Tom Lake by Ann Patchett EPUB & PDF– eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Authors: Ann Patchett
- Language: English
- Genre: Fiction
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
That Veronica and I were given keys and told to come early on a frozen
Saturday in April to open the school for the Our Town auditions was proof
of our dull reliability. The play’s director, Mr. Martin, was my
grandmother’s friend and State Farm agent. That’s how I was wrangled in,
through my grandmother, and Veronica was wrangled because we did pretty
much everything together. Citizens of New Hampshire could not get enough
of Our Town. We felt about the play the way other Americans felt about the
Constitution or the “Star-Spangled Banner.”
It spoke to us, made us feel
special and seen. Mr. Martin predicted a large turnout for the auditions,
which explained why he needed use of the school gym for the day. The
community theater production had nothing to do with our high school, but
seeing as how Mr. Martin was also the principal’s insurance agent and very
likely his friend, the request was granted. Ours was that kind of town.
We arrived with our travel mugs of coffee and thick paperback novels,
Firestarter for Veronica and Doctor Zhivago for me. I liked school fine but
hated the gym and everything it stood for: team sports, pep rallies, vicious
games of kickball, running in circles when it was too cold to go outside,
formal dances, graduations. But on that Saturday morning the place was
empty and strangely beautiful. The sunlight poured in through the narrow
windows just below the roofline.
I don’t think I’d ever realized the gym had
windows. The floors and the walls and the bleachers were all made of the
same strips of pale wood. The stage was on one end behind the basketball
hoop, its heavy red curtains pulled back to reveal matte-black nothingness.
That’s where the action was scheduled to take place. We had instructions to
set up one banquet table and five folding chairs in front of the stage (“Close
but not too close,”
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