The Play That Everybody Loves and Nobody Remembers

I had the pleasure

Of being the wardrobe mistress

For the play that everybody loved

And nobody remembers

To be fair

Nobody really remembers

Any of the shows that season

None of them went anywhere

And most of them were never even read again

After they closed

Scripts tossed out

A few production photos

But other than that

But I remember all the actors in the company

Backstage when opening night came around

And…well…it was timing

It was just the right time

For that show

Sometimes that has as much to do

With a play’s success

As the play itself

Like I said, most people don’t remember the show

And neither do I

Although I’ve been dead for ten years

So I don’t remember a lot of things

Sadly enough, I still remember my husband

But that’s another story

That night, the night we opened

One of the actresses was sitting backstage

After the show was over

And everybody was heading to the cast party

And she was looking at this photo

Of herself and—I guess her father?

‘He’s a good-looking guy,’ I said

She nodded her head

‘Were your parents happy you got into the theater,’ she asked me

I told her my parents went to their grave

Thinking I was an ornithologist

‘What the hell is that,’ she asked

‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘But if it was good enough for them, it’s good enough for me.’

I sat down and we had a drink

Of whatever they had back there

In the dressing room

I remember it tasted like pineapples

But it was the color

Of rust and caramel

‘Sometimes I wonder if I got into the right business,’ she said, this actress, this beautiful young actress—well, young by my standards, maybe not to all of you

I said, ‘Tonight, you created something.  Something from nothing.  You didn’t play a role somebody else has played.  You didn’t try to live up to something.  You went out there and put a memory in people’s minds where there hadn’t been one before.  And you made them feel good about themselves.  Hell, you made me feel good and I already knew how the damn thing ended.’

That seemed to cheer her up

A lot of the actors in the acting company

Used to get down on themselves like that

Because it wasn’t always glorious nights

Like the one we’re talking about

When you do show after show after show

You do more bad ones than good ones

That’s not theater, that’s just statistics

But every once in awhile, you hit magic

Like we hit that night

And when you do

It’s like—

Well, my husband

The one I remember

He used to play golf

And he was terrible at it

Once I asked him

Why he kept at it

And he said—

Because one time I got a hole-in-one

Years and years

For that hole-in-one

I knew what he meant

That play was a hole-in-one

And maybe I don’t remember it

But I remember the way

It made me feel

And I bet I’m not the only one