Well, here goes.” And she went off to read a scene with Jane Merritt. It featured Mazo as a young girl, and Merritt was plausible. They were both so good they could have been reading the Financial Post and it would have come alive. And the painful part to Harriet was that they worked so well together.
| MAZO: | When the rain stops, the air will be fresh again and we can go for a walk. We’ll go by the Mansion and see what the Masseys are doing. |
| CARO: | Mazo, the high point of my life is not peeping at the Masseys. |
| MAZO: | You enjoy it as much as I do. |
| CARO: | Oh yes. What do we have on our calendar today? Why the Masseys are having a party forsooth. We can pretend to be taking a stroll down Jarvis Street so we can watch the fine ladies being helped from their carriages. Perhaps one will toss us a coin and we can grovel for it. |
| MAZO: | Caroline, please don’t. Father will find a job soon and things will get better. |
| CARO: | And if he does, do you really think it will last longer than any of the others? And we don’t have the rent for another month in this place even. You heard them at supper last night. We have to move again. This time down by the railroad tracks. Well, they can move without me. |
| MAZO: | Will it be any better to work for strangers? To wait tables and smile and earn tips. At least we’re family and took you in when no one else did.… |
| CARO: | I think I’ve paid off that debt several times in my ten years as errand girl and beast of burden. My god, they can’t even call me by my first name. It’s “Clemmie, do this! Clemmie, do that!” |
| MAZO: | They call me Maisie and I hate it just as much. |
| CARO: | Well, they won’t be calling me anything for a very long time if I can help it. And I won’t be waiting tables forever. |
| MAZO: | Not the innkeeper’s son. Oh, you aren’t thinking of marrying him, are you? |
| CARO: | I shall be free to lead my own life and do whatever I wish. |
| MAZO: | But getting married isn’t leading your own life. It’s leading someone else’s. |
| CARO: | True. But since they never let me go to school, it’s the only prospect I have. |
| MAZO: | The prospect of being an innkeeper’s wife in Newmarket? |
| CARO: | Is that so different from being an unpaid servant in Cawthra Square? |
| MAZO: | There are different kinds of servitude, Caroline. |
| CARO: | In that case there’s something to be said for varying them. |
| MAZO: | Caroline, this house depresses me as much as it depresses you. I feel like a changeling, dropped by an accident of birth into a roach’s nest. Those nights when I wake you with my screaming — do you know what my nightmare is? I dream I’m tied down and being overrun by roaches, nasty little insects, coming out from all their corners in droves. I believe I knew from the very moment I was born that I wasn’t a Roach. All I ever dreamed of was getting away. |
It went on and on as if, in spite of the script, the acting brought the situation to life and everyone watching was caught up in it and enthralled. So it seemed that a good half-hour went by before the director finally clapped her hands and said, “Thank you.”
By the time Harriet was called up, the crowd had thinned out as those whose turns were over drifted away. She was sure that Jane Merritt and Brandi had the parts. Meg Wagstaff, who was to play Caroline to Harriet’s Mazo, was hopeless, overweight, and gross in every way. Harriet felt she was much too old for Mazo and sure that together they would make a farce of the scene.
| CARO: | If one of us gets away, she can rescue the other. We don’t have to be separated. When I’m married you can come with me to Newmarket. |
| MAZO: | I was born in that godforsaken town and I’ve no desire to return — ever. And I don’t want to be a guest in your home, a hanger-on, a maiden aunt, bossing the children about. I don’t want to share you, Caroline. I want you all to myself. I need you, Caroline. |
| CARO: | But I’m tired of being needed. I want to need someone else for a change. |
| MAZO: | But don’t you need me? Haven’t I taken care of you since you were seven years old? Didn’t I play with you and amuse you and make you happy even in the worst of times? |
| CARO: | Darling, you did. But I’m not a child any longer. I’m a woman and I need to escape this family. |
| MAZO: | Oh Caroline, there’s a way we can escape even if we never leave this house, as long as we stay together. |
| CARO: | (gently) Mazo, we’re too old for your play. We’re women of marriageable age. I’ll be twenty in a few more years. And I’m going to be married. Even if I have to wait on tables, at least I shall be called by my first name. |
| MAZO: | If you leave, I shall die. That’s all. It will be the end of me. |
| CARO: | Nonsense. You have so much talent and so much imagination — you can do anything. |
| MAZO: | But what can a woman do, Caroline, except get married? You said so yourself. And I won’t get married. I’ve never been interested in a man in my whole life. I’m different from you. And I can’t do my play by myself. Oh Caroline, don’t abandon our play. |
| CARO: | Darling, we can’t plan our entire lives around dressing up and acting out a play in a dark bedroom. |
| MAZO: | We can’t, Caroline? Why can’t we? Isn’t it better than anything we’ve ever done? Hasn’t everything else seemed pale in comparison? It’s our own private world over which we have complete control. And in it we can be anyone we like. We can stop being Clemmie and Maisie — you’re not Clemmie, or even Caroline Clement. You were Alayne Archer, and now that you are married to Eden Whiteoak you are Alayne Whiteoak. Who are you? |
| CARO: | I’m Alayne … Alayne Whiteoak. And I’m finding living in the Ontario countryside a little strange after New York. I stroll around the grounds of Whiteoak Manor trying to feel at home. |
| MAZO: | So, my brother Eden’s lovely wife is out for an afternoon stroll. |
| CARO: | Renny, I would rather walk alone. |
| MAZO: | Alayne, don’t you think that brother-in-law and sister-in-law should be friends? We both love the same person, and so it follows as a matter of course that we should love each other. |
| CARO: | Renny, your attentions trouble me. There’s an undercurrent in everything you say and do. I would rather you kept a distance from me — |