Behind the Scenes of AWAKENING MACBETH

AWAKENING MACBETH: Part 1

Begin Part 1:

"Right," Brodie Macbeth said out loud to her empty office, trying to ignore a tension headache.

She had to break up with Stanton tonight. He was on sabbatical from the university and leaving soon for California to film a documentary on presidential politics. If she didn't do it at dinner she'd have to wait weeks for another chance. And this lingering feeling of dead weight would surely crush her first.

Brodie rubbed her forehead and stared at the cheatsheet she'd written for the occasion. Stanton was an intelligent, mature man. He'd appreciate her intelligent, mature approach.

Three years has been enough time to establish incompatibility.

It's time to take stock of our individual life goals.

This is an opportunity for our relationship to move to a more professional level.

"Dear Lord," Brodie murmured, her heart sinking into her toes. She was a history professor and a best selling author and she'd never read such drivel in all her life.

She moodily tapped the Johnny Cash bobble figure on her desk, making it nod jauntily at the framed photos lined up beside it. Her dog Mouse in mid-Frisbee catch. Brodie and her father when she'd graduated from the University of Virginia. Brodie and her father when she'd received her Ph.D. from Georgetown University. Brodie and her best friend Diana Johnson fourteen years ago on the night the two seniors led the University of Virginia women's basketball team to a wild screaming 82-80 victory over Duke for the southern division title.

The two women mugging for the camera were both athletic, but the resemblance ended there. Diana looked like an Egyptian princess with her slender build, dark skin, black eyes, and high cheekbones. In contrast, Brodie's muscular frame, pink and white complexion, blonde ponytail, and gray eyes pointed to ancestors who wore kilts and tossed cabers. The outdated basketball uniforms made both look taller than their respective 5'10" heights.

Johnny's head started running out of bob. The last photo was of Brodie and Stanton at the university provost's fund raiser last year. Stanton was ascetically slim and darkly Irish in an Armani tuxedo. With her long blonde hair pulled into a severe bun, Brodie had on a black dress and flat shoes in an unsuccessful attempt to look narrower and shorter. She and Stanton were standing side by side. But not touching.

Our whole stupid relationship in one photo. Brodie flipped the picture face down and threw herself back in her desk chair. Her head pounded.

The problem was that she knew just how the evening would go. She'd begin with a carefully phrased opener. Stanton would pretend not to understand. Brodie would clarify that they really had no relationship besides being each other's trophy date for every university event. Stanton would bristle and get forceful, causing Brodie to freeze up, pull back, turn into a doormat–anything to avoid an emotional confrontation. Stanton would spend the rest of the evening gassing on happily about how they were the power couple of the College of Arts and Sciences while Brodie made bread pills.

She slid a Lee Roy Parnell CD into her computer drive, then put her feet up on the desk and stared out the window, mentally berating herself for being such a coward. It was late February, a few weeks into the spring semester, and the University of Virginia campus was glossed with a rare snowfall. Students were using cafeteria trays to surf across The Lawn, the broad expanse of grass bordered by the Pavilions housing designed by Thomas Jefferson. As Lee Roy started singing that he was country down to his soul, Brodie wished she was outside, too. In jeans and having fun. Instead she was in her stuffy office in Randall Hall wearing black pants and a beige twinset. And what could be more fun than trying to figure out how to extricate herself from a non-relationship?