Rosethorn (19 page)

March 31, 1986

We’ve run through the entire play from beginning to end in full dress and with stage sets. I'm in near bliss. There are some kinks to work out. Some of the backdrops are still not quite finished and the knights need to be coordinated a little more when they joust, but otherwise, everything seems to be shaping up.

Being in costume with the sets and everything has helped my performance. I feel transported, no longer Stella, but Guenevere.

And everyone has been amazed at Daniel’s transformation. I couldn’t help but be proud. When he walked onto the stage in silver armor, all the girls were dazzled. Even Lila looked suddenly interested in him. I think Greg should be worried. Daniel has become Lancelot before our very eyes, dashing, brave, handsome, the very picture of the perfect knight. He has his performance almost nailed, just minor glitches here and there, like when he accidentally said, “Stella, I love you,” instead of Jenny. Everyone laughed then and Daniel just lost all confidence. I gave him a wink to let him know it’s okay to mess up. That’s what rehearsal is for after all.

I think that theater’s gotten into his blood. He's different when he’s on stage. He even told me that he forgets everything that’s bugging him when he’s Lancelot. I told him I knew how he felt—that for those brief hours I’m on stage this whole other world exists fully and everything else disappears.

He confessed that he’s nervous about being in front of a real audience and that all that’s keeping him from running away is the fact that I’ll be there with him. I promised him that he will be a magnificent Lancelot and that he didn’t need me at all.

One week until opening night!

April 9, 1986

Has there ever been a more magical night such as this? There are no words to adequately describe how I feel-all eyes on me watching me move, every breath suspended and hanging on my every word, turning this way and that, lights brightly upon me, bringing Guenevere to life before them and creating Camelot from music and imagery, casting a spell so fine and beautiful that they believe everything I conjure. And when I sang my songs tonight, it’s as if I’ve never sung them before and that they just existed for me to sing right at that moment.

Everyone was superb, I thought. Evan was perfectly hateful as Mordred, Lila was deliciously evil as Morgan, Greg was noble and kingly. And Daniel, how he blew everybody away. Everyone gasped when he first stepped foot on stage, he shone so brightly in his armor. Such confidence and grace, what a Lancelot he was. Our scenes were the best, I know. The whole auditorium was silent for that all-important moment when Guenevere and Lancelot first truly look at each other and she or I kneel before him, stunned and in love. There was such tenderness in him when he sang If Ever I Would Leave You that it brought me to sincere tears.

Esme and Kay, Papa and Mama, they were all amazed. I think that they’re starting to take my ambition seriously now. If there was ever any doubt in me, there isn’t any more, not after tonight.

This is my destiny.

April 25, 1986

How I wish that books and tests and this day to day tedium would just vanish. All that truly matters are those two hours when I leave Stella Vasquez behind and become Guenevere. It is going by too fast. I want to hang on to it, but the dream leaves me anyway. I'm only alive when I’m on stage.

May 17, 1986

It cannot be the middle of May already!  When I sing the May song, I feel unexpectedly sad in the middle of it. There is a longing in it that mirrors my own. Guenevere and I are most immediately intertwined in those moments for it is her singing the song, as well as I. I, too, long to be “blissfully astray."

I want. I want. I don’t know what I want. But I am...wanting.

I know what I don’t want—that is, for this play to end. Two more weekends, four more performances, and I will be Guenevere no longer.

May 29, 1986

I can't believe what has just happened. How did I get here? Have I been in a cloud all along, oblivious to everything around me? Perhaps I have been, right to the very end, to my last cue, my final exit, the last line spoken, when the music died and the lights came up-even then I didn't know. All I heard was the echo of applause, even the lovely roses that Daniel brought to me for our final bow couldn't awaken me—it was all as I dreamt it should be and I was on my cloud, above everybody and everything. I didn't want to change back to my ordinary clothes and, thus, become ordinary again.

Afterwards, backstage when I was left alone, or so I thought, looking out by the wing at our empty stage, wistful and sad, I hear “Jenny,” called out to me and I turn to see Daniel in his armor still, shining in the dark. “Lance,” I reply without thought. We had taken to calling each other by our characters’ names, playfully, no harm, I believed, and it seemed to help our performances. He stood by me to look out.

“I wish it didn’t have to end,” I whispered, my roses still in my arms, unwilling to let go.

“These have been the happiest months of my life,” he said.

“Yes." I said, thinking of when I would next feel that unparalleled excitement and quickening of the blood that accompanies me when I am on stage.

I felt his hand reach for mine and I turned to look at him. And then I knew, even before he found the voice to say it, what I should have known all this time.

“You asked me once, why I wanted to be Lance when acting scared me." His eyes never wavered from meeting mine, even as I felt him shake. “The truth is, I just wanted to be the one you said I love you to every night, even if it was just pretend."

I wanted to snatch my hand back, but couldn’t move. I wanted to stop him before one more word was spoken but it was too late. It was all some terrible mistake. I’m in the wrong play, I stupidly thought. These are words for some other girl, not me, and I don’t know my lines.

“But it wasn’t pretend, Stella, not for me.”

And it was there, in his eyes, in his face, that fragility again, that longing I thought was make believe. It told me that I had been wrong, so wrong all this time, that I had believed what I wanted to believe or had been so blind to everything around me that I couldn't see this one plain and undeniable fact.

“You never noticed me, not ever. So I thought if I got a part, this part, then you and I—“  He trailed off as he looked at me, his whole being in a silent plea.

“Do I have a chance?"

I knew what I was supposed to say, how I should act. The stage is set. A knight in shining armor lays his heart before me, saying words that every girl dreams of, but I am numb to them, to him.

“Dan, you’re the nicest guy I’ve ever known." I see at once that this was the wrong thing to say. His whole body recoils. He releases my hand and backs away clumsily, his head turned from me.

I can't bear to see him this wounded, and by me, so I do the only thing I can, the only thing which can bring him back, which is also the worst thing I could have done - I fling myself to him and kiss him as if I were Guenevere kissing Lancelot.

But I feel nothing, except for pity.

“You’re my best friend,” I say, and this is the only true thing I can give him.

But it is the kiss that he takes to heart. What else do I say to him, I don’t remember. I tell myself that there are worse things in the world than to be told you are loved. He's made it clear that I held his heart in the palm of my hand, but why do I feel as if I were the one who had been caught?

Chapter 15

June 7, 1986

Surprisingly, I like being Daniel’s girlfriend. I don’t know why I felt so shocked and panicked at first. Looking back, there were signs of how he felt for me-why didn’t I see them?

He's so attentive to me and looks at me with such adoration-even when I haven’t earned it. This feeling is so new. When we walk together at school, I see envy in all the girls’ eyes—I’ve got Lancelot falling all over me.

Esme told me today that she feels backward now, being the only one without a boyfriend. I told her that I would have Daniel give her one of the swim boys. Daniel this, Daniel that. It hasn’t even been a week and already I’m one of those tiresome girls who can’t speak a sentence without dropping her boyfriend’s name.

June 8, 1986

The world is mine! It isn’t really but that’s what I feel like. Mrs. O’Connell told me this afternoon that a friend of hers who is the stage manager for the Shakespeare Festival asked her to recommend someone to play one of the fairies in their upcoming production of a Midsummer Night’s Dream. They were looking specifically for someone petite with a dance background and some singing skills to start rehearsing right away, and she mentioned something about equity, which I don’t really understand, but she asked me if I was interested.

Am I interested? I almost howled with excitement.

June 9, 1986

All those years of ballet finally paid off-It’s mine! Okay, it’s a teeny, tiny part, I don’t even have a name, I’m just one of Titania’s attendant fairies, but I get paid $50! And I make my professional debut in a Shakespearean play, no less!

It’s all happening, isn’t it? I can actually see the path in front of me with Broadway at the end of it. It looks long, it looks hard, but I can see it as clearly as this page before me.

June 18, 1986

I'm exhausted. But I just had to write. Finals week almost killed me, but I think I passed everything. I don’t know what I would have done if Daniel hadn’t helped me study, especially for my math final. It was such torture. I've been rehearsing all week after school with the troupe. The festival has already opened with Twelfth Night and has two more weeks, then a week after they close, Midsummer opens.

I can hardly believe that I'm now part of a real theater production. Of course I'm a nobody, no lines whatsoever, but just to be a part of it all. To watch and to listen to everybody. I feel humbled. To think that I even thought I knew how to act. I'm nothing compared to the actors playing Oberon and Titania. And Puck is amazing! He does acrobatics and leaps and bounds and makes it all look effortless while he talks in iambic pentameter. But what a flirt.

I'm one of six of Tatiana’s lesser fairies. My costume is so beautiful; it's made of very light material and is all shades of purple with sequins here and there so that it sparkles under the lights. I have gossamer wings and flowers to wear on my head. The others are in shades of green, red, pink, blue, and yellow.

We actually perform two dance sequences. The first is when Titania makes her entrance in the second act. We precede her with ballet-like movements, singing a song that is actually nonsensical but is supposed to be otherworldly. We dance again in the last scene, when everybody dances. I picked up the steps right away so I'm not worried at all. They seem satisfied with me.

Oh, I almost forgot—I got my bug. But it’s light blue. Papa almost didn’t buy it for me-he said I was being a baby about wanting a cherry red bug and called me spoiled. And Mama reminded me of how he has compromised and how I'm getting my way about the Conservatory and Midsummer. I feel so independent and free when I drive it, even though I'm only allowed to drive in San Rafael. And Papa checks the mileage to make sure I don’t go anywhere. It doesn’t irritate me as it should, for I'm really on my way.

Everything's happening so fast, it seems. And yet in the middle of it all, I stop and see everything clearly as if it were in a line stretching back into the past and then towards the future. I see all that has led to this moment- the dance classes, piano lessons, recitals, singing for my parents in our living room, choir and drama, Guenevere, and now Midsummer. And I see the future- the Conservatory, the plays I’ve yet to do, songs I’ve yet to sing. It’s almost scary, how near and within my grasp it all is.

I talked to Daniel about it and have told him my secret wish- to live in New York and study at NYU. He’s the only one who never tires of listening to me-everything I say is captivating, but he has no idea what I’m talking about most of the time. It wasn’t a problem when we were in Camelot together, but now I realize he was only in it for me, not for any real love of theater.

Mama saw me making faces the other night as I talked on the phone with him. She thinks I am too hard to please—If Lancelot isn’t good enough for me, who is, she asked, half-joking, half-seriously.

And then she asked me if perhaps I should wait for someone to sweep me off my feet. She told me that I will have a very busy summer and maybe it would be better for both of us to part ways now before it gets serious. She has no idea how serious it already is with him, that it would crush him if we were to break up. Besides, I do rely on him. He’s the only one who fully supports me.

June 19, 1986

Unbelievable. That is all I can say. It's taking me ages to write this all down because I am still in complete shock. Just when I take flight and soar, I am brought crashing down to earth in the most unexpected way.