Falling for Hamlet

10



Zara leans in to Ophelia. “We hear Hamlet started acting very strange after the wedding.”

“People like to talk.” When Zara lifts her eyebrows, Ophelia concedes, “Well, he was under a lot of pressure. Especially from Claudius.”

“Was he crazy?”

“That’s a loaded term.” Ophelia recrosses her legs. “Um… I will say he wasn’t quite himself.”

In the days following the wedding, Hamlet said he didn’t want to be anywhere near his mother or Claudius, but he also insisted that he didn’t want to go back to school. He refused to go outside into the world, because he didn’t want to be followed or questioned or photographed. And as discreet as people within the castle were supposed to be, they were more curious and watchful, too. So during the day, he hung out in my apartment even when I was in class, creating a kind of half-life for himself.

When I was with him, I spent most of the time worrying about how troubled he looked and how little he would speak and what “bad thing” he was planning on doing. I asked a couple of times, but he wouldn’t answer. I tried to go back to my routine, staying in the art studio after school and going to swim practice. But when I wasn’t with him, I worried even more and was totally distracted, so my coach kept yelling at me, and my art teacher, Ms. Hill, just stared with silent concern, which isn’t exactly good for the creative process. I couldn’t miss practice, since the end of the season was fast approaching, so I dealt with the shouting, but I decided to skip studio time and paint at home. But every time I got there and picked up the brush, all I could do was stare at Hamlet sprawled across my bed and think, What are you going to do? What are you going to do? Needless to say, I accomplished little.

My father did not notice Hamlet’s constant presence, or else he would have insisted on a change or at least offered his thoughts on the matter. Things had been so busy following the wedding, what with the shift of power and the flurry of requests for interviews and appearances by the royal couple, that he had not noticed what was happening.

Gertrude finally asked my father to ask Hamlet to leave our home. My father, taken by surprise, stormed into our apartment and began lecturing Hamlet, who was watching an infomercial about tall ladders. (I had wandered away out of boredom, as we neither needed a tall ladder nor did I understand how an entire hour could be filled by discussing a ladder.) As soon as I heard my father, I ran back in from the balcony where I had been sketching, only to hear Hamlet say, “Got it, Polonius. No need to go on.” He stood, zipped up his black hoodie (his uniform at that point), and reached out a hand to me.

I followed, and my father cleared his throat. “Dad, I’ll come back later. I’ll cook you a special Sunday dinner.”

“I believe Gertrude wanted to speak to Hamlet alone,” he advised.

Hamlet interrupted, “Then Gertrude can say so herself!”

“Hamlet!” I admonished.

He softened his tone and said, “If she wants me so much, she’ll have to deal with Ophelia being there. I really can’t be left alone with my mother right now. I don’t trust myself.”

My father looked apprehensive but nodded in agreement.

We found the newlyweds in the office of their social secretary. Gertrude fluttered over and kissed Hamlet in greeting. His arm tightened across my back, but he said nothing.

Claudius called out, “Son, how are you this bright afternoon?”

“Son?” Hamlet spat. “I don’t think we’re ready for that.” Hamlet turned to leave, pulling me behind him, but Claudius’s words stopped him.

“Fine. Then, Hamlet, how are you this bright afternoon?”

“Too much sun, if you ask me,” he answered sharply.

Claudius tsked and asked, “Why is a dark cloud still hanging over you?”

I wished I hadn’t followed Hamlet upstairs, but I squeezed his hand to try to bring him back from his deepening anger.

“Darling,” Gertrude said, stroking Hamlet’s cheek, “why are you still in this wretched sweatshirt? It is neither stylish nor becoming on you, and the color… it will seem to our subjects that you are still in mourning.”

He ducked away from her touch. “Seem? Seem? I’m not wearing black to make it seem like anything, Mother. If all of these things seem like grief, it’s because I feel grief. I—am—in—mourning. Aren’t we all?” He raised his eyebrows and glared at her.

Gertrude’s face became its typical mask, and her eyes flicked to me. She paused for a moment, then decided to speak in my unwelcome presence. Through thinly drawn lips, she counseled, “Be kinder to your uncle, dearest. You know you could spend the rest of your life looking for someone who will measure up to the image you have of your father, but you will find no one to match it.”

Hamlet’s face was pinking, but he listened to the rest.

“You know this is common. All living things must die. Ashes to ashes and all that,” she said.

“Yes, it is common,” he fumed.

I had the feeling that he didn’t mean only the death of his father, but that he referred to her, as well. She seemed to sense his insult and walked away irritated, though she had enough presence of mind to glance at Claudius, who stepped forward. It was clear that they had planned this verbal attack.

“It is sweet and commendable, Hamlet, to mourn for your father. But you know that your father lost a father, and that father lost his. Each of them mourned for a suitable amount of time. But to carry on like this… it is a sign of, well, stubbornness. And, frankly, it’s unmanly.”

I sucked in my breath, and Hamlet muttered, “Son of a bitch.”

Claudius heard what he said but simply narrowed his eyes and said in forced sincerity, “I love you, Hamlet, and I hope you can think of me as a father.”

Hamlet yanked me out of the room at this point. I don’t know what possessed Claudius to keep speaking, but he yelled, “We hope you will stay with us and not go back to college!”

Hamlet’s gait caught, but then he continued on.

Gertrude chased after us and begged, “Please do this for us… for me. Stay with us. Do not go back to Wittenberg.”

He would not look up but mumbled, “I’ll think about it.”

She couldn’t feel his sweating palms or see the pinched pain on his face, but I could, and his agony made me snap. I turned on her. “Gertrude,” I said, but paused to keep myself from telling her how much I hated her and wished her husband—her first husband—were there to scold her. “Don’t you see you’re messing with his head? First you told him to go, now you want him to stay.”

“I love my son.”

“So do I, which is why I think you should leave him alone. Can’t you see he’s upset?”

“We are all upset,” she said slowly, carefully.

With condescension that would have killed my father, I asked, “Are you?”

If she were a cobra, this would have been the moment when those weird flaps would have popped out of the sides of her head and her fangs would have spewed poison. She opened her mouth, but before she could say anything, the elevator arrived and Hamlet snatched me away from her.

As soon as the doors separated us from them, he said, “You’re crazy to talk to her like that.”

I shrugged and gritted my teeth. “Aren’t you always telling me to stand up to her?”

“Yeah, but wow. Hell of a way to start.”

“It’s not the first time,” I said with a sigh, and leaned my head against the metal elevator wall, wondering what the exchange with his mother would cost me. “I used to hold back, but since your dad… it’s been harder for me to keep quiet. Especially when she treats you like a pet or a little boy.”

His face darkened and he kicked the wall, making the elevator shake. “God, why? Why did my father have to die? Why did she marry Claudius? Why so soon?” In what had recently become a common gesture, he ran his fingers roughly through his hair, making it stand up in every direction. “Everything just seems so… wrong. I have no use for them… or for anything.”

“Not even me, sweet prince?” I asked, not at all hurt, but looking for a way to distract him. His eyes met mine, and it seemed to pull him out of his head. I pressed, hoping for a smile if not a laugh, “What, no sex joke? No, ‘But I have a lot of uses for you, wink, wink’?”

He stared at me for a moment and added coolly, “I never say ‘wink wink.’ ”

“Maybe not, but you’re not even going to make a snide remark? You’re slipping.”

He gave an exaggerated wink and said suggestively, “I could use a little slipping.”

I clasped my hands in a mock prayer of thanks. “And he’s back.”

I didn’t feel much like kidding around, to tell the truth, but I knew Hamlet needed it. I found everything Claudius and Gertrude had said to him distasteful and disturbing. What was their rush? They had obviously moved on, but most of us hadn’t, and certainly not Hamlet. It had been merely two months since the king had died, and they wanted life to return to normal. For Hamlet, there would never be a “normal” again, and the fact that Gertrude, especially, didn’t see it was shocking. I hoped he would go back to school, and fast. In truth, I was not sure how many more of those conversations he could take, nor could I imagine the consequences if his mother and uncle (for I would never call him Hamlet’s father, or even stepfather) did not let up. With dread I wondered if the “bad thing” Hamlet had spoken of might involve them.

When we got back to my apartment, my father came out of his office. “Why are you back? Didn’t your mother want you home?”

Hamlet kept walking, so I explained, “They had a fight. Can he just stay a little while, Dad?”

My father chewed his lip and watched Hamlet’s slumped figure pass down the hallway to my room. Reluctantly, he nodded and said he’d be working from home for a while and that Hamlet had to leave before dinner.

When I got to my room, Hamlet was sitting at the foot of my bed with my sketch pad in his hands. He didn’t even look up, so I sat at my desk and started doing homework. After I finished analyzing a poem, I tossed the textbook aside and slid onto the floor next to him.

He was scrawling “To Be” and “Not to Be” over and over.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“That is the question.”

I studied the scribbled page and tried to figure out what he meant.

He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, his voice distant. “Is it better to suffer through life, to deal with all the crap thrown at you, or to fight against your problems by ending your life? To die is to sleep. That’s all. And by sleeping, we escape everything that tortures us. That’s the dream, then, isn’t it? The perfection of nothingness.”

A chill ran through me. It sounded like he was talking about suicide. Was he just thinking aloud, or was he formulating a plan? If I came at it headlong, I thought he might freeze up, so I tried to follow his logic and keep him talking. I suggested, “When you sleep, it’s not nothingness. You dream.”

He opened his eyes and looked at me. “There’s the catch, huh? When you die, who knows what dreams might come? What’s in the afterlife—if there is one? That’s the scary part. That’s what keeps us living out our long, painful lives. Who would put up with the heartache and the injustice of life when one could just get a knife and end it… except for the fear of what comes next? Fear of something worse makes us too scared to do anything.”

My own fear bubbled over. “To do what, Hamlet? What are you thinking of doing?”

“Nothing.”

“It’s not nothing.” When he didn’t answer, I started to get up. “I’m going to get my dad.”

“Don’t,” he begged, grabbing my arm and pulling me down again. When I stiffened under his grip, he let go and leaned back. “I was just talking, Phee,” he said, pushing a smile into the corners of his lips. But his eyes were dead. He took the page, ripped it out of my sketch pad, crumpled it, and tossed it aside.

It rolled under my bed, but I didn’t get it. Instead I took his face in my hands and pleaded with him, “Please, Hamlet, tell me what you’re thinking of doing. I can’t lose you, too. I can’t.”

He rose, and my hands fell pointlessly into my lap. “You won’t, Phee. Everything’s gonna be fine. You’ll see.” Then he zipped up his sweatshirt and walked out.

Francisco: So Hamlet considered suicide.



Ophelia: I don’t know.



Barnardo: You were his girlfriend. How can you not know?



Francisco: Ophelia? He asked a question. (pause) He never spoke about it?



Ophelia: Well… yeah, he talked about it, but not in a real way.



Barnardo: Not in a real way? What does that mean?



Ophelia: Hamlet talked about a lot of things. He said he was going to climb Mount Everest one day. Maybe you should haul in some Sherpas and find out if they knew about that plan.



Francisco: Don’t be smart.



Barnardo: No risk of that with her.