I called Emerson that evening during the small window of time when the signal jammers were taken down, because I thought she’d enjoy hearing about the horses. Again, it’s not like I’d had some intense National Velvet communing-with-animals sort of experience, but I did get to feed a carrot to a horse at the end of the afternoon, and I got to pet his velvety nose, and he huffed warm breath onto my hand, and all of that was basically eleven-year-old Emerson’s life dream.
But my sister was in a bad mood when I reached her. Rehearsals for the fall musical were not going well. She had a small role, again, and she couldn’t really bring herself to care about the show.
“If you had a better role, would you care about it more?” I asked.
“Maybe,” she said.
Emerson had always told me it was critical for everyone involved in a show to take it seriously. It didn’t matter if you were the lead or if you were in the back row of the chorus, she said; the show belonged equally to everyone, and it was in everyone’s power, as a collective, to make it succeed or fall apart. Actors who didn’t take a show seriously just because they had a bit part were not real actors; Emerson had been clear about that for years.
But, of course, whenever she said that, she had been one of the stars.
“You’re still only a sophomore,” I pointed out to her. “You’re a sophomore at one of the best musical theater programs in the country. The bigger roles always go to upperclassmen, you know that. It’s not fair, but that’s how it is. It’ll be different next year.”
“The people in my program are really talented,” she told me.
“I know,” I said. “So are you.”
She heaved a huge sigh, like I was missing the point. I didn’t say anything for a long minute, and then finally she said, “Maybe I’m not as talented as they are.”
“One, I doubt that’s true,” I said. “Two, even if it is true, then you’ll just work extra-hard and you’ll get even better. If anyone can do it, it’s you.”
“God, Winter, stop. I’m not looking for a pep talk.”
“Look, I get that you’re in a pissy mood,” I said, “but you don’t have to take it out on me. I’m not giving you a pep talk because that’s what I think you’re looking for. I’m telling you the truth.”
“See, this is the problem!” Emerson all but shouted. “You make this so hard. You all make this so hard.”
“Who’s ‘you all’?” I demanded. “And what do we make so hard?”
“I’m not that talented. Okay? Can you just listen to the truth? I am a very good actress. I was better than anyone at Berkeley High. But Berkeley High is not the world, and in the rest of the world, there are people better than me. Not a million people, but enough people. And could I be one of the best if I worked even harder? Maybe. I don’t know.
“But I do know that I don’t want to work even harder. I’m tired of working so hard, and it doesn’t actually seem worth it anymore. It was worth it when it was easy. If it’s going to take this much effort, then I don’t think it’s worth it to me.”
“Since when?” I asked. I had trouble believing that she meant any of this. I’d never known my sister to shy away from a challenge. She wasn’t dissuaded from going after things that she wanted just because they were hard to get. If anything, that made her go after them with more energy and focus.
“Since I first started college, basically,” she said.
“This is what you were talking about at the bonfire,” I realized.
An awkward pause. “I didn’t think you’d remember that,” she said.
“I wasn’t drunk. I remember it perfectly. I didn’t think you remembered it. Or meant it.”
“I don’t a hundred percent remember it,” Emerson admitted. “But I did mean it. I don’t … Look, I don’t want to be a professional actress anymore.”
It really didn’t compute. It all seemed like some terrific gag. “What do you want to do, then?” I asked reasonably.
“This is what I’m saying!” she cried. “I don’t know what I want to do. I have no fucking clue. Just not this anymore. But I can’t tell anyone. I can’t tell my friends here, because then I’m not one of them anymore, I don’t care about what they care about, I’m a traitor, essentially. I can’t tell most of the people from home, not my old director because she wanted so badly for me to succeed, and not the other theater kids because they wanted so badly for me to fail. I can’t tell Mom and Dad because they did so much for so many years to get me here. I can’t even tell you because you already have this idea about me and who I’m supposed to be, and it’s like you can’t even hear me when I tell you that that’s not me anymore.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I wasn’t trying to judge you. I’m just … surprised.” But maybe I shouldn’t even have been surprised, because wasn’t this exactly what she had tried to tell me months ago?
“I’m sorry it sounds like I’m mad at you,” she said. “I’m just really frustrated. I don’t know what to do. At the end of last year, I honestly thought that I wouldn’t come back this year. That was my plan. I spent most of that incredibly long car trip from Oklahoma to California practicing how I was going to tell Mom and Dad thank you for supporting my acting career, but now I need to take a semester or two off while I figure out what I want to do with myself.”
And then she had pulled into our driveway and walked inside to a changed family.
“So when I lost my college acceptance,” I said slowly, “you had to go back.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” she said.
“But one of us had to keep doing what we were supposed to be doing,” I said. “And if it couldn’t be me, then it had to be you.” Her silence confirmed it. “Do you think Turn Them Toward the Sun doesn’t actually work at all?” I asked.
“Of course it works,” she said immediately. Our faith in Mom had always been absolute. But now there were so many cracks in it, I wasn’t sure how it could hold itself together.
“I’m just saying, I was supposed to be extraordinary at words. And you were supposed to be extraordinary on stage. Everything was set up for us to be extraordinary. And somehow, it got screwed up. So what does that mean? That Turn Them Toward the Sun doesn’t work? Or that we don’t work?”
“I don’t know,” Emerson said, “and I have to go. I have to be at rehearsal in ten minutes.”
“So what are you going to do?” I asked her.
“I’m going to keep doing what I’ve been doing,” she said as though it were obvious, then added, “What else would I do?”
She had a point. It’s simplest to just keep being who you are, and who everyone expects you to be. It’s when you turn out to be somebody different that everything goes to hell.