Elizabeth Crane - The History of Great Things

— Look, why do you suppose I wanted to be a writer?

— Because you were good at it.

— I was good at other things. As you know.

— I don’t know what you want me to say.

— Mom. Didn’t you ever read a book that made you feel. . like someone who didn’t even know you understood you?

— Pfff. No one in real life has ever really understood me. How could I possibly get that from a book?

You’ve been combing the auditions in Backstage for years, finally decide to actually go to one, for the role of Graziella in the touring company of a Broadway revival of West Side Story , and after two callbacks you are given the part. It’s your childhood dream come true, all these years later. You have been practicing your ooo-ooo-oooblieooos since you were nine. (You’ve been practicing all the parts, failing most noticeably while trying to sing them all simultaneously for the “Tonight” medley.) By the time you’re done rehearsing in New York, you’re already close with the cast, and by the end of the second week of the tour, in Kansas City, you’re calling yourselves family. It is agreed that your real families are not nearly as much fun, and that they’re messed up in similar ways, about which you talk late into the night on the bus to the next city. One dark night, six of you, high on pot brownies in the back of the bus, decide to stumble out to Cracker Barrel for munchies. All agree that Cracker Barrel high is the funniest thing that ever happened. You forget that Cracker Barrel is not someone’s house party where you’re invited to help yourself to whatever and grab a seat on the floor with several boxes of crackers and three types of cheddar, but this detail is overlooked until you decide to dance on top of a barrel — there seems no other reason for it to be there — at which time the police arrive, and you’re arrested for trying to get them to dance on the barrel with you. Fortunately, your high lasts just long enough to hold you until morning, when you’re released from jail, and after considering that you made it through this escapade without throwing up, you call it a win. Everyone should be arrested once. Box checked.

You are the newbie (though not the youngest by a lot) so the others make certain things known to you. One of them is that it isn’t always like this. It is, as often, exactly unlike this. Diva behavior, bitchy queens, personality clashes — most of you have big ones, which on a tour bus means that there is almost literally not enough room to accommodate the magnitude of the sounds (vocal exercises that range from bizarre chicken squawks to simple scales sung by five different people in five different ways at five different intervals), and the things (hair accessories, undergarments, a drugstore’s worth of products), everyone scheming to skirt the one-suitcase-per-person limit (people need options!), and the opinions (political, artistic, religious — remarkable, really, that there hasn’t been a documented murder on a tour bus), and the assorted pre-performance rituals (prayers, meditations, chants, bells). But this doesn’t concern you now, here in Tulsa or Omaha or Wichita; what concerns you now is your castmate who plays Anxious, who stops by your motel room at midnight with a bag of Krispy Kremes and a quart of milk from the gas station next door. You’re about two months into the tour now; the nightly group hang has taken the predictable toll, and most of you over twenty-four are retiring a little earlier now, though you still get plenty of socializing done earlier in the day. No one misses who gets with whom, that’s impossible, so you make your peace with it, and it is noted by all that you and Anxious are often in a corner by yourselves, and bets are taken as to when the sexy festivities will ensue; the girl playing Anybodys wins by picking the earliest time slot.

Anxious — he knows you. He says things to you no guy has said before; that he feels like he hit the lottery; wants to know where you would live, if you could live anywhere at all; if you’d be interested in quitting everything and sailing around the world with him and a couple of dogs, maybe make some kids; he has some ideas for kids’ names, Adeline and Mabel and Billiam — which cracks you up, Billiam? you say, and he says No one will make fun of our kids on our boat —and you are more and more sure he’s the one. You like this idea very much. Let’s do it , you say. Yeah? he says, Yeah , you say.

So you and Anxious jump off the bus right that minute, laughing hysterically. You have no idea how one goes about buying a boat, but you’ve just hit Tampa, as good a place as any for that. You hitchhike to the nearest shore, giddy, thank the old couple who picked you up, jump out, ask some random guy where to buy a boat, he asks what kind of boat you’re looking for, you say an easy one, you’re new boat people, he says he’s got one for you, takes you to a nearby boat dock and shows you a boat. Mint Chris-Craft Roamer, 1965, sleeps ten. Practically drives itself. You don’t ask the price, or for any more details. We’ll take it , you say. Naturally, it’s perfect, room for the dogs and kids, so you jump on board, initiate the master bedroom, conceive. Where should we go? Anxious asks. You suggest going through the Panama Canal and then up to Alaska to ride some whales. He tries to explain that that may not be an option, but that you can go look at them; you say Well you don’t know, maybe we’ll find some open-minded whales when we get there. All right. Whale-riding it is . Your first stop: New Orleans. You get off the boat, eat beignets and pralines and listen to music on the street and dance in someone’s funeral, but then you worry whether that may not be a hundred percent cool, so you dance out of it just as quickly; wandering New Orleans you find a little dog roaming around, one of those ones that’s like a hairless Chihuahua but with a head of floppy hair in his face and ridiculous ears, ears that say I belong to you guys , and you pick him up and get him all checked out at the vet and name him Flavio and jump back on the boat and Flavio goes right to the front of the boat and perches himself on the bow like a little hood ornament, wind blowing his ears back like ear sails, like the power from his little ear sails could take you to wherever your destiny might be.

You discover that you’re having twins, a boy and a girl, because why not, and when they’re born they just pop out, it’s not like my pregnancy at all, it’s painless, like shoop , two beautiful babies, Adeline-Mabel and Billiam, done, next. You home-school Adeline-Mabel and Billiam, heavy focus on life experience and the arts, you were never all that good at math or science, but there’s plenty of science out there on the boat, and you sing songs, play guitar, and then you reach Alaska and a whale swims up next to the boat to let you on for a ride and it’s spectacular, whale-riding, you feel like this is what it all led up to, this whale ride, you, a giant mammal, the salt water, the sea air, the waves, the sky. The whale brings you back to the boat so you can pick up the rest of the family, Adeline-Mabel and Billiam and Anxious, Flavio in front, and you whale off into the sea and that’s it, the end.

— That’s good, Mom. Graziella doesn’t actually sing in West Side Story , but whatever, I guess.

— Seems like that makes it the perfect part for someone who’s scared to sing in public.

— Good point. FYI, though, you can’t get high when you’re in AA.

— You still have to go to that?