Finley tried very hard to make my day happy yesterday. He took me to Ben Eaton's house, and they killed some Zombies, and the world was filled with acceptance and laughter.
Then he took me home. He'd gotten me food (why does he always bring me food?), and we were eating, and all of a sudden, after I was telling him about the latest dress Schultz had put me in (the blue one I mentioned earlier) he turned to me and said, "Payton...."
Very much the way Katie had. You remember my stipulations on that tone of voice, non-existant peoples?
"You've been really unhappy lately," he said, his eyes glistening, "Especially after you go to play practice. Payton... no matter what you tell me or how you try and laugh it off, these people... they treat you awfully." I open my mouth, he cuts me off. "No, let me talk now, okay? Out of the cast members, people... they treat you badly. They really do. You go in smiling, laughing, blowing me kisses, hugging your script.. and you come out sad, and lonely, and feeling like a monster again. Even I can't make you happy... and there's not a lot I can't make you happy after, Payton. Not a lot."
This time, I do answer.
"I understand Beatrice," I said quietly, "people... people don't like her. They... tolerate her. She's... crazy. I know what it is like to be treated as... to feel... crazy. I was cast like her because I understand her."
"You might understand the role, but you shouldn't have to!" my husband exclaimed. "Play practice is a place made for acceptance and love, and people aren't treating you like that. They don't know you well enough to do anything else, and they don't want to. They don't love you! Not like you love them! You can't just give your heart to everyone like this. The people who love you, that's who deserves to have your heart... but everyone-! Payton, that's how you get hurt. You can't keep doing this."
Huh. Katie said the ''acceptance'' part, too, that night after rehearsal. Both halves of my heart feel that way? Maybe something is wrong.
"They may not love me," I said, more firmly now, "but I love them. They will always have a piece of me, if they need it. It is not in me, to take it from them."
"Payton... I'm watching you fall into a hole, and I don't know what to do. What if I can't pull you up anymore? Please... don't do this to yourself. You shouldn't have to feel like you're crazy, because... because you're not, Payton! If the world would just take the time to know you, they'd see you like I do. You read much better for other things than Beatrice. You really did. You can't live in that. You know I don't like to tell people, once they've really committed to something...." A very long pause tells me where he's going.
"You can't... you can't do this to yourself. Leave the play, Payton. Talk to Schultz, get out of there, and feel happy again. Feel loved. I can't.... I can't watch you do this to yourself. Leave the Play, Payton. Please? For me?"
My eyes fill with tears. "Don't tell me I'm hurting you, too."
"Darling... wife... oh, no, don't...." He takes me in his arms, and I cry. Strange. This seems to happen a lot more than usual lately, this apparition of tears. I suppose the new part is that I've had people to comfort me.
"I won't abandon them, Finley," I say, tears running, "Not even for you, I will not abandon my cast. Don't you think I've had these thoughts? But I won't... I won't leave them to find a new Beatrice, not this late in the show. No one can play her like I do."
"Yes, someone very well bloody can," snaps Finley. "You shouldn't be putting yourself through this. In the end, though, it has to be your choice, because no matter how much I want to just walk up to Schultz and say, 'that's it, she's quitting', I don't have that power."
I close my eyes and run my fingers over his face.
You always, my heart promises, have that power to me, Finley.
I sip my soda.
"I won't be another Allen," I said. "I won't do that to Schultz and to my cast members. I love them, Finley. And nobody... nobody can play a heartbreak like I can. Nobody. Also, when it comes to Beatrice..."
His eyes open and look at me for a moment, scared, and then close again.
"I was thinking on basing her on Betty white," I confess, and his eyes open for real, and he grins. That's how we work, Finley and I. We bare our hearts and are sad, and then we do something to make each other outrageously happy. If that's dancing in my basement to 'Dancing in the Moonlight' at two in the morning, we do it. If that's sitting on the couch with him in my arms or me in his, we do it. If that's skivving ten minutes off a rehearsal to play an extra round of Smash brothers... we do.
In my opinion, that's how love should be.... finding joy in every moment, and finding new ways to find that joy. Because the initial excitement we feel for that big first kiss or holding hands in a public hallway, that isn't love. That's being afraid to be happy. That's being afraid to let our walls down. But Finley... he always had mine down, from the moment we first lay eyes on each other. God smiled on me--why me, I'll never really know--when He gave me Finley.
Finley, like Katie-bird, looks past the inital awkwardness I feel around people. Until I know they won't hurt me, I do that. But once I know you're willing to love me, love me like I love you, strangers out there, those walls come down, and I'm happy... I'm wonderful. Truly beautiful, sometimes. Finley knows my heart.
Do you know my heart, strangers? Cast members? Schultz? Family?
....
Do you even want to?
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