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NOW
Joanna began work a few weeks later. For the time being, work consisted of one prep period and an intro class each day, plus a short meeting with Mike immediately after the final bell. These meetings were usually brainstorming sessions about how Joanna could focus her energies on the less-experienced kids in the intro class. “I would love to get to a point,” Mike told her one afternoon, “where I can take, say Millie Tippin and Jesse Bradley, throw them into a scene together, and at least get five minutes where I’m not cringing or straining to hear the dialogue.” Millie Tippin was a voluptuous and irrepressible junior who’d been acting since elementary school; Jesse Bradley was a painfully shy senior hiding behind a slacker façade and for whom a mumble was a raised voice. If Mike wanted those two in a scene together, Joanna had her work cut out for her.
Though her work hours only lasted from one o’clock in the afternoon until about four, Joanna’s interest in it and in the kids leaked into other parts of her day as well. During her morning runs now, she found herself thinking about effective pairings or good practice scenes or monologues that she could try that day in class. On weekends, she browsed the internet for improv games and journaling prompts, cued up scenes from old movies to analyze with the students, and scoured bookstores to find new scripts. Even more, she looked forward every day to working with the kids and to the brainstorming with Mike after. Whether eager or difficult, each student had such disparate personalities—it was an ego boost when she realized she had some part of one of them figured out.
In the evenings, she and Poppa would sit down to a light supper and talk about their days. Poppa, who was beginning to toy with the idea of retirement, frequently came back to the difficulty he was having in finding any new associates to take on his heavier cases. Young lawyers just didn’t want to begin their careers in a small town, it seemed. For the time being, it was fine; he wasn’t set to retire for a couple of years at least. But Joanna could tell the workload was starting to weigh on him. She tried to come to the table with a handful of upbeat stories about her day—a funny comment from one of the kids, a breakthrough in a scene—to lift the fatigue settling around his eyes. He often accompanied her on her weekend bookstore jaunts, too; on those days, she saw more of the Poppa she remembered peeking through the surface.
After six weeks or so of devoting herself entirely to her new work, Joanna realized, with a pang, that she had inadvertently stopped planning her own future altogether. She was still determined to make it out of Grace—if for no other reason, then at least so that no one could say she hadn’t tried. Besides, her job with Mike would end in June, and then she’d be right back where she started. So throughout October, she got home from rehearsals for the fall show around 5:30, ate a quick supper with Poppa, and planted herself in front of the computer with a glass of wine. The sky was always dark by the time she sat down; she often caught a glimpse of her reflection in the window next to the desk: hair sliding out of whatever ‘do she’d had that morning, glass of wine at her lips, anxiety and disappointment pulling at her eyes. She looked old. She tried not to look.
Nothing she saw on these sites—casting calls, graduate programs, teaching opportunities—engaged her interest for more than a day or two. For a little while, she toyed with the idea of beginning her own theater program from scratch, but every aspect of it that she came up with already existed in New York, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Charlotte, Seattle, London, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver. Everywhere she could think of.
Quickly, Joanna learned to love her days and dread her evenings. Her days began with a run through a fall that grew progressively more beautiful. The leaves had burst into gold and red and orange flames; on sunny days, the light shining through them bathed her and everything else in light, and on cloudy days, the mist hanging over the river made her feel like she was running through a fairytale. (Once, she crested the hill in front of the town hall and saw three seagulls leap from its verdigris-encrusted roof and into the gray sky, and she had to bite her lip to keep from crying out at the absurd beauty of her little town.)
She was building a relationship with her students too. Even Jesse greeted her with a “Hey, Miss B.” in the halls now. She was touched, in particular, by the fact that her old teachers not only remembered her but seemed happy to see her. The last half of her high school years had been so overshadowed by Josh’s death, she hadn’t felt much of a personal connection to most of them. But from her first day on the faculty, she had been welcomed kindly, with none of the disappointment or pity she’d feared she’d encounter, as someone who’d come back home with nothing but a run-of-the-mill B.A.
The juxtaposition between the energy, camaraderie, and inspiration of her days and the stultifying nothing of her nights was steadily getting to her, as rehearsals for Our Town intensified and Joanna’s hours began to increase.
Our Town opened the Friday before Thanksgiving that year, for a two-show run. In the weeks leading up to opening night, Joanna served as stage manager, assistant director, costume mistress, parent-director liaison, and therapist. And then, suddenly, the show was upon them.
Eight minutes before curtain, Joanna was running from the green room to backstage, with the coat the lead needed for the opening scene gathered in her arms, when she heard someone call her name. She looked up and stopped short—Erik was milling around the entrance to the theater, dressed in dark jeans and a thick, buttoned-up flannel shirt. “Hey,” he said, smiling at her.
“Hey,” she said, laughing a bit in surprise and delight. She shook her head and asked him what he was doing there.
“Best show in town, right?” he answered. “How’s it feel to be on the other side?”
She paused, still surprised to see him on her turf. Casting about for the best adjective, she finally came out with, “Hectic.”
Erik laughed and then indicated the bundle she was carrying. “Nice coat.”
“Oh! Shoot—I was supposed to be bringing this to someone. Sorry…”
“Say no more,” he said, raising his hands and taking a step back. “I get it. Maybe I’ll see you after the show.”
“Maybe,” she told him, smiling.
“Break a leg.” He tilted his head. “Can you say that to a director?”
“I don’t know if it’s technically proper, but I’ll take all I can get. I had no idea how nervous I’d be for other people!”
“If they were learning from you, I know it’ll be great.”
“Thanks,” she told him, touched. He flashed her a smile, crinkling those blue eyes in a way that made her want to weep, and she raced down the hall.
Erik’s presence there that night only served to ramp up Joanna’s anxiety. Mike was in the booth, which left her to deal with things backstage. It took everything she had in her not to sneak out to the girls’ bathroom once things got going and check her reflection. She was sure she’d been sweating, at least a little, when she’d run into Erik. As far as she knew, Our Town was the first play Erik had seen since The Red Wall. It was certainly safer territory, but it was boring too, she had to admit. Would he be able to see the work the kids had poured into it? She was so proud of them; would he be too?
After curtain call and the time spent re-setting the stage for the next night, the kids ran back to the green room to change. Joanna peeked, with affected nonchalance, into the lobby but didn’t see Erik out there. A little disappointed, she joined Mike outside the green room, where they waited for the kids to change before going in to congratulate everybody and give them notes. It was almost eleven o’clock by the time she and Mike finally turned off the lights and locked the doors. They walked down the hall toward the school’s entry doors, Joanna gushing all the way about how well things had gone that night.
“Joanna.”
At the sound of her name, she slowed down and looked into the hallway ahead. Erik was still there, standing by the door and smiling hesitantly. Had he been waiting all that time?
“Erik?”
“Erik, good to see you!” Mike greeted him jovially, offering his hand for a handshake.
“You too, Mr. S.”
“Mike, please.”
Erik laughed and nodded. “Mike—I guess I’ll have to get used to that. Great show tonight,” he said to them both. Then, “Joanna—I was wondering if you’d like to grab some coffee or something before you go home.”
Joanna’s mouth stretched into a smile, and she nodded slowly. “Sure,” she told him, trying to sound casual.
“I can pass her off to you then?” Mike asked, sounding just like Poppa—and Josh.
“I’ll take it from here, Mr.—I mean, Mike.”
“Good night then. Four o’clock tomorrow, Jo!” Mike waved and walked out the side door, toward his car, while Erik led her out the front door to his truck. It was much colder now than it had been in the afternoon, when Joanna had first arrived at the school. The air smelled like snow—one of her favorite smells. She took a deep breath in; Erik glanced over at her and smiled.
Is this a date? she wondered, giving him a small smile in return.
“Were you waiting that whole time?” she asked him once they were settled in the truck. Erik nodded bashfully.
“I remembered that you always liked to go out after a show, but I thought maybe you wouldn’t want to be the old lady with all the teenagers, so I thought I’d step in. Although, now that I think about it, I’m realizing maybe there isn’t anywhere to go.”
“Yeah, what’s even still open now?” she asked him, laughing.
“We’ll think of something,” he said, turning the key. “You cold?” he asked, adjusting the knobs. She was, but she knew he wasn’t, so she said no. He turned the heat on anyway.
“So? What’d you think?” she asked him after a minute, laying her head back on the headrest.
“It was good. Is that a famous play?”
“Yeah. It’s good for high schools, because there are a lot of parts and nothing controversial. Kind of a rite of passage for actors, although Mike never did it when we were in high school.”
“A rite of passage for directors too, obviously,” he pointed out, indicating Joanna with his free hand.
She smiled. “You know I’m not really a director, right?”
“You sure looked like one tonight.”
She didn’t belabor the point. If Erik wanted to think of her as a director, she’d let him. Joanna Beaulieu, Director: it had a nice ring to it.
Eventually, they ended up at McDonald’s, where Joanna got a hot chocolate and Erik got two cheeseburgers and a Dr. Pepper. It was a beautiful, clear night—still not snowing—and when Erik asked if she wanted to drive a little more, she said yes.
Their conversation meandered that night, much like Erik’s driving, which took them through Grace and into Harper and over toward Ellsworth before circling back around and heading toward home. As they went, they joked around, reminisced a bit, talked about how they saw the next few years unfolding for them. Erik and Bruce were on track to have a successful first year. That, and his work with Ro, kept him busy and satisfied. When Joanna asked him if he had a five-year plan, he shrugged. “Not really. I’m happy, and things keep getting better. Why plan something else?”
“You don’t think you’ll ever move somewhere else or get a degree?” She didn’t mean to sound critical, but Erik’s fingers tightened around the steering wheel before he answered, so maybe her tone had come out wrong.
“If things progress to the point where moving or getting a degree would help, I don’t see why not. But right now, I’m happy, and I’m making more money than most of the people we know who did go to college, so why worry?” His voice was even, but Joanna took the hint and dropped the subject.
She cleared her throat after a few seconds of silence and said, “Um…I know I never said anything, but thank you for my birthday flowers. They were beautiful.”
Erik smiled, his eyes on the road. “I was wondering if you ever saw them.”
“Yeah—I just…wasn’t sure how to respond…you know…”
“Well—” He looked at her now. “You’re welcome.”
“So,” he continued a minute or so later. “What about you? You think you’ll be here, taking over for Mike when he retires?”
As Mike was at least twenty years from retirement, Joanna laughed a little. “Who knows? Being back here has reminded me how much I love it, but…there’s so little to do if I really want to make a life for myself. This year is a great distraction, and it’s nice of Mike to offer the position, but it’s not a life, you know?”
“If there were something here, would you stay, you think?”
She thought about it. “I don’t know. I was so sick of the city by the time school was over, but there is something exciting about it too. But on the other hand, being home…Maine sure does get into your blood, doesn’t it?” she murmured, holding her hand up to the window, through which they could see the silhouettes of hundreds of pine trees, a black outline against the blue-black sky.
“Ayuh. You fahkin’ know it, bub,” he murmured with a slow voice and a wicked grin. She smiled—he never really talked like that. But there was something soothing and familiar about it.
“What do you think I should do?” she asked him, half-playfully.
Without taking his eyes off the road, Erik shifted his position and didn’t answer for a minute. “Well.” He paused and cleared his throat. “To be honest, I think you should stay here.” He glanced over at her meaningfully and then swung his eyes back to the road ahead. “But I guess that’s not entirely selfless of me.”
The implication of his words hit her after a half second, and she sat back, tingling.
They were both quiet again, watching the dark road pass by under the wheels of the truck.
“Erik?” He looked at her, but he didn’t say anything. “I’m…sorry for how I was after Josh died.” He furrowed his brow quizzically. “I mean, I was so focused on how I was feeling, I never really let you talk about it. It wasn’t intentional, but it was selfish.”
If it hadn’t been the middle of the night, and if he hadn’t said what he’d just said to her, Joanna didn’t think Erik would have felt the right to do what he did next, but he looked over at her again, and, taking one hand off the wheel, he traced a line with his forefinger from her widow’s peak, down the right side of her face, landing at the tip of her chin, where he remained for a moment before returning his hand to the wheel.
Heart pounding, she sat, frozen to her seat and staring at him. If asked, she would have assumed that she’d been long inured to the physical impact of his touch, but clearly, she’d have been wrong. She could barely breathe.
Then he spoke, in a tired and serious voice. “Joanna, all I wanted to do back then was focus on you, so I wouldn’t have to focus on me. If you hadn’t fallen apart, I would have had to deal with my own feelings, and I sure as hell didn’t want to do that.”
“What were your feelings?” she asked him quietly. How was it that they had never talked about this before?
He sighed. “The same as yours, I bet. Grief, anger, confusion. I mean—it was Josh.” She nodded. She could relate to that. “You lost your brother,” he went on. “And I never wanted to…to overshadow that or take over with my own stuff, or whatever. But I lost my best friend. He was as close to a brother as I’ll ever have. And…I didn’t know what to do with all of that.”
“Is that why you got Ro so soon after?”
“Maybe,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “I guess it was that or tear myself apart.” He glanced at Joanna again. “I know you don’t like this now, but all I knew about how to be with you then was to take care of you. I’d never done anything else, and I was happy to keep on doing it. And I knew Josh would have wanted it that way. And—you always seemed happy about it. But Ro was someone I could move around with. She gave me a chance to run around and roll on the ground. And the cottage gave me a chance to pound nails into every surface and pretend I was doing it for a good reason.”
“It sure turned out nice,” she told him.
“Thanks.” He smiled at her indulgently. “But those ideas came a lot later. At first, I was just pissed the hell off and didn’t know what to do with it.”
“Erik,” she said quietly, feeling awkward. “I was so crazy then…I wouldn’t have been able to think of this on my own, but I would have been happy to take care of you. I wish you’d asked me to. I think—maybe part of why I felt like I had to get out of here is that no one was letting me take care of them. I felt useless.”
“I didn’t think of that. I have to admit,” he said in a low voice.
“I loved being Josh’s baby sister and how you both treated me back then, but then all of a sudden, I wasn’t his baby sister anymore, but everyone still treated me like I was.” There was a short pause, and then she asked, “If you had thought of leaning on me, what would have helped, do you think?”
Erik sighed loudly through his nose. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “I really don’t.”
“Well. I’m sorry I didn’t give it to you. Whatever it was.” Joanna reached out slowly and ran the tip of her finger a few inches down his forearm. Erik watched it move without speaking and gave her sad smile.
“Did we miss our chance, do you think?” he asked her in a quiet voice.
“I don’t know,” she whispered, her throat dry.
By then, they had parked outside her house; Erik had left the engine running for the heat. It was a little after two o’clock in the morning. Joanna was turned halfway in her seat, her elbows resting on the console between them, their faces only a few inches apart. It would have taken no effort at all for one of them to grab the other for a kiss, but Joanna straightened her body, reached for the door handle, and thanked him for the ride before that could happen. He laid a hand on her thigh, stopping her from opening the door, and looked at her.
“Joanna,” he began. Then, he lifted his other hand and scratched his jaw for a few seconds. “What would you think about you and me…trying again? For real?”
She let her hand drop into her lap and sat back against the seat. Here it was—the question. She wasn’t surprised he’d been the one to raise it; in truth, she’d been expecting it on some level ever since coming back home. But she’d also worked hard to put it out of her mind because, after a year and eight months, she still didn’t know how to answer it.
“I…don’t know,” she said again—the only answer she could honestly give.
He nodded and looked down. “All those things I said to you after your play weren’t okay. I’m sorry. I was mad, but I went too far.”
“That’s not why I’m not sure.”
“It isn’t?” Erik asked, surprised.
“No. I was mad too. And hurt. But I got over it.” She sighed and looked down at her hands and at his hand, still warm on her thigh. “Really, it’s that you know what you want your life to be and what you want it to look like, and I don’t. And I don’t know how to be with you like that.”
“Hm.” Erik nodded a few times and then a slight smile spread across his face. “Are you giving me the it’s-not-you-it’s-me routine?” She laughed, a short laugh, at his one lasting memory of all the Seinfeld episodes she’d made him watch with her in high school. But then she was serious again.
“Well, yeah, actually, I am. I mean—right? How are we supposed to work out any better than we did the last time, if I still have no idea what I want or where I want to be?”
“I get it.” After a pause, Erik laughed lightly and said, “Sometimes I hate that stupid school you went to.”
There didn’t seem to be any more to say, so, after a minute, Joanna put her hand on the door handle again and made a move to get out; once again, Erik stopped her. “I’m not giving up, Joanna,” he said, eyeing her. “Don’t get comfortable.”
A tingle went up her spine, and she smiled at him. “Thanks for the warning,” she quipped, hoping she sounded cool, and then she slipped out of her seat and closed the door, looking at him through the window. He flashed her a smile and lifted his fingers in a wave and watched her walk into the house.
Your story caught my attention! Now I need to go back and read the first 20 chapters!