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At the time, Mom told me an old friend of hers from NYU was also going to be in a play—a play premiering on Broadway.
“Thanks, Pearl,” I say.
“Please take care of yourself,” she says. “I know your mom would want you to.”
After hanging up, I dash back to the library and return to the desk where I left my things. I pull out a pen and notebook from my bag and search for every play and musical that premiered on Broadway in 1996—my freshman year in high school—the year Mom told me her friend was going to be on Broadway.
Thirty-eight productions come up that premiered in 1996. I go through each one alphabetically, starting withA Delicate Balance, which premiered on April 21, 1996, researching every cast member, including understudies, to see if any of them were graduates of the Tisch School of Arts.
When I reach the halfway mark on the list,Jack: A Night on the Town with John Barrymore, which premiered on April 24, 1996, I have a tally of thirteen actresses who made their Broadway debuts in plays premiering that year who also went to Tisch.
I keep going. By the time I reach the last play on the list,The Three Sisters, which premiered on November 7, 1996, I have twenty-seven women’s names written down—but none of their names are Liz or Polly, like Pearl mentioned.
I need to get ahold of the 1978 Tisch yearbook—the year Mom would have graduated had she stayed at Tisch, to see if any of the twenty-seven actresses on my list graduated that year.
I stand up from the desk and approach a librarian who tells me that I need to put in a special request from archives if I want to get a hard copy of the yearbook but provides me with a link to view it online in the interim. I thank her, return to my desk, and access the 1978 yearbook through an archive collection online.
As I go through each of the graduates’ yearbook pages, I see pictures of performances they were in and quotes they posted about their future, and I think about Mom, how she could have been one of them, wondering what happened to her that made her change the course of her life.
I click through yearbook page after yearbook page, focusing on the women—Trisha Fields, Belinda Henry, Meghan O’Hare—none of them are on my list of actresses who either appeared or understudied in performances in plays and musicals that premiered on Broadway in 1996.
The anxiety in my body starts rising again because there aren’t many pages left in this yearbook. But when I turn the following page, I see Mom’s face smiling at me! She’s in the background of one of the pictures on Laura Poitier’s yearbook page.
I immediately cross-reference Laura Poitier with my list of actresses and spot her name. She was an understudy for the role of Joanne Jefferson inRent, which premiered on Broadway on April 29, 1996.
I zoom further into the picture where Mom is standing in the background and see a man beside her with his armslung over her shoulder. It’s the man that picked Mom up from our house—the one she lied about, who she said was her second cousin. The one that drove a VW with a surfboard on top. The one who she went out with and then returned home alone crying. The one that sounded a lot like the guy Margot Cadell was in a relationship with, according to her neighbors. Whoishe?
I need to find Laura Poitier. Maybe she’ll know who this guy is. And maybe she’ll have answers for me about what happened to Mom while they were in school together.
I Google her name. She immediately comes up on the NYU university faculty page:
Laura Poitier, Chair of the Tisch School of Arts.
“University ID,” a tall, stern-faced guard tells me.
“I’m a psychologist,” I say. “Laura Poitier’s office called me for a student emergency.”
He looks at me dubiously. I pull out my driver’s license, handing it to him. “Look me up. Dr. Beatrice Bennett,” I say confidently.
He uses the walkie-talkie from his pocket to contact someone. I hear a woman on the other end talking to him, sounding confused, but she tells him to send me up anyway. He takes my information, including my psychology license number, and lets me through.
I take an elevator to the third floor and follow the signs leading me to Laura Poitier’s office. An assistant sporting a ballerina-high bun and thick black-framed glasses greets me.
“Are you the psychologist?” she says, looking up from her computer screen.
“Yes,” I say.
“What’s going on?” she asks.
“I’m hoping to speak with Laura,” I say. “She was a classmate of my late mother.”
She narrows her eyes. “I thought this was about a student emergency.”
“It’s a personal one,” I say. “The guard was confused.”
“Oh. Well, Laura is tied up in rehearsals all day for our fall musical production. Her office hours are tomorrow between one and twoPM.”
She’s running out of time.
