Vindication

“I’m not feeling this. I don’t think it’s working Lysander. Let’s try again. With feeling! Remember our notes we all made on the script everyone?”

 Mr. Clarke stared at Scarlett as he said this. The class wound up consisting of twelve girls. So she wound up as Lysander in a very short version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream set in the late 1960’s. The stuff of nightmares. 

It was either that, or scenes from Romeo and Juliet set in the 1950’s. The girls had gotten a vote. So here they were. And here she was, completely mortified. 

When she was younger, fresh out of high school she had been a serious actor. She got accepted into every school she applied to, Juilliard included. Juilliard didn’t take eighteen year old's into its theater program. No one under twenty two ever got in. But they accepted her. The day she realized she could never afford it, even with a scholarship, she cried. 

She wanted the best or nothing. She was in a few shows and a few indie films after that. Lived in New York for four years. But she never really “knew anyone” in the business.  After all, her parents were substitute teachers from Kansas. 

Something welled up in her, blocked her from hanging on too long. All in all, she fared better than most. But her world was black and white. Better than most still meant mediocre. 

 She received little blow after blow. She even got called  “talentless ” by an angry B-lister on a set once for a film about killer tornadoes. She played “Teen Number 1 Murdered by Tornado”.  A straight to Tubi special. She moved back home. Fizzled out. Hibernated. 

Five years later she was back in school, to go into business. Own a cupcake shop or something. A stage of giving up twenty somethings are prone to do. Think the journey has ended even though the road has just begun. 

She was at Whitshore Community College for basic credits. It was her last semester. Going in for her advising session, the woman had broken the bad news. She needed an elective. The only available class that would fulfill her credit was theater. She had begged and pleaded with them to let her into anything else. She had put herself on every waitlist possible. 

Intro to theater with Everett Clarke who was a veteran of the inferno itself, Los Angeles. Starting as a child actor in theater and His first and only credit he landed while still in high school. A few episodes of Star Trek. Ever since that fateful time in 1969, Everett Clarke had touted himself as having been in the big leagues.  

“I once sat in William Shatner’s hot tub.”

A familiar line for anyone who'd passed through his classroom. No one made fun of him anymore, it was too depressing. His messy classroom walls, riddled with Star Trek memorabilia. Whether he actually enjoyed Star Trek was up for debate.  William Shatner being the source the attachment seemed to stem from. They were the same "type" one could say. 

Scarlett gazed past his shoddy combover and stared at one of the William Shatner posters which read,

“When forced to choose between two equally undesirable options, the only thing to do was change the rules.” 

Beside the quote on the poster was a black and white photo of a young Shatner looking very serious. His narrowed eyes, even in black and white, were judging her. She took a deep breath and looked into Mr. Clarke’s wide gray eyes instead. 

“This is a comedy, how much more feeling do you expect?” 

She was growing impatient. The eleven other girls who had been all huddled around her took a giant step backwards. A few even sat back down in their chairs to dismiss themselves. The tiny cleared space they had been using as a stage was almost bare. Two crumbling wooden stage blocks. A chair threatening to collapse. 

She needed these credits. She didn’t need to cause trouble. The words were already out. Mr. Clarke's pale face was starting to tinge with rosy, especially around his button nose. 

“Listen Red, I need to remind you of something. The final performance is next week. A week from today. If you don’t start showing some passion, some willingness to work with us here, I’m afraid I can’t in good conscience declare you a thespian.”

“I don’t want to be a thespian. This is a community college."

She snapped back. This did not appear to wound him in the slightest. 

“Thespian translates to pass Red. I won’t be able to pass you in this class if I don’t see any willingness to improve. Our final performance is once again, in one week. And it’s in you somewhere. I’m not trying to push you. But you’ve shown me nothing. No heart. Nothing.”

 With this, Mr. Clarke picked up his large thermos off his desk and took several large swigs. By the time he put his thermos back down she was gone, out the door.

Sitting in the hallway with her legs pulled up to her chest, Scarlett weighed her options. She stewed over the idiotic nickname. Red. It was better than the fate of some of the others, Lipstick, or Curly, but still. She could go home, come back next semester, or she could go back in there. In the sparse hallway were a few kids, no more than twenty years old, kicking around a ball made of paper. The echoes of their laughs filled the silence, but made her feel alone. She often did surrounded by people with their brightest futures still ahead. Looking at the wall across all she saw was the blackness, the deep space that was her own. 

Even though she considered herself very old, she was out here on the floor after having thrown a tantrum. It was something people in her life often told her; move on, grow up, give up the things that wouldn’t work. 

They said she was clinging on to disappointment. What she was doing was searching for something new worth clinging to. What is to be done when a lone dream of a very stubborn person dies without another to replace it? She got up and turned to face the direction of the classroom door. Afterall, her bag and car keys were still in there.

As she started back towards the door, the other eleven girls filed out. She walked towards them, none of them so much as looked up to meet her eyes. She kept walking towards the class anyway. When she got to the doorway, Mr. Clarke was still sitting at his desk. He looked calm, somber almost. The usual animated, lopsided smile he gave all his students was missing. He lifted his hand without looking at her and motioned for her to come in. 

She left the door open in case he was gearing up to attack her or something. She took a few steps into the small classroom so that she was standing ten feet in front of his desk. All the thick lines of his face seemed to draw downward. He was looking at his thermos, the lid was off and he was staring directly into whatever liquid was inside. 

He began quietly, still looking down, 

“You know Red, in this thermos is orange soda. Contrary to what I’ve heard students gossip about here over the years, I drink plain orange soda out of this thing everyday. I drink enough orange soda to fill a swimming pool. I know it’s bad for me. Hell, it’s probably why I lost all my hair. The point is, what’s in here could be worse, but it’s not. It makes me happy. I’m seventy now. I was out in L.A. for thirty years before I gave up the game. I was too short, my voice was too high, I wasn’t funny enough, too poor, too young, then too old, my teeth were too crooked, you name it. When I came back here to my hometown, they wanted me to teach. They practically begged me, it was the first time in a long time I felt, ” 

He paused, trying to find the word himself, 

“I don’t know. Something. And that’s what I try to do, what I’m trying to do for all my students. Everyone can think there's whiskey in here if they want. I'm happy. Do you understand?”

Scarlett was lost for words. She had never once before taken him more seriously than the Captain Kirk bobblehead on his desk. It bumped its head around every time he slammed his hand on the desk. This was especially frequent during those insipid improv exercises. 

 She didn’t know what to say so she replied, 

“What can I do?” 

“The final performance is in a week. As you know, besides the Shakespeare scenes, I’ve also asked all of you to write a short contemporary monologue. Have you memorized yours yet?” 

“Yes I have.”

 She used to have eight monologues in her memory at any given time in her younger days. 

“Let’s hear it.” 

He was looking at her. She was cringing, rethinking it all. Maybe she should come back next semester. She thought of  the ceramics class she could take instead next semester. She could learn to make a clay bowl.

“Come on Red. What’s got you so scared?”

She turned her back from him. Took a deep breath. She took the breath down into her body where people who are centered, who aren’t afraid, take their breath. The path was rusty with cobwebs in her, but she did it anyway. And the webs were blown to the wayside. She closed her eyes and saw the blackness of deep space again. Opening them, she turned around and started to speak. 

The words were irrelevant. The intention was there. She filled the small room and spilled out the door. Her voice and body taking up space and liking it. Like they had done over and over long ago. Not for the attention, it didn’t matter who was watching. To chase away the blackness. To escape it and come back to earth where she belonged. Her voice sounded of the rich, strong cadence that even she didn’t recognize as her own anymore. But that was it. That was her real voice. Sounding and soaring, lilting and tilting and smoothing and sliding and running and lifting and bringing her back. 

Her speech was over. She had landed back on earth from a spacecraft, unsure of where she had come from, where she was now. But Mr. Clarke was standing up from his desk to remind her. His hands came together, once, twice, three times. He held his five foot two stature as strong as he could as he said to her, 

“You’ve got it now Red. You’re out here.”