All's Well

by Mona Awad

I have no real credentials to be directing them. Not really. I’m faking it mostly. I want to tell them this now. I’m faking it and you’re faking it and we’re all fucked, basically. And yet. And yet look how far we have come.

“And what if they don’t come around?” “You’ll make them. You’re the director.” “I’m the director,” I whisper.

Tears in my eyes then as there are now. Thinking of my Helen. I played her as she was meant to be played, as an enigma of a girl. You should have seen me. My voice was low but deep. I was desperate but calm too, as Helen is. Knowing what I had to do in the face of great adversity, my face said so. Knowing I had to take things into my own hands, I had no choice. I looked right into the eyes of the audience when I spoke. They were bewitched. I was bewitching.

“An actor,” I say. I think of my fiefdom of dead eyes, yawning faces. Not an actor anymore, a teacher. But I don’t bother to correct Mark. “Right.”

But I’ve never taught or directed, I said to Paul. You have a theater degree, don’t you? Plus, you’re an actor. You were onstage for what, ten years? And I remember I shuddered at his use of the past tense. I’m just saying teaching might be a good opportunity, that’s all, Paul said. For now, he added quickly.

If our relationship were on a stage, the audience would surely see, surely know. They would say to themselves, He pushed her out with his coldness. He was sick of her sickness. They would weep for me, absolutely.

Pain is a great actor’s gift, Ellie. It is a burden but it is a gift too. To be mined. If one is in control of one’s pain, of course.