Isaac blew a ventricle when I told him I was quitting Mathletes for our school play, his body tremoring like he’d been zapped too hard with a defibrillator. But he was being overdramatic. I wanted him to see my play, that I was more than math. I adorned his play invitation with quips like: Don’t worry, it all adds up in the third act! and Humor is the root of the play!
Ms. Simon shouts, “Places!” from onstage. I’m overtaken with sweat and muttering and nerves and more muttering. Wanted to be here, Isaac will be here, friendship mended. Wanted to be here-
“You’ll do fine,” some-kid-named Neil says, attempting Alegbra while lip syncing “Circle of Life” in the dressing-room mirror.
He became serious. “I had a dream once,” he says, “a Hollywood talent agent was out there.” He jerks his thumb to the door.
“Maybe one day,” I say, thinking of Isaac’s dream. It was the dream he met an MIT professor in the cereal aisle. They were heading for the milk together, but Isaac woke up. He described it as ordinary versus the extraordinary. Somewhere the lines blurred. We hoped it was our future.
I was not sure of my future, the madness of it. Maybe I wanted to be a Mathlete-champion actor. Maybe I should be a mathematician. Maybe I should act like I have the plan. But it was now now now, there’s only time for now. What I long for is a now for then.
My short steps leave the bulbous dressing-room lights for the black theatre. A quiet crowd is waiting through the curtains. We’re waiting, all waiting- teachers, friends, unknowns. Unknowns were the greatest: what you solve for, what you act for, what you anticipate.
Isaac had better be there.
Mary is here, suddenly bursting through backstage-theatre doors, distraught and proclaiming, “We sold out we sold out we sold out.”
I ask, “Selling out is bad?”
“To the assisted living home across the street,” she adds, “Gonna have to start late,” and she whooshes open the door, whisking actors to the front of our auditorium.
Ms. Simon reminds us of her big heart for students, ventricles popping like balloons, confetti contents celebrating catastrophe: a long line of canes, walkers and wheelchairs tip-tap-roll inching beside a stretch of teachers, friends, unknowns facing our Sold Out sign on the ticket window.
Calming, Ms. Simon says, “I want us to have the best show we can. Expect everything. It’s preparation. Prepare, prepare, prepare- just like in life. That’s what I always say.”
Elderly are offered the front seats. Dust-gray perms meander down the aisles. I hear jarring, senile bickering. Bettys and Margaries shouting they’ll love the show though they forgot their glasses. Teachers, friends, unknowns are given standing room in the lobby. They squint at the stage from the lobby doors.
All actors are ushered backstage.
Where was Isaac? A tiny slit in the curtains allows me to peek out from the theatre black. And there he is- the bespectacled face mentally measuring the stage dimensions. Eyes glide left then glide right. Mouthing silently something like: twenty feet? No, thirty feet, probably.
He had never seen a play before. He had told me he meant to but there was an emergency summer Mathletes lecture. I had been there. Now I was here, waiting for cues, sweating in face paint and costume.
House lights dim and Bettys and Margaries start cheering, forgetting it’s just beginning. They’d forget again at the end. Some-kid-named Neil claps me on the back.
He says, “Good luck. Break a leg.”
There’s more cheering and my own ventricles burst to confetti.
I’d better use that luck. Now.
But cheers for what, confetti for what? A performance? Our final display-? By no means is this our apex. Performance, achievement, success. All the world’s a stage and we’ve got the wrong audience. Stuck in the middle without the Hollywood talent agents or MIT professors. Peering out from backstage, curtain pulled back, I thought: prepare, prepare, prepare- let’s just call this practice.