Up … and Away

When seventeen-year-old Connie Wilson returned from a trip to Victoria with her normally sandy-brown hair mostly emerald green but with a few pink and purple streaks and explained that that is what thespians do and that she planned to become one, there were repercussions.

But first Connie’s father, Charlie, had to be diverted when he misheard the word “thespian” and started to describe how he, as a liberal-minded modern parent, would support his children no matter what they decided they were, as he had had his own differences to overcome as a youth. He did not clarify that his differences had been mainly with authority and had resulted in two brief custodial stays in the youth residential centre in Burnaby. It was explained to Charlie that Connie’s choice was unrelated to sexual preference—although there were plenty of thespians who enjoy the varieties, as there were no doubt cowboys, mechanics, and cops—but rather it defined those who made their living on stage, screen, and radio, acting.

That was what Connie was setting as her goal, attending drama school. In a month’s time there were auditions being held in Vancouver by the American Musical and Dramatic Academy (AMDA), on West 61st Street in New York City: musical theatre. Her dream. The Wizard of Oz … ruby slippers … Dorothy!

Connie was named in honour of her grandma, Margarita (Maggie) Consuela Pereyra-Mendez Wilson, a woman with an inclination to the dramatic, especially under stress, who, when Connie declared her passion, claimed that the urge to perform came from her side. This may have been borne out after she phoned 911 twice in two weeks, screaming for firefighters after Lennie got the toaster stuck on high. She got Constable Ravina Sidhu, who said, “Hello … emergency … No, I told you last time, Maggie, we don’t have a fire department. There’s just me. Should I bring my extinguisher down?”

Connie sounded like a songbird in the spring, and the kitchen floor at the Wilsons had a growing bare spot in front of the TV where she followed tap-dancing lessons on YouTube.

“This AMDA—how much?” Charlie asked.

Connie was aware that while her dad was a generous man, his pockets were never very deep, and especially lately, after the disappointing negotiations with Samson about the old blue truck at the Swede’s funeral. “Bloody Spinners,” Charlie had grunted.

But Connie was not discouraged. The immediate concern was cash to get to Vancouver and stay for the auditions, and she had a plan. All she needed was her dad’s twelve-foot ladder, which she could repair with duct tape, a bucket, a sponge, and a chamois. She would wash windows.

Her first estimate, at the Inlet seniors complex, was rejected by the resident manager Jeremiah Bell. However, when Connie explained the purpose of her labours, Jeremiah, who had himself spent numerous hours as a background performer, or extra, on the old X-Files and a couple of other Vancouver-made shows, waiting in vain to be discovered, relented.

He advised her to start at the top row of windows so that any water and suds that drifted down to the lower windows would just help with the washing of them.

Connie propped the ladder against the wall so that the top rung, with the bucket attached by a wire hook, was adjacent to the first window on the left of the second floor, the highest. She climbed up, dipped the sponge into the bucket, and began spreading the good news.

Inside the complex, Hyacinth Jakes stepped out of the shower, lifted her robe off the hook, and turned at a squelchy sound from outside. As a ten-year-old girl in her home village in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, she and her junior class had once, in the interest of “introduction to theatre,” been forced to watch a performance by a group of travelling players of the Victorian horror-melodrama The Face at the Window, followed by Maria Marten, or The Murder in the Red Barn. She had been scared silly, and now Connie’s face at the window, wide-eyed from shock as she felt the ladder’s poorly repaired (duct tape) faulty right rail give way, and distorted through a wave of sudsy water, threw Hyacinth into serial-killer flashback mode.

Hyacinth screamed. Connie floated backward and down, still holding the ladder and shouting, “Sooooorrrrry!” as she landed in Jeremiah Bell’s newly prepared vegetable patch, where the soft soil cushioned her arrival.

Jeremiah, with visions of insurance claims dancing in his head, scooped Connie up, made sure she was all right, and paid her in cash from his pocket twice the amount they had agreed on for cleaning all of the windows, not half of one of them. He ran inside, grabbed the phone from Hyacinth, who was about to call for police, pointed out that she really needed to finish getting dressed, and promised her a nice cup of tea.

Charlie Wilson pulled into their driveway where Connie was busy working on the ladder. “How’d your first day go, kid?” he asked.

Connie finished putting the final wrap on a new course of duct tape, tapped it down, and looked up. “I was wondering,” she said, “how many people might be needing their lawns mowed about now.”