Page 62 of The Dramatic Life of Jonah Penrose
“Shit. Okay. What can I do to help?”
Jonah paused as he found Penny’s name. “I don’t think I can go on tonight.” A lump worked its way to his throat as tears brimmed at the edges of his eyes. “I need to get to her.”
“Make the calls you need to make. I’ll sort everything else out. Go to your dressing room.” Dexter spoke with such confidence Jonah hung onto his every word and did exactly as he said. His dressing room wrappedhim in a warm hug and ushered him into his seat, where he finally called Penny and prayed she would answer.
“Jonah?”
“Aunt Penny,” he said, trying hard not to let his trembling voice break out into cries. “Can you get to mum?”
“Of course I can. What’s wrong?”
“She... she was slurring, she’s been drinking,” he said quickly. “She said something just now that’s terrified me, and I don’t want anything to happen to her.”
“Was it about walking into the sea?”
“Yes, how did you—”
“Jonah?” The voice changed, and this time it was Sally on the other end as Jonah heard rustling in the background. “Penny’s getting her coat on and will head over there now.”
“Has she said something like this before?”
Sally didn’t answer for several seconds before finally letting out a regretful sigh. “We decided not to tell you. We didn’t want to worry you.”
“Tell me what?”
“Two days ago, she called Pen and said she was going to walk out into the sea and not come back. We drove over there and she wasn’t in the house and we went down to the beach and there she was, in the sea. We took her to hospital. Penny stayed there with her, but they came home this morning.”
“You should have told me.” He was crying freely now, unsure of how else to convey the excruciating pain in his chest. “I’m coming home. I’ll get a train tonight and—”
“Jonah, we’ll look after her.”
“No, I need to be there. Penny’s on her way to her now? Is she? I need to call Mum again.”
“She just left.”
“Okay, thanks, Sally, thank you.”
He couldn’t stop crying, his eyesight blurring as more tears filled his eyes. New hands found his, Bastien’s, and took the phone from his grip.He turned Jonah to look at him before pulling him into a hug. Jonah tried to talk, but words were lost. He needed to call her, he needed to know she was okay.
“I need to—”
“Who do you need to call?” Bastien asked, picking up Jonah’s phone. “Let me help.”
“Mum.”
“Okay, I’ll call her.” Jonah would have protested, would have told Bastien he didn’t need to get involved if he thought he could pull himself together. But he didn’t want her to hear him like this. He couldn’t allow himself to show a weakness in front of her; she needed him to be strong, to be there for her, but his own devastation stood in the way. So Bastien called his mum. He paced in the dressing room, dressed as Patroclus, a ridiculous image of a Greek man on a mobile phone, and he talked to her. Jonah listened as he rambled about nothing and everything all at once. He told her about his wedding plans, about how he was moving to New York, and about the white fluffy dog he saw on the way to the theatre that afternoon. Jonah could hear his mum’s voice whenever Bastien stepped close to him, and the tears she shed earlier were long gone; she spoke to him with warmth, his voice clearly a comfort to her as she let out a laugh, and the tension in Jonah’s shoulders dissipated.
“Jonah?” Bastien said, snapping him out of staring at his red, blotchy face in the mirror. “It’s your aunt, she’s with your mum and wants to talk to you.” He handed the phone to him, and he put it up to his ear, body numb.
“Jonah? I’m here, okay, she’s fine. Just... had one too many glasses of wine. I’ve told her to stop drinking with the medication she’s taking, but... well, she hasn’t.” She spoke with a high-pitched voice, as if the higher her tone the better it would be for his mum. “I’m going to bring her home with me. I’ll look after her, okay? I’ll call you in the morning. Please, don’t worry. She’s fine.”
“Okay,” he said, his voice still shaking as fat tears rolled down his cheeks. “Tell her I love her.”
“I will.”
As he hung up the phone, Bastien knelt before him and rested his hand on Jonah’s knee. “Everything’s okay,” he said. “Omari’s going to call you an Uber and you’re going to go home.”
“No. I need to get ready for the show.”
