Playing Hard To Get

What most people forget about Jacques’s famous line in this aged tale is that he concludes that players in the unchanging setting of the world constantly enter and exit and change. Players don’t know when or why, but even as they play their own roles, they can be certain to learn that this is the truth.

So, on an old stage, in an old city, at a new age in her life, one player was learning that she wasn’t the best player after all. For she’d been upstaged, outsmarted, outperformed, and outacted by the one costar she could never leave behind—herself.

Tasha sat in the center of her beautiful world, with her beautiful things, looking more beautiful than she ever had in her life, yet there was an ugliness creeping in.

While she was surrounded with every new thing she’d wanted back from her old life, she kept thinking of the old things she was missing from her last life. It was Sunday night and the girls were probably just getting out of the tub. Toni was running around naked, giggling herself silly as her father chased her and Tiara was trying to find a way to get the powder bottle open again so she could dump the sweet-smelling talc all over the floor. Lionel was getting tired and probably noticed that Tiara had gotten the bottle open and snatched it just in time. The boring suburban house was growing quiet with the boring suburban night as the boring suburban family got ready for bed. In a while, they’d all be asleep. And the night, for Tasha in her new, amazing, and alive life in the big and bold city was just about to begin. There was so much to do and see where she was. So many places to go. Beautiful people to see. No naked babies or powder sticking to her feet. No crying and midnight feeding. No tired husband, vibrators, and runs to the airport. Her options were endless, but her mind was frozen in time.

“I need a glass of wine,” she said aloud, but she was speaking only to herself in the empty space of her apartment. There was silence. No response. Not even an echo of confirmation. She got up fro

m her plush couch and walked to the refrigerator to retrieve what was left of her last bottle of white wine.

“Shit,” she shouted, looking at the space in the refrigerator where the bottle once was. She turned and looked at the trash can to see the empty bottle resting on the lid. She exhaled and banged the door shut.

Maybe she could call the 3Ts together for a drink. Maybe she could meet up with her new girls for tapas. Maybe she could…She went and sat on the wide windowsill that separated her apartment from the street. A group of laughing women walked past. A homeless man pushing a cart. A man on his cell phone, walking his dog.

“What did I do?” Tasha said to all of them, though none of them could hear her. “What did I do to my life? How could I leave my family?”

In the silence of the city night, this last question marked the beginning of this player’s grandest performance to date. In all of Tasha’s life, only three times had she thought to consider how her actions affected someone else: when she was ten years old and set her nanny’s car on fire, when she’d tripped a woman at a Barney’s sale, and when she’d secretly started fertility treatments without Lionel’s consent. Each time, Tasha had been so busy fighting for what she was getting, she cared nothing about what others actually got. The nanny was fired for leaving Tasha alone in the garage, the woman at Barney’s lost a tooth, and Lionel was forced to realize that he had no control over his wife.

“I’ll go back to therapy,” Tasha said when Lionel picked up the phone. She was still looking out the window when she pulled the phone from her pocket and pressed the speed dial option “Home.”

“What do you use to get this baby powder off of the floor?” Lionel asked. His voice was ragged with indecision and she knew he hadn’t heard what she’d said. She could hear Toni hollering and Tiara crying in the background. She smiled as a tear rolled down her cheek.

“Don’t use water,” Tasha said quickly. “That’ll make it worse. Get the broom and sweep.”

“I can’t leave them in the bathroom,” Lionel said.

“Put them in their cribs and tell Toni to sing ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.’ That’ll give you five minutes to get the broom and sweep up the powder.”

“Really? Wait a sec.”

There was movement, Toni was singing, and then Lionel was back on the phone.

“Now, what did you say?” Lionel asked as he swept.

“I said I’d go back to therapy,” Tasha repeated, her voice breaking on every word as she cried. “Whatever you want. I just want my family back. I need—”

“They need you,” Lionel stopped her as his feelings made his throat swell. “I need you.” This call wasn’t supposed to go this way. Lionel was supposed to be angry. In his mind, the next time his wife called, he was to request a divorce, tell her to come get her things, and find the nastiest thing he could say to make her feel the worst she ever had. But as the days went by and he was managing nannies and appointments and his life with the lives of his children, he saw just how hard Tasha’s job was. And sleeping alone in a big, wide bed made specially for him, he felt how lonely she must feel each night without him. As he played her role, he realized that much of what he’d hated her for, he could in some ways understand. She wasn’t right for leaving the way she had, but she wasn’t wrong for feeling the way she felt. In the images of his own beautiful life and beautiful family, the beautiful player Lionel had somehow forgotten to take care of one important thing—his beautiful wife.

“I know I need help. I’m fucking up,” Tasha said.

“I think we both have things we need to work on,” Lionel admitted. “But it’s going to take time and we have to commit ourselves to it this time. I accept you for who you are, Tasha. And I know you have your faults—I do too, but we have to be a team on this. For our family. Do you want that?”

“I’m nothing without you all. I don’t want anything else and I’m willing to do whatever it takes to keep us together. I love you,” Tasha pleaded.

And then, the player and the player’s wife were silent, as an ugly exit in their play was transitioning to a beautiful entrance that would surprise both of them for years to come. There was nothing else to be said. Everything they needed to hear was in the silence they felt.

“Hey,” Lionel said suddenly. “I have someone who wants to say something to you.”

“What?” Tasha asked.

“Hold on a sec.”

“Ma! Ma! Mama! Mama!”

“That’s right, baby. Say it again. Say it so she can hear you.”

“Mama!” There was a gurgle and then the word Tasha had wanted to hear for so long from the one person who seemed to refuse to say it, was repeated as clear as a bell in the wind.