All's Well(21)

An actor, Fauve repeated, actually widening her eyes. Really? Anything I might have seen?

I was with a company in Massachusetts for a long time. Defunct. And then Shakespeare festivals, of course. Lots of festivals, I lied. Edinburgh, Idaho.

Idaho, Fauve repeated breathlessly. Really.

I try to remind myself that the adjunct life is a shitty life, that it can turn you into an asshole. That you can’t help but look at the faculty around you and think, Why the fuck are you here permanently and not me? That of course Fauve would turn her gaze on me. Deformed and drugged out of my mind. Forgetting my words mid-speech. CV full of filler and lies. I am easily usurped. She need only bide her time taking note with her neck pen, amassing her case, watching the train wreck that I have become go careening off the rails. And when it does, she will be there, of course, to pick up the pieces.

Anything I can do to help? she’ll say. You seemed like you had your hands full the other day. The students seem so terribly unhappy too.

Knock, knock again at my door.

Not Fauve, no. This is a soft knock. A kind knock. Something in its softness makes my eyes water as I gaze up at the underside of my desk. The spider is long gone.

“Who is it?” I ask the door. I shudder to think of Briana. Even Grace I don’t want to see right now. Oh god, not Hugo either. If it’s Hugo, I’ll—

“It’s Ellie,” Ellie says quietly through the door.

Some darkness in me lightens.

“Helen,” I whisper.

“What?”

“Just a minute.”

I get up, trying not to make huffing sounds. When I rise, I immediately falter and so lean against the desk, casually, coolly. But I can’t meet Ellie this way. So I force myself to sit down in my office chair. The pain I feel upon sitting, the slicing sensation behind each knee, makes me cry out.

“Professor, are you okay?”

“Yes. Come in, come in,” I call.

Ellie enters hesitantly, as she always does. Wearing her sad-girl clothes. Her no-color hair hangs lank around her bloodless face. Her gray eyes are, as usual, mournful. Her hands tremble at her sides, the fingers twitching uselessly, performing an anxious arithmetic. It gives me such joy to see her.

Ellie says she hopes she’s not disturbing me. I assure her she isn’t. Of course not. Never. She is welcome here anytime. Have a seat, my dear.

“Are you sure you’re okay, Professor Fitch?”

She looks so genuinely concerned.

“I’m fine, Ellie,” I tell her. “All’s well.” I try for a smile, but it cracks.

Ellie gazes at me with her sad eyes that see all.

“You don’t look fine, Professor Fitch.”

“Actually, Ellie, I’m not the best. Truth be told.”

“Are you in pain?” she asks so gently, as if even the question might hurt.

Ellie is so wise. So intuitive.

“Just an injury from my stage days,” I tell her. “I still haven’t recovered, I’m afraid.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.” She looks sorry. Actually lowers her head. I observe the dull blond roots that precede the dull dyed black. “Is there anything I can do?”

She looks at me exactly, exactly the way I would want Helen to look at the ailing King of France when she offers to cure him with her dead father’s ointment. Is it an ointment? A remedy. Some might even say a spell. Her desire to help is genuine, but she desires something in return too, something unspeakable.

I want to tell her, Ellie, I hope you know the only reason I don’t cast you in lead roles is because of bitch Briana’s parents. How I wish I could have cast you as Juliet last season. You would have been so perfect with your melancholy fire and your cheeks that burn bright at the sight of Trevor, our Romeo. You would have been in close proximity to Trevor for three months. Three afternoons a week, you would have felt his teenage breath on your face. You would have breathed in his boyish musk. You would have looked up into his empty, beautiful eyes. His dumb, deep voice would have been at your ear, his lips close to your unpierced fuzzy lobe, making all the dark hairs on your pale body stand on end. He would have crushed your cold hands in his sweaty warm ones. He would have given you things to masturbate about for months, perhaps years; you would revisit this material in the dark, after a day of tending to a cruel and ailing mother who fails to see your gifts. How I would love to have given you this experience, as your drama teacher, as a kind of other mother. Rather than see you off to the side, in old woman’s makeup and dowdy servant’s clothes, playing the nurse. Giving Briana/Juliet pep talks backstage. Watching Briana and Trevor from the wings, smoldering with envy, grief. Ah, but it deepened your soul. It gave you pain. Pain is a great actor’s gift, Ellie. It is a burden but it is a gift too. To be mined. If one is in control of one’s pain, of course.

I want to tell her, You are my true Helen.

But I say none of this. Instead I say, “You understand pain, Ellie. I hope you know that’s a gift. As a theater minor.”

Ellie doesn’t know what to say. I’ve made her uncomfortable. She looks down at her boring black clothes as if there were a response somewhere in their linty folds. A small, cheap silver pentacle dangles from her neck.

“Thank you,” she mumbles to her knees.

I really don’t know what you see in that girl, Grace often says.