The Rehearsal

glimmer of panic in Felix’s eyes as it dawns upon him that Stanley might really make good his word and run away. He looks quickly over his shoulder down the dressing-room corridor, and then says, “Your parents here tonight?”
    Stanley gives another howl. “My dad,” he says. “To make matters a whole fucking lot worse. My dad.”
    “Mine too,” Felix says. Then he says, tentatively, “If the girl’s parents really are here, Stanley, they’ve got to be prepared to be shocked. You can’t actually buy tickets to a show like this and expect to keep your… your innocence. You can’t. They must know what they’re in for. And they’re not kids.”
    “But they don’t know what it’s about yet,” Stanley says. “It’s opening night. Where in the fucking program does it say that this is a play about their daughter? It doesn’t. They’re coming to see me, as a surprise.” He looks again at himself in the mirror. The makeup artist has done a good job, powdering over his blond eyebrows and drawing in black arches that are higher and more angular than his own. He has a little red pout, and all the natural shadows of his face are thickened with gray: the creases around his mouth, the hollows of his cheeks, under his chin. His eyes are ringed with black.
    Felix is still looking thoroughly confused. “On the bright side,” he says, trying hard to reclaim the situation, “you’re absolutely unrecognizable in your costume and everything. If that’s what you’re worried about. With the parents.”
    “Yeah,” Stanley says. Underneath his makeup his jaw is set and his eyes are red and his face is pale, but in the mirror the pouting caricature that is Stanley’s reflection twitches his head and even seems to smile.
    Saturday
    Isolde and her parents are already on stage when the lights come up, Isolde on the far end of the settee and leaning still further outward, over the arm, every inch of her body craning away from the other two figures on stage: a stout mustached father and a bony mother who buttons all the way to the top.
    “What you need to understand,” Isolde’s mother says, “is that this little taste of what could be is inside you now. You’ve swallowed it up, like candy from a brown paper bag.”
    “What you need to understand,” Isolde’s father says, “is now that we know about it, it won’t happen anymore.”
    “Remember that the only difference between you and any of the others,” Isolde’s mother says, “is at what price, and under what circumstances, you are prepared to yield.”
    Stanley and his father enter, through the frosted French doors in the middle of the false backdrop, preceded by Victoria who has her palm out like she is showing the way.
    “He’s here,” she says unnecessarily, making more of the line than she ought to, because it is her only one and she wants to be seen. The mother makes a flapping motion with her hand and Victoria exits, walking with the pursed self-conscious walk of an actor who has too small a part and so has practiced a single move to excess.
    The group stand stationary for a moment, Stanley and Isolde looking at each other with an intense smoldering glare that is lost to everyone in the upper circle and in the restricted-viewing sections of the stalls.
    Then Isolde’s father says stiffly, “I was just about to say, now that we’re here, let’s sort this out in a civilized way, like adults. But just as it was on the tip of my tongue I realized that the word adults wasn’t entirely appropriate, given the circumstances.”
    There is a silence. Stanley’s father is the first to sit down.
    Saturday
    “The purpose of this recital,” the saxophone teacher says, “is really to let the students speak for themselves, as it were. It is really just a vehicle to let them voice their own growth, their own awakening, lay it bare like a virgin at an altar for all of you to see. While you are watching tonight, a good question to ask yourselves might be, What is this performance telling me about the performer? What naked shape emerges out of the rarefying mist of this girl’s music? What private things are being offered, and what private things are being betrayed?”
    Julia is sitting in the second row with her sax held loosely on her lap, waiting for her cue to rise and take the stage.
    “I mention this,” the saxophone teacher is saying, “because my next student has had a very difficult year. Many things have happened to complicate this