The Rehearsal

The saxophone teacher’s fingertips are on her saxophone hanging from her neck, and when she moves her hand she leaves gray ovals of damp that pucker and vanish in seconds.

“This girl, Willa,” Bridget says, “she was in my remedial English last year and heard me say mizled out loud and the teacher told me the right way to say it and we all laughed about it, because it was such a stupid mistake. And then last week we were sitting at lunch, a whole group of us, and Willa starts telling us about how she always thought mizle was actually a word, and she says mizled instead of miss-led. She repeats the whole story back to us as if it’s her own.

“I watched her really carefully,” Bridget says, “and she was looking at me when she said it, all casual and laughing at herself, and I truly don’t think she knew that she was telling my story. She would have looked guilty or avoided me or something. I think she’d just heard me make the mistake and she liked the sound of it and after a while she made herself believe that the story was hers.”

“Did you shame her?” the saxophone teacher says. “In front of everybody?”

“No,” Bridget says. “Everyone would have thought I was lame.”

“So nobody knew she was lying.”

“No.”

“And the next time you say mizled by accident, everyone is going to think you only want to be like Willa.”

“Yeah,” says Bridget. “If I make the mistake again.”

“And you know that Willa definitely does not read mizled in her head whenever she sees the word misled.”

“No,” Bridget says stoutly. “It’s my thing. And anyway she laughed at me in remedial English.”

“Well,” the saxophone teacher says. “It’s certainly not the most heroic story to poach from another person and call your own. I’m sure I can think of better.” She moves her hand again and the gray finger-spots of damp turn to vapor and melt away.

Bridget is flushed, unable to voice coherently the indignation and even rage she feels toward this liar Willa, the plunderer, the unashamed thief. Bridget is never rich in tales about herself, however unheroic, yet she is now a fraction poorer, her life shaved a fraction thinner, her mind a fraction less unique, because of this girl’s theft.

“But now she’s got this memory,” Bridget says, struggling on. “A real memory of it, of every time she’s ever read that word. And she laughs at herself and says, What an idiot, like she can’t believe how silly she is. And she isn’t. Silly. She knew the right way to say it the whole time.”

“Maybe she’s just a liar,” the saxophone teacher says.

“But if she doesn’t know that she’s lying,” Bridget says, almost desperately now, “and nobody else knows that she’s lying, and she’s got this real memory in her head—”

Bridget breaks off, working her mouth like a caught fish.

“Then it might as well be true,” she says at last, and in her distraction flaps her hands against her sides, once, twice, and then she is still.

Monday

“I had Mr. Saladin in fifth form,” Julia says offhand in her lesson on Monday afternoon.

“Did you?” the saxophone teacher says.

“For School Cert music,” Julia says. “I always thought he was just a bit of a nerd.”

“Oh,” the saxophone teacher says in surprise, this concept of a nerdy Mr. Saladin being altogether new to her. She rolls the idea around the inside of her mouth for a moment.

“She was in my music class that year,” Julia continues, a little dreamily. “Victoria was. That must have been way before they got together—she wasn’t taking woodwind tutorials then. I remembered that the other day, and ever since I’ve been thinking and thinking, trying to recall some incident where I remember the two of them together, some incident that I can extract from the rest of the year and make it mean much more than it actually did.”

“And?”

“Once,” Julia says, “once Mr. Saladin said, Victoria, if you touch that recorder one more time in the next hour you are going to meet a swift and untimely death, and don’t you dare test me to see if I mean it.” Julia erects the flat-edged arms on her music stand that hold her music in place. “I should bring it up in counseling,” she says. She snorts inelegantly. “And then I should cry.”

“What happened in counseling today?” the saxophone teacher says.

“Criticism is constructive, comparison is abuse,” Julia says. “Like, ‘I find your attitude hurtful’—that’s criticism, that’s okay. ‘I think you are so much like your mother’—that’s comparison, that’s not okay. We learned that first, and then we did role-plays. Role-play is a useful tool for exploring a situation from a different perspective.”

The saxophone teacher says nothing, waiting for Julia to continue, and strokes the rough ceramic edge of her mug with her thumb.

“So I put up my hand,” Julia says, “and I go, But what if it’s a same-sex relationship? I go, Surely comparison plays a much bigger part in same-sex relationships. Like, I’m fatter than you, or I’m more masculine than you, or I’m the mumsy one, or I’m the sugar daddy, or whatever. I said to the counselor, If comparison is abuse, does that mean you reckon same-sex couples are more abusive than ordinary couples?”

Julia rocks back and forth on her shuffling feet, exultant in the pale afterglow of her faulty teenage logic and remembering the fearful disgusted silence of the classroom, the counselor rubbing at his forehead and the girls scowling back at her across the void.

“The counselor just goes, Julia, we are not discussing same-sex relationships right now. Mr. Saladin was a man and Victoria was a girl. Let’s not deviate. And he uses past tense like he always does, as if they’re both dead.”

Julia comes to an end now, picks up her saxophone and begins to play. She has censored the last part of the scene just before the bell rang, as the girls turned back to face front and the counselor frowned and fished for his notes. One of the beautiful girls turned around in her seat and hissed, “Why do you always have to bring up things like that? Every class you say something like that, just to watch how uncomfortable we all get. It’s like you can’t get it out of your head and you say it just for kicks. It’s disgusting.”

Thursday

Sometimes, for her own amusement, the saxophone teacher tries to imagine what it would be like if the casting were to change. She imagines the girl who is playing Bridget in the coveted role of Isolde, and in her mind’s eye she converts the girl, ironing out her lanky nothing-hair into a glossy sheet that falls sheer from a center part, rosying her cheeks and transforming her expression into the careless wounded look that has become Isolde’s signature. She adds a silver watch and a delicate silver link necklace beneath the collar of her school uniform. Isolde’s character twists this necklace vaguely around her fingertip from time to time, or else lifts it into her jaw and chews it while she is thinking, the chain link biting into the smooth skin of both cheeks like a fine silver bridle.

Needless to say, Isolde’s part is not coveted because of any qualities inherent in Isolde herself: Isolde’s part is coveted because of her proximity to the scandal surrounding her sister. The resounding echo of dishonor and disgrace renders her powerful, in the same way that the beautiful girls who say “I just need to be alone for a while” are rendered powerful, thereafter attended at all times by grave concerned servants who flap about and whisper to each other, “I’m worried she might do something to hurt herself.” Even dim-witted Bridget can see that Isolde’s proximity counts for a great deal.

It makes the saxophone teacher smile to imagine mousy Bridget in Isolde’s role. It makes her think fondly that maybe there is a glimmer of hope after all for this pale stringy rumpled girl who chews at the end of her hair and wears her kilt just a fraction too high and tries so desperately hard.

For the role of Bridget the saxophone teacher imagines casting the girl who is currently playing Julia, mentally redressing her in a school uniform that is musty and overlarge and ever so slightly wrinkled. She imagines the girl’s posture changing, becoming withdrawn and apologetic, withering in the way that a rind of raw bacon shrinks away from the heat of the pan. The role of Bridget would be the easiest of the three, because Bridget is a victim, and victims are easy. After playing Julia, the role of Bridget would be a cinch.