Illyria (6 page)

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footlights there were infinitesimal flares of gold and scarlet, and the most delicate fragrance, roses mingled with scorched sugar.

I stared at it entranced, barely registering the shift in light toward the back of the stage where the topiary trees, now crystalline and opal-colored, gave way to knife-edged mountains and a snow-covered beach beneath a night sky, with a full moon snared in the rigging of a spectral shipwreck and a fluttering shadow like a moth's moving slowly, as though injured, across the white dunes. All the while the tapping continued, and that soft insistent whistle, like a steady indrawn breath.

Without thinking, I lifted my hand and extended it through the gap in the wall. I stretched it toward the stage just beyond the apron, until my fingers gleamed silver-blue in the footlights. I felt no cold, no heat. Just a faint tingling like a mild electrical shock, as though hair-sized needles stabbed my fingertips. I waited to see if anything changed, if something noticed my intrusion.

Nothing did. The fake snow fell and drifted and whirled. The weird noises didn't stop.

Finally I withdrew my hand. It was unmarked, and felt no different when I rubbed it against my cheek.

But suddenly I felt scared--that I
didn't
feel anything. That something so strange and inexplicable could leave no lasting mark, no trace that I had encountered it at all: not a scratch, not a shift in body temperature, nothing but a fleeting memory of sound and light and motion.

I shoved the board back into place, then scrambled in the dark for the flashlight. I stumbled back into the outer attic, knocked over a

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carton, and sat, heart hammering, as I listened for a shout of discovery from below.

But the house remained empty. I lurched from the attic into Rogan's room and blinked, shocked to see that it was still daylight.

The alarm clock read 1:05. I tore off his flannel shirt and flung it onto the floor, pulled my own shirt back on, and grabbed my jacket and fled downstairs. I ran into no one in the house, no one outside, and no one when I got back to my house.

***

"YOUR AUNT KATE WANTS TO TAKE YOU TO SEE A

show," my mother announced at dinner that night. I feigned surprise. "A show?"

She nodded. "A Broadway show. Something by Shakespeare.
The Merchant of Venice,
I think."

I caught myself before I corrected her. "Can I go?"

"I don't see why not. It's for your birthday. And it's Friday, so it's not a school night. She wanted to take Rogan, too, I think. Hal? Is it all right with you?"

She looked at my father. He swallowed his mouthful of baked potato, then said, "Yes, Kate mentioned it. She said she'd take you to dinner at Rosoff's beforehand."

I said, "That'll be fun."

"Make sure you wear something nice," said my mother.

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I didn't get a chance to talk to Rogan until the following afternoon. It was our fifteenth birthday, but we'd already decided not to make a big deal out of it. Nobody else was, except for Aunt Kate. He was waiting for me in the school parking yard.

"Wait'll you see what I got," he said as we walked down the hill toward Arden Terrace. "Un-fucking-believable. In-fucking-credible."

"What?"

"John gave me his old sound system. He has a new roommate this year, this guy Jeff. He's got an amazing stereo so John said I could have his."

"For your birthday?"

"Nah, he didn't even remember that till I told him. But isn't that cool?"

I smiled. "It's great."

"And dig this--this guy Jeff, he gave me a bunch of albums. I listened to some last night. It's wild stuff, Maddy."

He swayed back and forth, singing snatches of a song I didn't recognize. He laughed. "Man, I am
so
psyched."

We reached the bottom of the hill and turned down the road that led to Arden Terrace. Acorns rolled underfoot, hidden by the yellow leaves banked against the curb. Rogan grabbed a handful and tossed them across the road.

"Did Aunt Kate talk to your parents?" I said.

"Not yet."

"Maybe she did today."

"Maybe," he said, unconcerned.

We reached Fairview. I still hadn't told him about sneaking

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into the attic the day before. Upstairs, Rogan kicked at the door to Michael's room, to make sure no one was inside.

"Come here," said Rogan, and pulled me to him. We kissed in the hallway, then went into Rogan's room and closed the door. "Check this out, Maddy."

The turntable sat on the floor by the wall. Rogan began sorting through a small pile of records beside it.

"Here," he said.

He put the record on the turntable and handed me the sleeve. It showed a cartoon of a subway entrance, with pink smoke welling up from the black tunnel.

"What--"

Rogan put his hand over my mouth. "Shhh. Listen."

He played me two songs about a girl named Jane.

"That's us, Maddy," he said when the songs were over. "Our lives were saved by rock and roll."

I gave him a funny look. "That's more like your life. I can't sing."

"It's both of us." He grabbed my arm and dragged me toward the attic door. "Come on, Mad-girl--"

Afterward we lay side by side in the dark. Rogan pried the board loose and we gazed at the glimmering stage, our own tiny cosmos. There was no snow this time. Wherever the stage was, whatever it was supposed to represent, it seemed to be the middle of the night. The footlights cast a flickering cobalt glow across the stage.

I told Rogan what I had seen the day before. Snow; a full moon.

"Do you think there's anyone there?" he wondered, and stroked my back. "That we can't see?"

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"I don't know."

I touched my fingers to his lips, then kissed him. I was afraid to guess at what might be there, beyond the tiny stage; afraid to give a name to what we saw there, just as I couldn't give a name to what I felt for my cousin.

Magic; love.

Endless longing; a face you'd known since childhood, since birth almost; a body that moved as though it were your own. These were things you never spoke of, things you never hoped for; things you could never admit to. Things you'd die for, and die of.

"Rogan," I whispered.

"What?" He turned to me, and his eyes gleamed peacock-blue in the footlights. "Maddy? Why are you crying?"

"Nothing. Rogan." He put his arms around me and I trembled. "Just you."

***

ROGAN'S PARENTS DIDN'T MAKE A BIG DEAL OVER

him going to the play.

"They didn't care," he said a few days later. "They're going out Friday anyway. All they said was don't get lost in the city."

"Maybe because it's Aunt Kate? Or Shakespeare."

"Yeah, maybe." He sounded unconvinced.

After school on Friday we changed for the theater. I wore a long

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granny skirt and embroidered blouse and a macramé vest, and my new Frye boots. Rogan put on a clean flannel shirt and a different corduroy jacket than the one he'd worn to school that day.

We walked together from Fairview down the drive to Aunt Kate's house. It felt different: the two of us together in the waning daylight, wearing what passed for nice clothes, with a common destination and our parents' approval. Inside the carriage house, Aunt Kate hurried about, looking for her purse, the tickets, her expensive lipstick. She looked elegant--glamorous--in black velvet cigarette pants and a cream-colored silk blouse, a cropped bolero jacket. She wore no jewelry other than her emerald ring. Suddenly she stopped and stared at me.

"Maddy." Her eyes narrowed. "Don't you have a coat?"

I shrugged. "Just that yellow one. It didn't really go."

Aunt Kate winced. "That thing from Sears? You're right. That's an awful coat."

She stood, thinking; then turned and ran upstairs. Minutes later she returned, holding what looked like a blanket.

"Here." She opened the door, walked out onto the top of the stairs, and shook the blanket vigorously. "This has been in storage all these years, I just had it dry-cleaned this summer. See if it fits."

She stepped back inside and handed it to me. Not a blanket but a long cape, of royal-blue velvet lined with white satin, with three gold buttons at the top to fasten it.

"That was your great-grandmother's opera cape," Aunt Kate said as I pulled it on. "Madeline used to wear it after every performance. Wait--"

She adjusted it over my shoulders, then buttoned it. "Those are

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real gold. Wow. Maddy! It fits. It looks
great.
Utterly glamorous. Go look at yourself," she urged.

I walked into the living room and stood before the big old mirror there. Someone else stared back, me but not me. The deep-blue velvet made my hair look glossy chestnut, not mousy. My eyes seemed to have darkened as well, to midnight blue or indigo. I put my arm out and whirled, the folds rippling around me like waves.

"Holy Batcape, Batman," said Rogan.

I turned to him. "What do you think? Am I glamorous?"

"It looks fantastic. Can I try it on?"

"No," said Aunt Kate. "We need to go, the train's in twenty minutes. Come on--"

Rosoff's, the restaurant where we ate, was warm and wood paneled, crowded with theatergoers and filled with Broadway memorabilia--ancient photographs, old etchings, framed faded
Playbills.

"It's like eating in my house," said Rogan. I couldn't tell if this was a complaint or not. "Better food, though."

He'd ordered the chicken.

After dinner we walked to the St. James Theatre. Our seats were Orchestra, Row E, Center.

"This is where the drama critics always sit," Aunt Kate explained. "Best seats in the house. You're close enough to see the actors sweat and spit when they talk."

Rogan laughed. "Hey,
that's
glamorous."

"It's work, Rogan." Aunt Kate delicately balanced her
Playbill
on a velvet-clad knee. "If the actors are good enough, you don't mind seeing their sweat."

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"What about their spit?" asked Rogan. "Do I have to like their spit, too?"

Aunt Kate frowned and began to read her program. Rogan and I did the same.

"Hey." He jabbed a finger at the cast list. "The guy who wrote this is the same guy who wrote
Hair!
Maybe they'll take their clothes off."

We looked at Aunt Kate with renewed admiration.

The play was perfect. How could it have been otherwise? It was the first one either of us had ever seen, barring school productions at Christmas and St. Patrick's Day. The script was bowdlerized Shakespeare, the music cheerful and relentlessly contemporary. There were black people in the cast, and Puerto Ricans--an astonishing revelation--also sexual innuendos that seemed to be inherent to the original play.

Our admiration for Aunt Kate, and Shakespeare, became immeasurable.

After the play, we spilled onto the street with throngs of happily chattering people. I felt not just exhilarated but exalted, the way I did when Rogan sang. He sang now, a tune from the show he'd already memorized, walking along Broadway and turning on his heels, his voice rising above the crowd in a charmed, eerie falsetto. People looked at him in wonder and delight, his beautiful face and long hair, eyes closed as he walked backward, certain somehow that he wouldn't fall.

We talked about the play the whole way back on the train, then in Aunt Kate's car.

"I don't want it to stop," said Rogan as we walked out of the

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garage beneath her carriage house. He didn't sound disappointed, but anguished. "Why does it have to end?"

Aunt Kate dropped her keys into her purse. "Well, it doesn't. I got tickets next week for
Butley'

Rogan and I looked at each other, then burst out laughing.

"Thank you!"

"Jesus, Aunt Kate, really?"

"Shhh!" She cut us off sternly. "Hush. I haven't spoken to them yet. But yes. Good night, Rogan."

She kissed him, then beckoned at me. "Come upstairs, Maddy. That cape stays here."

I waved good-bye at Rogan. His voice echoed through the chill air until he entered Fairview, and the autumn night grew silent.

Inside I took off the cape and gave it back to my aunt, who folded it carefully then went upstairs. I stood in the living room, alone, and looked at the framed photographs of my great-great-grandmother on the wall. Madeline as Rosalind, her hair cropped short so she resembled a sly boy; Madeline as Gwendolen in
The Importance of Being Earnest,
a wicked glint in her eye as she pretended to read her diary. Madeline as Anya in
The Cherry Orchard;
as Mrs. Pinchwife, Cordelia, and Cleopatra, and the title character in
Major Barbara.

She looked different in each picture. Recognizably herself yet somehow, remarkably, older or younger or cunning or heartbroken by turns. Her adult career had been prolific but short-lived. The pictures displayed an eternal ingenue, an eternal boy-girl: Rosalind and Viola but never Hedda Gabler; never Lady Macbeth. There were no photographs of her as an old woman.