Benighted, Betrayed, Beshrewed

November 1962

We huddled around Father Fred with our heads down, eyes on the stage floor. Most of us had our arms wrapped around ourselves, whether to ward off the chill of the Illinois night or to comfort ourselves.

The great director was browbeating us again. His voice echoed in the empty fieldhouse of Our Lady of the Holy Scepter College. “You girls, Bell Jacoby especially, show up looking like tramps—or like you’re trying out as prostitutes! And when you’re not on stage, you act like prostitutes—trolling for johns among the boys!”

“Not you, Arla Balon: you dress like an old maid, and your hoity toity act is antagonizing everyone. You’re supposed to be the sweetheart of the piece, not a crabby old aunt! And you, Tina Martinez, had better start keeping that gaggle of kids with you quiet, or I’m going to threw them out!”

Fred ran through the plot—and the failures of everyone in the cast to enact it believably—sarcastic venom dripping from every word. “Now get to your rehearsals!” he thundered.

The message the rock opera conveyed wasn’t the misogynistic, hopeless mess Father Fred portrayed. I was starting to think Brother Armon had written it a hit. At an early rehearsal, we’d done a reading of The Taming of the Shrew for background. Somehow, Armon had switched roles and changed, dropped, or updated almost everything else for Shrewed! Yet it worked like the original—without defanging Kate or making Bia the only admirable woman. We had to take eat humble pie, but we survived while the audience could laugh at our foolishness.

Could we believe Fred’s sour interpretation? No, we were too convinced of the joy of life—or too young. But were we Pollyannas or realists? And was Fred a realist or a very sick man?

We struggled through rehearsal, some acting surly, some acting ashamed. Only Arla sailed through as if she had ignored Fred. I dreaded meeting with him for my scheduled tutorial afterward, but he had demanded it, so I went.

 Fred ushered me into his office graciously. “If it isn’t Elvis, our leading man—I mean, Hap Wilkie.”

“Uh, thanks, Father, but I’m in trouble in that introductory scene with Tina.”

 He raised an eyebrow—I guess the great director couldn’t chance letting me turn his world premiere into a dud.

I said, “How can I switch from a fixation on Bia to a fixation on Kate within the scene—and not become a total jerk to the audience?”

He nodded. “I know the scene you mean. Pete goes to Bart’s mansion to give Bia her first guitar lesson and finds her too pliant, too agreeable.” He frowned. “You did all right when Kate interrupted the lesson and you clashed with her.”

“Thanks. But when we zing each other back and forth, I’m supposed to turn from angry to amused—to fascinated with her. How can I keep the audience with me if I’m so fickle?”

“Son, acting is not about emoting, not about oneself, it’s about your concern for others. Show your connection to others, and the audience will love you. But that requires showing vulnerability. What are you most ashamed of? I know we’re not in the confessional, but I am a priest, after all. You can trust me to the grave.”

Why should I tell him something so personal? I didn’t get the connection to acting at all. But he said to get vulnerable, so I gave it a shot. “Being mean to a little girl, Madelyn. I was about seven, and she was about five.”

“No, son, what I want you to tell me is something deep within that you triumphed over. What else are you ashamed of?”

I didn’t have to think about that. What I had to do was summon more courage than I possessed.

Fred leaned forward. “Come on, son. Out with it!”

“I can’t say.”

Fred jumped to his feet, leaning over me. “Yes, you can! You must! This is your chance. Trust me!”

 I swallowed hard and closed my eyes. “I was a, a bed-wetter as a kid.”

“How did you get over that? Getting over weaknesses is key to developing resilience. If you can keep your vulnerability, that is.”

“My father was no help. I’d cry in the middle of the night when I got so cold from the wetness. Mom would come into the room all business, quiet me down, and change the sheets. But one time, when I was seven, the old man woke up, and there was hell to pay. He charged into the bedroom, grabbed the wet sheet, and rubbed my face in it. I thought I’d die. I wanted to. 

“After that, Mom started to remind me every day not to drink even a drop after dinner—and we had dinner early, around 5 pm. She gave me an alarm clock, too, and she set it for 1 a.m. That first night, when the alarm rang, she got up and made sure I went to the bathroom. That did it. I never let that clock run down. I’d wind it thirteen times every night before I went to bed, and I’d get up when it rang and march myself to the toilet.”

“See? You took a vulnerability and applied self-discipline. Good for you. Now put something like that into the scene. Make your retorts to Kate forceful—you’re defending yourself, your right to be there. Slowly, gradually, let yourself succumb to the joy of combat with her. Show vulnerability to that impulse.

“You don’t have to recite the script verbatim. Have fun with it! And you don’t have to show that you’re in love with that harridan—Kate, I mean—only that you are feeling good about asserting yourself. The audience will see the sparks fly and start making romantic assumptions—they’re love-sick fools anyway, or they wouldn’t attend something as melodramatic as a musical comedy. And that’s what this is: a work that shows how foolish human beings are. How we are driven by forces beyond our control, and we succumb to them. And that, dear boy, is why we laugh at comedies. We laugh at our helplessness.”

I nodded as if he were speaking great truths and agreed to give it a try. But, as I should have realized, I had an answer to the question of whether the cast were Pollyannas or Fred was a sicko.

The next night, Fred had us start at the scene with the bickering. I can’t—I mean, I don’t have the courage—to tell you how I ad libbed. I’m too ashamed. Oh, I ‘had fun with’ the script, all right. I got so full of myself I didn’t notice what I was doing until Tina—steady, supportive Tina, our sturdy veteran of starring roles—got tears in her eyes. Unbelieving, I looked at Arla, whom, as the script instructs, I had dismissed from my attention to fight with Tina. Arla was in tears, too! To my horror, I was no longer channeling my hero, Elvis. I was channeling my mean old man.

Fred yelled, “Stop! Wilkie, what the hell’s gotten into you? You’re pissing on everyone! But what can we expect from a bed-wetter? To the age of seven—if we can believe he got over it even then! That’s right, cringe, you spoiled brat!”

The cast visibly contracted into themselves. At least that’s my impression. I was too shaken to do much looking around. With a sob, I ran downstage, jumped into the orchestra pit, and dashed down the aisle. I didn’t stop till I was in the cloak room.

I found my coat and put it on. I’d go to the dorm and hide. I’d never go through another humiliation like that. I didn’t deserve to be on a stage anyway, not after that performance. I had no idea what I was doing up there, no clue. I was pretending I could act, and now they knew it. Everyone knew it—Fred, Armon, Arla, Tina, Bell, even Jean, my girlfriend in the stage crew. From the wings where she was working, Jean had watched the whole thing. She was already turned off about how my sexual anxieties were eating away at our relationship. I couldn’t imagine how she would hold Fred’s bombshell against me.

But misery makes us lose faith in our friends. Before I could head out the door, Tina flew into the room growling, plainly enraged. I flinched, but she said, “How dare that man! How dare he say that? How dare he attack you so viciously when you were only trying a new entregas—a new delivery?”

She paced back and forth, muttering in Spanish. She stopped in front of me, took me by the shoulders, and said forcefully, “Pay no attention to that evil man. Come back. I will help you. Play the scene like you did the first time, like it was hard for you to do.”

“No!” I said, crying anew. “How can I face them? After that… that…”

“After someone steps on your soul? Querido, you must answer with your heart. You must show who is the bigger man—and it is you, not that heartless bastardo.”

“But what he said! What everyone must think of me! I can’t!”

Tears came to her eyes, and she held me. “Querida mia, you are not the only one that devil has abused.”

Jean burst into the room. She too was furious. “Who else did he abuse?”

Tina looked scared and shook her head, but I wanted this out in the open. “Tina hasn’t said. But she must be talking about girls.”

“Why am I not surprised? The son of a bitch! Tina, what did he do?”

“Shhhh! Please! Do not get me into more trouble! You heard him threaten me about my sister and brothers.”

“Come on, Tina. If you won’t tell me, I’ll find out from someone else.”

Tina looked miserable. She shook her head again and ran out of the room.

Jean got in my face. “Hap, I swear, he’s going to pay for this. Whatever he’s done, I’m going to find out and tell the world. No one gets away with treating you that way. Not in my universe.”

She stormed out. In a moment, she was back, leaning on the doorjamb. She looked sad, pitying. “Oh, Hap! Is that why you don’t want to… you know … are you afraid of things coming out wrong… making a mess?”

She thought the most embarrassing thing in my childhood should be probed now? That I should relate it to sexual problems now, when I was trying to get over one of the most humiliating moments of my life? “Jean, get out of here!” I said bitterly. “Leave me alone!”

I spent the rest of the rehearsal smoldering in the dorm. With so many other scenes to rehearse, screw them if they couldn’t find one to practice without me. But by 9 pm, I got tired of being out of the loop, threw my coat on, and returned to the fieldhouse. I saw Bell, my backup vocalist, and asked her for a ride to the crew’s hangout, O’Reilly’s Bar.

I wanted payback. Was there any way I could turn the tables on Fred if I got some dirt on him? I was tired of guesses by Jean, whose insensitivity to my sexual problems still irked me.

Bell raised an eyebrow. “Slumming with the peons? Anyway, I don’t have wheels. Having a car is bourgeois.”

“If you didn’t back me so well, with perfect timing and pitch, and show up on time for every rehearsal, I’d swear you were a nihilist who cares for nothing.”

“I am,” she said. “Just not full time.”

I rolled my eyes and shook my head. “Sometimes feminine logic makes me feel like a ball getting slapped around in a pinball machine.”

“Sometimes a guy like you needs to get slapped around. A little.” There was no smile on her face.

I sighed, tired of the game. “How did you get to O’Reilly’s last time?”

“I made nice with Arla, and she took me.”

I put an arm around her, which was easy since I was a head and a half taller. “Let’s go find Arla.”

We did. Arla drove a beat-up old Ford, a rounded model from the early ‘50s without much of the original paint left. But it ran, and, about the time we got to O’Reilly’s, the heater started working. Not much heat was coming to me from Arla, though, only silence.

Apparently, she hadn’t forgotten our last encounter. In our first rehearsal, I’d acted like I was falling for her onstage. Afterwards, she found me heading out, caught my eye, and said, “You’re not really falling in love with me, are you?”

I couldn’t tell if she was being vain, dismissive, curious, interested, or a mishmash of such things. “With a gorgeous but shy girl who gives so little away? That would be sticking my neck out, wouldn’t it?”

She took my arm and shook her bangs out of her eyes. “Maybe. Maybe not. I may sing like I’m shy, Hap, but that may not be the real me.”

The more she wanted to play, the less I wanted to. I stared at her and said, “Who is the real Arla?”

She looked scared for a moment, but then she smiled, let it broaden into a grin, and canted her head to turn it into something sly.

What an actress, I thought. I could play the silence game too, though, and kept staring into her eyes.

Finally, she laughed, let go of my arm, kissed me on the cheek, and ran away.

The flirt, the bitch really had wanted to melt my heart.

Now, walking through the parking lot at O’Reilly’s, Arla and Bell were friendly enough with each other. They strolled into the bar chatting. By contrast, their cold shoulder to me was a slap in the face, another thing irking me. With Bell in the lead, we found Jean in the back with a half-dozen others from the crew. Jean looked high already, which pissed me off further. I recognized brawny Lance Ventnor, the set carpenter, and lanky Matt Cardy, the sound guy. They’d pulled three tables together. Two pitchers sat in the middle, one empty and the other almost empty of beer.

Jean was dandling a glass. “Bell! Arla!” she called out. “Hap! Sit down. Fellas, find more chairs!” No surprise, she had taken over the social group. Past parties had taught me that the higher Jean got, the louder she got. She roared, “While you’re up, get us another pitcher, would you? I’m paying.”

Let it go, I told myself. “Sure, Jean.”

Conversation resumed. The crew was yakking about the production, but Jean seemed to be steering the talk more toward Fred’s personality. Not very successfully.

After an hour and yet another pitcher of beer, she banged the table with her beer glass. “Hey! I want to know more about Fred. How does he really treat his actresses and script girls—when nobody’s looking?” As if anybody would stick their neck out and make accusations. When Jean was in her cups, she was about as subtle as a bullhorn, and about as persuasive as the other kind of bull. Another thing pissing me off.

Nobody said a word. Finally, Bell raised a hand and said, “Fred isn’t so great. He was merciless to my sister Pony when the company was rehearsing a play last year. Made her feel so bad she ran out of town—disappeared!”

Jean shifted her gaze to me and give me an I-told-you-so stare.

Lance said, “Bell, Pony’s gone. We can agree on that. But it’s not cool to spread rumors when you can’t back them up. How do we know what happened? She was a party girl, up to risky business with a lot of risky people. But jumping to conclusions and blaming Fred—that’s not right.”

Jean wouldn’t quit. “Is Fred gay? Has he hit on any of you guys? Or are you too chicken to say?”

That turned off the whole table. They started muttering to one another.

“Sorry!” Jean called out. “My mistake. What this table needs is another pitcher. Hap?” 

That was the last straw. “That’s the last thing this table needs!” I yelled. “It’s the last thing you need, Jean. You’re blitzed, you’re getting intolerable, and we’re tired of your meddling.” 

I wasn’t finished making an ass of myself. “I do not like seeing you drunk. I do not like seeing you fall back into alcoholism. Am I the only one?”

The table got silent.

Jean said, “Screw you, Hap. I mean, I’d like to, and you say you want me to, but you never follow through. So, screw you—metaphorically. Man.”

The table howled with laughter. I walked out. Jean was as mean as Fred. I trudged back toward campus, replaying their insults. Too miserable to pay attention to where I was walking, I stumbled on a chuckhole and fell on my face. My palms burned with fresh cuts. My impulse was to punch the pavement. I raised a fist. Something inside said, really? Revenging yourself on a road?

I blinked, sat, shook my head. Fred was nasty to me only after I was nasty to Arla and Tina. Jean was mean to me only after I was mean to her. Did I really want to become a copy of my old man? Maybe I needed to take a lesson from Arla—let people call me whatever they wanted. Nobody really knew what I was like. Maybe I needed to start laughing when they challenged me, and to start kissing them on the cheek. Wouldn’t that surprise the hell out of them?