Eleanor Catton - The Rehearsal

“She disappeared,” Stanley said, watching as Felix saw his mistake and swore under his breath. “I guess it’s just weird when people watch from the wings and we don’t know it. It’s like an unfair advantage. If someone had crept in through the foyer and was watching in the stalls I wouldn’t have cared.”

Isolde was sitting on the slat bench underneath the ginkgo tree. She was wearing her Abbey Grange school uniform, and was swinging her legs slightly as she flicked the pages of a dog-eared novel, curving her body over the book with her hair falling free about her face. As he approached he saw more clearly now how pretty she was, with full cheeks and a pouting mouth and a slender upturned nose that she was stroking absently with one finger as she read. As Stanley neared her she looked up and gave a puzzled start as she recognized him.

“It’s you,” Stanley said. “From the wings.”

“Oh, yeah,” the girl said, and drew her lower lip underneath her front teeth. She looked up at him uncertainly, like a puppy waiting to be admonished.

“You made me miss my cue,” Stanley said, and then they both blushed at his rudeness.

“Sorry,” Isolde said. “I heard the drum and I just followed the sound. I guess I just wandered in.”

There was a little pause.

“It was only a rehearsal,” Stanley said at last. She nodded politely and pressed her lips together in a kind of apologetic smile. Stanley pointed at her music case to change the subject. “What do you play?”

“Alto saxophone,” Isolde said. “My teacher’s studio is up there.”

“She must be rich, to afford a studio here,” Stanley said. “The rent is insane. I know because the Drama Institute were going to buy out way more of these buildings than they actually did, but it was too expensive.” He was growing hot with embarrassment now, the unease spreading like a scarlet ink-stain over his chest and into the stippled hollow of his throat. He knew that it would be visible above the open collar of his shirt, spreading up to his chin like an old-fashioned ruff. He wished he had not sought this girl out, that he had walked past her without speaking, maybe even given her a calm and cryptic nod.

“I don’t know if she’s rich,” Isolde said.

“Are you any good?” Stanley asked.

As soon as he said it he felt ashamed at having asked such an unanswerable question of this round-faced, blinking girl. He hoped she would not ask him the same question back. But Isolde only said, “I’m sitting Grade Eight,” and shrugged to show that the question didn’t much matter to her anyway.

“I hear you guys sometimes,” Stanley said. “Well, probably not you specifically, but the music travels down to where we are.”

“Yeah, I hear you guys sometimes too,” Isolde said, inexplicably blushing now too. “Mostly drums and shouting.”

“And screaming probably,” Stanley said, trying to make a joke out of it, but Isolde just smiled and said, “No, I’ve never heard screaming.”

“Okay,” said Stanley, flapping his arms. “Well, I guess I’ll see you around.” He had meant it to sound aloof, but instead it sounded expectant, as if he were anticipating another chance meeting. He looked away from her to show he didn’t care, out over the cobbles at the pigeons and the banked rim of litter framing the courtyard with a little crust of silver and white.

“Okay,” Isolde said, giving him a curious look. She made no move to take up her novel again, and followed him with her eyes as he stumbled away from her and across the quad, the bag of props slipping from under his arm.

“Stanley,” the Head of Acting said, “I want you to become your father.”

Stanley nodded tentatively. He was standing with his legs slightly apart and his hands behind his back. All the other students were sitting on the floor and looking up at him, hugging their knees tight against their ribs.

“This is a question-and-answer session,” the Head of Acting said, smoothing the page in front of him calmly with the flat of his hand. He was sitting at a desk to one side, his legs crossed at the knee, one bare white foot rotating slowly to relax the ankle joint. “We are going to start asking questions of you, addressing you directly as if you really are your father. I want you to stay in character for the next half hour. If you don’t know the real answer to any questions asked of you, then make them up. Don’t worry if you have to lie, just don’t break character.”

Stanley nodded again. He looked down for a moment, drew a breath, and then looked up again with his father’s wry twitching smile. He spread out his hands and said, “Hit me,” and all at once he was guiltless and unapologetic and mischievous.

“How well do you know your son Stanley?” the Head of Acting asked first.

Stanley raised his eyebrows and smiled. “He’s a good kid. We swap dirty jokes, that’s our thing. We get along fine.”

“What kind of dirty jokes?”

“Oh, we try and shock each other, back and forth. It’s just a game we play.” Stanley smiled again and looked at the Head of Acting coolly, as if he could see right through him, as if all of the Head of Acting’s wants and fears and hopes and faults were laid bare to him. The Head of Acting looked impassively back.

“Tell me one of the jokes that you’ve told your son,” he said.

“What’s the best thing about sleeping with a minor?”

“I don’t know,” said the Head of Acting politely.

“Getting paid eight dollars an hour for babysitting.”

There is a smothered giggle from one of the students on the floor. Stanley turned to flash him a smile. “Good, eh?” he said, twisting both wrists around to shake out his cuffs the way his father often did. “But it’s getting harder and harder to come up with anything original. I have my secretary look them up for me. Best job she’s ever had, she reckons.”

There was another ripple of laughter from the floor. Stanley grinned and drew himself up a little higher, placing both hands on his stomach and stroking the fabric of his shirt downward again and again. He contrived to make the movement look almost absentminded.

“Tell me one of the jokes that Stanley has told you,” the Head of Acting said.

Stanley paused and thought for a moment. “Can’t recall, sorry,” he said at last.

“Would you say you have a good relationship with Stanley?”

“We don’t see each other that often,” Stanley said, “but he’s a good kid. Good sense of humor. A bit sensitive maybe, but that isn’t going to hold him back. We get along fine.”

“What’s your son good at?”

“Stanley?” Stanley said, buying time the way his father would buy time. “He’s pretty well liked everywhere he goes, I think. He did well to get into drama school. Is he a good actor? I don’t know. You could probably tell me that.”

“So what would you say he was good at?”

“The arts,” Stanley said doubtfully, thinking hard. “He’s a romantic. He got that from me. He sure as hell didn’t get it from Roger.”

“Is Roger his stepfather?”

“Yes.”

“What’s he like?”

“Mild,” said Stanley. “Laughs even if he doesn’t think it’s funny. Runs out of things to say and then looks frightened, tries to escape. Sure he’s a nice man though. I wouldn’t marry him. But he’s a nice man.”

“Is he a good father to your son?”

“He’s a good stepfather to my son.”

“All right,” the Head of Acting said, turning to include the rest of the group huddled at Stanley’s feet. “Let’s open up the floor. Any of you can start asking Stanley’s father questions. Anything you like.”

“Do you see yourself in Stanley?” called out a girl in the front row.