Shooting Star (8 page)
Authors: Cynthia Riggs
Tracy stopped gathering utensils. “Mr. Atherton? The monster? The DEA agent? He’s coming?”
“You’ll get to see what he really looks like,” said Victoria.
Karen glanced around. “Is he here now?”
“He’ll be back shortly. He went home to feed his dogs.”
The evening was cool and the aroma of the hearty soup, cooked all afternoon, filled the house.
By the time Howland showed up, Smalley was ladling soup into bowls as Alison set them on the table. Howland looked quizzically from one to the other. “Had you two met each other before today?”
“I knew Alison by reputation.” Smalley passed her another filled soup bowl.
Alison smiled.
“Meet your hitchhikers, Howland.” Victoria introduced the girls, then ushered everyone into the dining room and seated herself at the head of the table.
The girls looked at each other nervously.
Howland turned his attention to them. “I wasn’t thinking when I pulled over for you two. Sorry about that.”
“Please everyone sit,” said Victoria.
There was a general shuffling.
Alison said to Amanda, who was sitting next to her, “I’m so sorry you’re going through this. I know what you’re feeling.”
Amanda looked down at her untouched soup and nodded.
During supper, Amanda picked up her spoon, stirred her soup listlessly, and set the spoon back on her plate.
Victoria turned to Smalley, who was on her right. “Howland tells me you’re a
Frankenstein
scholar.”
Frankenstein
scholar.”
“I wrote my senior thesis on
Frankenstein,”
he said. “I understand your play follows Mary Shelley’s book closely.”
Frankenstein,”
he said. “I understand your play follows Mary Shelley’s book closely.”
“Her book has been terribly misinterpreted.” Victoria’s eyes were bright. “I hope my adaptation will help people understand that
Frankenstein
is about social issues of the time, not the horrific aspects of the monster.”
Frankenstein
is about social issues of the time, not the horrific aspects of the monster.”
Tracy and Karen looked at each other and giggled.
“You see?” said Howland, reaching for the bread. “The monster has far more allure than man playing God.”
“Same issues as today,” said Smalley. “Mary Shelley was concerned about technology. Today, we replace knees and hips with hi-tech materials, transplant kidneys, and pluck living hearts out of dead people. We keep the dead alive with technology.”
“Brain transplants, next,” said Alison. “Pass the bread.”
“You’re not implying technology is evil, are you, Smalley?” Howland handed the breadbasket to Alison. “Frankenstein’s problem was that he was underfunded and unsupervised. For a first-year college student, a teenager working on his own, he did pretty well, scrounging body parts from cemeteries and morgues and stitching them together secretly by candlelight.”
“Imagine the poor ventilation,” said Alison. “He had to work in a hurry, once he acquired a corpse.”
“Yuck!” said Karen.
“The monster had to be huge, so Frankenstein could work on the fine stitching,” said Howland.
Victoria coughed politely.
Howland continued, “At least Frankenstein didn’t have to worry about malpractice suits.”
Alison broke off a corner of her bread. “The cost of malpractice insurance is why I’m in forensic medicine.”
“The malpractice lawyers would have had a field day,” said Howland. “The poor monster wasn’t to blame. He was an innocent.”
Amanda had been stirring her soup without eating. She spoke up for the first time. “The monster may have been innocent to begin with.” She set her spoon on the side of her plate. “But three or four murders is hardly the work of an innocent.”
“The second murder,” said Victoria, “was the work of a flawed justice system. The monster killed little William, Justine didn’t. She was innocent, yet she was convicted and hanged. Murdered by the so-called justice system.”
“You see?” said Smalley. “Nothing’s changed.”
“May I have the butter?” Karen asked in a small voice.
“Bread, too?” asked Howland.
“Yes, please. Thanks.”
Smalley folded his napkin and set it next to his empty soup bowl. “Two hundred years ago Mary Shelley saw technology as a threat to personal freedom. Nothing’s changed there, either,” he said. “Will we implant chips in people so medical records can be accessed, personal freedom be damned?” He turned to Victoria. “I want very much to see your play, Mrs. Trumbull. It’s time to clear away the sensationalism that’s overlain the book.”
“Bravo!” Howland applauded. “Do any of you intend to go to opening night?” There were emphatic denials around the table. “What about you two?”
“We don’t have tickets.” Karen shook her head and her hair swirled about her face.
“Do you want to go? I have comp tickets I won’t use.”
“Really?” said Tracy.
Howland reached into his shirt pocket and handed two tickets to Tracy.
“Thanks, Mr. Atherton!” said Tracy. “Do we have time to get to the theater?”
Victoria checked her watch. “The bus goes past the house in a little over ten minutes. That will get you there in time.”
After the girls left, the remaining diners sat around the table for a long time, finishing their coffee and conversing.
At eight, Victoria looked at her watch. “Curtain time.”
“It must be difficult to be the playwright and miss opening night of your play,” said Alison.
“Under the circumstances …” Victoria stopped in midsentence. “I have trouble understanding such insensitivity.”
Howland laughed. “Dearborn?
Insensitive
?”
Insensitive
?”
Tracy and Karen arrived at the playhouse in plenty of time and stood in a rapidly growing line.
“It’s almost like a Broadway opening,” said Tracy. “Look at the crowd.”
Karen stood on tiptoe. “The line goes all the way down to Main Street.”
“We’re lucky to have tickets.”
The doors opened, and the line slowly moved into the theater, which had been a barn when Ruth Byron’s Aunt Fifi willed it to her. An usher took their tickets, and they moved up the steep steps with the crowd into what had been the hayloft.
Tracy and Karen found seats next to a cute guy who was sitting alone, about a third of the way up the tier of seats.
“Hi,” said Tracy. “Are these seats taken?”
The guy smiled. “They are now.”
Once Tracy and Karen had settled themselves, Tracy turned to him. “Do you live on the Island?”
“My mother does. I’m visiting her. How about you two?”
“We’re working for the summer. The Harborlights Motel?”
“Nice place. Right on the harbor. Where are you staying?”
“West Tisbury?”
He grinned. “That’s where my mother lives. How did you get here to the theater?”
“By bus. And you?”
“Hitchhiked.” He held out a hand to Tracy, then Karen. “I’m George Byron, by the way.”
The girls introduced themselves. “We tried, like, hitchhiking last night,” said Karen with a giggle. “You’ll never guess what happened.” She and Tracy told him about Frankenstein’s monster picking them up, and how the monster was really a DEA agent, and they just had supper with him, and how they’re living with the playwright.
“Victoria Trumbull is the playwright,” said George. “She and my mother are good friends. My mother, Ruth Byron, owns the theater.”
“Wow!” said Tracy and Karen together.
“This conversation is typical Island,” said George. “Everyone’s connected.”
The lights dimmed and Dearborn Hill stepped onto the stage.
“That’s my uncle,” whispered George.
“Wow!” said Tracy and Karen together, again.
The audience fell silent.
Dearborn held his hands in a sort of benediction and looked up to some unseen divine being. “Tonight’s performance,” he said in mellow tones, “is dedicated to Peg Storm, who died last night.”
A gentle murmur from the audience.
“Peg was new to the stage. But Peg was a professional in every sense of the word. She would have wished the play to go on. We honor her wish with tonight’s performance.
Frankenstein Unbound.
First, a moment of silence.” He bowed his head.
Frankenstein Unbound.
First, a moment of silence.” He bowed his head.
Somewhere in town, a clock tolled eight.
Dearborn lowered his hands and looked over the audience. “Peg’s part, Justine Moritz, will be read tonight by Nora Epstein,
our stage manager. The monster will be played by Roderick Hill …”
our stage manager. The monster will be played by Roderick Hill …”
“My cousin,” George whispered.
Dearborn continued, “ … Robert Scott, who plays the Arctic explorer, in addition will read the part of Frankenstein’s friend Henry Clerval. And the bride of Frankenstein will be read by Rebecca Hill.”
“My aunt,” whispered George.
Dearborn started the applause, and the audience joined in. “Ladies and gentlemen, let the play begin!”
Scene One was set in the cabin of a ship held fast in the ice while on a voyage to discover the fabled Northwest Passage. The crew had rescued Victor Frankenstein from a cake of ice that he’d been rowing, desperately in pursuit of a gigantic figure the crew had seen racing across the ice with a dog sled. The explorer, delighted with his new friend, listened to Frankenstein’s strange story.
Toward the end of the first scene, someone in the back of the auditorium snickered.
Before the second scene of Act One had played for more than a few minutes, someone else in the audience guffawed, and then laughter broke loose and rippled through the auditorium.
The setting was Frankenstein’s college dorm room, where he was stitching together miscellaneous body parts, accompanied by stage thunder and lightning. Dearborn, as Frankenstein, had donned a black wig to make himself look eighteen. The wig perched on his white hair like a crow nesting in cotton wool.
After the second scene, the actors could do no wrong. The audience laughed, howled, stamped their feet, applauded, whistled, booed. There were shouts of “Bravo!”
Early in the second act, the monster begged Frankenstein to create a mate for him. Weak from laughter, the audience could only groan with pleasure.
“I am thy creature!” cried Roderick, the monster. “I ought to be thy Adam …”
Tracy turned to George and whispered, “Who did you say the monster is?”
“My cousin Roderick,” whispered George in reply.
The man in front of them turned and shushed them.
When, in the third act, Frankenstein tore to pieces the Eve he was creating for his Adam, and tried to dispose of the leftover body parts, the audience went berserk.
The actors picked up the energy from the audience, and audience and actors rose to higher and higher pitches, each feeding off the other.
Frustrated at the destruction of his mate-to-be, the monster hunted down Frankenstein’s friend, Henry Clerval, and strangled him. Roderick, as the monster, was so caught up in the enthusiasm, he was perhaps a bit too realistic. Robert Scott, who played Clerval, collapsed, as he was supposed to, and was carried off stage, as the script called for, and the audience forgot him as the play moved on to further delights—Frankenstein’s honeymoon with his bride of not quite one day.
Becca was at her emoting best in the honeymoon hotel. Stage thunder and lightning presaged the coming of the monster. The bridegroom heard her scream, dashed into the honeymoon suite, saw his bride lying limp on the bed and the monster scrambling out of the window.
“Bravo! Bravo!” Whistles. Rhythmic and prolonged applause.
In the wings, Dearborn, sweating profusely under his black wig, directed the substitute players to their places.
“Explorer! Where’s the explorer?” Dearborn called out, and when no one responded, he shouted again: “Nora! Act Three, Scene Five. Read Scott’s part at my deathbed. On stage, everyone! Quickly, quickly!”
“Frankenstein! Explorer! Monster! Places!” Nora called out. She picked up a copy of the script and took her own place at Dearborn’s side, where he had flung himself onto his bed.
Although the stage was fairly dark for the scene change, the
audience could still see enough to feel a part of the show, and called out instructions to the stagehands and actors.
audience could still see enough to feel a part of the show, and called out instructions to the stagehands and actors.
Dearborn, as Frankenstein, gasped his last. Nora, as the Arctic explorer, promised woodenly to carry out Frankenstein’s deathbed wish to kill the monster. Roderick, in trying to climb through the porthole, tore it out of its plywood setting and ended up with it around his neck like a horse collar.
“Shit!” shouted Roderick.
Dearborn sat up.
Nora pulled the constricting porthole off Roderick’s neck.
Dearborn lay down again. The monster raged. Nora thumbed through the script, seized the pistol that lay beside the bed, and aimed it at Dearborn.
“Not Frankenstein!” shouted the corpse. “The monster!”
“Bravo!” shouted the audience.
Nora lifted the pistol and aimed it at the monster. The audience hushed as the monster waited for Nora to pull the trigger, and when the shot finally came, ending the play in a glorious explosion, a brilliant burst of flame, a cloud of smoke, and the smell of gunpowder, the audience rose as one in a standing ovation that went on and on and on and on …
Curtain call. A second. A third. After the fourth curtain call, the monster tugged off his bathing cap wig and pulled off the makeup that had taken him an hour to apply.
Karen and Tracy together shrieked, “Roddie!”
“I’m heading for Island Java,” said George, as they stood up and waited for their turn to leave the auditorium. “Care to join me?”
Karen and Tracy looked uncertainly at each other. “The last bus is at midnight.”
George grinned. “We can always hitchhike.”
“Why not?” said Tracy, and the three, holding hands in the flush of excitement over the play, ran down Church Street to Main Street, and from there to the coffeehouse, giggling.
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