The Fat Lady Sings (16 page)
"Sure," says Cynthia, "He's Barnaby. He's really funny."
"Right, well, Elliot said to me one day, and I'll never forget this because we were in seventh grade and it just seemed so wise for a thirteen-year-old. He said, 'The best way to disarm someone is to use the weapon yourself.'"
"What does that mean?" says Cynthia.
"It took him a while to explain it, but basically it means, if it bothers me that people call me fat, I should just call myself fat. I should turn fat from an insult into a compliment. When someone calls me fat I should just say, 'you bet I am, and proud of it.'"
"And did you do that?"
"It didn't happen right away, but yeah, gradually I just started to look at fat as part of my identity, part of what makes me special. And I embraced it -- not just my size, but the word: 'fat.' And I did feel better. I mean, I'd be lying if I told you it doesn't hurt when I walk down the hall and some football jock says 'Make way for the wide load,' but it hurts less than it used to, and when I blow him a kiss and say 'Thanks for noticing,' and people start laughing at him instead of me, it hurts a lot less."
"So getting up on the stage and singing about being fat is just, what, empowering yourself?"
"Exactly," I say.
"I don't think I could do that," says Cynthia.
"You're skinny," I say, "You don't have to."
"Do you honestly think that fat people are the only ones with body image problems?" says Cynthia.
I want to say something about her purchased boobs, but I can tell by this intensely sad look on her face that this is not the time. "But you have a really nice figure," I say, hoping that's tactful enough.
"Do you even remember last year?" she says, "or the year before? Believe me, I know what it's like to be afraid to walk down the hall past the jocks and the cool kids. I mean, sure, I was skinny, but I was so self-conscious about my chest. Remember? I had nothing. Everybody else grew up except for flat-chested little Cynthia Pirelli. And it wasn't just the guys in the hall who teased me, it was the girls, too, especially in the locker room."
"Yeah, I know about the locker room," I say. "Although I didn't have that much trouble after about eighth grade because I think they all knew I could beat them up. Or at least sit on them til they stopped breathing."
"That would have been nice," said Cynthia. "In ninth grade, one of the girls stole my bra out of my locker while I was in the shower and they started tossing it around playing keepaway and saying that I didn't need a bra anyway because I had nothing to hold up and saying they were gonna show the padding to all the boys because they believed in truth in advertising." A single tear rolls down Cynthia's cheek, and I suddenly want to hug her, but I don't.
"That's horrible," I say.
"That's when I stopped doing sports," says Cynthia. "Not that that helped. They still called me Little Miss A-Cup all the way through tenth grade."
"Not very imaginative," I say. And I ache -- because, even though I never did it to her face, I called her that.
"No kidding," says Cynthia. "And then the next year -- last year -- I was in the same English class as you, remember?"
"Who could forget first period with Dr. Allen?" I say. "That's when I learned how to drink coffee."
"I had never met you before and I remember just staring at you in class because I was so jealous of your figure."
"You were jealous of me?" I say. I have to say, of all the chicken feathers that have ever threatened to knock my ass over, Cynthia Pirelli saying that she envied me my body was the biggest. I mean holy crap!
"You had a chest," says Cynthia, "and you were curvy."
"I'd say 'curvy' is putting a positive spin on things."
"Anyway, that's when I started talking to my therapist about these," says Cynthia, pointing to her boobs, which I am feeling more and more guilty about making fun of with each passing second.
"You have a therapist?" I ask.
"You won't tell anybody, will you?" says Cynthia.
"Of course not," I say, and I think this is it -- this is the moment when Cynthia Pirelli and I become friends.
"Anyway, my therapist said that sometimes surgery can really help self-esteem in cases like mine, so once I turned eighteen we decided to give it a try. I mean, think about when you hated being fat."
"I still do plenty of the time," I say.
"Right, well, imagine you could take a week off school, have an operation, and you wouldn't be fat anymore. Wouldn't you do it?"
"I don't know," I say, and it's true, I really don't. I mean, I've heard about that stomach stapling thing, but that's not exactly the same as a boob job. "I might. I think it depends on what day you made the offer."
"I would have taken that deal any day," says Cynthia.
"And did it solve the problem?" I ask.
"It wasn't a panacea," says Cynthia.
"Nice SAT word."
"But I definitely don't feel as self-conscious as I did."
"They do look -- really nice," I say.
"Having the surgery didn't exactly change who I am," says Cynthia, "but it did change the way people see me. Especially boys. I mean, sure, now they look at me because of my chest, but at least they look at me."
We sit there in silence for a minute, and I think we both know what a big deal this conversation is, that now we are bound together in a way that neither of us is bound to anyone else, and it's weird to feel that this monumental event -- the forging of this most unlikely bond -- is taking place in the middle of a school full of hundreds of people, yet nobody knows about it. How can something so major be so secret?
"I'm sorry you had to go through all that," I say.
"You really do have some nice curves," says Cynthia.
And I smile, and now I can't stop myself and I reach out and wrap her in a hug and the next thing I know we are both crying.
You know how the Eskimos have like fifty words for snow? I think teenage girls should have fifty words for crying. I mean, I know there's "sobbing" and "bawling," but those are mostly just heavy duty crying. They're about intensity, not quality. When you're eighteen, there are
lots
of different kinds of crying, and Cynthia and I go through most of them in the next fifteen minutes before the bell rings. And I'm feeling relief and anger and love and hate and guilt and forgiveness and loss and at least forty-seven other emotions and I know she is, too.
So whatever you call that kind of crying session -- catharsis or melodrama or teen angst on steroids -- that's what we do until the bell rings and we wipe off our faces, and head off to fifth period, both making up stories about our allergies acting up.
Rehearsals are going well.
David is complaining less about my singing and hasn't asked why I'm not going to see Mrs. Carleton. Suzanne has a whole gang of kids from the youth group hammering and painting scenery in the hallways of the Sunday School building, and Melissa Parsons is helping out, too. Her Mom ungrounded her long enough for her to be on the set crew, which is nice. Elliot is working with another group organizing ticket sales, posters, concessions, programs, and everything else that never occurred to me when I started writing a play. Taylor has done an amazing job of learning a massive amount of blocking and dialogue in just a couple of weeks. I'm starting to think that this is really going to happen.
The only person who worries me is Cameron -- he seems really tired and stressed. On nights when he drives me home he hardly says anything at all, and he used to chatter nonstop about the minutiae of directing. He's spending less time jumping up on stage and working with us on some great little character bit and more time sitting behind his script just watching us, saying almost nothing when a scene is over. He also keeps changing the rehearsal schedule, and frankly, I think we're not spending nearly enough time on Act II. We've worked Act I to death, and it's good, really good -- but there are two scenes in Act II we haven't even blocked yet, and the rest of the act is still super rocky.
On Friday Mom lets me borrow her car, because I want to get to rehearsal early and practice my songs alone in the fellowship hall. My voice sounds nice and full in the practice room now that Cynthia has taught me a little about breathing, but the fellowship hall is about a thousand times bigger than the practice room, and we're working Act II tonight at last and I haven't sung those songs in front of David and Cameron and Elliot since before I started my secret singing lessons, so I want to run through them on my own before anyone else shows up.
The outside door to the fellowship hall is locked, but Taylor showed us a door by the church office that's usually unlocked, so I go in there and cut through the Sunday School building. As I'm walking down the hall I hear a voice coming from one of the classrooms, and as I get closer I realize it's the room where we usually have our production meetings, and it's Cameron's voice. Did I have a brain fart and forget we had a meeting today?
The door is slightly ajar, and I hear Cameron say, "OK, enough about details, let's cut to the chase. What are we going to do about Act II?"
Thank goodness,
I think. He realizes how behind we are.
I'm just about to push open the door and say "Sorry I'm late," when Elliot says, "We're going to have to tell Aggie. I mean, we can't just rewrite the script without her."
Rewrite the script? What's he talking about?
"Besides," says Cameron, "we're not just talking about tweaking a few lines here and there. It needs to be totally reworked. I mean, I'm sorry, but Act II as it stands is enough to tax anyone's abilities as a director. Taylor, tell everybody what you told me."
Taylor? They invited Taylor to a production meeting and not me?
"Only that I was thinking about it, after Cameron said the other night that he was worried about the second act. I was trying to figure out why it wasn't working, and it seems to me the first act is set up just like a romantic comedy -- you know, two characters meet, they seem really different and mismatched, then they start a relationship. I mean, this one isn't romantic, it's just friendship, but it's basically the same thing."
"That makes sense," says Elliot.
"The problem is, nothing new happens after the first act. They just keep having the same relationship. In the movies they always break up -- there's usually some sort of misunderstanding or something -- and then at the very end one of them does something wild and crazy to prove their love and they get back together."
"So," says Elliot, "if Aggie and Suzy get mad at each other halfway through Act II and then get back together in the end -- "
"It would basically be a friendship version of a romantic comedy," says Taylor.
"Like the girl version of a bromance," says Elliot.
"I thought it sounded like a good idea," says Cameron, "and it would mean only rewriting the second half of the act."
So Cameron and Taylor have been scheming behind my back. Why didn't Cameron come to me? Why didn't Taylor come to me? Why am I, the person who actually wrote the script, the last to discover that nobody likes it?
"It would be nice if she only has to rewrite half an act," says Taylor, "because that's more than enough new material to learn two weeks before opening."
"Yeah, but aren't you forgetting something?" says Suzanne, speaking up for the first time. "What about Aggie? Do you remember what happened last time we asked her for a rewrite? And that was before rehearsals or anything."
"I see a diva fit coming," says Cameron.
"That's all I'm saying," says Suzanne.
"Is she really that bad?" says Taylor.
"She's pretty bad," says Cameron.
And up until then I was almost OK. So they want a re-write -- sure it's a pain, sure it hurts that they don't like Act II, sure I wish someone had said something earlier, sure I wish they hadn't talked about it behind my back, but hey, it's the theatre. Broadway playwrights do rewrites during previews. But the fact that they don't believe in me enough to think I can take a little criticism, the fact that they think I am so much of a baby that I get angry at every little thing, the fact that they think I'm going to tear their heads off or something -- well, that makes me want to tear their heads off or something.
"So who's gonna tell her," says Suzanne.
"I should," says Cameron.
"No, I should," says Elliot. "I'm the producer, I should take the heat."
Well, if heat is what they want, then that's exactly what they won't get. I push the door, it swings open, and they all turn and look at me like the bride of Frankenstein just walked in the room.
"Hello, Taylor," I say, as icily as I can, and believe me, when it comes to ice, right now I am the queen. "I didn't realize that backstabbing was a Christian virtue, but bravo. Well done."
"Aggie," says Elliot, but I'm not about to let him get a word in.
"Cameron," I say, calmly picking up his director's script from the table and tucking it under my arm. "I understand you are not quite up to the job of directing a 'concept musical,' as you called it. I'll see if I can't make it a little less challenging for you."
"Aggie, really," says Elliot, but I'm on a roll now.
"I'm sorry to disappoint you all by not throwing a temper tantrum, but perhaps in the future if you twist the knife a little more you can still get me to scream. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have work to do. I won't be at rehearsal tonight, Cameron. You might make a note of that. I know you have a lot to keep track of and I wouldn't want to tax your abilities."
Always exit on the callback,
I think, and I turn and walk down the hall.
Of course as soon as I reach the corner I break into a run, because I know they'll be coming after me. Thank god I drove myself tonight, because before they have any chance of catching up to me I've flung Cameron's script into the back seat and screeched out of the parking lot, spewing gravel after me.
OK, so maybe the exit wasn't completely calm, but I think I did pretty well under the circumstances.
I expect to start crying as soon as I am clear of the parking lot, but instead I'm just angry. And I'm angry that they predicted I would be angry and that makes me more angry. I'm surprised there's not steam coming out of the car.
