Cassandra the Raisin

by Barbara Alfaro

Interviews were held in a dance studio in Manhattans West forties. One bridge table, chewing gum gray, and two bridge chairs were placed quite a distance from the door. The award-winning film director was conducting the interview himself. Tell me something about yourself. I graduated from the American Academy. Ive appeared in several offoff Broadway productions and childrens theatre. That sounded boring even to me. No film work? Ah, hmmmnot yet. I smiled, adjusting the invisible dunce hat I seemed to be wearing. I wished I could have said Id done a few television commercials, even a cornflakes commercial. I admired my peers who play rejected raisins or plump plums in cereal commercials. It takes a certain amount of humility and lack of funds to play fruit in underwear ads when you have studied Shakespeare and diction for years.

He smiled and began to describe the role in his film that I was being interviewed for. As a part of me listened, another part of me slipped into something more comfortable a fantasy. In it, I did my stunning impressions of Hepburn, West, Monroe, and more devastating than any of these, my impression of myself. Bathed in a luminous light, I began. I am Cassandra, Portia, Olivia, and Antigone! I am an artist. Art is always a glimpse of God. And I would gladly spend my life in that exquisite glimpse! The director, seized with the spiritual love of one artist for another and a pleasant amount of sexual desire, places a film contract in my right hand and an engagement ring in my left hand. He holds me ever so gently, moves his face toward mine and I cant help feeling Ive seen you before, he was saying. ErahI used to check your coat, I volunteered. At Als Steak House. Three years ago. Admittedly, I thought, not the same thing as film credits. I remember you, he said. The shy one. I saw my film career evaporate and in its place, long years of teaching ten-year-olds somewhere in Indianapolis stretch before me. I wanted to tell him how the first few months I checked his expensive coat, I had not known he was a famous film director. When I found out, all I could do was put his coat on a hanger instead of a hook. I wanted to tell him how all my life I dreamed of a man just his height. I wanted to tell him the French actress he was currently seeing was so very

wrong for him. I recalled his ankle-length tan leather coat. Had the man never heard of animal rights? The director was smiling and for one mad moment I considered asking him if he liked Lord Byron. If his answer was yes, I would offer myself to him. If his answer was no, I would offer myself to him. Delicate as a seashell, strong as the sea, our love would grow andSuddenly, like a lioness roused from sleep, a voice deep within me commanded, of all things, "Cut the crap!" The night before, I sat across from my ex-husband at a small table in a large Italian restaurant. We played My Therapist is Better Than Your Therapist. Since our separation and divorce, my ex had exhibited an odd and disquieting pattern of mimicking me. I studied acting. He took acting classes. I began therapy with a Jungian analyst. He began therapy with a Jungian analyst. I ordered lasagna. He ordered lasagna. But how are you, really? he asked. He reminded me of Robert Redford. He didn't look like Robert Redford, but he reminded me of him, something to do with the easy, annoying confidence of handsome men. How is your therapy coming along? He smiled. Fine. I didnt smile. Are you seeing anyone? No. How are you? Fine. Of course, if we were both fine, we wouldnt both be in therapy.

Had any good dreams lately? Did he mean to paraphrase Heard any good jokes lately? I refuse, I replied, to discuss the state of my soul over a plate of lasagna! He was laughing. Then, with a serious thrust to his chin, he asked, Think youll ever marry again? Id rather be keelhauled. I was, as New Yorkers insisted on saying, involved with an older man who didnt remind me of Robert Redford, more God-the-Father and Paul Newman. An older man who just that afternoon told me he was fond of me. Fond was the way I felt about an aunt or a friends Airedale or raisins. I was fond of raisins. When I was a girl I read biographies of Eleanor Duse and Sarah Bernhardt. Stories of how when they appeared in plays, admirers covered the stage with roses. Young men followed them home, chanting their names and throwing flowers. It seemed to me a wonderful way to live. I especially liked the no cooking part. I read about Stanislavski and Chekhov and the Moscow Arts Theatre. I was timid and had a startling inability to apply make-up correctly. Still, I loved theatre, the place without windows where souls are revealed. The film director was shaking my hand and thanking me for coming. I paused at the door, then left.

I may carry it with me to the grave, I thought, clutching my nonleather pocketbook, but I will never ask that man if he likes Lord Byron.

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