What was it about it her that was affecting him so deeply?
He suspected that she was pretty under all that stage make-up, bouffant 1890s hairdo and neck to ankle dress, and, as duly noted, her high, pert chest was undoubtedly a thing of beauty. But his feelings really weren’t about beauty or attraction. They were about something else far less quantifiable or easily explained. The only words that came to mind? Under his skin. Her performance had gotten under his skin. The way her face had crumpled, the way her voice had broken when she whispered “Cyril,” the profound sorrow on her face, and how terribly discomfited he felt at not seeing her alive and smiling one last time.
There was something about Elise Klassan that was special. Compelling. And she shone more brightly than hammy lines and mediocre co-stars. He was affected. He was moved. He was touched. And though he knew this was the point of theater, he found he didn’t like it.
When Preston turned around, the man stood, his lips spreading into a wide, satisfied smile. “You’ve helped immensely.”
“Have I? With what?”
The man nodded, reaching down for his umbrella and chuckling softly to himself before looking back up at Preston. “I wasn’t sure if I was right. But now…seeing you….well, I know I am.”
He nodded once more, as if in thanks, then he sidestepped out of his row, winked at Preston and exited the theater.
***
God, it was so humiliating.
So. Dang. Humiliating.
Elise Klassan stared at herself, the bright white, bubble-like bulbs surrounding her dressing room mirror and lighting her up like a hundred sparklers on the Fourth of July. She reached for another makeup wipe and scrubbed at her other cheek, sighing deeply.
When she had agreed to play Matilda in the off-off-Broadway world premiere of She Loves Me Not, Elise had read the script four times, trying to find a way to play Matilda that didn’t reek of melodrama. She’d decided to play the character as a lost waif, a forgotten nobody who rises to prominence via an inheritance, though she has none of the skills necessary to negotiate her way through higher society. If Matilda could be seen as vulnerable instead of headstrong, the audience would be sympathetic to her ending up rich, but alone. Instead, the director had blocked her efforts at every turn, insisting that the play was a farce with Matilda receiving her just-desserts-comeuppance at the end, and forcing Elise to overact the dramatic moments so they’d read funny.
They didn’t.
They just read bad. No, not bad. Awful.
Throwing the used light-orange makeup wipe into the garbage, she grabbed another and scrubbed at her lips vigorously, the red lipstick coming off on the small white cloth in garish streaks. She attacked her eyes with similar gusto and her cheeks again, relieved to see her lightly freckled face finally emerge from behind the thick pancake. With impatient fingers, she pulled the hundreds of pins from her hair, neatly placing them in an empty Altoids tin. Her dirty blonde hair tumbled in waves around her shoulders, and she drew it back into a ponytail and wrapped a gray scrunchie around it.
She’d taken off her dress and Victorian underthings as soon as she entered the shabby dressing room, but now she pulled on her favorite Old Navy jeans, faded and soft from frequent wear, and took a floral, long-sleeved T-shirt from the chair beside her modest dressing table. Flipping it over her head, she smoothed her ponytail again, and put on her glasses before looking at herself in the mirror. She looked like herself now, like Sarah and Hans Klassan’s youngest daughter, Elise, from Lowville, New York.
Staring at her pink, fresh-scrubbed, bespectacled face, she couldn’t help the intense moment of self-doubt that ensued: Was she crazy for leaving her family’s farm in upstate New York and coming to New York City?
Certainly her three older sisters hadn’t made such a rash decision with their lives. Good Mennonite daughters, they’d all settled in or around Lowville, all were engaged or married to local men from their church, and her oldest sister, Abby, already had two babies. But not Elise.
Always considered an “odd duck” by her family, she’d been captivated by the theater in second grade when she took a field trip to the local high school to see Finian’s Rainbow. It wasn’t just the beautiful songs, like “How Are Things In Glocca Mora” or “Look To The Rainbow.” No. It was the way the high school students, some of whom were friends of her older sisters, had transformed themselves into someone else. To be someone else, she marveled, looking down at her no-frills, homespun clothes, sounded wonderful.