the brace

(a companion to the play they walked out of. bob, the same night.)

Twelve-eleven on the kitchen clock. Twelve-thirteen on the bathroom clock, which was four minutes fast on purpose because the kitchen clock was three minutes slow and my mother had decided we should round up.

The audition was at four PM the next day.

I had practiced the line sixteen times. I was about to practice it the seventeenth.

The line was but soft, what light through yonder window breaks? The first syllable was easy. The first word was easy. Even the first phrase was easy — but soft — because but soft was a thing my mouth had said since I was eight, after my grandfather gave me the Shakespeare and said son, this is the play you start with, this is where the language is youngest, and I did not understand him until I was ten, and re-read the balcony scene, and suddenly the whole sentence opened up in my chest like a door that had been waiting.

I had loved this line for nine years.

Tomorrow, in the high school auditorium, in front of Ms. Hartwell and the rest of the class and possibly Drew already seated in the front row because Drew was first up and would stay to watch the rest, I would have to say it. I would have to make Ms. Hartwell write something on her clipboard. I would have to make Drew think the part might not be his. I would have to take a line I had loved for nine years and put it in a room with twenty-three other people and hope it survived.

I said it. The tap was running because my sister was in her room next door and the bathroom door was thin.

But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?

It came out fine. It came out exactly fine. It came out fine the way a sentence comes out fine when you have said it sixteen times and know exactly where every breath goes and it is still not, somehow, the thing.

I watched my eyebrows in the mirror.

The trick of Drew's audition — the thing I had been studying — was that on did my heart love till now, his eyebrows did one thing on love and a second thing on till. Two micro-movements. They were not designed. He was not thinking about them. They happened because he was inside the line, not next to it.

I was next to my line. I had been next to my line for two weeks. The line and I were two separate objects in the same bathroom, watching each other across a small distance neither of us could close.

I said it again.

But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?

My eyebrows did the wrong thing on soft. They did the same wrong thing they always did on soft, which was a tiny clench, a defensive thing, like someone had said the word at me and I had had to brace for it. Drew did not brace. Drew probably did not know what bracing was.

I tried again.

But soft.

Brace.

But soft.

Brace.

But soft.

The brace was happening before I could stop it. The brace was probably the thing that had kept me from being good for nine years. The brace was every conversation in this house where my stepfather had said acting is fine but son let us not get too dreamy here, with the son doing all the work in the sentence the way sweetheart does work in some other house.

I did not know how to take the brace out without taking the wanting out either.

I said it one more time. The tap was still running.

The brace was still there.

The line was still beautiful.

I turned the tap off. I went to bed. I would not get the part. I was going to audition anyway.

— tilt