers.
Cynthia chokes back tears and hugs her puzzled new best friend.
For the final two evenings of the show, Cynthia is Jim a ten year old in the 1920's, She is fighting with girls, skipping stones in the Swansea River, hunting Indians and catapulting snowballs. Then the play is done, it is over. Wales and her experience sink into her subconscious; gently adding to her own sweet childhood memories without stirring up the bees’ nest of bad.
A solution to Cynthia’s predicament presents itself: Elena is failing all her early morning classes, so the two students make a deal, free housing for free tutoring. It is a perfect arrangement. Cynthia only wishes Elena could borrow Jonathan’s attention span.
Cynthia wanders up the shoveled path to Jonathan’s house thinking, “Maybe there is something to this T.V. corrupting the mind theory.” The snow castle is melted and the symbolism makes her sad. As she walks up the path she hears Jonathan diverge from his assigned music into something new, yet strangely familiar. The music lulls her, invades her, and opens a door in her mind: A door through which images of knights and dragons swirl into an ancient land.
A shrill and abrupt voice opens the house door for her. Cynthia’s presence is barely unacknowledged. The mother only reprimands the son, “The sooner you stop playing around, the sooner you will be finished with your assigned lesson.” In her former room, Cynthia's things wait in boxes. In their former place are her replacement’s things: A Lufthansa ticket, German magazines, and a silver flute. It chokes Cynthia up. She doubts she was ever qualified to be Jonathan’s nanny. Once her car is loaded, she hugs Jonathan in front of the castle remains. The exposed bread-tins’ rust bleeds orange in the gray slush.
He says, “We’ll always have Everlot.” Cynthia doesn’t get his meaning. She thinks of the last time she didn’t get his meaning; she thinks of the tigers in the snow.
“You see them too. I knew you would eventually.” He stumbles over the many syllables in the word eventually, and she is so grateful for the childishness of the sound. He adds,“ I’ll leave the door open,” placing a Drac-oh card in her hand. It is the dragon from her dream, the same dragon she rode. “We can ride together anytime.” The mother takes his hand and walks her son away from such nonsense.
Puzzle pieces snap together in her mind. It is an image of a kingdom. As incredible as it sounds, she has to yell “I’ll see you in Everlot!” She is skipping along the road, “Play your music, Jonathan. Open the door for me and we will ride dragons together!” They both are linked by an invisible beam that bonds the two. The mother yanks her child away from the lunatic screaming in the street. Cynthia feels the strength of the mother’s protection of her son, and no matter how misguided it may be, Cynthia is glad for it.
