stage moth­er

I would nev­er have thought I had it in me.

You know Avery wants to be an actress. She spent long months on the wait list at the Sylvia Young The­atre School, which actu­al­ly trains chil­dren full­time, run­ning as a real school, to be singers, actors, dancers, while one imag­ines fit­ting in the odd Eng­lish and maths les­son now and then. All she want­ed was a spot in the Sat­ur­day les­son. Final­ly one appeared. I was remind­ed of the old New York­er car­toon, “Spots still avail­able in domi­no tour­na­ment. If nowhere else.”

So three years ago she began her week­ly Sat­ur­day act­ing lessons and has enjoyed them tremen­dous­ly. “You should have seen what we did today, one girl was sent out of the room not know­ing that her char­ac­ter had been kicked out of the apart­ment she shared with the rest of our char­ac­ters, and then had to come back and impro­vise…” inter­spersed with Antigone, pan­tomime, you name it. She loves every after­noon of it. Well, asso­ci­at­ed with the school is an agency, and they agreed to take her on. Many piles of paper­work, sub­mis­sions of pho­tographs, sign­ing over of all her life infor­ma­tion ensued. And since then, many audi­tions. Even call­backs. But nev­er a job.

Until today.

I must back­track and explain the process, for my own san­i­ty. You must under­stand that when your child turns 13, many peo­ple step for­ward to give you advice on many things, which all boil down like a reduced veal stock, to the fol­low­ing issue: how to get your child to be more inde­pen­dent. But not [oth­er peo­ple’s fin­gers raised here in admo­ni­tion] to assert her own inde­pen­dence too much, or request inde­pen­dence in a dis­re­spect­ful way, or achieve the inde­pen­dence first and THEN ask for it. The per­mu­ta­tions are quite, quite unbe­liev­able, and you will know I speak the truth when I say that I have heard far too much on the sub­ject. This recal­ci­trance on my part is due entire­ly to my desire to keep Avery wrapped up in cot­ton wool, prefer­ably curled up next to me with a good book and a leg chain, for the fore­see­able future. This I real­ize I can­not attain.

So I com­pro­mise. I try to leave her in charge of deci­sions, details, arrange­ments. In gen­er­al it’s work­ing out fine (there was that inci­dent with the taxi and an ice skate which near­ly gave me a heart attack, but I’m over that now).

My phone rang last week to tell me that Avery had, not an audi­tion, not a call­back, but a REAL JOB. As a voiceover for a char­ac­ter on “Bob the Builder,” a very pop­u­lar BBC show here in the UK and also as an import to the US. Cool! But let me tell you, the road from the job announce­ment to the even­tu­al job was dark and twisty, like a char­ac­ter on “Grey’s Anato­my.” First there was the lacon­ic request from the agency for a “let­ter of per­mis­sion” for Avery to miss school on the day. So I typed up a let­ter to Avery’s form teacher, explain­ing the job and ask­ing that she type up a let­ter giv­ing Avery per­mis­sion to skip school. Noth­ing hap­pened. “She’s out ill,” Avery explained, “so I gave the let­ter to the sub­sti­tute.” I prompt­ly for­got about it for anoth­er cou­ple of days. “Don’t for­get to ask for that let­ter,” I men­tioned once or twice. “I won’t.”

Final­ly it was Mon­day, Avery was fin­ished hav­ing her braces put on (don’t ask) and I felt it was time to move on to the next cri­sis. “You know, you’ve got to pro­duce that per­mis­sion let­ter or you can’t go on the job,” to which she replied in a pain-hazed fren­zy, ‘I know, I will, I will!” and dis­ap­peared into the school. I knew the issue was not over.

Halfway through cof­fee on Tues­day with my long-suf­fer­ing friend Dalia, my phone rang. It was the agent, Reb. “You know, I need­ed that let­ter yes­ter­day, so the coun­cil can apply for her per­mis­sion!” he wailed (this was the first I had heard about coun­cil per­mis­sion). “This is the first I’ve heard about coun­cil per­mis­sion,” I wailed back, and he said, “You have to fax it to me by this after­noon, and even then I have to go to Plan B [some much more won­der­ful child actress, his tone implied].”

Before I could reply, anoth­er call came through. Avery on a bor­rowed phone, at lunch. “My teacher says there isn’t enough infor­ma­tion about the job in the let­ter you sent, for any­one to sign it and in any case that’s not her job, it’s the pas­toral head, and this is REAL­LY IMPOR­TANT TO ME and what a ter­ri­ble week…” Under­stand­ably fran­tic. I ring off telling her I’ll call her back. Ring up Reb. “What more infor­ma­tion can you give me?” “What did I give you already?” “NOTH­ING!” So he comes up with the name of the pro­duc­er and the address of the job. I ring off and call Avery to tell her I’m email­ing all the infor­ma­tion to school, but the call goes to voice mail. Lunch is obvi­ous­ly over.

I sigh, feel­ing my stom­ach mus­cles clench. I know I can’t solve every­thing for her, but the day after her braces are put on, to see her face such dis­ap­point­ment through no fault of her own… I could­n’t bear it. So much for inde­pen­dence. I called the love­ly school sec­re­tary and grov­elled, glad­der than ever that she and I had forged a lit­tle friend­ship over “Lost Prop­er­ty.” “Email me the infor­ma­tion, and I will walk it over to the pas­toral head… wait, I see her now. Send it right on.” I do so. I ring Reb to tell him the let­ter’s com­ing. He says he’ll ring when it comes.

No call comes.

I turn up at school, grov­el some more to the sec­re­tary’s sec­re­tary who smiles sun­ni­ly and says, “Oh, yes, that per­mis­sion let­ter’s been giv­en to Avery to bring home.” OH NO! I meet Avery out­side school, grab the let­ter, race back to the office. “Could you fax this to this num­ber?” hand­ing over the grub­by sheet torn out of my mys­tery nov­el, giv­en me by the dis­mal Reb. She goes away with it and comes back. “That fax num­ber is not answer­ing,” she says, sym­pa­thet­ic with my squirm­ing anx­i­ety. “My teeth hurt so much,” Avery moans almost silent­ly. “I’m not allowed to have med­i­cine in school, so I haven’t tak­en any­thing…” I can’t bear it. I ring Reb. “Why isn’t your fax machine turned on?” I ask through grit­ted teeth. “Oh, I’ll check, hang on…” Back again. “It’s on now.” B***dy hell. Final­ly the fax goes through. Avery swal­lows her nuro­fen, drinks water, we walk home in the gath­er­ing dusk, real­iz­ing there are no snacks she can chew, feel­ing slight­ly hard done by, steel­ing our­selves that the job might not now come through.

At home, I sim­ply can­not bear anoth­er phone call, so Stage Father takes over, to be told that the coun­cil per­mis­sion is miss­ing and so she can­not do the job. After all my crazy day. I feel I can hard­ly bear it. Avery chokes down some soup for sup­per, we are all demoralized.

Then this morn­ing, John is imbued with an extra sense of “after all that!” and rings the coun­cil him­self. And voila! Job ready! Be at Sylvia Young in an hour! Done.

Long sto­ry short, she had the time of her life. “There was a room sep­a­rat­ed by glass from anoth­er room where a man was arrang­ing all the sound, and I was all alone in the room, wear­ing these head­phones, while one lady told me what to say, and the sto­ry­boards went up…” Sheer heav­en. “I had so much FUN.” She did one ver­sion in Eng­lish, and anoth­er in Amer­i­can, pre­sum­ably for the two mar­kets in which they’ll sell the DVDs. “I played a lit­tle girl who cheered a lot, ‘yay! yay! yay!’ ”

As a par­ent, one learns to rise above annoy­ances and try real­ly hard to think what one’s learned from the sit­u­a­tion. How about, “Nev­er ever EVER get involved with show busi­ness”? I don’t think that will work. Avery had such fun. I sup­pose I learned the chan­nels of pow­er to go through, the fact that no one on either end cares that I don’t know what I’m doing, that every­one is supreme­ly ready to drop a piece of paper that’s ask­ing him or her to do some­thing. Every­one except the school sec­re­tary, who deserves a medal. Or a plate of brown­ies, more likely.

Up and down, up and down. Great par­ent-teacher con­fer­ence, awful cold, great Thanks­giv­ing, awful braces, great act­ing job. As for my career as a stage moth­er, I think it’s over. I’m much bet­ter as a cook for some­one who can’t chew.

Creamy Mush­room Soup
(serves 6)

2 tbsps butter
1/2 white onion, chopped
4 cloves gar­lic, chopped
4 cups mush­rooms, white or chest­nut, chopped
1/2 tsp dried thyme or 1 tbsp fresh leaves
splash Madeira or white port or Calvados
2–3 cups chick­en stock (just to cov­er mushrooms)
1/2 cup light cream

Melt but­ter in a heavy stock­pot and fry onion, gar­lic and mush­rooms till soft. Add thyme and Madeira and sim­mer high for 1 minute. Add chick­en stock and sim­mer until mush­rooms are com­plete­ly cooked, about 10 min­utes. Puree with hand blender, add cream. Sea­son with sea salt and pepper.

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This soup can be made with turkey stock (Thanks­giv­ing or Christ­mas left­overs?), or beef stock. I made it once with stock from roast duck bones and that was lip-smack­ing­ly lus­cious, but rare. I don’t roast ducks very often. I bet with a rich ham stock it would be love­ly too.

Turn off your phone, close down the com­put­er, gath­er your long-suf­fer­ing loved ones with dis­ap­point­ments, frus­tra­tions, sore gums, home­sick­ness, any­thing, and tuck in. Pure creamy com­fort. That audi­tion can wait.