Read Online Alone in the Classroom by Elizabeth Hay - Free Book Online Page A

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.
    Tess: It’s too late.
(Pointing to the breakfast table for two, her dressing gown, etc.)
    Angel
absorbs the scene and leaves
.
    Tess
closes the door and leans against it sobbing
.
    Alec
from the cloakroom-bedroom yawns, then calls out:
Tess, bring yourself and my tea in here.
    Tess
goes to the table and picks up the cup and saucer. Then she puts them down and picks up a knife
.
    Parley had coached John Jacobs to thump his chest with both fists to produce the gruesome, gulping intake that would be his last breath on earth. It was the boy’s moment of glory and he gave it his all, doing it in the schoolyard on command.
    Tess
emerges from the bedroom with her cloak half-dragging from one shoulder and carrying her gloves. She tries to put them on, but they slip off her bloody hands
.
    Parley instructed Susan, “Understand that she doesn’t know what she’s doing. She doesn’t even know they’re a pair of gloves.”
    She takes her brush in her half-gloved hands and tries to brush her hair, but the brush bangs against her head
.
    Angel
re-enters. He loosens the brush from her rigid fingers, one finger at a time. Puts her cloak over both shoulders
. Come.
They leave together
.
    Moments later the
Landlady
rushes in
.
    And this was the sticking point. No matter how effective Susan was with her gloves and her hair, everything was ruined by Klara Munz bursting in and yelling, “Mrs. D’Urberville. Mrs. D’Urberville! There’s a red stain on the ceilin’ and blood’s drippin’ down.”
    Then one day it occurred to Parley to have Klara say the words in German, followed by broken English, and the effect worked. It sounded like the end of the world.
    He paced the schoolyard as he smoked, and she heard him talking to himself sometimes. Not as Michael did, saying, “I’m no good at this,” but in the third person. “Burns was losing his mind.” Or, “Burns was about to lose his temper.” Or, “They decided to torture Burns again.” He said these things looking at his feet, or sometimes looking straight at you, his eyes furious.
    One day he had Susan bring Mabel to school, the dog that was a nervous cross between a collie and a spaniel. They were working on the scene when Angel Clare comes back, but much too late, and Tess sobs after she sends himaway. Susan was at the front of the room and the dog lay by the door. Without warning, Parley lunged at the pet as if about to deliver a swift kick. The dog squealed, and Susan cried out and sprang towards her.
    “That’s what I want,” Parley said to her. “That look on your face. Remember it and duplicate it.”
    Cowering under a desk, the dog vomited, and would not come out when the girl reached for her.
    They were to put on two performances of
Tess
late in November in that prairie schoolhouse. They did it a third time, owing to popular demand. Susan Graves made people cry. She was unthreatening and very powerful.
    There were some who went to all three performances. Susan was known in Jewel. More than just recognized, she was known. She blossomed in the role. It was one of those transformations we all long for. She became sensuous and warm and human; her body actually looked riper and fuller. You could see what sort of woman she would be at thirty. She even had a consistent accent, rustic-English, and some who didn’t know her thought she came from Dorset. After each show she was applauded heartily and praised. Parley was heard to say, “She has talent. She has a gift.”
    Only Mary Miller found something to criticize. She went up to Susan with a smile and fingered her blouse, which was open at the throat. “That’s so unlike you,” she said. “Did he
make
you undo all these buttons?”
    “No one made me.” And she removed herself from Miss Miller’s jealousy.
    At the first performance, Michael had looked away when his sister came onstage, terrified that she would forget the lines he had heard her rehearsing endlessly behind her closed bedroom door, not in