Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen - Dyan Sheldon [31]
Ella nodded. “Uh-huh. Well, I asked my mother.” She kind of shrugged with her mouth. “I never manage to stay up late enough to see my father most of the time.”
“And what did she say?”
Ella made a face. “She said no.”
I sighed and started walking again. “That, of course, was to be expected,” I said. “But I really thought my mother would come round. After all, I can understand your mother worrying about you. You’ve never even been on a subway. But me?! I know my way around the City like a rat. My mother knows she has nothing to worry about.”
“What does it matter?” asked Ella. “We can’t go and that’s the end of it.”
But I am not a “Que será, será” kind of person.
“No, it isn’t,” I informed her. “It’s just the beginning.”
THE THAW
It wasn’t as if Carla Santini exactly surrendered and signed the peace treaty after I confronted her in that first rehearsal. She pretended I was human when Mrs Baggoli was around and ignored me as much as she could whenever Mrs Baggoli was out of the room. But she had other ways of getting revenge.
Mrs Baggoli clapped her hands together. “Let’s have some quiet in here!” she shouted. “Higgins, Doolittle, Mrs Pearce, Eliza… Let’s try it one more time.” She pointed at me. “Start with ‘Don’t I look dumb?’”
I nodded. I raised my head. “Don’t I look dumb?”
“Dumb?” asked Professor Higgins.
“Mrs Baggoli,” said Carla Santini. “I’m sorry to interrupt again, but do you really think dumb’s the right word?”
Mrs Baggoli doesn’t tolerate rudeness or dissension among her cast, so no one groaned out loud the way they would have normally; but we all shot desperate looks at one another. It wasn’t so much that Carla interrupted us; it was more like we interrupted her.
Mrs Baggoli sighed. She knew that she couldn’t yell at Carla because Carla wasn’t really doing anything wrong. She wasn’t goofing off, or snickering in the background, or anything like that. She was just trying to make sure that everything – and everyone – was as good as it could be. I know this, because it was something Carla said at every rehearsal, at least once, usually when Mrs Baggoli’s awesome patience was about to snap in two.
“Carla,” said Mrs Baggoli very slowly and distinctly, “we all appreciate your sense of perfection about this production, but it really would be helpful if we could get through at least one whole scene this afternoon.”
She could have added, “For a change”, but she didn’t.
Carla wrung her manicured hands. “Oh, I know, I know,” she said, her voice tormented and deeply apologetic. How could anyone be mad at her when she was suffering so nobly for all our sakes? “I know I’m being a nuisance, but this is so important to me—”
Mrs Baggoli put up one hand. “Please,” she pleaded, “it’s important to all of us. Maybe you could just save all your questions till we’re through.”
Carla nodded. “Of course,” she said. “Of course you’re right. I’ll wait until we’re through.”
“Right.” Mrs Baggoli took a deep breath. “Once more, Eliza.”
If we’d been making a film instead of rehearsing a play, at that point someone would have jumped in front of us with a clapboard and screamed, “Pygmalion. Act Two, take sixteen.”
We started yet again. This time we got as far as Eliza telling Higgins that her father only came to get some money to get drunk with when Carla’s calfskin shoulder bag crashed to the floor.
Everyone looked at Carla.
“I’m so sorry…” crooned Carla as she picked up her bag from the floor. “I was looking for a pen and paper so I could write down my questions.”
“I have an idea,” said Mrs Baggoli. “Why don’t we run through the beginning of Act Three instead?”
Mrs Baggoli might be a little naïve and too patient for her own good, and she had no idea what was really going on, but she wasn’t a fool. Act Three featured Mrs Higgins. By now all of us knew that the only way you could get Carla to shut up when I was on stage and she wasn’t, was to change the scene.