Mother, Can You Not? (5 page)

T
his is a mantra my mother both practiced and preached. As a fervent antiwar activist in the late ’60s, she was arrested three times while protesting the Vietnam war. One of the demonstrations that my mother dreamed up involved collecting severed, bloody animal parts from a butcher and then leading a pack of angry activists to Broadway, where they flung blood and meat onto theatergoers arriving to see “frivolous” musicals. All while screaming, “BLOOD IN HANOI? BLOOD ON BROADWAY! BLOOD IN HANOI? BLOOD ON BROADWAY!” When her comrades suggested using red paint instead of actual
animal blood, my mother responded with “DO OUR SOLDIERS BLEED PAINT?!”

The fact that this “street theater” was
not
one of the three protests she got arrested for (1) makes you wonder what the hell she did to get arrested those other times (I asked, and she was very vague) and (2) illustrates the lengths she will go to once she has decided to commit to something.

Kate, if you’re going to play water polo, why just swim well when you can also file your fingernails into points and scratch your opponents underwater?
*

If you’re going to enter a costume contest on Halloween, why dress as a princess when your father can build you a custom lime-green boom box that actually plays the “Macarena”?

If you’re going to run for student council, why just make a speech when you can also wear a Supergirl costume and sing?
In fairness to her, I won that election.

The “whatever it takes” idea is something that manifested in every aspect of her parenting, but there is
no better example I can point to than an incident my family refers to as The 8th Grade Play Affair.

When the drama department at my middle school, Harvard-Westlake, announced that the spring play would be
A Midsummer Night’s Dream,
my mother had a happy seizure. I was excited too, as I had been fantasizing about playing Hermia since my mother first read the play to me in elementary school. It was my dream part.

Unfortunately, the chance of me getting that role was about as likely as getting abducted and anally probed by aliens. It was widely understood that seventh and eighth graders never got the leads. The main parts were always awarded to the ninth graders, who had paid their dues. My mother’s response to this unspoken policy: “Well, if it’s
unspoken,
it’s not a real policy, now, is it?”

The day after the initial audition, I paced alongside all the other hopefuls during lunch. We were waiting next to the drama department bulletin board to find out who had gotten called back for a second tryout. Now, if you’ve ever met a theater nerd, you probably
know that “theater nerd waiting to find out if they got a part” is not a theater nerd at his or her best. Add to that the fact that some of these kids were actual working actors in Hollywood, and worse, some of them had
parents
who were A-list actors, directors, and writers, and you can start to understand the atmosphere and the pressure. One girl actually threw up, and she wasn’t even bulimic! All the faux camaraderie had evaporated, and the vicious little animals that we were emerged.

Two minutes before the lunch period was over, the director sprinted out, pinned up the list, and scurried back into her office, wisely locking the door between herself and a sea of angsty teenagers. A mosh pit instantly formed around the callbacks list, and I couldn’t see over the crowd. I was jumping up and down, trying to catch a glimpse over everyone’s shoulders, when Larry Glassman turned toward me, braces gleaming.

“Congrats, Kate! We both got callbacks!”

He had auditioned for Lysander, Hermia’s love interest in the play. My heart fluttered, and not just because of the news that I had gotten a callback for Hermia. Nerdy, sweet Larry and I had been in the
ensemble casts of both shows in seventh grade together, and I was in love with him, metal mouth, crackling pubescent voice, and all. He had a quiet attractiveness that none of the other girls had noticed yet, but oh boy, I had. I blushed.

“Thanks, Larry! Congrats to you too!” He squeezed my shoulder warmly, inciting a minor cardiac event, and left me pining after him. I stepped up to the bulletin board to confirm the results for myself and immediately ran off to call my mom.

Her response? “Start memorizing your lines.”

When we walked through our front door after water polo practice that evening, my dad was sitting on the couch in the living room where we always rehearsed. My mother flung her arm out, pointing toward the kitchen.

“Michael, out!”

My dad looked up, remote in hand. “But I’m watching—”

“Get your butt out of here! Go make dinner or something. Healthy.”

“Kim, come on, there’s only a minute left in th—”

“Oh, I didn’t realize
boxing
was more important to you than your only daughter’s future. You know what? Never mind, I totally understand. You just finish your show, and if Kate doesn’t get the part? She doesn’t get the part! It’s not like getting the lead in this play could make the difference between her being able to get into an Ivy League college, having a fabulous career, meeting an intelligent man to breed with…and becoming a high school dropout! You just finish your show, Michael, by all means, we’ll wait.”

My father, in an effort to avoid getting roped into another one of our marathon rehearsals, shut off the television and wandered into the kitchen. In his mind, even washing dishes would be better than seven hours of playing his daughter’s love interest.

“Okay, Kate! I have an amazing idea!” Amazing? Her last “amazing” idea involved trying to vacation on the cheap and getting us stuck in a foreign country in a house filled with flying cockroaches. So you can understand my skepticism.

The scene the drama teacher selected for the callback was between Hermia and Lysander; it also
happened to be the pinnacle of sexual tension between the two characters. My mom rustled through the pages in her hand and pointed to one highlighted section of the script.

“Here, this line.”

“Which one?” I walked over and saw that she was talking about the climax of the scene, in which Hermia is trying to resist the urge to sleep with Lysander.

“I just know all the girls are going to wimp out on this part and not really do it full out.”

“Okay, so what’s your idea?”

“Well…instead of just hugging him or something stupid like that, I think you should get a running start, jump on him, wrap your legs around his waist, and actually kiss him full out. Stick your tongue in his mouth if you can.”

And there it was, the old “whatever it takes” rearing its (in this case, sexually aggressive) head.
If you’re going to audition for a play, why just act well when you can also perform an over-the-top sexy stunt to make sure you get the part?
The most frustrating aspect of my mother’s “whatever it takes” moments is that they
almost always work. And in this case, the end was something I desperately wanted, independent of my mother.

That said, I was thirteen, so I also desperately wanted to avoid making an idiot of myself in front of a large group of mean teenagers.

“Are you insane? In front of everyone? Absolutely not! No way!” I folded my arms.

“Kate, I realize it’s a little over the top, but it’s the only shot you have at getting this part. Yeah, you’re good, probably better than everyone else auditioning, but you’ve gotta do something big if you’re going to beat out Carly for the lead.”

Of course she was annoyingly right. Carly was one of the other girls who had gotten a callback for Hermia, and she was my main competition for the role. She was a very talented young actress and also a ninth grader, so if she didn’t completely blow the audition, she had a 90 percent chance of getting cast. “Come on, let’s at least rehearse it this way, and you can decide tomorrow. Let’s just try it.”

We spent the next three hours running the scene, before I collapsed onto my bed in a heap of anxious exhaustion. After school the next day, I shuffled into the black box theater where the auditions were being held, with everyone else who had gotten a callback for the play. My mother was a professional television director, so I trusted her instincts, but would I have the nerve to actually do it?

All day I had been obsessing over who my scene partner would be. I was facing a Russian roulette of hormone-crazed pubescent theater-nerd lips. I silently scanned the room and found everyone who had been called back for Lysander: Tom Michaelson, Bobby Friedburg, and, of course, dreamboat Larry Glassman.

Tom would be the ideal candidate. He was gay, he was my friend, and he was still publicly pretending to be into girls, so it was a win-win. Bobby was in ninth grade and over six feet tall, so at (optimistically) five foot three, I felt like that was a setup for logistical failure. And,
OH GOD,
what if it were Larry? Would I have the nerve to stick my tongue in his mouth? I had
already lost my smooching virginity way back in seventh grade during a game of Truth or Dare at a bat mitzvah (no tongue though). But, yeah, I knew a thing or two about locking lips. Larry, on the other hand, was a late bloomer, and everyone knew he hadn’t kissed anyone yet.

Someone tapped me on the shoulder, and I turned to find Larry giving me a nervous thumbs-up. “Come on, sit with me over here!” He smiled at me excitedly. “You ready?!”

I fought the nausea welling up in my throat and sat down next to him on the floor. The auditions began, and after about forty-five minutes of acting that ranged from Corky St. Clair–level terrible to Maggie Smith–level fantastic, it was time for the Hermia and Lysander scene.

Ms. Benson, the director, climbed back up onto the stage with the clipboard. “Okay, settle down, everyone! Shhh! Okay, up first, for Hermia and Lysander…Carly, you’re reading Hermia; Bobby, you’re reading Lysander.”

I sat back and watched Carly absolutely nail her audition—she hit every beat of the scene perfectly and had all seventy competitive teenagers in the room giggling. My mother’s parting words from that morning at car pool rang in my ears: “Come on!! Just go for it! If you do it like we rehearsed, you’re going to get the part.”

I watched as Ms. Benson stepped back on stage, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes, and I knew I would have to go through with it.

“Wow, great work, guys!” Ms. Benson smiled.

I willed her to call Tom and me up to perform, and it occurred to me that if this worked, I might have a future in mind control. I wasn’t sure I could actually go through with the stunt if I had to do the scene with Larry. She glanced down at the clipboard, and I held my breath.

“All right, let’s see. Tom, get up here. You’re reading Lysander. And Hermia…Sara Jane, you’re up!”

Smiling, Larry nudged me and leaned in, whispering, “Awesome! I was hoping we’d get paired up!”

STOP BEING NICE TO ME, LARRY! GODDAMN
IT, CAN’T YOU SEE I’M TRYING TO CONVINCE MYSELF TO JUMP YOUR BONES!?

Soon it was our turn. From the moment we started the scene, our chemistry was palpable. I remember thinking,
Wow, I might actually be getting more laughs than Carly.
I hesitated at the big line, wondering if I even needed the stunt to get the part. My mother’s voice flashed into my head again: “Come on, Kate! Don’t back down now! Whatever it takes!”
Screw it.

Larry’s eyes widened as I raced toward him, but he absorbed the shock of my weight wrapped around his waist and the firm press of my mouth against his with surprising ease. The audience leapt to its feet and started shrieking—50 percent shock, 50 percent laughter. And Larry’s mouth was everything I had dreamed it would be.

So did the end justify the means? It feels odd to answer
yes
when the means involved stealing the mouth virginity of an eighth grader, and the end was a leading role in a middle school production of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
But I got the part, so technically,
yeah, another one of my mother’s “whatever it takes” moments was a success.

That said, Carly got the guy. She and Larry went on to be the first-ever younger man–older woman scandal in our drama club, so I guess it was a mixed bag.