Act V (2 page)

Three witches took the stage dressed in
jeans and t-shirts. It was still too early in the rehearsal process
to worry about costumes, even rehearsal costumes. “Alright,”
Glynnis called. “we’re in blackout, well, as much blackout as you
can get outside in the summer, lights and fog comes up…and,” She
pointed to the witches.

“
When shall we three meet
again…”

This was Glynnis’ favorite
part of Macbeth: the witches, the prophecy, the cauldron, and yet
she couldn’t focus.
I should be calling the
police,
she reasoned.
But what would I tell them? Somebody’s going to be killed by a
sword and force-fed a glass of wine? And by the way, I don’t know
who it is or when it will happen. How do I know this officer? Well,
I dreamed it of course, twice actually, and if I dream it again, it
will be too late to change it. I’m a three times you’re out kind of
dreamer. Yup, they’ll jump right on that one.

“
Fair is foul and foul is
fair,” the witches cackled. “Hover through fog and filthy air.”
Evil laughter filled the stage as the three danced and gyrated in
evil glee, almost convincing even Glynnis of their witchiness. They
were all three great character actors.

“
More writhing on this part,
ladies,” Glynnis called out. “You’re actors, act like you like each
other. Uhm…not that much, Robyn, this isn’t the Roman Polanski
version. Go more Disney. People bring their kids to this show.”
That brought on a round of giggles.

Their celebration was interrupted by
the tinny ring of a cell phone playing Brown-eyed Girl. “Oops,
sorry, Glynn.” Celeste, witch number two, grabbed for her purse. “I
forgot to turn it off.”

Glynnis rolled her eyes, but said, “No
problem, Celeste. Five minute water break guys. Go pee if you
gotta…but I do mean five minutes, not fifteen.”

Glynnis climbed the stairs
to the backstage area, holding tightly to the handrail. She wanted
to check the scenery being constructed by her tech guy, Aaron, and
his assistants. “Looking good, Aaron!” She said, checking out the
castle turret, which rose easily twenty feet, nearly touching the
teaser curtains. The height wouldn’t make any difference outside.
Out in the open the general rule was,
the
bigger, the better
. After all, it had to be
seen. Once outside, the turret would have stairs behind it to allow
for a second level of interaction, and especially for the entrance
of Lady Macbeth in the "Out damned spot!"
scene. “Will you be able to move this through the outside door
and onto the stage in the park? It looks enormous!”

Aaron stopped hammering and glowered up
at Glynnis. “Alright there, Miss Director. If you think you can do
any better, there’s another toolbox right up here and…”

Glynnis smiled. To hear
Aaron speak, you’d think he was raised by cows and chickens
underneath
the farm. But
she knew for a fact that it was all show. Yes, he had been raised
right here in South Carolina by mill worker parents, but he could
sound as refined as a CEO from Manhattan when he wanted to. Aaron
had a bachelor’s degree in theatre from Winthrop and a master’s in
technical theater from NYU. He could have stayed in New York and
made a pretty good living in theatre, but he had come home after
graduation, taking a job in the small, professional theatre here.
He was proud of his good old boy heritage and wore it like a
military uniform. “Take it easy there, Aaron.” She patted his
shoulder. “I didn’t mean to question your judgment.”

Aaron grinned back and spit out a wad
of gum into the plastic trash can beside him. Glynnis knew it was
gum but it might have been a wad of tobacco the way he’d pressed
his tongue to his teeth when he did it. “Well, I suppose I could
let it slide just this once. Here,” he grabbed one side of the
turret with both hands. “Let me show you how it works.” With deft,
experienced hands, he folded the roughly ten by twenty foot piece
of carved plywood into four neat sections connected by hidden
hinges.

Glynnis was honestly impressed. “Aaron,
you are brilliant.”

The praise caused Aaron’s handsome, if
somewhat sunburned, face to light up like her grandma’s front porch
on Halloween. “Thank you, ma’am. I do my best.”

Glynnis could hear the actors returning
behind her. “Thanks Aaron, keep it up.” She walked gingerly toward
the short case of four stair steps and made her way down, holding
onto the rail with caution. She hoped nobody was watching. Stairs
always gave her away.

“
Glynnis, honey…” Aaron’s
voice stopped just short of pity. “You feelin’ okay? Tell the
truth, are you getting worse?”

She reached the bottom and turned with
all the grace she could muster. She aimed a beaming smile to Aaron.
“My dear, I didn’t know you cared.”

His eyes narrowed and his mouth
straightened into a flat line. “Don’t try to brush me off, Glynn.
You know we all worry about you.”

“
I’m fine, Aaron. I was a
klutz long before the MS. I’m just being careful so that you don’t
have to take me to have my leg put into a cast while you’re wearing
those hideous overalls. It might be embarrassing.”

“
Glynn…”

“
Oh please don’t give me
that puppy-dog look. I’m really doing great. The meds are excellent
and I work out every night. My doctor seems happy and you don’t see
a cane in my hand yet, do you?” She didn’t tell him that she kept
one in the hatchback of her SUV in case of emergencies or that she
suffered from bouts of “MS banding” around her chest area at least
once every couple of months. Some fool online had dubbed it the “MS
hug”. If that was a hug, a bear trap was a kiss. Glynnis kept it to
herself. Nobody wanted to hear that stuff anyway.

Aaron shrugged. “Okay, sorry. I know
I’m not your mama.” He thought about that for a second and one side
of his full mouth crept upward. “Course, if you need a keeper,
somebody to watch out for you, maybe give you the occasional
spanking…”

Glynnis rolled her eyes dramatically
and sat down in the center of the first row. “Hey everybody, come
sit down so we can talk for a sec.” The cast and crew plopped down
on the stage, folding long legs beneath themselves or hanging them
over the front. “You’ve put in a really good rehearsal today and
I’ve got to leave a little early so we’ll stop here, but
I…”

“
Hot date, Glynn?” That was
Daren, her Macduff. “You gonna fill us in on the details tomorrow?”
He lifted his eyebrows.

“
If I told you,” she winked,
“you wouldn’t respect me in the morning.”

Daren cackled out loud, joined by a few
others.

Glynnis went on. “I wanted to remind
you of a couple of things. One, we open in three weeks. If you
don’t already know your lines, eat, sleep, and dream them tonight.
No more scripts as of tomorrow.” A few sheepish giggles went up
from the group. Glynnis knew that some of these guys would be
memorizing lines over their Froot Loops tomorrow, but they would
know their lines. “I mean it! Secondly, we are the only
professional theatre group in this town. We actually get paid to do
what we’re doing. Yes, it’s Shakespeare in the Park and thus
depends on donations rather than tickets, but people still expect
more of us than the Little Theatre down the street. And we want the
donations to be big! Starting tomorrow, I want to believe I’m
living in sixteenth century Scotland.”

Nods bobbed across the
stage.

“
See you at
9a.m.”

*****

Addison Paddix stood up from his desk
and stretched, rising to his full 5’ 8” and adding tiptoe height to
that, reaching 5’ 10’. “It’s been a long, boring day, Bubba. I’m
headed home. Laney has chicken baking and I’ve been warned not to
let it get dried out.”

Brice stared at his partner for a
couple of seconds. “I thought Laney didn’t cook.”

“
Can’t and doesn’t are two
different things. You know, her mama was a great cook. She could
stew up squash, mash potatoes, and serve ‘em all with pot roast
that would make you beg for more. I don’t know what happened to
Laney.” He watched as Brice took out his notepad and jotted down
something, keeping it hidden from Addison. “You writin’ down
something important?”

“
Just quoting you on that
bit about Laney in case I need it later.”

“
You ought’a be doin’
stand-up comedy.”

“
I could make a two-figure
salary easy.”

“
Well just so you
know…cookin’ ain’t everything. A woman who can cook is nice to have
around, but I’d rather have somebody with a brain any day, and my
Laney can outsmart the both of us, not to mention that she’s just
plain nice to look at.”

“
And yet she married you.
Must have been love.”

“
Yeah, that and my fine
physique.”

Brice didn’t bother to respond to that
one. Addison, with his coffee-colored skin, stood six inches
shorter than Brice and weighed fifteen pounds more. Add to that the
fact that he had more hair on his lip than on his head, and you had
one heck of a man. He reminded Brice of Mr. Potato Head. Still, you
couldn’t have designed a better detective or partner. Brice would
have chosen Addison to back him above anybody else if he’d been
surrounded by street thugs, junkies or serial killers. He was one
of the good guys and as reliable as heat in summer. “Go home to
your lovely, but obviously blind, wife. I’m going to finish up here
and head home. The Braves are playing tonight.”

Addison grabbed his keys and wallet,
then started for the door. “You know, it’s been a quiet week around
here. The worse thing to happen was that B&E on Lee Street and
that’s pretty common over there.”

“
Yeah,” Brice agreed, “it
makes me wonder when the other shoe is gonna drop.”

*****

Glynnis brushed her teeth, touched up
her hair and makeup, put on her new crepe pants and a low-cut, teal
blouse with flowing fairy sleeves. The blouse made her feel airy
and a little sexy. She would have worn a dress, but heels could be
a problem these days, and she didn’t want to attract that kind of
attention at the shower. “Okay Carl, how do I look?”

Carl thumped his curled tail against
the floor.

“
You’d say the same thing if
I was wearing dirty sweats as long as I fed you and let you sleep
on the bed.” She reached down to pet the dog. “I’ll see you in a
couple of hours.” Carl looked forlorn. Glynnis had decided not long
after she got the full-grown Basenji about a year ago, that he had
separation issues. “Aw, come on Carl, you know they won’t let you
in the country club. Dogs aren’t allowed. I’d rather be here with
you anyway, but I have to make an appearance.”

Carl whined, but waggled his
hind-quarters when she tossed him a doggy treat.

*****

It took her ten minutes of roaming the
parking lot to find a space and then it was a good block and a half
away from the reception room where the party was being held.
Glynnis snatched the white bag with white tissue paper,
superimposed with white gardenias, out of her trunk. She locked the
car with the clicker and started for the Magnolia Room at the
Fairfield Country Club. The place was amazing, and huge! She had
been here twice before but couldn’t imagine what it would cost to
actually be a member—not that they’d let her if she could afford
it. You almost had to be born into this place. Self-consciously,
she peeked into the reception room and scanned the crowd until she
found Sissy. She was all poise in the corner with a dazzling yellow
sundress that only accentuated her dark coloring. They had never
been best friends, but back in high school the two of them had gone
through theatre classes together. Sissy naturally wanted to be on
stage all the time. Being the center of everybody’s attention was
what she did best. She landed the role of Marianne, the librarian
in “Music Man” and Alice in “Through the Looking Glass” along with
several other prime roles. And she was really a great actor. She’d
even worked with Glynnis doing Shakespeare in the Park a couple of
times in the last three or four years. She’d made a great Rosalind
in “As You Like It”.

Glynnis had never enjoyed being on
stage. She was much more comfortable setting up scenery, working
lights and imagining how the whole play should look and sound when
it was finished. Putting the whole thing together was like watching
a jigsaw puzzle take shape. It was a pure adrenaline rush on
opening night. Glynnis and Sissy got along really well, probably
because they never competed with each other for acting
roles.

Glynnis walked to the table where a
mountain of white, pink, and yellow wrapped packages covered with
ribbons and bows sat. She dropped off her small package, a salad
plate, tea cup and saucer that cost enough to feed a family of four
for a week, and went to congratulate Sissy. This place looked like
a listing from the society page. Her friend was surrounded by women
of all ages, some from the Junior League, some of them old
classmates and many aunts and cousins. Glynnis recognized Sissy’s
mother and a woman who looked like another version of Sissy, only
50 years older. Glynnis figured that had to be her grandmother.
Conversely, there wasn’t a man standing anywhere near the gift
opening area. All the guys, including Sissy’s fiancé Terrence, were
crowded around the food table, most holding beer mugs, a few with
wine or mixed drinks. There were a few women at the table, one
Glynnis thought she recognized somehow—a local celebrity, like a
news broadcaster maybe. Low, uncomfortable laughter echoed from the
group. Well, what else would you expect besides discomfort when you
bring men to a wedding shower? It went against every southern
wedding tradition, but as Glynn’s daddy was fond of saying, “You
either gotta run with the big dogs or stay on the porch”. That
expression was a multi-purpose adage meant to apply to many
situations, but in this case the implication was—change with the
times or be left behind.