My Life: The Musical (14 page)

“Please!” Emily cried, pounding on the box office window. “We
have
to have tickets to the final performance! You can charge us anything you want. We’ll stand in the back. We’ll watch from the wings!”

The box office manager looked exhausted. Grimacing, he said to Emily what he’d already gone hoarse saying to 426 people before her, not that any of them had believed him, either.

“Regardless of what you may have read on the Internet, ‘officially’ we have not announced a closing,” he croaked. “So ‘officially’ there is no final performance!” He started to pull down the Plexiglas divider that shut the box office window.

“But unofficially?” Emily cried, jamming her hand under the glass. The manager was barely able to stop the window before it smashed into her fingers.

“Unofficially—the next two weeks are completely sold out. We’re not selling tickets for performances after that date at this time.” He looked at them with burning eyes. “Do I have to write it in blood? Go home!”

“Wait!” said Philip. “Will there be any rush lines on the days of performance?”

“No more rush lines!” The box office manager put his mouth right next to the narrow opening beneath the glass. Emily could feel his breath on her hand. “There are no more tickets!” he rasped. “Got it? Go see
Phantom of the Opera
! This box office is closed.”

Emily barely got her fingers out before he slammed the window shut.

15

“KEEP IT GAY”

The Producers

2001. Music and lyrics by Mel Brooks,
book by Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan

There are times when a person is alone in her room crying but is secretly hoping someone will come in and find her, sit on the side of the bed, ask the right questions and listen calmly, all while radiating a tender glow of sympathy and understanding.

This was not a time like that. This was a time when Emily wanted more than anything to hide from the truth, pull the blankets over her feelings and pretend that everything, just for a moment, was the way it used to be. But her feelings refused to cooperate. They erupted, hot as lava, and poured down her cheeks and twisted her face into a horrible tight crying expression that made her feel like her skin would split.

She’d slept on and off all night, waking, remembering, crying, dozing, and waking again. Her bike had been gone from the train station when she and Philip got back, as she’d expected, but that didn’t make it any less upsetting. Luckily her parents had been too distracted by the missing bike to poke any serious holes in her story about the PSAT class instructor being late and taking the class out for pizza afterward to make amends.

Grandma Rose had been out for the evening and had uncharacteristically left the door to her room locked, so the unspent two thousand dollars (minus the cab fare from the station) was stashed in Emily’s closet, rolled inside a bedroom slipper and hidden in the back, behind her summer clothes.

Emily thought of all these things during her wakeful fits of misery, but mostly she thought of
Aurora
.

Is this how things ended?
she’d wondered at 3:18 a.m., when she finally left her bed and stared out the bedroom window at the street below.
With the last time of whatever it was you loved already over, and you didn’t know it was the last time so you didn’t pay special attention or say goodbye or anything?

If that was what last times felt like, she realized with horror,
anything
could be the last time. This could be the last time Emily stood shivering in front of her window, or the last night she spent in her own bed.

Maybe a meteor would strike her house this minute and crush them all to powder, making this the last time she’d be able to think about what last times felt like!

Emily remembered her bike—she’d never ride it again,
never never never
—and started to cry again. She crawled back under the covers and hugged her pillow, until she dozed off once more.

Much to his surprise, Philip woke up on Tuesday morning to the smell of pancakes.

For a moment he wondered if he might be having a stroke. That was a symptom of stroke—you started to smell things that weren’t there. He was sure he’d read something like that in a book once. He inhaled. Pancakes. A stroke, definitely.

Even after going to the bathroom and splashing water on his face he smelled it, and as he approached the kitchen he heard something sizzle, just like batter on a hot griddle. Obviously the stress of
Aurora
’s closing had caused some fragile artery in his brain to weaken and burst—

“Good morning, honey!” said Mrs. Nebbling. She was wearing not her customary hazmat suit, but an apron, and she was cooking breakfast. “I decided to stay home today.”

“Oh. Hey.” Philip wondered if he should kiss her on the cheek, but she was holding a drippy ladle in one hand and a greasy spatula in the other. It seemed dangerous to get too close.

“I’m making breakfast,” she said.

“Yeah,” said Philip. “I smelled it. I thought it was a stroke.”

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing,” said Philip, peering at the griddle. “That batch needs to be flipped.”

“I’m so sorry I wasn’t home for your birthday,” she said. “I hope you had fun.” The kitchen was filling with smoke. If there had been batteries in the alarm, it would have gone off by now.

“It’s okay.” Philip reached over the stovetop and turned on the exhaust fan.

“Thanks,” said Mrs. Nebbling. She handed him a plate of steaming pancakes. “Syrup’s on the table.”

Philip was so used to eating cold pizza out of the box and Pop-Tarts out of the wrapper, he’d forgotten that the cabinets of the Nebbling kitchen contained actual dishes. Cream-colored background with a pink and green floral pattern around the rim: the same dishes they used to eat dinner off every night in their old house.

“Your brother and I had a long talk last night,” Mrs. Nebbling said.

“Mmph,” Philip said. The syrup was Mrs. Butterworth’s—Philip preferred real maple, which was too expensive for their household now—but the pancakes were delicious. “These are good,” he said, his mouth full.

“You look skinny,” Mrs. Nebbling said. She smiled at Philip as he ate. It seemed like a fake smile, but maybe Philip had just forgotten what her smile was like. He knew he should be miserable because
Aurora
was closing, but the food tasted so good. Hot breakfast that you ate off a plate! He heard himself making little
yum-yum
noises as he chewed.

“I can understand why you might not have wanted to tell me,” Mrs. Nebbling went on. “I haven’t been home very much, I know. I guess you probably feel like I’m not interested in your life. But I am.”

Philip was distracted by his meal, but not so much that he didn’t immediately start to wonder where this was going.

“And don’t be mad at Mark,” she said. Her smile was starting to look more familiar. “I was the one asking questions. I’m a lawyer, remember?”

Mark is an idiot,
Philip wanted to say.
Mark is gross and mean and lies about everything.
But he couldn’t say those things because his mouth was crammed full of pancakes.

Mrs. Nebbling put her hand on Philip’s, which now bore traces of Mrs. Butterworth’s. “Mark told me everything, and I want you to know that I love and accept you exactly the way you are.”

“Mark is an idiot,” Philip mumbled through his food.

“Philip, honey.” Mrs. Nebbling patted his sticky hand. “Mark told me that you’re gay.”

Emily had never seen her mother so happy.

“A whole season of Matthew Broderick!” Mrs. Pearl squealed. “Oh, Emily! We
have
to get tickets!”

What?

Emily had come downstairs Tuesday morning prepared to smile, to joke, to put on a Tony-worthy performance of acting normal even though her broken heart was imploding like a dying sun, turning its own mass in on itself, collapsing at unfathomable speeds until nothing was left but a black, black,
Aurora
-less hole—but she had no audience.

Mrs. Pearl was completely engrossed in the Tuesday arts section of the paper. “Listen to this, Em! ‘Broadway’s “Sure Thing” Arrives At Last’! See? It’s in the
Times
.” Mrs. Pearl pushed the newspaper toward her.

Broadway’s “Sure Thing” Arrives At Last

New York—Legendary producer and theatre owner Stevie Stephenson has ended the rumors sweeping theatrical circles in recent days by announcing a full season of plays, musicals and dramatic readings at the Rialto Theatre. In an unprecedented casting coup, all programming to be presented at the Rialto will costar Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick.

“Nathan Lane
and
Matthew Broderick! From
The Producers
!” Mrs. Pearl exclaimed. “They are so funny!”

Plays under consideration for the so-called “Lanerick Rep” include Beckett’s existential laugh-fest
Waiting for Godot,
Shakespeare’s
Julius Caesar
(with Lane as the treasonous Brutus and Broderick as Cleopatra’s boy toy, Marc Antony), and gender-bending versions of
I Do! I Do!, Driving Miss Daisy
and
Antigone
(with Lane as King Creon and Broderick as the spunky heroine of the title). “Classic, contemporary, drama, comedy—it doesn’t matter,” announced Stephenson at a press conference held at Sardi’s restaurant. “You can put those two in anything and it’ll be a hit!”

Theatre pundits share Stephenson’s confidence. “There’s no sure thing in show business,” says noted theatre critic John Simon, “except Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick. Producing a show, any show, with those two in it—it’s like printing [expletive] money.”

Matthew Broderick? Wasn’t he married to Sarah Jessica Parker from
Sex and the City
? Emily’s heart started to race. The letters on the page swam and circled in front of her eyes. For this she would lose
Aurora
? For the (expletive) money-printing Lanerick Rep?

“The Rialto,” said Mrs. Pearl. “Isn’t that where that show you like is playing?
Aurora
? Oh, I hope this doesn’t mean it’s closing!”

Not surprisingly, the
New York Times
was slightly better informed than Mrs. Pearl.

The theatre’s current tenant, Tony winner
Aurora,
will be vacating the Rialto at the end of next week despite vehement protests from its fans. When asked if
Aurora
might be moved to another theatre, Stephenson answered in the negative. “Have you seen it?” he asked one reporter. “The ugliest costumes on Broadway, and I should know! I paid for them!”

“Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick,” sighed Mrs. Pearl, her hand over her heart. “In
Antigone
! Who would guess? Did you see a bunch of college catalogs arrived for you? I put them on the dining room table. College! I can’t believe it’s here already. . . .”

Oh my God,
thought Emily. The unspent two thousand dollars was still jammed inside a bedroom slipper in the back of her closet. She needed to put it back. Maybe Grandma Rose hadn’t even seen the note in her underwear drawer yet; that would be best of all.

“Is Grandma up?” Emily asked.

“Not yet. She came in late last night and wouldn’t say where she’d been. It’s almost like having two teenagers in the house!” Mrs. Pearl glanced at the clock. “Come on, I’ll drive you to school. I can’t believe those awful kids took your bike.”

16

“ROSE’S TURN”

Gypsy

1959. Music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim,
book by Arthur Laurents

The official notice went up the next day.
Aurora
was closing, and Emily and Philip had no choice at all but to go about their lives. They went to school. They went home. They made a solemn pact to avoid the Broadway message boards and chat rooms because the people who were posting were the ones who’d gotten tickets, and it was just too painful to realize the show was going on without them. (Emily wondered briefly if SAVEME was among those lucky few—but a pact was a pact, and she forced herself to put those thoughts aside.)

They went to each other’s houses and listened to the
Aurora
CD together. For a while they concocted elaborate schemes that would, theoretically, allow them to see one last performance—they would disguise themselves as ushers, or sneak backstage through the stage door when the doorman wasn’t looking, or ambush Marlena Ortiz after the show and beg like their lives depended on it—but soon they ran out of steam.

If I were Dolly Levi from
Hello, Dolly!
,
Emily thought,
I’d be able to charm the stagehands into letting me see the show from the wings. If I were Auntie Mame, I would lead the cast and audience in a curtain-call parade down Broadway.

If I were Sweeney Todd,
Philip thought,
I’d slash throats until somebody coughed up a pair of decent seats in the front mezzanine
. (Philip’s imagination had grown a little bloodthirsty lately, probably because he was so angry at Mark.)

It was no good. Noble sacrifices, last-minute redemptions, outlandish coincidences, and madcap risky schemes that made your wildest dreams come true—these things only happened in musicals.