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A Novel
by Ann Patchett
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That Veronica and I were given keys and told to come early on a frozen Saturday in April to open the school for the Our Town auditions was proof of our dull reliability. The play's director, Mr. Martin, was my grandmother's friend and State Farm agent. That's how I was wrangled in, through my grandmother, and Veronica was wrangled because we did pretty much everything together. Citizens of New Hampshire could not get enough of Our Town. We felt about the play the way other Americans felt about the Constitution or the "Star-Spangled Banner." It spoke to us, made us feel special and seen. Mr. Martin predicted a large turnout for the auditions, which explained why he needed use of the school gym for the day. The community theater production had nothing to do with our high school, but seeing as how Mr. Martin was also the principal's insurance agent and very likely his friend, the request was granted. Ours was that kind of town.
We arrived with our travel mugs of coffee and thick paperback novels, Firestarter for Veronica and Doctor Zhivago for me. I liked school fine but hated the gym and everything it stood for: team sports, pep rallies, vicious games of kickball, running in circles when it was too cold to go outside, formal dances, graduations. But on that Saturday morning the place was empty and strangely beautiful. The sunlight poured in through the narrow windows just below the roofline. I don't think I'd ever realized the gym had windows. The floors and the walls and the bleachers were all made of the same strips of pale wood. The stage was on one end behind the basketball hoop, its heavy red curtains pulled back to reveal matte-black nothingness. That's where the action was scheduled to take place. We had instructions to set up one banquet table and five folding chairs in front of the stage ("Close but not too close," Mr. Martin had told us) and then ninety-two feet away, under the opposing basketball hoop, we were to set up a second banquet table right in front of the doors to the lobby. That second table was for registration, which was our job. We wrestled the two folding tables from the storage closet. We brought out folding chairs. We were to spend our morning explaining how to fill out the form: Name, Stage Name if Different, Height, Hair Color, Age (in categories of seven years - please check one), Phone Number. The hopefuls had been asked to bring a headshot and a résumé, listing all the roles they'd played before. We had a cup full of pens. For people who arrived without résumés there was space to write things in, and Veronica was prepared to take a Polaroid of anyone who didn't have a headshot and then paper-clip it to the form. Mr. Martin told us we weren't to make anyone feel embarrassed for having less experience because, and this was what he actually said, "Sometimes that's where the diamonds are."
But Veronica and I were not theater girls. Theater girls had not been asked to do this job in case they wanted to try out for a part. We were regular girls who would've had no idea how to make adults feel judged based on their lack of theatrical experience. Once we had the person's paperwork, we were to hand over the pages they would be asked to read from, which Mr. Martin told us were called "sides," along with a number printed on a square of paper, and then we would direct them back out to the lobby to wait.
When the doors opened at eight o'clock, so many people flooded in that Veronica and I had to hustle back to our table to get ahead of the crowd. We were instantly, overwhelmingly at work.
"Yes," I assured one woman and then another, "if you read for Mrs. Gibbs, you'll still be considered for Mrs. Webb." What I didn't say, though it was rapidly becoming evident, was that if you read for Emily you would still be considered for Emily's mother. In a high school production it was not uncommon for someone fifteen to play the parent of someone seventeen, but community theater was a different cat. That morning the hopefuls were all ages, not just old men looking to be the Stage Manager, but college types who came to read for Emily and George. (The Emilys wore too much makeup and dressed like the Amish girls who sold cinnamon buns at the farmer's market. The Georges slyly checked out the other Georges.) Bona fide children approached our table announcing they were there to read for Wally or Rebecca. Parents must have been looking for childcare because what ten-year-old boy announces over breakfast that he wants to be Wally Webb?
Excerpted from Tom Lake by Ann Patchett. Copyright © 2023 by Ann Patchett. Excerpted by permission of Harper. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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