Things I Never Told My Wife
True confessions of a Shakespearean actor
Chapter 18
HAVE YOU EVER BEEN CAMPING with a four-year-old and a five-year-old? What an experience! Daphne and I both felt going to Disneyland for our vacation the previous year had been too much for our kids. I guess it was a case of parents wanting to do things with their kids because we thought that was what we were ready for and got a step ahead of their development. Not that we didn’t all have fun, but it would have been better if the kids had been about three years older. We’d try again then.
So, instead we joined a group from Shelly’s preschool on a camping trip. There were several parents with one, two, or six kids on the outing. We’d managed to reserve a group campsite on Icicle Creek near Leavenworth. That was the easy part. I was teaching at the Rainier Youth Theatre Summer Camp, thanks to Tressa continuing to badger me all year long. And it had been fun. I was finally able to start looking at high school kids as kids, not as sexually mature adults. I suppose the day would come soon enough when I’d start seeing college kids as kids, too. It’s part of maturing. But, as I was saying, I had to also get ready for a camping trip. Somehow, I got to thinking that we needed all the right equipment, including a tent, sleeping bags, backpacks, portable stove and grill, ice chests, mosquito netting, hiking shoes… I was soon on a first name basis with half a dozen sales clerks at REI. We ended up needing a small trailer to carry the camping gear.
Which seemed logical enough that I found and bought the Camping Pro Trailback, a six-foot trailer ‘designed for the serious camping family.’ That’s what the brochure said. When it was finally time for the camping trip, it had already cost me several thousand dollars and I was envisioning a lifetime of camping experiences with our kids.
We got to the campground and I managed, after several tries, to back the trailer between two trees to where we’d be setting up camp. Allow me a small correction. Where I’d be setting up camp. We had two children under five running wild with twenty other kids in a forest with a rushing creek. Daphne was going to have all she could handle keeping them from drowning or being eaten by a bear.
It took me two hours to get the tent set up, air mattresses inflated, sleeping bags unrolled, the screened-in extension set up, the grill leveled and propane attached, the camp chairs set up, and a campfire laid. It was so much fun! Why had we never done this before? I fully believe insanity is inherited. It’s passed down to us from our kids.
I’d run a grill before with moderate success, so when dinnertime came around, I was confident that I could get a meal on the table in limited time. Not if I wanted the chicken actually cooked through. Or potatoes that could be cut and mashed. I had a lot to learn.
But it was all worth it. Just having the kids enjoying the outdoors with their friends and then cuddling up with us around the campfire as we sprayed mosquito repellent on every living creature in the forest and sang silly camp songs while the kids faded off to sleep. Daphne came out of the tent while I was still trying to clean the frying pan in lukewarm water. Parents all over the campground were getting their kids to bed and ours were out like a light. I rinsed the offending skillet and hung it from the set of camp hooks strung between the rails of the trailer and turned to Daphne. She collapsed forward into my arms and I just held her.
“Why was it you wanted children?” she asked plaintively. Me? Okay, maybe a little.
“What would our lives be like without them, sweetheart?”
“We’d be having sex by now. In a four star hotel in New York City.”
“We could be having sex right now over there next to the creek,” I whispered, stroking down to her firm bottom. Two kids might be exhausting, but they sure kept Daphne in good shape.
“Can’t. Bob and Donna already called dibs. Carl and Eda are watching over their kids.”
“Can we schedule it?”
We laughed and cuddled, finally going into the tent and managing to get naked without waking the children. We were about to make love when we fell asleep.
For all that it was a bit chaotic to start, the week was really fun. We hiked. We played games. We played in the stream as the tykes tried to build a dam by moving pebbles into a row. The water was cold but the temps, even up here in the mountains, were in the nineties in August.
Everything went fine until the rain started on Thursday. On Friday, half our group had broken camp and headed home. Saturday morning, after having played every game we brought with us until it and we were worn out, the sun came out again. Daphne and the other mom who was still in camp played with the kids while the two of us dads reversed the process of setting up camp, packing everything into our cars and trailer, and finally buckling our children into their car seats for the long drive back to Seattle.
As we crossed Stevens Pass, Daphne looked up at the sunny slopes. “You know,” she said, “we should come up to ski this winter.”
I felt almost relaxed when freshman orientation started. I did my schtick and oversaw the table where freshmen gathered to have older students take them on tours of the theatre and give them the big pitch on how great our program was. I’d been promoted from assistant professor to associate professor in recognition of my being fully on a tenure track. I was happy about that. Teaching agreed with me. I’d been here long enough that I knew the majority of the kids in the program and quickly learned the names of the freshmen.
“King Lear, huh?” Traci stood beside me with her arms crossed. “I think I’ll transfer to the University. They’re doing Comedy of Errors.”
“You think you can only do comedy? I thought playing Laura cured you of that notion.”
“Not only. But I just like it so much.”
“I think you’ll like Lear. I’m bringing in a guest star to play the old king,” I said.
“Really? Why?”
“First of all, because serious actors should have something to look forward to as they age. Putting an eighteen or twenty-year-old in the role of the doddering old king as he goes senile is simply too much of a stretch unless the rest of the cast are nine-year-olds. Second, working with a seasoned veteran will be a learning experience for everyone. And third, while Lear is the lead, there are a dozen extremely good roles in this show.”
“For men. There are only three women.”
“Ah. You have done some research,” I laughed. “So, in your studies have you identified roles for the boys of Shakespeare’s theatre? I’m thinking I should double cast like Shakespeare did.”
“Not use any women? Now I’m sure I’m transferring!”
“If Shakespeare did it casting boys to play the part of women, why shouldn’t I cast women in men’s roles? What if we played Goneril and Albany as lesbians? Or Edgar and Edmond as sister and illegitimate brother? Why don’t you poke around the script and see what you can come up with?”
“I think I’ll stick around just to see how this turns out,” she laughed. “You didn’t think I’d really leave you, did you, Terry?”
“Me? You mean the program.”
“Yeah. And what keeps me in it.”
Kate Winslet was waiting in my office for me. I stopped at the door with my mouth hanging open.
No, it wasn’t the actress I’d fallen in lust with while watching Titanic. But Deborah di Cambria could certainly have been her stunt double. The senior was capitalizing on her resemblance, too. I’d already heard Jon mention her name for the role of Clea in Black Comedy.
“Hi, Terry. Guess you got the short straw in the drawing for TAs this year. I’m it.”
“Well, Deborah, I certainly think I could have done worse. How was your summer?”
“I got to play in a summer rep in Idaho of all places. If I still have a country twang to my voice, it’s all their fault.”
“Working as an actress is working as an actress. Every role counts toward the next one.”
“I understand coffee is part of my responsibilities. I’ll need to get it when I come in for my voice lesson at eight, but I’ll nuke it for you before you get here at ten.” I scowled at her and she started giggling.
“Just kidding. I know microwaving coffee makes it terrible. How do you feel about iced coffee?”
“Why don’t I see if I can find an assistant teaching assistant? Seriously, forget about the coffee. I have a lot of other things to get rolling. I need my schedule of classes and enrollment. We need to order scripts for King Lear. I liked the French’s edition of R&J, so let’s go with that. We’ll need a meeting set up this week or next with Jim Mason to go over scenic concepts. Are you planning to be my AD?”
“Yes?” she squeaked. She scrambled for a pad of paper and started scribbling things down. “If you’ll have me. Jon was very specific that I should work with the director for one of the shows and I’m not going to miss the musical if I can help it.” Bolstered by his success with Victor Victoria, Dan Richardson had chosen to do A Little Night Music at the Rep this year. I was back on SCU’s stage for Lear. Jon was moving all the way to farce for the first show of the year—two one acts called The White Liars and Black Comedy.
“Hey, Terry. Coffee?” I looked up to see Traci standing in the doorway with a cup held out to me.
“You’re a lifesaver,” I said. “You just saved Deborah’s life.”
“Hey, girl. Want me to take over the coffee job? I know you’ve got a class right before Terry’s usual arrival time. I don’t have anything until next hour.”
“That’s a demeaning personal service and isn’t part of a TA’s responsibility,” Deborah sniffed.
“Sure it is. I met Doug and Julie at Starbucks getting coffee for Jon and Dan. That’s what reminded me.”
“Really? Okay, Terry. I can at least get you an afternoon cup before you start rehearsals and all.” Deborah still looked a little put out but was trying to make the best of it.
“That works for me. I usually end up with the swill Doc Henredon has in a pot outside his office in the afternoon. Here, I happen to have two Starbucks cards.” I handed each of the girls a gold card that I’d filled just last night.
“Just happened to, huh?”
“One is the office card I keep filled for my TA. The other is my personal card. I guess I’ll have to pick up another. Now let’s get to work. I need to get to my first class,” I said. We all headed out and Deborah showed me she really did have a good grasp of her job as a TA and the skills to carry them out. She was a little more formal than El had been as my first TA, but she took it a little further, too, and led the class in ten minutes of warmups and stretches before she introduced me.
The only other department in school that has as much eye candy dressed in leotard and tights is dance. Most of the serious dancers were too skinny for my tastes. Deborah wore a sports bra top and shorts. Yes, she definitely had my attention. As soon as she introduced me, she picked up her things and left The Box. She’d get things started in the morning but she wasn’t staying for the whole class.
Deborah and I had very little overlap in our office times. It had been that way with Lee the previous year as well. I noticed, however, Traci seemed to hang out more. That was nice. I was working on the master script one afternoon when she walked in.
“I figured it out,” she said. “Shakespeare used boys to perform girls’ roles. As a result, girls weren’t on stage all that much. Except Regan and Goneril are bigger parts and might not have been swapped out. One of them could have played Poor Tom, I mean Edgar, but they would have to change back and forth too often. That leaves Cordelia. She is in the first scene and then doesn’t appear again until the end of Act IV. The Fool doesn’t show up until the middle of Act I Scene 4. Plenty of time for the boy playing Cordelia to change costumes. The Fool is not seen again after Act III Scene 6 and Cordelia enters in Act IV Scene 4. Plenty of time to change back to his girl’s weeds. Cordelia and the Fool could have been played by the same boy.”
“My oh my, Traci. You worked all that out? Well done.”
“No. I got Dr. Kellogg to help me.”
“Resourceful.”
“Do you want me to play Cordelia and the Fool?”
“The idea has crossed my mind but I won’t commit until I see everyone audition. There could be an alternative I can’t resist.”
“So then. I guess it is up to me to become irresistible. I’ll do my best, nuncle. In every way I can think of.”
She did do her best and as the year progressed, she became more and more irresistible. Nor was she the only one. Deborah always seemed to wear something tantalizing—almost as if the two were in competition. But then there was also Roberta.
Daphne started her teacher certification classes on September eighteenth, a week after Roberta started as our nanny. With our schedules the way they were, we just needed more coverage with the kids than a high school student could provide after hours. We went through a nanny placement service and found Roberta. She was a single mother with a four-year-old who, as it happened, was in the same preschool as Billy. Many people hiring a nanny don’t particularly want a mother. Weird! We thought it was perfect. I bought a third car—an economical Toyota—that Daphne drove to her classes so Roberta could have the Volvo station wagon with three car seats in back for the children. I would take the kids to school in the morning where I would pick up Roberta and drive back home. She would then have the car for the rest of the day until Daphne drove her home around eight in the evening.
At twenty-three, Roberta was a young mom. But what a pleasure to be around. She related well with the kids and it was clear she wanted nothing more than to be with them. She worked from two until eight daily and was available for other hours as needed. Her duties included feeding the kids and making sure there was something for Daphne and me to eat in the evening. We weren’t getting many meals together except on the weekend.
It was purely a bonus that Roberta was so cute.
I took off for Los Angeles on New Year’s Day to shoot a bit part June had found me in a big budget movie. A bit part, yes, but the three weeks of work netted almost as much as I made in a semester of teaching. But I knew where I’d be when I was teaching and exactly when I’d start again. And I liked the life. I only hoped Daphne would like teaching as much as I did.
When I got back to town, work on King Lear started in earnest. Deborah did manage to land the role of Desiree Armfeldt in A Little Night Music but her schedule improved so we could do more work in the morning. She was a little curious about why Traci joined us so frequently, but that was revealed as I started rehearsing the Lear-Cordelia scenes with our guest star, Aldo Bertorelli.
Aldo was a retired actor, nearing seventy years old, and he adopted Traci as a new granddaughter. The chemistry was dynamite whether they were Lear and Cordelia or Lear and the Fool.
“I assume you don’t want it noised about that Cordelia and the Fool have already been cast,” Deborah sighed.
“You assume rightly. I plan to have her audition with everyone else, but it would take something special to displace her at this point. There are other roles I plan to cast as women, too. Most notably, Edgar and possibly Oswald. We’ll see who really ups their game when we start auditions. And believe me, Aldo needs the extra rehearsal time. Fortunately, Traci is working with him on his lines all the way through the show. I guess it’s a little harder for him to memorize at this age than when he was at the Rep.”
“He’s still pretty sharp. And what a voice! When he cuts loose it just resonates all through the theatre. The guys are going to look like real amateurs next to him.”
“It’s likely I’ll choose them from my class Voice for the Stage. I’m teaching them to reach deep for their voices and it’s beginning to show.”
“I wish I’d had that class. Up until you started it, all our voice lessons were for musicals. Not that I object to that! I mean, I get to sing ‘Send in the Clowns.’ I can’t ask for much more than that.”
“Good attitude, Deborah. And you have a great voice for the role. And we did work pretty well together in the stage movement class when you were a freshman. I hope that’s coming in handy.”
“Oh yeah. Terry, I have no complaints about the training I’ve received here at PCAD. I’m even beginning to appreciate the insight you have when you are directing. It’s been a real eye-opener. Do you want to fuck me?”
“Yah… ah… um… What?”
“I know you and El got it on. You were just too easy with each other not to have a relationship. I just could never figure out when you managed to do the deed. I thought you’d maybe want the same from me. I’d consider it part of the learning process.”
“Deborah, El and I never had a relationship here at PCAD. You’ve got that wrong. We flirted a lot and got along fabulously. But you can’t possibly expect that I’ve had that easy a relationship with any of my other TAs. We’ve always gotten along well, but I don’t have affairs with them. You and I had a little trouble getting our schedules coordinated last term but I think we’re doing just fine now. That’s all I’m asking.” That was all true. El and I didn’t get together until after she was no longer a student. It seemed to stop the questions but I couldn’t tell if Deborah was relieved or disappointed. She would probably be a fun fuck but my mind was elsewhere.
And the elsewhere was absolutely killing it as we went into full production in March. Deborah closed her show and from that point on was stuck to me like a sandbur. It made it very difficult to develop something more with Traci. It didn’t take long for the rest of the cast to realize Traci had a truly major role now that the two characters were combined. She ended up with more stage time than any other character besides Lear. It was a thing of beauty.
The critics felt the same way. The Seattle P-I sent a critic who had a writeup in the Friday edition. They praised the return of Aldo from retirement up one side and down the other but also said the production as a whole was worthy of his talent and there were no weak spots in the cast. Then they praised Traci’s performance in her dual role.
Most people have some idea about how pro scouts watch potential players in college games. The same is true of scouts for regional repertory companies. I might have fueled it a bit by forwarding the review to several artistic directors I knew at places like ACT, Seattle Rep, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, The Guthrie, Berkeley Rep and Cal Shakes, the Goodman in Chicago, and even Washington DC’s Arena Stage. I didn’t expect they’d all show up, but there were three artistic directors who showed up for closing night. ACT and Seattle Rep had both come the previous weekend.
Of course, everyone was interested in Aldo, who indicated he might be available to reprise the role at Ashland but wasn’t interested in returning to the stage full time at his age. Traci collected invitations to audition one after another. She wasn’t the only one. Mary Jane Schmidt, whom I’d cast as Edgar, was invited to open auditions at ACT. The men playing Edmund and Gloucester were also given audition invitations.
And last but not least, Rainier Youth Theatre asked if I would consider taking over their Shakespearean production next summer and assisting ailing director Stewart Rand in this season’s show. I’d already blocked out the time to work as an instructor in their camp for the summer, so it was an easy step for me to make in getting the summer production under way.
While they were there, Seattle Rep asked Deborah to come in for an audition based on her performance in A Little Night Music. That allayed most of the jealousy she might otherwise have had for Traci.
Both girls hopped a ride with me to the cast party at Jon’s house, and both stayed snug at my side throughout the party. The result, rather than an intense threesome, was a concerted effort at cock blocking. I couldn’t get any time alone with either girl and we got through the last week of school with no hanky-panky. Daphne, desperately needing a night out after her first year of teacher certification training, got dressed to the nines and made me wear my tux to the Gala. We had a wonderful time, easily socializing with other faculty and with my students. I was just as effectively cockblocked by my wife as I had been by the two young women.
“Don’t you just want to take all these beautiful students home with us and have an orgy?” Daphne asked. “They are all so yummy. Maybe I should focus on teaching college instead of grade school. We could have so much fun.”
None of them ever knew how close we’d all been to an orgy.
Of course, I never told my wife about that.
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