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Lucky
Lindy PAGE
THREE: I closed my eyes and there was his office in sepia tones, his Sunset Boulevard office with the view of the Hollywood hills. His huge mahogany desk that he paid too much for. He was there behind the desk in his leather swivel chair, bringing a gun up to his head and... I opened my eyes. The cowboy was standing at the door. He asked me if I was okay. I hadn't realized it but I had been screaming. I don't remember. But he heard me. "My father killed himself," I said for the first time. Much crying and drinking and smoking cigarettes followed. I woke up to the heat of a blue sky pictured in my window. For a moment I thought it had been a bad dream. Then I smelled the stale cigarettes and tasted my brandy breath and knew it was true. Cowboy was sleeping like a baby. Men. I got up and almost tripped over the fishing tackle box that I used for my stage make-up, and it hit me -- opening night -- shit. I was still only wearing a t-shirt -- thought maybe I should put on some underwear. Opened the underwear drawer and stared, couldn't decide -- striped, plain, laced. Closed the drawer - stumbled down the hall, suddenly feeling nauseous, went to the bathroom, threw up. Felt no better. Got to the kitchen -- drank some water, looked at the beautiful view out my window and thought, how could he not be on this planet any more? How could he leave it when you could see such beauty right from your shitty little porch? I called my co-star Drew first. He was shocked and didn't know what to say. "What do you want to do?" he asked. What did I want? I called my director; he too was shocked. "What do you want to do?" he also asked. I wanted someone else to deal with it. That's what I wanted. I wanted one of them to say, "We'll cancel the show, don't worry about it. Don't even think about it anymore. Deal with what you have to deal with." But neither said that. They both asked what I wanted to do -- with a little expectation in their voices that somehow I would be able to go on. What did I want? I couldn't even decide what underwear to wear. "The show must go on" is great in theory. Cowboy came in rubbing his red eyes and mumbling to himself, "Boy, he sure picked a day, didn't he?" Yeah, didn't he, I thought. Wait a minute. Did he? Did he actually pick this day to die? Was this his punishment -- his way of putting an end to my acting career for good? And that was it -- I knew I had to go on. I had been working so hard to be my own person, not just to please my father, because it was becoming increasingly apparent that there was no pleasing him. I needed to do this, to prove something to myself. So I called Drew. My good friend Pat came over and I released the cowboy from active duty. Pat and I went to the hot tub place and sat and cried, and I thought many times that day -- am I crazy? But the day went on, and I finally dragged myself to the theatre. Sherry, the punky bleached blond in the box office looked up, her eyes filled with such sympathy -- I lost it. I ran back into the dressing room to find Drew with his long bony arms extended for a hug. I told him I couldn't handle people touching me, or looking at me, for that matter. He left the room; he must have spread the word because no one came within ten feet of me for the rest of the night. I sat in the dressing room, dressed in my flight suit, our opening costume, and tried to think about the show. Places were called and I walked backstage to wait for my opening cue. I was in the wings on stage right, Drew on stage left. The music that began the show started to play. In a moment I would walk on stage, I thought, and for an hour and twenty minutes with no intermission I could be someone else. I would give a swimming lesson to a toy airplane in an aquarium, I would teach another toy airplane how to fly, I would know what to say and when to say it. I would know what came next. For one hour and twenty minutes without intermission there would be no surprises. The
lights dimmed. I looked heavenward and imagined him tied to a chair
front row in the hereafter, forced to watch my opening night. My
life might seem unstable, but it was my life, and he wasn't going
to take it away with his. The music swelled and I went on.
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Finally
there were no more questions to ask and we hung up. 
