Elizabeth Crane - The History of Great Things

All these years later, after you work far enough through some shit so that you can actually perform, it still gets you only so far; you’re doing it, but you’re still massively uncomfortable; you decide to go to therapy. But therapy takes time, so let’s just say that before the show’s run is over, a bunch of stuff comes up in therapy that you hadn’t been dealing with as regards your mother. Your therapist gently suggests that your mother may have discouraged you from being a singer. But why would someone who was willing to sacrifice everything to become an artist not want to encourage her own child to become an artist? Why, if you’re going to make a point of saying that your own parents did these things wrong, would you then go do those exact same things? Why do you think, Betsy? I don’t know. I know what she told me, that it was too hard, and she wanted something easier for me. Is it possible that she believed that? I guess, but I think there’s more to it. Okay, so what’s the more, do you think? I think the more is obvious. Maybe, maybe not, but I want you to say it. Well, maybe I was competition for her. Say more about that. Ugh, do I have to? No, you don’t have to. You could keep struggling. Fine. I think it’s possible that she felt she had enough competition out in the world and didn’t want any more right in her own house. I think it’s possible that she had me and then spent the rest of her life wishing she hadn’t. And how does that make you feel? Nauseous.

— I actually do feel nauseous right now.

— Nauseated.

—. .

— You’re a writer, don’t you want it to be right?

—. .

— Anyway, that’s probably psychosomatic.

— Either way, I am having a physical feeling in my intestines, the kind that portends throwing up.

— It’ll pass. I’ll send you some Reiki.

— Reiki from the beyond. Interesting.

— It’s a thing.

— Is it.

— Weirdly, I feel a little better already.

— That’s the Reiki!

Anyway. So you’re in therapy, and you recognize these things that have been holding you back and making you want to throw up every night, and you even make some progress, and that first show comes to an end but you’ve gotten only excellent notices, and you’re asked to join the touring revival of Godspell , of all things — why not? — no audition, and you’re still single, and you’ve wanted to leave New York since forever — and so a year on the road, in a supporting role, is a perfect opportunity. Your last tour was an amazing experience, with some wonderful benefits: the camaraderie among the cast, a new lover, a sense of having a place and a purpose, even a transitory one. You begin to allow yourself to enjoy the applause as much as the music, though it’s not sustenance for you in the way it was for me.

Artist Marcello Mastroianni comes and goes. It’s a whirl of a week. He flies you to Barcelona, where he has another opening. He pronounces it Barthelona , which sounds positively absurd until you hear a number of actual Spaniards pronounce it this way, after which you will pronounce it this way forevermore. It’s hard not to compare this trip to Spain with your last, more than ten years ago. The first time, everything was new: your marriage, art, the world. This is new too, there’s a sensual charge to it; your skin feels like a penny in your mouth, and the world itself seems altogether changed, and it feels harder to reach that sense of promise you had back then. Is it just the difference between being nineteen and thirty? How could a person feel simultaneously so alive and so full of dread? Marcello’s Barcelona show is closer to what you imagined: a gallery with actual doors, art you can identify as such (even if it’s still probably not what you’d call your thing ), with an added flurry of attention on him, photographers, acolytes, women younger than you — when did that moment happen? You’re barely into your thirties, not a line on your skin, but these women seem to have been born in groups of threes and fours, long-legged, effortless European beauties, style you can’t grasp; born muses they are, would that you could be one too, someone free of what exists in you, someone who could exist simply as an inspiration for the art of another, a type of well for another to draw from whatever he might. There are those, like Marcello, who would happily offer you this as a permanent post, yet it is not your calling. Marcello pays these muses-in-waiting no mind, though it’s impossible not to notice the amount of attention they lavish on him, the exact reverse of the ratio you aspire to. You have more than a few jealous bones, though in this case you’re not sure jealousy is exactly what’s at play.

You stay at the Majestic Hotel (silk fringe ties on the heavy brocade drapes, full-size bath soaps scented like lilies of the valley! — you like this a great deal), and he orders room service, which comes with champagne. This part of the trip is all about your wishes. You and Marcello spend the rest of the weekend in bed. For a second, this bed, with its incredible sheets and carts of covered food and its Marcello, could be the ideal place to stay forever. You’re not a big drinker; one glass of champagne is more than enough to make you forget you were once a genteel young lady from Muscatine, one whose parents have no capacity to imagine a universe where people do other than get married and stay that way; you only wish the champagne would help it stay forgotten the next day. You are not so much hung over as just no longer buzzed. You fly back to New York with a suitcase weighed down with Majestic Hotel letterpress note cards and a half-dozen bars of soap you pilfered from the maids’ cart when they weren’t looking; nothing wrong with that, it’s paid for. Bouquets of roses come to your door, some exotic breed with blooms the size of grapefruits, but despite the romantic notes pinned to them, you waste no time before breaking it off. Marcello treats you well, but you’re not interested in holding his spotlight, which is about all he asks in return. Audrey thinks you’re crazy, though she’d never say as much to you; it sounds like a dream to her, she’s a full-time nurse with four kids, you let it slip though that you “almost” envy Audrey, which she’s too nice to ever call you out on. You go on to say that she got a winner in Jack; she laughs and says Sure, I got lucky, but it’s still not all rainbows and kittens. I have three boys and a teenage girl. With boobs. Big boobs. You tell her you’re not ready to think about teenage girls and their boobs; she tells you not to worry, it’ll happen whether or not you think about it. Audrey knows that all you want is for her to tell you whatever might make you feel good in any given moment, so she says sure, she understands that’s not quite what you’re looking for, though secretly she does wish for some real thing that might make life easier for you. Her fear, and yours too, is that there may be no such thing, though Audrey is slightly more optimistic about this than you are. Audrey has a gentleness to her voice and a perpetual look in her eye that shows she was born to give care, seemingly just for you, though she has compassion to spare, and so when she asks directly what might help most, you say I don’t know, and if I did there probably wouldn’t be a big enough supply of it anyway.

You try a few singles bars with Peggy, and meet two or three men who by contrast make Dad seem like Cary Grant, dullards mostly, a long parade of businessmen types, blurring together to form one massive dullard, always enamored of you, always by and large unimaginative in bed, and adding these boring notches doesn’t help your feelings about yourself any.