The Chelsea Girls(66)
“I should go.” Reluctantly, she kissed Charlie, before leaving him to gather everyone on the stage to thank them for all their hard work, for believing in her and in the play, and also to express her gratitude to Mr. Canby for giving them the opportunity to present it to the world. Everyone clapped and kissed, but then the stage manager called half hour and the moment passed, as the nerves kicked in and the actors scrambled back to their dressing rooms to finish getting ready.
In the house, she greeted her mother, who looked splendid in a pink gown Hazel hadn’t seen her wear since before her brother’s death.
“You look lovely.” She kissed Ruth’s rouged cheek, pleased to have given her a night out, the first one in a very long time. One of the neighbors was looking after her father that evening. She wished he could have come, to share in her success.
Hazel made sure Ruth was settled in and then popped over to where Lavinia sat with several residents from the Chelsea, who offered Hazel kisses and congratulations. Finally, she took her place next to Mr. Canby at the top of the center aisle, greeting the incoming agents, lawyers, and industry people. How far she’d come, from the shadows of understudying where no one really knew she existed, to this.
She checked her watch. Ten minutes after eight o’clock. Not bad for an opening night. The curtain finally lifted and she relished the collective gasp as the audience took in the set, an intricate replica of a war-torn, formerly majestic hotel, complete with a crystal chandelier, a scarred grand piano, and a pile of rubble stage left. That gasp was a good sign. It meant they would suspend their belief and enter the world of the play easily, happily.
The first act moved along fast, buoyed by the actors’ nervous energy, but not so fast that the lines got lost. Excellent.
At intermission, Hazel and Mr. Canby shared hesitant smiles. So far, so good.
The final act began well. But about halfway through, Maxine seemed off. Hazel couldn’t put her finger on it, and probably the audience, seeing the play for the first time, didn’t notice, but the other actors sensed it and became slightly more careful when they should be diving in, building the emotion and the tension. There was tension, sure, but it wasn’t the right kind.
Beside her, Mr. Canby straightened up, alarmed. Hazel clenched her fists, willing the cast to keep up the momentum, not lose it.
The audience began to cough. Never a good sign. It meant they were getting fidgety, bored. At the crucial moment near the second-to-last scene, Maxine paused. She’d never paused at that place in the script before. She turned out, facing the audience. Her face was frozen, eyes wide. Her lips parted, but no words came out.
She’d been thrown into that desperate oblivion, one every actor fears.
She’d gone up on her lines.
Hazel knew that horrible feeling from her acting classes. She imagined it was similar to a fighter pilot ejecting from a plane. One minute, you were the pilot, fully in charge, and the next you were drifting in the open skies, vulnerable, at the mercy of the winds.
When Hazel had gone up doing a monologue from Macbeth in acting class, she’d been thrust out of the world of the play, where she portrayed a Scottish noblewoman bent on murder, and was suddenly just Hazel, a plain girl standing all alone on a stage, everyone staring and judging her. Blood had pounded in her temples as adrenaline flooded her body. It had felt unbearable.
The audience began to murmur and shift in their seats. Hazel said the line quietly out loud, vainly hoping that somehow Maxine would pick up the cue and get back on track. Tears came to Maxine’s eyes, magnified by the lights, but she didn’t wipe them away.
Maxine stood there, in terror, lost, as the seconds stretched on and on.
* * *
After what seemed like hours, one of the other actors fed Maxine her line and the show finally lurched forward. Hazel swore she heard a collective sigh of relief from the audience members, but recovery proved futile. The cast was unnerved and Maxine overacted the final scene, as if to make up for her misstep.
The magic was gone. Maxine’s last line rang out over the theater, drifted up to the mezzanine and the top balcony, and dissipated. Where in earlier performances, Hazel had heard gasps—sobs, even—in the interval between the last line and the first burst of applause, tonight a splatter of limp clapping broke out. It grew louder as the cast assembled onstage for the curtain call, but not by much. Audience members were already scuttling out, turning their backs on the work of these actors who’d slaved so hard the past few months and tried valiantly to bring Hazel’s words to life.
If only the critics could have come the night before, or on any other night but this one. If only.
Without saying a word, Mr. Canby sprinted up the aisle before the curtain call was finished. Hazel sat for a moment, stunned, before slipping out the side door of the house and heading up to Maxine’s dressing room.
The door was ajar. Hazel pushed it open and stood there, unsure of what to do next. Maxine sat in front of her mirror, wiping off the stage makeup, her shorn hair sticking up as if she’d run her fingers through it in frustration.
“Sorry, Hazel. I blew it.” The bitterness in her voice brought tears to Hazel’s eyes.
“You went up on your lines. Happens to everyone, at some point.”
“Not on opening night, at the most crucial moment in the play. You should have never cast me, I was terrible.”