Life With Objects

He thought that Janine and Tim were asleep in the guest room, so Charlie turned the silver knob on the record player down low before placing the needle. The blues crawled out of the speakers. Ever since Charlie first brought Tim to his father’s Nantucket home years ago, his friend had preferred the surround sound in the basement. Janine, on the other hand, loved the record player. She said she liked the solid feel of the sound.

Janine appeared in the doorway. She was holding a bowl of blueberries, its plastic wrap cover ripped through the middle.

"Are we dancing?" she asked, then crossed the room to put the bowl down on the table next to the record player. With a slow turn of the volume knob she made the music louder. She smelled like last night's shower and sweat and a trace of men’s cologne.

"Where did you come from?" he said. He nudged the music down, not wanting Tim to wake up.

Janine weaved her head and hips side to side like a puppet untangling its strings. Shadows wavered below her eyes; in a few hours she would flame out and fall back to sleep. On the drive down to the ferry, she had dozed off, her head dropping onto his shoulder. Tim had looked up from the road to make a joke about drawing on her face.

She moved toward him, her feet following the whispered patterns of the drumbeats on the floorboards. Her engagement ring swayed on the silver chain around her neck, where she had strung it the day before to keep it from getting lost on the beach.

"I'm hung over," he said, backing off. He eased into his father’s armchair. Its leather flesh clung to him in the heat.

Janine’s hands clapped down on her thighs.

"Is this it then, Charlie?" she asked. She turned the volume all the way up and yelled, “Can we not have fun anymore?" Her voice was teasing, but the question glowed at the centers of her eyes.

A harmonica took over the song. The sound felt like the falling of night. He stood up, gripped by the hope that he could move beneath the wailing tone and touch her without being seen.

Tim walked into the study in his underwear. Without pausing, he stalked across the room toward the record player. "Don't you people ever sleep?" he said. He turned the music down with a violent counterclockwise twist of his hand.

Janine leaned against the table. She said to Tim, "You better stay up. I'm making pancakes.”

“Well come get me when they're ready, and not a goddamn second sooner." He gave Charlie a wry grin.

"Or I can always just leave you there," she said.

Charlie knew this was not true. She would serve Tim his pancakes first and Charlie second and herself last. But when Tim slammed the door behind him, she turned the music back up. The sound covered the room.

Jess sits inside her cramped, brightly lit dressing room, staring at the vanity mirror, studying her powdered face and dark red lips. She touches her shiny hair, recently dyed black, firm from all the hairspray and bobby pins that hold up her spiraling bun. She hears creaking above her. The musicians, she knows, are getting into place within the orchestra pit. The prelude starts a minute later and the floorboards vibrate from the percussion, strings, woodwinds, and brass instruments. Then someone knocks on her door.

The stage director enters, dressed in black, with a wireless headset strapped over the arc of his bald head. “It’s time. Two minutes until curtain.”

Jess presses her hand against her stomach and looks back at her reflection in the mirror. She feels sweat run down her scalp, down the back of her neck. “I think I’m going to throw up.”

“There’s no time for that.”

“I’m not sure I can do this.”

“You can,” the stage director says, extending his hand. “You’re going to be great, but we need to go now.”

Jess puffs out a deep breath, then turns and nods. She takes the stage director’s hand and follows him out of the dressing room and up the winding steel staircase. She walks around props and plywood cutouts with him, past the other singers and dancers, but stops at center stage, a foot behind the thick mauve curtain.

“Your dad’s three rows back, front and center, just like you wanted.”

“Perfect.”

“You’re going to be great, kid.”

Jess puffs out another deep breath. “I sure hope so.”

“I’m turning on your ears and microphone,” the stage director says, twisting the dials on the wireless packs attached to the back of her red dress. He gives her two thumbs up, right as her in-ear monitors and hands-free microphone go live, before walking away.

Jess watches him move towards the other singers and dancers off stage. She watches him and waits. Then he holds up both hands, fingers spread. Ten seconds to go. She turns and faces the curtain, stands erect. She closes her eyes and visualizes the brass knob and maple door like her father taught her when she was first learning to act and sing, back when she was just a girl in grammar school. The knob is the key, he always said. You must see it, reach for it, and turn it, he insisted, to open the door to your character’s world, then leave all else behind as you cross the threshold.

She focuses on the brass knob, circular and smooth, and lifts her hand up and out to touch it. She grabs hold of it, feeling the cool metal, as the curtain slowly lifts. She twists her hand and swings open the door. The lyrics to the first song, a solo ballad, rush through her brain, but then she steps forward and passes through the imaginary door frame, opening her eyes to the brilliant stage lights. Transformed, she starts to sing.