Sam’s eyes begin unexpectedly to fill. She blinks a few times fast, hoping Gertie doesn’t notice. “So... so you’re not getting back together?”
Gertie’s smile is small and wistful. “No,” she says. “No, we’re not getting back together. And I think that’s the right thing for both of us. Notthink, Iknowit is.”
Peopledon’tchange, thinks Sam. It’s such a basic statement, but it’s also true, as true and right as anything Henry has quoted from his philosophers. So why do we all spend so much of our time trying to change everyone around us? Sam has accused her mother of wanting her to be someone she’s not, but hasn’t Sam been doing the same to Amy?
“I’m going to go downstairs and throw on something more appropriate, okay, Sammy?” says Gertie. “What are you going to do?”
Sam shrugs. “I guess I’m going to sit here and wait for Uncle Timmy to come back with that lemonade. But I have a feeling he’s not going to rush back. So maybe while we’re waiting, we can run those lines?”
August
Timothy
Sam has Hero’s lines down cold.
“I’ll still hold the script,” she tells Timothy. “Just in case. But I don’t technically need it. I think I’ve got it.”
“You’re amarvel, Sammy. You are simply a marvel. You memorized Shakespeare in the time it takes most people to memorize Shel Silverstein.”
“‘I cannot go to school today,’” quotes Sam. “‘Said little Peggy Ann McKay.’ I’ve got my Silverstein down too, see?” She smiles wickedly. It’s so good, thinks Timothy, to have what he thinks of as the Real Sam back. He’s really happy they’ve put the fight behind them, and they’ve put the party behind them, and they’re getting down to actual work. “Seriously though. I’m not as fast as you’re giving me credit for. It’s just because I sat through a bunch of rehearsals and picked up lines that way. I could probably do Claudio too.”
“Absolutely not,” says Claudio. “My granny has tickets to the third night. Do you want to crush her soul?”
It’s the first of August, there are eight days to go until opening. Neither Timothy nor Amy can afford to spend time fighting with the other; he apologized one more time about telling Sam the L.A. thing, and then they both had to let it go.
Today, while some members of the cast are rehearsing, othershave final costume fittings. The set builders are in the final stages of their work, hammering away at an errant nail, glue-gunning a stray piece of ivy to the villa’s facade. Truly, truly, truly, knows Timothy, there isn’t a moment to lose. His adrenaline is high; his sleep is low. He loves every single minute of this part of the process.
Knowing all of her lines doesn’t make Sam not nervous; Timothy understands that. Of course she’s nervous! Timothy has to remember that she has every right to be. She hasn’t acted on a stage in seven years; she’s only been Hero for a little over a week.
“Butterflies,” she reports, pointing to her stomach, the first time she gets on the stage to learn the blocking. “So. Many. Butterflies.” She’s holding her body very carefully, like she’s made of glass and might break if moved the wrong way.
Timothy watches Gertie cross the stage to Sam. She wraps her arm around her, and she puts her head very close to Sam’s, and she whispers something to her. Timothy can’t hear the words, but he can see Sam’s rigid back soften under Gertie’s touch, and then he sees her smile, and then he hears her laugh, and that’s how he knows it’s going to be all right.
Today they started early: nine o’clock. They will run through the whole show twice.
Shakespeare’s plays were originally performed without intermissions, so their inclusion in modern-day performances is at the discretion of the director. Timothy has chosen to break between acts 3 and 4—more than halfway through the run time, but logical, from a dramatic perspective. Today the actors will get a short break at the intermission point in each run-through. This will give Timothy some time to confer with the stage manager, to see if there’s anything going on he needs to be aware of.
By the middle of next week, they’ll be opening!
The cast has taken to the stage like they’ve been there all summer; the blocking translates easily from barn to theater, which,Timothy knows from experience, isn’t always the way. Borachio’s long, logistically heavy speech, during which he outlines the plan for tricking Claudio into believing in Hero’s infidelity, has always been a challenge, with Borachio dropping lines like they’re hot potatoes—but today the speech goes off without a hitch.
Drunken Borachio brags about his deception; Margaret dresses Hero for the wedding; Beatrice professes to have a cold when in fact she’s lovesick. And on they sail to the beginning of act 4, just before Claudio and Hero’s wedding, the dramatic center of the entire play. Claudio, instead of taking Hero’s hand in marriage, shuns her, accusing her of infidelity because of the false story Borachio cooked up.
As these lines approach, Sam’s aspect changes completely. She starts fumbling with her script and messing up the blocking. She almost knocks down her own father, Leonato, as he stands next to her in the outdoor church that the carpenters have constructed with an archway of flowers. This is the place where Hero is supposed to show her emotions—emotions Timothy knows Sam is more than capable of displaying, every bit as capable as Amelia Rees was. But she can barely get her lines out. What is going on?
Timothy makes a note for Sam.
“She knows the heat of a luxurious bed,” accuses Claudio. “Her blush is guiltiness, not modesty.”
Sam: “I talk’d with no man at that hour, my lord!” She’s supposed to sound plaintive here, disconsolate. Instead she sounds wooden.What is going on?
Timothy makes another note.
Leonato, wretched: “Hath no man’s dagger here a point for me?”
Here, Hero is supposed to swoon, and Timothy knows Sam knows how to swoon. He knows it, because it wasSamwho helpedAmelialearn to swoon in early barn rehearsals. Sam can swoon like she’s getting paid to do it, her rent is due, and her bank account is empty! But her swoon looks like a swoon you’d see in athird-grade production of... well, he can’t think of a third-grade production that would require swooning. But that’s the level of swoon he’s seeing here.
“Hold!” he calls. Sam rises. She drops her script, picks it back up.
