Successful Auditions for the Roles of Colleen’s Dearly Departed 

Her mother

The auditioners are young, old, in between. Their resumes include character roles with the Daleborough Main Street Players, starring turns with the Prescott High Drama Club, class of ’89. Colleen’s sketched out a few brief scenes for each role, holds the auditions in her spare room with the barest of sets: table, two chairs.

“What's this scene,” the first actress asks, “is this for real? What do you want me to do here.”

“Just what it says.”

The actress stands, sets the page on the table, leans in and slaps Colleen across the face. “Like that?”

Colleen smooths her bangs, touches her stinging cheek with her fingertips, wipes back a tear. “You've got the part.” 

Her sister

The actress has a broad smile, a warm voice; she offers Colleen a Ziploc bag of sugar cookies, dusted pink. “I’m sorry, but you may be too charming,” Colleen tells her. “You walk into the room, people will like you immediately. You have charisma.” She touches the cookie bag, remembers her sister rubbing dirt in her hair when she was eleven. “It’s not quite what we’re looking for.”

The actress takes off her shoe, lifts it, brings it down like a hammer on the Ziploc bag again and again, until the plastic is shredded, the cookies a fine dust. Puts her shoe back on, smiles sweetly. “You think I can’t play against type?”

Herself

“I can do anything in the whole world,” the actress reads. She’s thirteen, wears glasses, braces, pushes her hair behind her ear as she goes on, “My life is a gift.”

“That’s good,” Colleen says. “Read the rest.”

“It just doesn’t seem likely she’d spiel out this whole speech.” She frowns at the page. “I mean, I wouldn’t have a problem memorizing it or anything.”

“It is likely,” Colleen says. “Remember her mother just told her she was a useless shit.”

“Well okay, but…”

“She’s saying this to herself in the mirror. She wrote it down so she wouldn’t forget. To give herself courage.”

The actress pushes back her glasses. “Why doesn’t she just tell them all to fuck off?”

Her husband

The actor’s tall, over six feet, has wide warm molasses eyes, holds Colleen’s hands across the table. “Don’t I get any lines in this?” he asks.

“In the other scenes,” Colleen grips his hands so he can’t pull away, “not this one.” Harold was small, he got picked on a lot, she thinks. He had a stammer. Maybe she’ll revise the script to include what she’s left out. When he didn’t get a promotion, he locked himself in the workshop at night. He slept there with his magnet collection and a ham radio.

“So what should I do?”

“Just this,” Colleen says as his hands relax, “you don’t have to say a thing.” Half-closing her eyes, feeling herself float in the pools of warm molasses. “Look at me as if I’m your whole world, your precious one.”

Her daughter

The actress has her hair pulled behind her head, no makeup; her forehead and nose are lightly freckled. “You may be too attractive for this,” Colleen tells her.

“But what’s this person like?” the actress asks. “Is she weird or deformed or something? The script doesn’t say.” She lifts the page, studies it. “I could wear some prosthetics. Plastics, rubber. I went to school for that online.”

“No, no.” The last time I tried to kiss my daughter she turned away, Colleen wants to say, but doesn’t—nor is it in the scene she wrote. When I tried to hug her, she made a face. The last time we saw each other she was cutting herself again.

“It would actually be kind of fun,” the actress says, faraway look in her blue eyes. “Maybe just sharpen my chin some. Fatten my nose up, make it more piggish.”

“This character thinks she’s ugly, but it’s all in her head,” Colleen says, smoothing her bangs, but so softly the actress probably doesn’t hear, and anyway it’s too exhausting, Colleen’s already decided to give her the part. “This character was actually the most beautiful thing on earth.”