Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
1
That Veronica and I were given keys and told to come early on a frozen Saturday in April to open the school for the Our Town auditions was proof of our dull reliability. The play’s director, Mr. Martin, was my grandmother’s friend and State Farm agent. That’s how I was wrangled in, through my grandmother, and Veronica was wrangled because we did pretty much everything together. Citizens of New Hampshire could not get enough of Our Town. We felt about the play the way other Americans felt about the Constitution or the “Star--Spangled Banner.” It spoke to us, made us feel special and seen. Mr. Martin predicted a large turnout for the auditions, which explained why he needed use of the school gym for the day. The community theater production had nothing to do with our high school, but seeing as how Mr. Martin was also the principal’s insurance agent and very likely his friend, the request was granted. Ours was that kind of town.
We arrived with our travel mugs of coffee and thick paperback novels, Firestarter for Veronica and Doctor Zhivago for me. I liked school fine but hated the gym and everything it stood for: team sports, pep rallies, vicious games of kickball, running in circles when it was too cold to go outside, formal dances, graduations. But on that Saturday morning the place was empty and strangely beautiful. The sunlight poured in through the narrow windows just below the roofline. I don’t think I’d ever realized the gym had windows. The floors and the walls and the bleachers were all made of the same strips of pale wood. The stage was on one end behind the basketball hoop, its heavy red curtains pulled back to reveal matte--black nothingness. That’s where the action was scheduled to take place. We had instructions to set up one banquet table and five folding chairs in front of the stage （“Close but not too close,” Mr. Martin had told us） and then ninety--two feet away, under the opposing basketball hoop, we were to set up a second banquet table right in front of the doors to the lobby. That second table was for registration, which was our job. We wrestled the two folding tables from the storage closet. We brought out folding chairs. We were to spend our morning explaining how to fill out the form: Name, Stage Name if Different, Height, Hair Color, Age （in categories of seven years—please check one）， Phone Number. The hopefuls had been asked to bring a headshot and a résumé, listing all the roles they’d played before. We had a cup full of pens. For people who arrived without résumés there was space to write things in, and Veronica was prepared to take a Polaroid of anyone who didn’t have a headshot and then paper--clip it to the form. Mr. Martin told us we weren’t to make anyone feel embarrassed for having less experience because, and this was what he actually said, “Sometimes that’s where the diamonds are.”
But Veronica and I were not theater girls. Theater girls had not been asked to do this job in case they wanted to try out for a part. We were regular girls who would’ve had no idea how to make adults feel judged based on their lack of theatrical experience. Once we had the person’s paperwork, we were to hand over the pages they would be asked to read from, which Mr. Martin told us were called “sides,” along with a number printed on a square of paper, and then we would direct them back out to the lobby to wait.
When the doors opened at eight o’clock, so many people flooded in that Veronica and I had to hustle back to our table to get ahead of the crowd. We were instantly, overwhelmingly at work.
“Yes,” I assured one woman and then another, “if you read for Mrs. Gibbs, you’ll still be considered for Mrs. Webb.” What I didn’t say, though it was rapidly becoming evident, was that if you read for Emily you would still be considered for Emily’s mother. In a high school production it was not uncommon for someone fifteen to play the parent of someone seventeen, but community theater was a different cat. That morning the hopefuls were all ages, not just old men looking to be the Stage Manager, but college types who came to read for Emily and George. （The Emilys wore too much makeup and dressed like the Amish girls who sold cinnamon buns at the farmer’s market. The Georges slyly checked out the other Georges.） Bona fide children approached our table announcing they were there to read for Wally or Rebecca. Parents must have been looking for childcare because what ten--year--old boy announces over breakfast that he wants to be Wally Webb?
“If all these people come back and buy a ticket, they’ll have a smash on their hands,” Veronica said. “The whole production can go straight to Broadway and we’ll be rich.”
“How does that make us rich?” I asked.
Veronica said she was extrapolating.
Mr. Martin had thought of everything except clipboards, which turned out to be a real oversight. People were using our table as a desk, creating a bottleneck in the flow of traffic. I tried to decide if it was more depressing to see the people I knew or the people I didn’t know. Cheryl, who worked the register at Major Market and must have been my mother’s age, was holding a résumé and headshot in her mittened hands. If Cheryl had always wanted to be an actress, I didn’t think I could ever go to the grocery store again. Then there were the rafts of strangers, men and women bundled in their coats and scarves, looking around the gym in a way that made it clear they’d never seen it before. It struck me as equally sad to think of these people driving for who knew how long on this frozen morning because it meant they were willing to keep driving here for rehearsals and performances straight into summer.
“？‘All the world’s a stage,’？” Veronica said, because Veronica could read my mind, “and all the men and women merely want to be players.”
I accepted a résumé and headshot from the father of my friend Marcia, which she pronounced Mar--see--a. I had sat at this man’s dinner table, ridden in the back seat of his station wagon when he took his family for ice cream, slept in the second twin bed of his daughter’s rose--pink bedroom. I pretended not to know him because I thought that was the kindest course of action.
“Laura,” he said, smiling with all his teeth. “Good morning! Some sort of crowd.”
I agreed that it was, then gave him his number and the sides and told him to go back out to the lobby to wait.
“Where’s the restroom?” he asked.
It was mortifying. Even the men wanted to know where the restroom was. They wanted to fluff up their hair that had been flattened by sock hats. They wanted to read their part aloud to themselves in the mirror to see how they looked. I told him the one by the Language Arts Center would be less crowded.
“You girls look busy,” my grandmother said. She came up from behind us just as Marcia’s father walked away.
“Do you want a part?” Veronica asked her. “I know people. I can make you a star.” Veronica loved my grandmother. Everyone did.
“I’m just here to take a look.” My grandmother glanced back to the table in front of the stage to indicate that she would be sitting with Mr. Martin and the theater people. My grandmother, who owned Stitch--It, the alterations shop in town, had volunteered to make the costumes, which meant that she’d volunteered me to make the costumes as well since I worked for her after school. She kissed the top of my head before crossing the long, empty stretch of the basketball court towards that faraway table.