Backstage in the wings, Frank Earp was all eyes and ears during the first act, as if the show were a mirage that would vanish if he even blinked. His entire body was engaged, a kinetic sympathy of muscles and nerves. When their Ravenal, as dumb and handsome as a Ravenal should be, jumped ahead several pages, he and Carmen, his student assistant—she stood at Frank’s side with the open prompt book—hissed and whispered him back to his cue. The Magnolia was a pro, however, and didn’t even flinch. Then Tony, their Joe, sang his reprise of “Old Man River” as sweetly as always. Frank quickly pulled the curtain closed, and the first act ended.
Instantly, Magnolia, Joe, and the rest turned back into children. They all went a little crazy, giggling and jumping around, scuffing up the dust backstage and spilling out into the hall.
“Guys!” cried Frank. “Chill! You did great, but we got one more act.” He refused to play dictator-schoolteacher. That was Mrs. Anderson’s job. She was a music teacher, while Frank wasn’t any kind of teacher, only a ringer hired to help stage a school show. He’d never worked with kids before. They weren’t so different from other actors, just shorter.
The show was going well, however. Nobody froze, no cues were flubbed beyond repair. The audience was nicely slapped by niggers. Frank had been surprised Mrs. Anderson wanted to use the lyric, but the old lady wasn’t as old-fashioned as she liked to pretend. Tonight was opening night, tomorrow closing. It felt funny to work for six weeks on a show for just two performances, yet it gave the thing a kind of purity. Frank rode the same adrenaline roller coaster that had carried him through shows back when he was an actor himself.
“I’m only in it for the long green,” he joked to friends. The P.T.A. actually was paying him two thousand dollars. In his darker, hour-of-the-wolf moments, however, Frank feared a show like this was a dirty trick to play on kids, giving them a taste for something they could never get in real life.
Frank Earp had come to New York ten years ago, straight out of college in Tennessee, thinking he could have an acting career, a life in the theater. Well, he couldn’t. After a decade of showcases, road shows, regional theater gigs, and temp work, last year he had taken a full-time job as office manager for an investor. It was good to have a steady income. It was a joy to say good-bye to acting. Yet the job left him with mental space and time for projects like this one. He was also directing a play for his former roommates uptown, a set of skits to be performed in their apartment on West 104th Street—Frank had his own place now, in Hoboken. It was wild to be doing two shows simultaneously, one with kids, the other with grown-ups, so-called, especially after his decision to say “Fuck theater.” It never rained but it poured. This was only his hobby now, not his life. He preferred it that way. He had more time for life, meaning leisure, money, love.
He had spotted Jessie Doyle out front tonight. First he heard her laugh—single, sharp, birdlike notes of delight—then he recognized her goofy, lopsided grin out in the shadows. Frank was overjoyed that she’d come. He was distracted too, but it was a good distraction, like looking forward to the next movie in a double feature. When a song or scene went well and Frank could relax, he felt this show was not the only good thing that could happen tonight.
He stepped out into the hall to compare notes with Mrs. Anderson. He could call her Harriet to her face, but she radiated such old-lady authority that he still thought of her as Mrs. Anderson.
He found her at the drinking fountain. “So what do you think, Harriet? Will we get through this in one piece?”
She looked at him with her enormous, world-weary eyes. “Oh, they’ll enjoy whatever their little darlings do,” she said. “But I’m having a lovely time. Aren’t you?”
He laughed. This was the smart approach to theater, the sane approach. Mrs. Anderson was well into her old-lady Zen years, and Frank was constantly learning things from her. “I’ll have fun if you have fun,” he promised. “See you later.”
He found Carmen waiting for him backstage. “Guess who’s here, Frank? You’ll never guess. Not in a hundred years.”
“Just tell me, sweetcakes. We got work to do.”
Carmen, who was twelve, took on a chummy, big-sister air around Frank. He suspected she had a crush on him—a safe, make-believe crush. She was no Lolita, just a smart kid with bib overalls and pierced ears who was eager to be a grown-up.
“The Times!” Carmen announced.
“Yeah, right. Get out of here.”
“No, really. Not Bickle, but the number two guy. Prager.”
Leave it to Village kids to know the pecking order at the Times. “I should hope so. He’s Rosalind’s daddy.” The girl had innocently dropped the fact early in rehearsals. “My daddy says that the problem with theater today is…” And who’s your daddy? “Kenneth Prager of Arts and Leisure.”
Carmen looked disappointed. Frank assumed that would be the end of it, but then the cast returned from the hall and toilets and he overheard Captain Andy and Magnolia whispering, “Did you hear? The Times!” Then Tony, his beautiful Joe with the church angel voice, came up and said, “Is it true, Mr. Earp? The Times is here tonight?”
“It’s Rosalind’s daddy, dammit!” He clapped his hands. “Come on, guys. Get your butts in the wings. Now!”
The second act began, and the kids performed differently, more deliberate and determined. They turned into little marionettes of self-consciousness, clumsy and coquettish—all for the sake of the New York Times. It broke Frank’s heart. Damn Prager. He imagined him sitting out there like God, as if the show were solely for his benefit. Slowly, however, by the third number, the kids became themselves again, their self-consciousness turning back into I-can’t-believe-I’m-doing-this ticklishness. They came back to life, gracefully awkward, awkwardly graceful. They were beautiful.
Frank loved children. He was in awe of them, touched and fascinated by their look and size and needs. He wanted one of his own. It was a recent development, the real reason he took this job, in fact. He hoped to cure himself. Just as walking a neighbor’s collie two years ago had killed his desire to own a dog, he thought a school play would end his fantasies about fatherhood. And they were fantasies. He was thirty-one, a bachelor. There were a couple of girlfriends in the past, but none he wanted to marry. He knew his desire to populate the world with half-shares of his chromosomes was solely about him, not his love of a particular woman. Some Russian author, not one of the giants but a later, forgotten figure—even Frank couldn’t remember his name—once wrote that a man wants children only when he’s given up on his own life. Frank pleaded guilty.
Nevertheless, his love for Jessie Doyle—and he was in love with her, in a hopeful, sketchy kind of way—did not include telling her “I want you to have my child.” He might be getting primal but he was not Neanderthal. Besides, Show Boat had done its job. It had taken the romance out of children. Frank still liked them, as people, but he also understood that, like people, they could be real pains in the ass.
As the show approached its end, the players quickened their pace, like horses returning to the stable. Their eagerness gave their performances a new liveliness. Then the finale began, each performer taking one last turn. Frank held his breath. And suddenly, he could breathe again. It was over.
The applause started, the curtain calls began. Frank remained backstage, playing traffic cop for kids going out for bows. He had counted on curtain calls and rehearsed them, but he did not immediately appreciate the noise out front. It filled the auditorium: a sun shower of approval, a rainstorm of love. The kids stood out onstage openmouthed, delighted to find themselves adored. They began to wave at Frank to join them, first Magnolia, then the others, insisting he share this glory. Frank started out, then remembered Carmen and grabbed her hand. He hauled the startled girl with him into the shower that turned into a waterfall, a cataract. A few people even shouted, “Bravo!”
Frank was surprised by the old rush of joy. The auditorium was only two-thirds full, but the whoops and hollers and beating hands suggested an audience as big as the world.
Mrs. Anderson stood by her piano, applauding her cast, taking a few bows herself, then applauding Frank.
Frank and the kids applauded her. His tear ducts prickled and he told himself, Don’t be a fool. It’s just a school play. This is just the love of parents for their own.
Yet the high did not pass. He wished he could tell his stars, “Enjoy this now. Remember this. It will never be so pure again.”