And This Is Laura Read online

  After everyone had finished reading for the part of Eloise he said, “Those who want to read for Phyllis please come up.”

  “Mr. Kane!” Rita cried, “When will we find out if we got the part?”

  “I’ll post the cast list on my door tomorrow.”

  Beth took her seat and fanned her face with her hand. “I won’t hold out till tomorrow,” she whispered. “I was so nervous.”

  “You were super,” I said. “I never would have known you were scared.”

  “You didn’t,” she said hopefully, “happen to get any more—uh—predictions while I was up there, did you?”

  I shook my head.

  When everyone had had a chance to read for the major roles Mr. Kane said, “Okay, that’s it. Check my door tomorrow morning, then start memorizing your parts as soon as you can. We’ll have our first run-through on Friday in here. Be sure and bring your scripts.”

  Beth looked at me, shocked. “But you didn’t get a chance to try out for Nancy’s part.”

  I was as surprised as she was. I couldn’t understand why Mr. Kane had ended the auditions.

  “Mr. Kane,” she called out, “what about the other parts?”

  “I’ll assign them,” he said, “to some of the people who don’t get the major roles.”

  “You mean, only the people who auditioned for the big parts will be in the play?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But we didn’t know that,” Beth said. And before I realized what she was going to say she went on, “Because Laura wanted to read for Nancy and she didn’t get a chance.”

  Mr. Kane looked in my direction. I wished Beth hadn’t made such a fuss about it. Sure, I was a little disappointed, but not that much, since it was only at her insistence that I’d agreed to try out for anything.

  “I didn’t realize that,” Mr. Kane said. “All right, Laura, why don’t you come on up and read Nancy’s lines on page”—he checked over the script—“thirteen. And anyone else who didn’t understand how the tryouts would work and who didn’t get a chance, come up front and you can read for the parts you want.”

  I made my way down the center aisle and climbed up the steps to the stage. I wished Beth had kept her mouth shut. The stage seemed huge and I felt very small and lonely being the only person on it.

  I wasn’t scared so much as embarrassed. I realized as I read my few lines, remembering to “Project,” as Mr. Kane had told everyone, that they sounded ridiculous and hardly required any acting ability at all. The other parts had much longer speeches, so when you read them you really had something substantial to read. But the role of Nancy had no speech longer than two lines, so what I was reciting was all jerky and disconnected.

  “Meat loaf again,” I read, trying to sound disgusted. “Who was that on the phone?”

  “This library book is two years overdue.”

  It was impossible. Even a great actress couldn’t have made much out of a bunch of one-liners like that and I certainly wasn’t in the great actress category. I’d made a big mistake in reading that part at all, because I probably sounded even less talented than I was.

  “Very good,” said Mr. Kane, noncommittal as ever. “Next.”

  I went back to my seat and slumped down next to Beth. A few more people had followed me toward the stage and were waiting for their turns.

  “I never should have done it,” I whispered miserably to her. “That was awful.”

  “No it wasn’t,” she whispered back. She patted my hand. “You were fine.”

  “I wasn’t fine. I was terrible.”

  “It was the part you did, it wasn’t your fault. It’s not a very exciting part, that’s all. You were just right.”

  “Yeah, I was unexciting too.”

  “Well, that’s the role you wanted. You should have tried for a better one.”

  Mr. Kane must be discouraged, I thought, after expecting to find another Jill in his club, to realize that just because my name is Hoffman it didn’t mean that I would follow in my sister’s footsteps.

  But of course, that’s what I’d been trying to do. Why had I joined the drama club in the first place, if not to see if I could be like my sister? Why had I stayed in the club, when I realized right away that I was not very good at dramatics? Why had I tried out for this play at all?

  By the time we left the auditorium, it was all settled as far as I was concerned.

  “I’m not going to be in the club anymore,” I told Beth as I walked her to the bus.

  “Laura, you can’t quit now!”

  “Why not? I should have quit three weeks ago. There’s no point to it. I can’t act and it’s just a big waste of time.”

  “At least wait and see if you get the part,” Beth insisted. “You can’t try out for something and then not do it.”

  “I won’t get the part,” I said. “Don’t worry about that.”

  “At least wait and see,” she repeated. “Wait till tomorrow morning before you make up your mind.”

  “My mind is made up, but I won’t go running after Mr. Kane and hand in my resignation this minute, if that’s what you mean. I won’t go to any more meetings, that’s all.”

  “I was really looking forward to our being in the play together,” Beth sighed. “It would have been fun.”

  “I’m sorry. But it isn’t fun for me.”

  She paused on the bottom step of the bus. “Let’s just see what happens tomorrow.”

  Only Jill seemed to be home when I got in. She was pacing up and down the living room, a script in one hand and a banana in the other. She was mumbling as she paced, even as she nibbled at the banana.

  “Don’t tell me,” I said. “It’s a new speech improvement technique. Like Demosthenes with the pebbles in his mouth, right?”

  She laughed. “No, just memorizing. I’ll tell you, though, it wouldn’t hurt this play a bit if I did the whole thing with a mouthful of banana. It’s a perfectly dreadful play and I have a perfectly dreadful part and the whole thing is going to be a complete fiasco. I don’t know what got into Ms. Malone, picking a play like this.”

  “So why don’t you stay out of it?”

  Jill gave me a blank look. “I can’t,” she said simply. “I’ve got the lead.”

  “Oh. Of course.” I flopped down on the couch and put my legs over the armrest. “I’m quitting the drama club.”

  She stopped pacing and turned to face me. “Why? What’s the matter?”

  “I can’t act, that’s what’s the matter. And I’m tired of that hopeless look on Mr. Kane’s face all the time. Like I’m a constant disappointment to him because I don’t take after you. He expected me to be brilliant and I’ve turned out to be lousy.”

  “Oh, Laura, you’re exaggerating.”

  Why did everyone keep denying what I could see as plainly as my own shoes? First Beth, now Jill insisted I couldn’t possibly be as untalented as I knew I was. It was very annoying. Even Mr. Kane didn’t really want to believe it, despite the mounting evidence.

  “I’m not exaggerating. I tried out for a part in the play today and I was awful. And I couldn’t do pantomime, and I read my monologue terribly, and—”

  “Do it for me,” Jill interrupted. “Do the part you tried out for.”

  I reached into my looseleaf for the script. Jill sat down on the floor next to the couch. “What did you read?”

  “Page thirteen. Nancy’s lines.”

  She flipped through the pages till she found the spot.

  “Why in the world did you read that?” She turned some more pages and skimmed over lines until she got to the part Beth had read.

  “Do this.”

  I took the script from her hand and held it up so I could read it on my back.

  “Stand up,” she ordered. “You can’t act lying down.”

  “You can if you’re in an X-rated movie.”

  “You’re a bit young to be rehearsing for that,” she retorted. “Now get up and read it.”

  I h
auled myself off the couch. I stood in front of Jill, in the middle of the room and read the lines. I really tried.

  “It needs work,” she said, when I’d finished. “But you’re not nearly as lousy as you think you are. I could help you.”

  “Thanks, but no thanks. I’m not cut out for this. And two actresses in the family are enough.”

  “All right, you do whatever you want. But I don’t want you to quit because you think you’re no good. With a little training—”

  “I’d be mediocre instead of lousy,” I finished.

  “Anybody home, I hope?” my mother yelled from the kitchen.

  “Not mediocre,” Jill corrected, “fine. We’re in here!”

  “Well come on in here and help me unload this stuff.”

  We went into the kitchen and followed my mother out the back door to the station wagon, where about fifty-nine bags of groceries and Dennis were piled in the middle seat.

  “Come on out, Dennis,” my mother said. “We’re home.”

  “I can’t,” he said. “I’m stuck.”

  He was surrounded on all sides by bags.

  “Mother, why didn’t you put the stuff in the back?” Jill asked. “He can’t move.”

  My mother gave her a steely glare. “I did,” she replied. “If you’d care to look there are about a hundred and two more bags in the back. And I’m in no mood for criticism, Jill dear. I have just spent a harrowing two-and-a-half hours.”

  We ferried groceries into the kitchen and Dennis finally emerged from the car.

  “I was trapped,” he said grimly.

  “Don’t talk about trapped to me,” my mother told him. “You just go into your room and count or something, because we are getting on each other’s nerves.”

  “You’re not getting on my nerves,” he said. But he left.

  She sank into a kitchen chair. “I think he did a commercial for every single thing I put in my basket. Not to mention all the things he wanted me to put in my basket that I didn’t buy. At first they thought he was cute. Little old ladies stopped to listen to him. But he kept going—on and on and on. He didn’t stop for two hours. People stared. I got the most pitying looks from mothers whose children were just throwing tantrums or knocking cans of peas off shelves. I finally couldn’t stand it any more, so I sat him on an empty checkout counter and shoved a magazine in his hand and told him not to move. And ten minutes later I found him in the detergents and cleansers, pushing a cart piled high with cereal and potato chips and Ti-Dee Bowl. I can’t imagine why he wanted fourteen packages of Ti-Dee Bowl.”

  “But why did you take him?” asked Jill. “You could have known—”

  “Jill. Dear.” My mother’s voice was strained. “I got involved with the portrait of Linnet’s grandmother and before I knew it he was home from school and I hadn’t done the shopping and all we had in the house was a heel of bread and a desiccated lime.”

  “And a banana,” I reminded her. She gave me the same kind of look she’d given Jill. “Sorry,” I said meekly.

  “But what did you do with all that stuff he took?” asked Jill.

  “What did I do with it? I did nothing with it. I grabbed him by the arm and ran like hell.” Her expression defied us to find fault with her behavior. “Never again.”

  I put a box of pizzas into the freezer. The cold air vapor was swirling like steam and then I didn’t feel the cold at all. I didn’t feel anything, not heat nor chill nor my hand clutching the handle of the freezer. All I could see was that fog, till my vision was completely obscured by it. Then it began to clear, and when I could see again I was not seeing stacks of frozen food on metal shelves, but a small room, like a child’s room, with a little bed and a little rocking chair and a shelf of dolls.

  My mother appeared in the middle of the room. She was dressed in what looked like a little girl’s dress, but it was my mother’s face and she was her adult size. She went over to the shelf and got a boy doll, which she placed on the rocking chair. Then she took a smaller doll, a girl, and put it next to the boy. Then another girl doll, smaller than the second, so the three dolls were lined up on the rocker. She reached up for a fourth doll, but it wasn’t there.

  She turned all the way around, surveying the whole small room. She ran to the bed, looked over and under it, ran back to the shelf and skimmed her hand over it to make sure she wasn’t imagining the empty space. She counted the dolls on the rocker, pointing to each one with her finger.

  Then she threw herself on the bed, which was too small for her, and started pounding her fists into the pillow and kicking her feet wildly.

  “. . . close that freezer door!”

  I was peering at a shelf full of frozen vegetables. I slammed the door shut. I didn’t turn around right away, but leaned against the freezer, too shaken to move.

  What I had seen had been grotesque, full of a sense of vague menace. My mother, in a child’s pinafore, playing with dolls, a weird figure in a weird room. And then, the lost doll, the temper tantrum, all of which I had watched but not heard, since there had been no sound at all throughout the entire scene.

  “What’s wrong with you? Laura?” Jill grasped me by the shoulders and turned me around. “I’ll bet she’s had another hunch. Haven’t you, Laura?”

  I shook my head. “No, no, it’s nothing.”

  “Laura, what is it?” My mother got up and came over to where I was still leaning against the freezer. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, sure. I’m fine. It’s nothing. I didn’t see anything.”

  “What do you mean, you didn’t see anything?” Jill demanded.

  “Nothing, just a figure of speech.”

  What I had seen became even more frightening as I gradually discovered what it had to mean. Instead of being pleased that I could interpret my vision, instead of dissolving the feeling of dread that it had brought with it, I found that when I was sure of what it meant, I was more terrified than ever.

  Because of course, the missing doll was Dennis.

  7

  I SLEPT BADLY that night; in fact, I hardly slept at all.

  I was afraid to close my eyes, for fear that I might have another “vision.” Maybe it was the idea of my mind going off and thinking up things on its own, over which I had no control, that I found so scary. Even the thought of dreaming was terrifying.

  The possibility of something bad happening to Dennis was enough in itself to keep me awake, because that was the only explanation for what I had seen. The Dennis doll was missing and my mother had gotten hysterical over it. No matter how hard I thought—and I had plenty of time to think through that long night—there was no other way to interpret it. Something was going to happen to Dennis.

  But was it really a prediction? So far the only evidence there was about my ability to see the future was the episode with my father and Hacker. We didn’t know yet whether Beth was going to be the star of the play; it was still possible that I could be wrong about that. If only I was wrong! That would mean I might be mistaken about Dennis, too.

  I was groggy and bleary-eyed when I got to school the next morning but I was there practically as soon as they opened the doors. I raced down the hall to Mr. Kane’s room and fought my way through the cluster of girls at the door. They were also impatient to see the cast list. But none of them had as good a reason to read that list as I did, and I elbowed my way to the front of the group, not caring about the grumbles and the shoves I received on the way.

  Beth was right in front of the door and as I pushed myself next to her she turned to me, her face grim and accusing.

  “I didn’t get it,” she said. “You were wrong.”

  I was flooded with feelings of relief, which must have shown on my face, because she said bitterly, “Well, you don’t have to look so happy about it.”

  I felt terribly disloyal, being so glad that she hadn’t gotten the part she wanted, but I couldn’t help it. If I was wrong about this, then I could be wrong about Dennis, and that was more importa
nt than one Junior High School play.

  I checked the list myself, just to make sure.

  “Eloise: Jean Freeman.”

  “Hey, Laura,” someone said, “you got the part.”

  I looked around to see who’d said it. “What part?”

  “Nancy,” Sonia Bibby replied. “The one you tried out for.”

  “I did?”

  I looked at the list again. There it was, down near the bottom of the paper. “Nancy: Laura Hoffman.”

  “I don’t believe it.” I read the whole list with more interest now, and saw that Beth’s name was second.

  “Beth, you got the second lead! That’s practically as good as Jean’s part!”

  Beth separated herself from the crowd and moved a little way down the hall. I followed her, not knowing whether I should feel happy or guilty or disappointed or what. It was bewildering.

  “Beth, now we’ll be together in the play, just like you wanted.”

  “You said I was going to be the star,” she said. “And you didn’t want to be in it anyway. Just yesterday you said you were going to quit the club.”

  “But you told me I couldn’t if I got the part. Beth, I’m sorry about what I told you. I never should have said it. But you wanted to know, and you kept insisting and insisting that I try to see something for you. Maybe that’s not what it meant. Maybe it meant that you’d be so good, you’d steal the show and end up being the star.”

  “That’s not what you said.”

  “Look, I’m new at this. I told you I couldn’t be sure of being right.”

  “I know.” She put her flute case into her locker and pulled out some books. “It’s just—well, I really psyched myself up for that part. And why did you have to look so happy when you found out I didn’t get it?”

  “Beth, I’m sorry. It wasn’t that I was glad you didn’t get the part; it was that I was glad I was wrong.”

  And I told her the whole thing.

  The look of shock on her face when I explained what the dolls meant was enough to convince me that she wasn’t angry anymore.