John Casey - Compass Rose

A boy in plus fours breezed through to say he was off to a roadhouse. His mother held on to his jacket and was dragged to her knees. The audience laughed. Elsie was reminded of another thing she didn’t like about theater. Not just what if they forgot their lines, but what if they hurt themselves taking a pratfall? It was an annoying anxiety.

Elsie’s mood changed when the father said, “And here comes my darling daughter.” As Rose made her entrance, Elsie went cold with fear. Rose wasn’t tucked away out of sight at the back of a church, she was under a giant eye. And then the audience was laughing at her. Rose trotted onstage with tiny steps. She came to a stop with a little hop and a shimmy that made her short beaded dress sparkle under the lights.

Elsie recovered when she saw that Rose wasn’t undone. She thought, She’s meant to be a dizzy flapper — headache band, her mouth lipsticked into a Betty Boop cupid’s bow. And the father was getting a laugh — his eyes goggled, he put his hands to his head and sank into his chair.

“Oh, Daddy,” Rose said. “It’s what all the girls are wearing.” She twirled her yard-long strand of pearls and caught it neatly.

The father sang a bit about girls these days. Rose knelt at his knee, looking sweetly submissive to this fictitious father.

At first Elsie didn’t know what this new sound was. Rose joined in the father’s song so softly it sounded like a single voice. As they went on singing, Elsie heard Rose’s voice more clearly. She seemed to be singing more notes than the man, but they ended together. The audience clapped, and there were a few cheers. Elsie looked at Mary. She was sitting completely still. Mary closed her eyes for a second, then made a note on her program.

Then came the setup: the gentleman caller and his pal were sent to the father’s house but were told that it’s an inn, and then a female cousin told Rose about the gentleman caller — he was so bashful that he stuttered. “With girls like you and me,” the cousin said. “With other girls, it’s a different story.”

“You mean … floozies?” Rose said.

“I mean anything in skirts to whom he has not been properly introduced.”

And indeed when the cousin introduced him — properly — to Rose, the boy stuttered and stared at his feet. They sang a duet, the boy doing scales with his “Wha-wha-wha what was I trying to say?” while Rose trilled a tune. The boy left, and Rose did one of the other things that Elsie found unbelievable about theater — she made a speech to herself, the upshot of which was that she thought the boy handsome and she’d find some way to get him to behave like the roguish charmer he was said to be.

After another scene of folderol among the father, the mother, the cousin, and her beau, there was a blackout. The lights came up on a bedroom and the gentleman caller complaining about the inn’s service — his bed wasn’t even made. Rose came in carrying a load of bedclothes. She set about making the bed, more tidily and quickly than at home. But Elsie was struck by how good she looked in her maid’s uniform — black dress and white bib apron belted tight around her small waist. She sang another duet with the boy. Elsie cocked her head, pleased that she recognized that it was the same song as before, but this time the boy tenor sang the melody and Rose chirped the in-between bits: “Oh, no, no, no, you stay on your side.” Elsie wondered just where and how Rose had come by this nimble coyness, the not knowing that their hands touched as they tucked in the sheet, the exact length of time to let his hand linger on her shoulder before it became a yes but not slipping away so quickly that it was a cold no. Rose’s hair was tucked up into a maid’s cap. Two broad ribbons hung down her back, bobbing and swirling as she flitted around the bed, apparently breathless but still singing.

They stopped singing. There was applause, which unsettled the boy in the middle of a spoken line. He stood openmouthed, looking panic-stricken. Rose curtsied to him and said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you. Something about my palm.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said. Rose held up her hand. The boy clutched it and said, “I’m a palm reader. Your left hand shows what gifts you’re born with. Any fool can see you’re beautiful and charming, but the right hand shows how generous you’ll be with your gifts in the future.”

Rose tucked her hands behind her back and said, “I’m smaht enough to know the fu-cha you have in mind.” The audience laughed. Elsie jerked back in her seat. It was broad swamp-Yankee. It was May’s accent. It was May’s hitched vowels, May’s deliberate rhythm. How could she do that to May? And to Dick. To her whole other family. Elsie burned. She was afraid of what May must be thinking. She was ashamed. And then she was angry again.

She had to sit through the rest of the damn play, her anger congealing during the subplots, reheating when Rose did it again: “An inn? Whatevah gave you that idea? It’s Mr. Hahdcastle’s house.” The audience brayed their laughs. Elsie wanted to slap them silly.

And then all was revealed. Rose was really the daughter of the house, the boy tenor was cured of his stutter, the cousin got her beau, everyone onstage for the finale, all singing how happy they were. The audience applauded, the curtains closed, more applause. The curtain opened, the singers took a bow all in a row, then two by two, then the white-haired father led Rose forward and stepped back to let her curtsy by herself. He took her hand again, and together they leaned forward and pointed, palms open, to the little orchestra. The curtains closed.

Over at last. Elsie wasn’t furious anymore. She was pressed into a cold gloom so thick she couldn’t move.

Mary took one look at Elsie and knew there was no talking to her. Mary had no idea what was wrong. She considered the possibility that Elsie was so pleased that she was overcome, but dismissed it after a second look.

Mary herself was so bursting with things to say that she got up and bumped across people’s knees to get to the aisle away from Elsie. Of course, there were one or two little moments Rose could work on, but those could wait. What couldn’t wait was seeing Rose, Rose still flushed and anxious, believing and not believing with every breath, wanting to hear that she was good from someone she could trust.

Jack was holding court in the hallway outside the greenroom. Mary would have slid by, but she saw Sally — she always made a point of being nice to Sally in front of Jack, the easiest way of reminding him to keep his hands to himself. When she held out her hand to Sally, Sally hugged her and kissed her on the cheek and said, “Wasn’t Rose terrific! And I know how much she owes to you.”

Mary’s face grew hot with the pleasure of it. She took a breath and said, “Oh, she was born with that voice, it’s a gift from God. But surely some of it must be from you, somewhere on your side of the family, though your sister has a tin ear. It’s not from Dick, God knows.” Mary heard herself taking off, as full-voiced as her father at a Christmas dinner after a drink or two — even the hint of a brogue he had retrieved from his boyhood. “Now, when it comes to the acting,” Mary went on, “that’s where you get a glimpse of Elsie, whether she’s setting her cap for a man or pinning his ears back.” And poor Sally had just wanted to say something nice in passing, not get reminded of the graft in Rose’s family tree. “And that’s just what the part needed — that clear soprano voice plus a bit of mischief.” If only Sally would say something, Mary would be on her way, but Sally stood there, a pretty portrait against the wall, not nodding, not even blinking. If this was what the poor dear was like when Jack climbed into bed, no wonder Jack had a roving eye. “So she’s in there, is she?” Mary said, pointing to the greenroom door. “I’ll just poke my head in. She gets so … After she sang the ‘Ave Maria’ … Were you there at Sylvia Teixeira’s wedding? She was more undone afterward than she was before. I mean Rose, not Sylvia. So she needs someone calm.” Mary laughed at herself and rolled her eyes. She unplanted her feet and tipped herself through the door, saying, “Well, musically reassuring,” to no one in particular.