Dancing in the Light Read Online Free PDF Page A

identical.
    She looked up at me. I blinked. I sensed this was an important moment. So did she.
    “I see,” said I.
    I hesitated. Should I pursue this or not? I went on.
    “Okay, now,” I said. “Let’s have some fun. Do the same thing with the fruitcake and deliver the same ‘life can be mysterious’ line, but make me feel sad as though your heart is breaking.”
    “Sure,” she said without even thinking. Again, with no preparation or emotional adjustment, she cut a little more hesitantly into the cake and seemed to be choking back tears as she said, “Oh, Mom, life can be so mysterious,” as though she had beensentenced to die at dawn. She really moved me. As a professional, I thought, oh dear, should I really tell her how talented she is? Her kind of expressive capacity was instantaneously evident. I felt almost guided to go on.
    “Okay,” I said, “let’s do something else.”
    “Sure,” she answered, knowing that not only was this fun, but she might be on to something.
    “Let’s do an improvisation,” I suggested.
    “What’s that?”
    “Well, here’s the outline. You go outside. Knock on the door. I’ll answer it, and your task is to tell me that you have found someone out on the street who has been injured somehow and desperately plead for me to help them. And make me believe it.”
    “Oh,” she said, her face lighting up. “Just knock on the door and then launch into all that?”
    “Yep.”
    “Okay.”
    She walked outside and closed the door. I heard her descend the stairs that led to the beach below. About one minute elapsed before she ran up the steps and pounded on the door. As soon as I heard the intensity of the pounding, I knew how it was going to develop.
    “Mom, Mom,” she screamed. “Open up! Open up!”
    I opened up.
    “There’s a man, a really sweet man, outside on Malibu Road. He’s been hit by a car and he needs help. He’s bleeding, Mom. He’s losing so much blood, we need to call the paramedics before it’s too late.” Her eyes filled with desperate tears as she pulled on my arm to come and look. “Please, Mom, come and look for yourself if you don’t believe me. Come, really. This isn’t acting. He’s really there. Maybe you should look at him before you call the doctors so you can tell them what to bring. But hurry, he’s really in pain. I’m not acting now. Come on. Don’t just stand there.”
    It was all I could do not to bolt down the stairs and beeline it for the street. I stood astonished in the doorway.
    Sachi stared at me.
    “What are you doing, Mom?”
    “I’m wondering if there really is a man on the street.”
    “No, Mom,” she laughed, the tears gone now. “You said make you believe it. I did, didn’t I?”
    “Yes, darling,” I said. “You certainly did, especially when you said, ‘This isn’t acting.’ You’re shrewd too.”
    “Is this acting?” she said.
    I put my arm around her and closed the door. “This is more than acting,” I said. “This is believability.”
    She skipped back to the fruitcake. “Then is acting making someone believe what you say, whether it’s true or not?”
    “Yes,” I sighed, thinking of Ronald Reagan.
    “Well,” she said, “maybe I should go into that. I’ve been doing this sort of thing all my life!”
    In five short minutes, the course of her life had been changed and we both knew it. With stunning alacrity, she understood that she had stumbled across a form of expression that was natural for her. The question was, would she have the discipline to realize that acting took more than talent?
    Within two weeks, Sachi had enrolled herself in one of the finest acting schools in Hollywood and found herself working beside already established actors and actresses who had returned to class to brush up on their honesty. She had no problem being known as my daughter, although she never mentioned it unless someone else did. And before I knew it, she was rehearsing, memorizing lines, wading through my