The Weird Sisters - Eleanor Brown [53]
So, yes, it might be more expected for us to have summered regularly in Stratford, or London, or Padua, or anywhere in Europe with some vague Shakespearean connection, really. But we think our father genuinely enjoyed these forays into Americana. For all his high-minded ignorance about its ways, he found the lives of everyone else all around him, outside our little Barnwell-shaped academic bubble, fascinating. He marked these trips on a mental checklist he carried, some way of bringing himself—and us—into the mainstream, if only for a few weeks.
On this roadtrip to our mother’s date with breastiny (™ Cordy), we had all brought books, of course, no one in our family would ever think of being without reading material, but Rose and our mother were the only ones reading. Our father was driving, holding the steering wheel loosely in his right hand while his left stroked his beard obsessively. He did this so often we sometimes wondered if he would wear tracks in it where his fingers moved. Bean was staring out the window, balancing Edward and her conscience on a mysterious set of mental scales, and Cordy was talking to our father about some avant-garde production of The Merchant of Venice that she had seen at a fringe festival somewhere.
“And then there was this whole thing about how the boxes Portia’s suitors are trying to unlock are, like, symbolic of her virginity, so she kept grabbing her crotch while she was talking.”
“That’s not exactly a new theory,” our father interjected. “It’s not a difficult leap of imagination to make. The word is actually ‘casket,’ and there’s the connection to the death of her father because of the word choice, but they are really just boxes.”
“But did she have to fondle herself onstage?” Cordy asked.
“No, I suppose that’s a bit much.”
“Oh, but you haven’t heard the worst part yet,” Cordy said. She had clasped her hands in her lap, leaning slightly forward, her chin resting on the shoulder of our mother’s seat, the earnest family dog. Bean raised one finger and dragged it carefully, metronome-like, back and forth along the window, ticking away the miles in her mind.
“Do tell,” our father said. He delights in precisely this kind of thing. In the same way Mount Rushmore was, to him, glorious in its baseness, he revels in the dreadfulness of various interpretations of Shakespeare. This meant that throughout our childhood, much of the live theater we saw was just that: dreadful interpretations of Shakespeare, including, memorably, that one all-nude production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which (after Bottom—in full ass-head regalia—sported an erection upon being fondled by Titania) gave us nightmares for a week. The benefit, besides being able to quote liberally from nearly every play, was that we all became quite good at critiquing theater. And at sleeping upright.
“Well,” Cordy began, stretching the word out like salt-water taffy, relishing the moment. “The Prince of Morocco, you know?” Our father nodded. “The guy playing him was, like, Rastafarian? And he had fake dreadlocks. And an accent.”
She sat back, having dropped her bombshell.
Our father chuckled. “Mislike me not for my complexion, mon,” he said, in a clumsy patois.
“Da-ad,” Bean moaned, stopping the ticking of her finger and rolling her eyes.
“No, it was totally like that!” Cordy said, turning to Bean and then back to our father. “Dad, you should have been there. I thought I was going to pee myself, I was laughing so hard.”
“What were they trying to do, do you think, Cordelia?” our father mused. This was, of course, the nut. Even a bad production had some value, something to be learned from it, even if it functioned as no more than a cautionary tale. “Do you have any idea of the zeitgeist?