I'm with Stupid (33 page)

My father asks Manuel why he is wearing a tuxedo and facial hair. Manuel explains that there was not enough money in the budget for costumes and that each actor was asked to provide his own period clothing. I remind him that
Fiddler on the Roof
is set long before the advent of the tuxedo; he counters that there are no provincial vests and burlap trousers among his belongings. Makes sense. He adds that the tuxedo will lend a measure of authority to the role. Henryk asks what the handlebar mustache is adding. Manuel ignores him, as he must. “It gives the fiddler a more weathered appearance,” he says to Libby. The topic of fiddle playing comes up as well. Did Manuel bend the fiddle to his will? Last we spoke the recorder was his instrument of choice. He twirls his mustache and tells us he can’t play a note. The soundman has a cassette tape with the appropriate music. He will be fake-playing, it turns out. He stresses that he would have preferred to fake-play a violin but that he’s agreed to compromise for the sake of authenticity. After giving the ends of his mustache a few more twists he informs Libby that he must return to his “dressing room” but asks that she come backstage at intermission. My brother assures him that we’ll be there. Manuel smiles at Libby and leaves.

As soon as he does I am tapped on the shoulder by a pudgy guy with freckles seated behind me. “Do you know that Bob character?” he asks. The guy strikes me as particularly humorless. I hesitate: Depends, who wants to know? He informs me that his sister Maria, who just moved here from Chicago, is an extra in the play. She thought it would be a good way of meeting people around the neighborhood. “That Bob Apple gave my sister a hard time,” he says, sounding like the overprotective older sibling who would accompany her on a first date. “He’s lucky he didn’t get his behind kicked.” Bob Apple? What the hell is Manuel doing? “My sister talked about him every time she came home from rehearsal,” he adds, shaking his head. “He had her in tears more than once.” The pudgy guy introduces himself as Joe. According to Joe’s sister, Manuel got the part in the play after the original fiddler, Ryan, was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Manuel managed to learn every part in the play over the course of six days (I guess he wasn’t exaggerating when he told Libby that he has a photographic memory) and threatened to depose the director when things weren’t going well during rehearsal. He was particularly dissatisfied with the pair of women playing the mother and the matchmaker, whom he recommended be fired. He suggested that both roles be given to him. (Well, he is a ventriloquist.) When the director reminded Manuel that the scene required the two women to be sitting next to each other while conducting a conversation, Manuel pointed out that he could move from one chair to the other with relative ease while having the conversation with himself. I braid my fingers and suggest that perhaps Manuel thought he was auditioning for
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
. Humorless Joe doesn’t find this funny. He continues: “My sister told me he was real, real bossy. Everyone was annoyed with him. When he did manage to settle down, which wasn’t often, she said he wasn’t half bad—definitely had a flair for it. The only problem is that no one liked him.” That’s our Bob Apple. No surprises there. “Well, enjoy the show,” humorless Joe tells me. I nod. Many thanks. A child in the row directly behind William bursts into tears. I look over at the author, who’s hunched over the laptop, type type type type typing like mad. He begins to mumble that the crying is distracting. I almost point out that he loves children. It’s one of his favorite things to discuss with my mother. I turn around to look at the caterwauling gentleman drowning in spittle behind us. He’s about four and having a serious tantrum. He begins banging a yellow yo-yo against the back of William’s metal chair. William puts his fingers in his ears and concentrates hard on the screen as the boy’s mother tries to calm him by lovingly smoothing his blond hair. “There, there, Teddy,” she offers. He bares his teeth. The front two are missing in action.

Yo-yo boy calms down and for a moment it is quiet. Then the auditorium doors swing open and slam shut. “Don’t grab my ass like that!” someone loudly says. I turn. It’s Max, with Phillip. They are both wearing flannel shirts, ten-gallon cowboy hats, snakeskin boots with spurs, large belt buckles, and black leather chaps over their jeans. I put my hand over my mouth as Phillip tries to grab Max’s ass again. Max jumps. It’s like a gay episode of
Gunsmoke
. Or just an episode of
Gunsmoke.

As they mosey over—and really, in all that hindering gear, all you can do is mosey—the sound of clinking metal can be heard. Max was not kidding about Phillip having a fetish. He and Max silently take the remaining seats in the first row, between Libby and William, respectively. I look over at Max. I’m about to say something when he draws a line with his index finger from one end of his lips to the other. “Zip it,” he says. “Just shut up about it. I don’t want a word.”

But immediately my mother engages him as my father stares. “Oh, Max,” she says, not sure what to make of the cowboy gear. “Is this your father?” She offers Phillip her hand. I turn away to hide my laughter. She’s got a point. They seriously look like they are headed to a father–son dance somewhere in the heart of Texas Hill Country.

The lights flicker to signal the start of the play. Someone asks Max and Phillip to take off the cowboy hats because they are obstructing people’s views. I tell William to stop the typing. He sets the laptop on the floor and opens his binder. Booming fiddle music begins to play as dawn breaks over the shtetl. It is not much of a shtetl, which is perhaps why the fiddle music is so loud. There is also no roof because there is no house to put a roof on. Manuel and his tuxedo enter stage left. I can see that he is holding the fiddle’s bow a few inches from the strings. He approaches center stage and closes his eyes. He is smiling. He is a happy fake fiddler without a roof. The fiddle music stops; Manuel stops fake-playing. He looks at the audience and wipes his brow for effect, then twirls his mustache. He is an exhausted fake fiddler without a roof who needs a close shave, we get it. The lights dim briefly while Manuel makes a reluctant exit. The play’s first scene unfolds. Considering the meager set, the production is entertaining. The actors are talented. The only thing keeping me from a good time is William, who occasionally asks for the spelling of complicated words like
receive.
“Is
countryside
hyphenated?” he asks during a song-and-dance sequence. “That’s all I need to know.” Is that really all he needs to know? Somehow I doubt it.

Manuel comes back out before the end of the first act to fake-play. One of his diamond cuff links catches the light, emitting a glint that refracts off my cornea and (quite possibly) gives me free laser surgery to correct my astigmatism. If it happens again I may get X-ray vision. “Don’t touch me there!” Max loudly whispers to Phillip.

As Manuel enthusiastically falls into his role, I begin swaying my head to the melody.

And then the fiddle music unexpectedly goes into hyperdrive.

Uh-oh.

Where’s my babushka? I sit up. Something must be wrong with the cassette tape, I think, while looking on in horror. It sounds like someone hit fast forward on the machine without first pressing stop. It sounds like an Alvin and the Chipmunks version of fiddle playing. Manuel looks to his right, evidently over to where the noise is coming from. I look over at William. He’s writing in the dark, unaffected.

The fiddle music is only getting faster and louder. Manuel begins to fake-play faster and faster to keep up. He’s got the bow moving a mile a minute and is kicking his legs and spinning in a circle. I think he’s pretending to be delighted, or ethnic. Whatever it is isn’t fooling anyone. “He’s going berserk out there,” I hear my father say from a few seats away. After an excruciating minute, the music stops. Manuel wipes his brow. I think he means it this time. The curtain falls to signal the end of act one. It’s intermission. The crowd claps politely; a few people laugh. My brother wolf whistles, which I never knew he could do. Will this kid’s talent never cease? Max bolts from his chair. William is too busy to look up.

A riot has broken out backstage. The soundman is hunched over in a chair, holding a mangled cassette and a foot of exposed black ribbon in the palm of his shaky hand. Manuel screams in his ear: “I cannot work under these conditions! Your unprofessionalism has reduced this production to a spectacle. You would not last the length of one eighteen-hour shift in my father’s tube sock factory. You would be hanged by the ankles and quartered over far less than this!” The soundman screams back that Manuel needs to shut his mouth. He’s trying to concentrate. He looks down at his confetti. It’s a party. “You would first need a brain in order to concentrate!” Manuel points out. The director, your typical New York hipster with black-framed glasses, runs over and breaks up the fight.

“Just please let the soundman do his job, Bob,” the director says.

“If he only knew his job I would let him do it,” Manuel retorts. “But clearly he has no understanding of what is expected of him.” Manuel waves his hand dismissively in the soundman’s direction: “All he is capable of doing is breaking cassette tapes. At such work he excels beyond measure. His sophistication is newsworthy.”

The soundman protests: “I did not break the tape, chief.”

Max whispers in my ear: “Ask Bob for an eight-ball of coke.”

I look him up and down. “You’re in no position to be making fun of anyone today, Howdy Doody,” I remind him.

“Shut up,” he says, adjusting his cowboy hat.

The soundman orders the director to get Manuel out of his sight. Manuel folds his arms over his chest: “That is the only intelligent thing you have suggested thus far.” He turns to the director: “Bring in my understudy. I am not going back out there in order to be humiliated by bumbling technicians.” The director bows his head, the way everyone eventually does around Manuel. His next words are barely audible, his strength depleted: “What understudy, Bob? What understudy are you referring to? This isn’t Broadway, it’s Brooklyn. We don’t have an understudy. You are the understudy. You walked in on the day Ryan was diagnosed.”

Manuel tenses up. He looks like he might rip the director’s shirt off: “You have no understudy for the lead role?” The director shakes his head: “Bob, how many times must I tell you that yours is not the lead role? It’s not even a speaking part. You’re just supposed to go out there and pretend to play the fiddle. It’s no big deal.”

Manuel begins to scream: “No big deal! No big deal! Music is the language of this play! The fiddler begins and ends this production because he is its essence. He represents the undying hope of everyone portrayed here tonight. Nothing is possible without him. The fiddler is indispensable.”

The director raises his voice: “Don’t bother explaining the fiddler’s role to me. It’s all you’ve been talking about. I’m the director and I know what the fiddler represents. I even agreed to add a few more fiddling scenes at your request, remember?” Manuel looks up at the ceiling. Of course he does. The director continues: “I finally gave in because you spoke so eloquently on the fiddler’s behalf while following me to my car every day with books about the Jewish Diaspora. The fiddler may very well represent the hope of this play but all the hope in the world isn’t going to get that cassette fixed. Stanley is going to get it fixed. And I’m sorry we had to use a cassette but this is rarefied music, they don’t record this kind of thing anymore. It’s the cassette or nothing. At this moment the play revolves around Stanley, who has to fix it, not you, so please, just stop antagonizing him. If he can’t get it fixed we’re royally screwed because that means you’ll have to actually play the fiddle.”

This final, flippant comment makes Manuel’s blood boil. “How dare you, you bumpkin!” Manuel challenges. “You would have me play a commoner’s instrument? I have my pride to protect! I cannot play the fiddle and do not intend to learn. You should have agreed to my request for a violin. That I would attempt to master in five minutes. But this, no, never. I was told the fiddle music would be provided. I am an actor, an artist, perhaps someday a violinist, but certainly not an agrarian fiddler chasing livestock through a meadow . . .” Manuel notices Libby and peels off his mustache. There is white glue stuck to his upper lip. “I am sorry you had to see this,” he says. “I had no recourse. I have been undone, I quit.” He storms off. Somewhere in another room a door slams. Libby turns to me. “Will you rub right there?” she asks, pointing to her neck. “I have a kink.”

At the beginning of act two, when the fiddle music begins to play at the appropriate tempo, several members of the audience break into spontaneous applause. “They fixed it,” my mother says too loudly. Manuel is relieved, too. He begins to fake-play with renewed intensity and determination. William, meanwhile, is scribbling happily in his binder.

The second half of the play is as good as the first. Manuel comes out a few more times and fake-plays like a fake expert. After each set he draws attention to his mustachio by smoothing it with the tips of his manicured fingers. By the end of the play, when the shtetl’s inhabitants are forced by the Russians to abandon their homes, Libby and I tear up. Never fails.

I sigh deeply when the final scene is upon us. This play gets me every time, perhaps because, more than anything, it’s a story about family. Manuel walks onstage and begins fake-playing. I am momentarily distracted by William’s elbow, with which he keeps jabbing my hip. “Can you move over?” he whispers. Where does he want me to move, into the aisle? “I need more room,” he hastily offers. More room. How’s South Africa sound, Hemingway? Lots of room there. I am moving my chair when the fiddle music prematurely stops. Silence follows—the most uncomfortable kind. “Shit! It ate the tape,” someone from backstage shouts. I look up. William starts clapping and asks if it’s over already. I let the legs of my chair touch the ground.

“Get your hand out of my pocket right now!” a clearly frustrated Max says to Phillip. “I’m not a piece of meat!”