They said it twelve times, swapping perspectives, before anything happened: You’re sitting on your hands, I’m sitting on my hands, you’re sitting on your hands, then a break—Rachel, gnawing a rind: You got defensive. “I didn’t get defensive.” She called him exasperated and he said he was. She was eating a garnish, said Mark, stirring repetitions that crescendoed, unexpectedly:

“You’re bearing down on me.”

“I’m not bearing down on you.”

“You’re bearing down on me,” he said.

“I was bearing down on you.”

“You’ve calmed,” he said, and she agreed.

Meisner wasn’t about repetition, not really, but it was when they did it, the truth the upshot of an echoed series. To do something, you contrive to do it, collapsing intention and invention, corpsing through lines you really believe. Actual behavior, the stuff of life, is iterative: whatever’s next is true. Mark cherished the method, ready to speak Ibsen and mean it, to waver between resolutions and, as Hamlet, be swayed. To Rachel, it was a revelation: the shortest way to the truth was a sine wave. The sessions, enacted nightly, were her idea.

She offered a foot that night, the night she “bore down” on him, and he massaged it, maybe as a supplication, grinding the shiny parts with his palm and making jokes. It was a two-way gift, his indifference to a malign office, she with the olive branch: I’ll let you make me love you. Circle, circle, press, circle, circle, press-in, Mark side-wound her calf with his elbow and grunted a little, like a tradesman. He wondered if, by calling attention to his favor, he voided a pact—was his reward already in transit? The ceiling was vaulted; things came open underneath. Rachel frowned: Were they really that good? He would peel the roof and meet the fingers that framed it: the church, the steeple—open the doors, behold the people. They had to be honest, the leads were exquisite. The difference, he said, was next year. “By then, we’ll be better.”

They kissed, coupled, he held her. She traced the walls with a finger, speaking: Remember Vanya? Of course he did. They saw it a year ago, in the city. He’d gotten his six-year, she finished her probationary period, and milestones took shape ahead, a grade of diminished returns. “How about a show,” since they’d acted in college. They rode the commuter rail in cocktail dress. “You wanted to get dolled up,” (Rachel), “You said it like that: dolled up.” He said (in the present, scratching her head), “We were dolled up.” Yeah, she said, just dolls. They got dinner, drinks. They went to a bar where the menu was all spells. Drink for untarnished resolve. Her drink had honeysuckle in it, but he called it honeydew. He made it a pun: Honey, do. She said that’s not what it was. It was a sweet flower, it tasted like summer.

The theater was an envelope, velvet-crushed and stuffed with wigs, lav mics, affected voices and all they entailed. There were quarter-zips and oxfords, rugby shirts, Aran wool—to see: three grand dames (begowned), lesbians with knapsacks, venerable, half-centennial couples, and a tragically tuxed senior with no one on either side. Emerson students pointed at chairs and made angles with their hands, jutting at the shoulder then bending the wrist and cutting left. Tchaikovsky or something piped in from above. When they found their seats, Rachel chewed gum and Mark thought he should kiss her, but he didn’t, just wondered: would their bond resolve to silence? The lights went down, it’s starting Ma, what? Ma shhh, it’s starting, Mark didn’t look back to see, just smiled sagely, and when the music cut out, she took his hand.

Rachel (in bed after the foot rub, the Meisner): Something came undone there. I remember thinking, “Thank God for Chekhov.” And what better place for social feelings. We’re there with all walks of life—all walks that like Chekhov—and you’re listening and I’m listening, and we’re all being manipulated (Mark laughs), but we are, it’s true, thank God, we’re manipulated together, in the same direction, ushered to our seats then subordinated, to art. (Mark: You, subordinated? Rachel thinks.) Maybe I wasn’t. No, not subordinated. Just ordinated, brought into alignment. I’m not a fan and I’d make a terrible critic, but I could contend with their decisions—I was a peer. The lights went out with, “We’ll rest, I know we will,” but I knew we wouldn’t, not yet. We found SSCT (South Shore Community Theater) on the train back, remember, auditions in a month. We were sure we’d get in.

“Well,” said Mark, “Tonight wasn’t Vanya.”

“Not by a mile.”

“But they were good,” he said, arcing the comforter with his arm.

*

The drive home was a wreck. Gunning from the lot, a gauche exit from a school auditorium, then huffing until the windows fogged, petulant and unspeaking. Rachel scanned the yards for creches. They didn’t have one at their house, just the inflatables, which the kid loved, but she thought maybe they should have one, a creche, not just beloved faces that melted at night, when no one was looking. She sighed. The skylight put boxes on her husband. He looked disappointed, but measuredly so, like he was half-thinking of tomorrow’s lesson. Look at us, she thought, we’re so adult. She saw a sign—SSCT presents The Cherry Orchard: Ugh-pfft, she said. He said he could turn around; she could kick it over. Rachel laughed. Ha, she said. Ha-ha.

“Lyubov was flat, don’t you think?”

“I don’t remember her singing.”

“I’m serious.”

“Terribly flat,” he said, “Bressonian.”

“When Bresson does it, it’s a good thing.”

“But oh is it wrong for Chekhov.”

She asked to get ice cream and they did, big waffles of it, from one of the boutique-y, photo-conscious spots that add a KitKat at an angle and drizzle chocolate just-so. “Fuck,” she said. He smiled: I know. They sat curbing brain freeze, really taking the sitter’s time. Sweets were their thing, something they’d discuss with other couples—but you’re a hygienist; I get friends and family—and, public-facing though it was, the taste was intimate, a real joy. Mark was impressed with Lopakhin’s tone (just his tone, for now), that it revealed his betrayal without reaching (he said) for justification; he was expansive. She agreed, if shyly: It felt “historical.” He repeated the word. “Not bad for that play.”

From there it was one-way questions, Rachel perked up and unhappy: what did you think of Lyubov’s monologue, the costumes, did she play it like a mother or a big sister, was she regal enough, beautiful enough, the actress made her a ghost, but should she be? Mark answered evenly, enthusiasm absent or withheld—the monologues hit the right beats, the clothes were cheap but appropriate, she played like an unfit mother and a ghost, he agreed, but there was a specter in Europe, especially there, fourteen years before dot-dot-dot. “Maybe she’s single,” said Rachel. It was a joke, one a weaker (nicer?) person might follow with kidding. Not Rachel, unspeaking until the bedroom, where she’d kick off the Meisner.

In the car, though, Mark pushed her: “Who else was sitting there, waiting for them to fail?” She scoffed. “It’s true though, isn’t it? Lots of us tried out, the non-cast came in spades. Do they feel how we do, or some better way?” Skylight flitting: shoom, shoom. “They’re out there. Next year’s leads are of-age, live in the area. What do they do tonight?” Rachel had worried Mark didn’t “want it” like she did, not with acting. She didn’t think that anymore. “I think that’s how we should act, don’t you?”

*

Outside the auditorium, the walls were lined with student art, so when they arrived, they stood for a while, looking. See the elder, craggy with plumb carriage, the old an indulgence of the novice artist, a piñata of shaded lines, but dignified, the newbie’s trick a flex of maturity. This one was smooth, though, and huge—his face balked signification. Exceeding his canvas, zoomed-in and off-center: three fourths of a lip, a clipped nose, whole chin, eye fixed and unseeing. The effect was not entirely pleasant.

“Margaret, hello,” said Rachel.

“It’s um,” said Margaret, the director of SSCT, before Mark gave their names.

Rachel: Can’t wait to see what you did.

“We love The Cherry Orchard,” he said.

“I’m glad to hear it. Great to see you both.”

“Real quick: who’s playing Lyubov?”

Margaret said a name: Want a playbill?

“No that’s great, thank you.”

“We’re proud of our work. Seasoned cast, love to spare.”

“So I’ve heard,” said Rachel.

“What,” said Margaret, “I’ve got to go.”

Faces swelled against the hall, neighbors scanning for family, friends, set figures and fresh blood. Mark and Rachel clustered traits: the eyes matched the nose, the mouth—Hal Schwartz of Mike’s Deli, eyes wide: Rachel, Mark, how are you. Smile, kiss, not too bad, excited to see them try. “Where’s Helen?” asked Rachel, when he’d gone. “Book club,” guessed Mark. A neutral sound—Mm. She wondered who came to these, if they all had someone to see, or if there were gadflies, thespians, insiders looking to judge for themselves. Too much was unknown; if they got in, would people come?

Concessions were a given, though: the Snickers a hiss, SSSSSSSS, the Twix counting by twos to ten. There was coffee in urns and tea, or its promise—hot water and envelopes signed “China Green Tips,” or “Passion”—lining a cashbox, delivered two days after the SSCT Treasurer put in the order. “Here comes Sweet Tooth,” said Pattie D, a friend of Mark’s mother. He smiled: You know me. She asked what it would be “sweetheart,” and he said coffees. “Six months to swimsuits.” He laughed, pointed at Rachel. He thought “I-C-E cream” was in their future. It would be six dollars, and he gave her a ten, so she split it. Mark plugged the holes with his thumbs while they shuffled, ‘scuse me, ‘scuse me, ‘scuse me, over knees and laps and unseen, frowning faces to their seats.

*

“And then, and then the guy and his friend are on the cliff, and there’s a clown, and he’s on the other cliff, the clown is standing, and it’s, and he’s standing on the other cliff and juggling, he’s throwing—and he’s throwing knives at the guy’s friend, and the guy’s married, he married his friend, his friend is a girl, and the guy stands in front of his friend and the knives, the clown is throwing them, and they hit the guy, not his friend, because, because he loves her, and he turns around and the knives are on his back and he hugs her and says I love you, and the clown, the clown turns around because he’s sad, because he didn’t want them to win, to love each other and win, he turns around and he leaves them alone, and the friend, her heart is red and it gets big and red and all the knives leave the guy and then, and then they leave, but they didn’t die.”

“Oh,” said Rachel.

Mark said Mommy hadn’t seen the video, but it sounded very funny. Bella drew on her menu. When they got bad news, be it a layoff or a diagnosis, they changed shirts for eveningwear, fetched a sitter when possible (it wasn’t tonight), and left for somewhere with real menus and glasses you could play. They announced the cast of The Cherry Orchard that afternoon, and Mark knew his order by the bottom of the memo. He massaged Rachel’s hand: Why don’t you use the bathroom? Food’ll be out when you get back. She scoffed for a moment and snapped the other hand, fingers clawed, then shook her head and laughed, excusing herself. Bella: What’s hurry up and wait? He said it was what actors did, then got a little silly: Oh my goodness, hurry up!!! Hurry up!!!! (making a funny face, one hand palm-out in the air) Waaaaait!!!!!

The food was there when she got back, mood improved—probably white-knuckled that way, which Mark admired. Finger in the air, she smirked: You know the rules. Bella grinned and yelled “First Bite!” then remembered herself and said it quieter, almost whispering, “First Biiite.” First Bite was a tradition of theirs, one Bella would resent as a teenager, but which she enjoyed now, still a child’s child, an easy mark for anything with a name and whispered rules—have you heard of First Bite? It was simple: they all stopped talking, took a healthy bite, preferably one with all the flavors present, then rolled it on their tongues, preparing a report. Once they’d swallowed, they’d give descriptions. Mark went first, presenting his cacciotore and forking some chicken, peppers and a wide, smooshed noodle, then jerking it into his mouth, Bella laughing, to chew and chew and swallow. “Rustic…homespun…spicy!” He stuck out his tongue and fanned it, the others laughed. Bella’s turn, sauce-faced: Yummy!

Rachel, always last, took a second bite, flaking snapper and smearing the potatoes, not forgetting lemon, then chewing indulgently, closing her eyes and making a small, curt smile. Bella couldn’t take it anymore: How is iiiit? She finned her hand and whispered. “Really?” said Bella, eyes wide. Rachel nodded, the squinty one moms do when they want you to be, literally, amazed. Then she ate: fish, potatoes, wine, potatoes, fork on plate, mouth sounds—mmmmmmm. The meal was silent, their first since they had Bella, followed by biscotti and espresso, ice cream for the kid (but which Mom and Dad enjoyed).

Later, she’d hold him and cry, just a little. His hand in her hair: It’s so pretty. Her stiff for a second, then a smile, interesting teeth. Really? He’d nod. Chin on her head, not quite painless. Sometimes he’d do these kisses, small ones all over, silly things he really meant. I’m sorry, from Rachel, he kissing her.

*

The Russians discourse, half-cocked against the fall. The student, always smug, cites the cities: cutthroats, slums, the counterweight to—he assures us—a whiggish telos, the hard-earned birth of a New Man. But (Rachel licks a finger, turns the page) it’s to be earned. The band, unseen and faintly heard, plays all days but the seventh, sabbath withheld for a choosy God. Maybe Lyubov will buy a lay. Gayev says something about billiards, to no response. Some way off, poplars mark the orchard—a face, (a soul? Too obvious for this translation), a history to every leaf, the fruit their own encyclopedia. Firs knows: Cherries used to do things here. Lopakhin, still in work clothes: By rights, we should be giants.

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Sean Cavanaugh is a writer based in Boston, MA. His work has appeared in the Long River Review, Heavy Traffic, X-Ray Magazine, and Maudlin House. Twitter: @DoctorSlop