Meaghan Epifane stormed out of the school after overhearing her play director disparaging her and her best friend, Jillean Reilly. She opened the heavy wooden doors to the Dunne Auditorium of St. John the Baptist High School. She walked through the rear lobby, passing the mahogany Wall of Fame and out gray metal doors back into the world. She and Jillean, looked around for the dark blue Chevy Silverado. They threw the rear passenger door open on the trucks four door cabin. “I’m quitting the play,” Meaghan Epifane told her father hysterically. She and Jillean climbed into the back seat of Joe Epifane’s truck.
“What??” Joe asked as he drove out of the labyrinth-like high school parking lot and turned onto Montauk Highway in West Islip. The big boned 51-year-old strained his ears, trying to discern words from sobs as the girls explained what happened. “So you quit. . . what are you gonna do?”
After taking her friend home, Meaghan burst into her house in Lindenhurst. Her brownish hair was a mess and her pale blue eyes were wet. Tears streamed down her face as she shouted “I am quitting the play. Jeanine’s a bitch!” She stormed to her bedroom to call her best friend. “Why is she quitting, Joe?” her mother asked. Carolyn Epifane stared at her husband. Somewhere between annoyed and concerned, she waited for an answer. This wasn’t the first time the mother of three had dealt with this director upsetting her middle child. Joe took a deep breath and exhaled sharply, “I. . . I really don’t know.” He shook his head the way he always does when things don’t make sense to him and tried to recall the conversation from the ride home. He walked to the refrigerator and pulled out the Green Tea as if he was going to try and drown his confusion. “She got in the car with Jillean, they were crying, something about Jeanine calling Jillean fat and saying Meaghan was rude.” Katie, the oldest of the Epifane sisters, got up from the mahogany colored table and went to her sister. “What happened?” “Katie just go away. I don’t wanna talk about it,” said Meaghan, now more hysterical than when she got in the truck. “Just tell me what she did.”
Carolyn could hear Meaghan sobbing out a story to Katie up the hall. Carolyn’s youngest daughter, Michaela was sitting at the family computer in her pajamas. She had her right foot on the seat of her wooden chair, her left hand in her mouth – she was biting a cuticle. Her right hand was alternating between the mouse and keyboard as she instant messaged her friends.
Carolyn got up to listen to Meaghan’s story. Michaela jumped up from her chair and ran past her mother to the bedroom. The hallway was lined with a green carpet, wood panels and, despite its small size opened to six rooms: The laundry room, linen closet, three bedrooms and a master bathroom.
“Jeanine was talking to some kid about Jillean and made a comment that ‘not all of the cast members fit into their costume’,” Meaghan explained. “Jillean ran out of the auditorium because she heard her. I ran after her, and after practice Jeanine was talking to a different group of students and we heard her say that this was our second incident. She called me rude!” “What does she mean your second incident,” Carolyn asked. “I dunno, I think maybe she knows that Jillean and I were the ones that yelled b**** into the auditorium one time after she spent an entire practice focusing on one small group of singers and ignored the rest of the cast.” Meaghan began crying again and Katie handed her a tissue. “I can’t do it anymore. I can’t.”
Katie sat on the bed next to her sister. “It’s okay Meaghan. Don’t worry, everything will be fine.” Katie’s hair was dark brown and each of her curls was like a loose spring. Her smooth, blemish-free face was lined with concern as she looked to her mother for an answer to her little sister’s problem. Carolyn turned to her husband and said “I want a meeting with this director. It’s a high school play, Meaghan shouldn’t be crying like this.” Meaghan looked desperately at her mother, who was making no effort to speak to Joe privately. Carolyn, catching Meaghan’s eye, said “I’m sorry Meaghan, I know you don’t want to, but we have to talk to her. We have to find out what this woman’s problem is because you need to be involved in activities if you want to get into a good school. I’m not gonna make you go back until we know what exactly her problem is, but I think you have to go back.” Meaghan nodded solemnly at her mom, “I was dreading the idea of having to sit down to talk about it again,” Meaghan said.
But Carolyn and Meaghan never met with Jeanine. A couple of days later Meaghan decided that it wasn’t worth the hassle. “Knowing Jeanine’s problem doesn’t really do anything. The play is the only thing I’m involved in. Even though I really can’t stand Jeanine the play is great. I have fun with my friends and I love singing and dancing.” At St. John’s, casting for the play begins in November and rehearsals begin in mid-December. As a result, Meaghan dedicates the majority of her school year to singing her heart out, and dancing and acting.
“Meaghan is teeming with talent,” said her sister Katie, “It’s funny though, she doesn’t like to sing at family gatherings. Everything is a joke when it comes to dancing at parties, and she and my Nannie fight whenever Nannie asks her to sing for family or friends.” Meaghan’s maternal grandmother, Joan Gargiulo, is seventy-something but looks like she stopped aging at 50. She stands about five feet tall and makes no effort to hide the emotions in her youthfully endowed face. Joan, whose friends and family call her Joanie, lives in the upper level of the family’s mother-daughter house with Meaghan’s grandfather, Andrew. “It makes me feel so happy when I hear her sing. Her voice is beautiful and she won’t share it with anybody.” Joanie laughed and smiled as she recalled several occasions when she had asked her granddaughter to put on a mini-performance for a house guest. “She gets upset and she goes into her room,” Joanie said with a smile.
Meaghan is comfortable on stage. But socially she Meaghan becomes anxious if she is outside of her comfort zone. “Meaghan likes to sit home and watch old movies all day,” said 12-year-old Michaela. If you held Katie’s twelve-year-old picture up next to Michaela’s, you would never know the difference. Michaela is five foot tall and has a metal-mouthed attitude. She shares a room with Meaghan. “She sits in bed with the clicker and watches black and white DVDs all day,” Michaela said, “I can never watch T.V. In my own room and whenever she has friends over I am not even allowed in there. She kicks me off the computer all the time too. She puts on songs from old movies and sings along.”
Every other Sunday, Meaghan and Katie clean their grandparents’ house. They put on old Broadway show tunes and sing along. “Meaghan always sings loud and proud, she needs to drown me out as I am less than gifted when it comes to singing,” Katie said. Meaghan also takes voice lessons from a woman she calls Toni. “Toni will spend a month or two training Meaghan on a song so that she can expand her range of pitch, volume and style,” Carolyn said with a smile. “I remember when Meaghan first started, Toni heard Meaghan’s voice and instantly assigned her The Wizard and I from the play Wicked. It sends chills up my spine whenever she finishes the song.”
Often Meaghan’s performance is usually accompanied by her competitive sister Michaela. They will sing along with the soundtrack recording by Idina Menzel. While Meaghan sings she looks right through whomever she is singing for. She has a way of making the audience feel like she is on a stage and can’t see them at all. She moves around, usually circling her starting position, and allows the song’s emotions to compel her to look down at her feet in sorrow or caress her heart with happiness. She wraps up the song with both of her hands in the air “The wizard and I. . .” her voice ringing out in a vibrato that sends the sensation of an ice cube sliding up the backs of her audience. Hello Dolly is also a favorite for Meaghan. “Hello. . . Dolly, Oh Hello. . . Dolly” she sings as she can-cans in front of the computer, the light from the monitor silhouetting her.
“Its all practice for her stage presence,” her father said. This year Meaghan is playing an angel, a chorus position in the The Children of Eden, this year’s school play at St. John’s. “Meaghan is not outgoing. You need to walk up to these directors and producers and let them know who your are,” said Joanie. Although Meaghan loves singing and acting, she is just as happy being in the background. Her family constantly reminds her that she would be wonderful in a spotlight solo, though in the ensemble she is comfortable blending in with people who love her. “I like being with my friends, I would love being a lead but as long as I get to sing and dance with my friends and it helps me with college, I’m fine,” said Meaghan.
On the play’s opening night Meaghan was more than fine. In her golden sequined, curly locked, angelic costume, Meaghan beamed from the top of Noah’s Ark high above the stage. She sang and danced, chuckling at the audience as she did, accenting each scene with her own touch of talent. Apparently, being in the background is all the stardom come people need.