Introduction

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Excerpt

Chapter 1

“So, is this a relationship built on manipulation or intellectual attraction?”

Please God, someone have an answer. Anybody. Nobody. I looked out at my class of twenty-four students, only about sixteen of whom were feigning interest in the material. Not a single hand was raised, not even Lydia’s, which was a bad sign. Lydia was my prize student in Shakespeare 401, my upper-level English class at Pasadena City College. A bright young Korean second-gen with UC Berkeley dreams, she was my go-to responder on days when even I didn’t feel like discussing the Bard. Lydia would pull some question out of thin air and keep the discussion going until the bell rang or Antonio’s cell phone went off (Party Rockers in the House Tonight!), whichever came first.

But on an unusually hot and smoggy Tuesday in April, even Lydia couldn’t have cared less about The Taming of the Shrew.

God, I hate this play.

Which is why I taught it, to make my point that even a writer as brilliant and timeless as Shakespeare can miss the mark. But apparently, not a single student in my class was interested in my reverse (perverse?) psychology. Not Morgan, the spectacularly beautiful private-school girl who spent one semester at NYU then fled back to Pasadena after discovering that college in NYC was not at all like shopping in NYC. Not George the Ukrainian (his moniker, not mine), who wanted to become a teacher after driving a truck for ten years. Not Emilia, the young single mom who was somehow putting herself through school and working at Bed Bath & Beyond. My usually lively class was otherwise occupied. It was the last week before spring break and, clearly, they were all mapping out the quickest route to the frozen yogurt emporium post-lecture.

“So no one has an opinion on one of the most famous relationships in all of Shakespeare? Kate and Petruchio. Fire and Ice. Sexist Pig and Cold-hearted Be-yotch. You read this scene and you thought, what? Fine, great. I gotta get me a guy like that.”

Laughter rippled throughout the classroom, reminding me why I get up in the morning. “Professor Lancaster, I have no idea what’s happening in this play,” Nico Andregosian piped up. Nico faithfully wore his high school letterman’s jacket every day to class, despite the heat and without irony. Nico wasn’t headed to Berkeley anytime soon, but he did help me change a tire last week. Another reminder of why I got up in the morning. “I don’t get this at all.”

“Did you actually read it, Nico?”

“Yeah, kinda. But it’s crazy, about the sun and the moon.”

This is where the class gets good, I thought. Where I, Elizabeth Lancaster, community college English teacher and theater enthusiast, feel most in my element. “Okay, let’s do this. Let’s read it together, Nico. You and me. Like I always say, Shakespeare’s words are meant to be spoken, not studied at arm’s length. It’s living, breathing dialogue. And in this scene, the sexist pig is trying to convince the cold-hearted be-yotch that the sun is actually the moon. It’s his way of exerting power, and she is employing her own manipulative techniques to shut him down. Raise your hand if you’ve done this in your own relationships. Who’s played mind games in a romantic relationship?”

All the hands went up except Sahil’s, whose closest personal relationship has probably been with his PlayStation controller. “That’s what I thought. Get up, Nico. You’re Petruchio and I’m Kate. Let’s go.”

He heaved his squat body out of the chair, as his classmates hooted. His buddy from high school, Aron, hissed, “Duuude.” Nico’s reluctance was skin deep. He was a ham at heart. “Please, don’t make me do this.”

I took a swig of Diet Coke and did my best faux-ghetto “Oh, it’s on.” The students whooped, like I knew they would.

Nico began haltingly, adding several more syllables than in the original. “Come on, a’ God’s name. Once more, um, um, toward our father’s. Good Lord, how bright and goodly shines the moon!” He inserted a dramatic hand gesture for emphasis, then gave me a triumphant look.

Oh, it was on. I tapped into my Inner Shrew, which wasn’t hard. I was a single, mid-30s woman with emerging bunions, a leaking roof, and a love life that had been in decline since the early Aughts. Not to mention that I had a mother who kept setting me up with every divorced dad in Pasadena and a sister who insisted I needed to keep “putting myself out there” even though she has no idea how rough it is “out there.” Why couldn’t they just leave me alone with my books, my vegetable garden, and my growing collection of European comfort shoes? I happened to like my life. Why didn’t my family? Oh, yes, at that particularly moment in time, I was feeling extremely shrewish. Watch out, Nico. “The moon! The sun—it is not light now.”

Nico rose to the challenge, playing his Petruchio with a touch of Jersey Shore. “I say it is the moon that shines so bright.”

The classroom door cracked as it opened. I didn’t bother to turn to see who’d arrived thirty minutes late to class. Besides, the audible gasp from a dozen young women told me it was Jordan. He was easily the best-looking boy in the room and a star baseball player who was hoping for a decent transfer offer. Jordan slid in late most days, hoping for attendance credit and a chance to flirt with Shiree. But I paid no attention to the rumble from the other students, because I was in the zone. “I know it is the sun that shines so bright.”

Nico’s jaw dropped open, apparently stunned silent by my confidence. But the scene wasn’t nearly over, so I gave him the universal “it’s your turn” sign with my hands. He stammered, unable to get out the next line. And then I heard the next lines come from behind me. “Now by my mother’s son, and that’s myself, It shall be the moon, or star, or what I list…”

I turned to face the owner of the familiar voice. Good God, just what I needed.

No wonder the girls gasped. There, resplendent in jeans and a black T-shirt that probably cost more than my car, was Francis Fahey. Or as the world knew him, FX Fahey, the third-highest-grossing action star behind Harrison Ford and Tom Cruise. His “Icarus” franchise had spawned video games, fast food tie-ins, and a legion of fans that believed the laid-back actor to actually be the futuristic cop hero. Clearly, FX was used to being the center of attention, and he owned the classroom the minute he entered. He strode up the center aisle, grinning effortlessly, like he was just returning from the grocery store with a six-pack of beer instead of invading my workplace after a decade of no face-to-face contact. Oh, he was enjoying the moment. “Or ere I journey to your father’s house. Go on and fetch our horses back again. Evermore cross’d and cross’d, nothing but cross’d.”

I wanted to kill him. “Forward, I pray, since we have come so far, and be it the moon or sun, or whatever you please.” Now he was close enough to touch, and I was tempted, because his T-shirt, stretched poetically across his chest, appeared to be made of the softest cotton ever spun. I needed to physically stop myself from petting him. Be the shrew. Be the shrew. “And if you please to call it a rush-candle, henceforth I vow it shall be so for me.”

FX leaned in, his chin barely grazing the top of my head. He smelled like lime. “I say it is the moon,” he whispered for all to hear. The students responded with catcalls and an “Oh no, you didn’t.”

I stepped back, a gesture of stagecraft and self-preservation. “I know it is moon.”

FX closed the gap. “Nay, then you lie; it is the blessed sun.”

“Oh, snap, Professor,” Nico interrupted from his seat, where he had returned to watch.

“Then God be blest, it is the blessed sun. But sun it is not, when you say it is not; and the moon changes even as your mind.” I brushed away a lock of brown hair from his forehead, in what I believed to be a saucy fashion. That was a mistake. “What you will have it nam’d, even that it is, And so it shall be for Elizabeth.”

FX broke character, beaming, “Don’t you mean, ‘So it shall be for Katherine’?”

Busted. “What did I say?”

“You said Elizabeth. That’s you. I think you meant to say Katherine, because while Kate might agree with Petruchio to shut him up, Elizabeth Lancaster would never agree with me for expediency’s sake.”

Oh, snap.

*****

“You haven’t changed a bit, Lizzie,” FX said, looking around my tiny office, taking in my decorating style, which I referred to as Oxford in Southern California. Basically, my look included a couple of walls of leather-bound books, some gold-framed flea-market oil paintings, and one of those good-luck Chinese bamboo plants that a student had given me years ago and I didn’t want to tempt fate by tossing out. He wandered around, touching everything like a five-year-old at Target. “You look good.”

Compared to whom? The Brazilian supermodel he’d been living with, or the supermodel’s nanny he was sleeping with, according to Stun magazine?

“Thanks. So do you, Francis.” His amused look told me that only his mother still called him Francis. “Sorry, FX. Or is it really just X now? That’s how Matt Damon referred to you on The Daily Show.”

“On set, it’s X. Short, simple. Kinda boss. Remember when you helped pick my stage name? The X was your idea.” Of course I remembered. We were lying on a futon, the only piece of usable furniture in our tiny, oven-like apartment on the Lower East Side, just before the gourmet cheese shops and a John Varvatos boutique invaded the dodgy neighborhood. It was the summer FX landed his first professional acting gig with the Public Theater, and I followed along, as an intern to the artistic director. There was already a Francis Fahey and a Frank Fahey registered in the union, so I suggested replacing his actual middle name, Christopher, with the more traditional match to Francis: Xavier. FX Fahey was born. That was a name, I declared, that made him sound like a member of the IRA. Back in those days, terrorists were cool.

“I remember,” I answered, but I didn’t want to remember all of it, so I moved on. “What are you doing here? How did you find me at work?”

“I have people, Liz. That’s their job.”

“You couldn’t have just Facebooked me, like everybody else I haven’t seen in a decade?”

“I’m an actor. I like to make an entrance,” he smirked. “Plus, I was in Pasadena for a photo shoot, so I thought what the hell? I’ll swing by.”

Ah, I was convenient. Got it.

FX was studying my framed diploma collection: BA from Wesleyan; MA and PhD from UCLA; First Aid/CPR certification from the Rose Bowl Aquatic Center. He turned, “You have to admit, we were pretty good in there. I think your students were impressed.”

“They’ve seen me do Shakespeare. Pretty much every class.”

“I meant with me. I think I impressed them.” Was FX Fahey seriously looking for props from a classroom of nineteen-year-olds and George the Ukrainian? Still insecure about his talent, I noted. He carried on, “Remember the last time we did that scene together? I think we were better today.”

I did remember, and it filled me with embarrassment and a touch of nausea.

FX picked up a silver-framed photo of my family taken several years earlier. There was my father, the man of the hour that night, Dr. Richard Lancaster, in white tie with decorations, standing stiffly next to my mother, Anne, who was flashing a triumphant grin. My mother was clearly at her spousal zenith that night, taking her victory lap wrapped in peach silk taffeta and her grandmother’s diamonds. Next to my parents stood my two sisters, Sarah and Bumble, as different as night and day, but both in black sequins, flanked by their husbands, solid citizens each. And then there was me, on the end, in a vintage Lanvin gown and excruciatingly painful heels, posed next to the King of Sweden. FX didn’t seem to notice the royalty. “How is your dad? He gave me all that grief for years because I didn’t know who that famous science guy was, what’s-his-name?”

“Feynman. Richard Feynman.”

“Yeah. Wasn’t he the founder of Popular Mechanics or something?’

“Quantum mechanics. He was a theoretical physicist and my father’s mentor.”

‘That’s right. Quantum mechanics! That’s a good name for a movie. Does your dad still talk about me?”

“FX, my dad won the Nobel Prize in Physics a few years ago. He never talks about you.” I snatched the photo out of his hands with a little too much impatience.

FX threw up his hands in admiration, “See, nobody puts me down like that anymore! I’ve missed you, Lizzie. Wow, a Nobel Prize. That’s pretty impressive.”

Yeah, kind of. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the last time my father noticed an ad for one of his movies on the side of a bus, he pointed at it and said, “Isn’t that what’s-his-name?” My father exists in a world without TMZ and always has. When your day job involves determining the origins of the universe, you simply can’t be bothered with the mundanity of pop culture. Or a boy your daughter used to know. “Did you just stop by to run lines, or did you need something?”

In one graceful move, he grabbed my extra chair, pulled it closer to my desk, and sat down on the edge of the seat, “I have a proposal for you, Professor Lancaster.”

Our knees were almost touching. A proposal? I was afraid to open my mouth, convinced unfortunate squeaking noises would come out. Like the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz, only not so charming. So I used my timeworn technique of lifting my eyebrows and lowering my chin, as if to say, “Go on.”

It worked. One of the world’s biggest movie stars continued. “I want you to come to Ashland with me this summer for the Shakespeare Festival. I’m doing a production of Midsummer Night’s Dream. You, me, Shakespeare. How perfect is that, right? Remember sophomore year? I need you on the team. As a producer or consultant or whatever you want to call yourself. And guess who might be directing?”

I managed a shrug and a head shake.

“Taz Buchanan. Freakin’ Taz Buchanan. The original director dropped out because the surrogate delivered early and he and his partner are home with twins. But then I ran into Taz in a bar in London and the next thing you know, boom, he’s interested. I go to New York next week to seal the deal, I hope. But I need your help. We have two months to pull it together. A couple weeks of rehearsal with an eight-week run. Please say you’ll do it.”

Of all the proposals that might have come out of FX’s mouth—Let’s go for a beer! Can you dig up my Counting Crows CDs? Would you be a character witness at my trial? —this is the one I least expected. I finally found my voice, “That is a proposal. But why me? Don’t you have people who would be better suited?”

He shook his head. “Better suited? Just your use of the phrase ‘better suited’ makes me realize how perfect you are for this.” He relaxed back into the chair like my acceptance was a done deal. “And Taz Buchanan? You’ve gotta want to work with him, right?’

Yes, FX, I often fantasize about working with brilliant but temperamental directors like Taz Buchanan in my role as faculty advisor to the campus Theater Appreciation Club. “Ah, that possibility has never really come up in my career,” I responded, then shook my head a little. “FX, what’s the real story? Are you down a babysitter? Is that why you want me?”

His face got serious. “I did not sleep with that babysitter. Seriously, have you seen her? She’s like 60. Or 50 anyway. Things are over with Bebe, but not because of any babysitter. Although, I could use some time out of the limelight.…”

Now, we were getting somewhere. Here was the thing about FX—despite the box office, despite the perfect dimple on the perfect chin, despite the ease with which he glided through the world, he was not a bad guy. And, much as I hated to admit it, he was impossible to dislike. Not liking FX was like not liking bunnies.

“What’s going on?”

“I have a movie coming out in the fall. It’s really good, Liz. And I’m…really good in it.” I knew, of course, about his movie. Starting with last year’s Super Bowl ad, Dire Necessity had been called everything from “a masterpiece” to a top Oscar contender months before its premiere. It starred FX Fahey as General George Washington in the days leading up to the crossing of the Delaware. Only in Hollywood could somebody with unrelenting bone structure and a personality like a yellow lab be cast as a brilliant soldier with a pockmarked face and wooden teeth. But according to the story I read in US Weekly (I was at the nail salon), FX Fahey quite simply embodied the leader of the Continental Army. Or so said his PR person. He was also getting credit as a producer on the film, a first for him. “This is a big deal for me, and I want to make sure everything that could happen, does happen.”

FX gave me the same openly sincere look he threw my way during our first-night freshmen mixer at Wesleyan, fall of 1993. Back when he was simply Francis, a Seattle-bred, Nirvana-loving aspiring English major in a flannel shirt and Doc Martens. “I want to change my generation with my poetry,” he had said that night, as if he really, really meant it. And I really, really fell for it. It didn’t matter that most of the poetry he quoted to me was actually written by Kurt Cobain. I was in a heart-shape box for the next five years.

And here I was, falling for it again after more than a decade of being Francis-free. At least this time I wasn’t wearing a thrift-store granny dress and cowboy boots. Small victories.

“I get that the movie’s important. That’s great, FX. But where does the Shakespeare fit in? Sounds like you need a marketing team, not a professor-slash-producer.”

“Oh, I have a team. That’s who wants me to go to Ashland. According to my agent, my manager, and my publicist, I need to raise my acting profile before the movie comes out to be take seriously for a nomination.” He was all business now. He didn’t get this far in his career because he didn’t understand the score. “Doing live theater is exactly what my resume needs now. It’s real, it’s brave, and, you know, Shakespeare is classy. Not every action hero can do that shit. Can you imagine Channing Tatum as Hamlet?”

“Well, Midsummer is not exactly Hamlet, but I guess I see the point.” But I was still vague on what my role might be in the FX Fahey Road to the Oscars. “You know, FX, I haven’t worked on anything but student productions in the last ten years. Sure, I’ve led some tours to Ashland for students and friends of my mother, but Taz Buchanan and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival are both kind of out of my league.”

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, or OSF as it was commonly referred to, was one of the top repertory theaters in the country, thanks to consistently excellent directing, acting, and production values. It produced about a dozen plays a year, everything from four or five Shakespeare titles to new plays by emerging writers. Hundreds of thousands of theater fans made their way to the tiny town of Ashland during the season to sit under the stars and feel the power of live theater. It wasn’t a place for amateurs.

“You’d work for me. You’d be my person. I need you to keep me on track, to make sure I don’t do anything too stupid. To be the voice of good judgment, like you always are.” FX noticed my raised eyebrows. “On stage. Only on stage, not off stage. I’m a big boy. I’ll lay low when the curtain comes down. I’m totally focused on this. We have, like, no time to produce this thing, and Taz is Taz. I just need to know the production won’t go off the rails. Creatively. And I know you won’t let that happen. You care too much about this stuff. It’s just, I mean, I haven’t done live theater, you know, since.…”

Ah, yes, since what Frank Rich, the New York Times theater critic at the time, called “the most self-indulgent three hours ever produced for the Broadway stage,” otherwise known as FX’s turn in Coriolanus in 2002. (And that was one of the better reviews.) He offered up his performance as a “gesture toward healing in the post-September 11th world”—a fatal miscalculation about his worth to the American psyche. He paid for his hubris for years, with mocking referrals and unrelenting ridicule. I admit, at the time, it pleased me. Since then, the green screen has been his friend, and he hasn’t stepped foot on a stage other than at the Golden Globes. Now, to get his Oscar nomination, he was ready to conquer his demons but he thought he needed me there.

I was flattered.

I shuffled papers around on my desktop, stalling for time. “What role are you playing?”

“We’re doing the dual-role interpretation. I’ll be Theseus and Oberon.”

Perfect, the King of Athens and the King of the Fairies. One powerful in reality; the other powerful in the dream world. Now I was impressed, damn it. And interested.

“I have to think about this. I do have a life here, you know. I have a lot going on. A lot.”

I had nothing on my calendar for the summer. Seriously, not even a dentist appointment. The community college system was so broke that all my usual writing classes had been cancelled for the summer. I was actually considering starting a college-essay advising business to take advantage of all the wealthy Pasadena parents who didn’t want their kids to do time at PCC and had the money to buy their way into a small liberal arts school in Ohio, thanks to tutors. But I hadn’t even put up a flyer on the community boards at the trendy coffeehouses yet. Still, FX didn’t need to know all that. “It’s not so easy to pack up and relocate for the summer.”

He nodded. “I’m sure you’re booked, and I know it will take some rescheduling. I’ll take care of everything, and I mean that. Housing, transportation, and whatever you want for a fee. Really. Whatever.”

Good to see a touch of guilt surfacing. FX handed me a card with his agent’s contact information. “I need you, Liz. Think about it and then call my agent. We’ll set up a meeting. We’ll sign a contract and iron everything out. This is a real job offer.”

“Not an au pair position. I get it. I’ll think about it, FX.” There was a knock on the door and one of my students, Julio Jimenez, popped his head in. It was time for our weekly advisor meeting. God bless Julio. I stood up to signal the end of our conversation. “Give me a couple of days.”

FX gave me a double cheek kiss. Yup, limes with a little bit of mint. “Come to Ashland, Lizzie.”

As FX shut the door, Julio stared him down. “Hey, was that…?”

“Yes, it was.”

“Cool! How do you know FX Fahey, Professor?”

I spun my chair around to look out the window facing the quad. “I was married to him.” view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

When we first meet Elizabeth, she seems perfectly contented with her lifestyle, though her family of high achievers encourage her to be more ambitious. Do you think she was denying her ambitions out of fear?

Setting plays a large role in Elizabeth the First Wife. Do you think that Ashland and Pasadena could be considered characters of their own in the book? Does Elizabeth’s relationship with each of these places changes over the course of the book?

The title Elizabeth the First Wife ties the character of Elizabeth immediately to Elizabeth the First of England. What aspects of our protagonist draw inspiration from the first Elizabeth? How is she a modern day Elizabeth?

When Elizabeth’s ex-husband swoops into town with a suspiciously generous job offer, she enlists both of her sisters for advice on what to do. If you were her sister, would you have advised her to go?

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»	Author Lian Dolan's web site
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