The Chelsea Girls(30)

Of course, she knew exactly what was going on. That’s what happens when you share a tent and sleep under each other’s laundry.

“Do you trust me?” she asked.

I nodded.

We stepped into the hair and wig room. She dismissed the crew and closed the door. “Take off your shoes and dress.”

I did so.

“And the wig.”

“I’m not sure about that. Not just yet. Give me a week and I’ll do it.” I tried to hide the pleading from my voice. She was asking me to give up all my defenses. On the first day of rehearsal. I’d figured around week three I’d shock the cast and crew with my wigless head, once we’d all gotten to know each other and I felt safe. Not day one.

I deserved this, though. Everyone else in the cast was better than me. I was terrible, a fraud, a vampy whore who would be shown up. That awful Brandy Sainsbury popped into my head. I imagined her reading the reviews, crowing at my bad notices, proclaiming that I’d ruined the production with my wooden line readings.

I took off the wig.

Hazel grabbed a roll of cloth and told me to lift my arms while she bound my curves down, circling around me and around me, her eyes focused on my torso. Then she handed me a man’s suit, one that had been recently brought up from storage, by the sour smell of it, and I put it on.

“Shoes.”

I stepped into a pair of men’s Oxfords. The comfort of being able to wiggle my toes perked me up. Much better than heels.

“Let’s go back down and try again. You can’t coast in this role, Max.” She leaned in and put her hands on either side of my face. “From now on, when we’re rehearsing, you must wear these clothes and take off the wig. Lina has to act like a man to make herself heard. She can’t use her feminine wiles, which means neither can you.”

We walked back down to stage level, Hazel leading the way, holding my hand and talking in a low, soothing voice, as if I were a horse about to bolt.

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t show everyone how awful I looked, what a mess I was. What Arthur had done to me. I wanted to pretend that he never existed, and now it was as if he was standing right behind me, jeering and laughing.

Hazel kept talking. “Remember when we first saw the boys in the plaza? Their faces, one defiant and one near tears. What was Paul thinking? What made him sling one arm around his friend, like they were two kids heading off for a summer’s day of fishing? Not about to be torn apart by a mob. When have you felt that way, Maxine? Defiant when you should be terrified?”

The answer came to me right away, although I didn’t speak it out loud.

The day that Lavinia had rescued me and my grandmother, ushering us inside the foyer of the Seattle theater, where it was silent and dark, the air sweet with pipe tobacco. As Lavinia and the others huddled over my grandmother, who’d been on the verge of fainting, I’d turned back to the glass doors and stood, legs spread wide, hands on hips, glaring right back at the unruly mob outside like a sheriff in a Western. Rage surged through my body, like I was on fire.

Hazel and I walked back onstage. I hardly noticed as the stagehands and cast gasped at my physical transformation. I touched Jake’s arm, briefly, to connect and let him know that I was in this one hundred percent.

We began from the top, and this time I didn’t think about my posture, or what to do with my hands. The emotion inside me, the image of my grandmother’s cheek glistening with spit, was the engine of the scene now. Everything else followed suit, and before I knew it, we’d reached the last line.

Applause filled my ears. I’d found her. I’d found Lina.





CHAPTER EIGHT


    Hazel


June 1950

After that first tweak with Maxine in rehearsal, which came to Hazel in a rush of inspiration and panic, the cast and crew settled into a rhythm. She and Maxine fell into an easy alliance onstage, just as they had in Italy. Artistically, Hazel knew what she wanted and what she was doing. Whenever she had a logistical question, she counted on the grizzled stage manager to answer it and guide her forward. From her stints understudying, she knew that a good stage manager—who acted as the glue that held the cast, crew, and production team together—was the key to a smooth ride when it came to wrangling the strong personalities of the theater world.

Mr. Canby sometimes stopped by rehearsals but generally kept out of Hazel’s way, other than making sure she had everything she needed, and after a couple of days, she no longer thought twice about piping up to offer her opinion, whether with the set designer or the wardrobe mistress. A dramatic shift between Hazel and Maxine, almost a role reversal, had clicked into place after Maxine’s tearful, terrible confession. In Naples, at least in the beginning of their friendship, Hazel had hung back, observing, while Maxine ruled as queen bee, and now Hazel was the trailblazer and Maxine the vulnerable one. Hayseed Hazel had taken the wheel, with Maxine along for the ride, and so far the dynamic was working nicely.

Back at the Chelsea, Hazel was usually exhausted after a day of rehearsing, but Maxine never lagged. She could often be found wandering the halls in the evenings in a silk caftan and turban, popping from room to room, checking in on the twins or Virgil Thomson. Or she’d force-march Hazel up to the roof, where Lavinia held what she called her “sunset happy hours.” The three would talk shop as the lights of the city twinkled around them.