Thick Skin

I had a dinosaur’s-eye view of the audience, down my long bumpy nose, through caged peepholes deeply shaded by flannel lashes. Every move of my oversized head seemed to make them laugh, and there were “awwws” when I and the other dinosaur embraced. But nothing about being inside this costume was cute. 

At 13 I was willing to do almost anything to be on stage. I was too small to play the mother, or even a kid, in Skin of Our Teeth. When I learned that my dinosaur skin would be dyed green long underwear with a gaping fly, topped off by a warty papier-mâché mask, it was too late to back out.

That droopy green flap is all I can picture when I receive the invitation to my 40^th high school reunion. The stars of the play will be there, two theater heroes returning to receive a special award. I’m pretty sure neither of them has ever performed in an animal suit. Still gliding through life in their boardwalk-clown masks.

Before each performance of Skin of Our Teeth an upper-class stage assistant helped me get into the baggy long-johns and pinned the tunic tightly down to my thighs so the fly was covered. Bless you to this day, whoever you are. How much shame I felt wearing those green leggings no one could have guessed. I have never told a single person about this.

It’s just a costume, they would have said. And I’m just a girl. Who would be so clueless as to make an eighth grade girl who hasn’t even started her period wear boy’s underwear and be forced to think about those private parts? I knew Sylvia Plath’s lines about “turkey neck and turkey gizzard.” All the girls snickered over them.

It never occurred to me to negotiate for a different costume. Eighth grade was different then. Today girls that age know everything about sex and hook up on line with strangers. I could never keep up with that.

It was bad enough being caged inside the giant cratered dinosaur bust. When the snout was lowered over my head, I sank into the private darkness, standing precariously in the wings inhaling the pacifying scent of wheat paste and newsprint. For my entrance I had to crawl carefully through the dining room set not letting my snout drag or catch on anything,

I nodded and huddled obligingly under the hot lights in the “Tableau by Raphael” scene with Mr. Antrobus and his family. The audience always tittered at the two dinosaurs cavorting on all fours. This should have been at least somewhat rewarding, but being noticed meant someone might really see through to my misery. I was a skinny flat-chest girl playing a galumphing crocodilish extinct lizard. How did I end up here?

The other dinosaur was played by my classmate, Matteo Montefiore, who embraced his role with an antic appetite. His dino-head was more rounded and water-buffalo-like, with heavy gums and painted-on horns. (Since when do dinosaurs have buffalo horns?) Matteo had an angelic round face himself and waves of black hair but he was not the regulation shape of the “beautiful ones” who ruled in our East Coast private high school. I cringed for Matteo as well as for myself, that we were actually on stage pinned under lights pretending to be loveable pet dinosaurs. When the audience laughed I was sure that it was mostly for Matteo and his pudgy waggling. Who was the cruel teacher who cast him in this role?

Matteo wanted the two of us to have more backstage camaraderie than I could possibly feel, whether as a dinosaur for my clumsy brother or for Matteo himself, gentlemanly as he was. He offered me odd-shaped pieces of his Kit Kat bar as we waited in the hall during the opening music, and even though I politely declined, he never seemed to get the message. I knew he was working up to some kind of bigger invitation. I dreaded his chumly hugs before and after the show, in the spirit of “we’re all in this together.” Evidently I couldn’t project enough chill sheathed in green long johns and feetsy slippers.

Every night, there we were, the two reptilian eighth graders, looking on as the upper-grade star, Bartholomew Corbett, reached for the leading girl, so advanced for her age. Our classmate Gwyneth Nilsson, of the broad doll face and big hips, loved to toss her heavy hair that coiled like wisteria below her waist. She acted like she and I were such pals but I knew it was just a proximity thing—we were assigned next to each other in our alpha-order homeroom. Gwynnie liked to call me “Cuz” because of our Nordic surnames, and affected that European cheek-kissing hello. But on stage she acted like she didn’t know who was inside the dinosaur heads.

Bart and Gwynnie were the stars of every school play, and now they were the folksy Antrobus parents. Gwynnie had expected that Bart would be her boyfriend since they spent so much time together, but he wasn't interested in an eighth grade groupie. They were always just a stage couple. Gwynnie still found ways to touch him as often as possible, on stage and off, and her avid laugh grew louder and more gulping in every production.  

I can’t recall who played the rambunctious Antrobus kids, chasing us dinosaurs around the stage, but I do remember a moment huddling up in that Raphael tableau scene where Bart put his hand on my lumpy head and stroked it. I nodded and canoodled back, as instructed by the director. I knew Bart must feel so powerful in that gesture—the big Daddy gets to pet his timid little dinosaur. But off-stage Bart was just as kind and courtly as Matteo. 

This was my first year at Livingston Country Day. I wasn’t used to the ways of prep school boys in their white khakis, blue blazers, leather tennis shoes and red-stripe ties. They all seemed born into the uniform, a country club look, vaguely nautical. It became them so well, even portly Matteo. You could get away with a lot dressed like that. At recess there were plenty of kids who went down to the hedgerow past the playing field to smoke pot and paw each other, amazingly un-busted by the playground monitors.

I never got invited down to the hangout. Those kids were the rich ones from town, bankers’ kids, faculty brats, the insiders, and I felt basically a year younger than them anyway. They had all known each other since kindergarten and the rest of us were invisible to them.

After the performance was over I couldn’t wait to shed my skin and slip out the side door. No staying behind to self-congratulate with the rest of the cast. I ran through the November dark to find the station wagon in the school turnaround where my mother was usually knitting with her eyes closed, listening to classical radio. Did my parents ever come to see me in the show? I don’t remember even talking with them about it. Probably I told them not to bother.

What I do remember clearly and will carry for all time is cowering in the girls’ bathroom across from backstage waiting for the upper-class wardrobe angel. She always was very kind and put extra safety pins wherever I asked for them, to make sure the leggings would not sag and the floppy fly would not be exposed. I stood still as a fawn, chilly on the tile floor in my green slipper socks, staring down at the black felt toenails. The sooner that insulting opening was covered the better.

I ran out the side door the long way around to the parking lot to avoid Matteo’s post-performance glee. After deconstructing his dark brown and black cardboard armor in the other bathroom, he would bound down the hall looking for me. I didn't want to have to back away from another hug. 

During all our high school years and reunions thereafter, Matteo wanted to joke about our shared stardom/humiliation in Skin of Our Teeth. I am never sure which way he sees it; he never lets on. I keep silent. 

He always mentions our improbable brush with greatness. Dinosaurs on stage with the school star (and soon to be world-famous) Bartholomew Corbett! Bart went to New York City after high school and starred as a heartthrob in soaps before becoming a film superhero in a series of comic book remakes. Matteo and I didn’t go out for drama again.

The last time I saw Matteo, on a visit back east some years ago, he was working at a gourmet store after losing his job with the local paper. I went in to buy eclairs for my mother and was shocked to recognize him behind the counter. In a white apron and paper hat he looked like a smaller version of the charismatic chef Paul Prudhomme, and no less confident. He was cutting exotic cheeses to feed the open-mouthed dowagers who crowded at the curving vitrine. I didn’t want him to spot me but I wasn’t quick enough. I was fascinated watching him work, apparently not at all resentful of his comedown in life. He was expertly charming those lady customers and his flushed face modeled the effects of a steady diet of imported cheese. He didn’t miss the pressures of the journalism world, he said, and the refined environment of the store made him feel close to his Italian heritage.

I wondered if Matteo would make the trip to the reunion this time. I had read that he was a baron or some kind of gentleman in Italy now that his parents and most of their overseas family were dead. He took pride in managing the ancestral lands and estate house, growing grapes, olives, garlic and herbs.

If I could have hung in all those years of high school and dated him, gone to the Steppenwolf concert, married him, well, I’d be a baroness now. But who took him seriously in those days when he talked about his family’s Italian villa?

Yes, he now was a baron. With a capital B, probably. Curing his own cheeses in caves of the Tuscan terroir. Who ever could have foreseen such a transformation? From dinosaur to nobleman.

What will I say to him? Will he still want to kid about our shared family history as reptile siblings? How will I recap my last ten years, give them an exuberant spin, as he always does? What can I say about looking after my mother, getting fired from a tenure-track job for refusing to sign what amounted to a loyalty oath, subsisting more unemployed than employed?

Baroness, I could play that role now. This is more the way I saw myself back then, far from the homely dinosaur. I was Sleeping Beauty, Guinevere in King Arthur, Ophelia in the green waters surrounded by pastel flowers, how she floats so serenely. A dead princess: always more loveable than a live dinosaur. 

Where was the kind witch who could lift the lizard spell? Back then I knew that someday I would be the princess in the play and Gwynnie would be chilling in the wings. It could still happen.

I didn’t look forward to hearing Gwynnie’s horsey laugh again and watching her and Bart stretching their hypermobile faces for the cameras, holding up their award plaques. What had they ever done that really pushed them to their limits? All they had to do was crook their perfect croissant smiles and people applauded. 

I know the real Prince and Princess are Matteo and me. We are the true theater heroes of Skin of Our Teeth. We went down on all fours, panting inside cages of papier-mâché. We gamboled around making Bart and Gwynnie look good. Performing as dinosaurs was the real test of an eighth grader’s courage. We had both shouldered the ridicule of our classmates and the rest of the upper school, in fact, and none of this interfered with our performances. Yet our roles in the famous production of Skin of Our Teeth, the one where Bart and Gwynnie were at the peak of their high school fame, are forgotten. Probably no one even thinks about real kids being inside those dinosaur bodies when they look at the old photos.

Despite a lingering strangeness from our last meeting in the cheese store, I am really anxious to see Matteo, to huddle with him and go over every detail of our stoic performance laced with secret shame. I hope he will cross the Atlantic and make an appearance at the reunion. I hope the Baron thing has not gone to his head.