It was the first time I’d seen her act. She was good, there was no question of that, but there was something she lacked, that spark that true geniuses have. The envious part of me rejoiced-this woman, I thought, would not be a threat. But there was another side of me that regretted she wasn’t better. I liked Jessie, I wanted to see her succeed. I felt almost protective toward her, like a mother toward a child. She was so innocent-I didn’t want her to get hurt.
I was offered several parts at the Berkeley Shakespeare Festival and began to make arrangements to go up north. Jessie was pleased for me, but by this time she knew me well enough to speak her mind. "There aren’t going to be any casting directors up there, Pam," she said. "Those parts aren’t going to lead to anything. It’s an honor, I know that, but it might be better to stay in town, see what you can get here."
"I need to stretch myself, see what I can do," I said. And when she seemed unconvinced I added, "It’ll look good on my resume."
We rehearsed together again. I had gotten the part of Emilia, Iago’s wife, in Othello, and I had her take the other roles. As we rehearsed I was amazed to realize that she didn’t have any idea what the play was about, that she stumbled speaking the old Elizabethan cadences. I had thought, naively I guess, that anyone who wanted to act had had at least some grounding in the classics.
"So this Iago guy, he wants Othello to suspect his wife Desdemona," she said. "He’s really evil, isn’t he? Do that bit again, the one that starts ‘Villainy, villainy, villainy…’ "
I did. "Hey, you’re good," she said. There was nothing but pure pleasure in her voice. "You’re really good. I bet you’ll make it. Don’t forget your old friends."
She had an audition the day I was to leave, so she rented the BMW and drove me to the airport in the morning. We hugged at the curb in front of the terminal, careful not to wish each other good luck, smiling a little at our superstitions.
I had fun in Berkeley. I liked some of the cast, disliked others, felt indifferent to the rest, the way it usually goes. We were busy first with rehearsals and then with the performances themselves, and I didn’t have time to get lonely. Every week, though, I’d call Jessie or she’d call me and we’d exchange news.
Finally we settled into a routine and I had time to catch my breath. The man playing Iago told me about an audition in San Francisco, a company that was going to do Sophocles’ Oedipus. "Almost no money, of course," he said. "But all the prestige you can eat. It’ll look good on your resume."
I called, got an appointment for an audition. Iago loaned me his Berkeley university library card, and I took the BART train over to campus to study up on my Sophocles.
All the way there I could hear Jessie, as clearly as if she were sitting next to me. "Why are you doing this? What possible good can it do you? This isn’t going to lead to anything, you know that."
In my mind I told her, firmly, to shut up.
I was a bit overawed by the graduate library stacks at Berkeley: I’d never seen anything quite like them. There’s no space between the bookshelves-they sit on tracks and have to be cranked apart by hand. It’s the only way they can keep their huge amount of books in one space.
I found the Oedipus trilogy fairly easily. While I was in the Greek drama section I decided to look around, see if there were any books that might help with an interpretation of the play. I took down a few that looked interesting, then reached for the crank.
I stopped. There was a book on the shelf called Fortune and Misfortune, grimy with dust. I don’t know why it caught my attention-it looked as if no one had opened it for years, maybe decades. I pulled it down and read at random.
"And he who reads the following words will be plagued by ill fortune for all his life," it said.
This is my story, as I said, but now I’m going to talk about you. Are you comfortable? Probably you are, sitting and reading in your living room, leaning back in your recliner, a pleasant record in the CD player, iced tea or coffee or beer or wine beside you. Or maybe you’re sitting in your family van, waiting to pick up your child from school or ballet practice or the orthodontist. The sun is shining, birds are singing.
One of the books I picked up in the library was Aristotle’s Poetics. Aristotle says that when we watch a tragedy we feel pity and terror as the protagonist falls, and that when the play is over we feel cleansed, pure, a catharsis.
But what about the guy on stage? What about Oedipus, standing there with the gore running down his cheeks after he’s plunged Jocasta’s brooches into his eyes? Aristotle goes home, whistling, feeling better, feeling glad the tragedy happened to some other poor schmuck, but how does Oedipus feel?
What if the shepherd bringing the final message hadn’t said, Oedipus, the reason all the crops are failing and everything is going to shit is because you killed your father and married your mother, you poor fool? What if instead he had looked out into the audience, pointed to, say, Aristotle, and said, "You-you’re the reason we’re in such a mess. You don’t know it, but you’ve killed your father and married your mother, and now we’re all doomed." Would Aristotle have gone home whistling then?
I don’t think so. We feel better when we watch someone else suffer. But Oedipus, if there really was an Oedipus, and I think there must have been, he doesn’t feel better at all.
The first thing that happened was that I didn’t get the part of the Messenger in Oedipus. Well, I thought, I don’t get most of the roles I audition for-you could hardly call this ill fortune.
The second thing was far worse. My mother called the hotel I was staying at and told me that my father had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He’d had stomach aches and nausea for months, but by the time he’d finally gone to the doctor it was too late. They gave him a day or two at the most. I took the next flight out.
He died before I could reach him-I never even got the chance to say goodbye. My father, my funny, caring, supportive father, the man who gave me his blessing when I said I wanted to be an actress. I called the company in Berkeley, told them I was staying for the funeral.
My mother wanted a closed casket. Because of this, and because I’d never seen him ill, I couldn’t really bring myself to believe he was dead. I had dreams where I’d talk to him, laugh at one of his silly jokes, and then suddenly realize that he wasn’t supposed to be there. "But you’re dead," I’d say, horrified. Sometimes he’d disappear at that moment, sometimes he’d put his finger to his lips, as if to tell me that these were things that shouldn’t be spoken of. Once he told me that he wasn’t really dead, he’d just been away on a secret mission somewhere. And every time when I’d wake up my cheeks would be wet with tears. I hadn’t known you could cry in your sleep.