The Green Gate

(continued)

By E. A. Short

This afternoon, a Wednesday when every living soul within three counties has either just been to the fair or is just about to go, Sunny accepts one of the previous day’s oranges from my tote bag and rolls it between her palms, softening it up because she likes it pulpy. Abstaining, I watch her run a fingernail around the peel and slip her thumb neatly under the scored skin.

“You were talking yesterday about having conversations with yourself,” I say, casting an inviting nod at a Lookie-Lou who is skirting the perimeters of my booth like a stray dog. After he veers away from the bottle of Mirror Magic I hold out, I turn to Sunny. “Is it like characters from your favorite movie are talking to each other?”

Sunny breaks her orange in half and licks her fingers. “No, hon. I put myself in certain situations — like when I watch Inside the Actor’s Studio,” she says, waving gaily to a woman sniffing her pickling spices at the rear of the booth.

After making a sale, Sunny comes back and leans over my demonstration mirror, a cracked medicine cabinet I got a good deal on at a garage sale. “I’m always amazed by the questions the interviewers ask. Usually I’ve already got them answered in my head.” She runs a powder puff over her nose and cranks open a tube of Kiss Me Kate. “They’re not usually questions I’d ask someone, because I’ve already got the answers, in a way.”

“Like 'Why do you act?' Questions like that?”

“No, like 'Do you feel you bring yourself to a character or do you create one from scratch?' What an obvious answer that is! You have to bring who you are to a character — you have no other instrument to work with.”

I nod to convey that I understand, even though I don’t quite.

Sunny sighs and takes off her bonnet: the day was heating up. “I don’t know; I keep telling myself you should be rich and famous because you have all of these answers. So, I’ve decided I need to be rich and famous, but…”

I myself believe that Sunny is well-positioned for a rags to riches story. She’s successful enough in sales, but I think she could do more.

“Well,” I say, “You should be able to make it big just doing what comes naturally. Things that put your talents to full use. Whether that means...”

I interrupt myself to pitch the Magic, making expert swipes across my mirror as I tick off the countless benefits on my fingers. For the fourth time in a row I fail to close a sale. I think of sitting in the trailer doorway this morning with my coffee: again, the sense of being stripped clean, the feeling of my bones rising toward my skin, my future rising to the surface. It was that way for the Joads, sometimes — the hard work, the setbacks. Making them all stronger, in the beginning at least.

Looking worried, Sunny frowns into the spotless horizon of my mirror and fluffs her tight gray curls under the fluorescent lights. “I’ve heard stories about people trying to get acting jobs, well, living on food stamps. I need something that’s… I mean, Frank and I live spare already, it’s not like…”

Foot traffic picks up and it isn’t until we drape our booths with old sheets and switch off the hot lights that we finish our conversation. I can tell by the way Sunny talks that she’s been thinking about becoming rich and famous all day.

“Oh hell, as long as I’m living on the margins I might as well be doing something a little more…” she says as we thread our way through the whirring carnival rides. The operators had slept little the night before; I’d heard them yelling and breaking bottles late into the night.

“Exactly,” I say, then stop, Sunny’s words rippling through my head like someone has thrown a pebble. As if a switch has been thrown, sights and sounds expand. The ferris wheel speeds up and slows down before taking off again with a breathtaking lurch, thrilling a whole nation of arm-waving people as they hurtle toward the sky. Hot-pink bunny rabbits and blinding goldfish, the deflating crunch of a Styrofoam cup and the s-t-r-i-i-i-i-p of tickets spin around me like a swarm of thundering day-glo gnats. When I look over at Sunny she’s still talking, but no words are coming out.

Suddenly I remember I skipped the curly fries this evening and realize I’m famished. I open my tote bag and reach down, wrapping my fingers around the last orange. Lifting it to my mouth I tear into the fruit, bitter peel and all, raking my teeth through the pulpy meat, letting juice dribbling down my chin. Sunny hands me a napkin from a corndog stand after I spit out a few seeds.

Wiping my face, I feel my jaw under the thin tissue, tight and firm as a stretched rubber band. Touching that bone, all the things Sunny said today finally make sense. I take my leave on unsteady feet, giving Sunny a hurried wave before quickening my pace toward the Green Gate and the parking lot beyond.