“Are you sure you’re okay, Professor Fitch?”
She looks so genuinely concerned.
“I’m fine, Ellie,” I tell her. “All’s well.” I try for a smile, but it cracks.
Ellie gazes at me with her sad eyes that see all.
“You don’t look fine, Professor Fitch.”
“Actually, Ellie, I’m not the best. Truth be told.”
“Are you in pain?” she asks so gently, as if even the question might hurt.
Ellie is so wise. So intuitive.
“Just an injury from my stage days,” I tell her. “I still haven’t recovered, I’m afraid.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.” She looks sorry. Actually lowers her head. I observe the dull blond roots that precede the dull dyed black. “Is there anything I can do?”
She looks at me exactly, exactly the way I would want Helen to look at the ailing King of France when she offers to cure him with her dead father’s ointment. Is it an ointment? A remedy. Some might even say a spell. Her desire to help is genuine, but she desires something in return too, something unspeakable.
I want to tell her, Ellie, I hope you know the only reason I don’t cast you in lead roles is because of bitch Briana’s parents. How I wish I could have cast you as Juliet last season. You would have been so perfect with your melancholy fire and your cheeks that burn bright at the sight of Trevor, our Romeo. You would have been in close proximity to Trevor for three months. Three afternoons a week, you would have felt his teenage breath on your face. You would have breathed in his boyish musk. You would have looked up into his empty, beautiful eyes. His dumb, deep voice would have been at your ear, his lips close to your unpierced fuzzy lobe, making all the dark hairs on your pale body stand on end. He would have crushed your cold hands in his sweaty warm ones. He would have given you things to masturbate about for months, perhaps years; you would revisit this material in the dark, after a day of tending to a cruel and ailing mother who fails to see your gifts. How I would love to have given you this experience, as your drama teacher, as a kind of other mother. Rather than see you off to the side, in old woman’s makeup and dowdy servant’s clothes, playing the nurse. Giving Briana/Juliet pep talks backstage. Watching Briana and Trevor from the wings, smoldering with envy, grief. Ah, but it deepened your soul. It gave you pain. Pain is a great actor’s gift, Ellie. It is a burden but it is a gift too. To be mined. If one is in control of one’s pain, of course.
I want to tell her, You are my true Helen.
But I say none of this. Instead I say, “You understand pain, Ellie. I hope you know that’s a gift. As a theater minor.”
Ellie doesn’t know what to say. I’ve made her uncomfortable. She looks down at her boring black clothes as if there were a response somewhere in their linty folds. A small, cheap silver pentacle dangles from her neck.
“Thank you,” she mumbles to her knees.
I really don’t know what you see in that girl, Grace often says.
Everything, I tell Grace. And I cry a little if I’m drunk. And Grace looks away.
She’s a little creepy if you ask me, she once said.
Aren’t we all a little creepy at that age? I asked Grace. I certainly was. Weren’t you?
No, Grace said.
I look at Ellie now, her silence containing multitudes. “What can I do for you, Ellie?”
“I wanted to warn you,” Ellie says, looking up at me, her pale face grave.
“Warn me?”
She nods. Looks over her shoulder at the hallway. She left my door half-open. Too late to close it now. “There’s been some… dissatisfaction.”
“Dissatisfaction?”
“Dissent.”
I smile, though it hurts my hip, my spine, my pelvis, my femur bones. “Which is it, Ellie? Dissatisfaction or dissent?”
She looks over her shoulder again, then back at me.
“I think a complaint is going to be made,” she whispers.
I burn. Spine seethes. Hip swells. Legs are screaming for me to rise even though I can’t stand up any more than I can remain seated. “A complaint?”
She nods.
“About what?” Even though of course I know about what. And I know who is responsible. Can picture her at the helm, flipping her burnished hair in righteous outrage, amassing validation from her Ashley/Michelles, emboldened by Fauve, who no doubt took her aside after rehearsal. My dear, I just want you to know that I witnessed Miranda’s pigheadedness firsthand, and I feel you’re absolutely within your rights. It’s your theater club, after all. If you need anyone to back you up, you just let me know. Trevor, her right-hand man, nodding dumbly like First Murderer in Macbeth. All of them marching to the dean’s office together.