The short story “How the Nurse Feels” by Greg Changnon was first published in 1998. It treats of universal themes such as growing up and how the transition from child to adult is not always an easy or desired process. The adult world can seem alien and impossible to identify with but through the story it is told how a single event can alter the perception of it. It also deals with the boundary between fiction and reality which can be quite blurred especially at this transitioning age. While fiction can help us understanding the world around us, the short story also stresses the importance of life experience in order to fully understand the fiction. These are all things the main character, Tess, has to deal with.

Tess is playing the Nurse in her school’s staging of William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”. She is a fifteen year-old girl who lives in Winetka with her parents. Her father is a priest and her mother owns a fabric store. It is a very isolated community which bores and frustrates Tess: “Neither of them […] know what it’s like to have your whole world contained in the tenblock radius of the church, school, home, and the fabric store. This, I know, is why I act. I have to feel what it’s like in somebody else’s skin.”1 Tess desperately wants to leave Winetka and craves a more exiting existence in New York: “I want to worry about rent and the smelly man who sits on my doorstep. I want to have three lovers at three different theatres, one suicidal and the other two Caribbean”2 This sounds like something out of a book and Tess is definitely quite inspired by fiction, which makes her despite her own reality. Therefore she tries to escape the monotony of her community through acting, but this time finds it hard to identify with her character, the Nurse. It is inexplicable to Tess why the Nurse would care so much about the Capulets, about Juliet, when she is merely a paid employee. The almost parental love and anxious worry, the Nurse feels towards Juliet, is at the beginning of the short story still incomprehensible to Tess, and so she cannot get her motivation right. However, she has no problem understanding the character of Juliet as the two of them have quite many similarities – like Juliet, Tess wants to follow her dreams and yearns for a life far away from her parents and their expectations: “Both my parents think that after college I will come back and take over Mother’s fabric store, but they have no idea. If I could leave now I would do it in a flash […] Instead, I have to sleep in a pink satin bedroom designed by my mother”3. Tess feels trapped in a world controlled by her parents and fears the future they seem to have decided for her. Her description of Juliet applies to herself as well: “Ruled by her parents and led by her heart.”4 To create excitement in her boring world, she undertakes the role of Juliet and assigns some of the other characters to the people around her. To Tess, Tiger De Soto, who plays the Apothecary in the play, represents the character of Romeo – though he is marijuana selling troubled kid, Tess’ idea of him is far more romantic; he is a guy with the guts to stand up to moral codes and break free from his parents and the monotony of daily life. She develops a crush on him while talking to him on the phone about rehearsals being cancelled because of the weather: “There’s four miles of hard packed snow between us but I’ve never felt so close”5. He plays the guitar on his end and Tess listens wondering who else in this snow is sitting on the phone listening to a guy play music6, hoping she is the only one. As the conversation is about to end, she asks him why he is called Tiger to lengthen it, and he tells her it is because he screamed a lot as a baby. The next day, Tess’ father informs her, that Tiger is missing. Tess’ friend, Kimberly, wonders whether he has run away, but Tess knows better: “To run away sound so preteen. He didn’t run away. He got the hell out of here.”7 Once again Tess ascribes a quality to Tiger that might not be true. It is not necessarily how Tiger is, but rather her idea of him. Her father tells her how worried Tiger’s parents are, but this does not bother her the slightest: “Dad, listen, just say a prayer or something”8. Instead she fantasizes about Tiger’s heroic departure imagines that he has run away to a better place where he can be himself, freed of all rules and pressure and does not comprehend the seriousness of the situation. She does not really think about what this have done to his parents, or is unable to enter into their feelings. She ridicules their worry as she cannot understand it – it is completely strange land to her. It is not until she sees the De Sotos that she begins to realize the other side of the story. As she watches Mrs. De Soto wring her hands in front of the drama team, hoping that they know the whereabouts of her son, she cannot help thinking about the Nurse, and begins to transfer the
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relationship between Tiger and his mother to Juliet and the Nurse. She imagines that Juliet, like Tiger, cried a lot as a baby and therefore the Nurse created little nicknames for her. She also transfers physical traits as she makes the Nurse twitch her hands nervously in the same manner as Mrs. De Soto does it. Another aspect of the play has opened up to her, and as she looks at Mrs. De Soto standing at the exact spot, where the Nurse finds the dead Juliet in the play, she tells herself to remember this exact moment; she can sense, that it is important, that this is something she can use when acting, but is not yet sure why. This scene is also an omen of what is about to happen: “We’re all thinking about destroyed parents instead of star-crossed lovers.”9 The day after the opening of the play, the drama teacher, Mr. Swick, calls Tess into his office. Thinking he is unhappy with her performance last night, Tess begins to explain how she has finally realized the true nature of the Nurse, which is greatly inspired by Mrs. De Soto: “[The Nurse] does love Juliet just like she’s her mother … she gets this habit of shaking her hands all the time. She holds them but they twitch. She may act zany the whole play, but that’s a front. It’s a mask. That sense of humor is covering up all her fear.”10 However, this is not the reason Mr. Swick wanted to speak with her: “Tiger De Soto’s been found.”11 With Tiger De Soto’s death, he no longer represents Romeo, but instead takes on the role of the dead Juliet. Tess’s childlike dream is now definitively shattered and replaced by a much gloomier world view, which gives the play a whole new meaning: The destroyed parents. She can finally identify with and feel compassionate towards the parents who she earlier despised. Acting has indeed given Tess a glimpse into another world, but not quite the way she had in mind. Tiger’s death reveals to her a more adult world of never-ending anxiety and worry, which is best described by Mr. Swick rearranging the pictures in his office: “Mr. Swick moves to another picture, pushing one corner up out of balance. All the pictures are crooked. Everything was straight once. Now he’s gone and straightened them all crooked.” Adult life is not as simple as the life Tess knew, a truth she is beginning to realize. With this transition from child to adult, everything will change for her, now that she can finally identify with the Nurse: “I think, right now, I am the Nurse.”12

Tess’ gradually understanding of the character of the Nurse is arranged in parallel with her understanding of adult life. In the beginning, Tess thinks solely about bright hopes for the future and escaping reality and responsibilities, but throughout the story she matures with the tragic events. She is confronted with the horrible fear of losing someone you love, and this proves to be the key to understanding both the Nurse and most parents, whose problems and worries at first seemed alien to her. While her dreams back then were foremost based on fiction, they have now been replaced by a more realistic and adult approach to life. Tess has taken a step towards adult life and the understanding of what that really involves, and instead of living through fiction, she now interprets it through her own experiences. At the same time, the short story puts Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” into perspective. The focus is always on the star-crossed lovers, but Greg Changnon shows us another aspect of the classical tragedy. Tess says in the beginning: “Juliet is easy.”13 This can of course mean ‘playing Juliet’ is easy, but can also be interpreted as ‘being Juliet’ is easy - she is young and in love without a care in the world. A heavier character, however, is the Nurse. She has grown up to realize a world not as perfect and ideal as she probably imagined back when she was young and careless. She has already lost one child and is terrified to lose Juliet, who is the closest thing to a daughter, she now has. The story of the Nurse is one of grief, fear and worry, of destroyed parents, which is a subject Greg Changnon is eager to bring to light. The naïve carelessness and idealism of the young is much written about and he attempts to recognize the significance of the more realistic and at times grave and gloomy world of the adult.