Simon wore Guinness boxer shorts, tube socks ruffled to the ankles, and was watching the complete first season of Clarissa Explains it All on DVD upon my arrival. “We have a fourth!” I said excitedly plopping down beside him on our tattered couch, “and she’s a she—AND—I’ve seen uglier.”
Simon could hardly focus but for the television so said he was glad and hoped she wasn’t an ax murderer. I assured him she wasn’t and called for Allison so to share the news with someone assuredly more engaging.
Having been born without a Y chromosome she was already fixing herself for the night, hours before necessary. Allison’s hair is quite representative of her overall demeanor—brown, straight, and parted down the center. She is unassumingly pretty—but in a Little House on the Prairie sort of way: hidden by a forgettable personality. It is necessary for her to stand in one place, silent, in order to be noticed.
She answered my call in just that way—her brown eyes glowing as they do on stage. With visibly touchable skin, she covered herself only with a towel. And being more than a foot taller than her I felt like a father asking how her audition went.
She replied the usual: “I did my best.” Ironic is how self-conscious actors are without the cover of the camera or the lights of a theater. Sometimes I’d rather write Allison a script for common conversation than listen to her struggle to articulate all but the simplest emotions.
Soon after calling to confirm Estella’s commitment I spoke in more detail with Allison about the night, asking if she was excited.
“Well certainly—it’ll be like we’re movie stars for a day…except no one will notice.”
“You aren’t upset about Estella then?” I asked her sincerely.
She half joked that she hadn’t any inclination to feel more than indifferent since all she knew of her was that she is forward and lacks the ambition to kill people with an ax. But I saw in Allison’s eyes what can never be concealed by even the finest actors—sadness. Such an emotion so overtakes the body that it’s impossible to bury. It creeps heavy truth in our smile—and for now—in Allison’s.
She often looks as such when Simon or I whisper of fair weathered females. We both know her romantic affection for us to be fact, but hardly would speak of it seriously. Such an awkwardness—the type stemming from unreturned love and the insufficient explanation that follows—is avoided at all costs. Worse is that she knows we know. It’s an infinite regress of faulty expectations. And for the life of me I wish I knew why I don’t reciprocate her feelings? Alas, love is never an equation—because if it was, I’d have figured it out by now.
