Matureauditions [DIRECT]

That was her. She walked into the cavernous, dark auditorium, the single stage light a blazing sun. The judging table was a shadowy outline in the front row.

Her phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number: “Welcome to the company, Ms. Vance. Amanda is yours. Rehearsals start Tuesday at 7. Don’t be late.”

Yet here she was, clutching a worn copy of the play, her knuckles white. The hallway was lined with them: the mature auditioners. A silver-haired man in a cardigan ran lines under his breath, his fingers trembling slightly. A woman with a chic grey bob and a velvet scarf sat perfectly still, her eyes closed, lips moving silently. Another woman, larger and louder, was recounting her triumph as Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? ten years ago, her voice a little too bright. matureauditions

Eleanor began.

Her voice, at first a dry rustle, gained weight. She wasn’t reciting; she was unspooling a lifetime of cautionary tales. She moved with a stiff, tragic elegance, her hands fluttering to an imaginary hairpin, her eyes scanning the darkness for a gentleman caller who would never come. She wasn’t Eleanor, the retired widow. She was Amanda, clinging to her blue mountain. She was every woman who had been told her time was up and had refused to believe it. That was her

She reached the end of the monologue, her voice dropping to a whisper: “I’ve had to put up a pretty fierce battle, but I’ve won.” Then silence.

She set the journal on the kitchen table, next to Harold’s photograph. “Well,” she said to his smiling face. “Looks like I’m back.” Her phone buzzed

“I know so well what becomes of unmarried women who aren’t prepared to occupy a position…”

“Mature,” she’d muttered to herself, loading cans of cat food into her cart. “A polite word for ‘ancient.’”