Falling for Hamlet (19 page)

The next day he came back, and the next, and the next. We got pretty comfortable with our routine and our privacy. And complacent. We didn’t take into account the possibility that my father might have a budget meeting requiring files that he might have forgotten in his study. I was trying to finish a paper while Hamlet sat on my bed flipping through magazines when we heard the elevator door open. We froze. My father walked directly to his study, so I was nearly ready to consider us safe. I listened to his footsteps come down his hall then stop abruptly in the sitting room. Double-time he pounded through the apartment and filled my doorway holding a pair of sneakers. Hamlet always kicked them off when he walked in. My father looked at Hamlet and then at me with ferocious disappointment, almost more than the morning we came back from Wittenberg. He dropped the sneakers and whipped back around without speaking. I heard the elevator doors open and shut, and then silence.

I put my face in my hands and listened to my breath echo off my palms. The veins in my neck were throbbing, and my ears filled with a panicked whine. Hamlet sank to his knees next to my chair and gently pulled my hands away from my face.

I squeezed his hands in mine and said softly, “You should go.”

“Cat’s out of the bag now.…” he replied.

I didn’t even want to think about the cat or the bag or the little mouse the cat was going to murder when it finished with its meeting upstairs. “Go, Hamlet,” I insisted.

He looked up earnestly and explained, “But I feel so much better when I’m with you. Don’t make me go off by myself. I think too much when I’m alone.”

I sat picturing my dad’s disappointed face but also knowing that Hamlet
did
think too much when he was alone and that he’d been almost himself since he’d returned from Wittenberg and that I really did want him to stay. Even so, I couldn’t. Not that day. I shook my head.

Hamlet’s eyes darkened and he sat back on his haunches. “So you’d choose your dad over me?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You are choosing to play the obedient daughter rather than do what you know is right for you… and me? You’re not a child anymore.”

My temper was starting to rise. “No, I’m not, but he asked me, and I have to respect that.”

“And I’m asking you to be with me.”

“I can’t.”

He stood up. “Give me a break, Ophelia. If you really wanted to be with me, you would.”

“Don’t be so dramatic. This isn’t forever.”

“Maybe it should be.”

“What?”

His eyes were full of accusation and fury. “Choose. Choose now.”

“Don’t,” I begged.

“Choose.”

“You don’t want me to do that.” It was both a plea and a threat.

“Choose,” he said slowly, his eyes mere slits.

I stood to match his gaze, fuming. “I have put everything aside to be with you. Everything. My friends. My ambition. Don’t make a face. I used to have it. But in the last few months, I let everything else slide. You want to know what I want? Well, so do I! But I can’t see past this little world we have when we’re together. I can’t see a future that doesn’t include you.”

He took a step forward, as if those last words were encouraging him, but I put my hand up to stop his progress and continued. “Hamlet, as much as it’s crushed me when we’ve broken up, it’s almost a relief, because it forces me to think about myself. But then you change your mind. And every time you’ve wanted to get back together, I’ve said yes. Every time you’ve asked for forgiveness, I’ve given it. Everything that’s mine has been yours. For as long as I can remember, it’s been this way. It was my choice to give up everything, but this time I need something. I need to obey my father for a while. Let me do this.”

“Let you? What kind of relationship do you imagine we have?” He yanked on the hood of his sweatshirt, but didn’t go. “Do what you want.”

“Like you? You let yourself be manipulated by responsibility and by your mother. You might hem and haw, even break from what’s expected once in a while, but you always come back to what you have to do. You always end up agreeing to what your mother wants.”

“Not anymore,” he said, his fists clenching and unclenching. Then he touched his pocket, where I could only assume he was keeping the gun I’d seen earlier.

I didn’t want to think about it, so I refocused on our fight. “Well, she still controls me. And if I’m with you, she always will. She will be the wedge between us forever. How long can we stand up to that? And at what point will your responsibilities come between us?”

“It’ll be different when I’m in charge.”

“When will that be? Claudius is young enough that he could be in power for twenty years, easy. Are we going to sneak around until then? This is crazy. We should just—” I stopped myself and stood frozen but for the rise and fall of my chest as irregular breaths escaped. I had thought it but couldn’t bring myself to say it. Couldn’t think about the pain I would cause him. Couldn’t think of what it would mean for me. And I loved him. How could I say it if I loved him?

“What?” he asked.

Drawing strength from the core of my being, I forced out, “End it now. Before it gets even harder.” Pressure on my lungs ceased my ability to say more. I wanted to take back what I’d just said and hold him. I wanted to push him out the door and start a new life for myself.

He stared at me. Only the traffic outside filled the silence. He pulled his hood lower on his forehead and shoved his hands in his pockets. “Is that what you want?”

“Yes,” I said. His face fell, and my stomach contracted. “No,” I whispered. I had thought that once I said it, it would be real and done and I would feel better. But it only made me more confused. All strength left my legs and I sank against my desk. “I don’t know.”

He grabbed the magazines I had left on the floor and threw them across the room before racing out. He forgot his sneakers but didn’t bother to come back for them. I sat in misery, watching the empty doorway, hoping he would return and hoping he wouldn’t.

That night, my father didn’t come speak to me, which was actually worse than if he had yelled. I spent the balance of the afternoon and evening worrying about Hamlet, and feeling both sorry and relieved that we had broken up. I waited for my father to lecture me, to share allegories and sayings meant to defend his point of view, and to have him remind me for the umpteenth time about the public nature of our private lives. I would almost have welcomed being reprimanded over what did happen. I had given up on dinner, which had grown cold and clotted-looking, and sat on the couch watching the television absently when he entered. He looked around to see if I was alone, sighed, and walked to his room, shutting the door behind him.

My insides roiled. If my father wouldn’t even give me the chance to tell him that I’d finally done what he’d asked, then what the hell was the point of having broken Hamlet’s heart? And my own. But maybe I had actually been looking for an excuse to end things. Hamlet was scaring me. Talk of murder and suicide and ghosts was too much, and I knew if I stayed close to him, I’d get sucked further into his plans. And that thought scared me more than trying to come up with a Hamlet-less identity. Completely wrung out, I went to my room.

Francisco:
By cutting off communication with Hamlet, you intentionally drove him deeper into madness.

Ophelia:
Is that a question?

Francisco:
Yeah, smartmouth, it is.

Ophelia:
You’re wondering if that was my plan? (pause) I felt terrible about it, but my father asked me to.

Francisco:
He also asked you not to date Hamlet from the outset.

Ophelia:
I tried to be a good daughter.

Barnardo:
You failed Hamlet and your father.

Ophelia:
That is so—

Barnardo:
What?

Ophelia:
If I tell you to screw yourself, will you arrest me?

Barnardo:
Yes.

Ophelia:
Then never mind.

14

Zara shows a picture of Ophelia in her school uniform sitting close to Sebastian. “Who’s this?”

Ophelia shifts in her seat, her face stony. “A friend from school.”

“Just a friend?” Zara asks, her voice full of untold information.

Ophelia looks at her hard. “Yeah.”

“Mm-hm.” Zara flips her hair as another photo comes up of two college guys in Wittenberg T-shirts standing in front of Hamlet’s fraternity house. “Who are these guys?”

Ophelia shrugs. “Friends of Hamlet’s, I guess.”

A new picture comes up of Ophelia standing with the same guys while holding a cup of coffee.

“Clearly you talked to them,” Zara presses her.

Ophelia shrugs again and looks like she might yawn. “People talk to me a lot. Doesn’t mean I know them.”

Zara crosses her arms, looks at her producer, and then turns to the audience with a dazzling smile. “Well, ladies, they sure make ’em cute at Wittenberg, huh?”

The audience applauds.

I couldn’t sleep at all that night, tossing and turning and regretting what I’d done. How could I live without him? But how could I stay with him? I was damned no matter what I did. I missed him. It had been only half a day and I genuinely missed him.

I watched the hours tick by. There was a part of me that thought Hamlet might sneak into my room as he had for weeks, and that we would embrace and maybe cry and definitely say we were both sorry for being stupid. At least I would. And he should. He should have been sorry for dragging me out of bed to the conservatory only to yell at me. He should have been sorry for bringing a gun to my room and acting like it was no big deal. He should have been sorry for throwing my magazines and telling me that obeying my father was wrong.

My fury swelled, and I tossed angrily in bed until I started thinking about him wandering the castle all night with no one to trust and no one to talk to, surrounded by people who would all profit from his downfall. I even sat up once and started to put on my shoes, ready to go find him. But then I thought again of that gun and slipped back under my sheets, watching the minutes pass and the sky grow light.

After the sun rose, I went to the coffee shop across the street from the castle, intending to order whatever they had that was sweet and strong.
Like I like my men
, I joked to myself, but even thinking that put me in a snit.

“Ophelia,” a voice said behind me.

I spun around and saw two guys around my age whose faces I didn’t know. I turned back and paid for my coffee, planning to walk away from the counter as quickly as possible.

“Damn, that’s rude,” said the taller one to his friend, or me, or both of us.

“Do I know you?”

“Billy Rosencrantz.”

“Dave Guildenstern.”

When I showed no sign of recognition, they went on. “We met at Wittenberg. You probably heard us called by our last names.”

“I don’t go to Wittenberg,” I said, even more irritated, used to confused posers but not in the mood to humor one just then.

Guildenstern sneered. “I know. You were visiting. You were pretty drunk, so…”

All of a sudden I remembered them. “I wasn’t that drunk,” I said. “I remember now. You had on beanies.”

“Yeah,” Rosencrantz said, frowning and pulling at his baseball cap.

“So why are you here?” I asked.

“Oh, the queen invited us personally,” Guildenstern said, exchanging a smile with Rosencrantz.

“Really,” I said. I couldn’t think of one occasion when Gertrude had invited anyone to the castle on behalf of Hamlet. Even his birthday parties had been arranged by a social secretary.

Guildenstern said, “Wanted us to cheer him up. Hamlet, that is.”

“Hamlet?” I asked, trying not to lose it at the mention of his name. “Why you?”

Rosencrantz leaned casually on the counter holding the sugar and cream canisters and explained, “We’re friends with him.”

“You are?”

“From school,” Guildenstern said slowly, as if I were a stupid child.

The coffee was burning my hands, and as much as I wanted to throw it at them or just get away, I wanted to know what was happening more. “I’ve never heard him talk about you.”

Rosencrantz answered, “Maybe he doesn’t tell you everything.”

“I’m sure he doesn’t,” Guildenstern said, looking at Rosencrantz, and they snickered.

I felt really peevish and exposed, and was tempted to ask what they meant, but then thought better of it. Did I even want to know? “How would the queen know to ask for you two?” I prodded, steering the conversation away from my possible humiliation and toward theirs, if I was lucky.

Guildenstern answered, “Our dads have been working for Claudius on a PR project. Claudius wants a profile done of himself. A soft news piece, you know. Make him look good as the new king. While they were meeting, my dad asked Claudius how Hamlet was doing, said that I hadn’t seen him in a while and was worried.” Guildenstern puffed himself up.

Rosencrantz smiled. “And when he and the queen learned that we had been friends at school, they asked us to come and try to cheer up Hamlet.”

“And did you?” I asked.

“Cheer him up? I think so,” he answered.

I thought of how angry Hamlet had been the day before and could not imagine what could have turned his mood around so quickly.

Rosencrantz went on to explain. “We had met up with Wittenberg’s improv comedy troupe at a rest stop off the highway. They were coming to Elsinore, too, which was totally random. When we got here, we told Hamlet about them, and he was really excited and ran off to work with them on something or other.”