In Harmony(40)

“You also said I’d get Ophelia,” I said. “And you were right, because I took your advice. I told the story.”

He nodded. “It’s the only thing to do.”

I went back to my coffee, thinking he couldn’t be more right. I ran my finger along the edge of my coffee mug’s handle. “So, since we’re here, can I ask… Does it help?”

“Does what help?”

“Acting. I mean, why do you do it? For relief?”

He nodded. “Yes. For a little while. But there’s always more there. More story to tell, so to speak.”

“What’s your story?” As soon as the words left my mouth, I wanted to snatch them back. They were so horribly invasive.

And I couldn’t give mine in return.

“Well,” he said.

I waved my hands. “No, forget it.” I grabbed for my coffee and took a long pull to keep my mouth occupied.

He shrugged. “It’s sort of what we’re here for, right?” His lips pressed together and relaxed, as if he couldn’t decide to release the words behind them. His long fingers tapped the stirring stick I’d used in my coffee, his eyes far away.

Maybe he was like me. Maybe under the bravado and aloof manner and don’t-give-a-fuck, Isaac Pearce only wanted a little piece of normal. To sit over a cup of coffee and just talk.

“My mom died when I was eight,” he said. “She had a stroke. She was too fucking young to have a stroke, but… It was a blockage no one knew about. It killed her instantly.”

A slow horror crept under my skin.

Did he see her die? Please tell me he didn’t see it.

“I was at school,” he said, as if reading my mind. “I went to school with a mom and came back without one.”

“I’m so sorry.”

His smile was hard and quick. My stirring stick moved through his fingers, turning over and over.

“Sounds dramatic, but losing my mom so suddenly was like having the wind knocked out of me for an entire year. No way to process what happened. She wasn’t sick. One minute she was there, totally healthy, and the next minute she was gone. It was so fucking meaningless.” He shrugged, a casual, bitter acceptance of something terrible. “So I stopped talking. I didn’t see the point.”

“For a whole year?” I asked.

He looked up at me, his features hardening. “You heard that, huh?”

I sat back. “Well…yes. At school.”

He waved a hand. “It’s okay. There’s some weird shit floating around about me. My dad isn’t well. You probably heard that too.”

He deserved honesty, so I nodded.

“He didn’t take Mom’s death well either. Drove him to drink. Talking to him never got me much but a fist or a boot after that anyway.”

I swallowed hard and Isaac noticed.

“Sorry. I don’t know why I’m telling you that shit. It doesn’t matter.”

“Yes, it does,” I said. “Of course, it does.”

He didn’t reply but I saw my words land on him and sink in.

“Then you found acting,” I said, and it wasn’t a question. “I heard it helped you find your voice again.” Shame burned my skin for sucking up rumors and gossip as if there weren’t real people on the other side.

“Fourth grade,” Isaac said. “When I went back to school, Miss Grant was the only teacher who didn’t demand I talk. She put someone else’s words in front of me one day and said, This character needs a voice. If you could lend him yours, that would be great. Like I was doing her a favor.” He glanced at me. “So I did. It wasn’t me talking. It wasn’t my words. And that made it okay.”

“You’ve been acting ever since?”

“Yeah.”

“And it helped you.”

He nodded. “That’s the funny thing about art. If it’s really good, you can see yourself in it. Sometimes a little bit. Sometimes a lot.”

“Do you see yourself in Hamlet?” I smiled faintly. “Seems like the exact kind of question Martin wants us to ask each other.”

He didn’t smile back. “Yeah, I do. Hamlet hates that his mother married Claudius so soon after his father died. In Hamlet’s eyes, Claudius is an imposter king, sitting in a chair that doesn’t belong to him. I lost my father when my mom died. An imposter sits in our shitty trailer now, drunk and unrecognizable, pouring the poison down his throat.”

Now I had to bite the inside of my cheek. Angie told me by doing this play with Isaac, I’d have a front row seat to his incredible talent. Sitting across from him at this little table, I realized he had an incredible mind, too. Poetry in his own words, though I doubt he knew it. His quiet observations about his life were a thousand times more potent and raw than anything I’d seen him do onstage.

He raised his eyes to mine and slowly they came back to the here and now. And my awestruck expression.

“Shit,” he said. “That was probably way more than you wanted to hear—”

“Don’t apologize,” I whispered.

His eyes widened slightly, drawing me deeper into their gray-green depths. A storm-tossed ocean, miles deep. Icy and choppy on the surface. Warm stillness beneath.

We stared. And in the short silence, something settled between us. An agreement or understanding. He’d shared himself, yet asked nothing in return. I was free to float in the intimate closeness between the storyteller and the listener. I wasn’t trapped or weighed down by him.