Massonville 1973
Des walked across the stage to the old trapdoor. She opened it, and began descending the rickety ladder—the original wooden one made in 1876—to the basement below the opera house. She climbed down the first three rungs, then reached up to close the trap over her head, before she continued down in the dark.
She didn't have to risk life and limb getting down to the lower regions of the opera house; on the side of the stage there was a perfectly good staircase that went to the basement. But she'd been going down this way since she and Hank were kids.
The air in the basement was damp, and it smelled old. Once, Des had tried to sweep the concrete floor—also original from 1876—but it had been a waste of time. The space seemed to breed dust. She turned on her flashlight so she wouldn't trip over the old elevator, a platform that had carried actors up to the stage level in the old days when plays featured witches and ghosts. The elevator and the trap were never used now, but no one had bothered to dismantle them. The stage had been modernized a couple of times over the years, but the basement hadn't been touched since the opera house was built. The smell was probably original too.
Des tolerated the smell because the basement was one of the few places in the opera house where she could escape from Ma and Hank and their only topic of conversation—keeping the theater afloat. Or, as Ma liked to put it, “carrying on our glorious legacy.” As if that mattered, with everything else that was going on in the world.
The war in Vietnam had finally ended after protests, marches, black armbands, and four kids getting themselves shot at Kent State. The Supreme Court had voted that women had the right to have abortions; the Pill and the sexual revolution had changed the world forever; and the Beatles had written a song about Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. There were new allegations coming out about Tricky Dickey and that burglary at the Watergate Hotel. The times, they really were a-changin’, but her brother, who should have been in the big-ass middle of it with everyone else his age, spent his time helping Ma rent out the opera house for road shows in the winter, and running their summer theater after June. There were times when Des couldn't believe she was related to Hank.
She certainly didn't look like either Ma or Hank. Ma was short, and although Hank was muscular, he wasn't tall. They both shared the same curly black hair and strong masculine features, which looked lots better on Hank than they did on Ma. Des was tall and fair with a delicate chin and a small upturned nose. Boys thought she was cute until she started talking about politics. Her friend Bill Killian said she ran them off. She said it was a compliment when dumb rednecks didn't like her.
Des let her flashlight beam play around the walls of the basement. In the 1870s, the space had been used as a storage place for props. The goblets, masks, shields, and tea services had been all laid out on a long table placed against the right wall. Today, all the props and costumes were stored in a moth-proof room in the attic, but the ancient prop table was still in its original spot. Des kept a stack of her news magazines on it—she read them voraciously—and her stash of batteries for the flashlight. The magazines and the batteries were a bone of contention with Ma.
“They're so expensive, sugar,” Ma would say in her sweet, tired voice. “Do you have to subscribe to three periodicals each month? We need a new cloak for Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest.”
It did no good for Des to point out that she had earned the money for the magazines and the flashlight batteries by working after school as a cashier at Winn-Dixie. When Ma needed something for the theater, she assumed you'd be thrilled to help her, and if you weren't, she'd been known to raid handbags and piggy banks. She was always shocked if you got mad. That was why Des had put her earnings in the bank. The money she earned was for college.
College was another bone of contention with Ma. “Theater people don't need a formal education,” she'd told Hank and Des. “When you're producing Shakespeare, you read about the Tudors, when it's Chekhov you study the Russians—we learn what we need when we need it, and no school can predict what that will be.”
“I'm not a ‘theater person,’ Ma,” Des had said once.
“You'll get over that, sugar,” Ma had said, as if Des were five years old and going through a phase.
But a college diploma was going to be Des's ticket to a new life. Furthermore, she was going to get that very important document in Massachusetts, because she, Desdemona Venable, had won a scholarship to prestigious Wellesley College. It was the first time a girl from her high school had even gotten in to a Seven Sisters school, and the principal had wanted to hold a congratulatory supper for her. Her mother couldn't have been less impressed.
Now Des sat in the lawn chair she'd dragged down to the basement. She turned on her flashlight, pulled out the ham biscuit she'd grabbed from the breakfast table, and opened her new copy of Time. She couldn't read long this morning; she had to get to the Winn-Dixie early so she could ask her manager for double shifts during the summer. Her Wellesley scholarship covered only her tuition; she still had to pay for her own room, board, books, and travel.
She could have had a job at the opera house for the summer, but if you were one of Ma's kids, you got a paycheck when it was convenient. If it ever was. “Don't we all have a roof over our heads and food on our table?” Ma would say happily when you asked for your money. “Aren't we ‘one for all and all for one’?” Then she'd haul Des and Hank out into the garden to look at the statues of Uncle Edward and the great Juliet Venable, who had started the whole mess.
“Just think of the gift they gave us.” Ma's face would glow with joy. “Think how lucky we are to have our legacy!”
And Hank, the fool, would nod his head up and down like one of those little bobbing dolls you won for shooting tin rabbits at the county fair.
Des put down her magazine, and closed her eyes. There had been a time when Hank had been different. When they were little, they had agreed that they'd rather be eaten by snakes than grow up to be Venables and carry on their damn legacy. But then Ma snookered Hank into performing at the theater, and he turned out to be a good character actor. He never really had the dash to play leads, but if you needed a goofy sidekick or a stalwart best friend, Hank was your guy.
It wasn't until he turned sixteen, when Ma started “grooming” him to take over the old hellhole, that he really started to change his tune about being a Venable.
“If I want to be an actor, what's the point of doing commercial crap in New York or Los Angeles when I can have great parts right here at home?” he asked Des one steamy summer night.
It was evening and they'd escaped the heat of the apartment to sit on the front steps of the opera house. In the distance Des could see the river.
“If you act in commercial crap, at least it'll be your career,” she said. “If you stay here, you'll be a part of the glorious legacy.”
“Is that bad?”
“You've always said it was.”
“Maybe I'm growing up. This theater is mine. When Ma turns it over to me, I'll be my own boss.”
She tried another angle. “How are you going to act in the shows and run the theater? Even Ma couldn't do that, and she hates to sleep.”
“I'll act in two plays each season.”
“That's not a lot.”
“But I'll get to pick the plays I act in.” He drew in a breath. “It's the best of all worlds.”
The words had come straight from their mother's mouth; Des could hear Ma saying them. And she knew there was no point in fighting with Hank anymore. Ma seemed so gentle and sweet, but she always managed to get what she wanted—from everyone except her daughter.
Des put the magazine aside reluctantly. One of Tricky Dickey's aides named John Dean was starting to spill the beans about the Watergate scandal, but she didn't have time to finish the article. How Hank and Ma could survive without even reading a newspaper, she'd never know. The funny part was, Ma had a reputation for being very “with it” politically In fact, if you asked most people in Massonville, her mother was a champion for civil rights.
The story about Ma being a crusader for equality had started back in 1968 when a New York producer had called to book a play called Jessie and Joe into the opera house. It was a romantic comedy that had had a nice Broadway run because of the two charming leading actors who were now taking it out on the road. An Afro-American actress named Leonie Johnston was playing the part of Jessie; the rest of the cast, including the actor playing her love interest, Joe, was white.
“There's no smooching,” the booking agent reassured Ma. “Just a lot of good old-fashioned sexual tension.” Then he added, “But by the end, the audience knows what's going to happen.”
Ma said yes without hesitating. People said she was brave or crazy, depending on where they were coming from. What they didn't know was, Ma agreed to take the play because she knew Leonie.
“You remember her, sugar,” Ma said to Des. “She did small parts for us four summers ago. Leonie is very gifted.”
And that was it. Because while Ma was vague about politics and she wasn't too clear on the names of any civil rights leaders except Martin Luther King, Jr.—who, she said, had a lovely speaking voice—Ma knew talent. And as far as she was concerned, if Leonie Johnston was talented, then Leonie would appear on the stage of the opera house. Ma never stopped to think about how people would react.
As it turned out, there was no negative reaction. Before the acting company left New York, its publicists sent out a story to the press. In it, Ma was described as “a crusader for human dignity,” the Venable Opera House was “an old jewel where equal opportunity flourished,” and Massonville was “an oasis of racial tolerance sitting in the heart of Dixie.”
Several newspapers picked up the story, and then someone at the Today show heard about it. And before long, the mayor of Massonville was on television being interviewed by Hugh Downs. There were probably some people in Massonville who hated what Ma had done, but most of them enjoyed their hometown's moment in the sun. Then the mayor assured the fame of the Venable Opera House and the town by telling Mr. Downs and all of America about Ma's Kiddie Matinée.
The Kiddie Matinée was Ma's invention. Like most summer stock companies, the opera house had a program for apprentices. In most theaters, these kids did the dirty work and paid for the privilege. But Ma gave her apprentices the opportunity to work on the stage. The opera house closed every summer season with a play by Shakespeare. The apprentices were allowed to audition as understudies for the roles in this final production, and one special matinée was given in which they played the roles on the stage in front of an audience. After the mayor had bragged about this performance on the Today show, The New York Times sent a reviewer South to cover the kiddie matinée. The reviewer was so impressed that the newspaper continued to review the event every year afterward. Several other newspapers and magazines got into the act, and over time, dozens of articles were written about the apprentices. Theater Monthly, the only magazine Ma ever read, did a story about them every season.
Naturally all this attention made the theater glamorous. So, even though most of the mills in Massonville had closed and the town was struggling, the Venable Opera House built a new audience. In the summertime, buses full of eager playgoers who had read about the theater came in from all over. An entrepreneur who had refitted several old steamboats for tourists, and sent them up and down the Chattahoochee, even included a play at the Venable Opera House in his cruise package.
“Jessie and Joe was the goose that just keeps on laying golden eggs,” Hank said long after the show had come and gone.
“I always knew Leonie Johnston would be a fine actress,” Ma said.
There were footsteps on the stage above Des's head; Hank and Ma had finished breakfast and were starting a new workday. Des turned off her flashlight and ran for the side stairway, but she was too late. The trapdoor lifted and Ma's head appeared in the dark like a vision at Macbeth's banquet.
“Desdemona, sugar, I know you're down there,” Ma called into the gloom. “Hank and I need you. And I don't want you using this trapdoor anymore; you'll break your neck,” she added. Then she disappeared. Des turned on her flashlight and made her way up the stairs.
The stage floor was covered with pictures of young applicants for the summer apprentice program. There were snapshots, studio portraits, graduation pictures, and a few professional eight-by-ten glossies. Most of the professional photos came from the states surrounding New York City. Each picture was accompanied by an application form in which Ma had included three essay questions. They were the same every year: (1) Give a brief résumé of your theatrical experience—if any. (2) What do you hope to gain from a summer at the Venable Opera House? (3) What are your hopes for the future? Ma swore that the essays helped her pick the best candidates.
As far as Des could see, the apprentice pool was always the same. Most of the kids were conscientious little hopefuls who were never going to make it. There were usually a couple who had a chance, but as far as Des was concerned, all of them were as boring as whale shit.
“Desdemona, come over here,” Ma commanded. She and Hank were sitting on the floor at the back of the stage. “Mind where you step, sugar.”
Des picked her way carefully through the smiling faces until she reached her mother and her brother. There were twenty slots open for apprentices, and they'd narrowed down the field to forty possibilities. This was the point at which, every year, they began fighting. Why Hank bothered to get into it with Ma, was beyond Des, because he never won. But they were at it again. Ma had an application in her hand, and Hank was staring at what had to be the accompanying picture.
“What do you think, Des?” Hank held out the picture to Des.
That was the first time Des saw the girl who called herself Rosalind Harder.