Marcia Talley: This Enemy Town

Suddenly, as if a bell had rung somewhere-this was a school, so perhaps it had-the room began to fill with midshipmen. I checked my watch: three-fifteen. The tech crew disappeared through a door at the rear of the stage, and a tall midshipman holding a sheaf of papers and looking very much in charge did an impressive, one-armed thrust and sprang onto the stage, “Listen up!” he shouted. After thirty more seconds of to-ing and fro-ing, the hammering stopped, someone pulled the plug on the power saw, the room quieted and he began passing out rehearsal schedules for the remainder of the week.

“Hannah!” Dorothy breezed in from a door on the north side of the auditorium, smelling winter-fresh, a combination of cold air and wet wool. She plopped down in the chair next to me. “Sorry I’m late,” she whispered. “I got tied up at the grocery. You wouldn’t believe the crowds. Must be because of the snow.”

“Oh, yes I would,” I whispered back. It was a mystery to me why in these parts ordinarily sane people, at the slightest hint of snow from some know-it-all on the Weather Channel, would rush out to stock up on milk, bread, bottled water, and toilet paper. Even in Annapolis, which rarely saw more than one or two inches of the white stuff, a prediction of snow turned everyone bonkers.

“Did you notice our setup out there?” She gestured with a gloved hand toward the door through which she had just entered.

“So that’s where the sawing was coming from! I wondered. I came in from the hallway on the south side, so I missed it.”

Dorothy pulled off her gloves, stuffed them in her pocket, then shrugged out of her fur-lined jacket. “There’s no scenery shop in the building,” she told me. “But we’ve got a huge workshop over in Alumni Hall. We’ll go over there tomorrow.”

I helped Dorothy arrange her jacket over the back of the chair in front of her, where it could dry out, then nodded toward the stage. Two actors in long raincoats had wandered on. “What’s up?”

Dorothy squinted at the stage for a few minutes, getting her bearings. “They’re getting set to rehearse the opening number. Those two guys are grave diggers.”

I leaned back comfortably in the cushioned seat, waiting for rehearsal to begin.

“This is a wonderful theater,” Dorothy mused. Her head rested against the back of her seat and she stared up dreamily into the impressive, sky-blue dome with its enormous, Phantom-of-the-Opera-style chandelier.

“You should have seen it a couple of years back,” I told her. “Tiny stage, no fly gallery, piss-poor sound, and a lighting system from World War Two that was always blowing fuses.” I explained how a $750,000 donation from a former thespian had allowed the Academy to restore Mahan Auditorium to its former grandeur, with enough money left over to hire a paint expert to recreate the historic polychrome painting that decorated the elaborate and unusual proscenium arch.

“And you won’t believe what they found during the renovation!” I waved my arm in an arc that took in the entire U-shaped balcony. “When the workmen pulled down the acoustical tile up there, and scraped off the adhesive, they uncovered six enormous display cases set into the walls. Inside were souvenir flags from the War of 1812 that had been lost for half a century.” I drew quotation marks in the air around “lost.”

Dorothy shaded her eyes and squinted up into the darkness, trying to see what I was talking about. “Some idiot simply tiled over the glass?”

“Yup. I’ll take you up there later for a closer look. I mean, who knew? You’d think the Navy couldn’t lose track of something that important. They were British pennants from the Battle of Lake Erie, for heaven’s sake, captured by Oliver Hazard Perry in 1813 or thereabouts. That was one of the most strategic naval battles in U.S. history. It helped secure the Northwest Territories for the United States.”

Dorothy was staring at me as if I’d grown another head.

I made a fist and poked her playfully on the arm. “That’s Paul talking, not me. He goes on and on about it. When he’s not diddling around trying to solve Reimann’s Hypothesis or some other bit of mathematical esoterica, he’s quite the history buff.”

On stage, the midshipman in charge was reaming out some hapless plebe who was making himself as small as possible in the front row. “I warned you that we’d be working through the weekend, Parker! What do you mean you have to go to your cousin’s wedding?”

“I’ll take care of it. Sir, ” the plebe added glumly.

I bet Dorothy a double latte that if the kid had a cell phone, he was already on it, cancelling out on his cousin rather than seeing his Navy career shot down in flames.

Suddenly a hand went up, tracing a languid O in the air. The hand belonged to a bearded, tweedy gentleman, professorially attired in a gray wool jacket over a blue cashmere V-neck sweater that stretched gently over his modest paunch. “Move on, Mr. Lattimer, move on.”

“That’s Professor Black, the director,” Dorothy whispered. “He’s absolutely amazing.”

I was familiar with Professor Medwin Black, having read his résumé printed in the “Cast” section of every Glee Club program for each of the previous ten years. During summer vacation, Professor Black directed summer stock in upstate New York. Several of his protégés were currently on Broadway. The Academy was incredibly lucky to have him.

Dorothy leaned toward me once again. “And the guy at the piano’s the music director, Professor John Tracey. The mids call them both ‘Doc.’”

In the rosy light from the stage, Dorothy’s face looked young and unlined. I made a mental note to find out what kind of lightbulbs they were using so I could install them around my vanity at home.

“Everyone has nicknames around here,” Dorothy continued. “I imagine the mids will give you one, too, if you stick around long enough.”

“Oh, I plan to stick around,” I said. Even though the sets were well under way, it looked like a good deal more work had to be done before opening night in two and a half weeks’ time. I had never been one to give up easily. And if I’d made a promise? I’d stick to it.

“Do you have a nickname?” I asked.

Even in the subdued light I could see Dorothy blush. “They call me ‘Mom.’”

“That figures,” I chuckled. “You should be flattered.”

“Oh, I am.” Dorothy leaned toward me and pointed. “See that mid there?”

I recognized the fellow I’d seen earlier, the one in sweats who’d been gesturing at the lights with a hammer.

“He’s on the tech crew. His name is Jonathan Lyon, but they call him ‘Cher.’”

“Cher? As in Sonny and?”

Dorothy chuckled. “No, Cher, as in clueless.”

It took a moment for it to register that she was talking about Cher, the teenage heroine in the movie Clueless . I smiled. The film was a family favorite. “I see. But why Cher?”

“He looks busy, doesn’t he? But every time you need actual work done, he’s clueless. Either that or nowhere to be found.”

I was both amused and appalled. “Midshipmen take no prisoners, do they?”

“And see those two over there?” Dorothy pointed to two female midshipmen, wrestling what looked like a meat grinder the size of a washing machine up the left-hand flight of stairs, one of a pair that flanked the proscenium arch. “They’re Frick and Frack.”

We watched while Frick (or was it Frack?) tipped the contraption forward while Frack (or Frick?) seemed to be trying to set it down on the top step and got thwacked in the head by the handle for her trouble.

“Isn’t that just perfect?” Dorothy cooed.

I was confused. “Getting thwacked in the head by a giant meat grinder?”