Weeping Underwater Looks a Lot Like Laughter Read Free

proscenium (if there was no actress named Emily Schell, then there was no proscenium, either; it was a rectangular stage with pleated skirting and a knee-high guardrail), swatting imaginary mosquitoes and poking branches. She crumbled to her knees. “Boys!” she cried out. “Where are you, boys!”
    Two waifs pawed their way from the peripheral darkness to the halo of light at center stage, cowering in their suspenders. The actress swung around and—her theatrical contacts rendering her as blind as her character—reached for the sound of their footsteps while accidentally leg-swiping a plastic tree. Despite the blunder she remained astoundingly in character, addressing the noise of the wobbling stand as though reacting to a roiling thunder deep in the heart of the forest. Laughter broke throughout the auditorium, beginning at the front row and rolling backward. I cackled urgently along, attempting to rein in the distraction so that I could quickly end it and we could return our collective focus to the simple movements of the blind actress whose bare legs were now shimmering long and white in the direct gaze of hot canned lights. She pulled her tawny hair taut over her forehead. When she squeezed herself for warmth, I put myself in that squeeze. I turned to a ferret-eyed classmate next to me, craving the actress’s name more than anything else, but too meek with loneliness to ask even that.
    “What year is that girl?”
    “Junior. Future class of nineteen hundred and ninety-five,” he answered, in a professorial whine, which I supposed was his way of suggesting that he’d only shown up for the extra credit, and that this theater crap had dragged on long enough. “What year are you ?”
    “Junior,” I said. “When does this thing end anyway?”
    “Quarter to titty,” he replied, suddenly smitten by the performance and therefore upset by my interruption.
    A recording of wailing winds and flashing thunder screeched through the auditorium. The actress’s fear was so real I was tempted to storm the stage, grasp her by the shoulders, and inform her that there was no place in this pubescent world for such honest and precise emotion. I swore I detected Zach’s voice among the band of idiots hooting and hollering a few rows back, but even they couldn’t break the performance. (While I can’t claim to have initially recognized how to interpret this play, after having seen it performed several times since in various theaters throughout the Midwest, I now judge it as either a dramatization of the fallacy of theocratic faith, or, conversely, the potential of atheistic hope. Either way, I considered the St. Pius production of Into the Night a brave and ambitious undertaking, especially in consideration of the venue.) In the final scene, as the heroine led the singing schoolboys to the safety of a convent, I experienced the dizzying notion that if I traced my personal history I’d find Emily Schell back in Davenport, crowding the memories of my childhood.
    In less time than it took for the auditorium lights to warm up, most of the audience had already shoved their way out the rear exit. While the cast gathered at the front of the stage to receive the congratulations of their teachers and friends, I wandered the penny-and-gum-wrapper perimeter. My lackadaisical floor perusal soon drew the attention of a beady little priest and part-time administrator I’d met during my admissions interview (which was conducted as if St. Pius were a competitive institution that chose its students based on criteria above their ability to reduce the burden of its perennial financial crises). After pressing me to admit to whatever contraband I was obviously searching for, he asked my opinion of the performance, then skipped over my response in order to relate anecdotes of his own lovely acting days. He was midway through an animated description of an autistic prop master when I noticed Emily Schell emerging from backstage in jeans and a