Page 56 of Potion Sickness

“March,” she says, to both of us.

* * *

A few hours later, there’s a theater on my lawn. I was not consulted.

The stage is the flat part between the porch and the forsythia. The audience section is four kitchen chairs, carried out one at a time, and a quilt. The set is a lime green lawn flamingo named Doreen, transported by Lily from Hannah’s front yard in a wagon over a distance of nearly a mile.

“Doreen’s the castle,” Lily says.

Emma has a program made of index cards, stapled, with a cast list and a running time.

THE SCOTTISH PLAY (SHORT)

Duration: 11 minutes

Intermission: no

Refreshments: after

“Eleven minutes? Wow.”

“We cut it,” Emma says. “The real one is too long.”

Addie plays Lady Macbeth, of course. Lily has combined all the exciting roles into one and cast herself in it, so is playing Macbeth, the murder, the ghost, and the dying. Bandit plays Banquo, according to the program.

Englebert arrives at the top of the porch steps. “Where’s the throne?”

“That stump over there,” Emma says.

“Where does the audience sit?” He descends and circles the makeshift stage. “No, don’t answer. I can see where the audience sits, and it is wrong. Move the chairs. You can’t have your house looking directly into the sun. They must be able to see.”

They move the chairs.

When the play goes on, the house consists of me, Hannah, Annabel, Gabe, and Maude, who arrives on his own recognizance and installs himself in the center of the quilt, forcing Hannah onto the grass.

“Give him your seat,” Englebert says. “He is a professional. He was offered a role in the full production and declined. I respect this decision. It is the correct instinct at his stage of career.”

“He’s just a normal cat, Englebert. He’s not an actor.”

“He is a cat with a style.”

Lily comes on and delivers a soliloquy she wrote herself, consisting of the sentence “I want to be the king” four times at increasing volume, followed by a stab.

“Who did she stab?” Hannah says. “There’s nobody there.”

“Duncan,” Emma says, from her post at the corner with the script and the timer. “Duncan’s offstage. He’s offstage in the real one too.”

“That’s actually right,” Gabe says with a shrug.

Addie enters with a dish towel over her shoulder and delivers her lines.

“She’s better than you,” I whisper.

“She’s better than everybody. She gives me notes at breakfast.”

We reach Banquo’s death. Bandit goes over sideways with his feet still going. Lily, from the stump, screams “AVAUNT” with complete commitment and presumably no idea what it means.

The sleepwalking scene is Addie walking in a circle, rubbing her hands together. “Out, darn spot,” she says.