‘You loved her,’ David said.
‘Yes. I loved her.’
‘And your father?’ David prodded.
‘You mean, did I love him? Yes, I loved him.’ He pulled a page from his pad. ‘Here. Just take a quick look at this scene between Zeruiah and Asahel.’
‘Asahel—Zeruiah’s youngest son?’ David queried.
‘Right.’
David read, picking up one of Zeruiah’s lines: ‘Samuel was one of those strange babies born after his mother’s courses had long ceased, and she was so grateful that she dedicated him to the Lord. I suppose she had to do what she promised, but I know I’d never take one of my little ones, barely able to piss against the wall, and send him to a crotchety old priest to be trained as a prophet.’ He looked up. ‘Piss against the wall—where’d you get that?’
Nik grinned. ‘Right out of the King James Bible. I like it. How you tell the men from the boys. Or, rather, the babes from the boys.’
‘David’s not in the scene?’ David Wheaton asked.
‘Don’t worry, Dave, there’ll be plenty for you, and more interesting than all the fighting-with-the-Philistines stuff.’
David went out to the kitchen to get more milk, and Emma picked up Nik’s pages, reading silently a scene between Zeruiah and Asahel, followed by a scene between Zeruiah and Michal. There was too much talk. The play bogged down. Instead of showing Michal trying to protect David from her father, King Saul, by lowering David from a window and arranging the covers in the bed so they looked like a sleeping form, Zeruiah and Michal talked about it.
‘Nik, I’m sorry, this scene won’t play well.’
His dark eyes seemed to spark. ‘What?’
‘It won’t play well. You usually show what’s happening, and here you’re telling. I know this is a rough draft, but what I think you’re doing here is telling yourself the scene you’re going to write.’ Surely she should have known better than to criticize that bluntly.
His voice was cold. ‘Any decent players could make it work.’
‘But, Nik—’
‘There is a certain amount of necessary exposition.’
‘But, Nik, it isn’t interesting.’
‘What do you suggest that I do?’
‘What I said—show the scene where Michal helps David escape. It’s the one place we really see her love for David.’
‘If I show everything, the play will last twelve hours. I have to get over a lot of historical information as quickly as possible.’
‘It’s too much the butler and the maid.’
He had flung the pages down on the table, banged them with his fist, shouted at her. ‘You don’t understand my play, what I’m trying to do.’
‘Nik, stop, please—’ She looked up as a burst of giggles came from the kitchen.
He had talked about his explosive temper, but this was the first time she had witnessed it. She felt cold in the pit of her stomach.
David returned, a smudge of lipstick on his nose, a bottle of milk in his hand, asking, ‘What’s going on?’
Nik stood up. He was shaking. ‘I’ve just been unforgivably rude to your daughter. I’m sorry.’ His voice was stiff. Apology did not come easily.
Emma said, ‘Okay.’ It wasn’t okay, but there was nothing else to say.
With a great effort Nik sat down and controlled his voice. ‘I don’t want to make Zeruiah farcical, but you’re right, Em.’ He reached across the table and gently touched her fingers. ‘These scenes between Zeruiah and Asahel, and Zeruiah and Michal, are dull, and I don’t know what to do about them.’
‘Do you need to use all of them?’ Emma asked carefully. ‘I know you need to spread them all out, to see the information and assess it, and when you get it all down on the page, then you can tell what you need for yourself and what you need to tell the audience.’
‘Okay. Good.’ Nik’s voice was so reasonable it was almost amusing. But not quite. She was still cold with shock from his outburst, which had been at least partly caused by her tactlessness.
David asked, ‘So what’s this dull but necessary information?’
‘History. And I’m coming to battles which you can’t put on stage.’ Nik sighed. ‘And I really ought to include how Saul meets Samuel when he goes looking for a seer.’
David asked, ‘What’s the difference between a seer and a prophet?’
Nik shrugged and looked at Emma, who said, ‘Not much. There were prophets who went around in bands, having ecstasies. They got so excited they almost jumped out of their bodies. Ex-stasis: out of body.’
‘My darling,’ her father asked, ‘how do you happen to know so much?’
‘Grandpa Bowman and Bahama, of course.’
‘And you remember,’ her father said proudly, ‘like a good actress. Does that bother you, Nik? That Emma knows so much about your subject?’
‘You mean, am I jealous? I don’t know. Probably. On the other hand, it’s extremely helpful. Ecstasies and visions,’ he mused, doodling circles on his pad. ‘I can hear Zeruiah saying, “Samuel couldn’t possibly move fast enough to have an ecstasy, but he claimed to talk personally with God.”’
‘You’d have to get a good character actress to carry Zeruiah,’ David suggested.
‘Dave, I thought Emma made it clear—this is embryonic. I’m just trying to work it out.’
‘Sorry, Nik. I do tend to jump the gun, and it always gets me in trouble. And with Zeruiah you’re working out your own feelings about your mother, aren’t you?’
Nik nodded.
‘Any particular problem today that’s made you so prickly?’ David raised his eyebrows, which were still dark despite his whitening hair, and looked at Nik with concern.
Nik laughed. ‘Ah, Dave, you’re perceptive. Yes. It’s my mother’s birthday. It would have been her sixtieth.’
Emma reached toward him, barely touching his fingers. ‘Nik, I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be, Em. I’m the one who’s sorry. And yes, I’m working out my own stuff. My mother had that touch of second sight I’m giving Zeruiah. When she said goodbye to me when she and my father went on that last trip, she wept and told me they’d never see me again. My father was furious, and I didn’t blame him. We both told her not to be idiotic, always looking for disaster. But she was right.’
‘And you’re feeling guilty?’ David asked.
‘Of course.’
‘Wipe it out. False guilt, Nik, false. She should not have burdened you with her foresight, if indeed that is what it was. Leave it alone. Let her rest in peace.’
Nik rubbed his face, but when he took his hands down he was calm. ‘Thanks, Dave. You’re kind.’
‘Not kind,’ David Wheaton said. ‘Truthful, I hope.’
‘Yes. That you are. And your daughter is wise and wonderful, like David’s Abigail, who won’t come in until well into the second act.’
‘No, Nik.’ Emma shook her head. ‘I’m neither wise nor wonderful.’ She thought ruefully,—Please love me for what I am, Nik, not what you’d like me to be.
‘Let me have my illusions.’ Nik’s smile was sweet, and in total contrast to his outburst. ‘Now here’s a scene about some crazy prophets you might like.’
‘Those crazy prophets,’ Emma suggested, ‘were like whirling dervishes?’
‘Yeah, pretty much,’ Nik agreed.
‘Have you ever done it? Whirled?’
He looked at her questioningly.
‘When I was in boarding school, in the spring, when the trees were budding and we all had spring fever, we used to whirl, out on the grass of the hockey field. We’d whirl and twirl, round and round, till the sky and grass seemed to meet, and suddenly we were lying on the grass with the sky whirling around us. You never—?’
‘I grew up in Brooklyn,’ Nik said.
‘I grew up in Manhattan. But there are hills in Central Park, and when I was a kid Adair showed me how to roll down them, rolling over and over, and at the bottom he’d pick me up and hold
me until I wasn’t dizzy, and we laughed, and then we’d do it again …’
She stopped as Nik stood up and started twirling himself around.
‘No, no, not here,’ David warned. ‘Go in the living room.’
‘You have to twirl faster and faster,’ Emma said, ‘and you need to be where there’s space and if you fall you’ll fall on the rug and you won’t hit your head on something on the way down.’
Nik went to the living room, where there was a large open expanse on the great Chinese rug.
Nik said, ‘I’d like to know what Saul felt like. I feel close to Saul, with his horrible moods.’ He began to twirl again.
‘Good. Faster, Nik, faster.’ Emma, too, began to twirl. ‘Just keep turning around,’ she ordered. ‘Keep your left heel on the floor. Pivot. Keep going. Terrific! Faster!’
The two of them twirled until Nik exclaimed, ‘Holy moly! The floor’s coming up to meet me!’
Emma fell to the rug beside him. ‘I haven’t done this in years. I’d forgotten how exciting it is.’
Nik reached for her. ‘Ex-stasis. Truly wonderful. But now I’m back in my body.’ His lips touched hers. Their mouths opened.
Finally Emma pulled away. ‘Papa and Sophie are in the next room …’
Nik sat up. ‘I’m still dizzy.’
Emma jumped to her feet, held out her hands to Nik, and helped him up.
‘Saul,’ he said. ‘That’s a new insight for me about Saul. Maybe about myself, too. Emma, I frightened you, didn’t I?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m sorry. I’ll try not to lose control again. But I do understand Saul, with his ecstasies turning into black depressions, and his violent jealousy over David.’
The dining room was empty. David Wheaton and Sophie were either in the kitchen or had gone to check on Louis. Nik returned to his place at the table and flipped the pages of the Bible. ‘Em, bear with me through this rough drafting. I need to move out of comedy, to do something completely new. And even with my comedies I do draft after draft, hacking away at my material until I find out what works and what doesn’t. I know a lot of this is even worse than rough, but it’s important for me to try to work through it to make it really real.’
What is real? They looked for their own reality in doing some of the classic New York excursions. They frequently walked from the theater on Forty-fourth Street to Emma’s apartment on Fifty-fifth. She loved her apartment, an unusually large studio room, with a reasonable kitchen and a large dressing room and bath. Etienne had built bookshelves for her on one wall and made a special corner table for her record player. Chantal had given her a silk screen of a Picasso Harlequin for the wall, and Sophie had produced a cover for her bed, and a pile of colorful cushions. On the bed table were her favorite books, Bahama’s Bible and Prayer Book, Stanislavsky’s An Actor Prepares and My Life in Art, Arthur Hopkins’s To a Lonely Boy, Chekhov’s letters to his wife. She had a small sofa, a drop-leaf table, and a couple of comfortable chairs. It was a warm, spacious room. She loved her own place.
‘But, darling,’ Sophie protested, ‘you don’t need to move away! Louis will be devastated! Isn’t your room big enough?’
‘It’s fine, Sophie, but I’m out of college now and I need to be on my own.’
‘It’s not that you don’t feel welcome—’ Sophie’s voice was anxious.
‘No, Sophie, of course not! And I’ll come see you and Papa lots …’
And that she had done, always. But moving into her own apartment was a necessary rite of passage.
Adair agreed. ‘No matter how grownup you are, you’re still a little girl to Sophie, if not to your father.’
Emma had saved money. She could afford her studio—barely, but she could afford it. It was in easy walking distance of most theaters, and not too long a walk to David and Sophie’s on Riverside Drive. Emma took Nik down to the Village to Chantal’s frequently enough so that he was able to make friends with Chantal and Everard, with Jarvis. She and Nik took Louis to the movies, Inez to Rumpelmayer’s for hot cocoa and cakes. ‘I love your family,’ Nik said. ‘I’m an only child. You don’t know how lucky you are.’
‘Isn’t Chantal beautiful?’
‘She’s so beautiful she terrifies me. I’m happier with your kind of beauty, subtle and surprising.’
They rode the Staten Island ferry. They took the Circle Line boat around Manhattan, becoming friendly with the young unemployed actor who was giving the spiel, and who was in awe when he found out who they were.
‘But I saw your show!’ he cried to Nik. ‘It’s amazing.’ He turned to Emma. I don’t think I’d have recognized you—’ He broke off.
‘It’s okay,’ Emma reassured him. ‘As long as you recognize me onstage, that’s enough.’
They rode in the front cars of subway trains, looking for abandoned subway stations, and spotting several. They spent hours in the Egyptian section of the Metropolitan Museum. And wherever they went, they talked about King David and his women.
‘There are some amazing parallels,’ Emma said, ‘between Papa’s wives and children and King David’s.’
‘But many more discrepancies,’ Nik pointed out. ‘What strikes me is that both Davids are men who love, and men who love are rare.’ Nik was walking Emma to her father’s apartment. Sophie had promised them fresh asparagus, though she would not tell them where she had found them out of season. He reached for her hand. ‘It sounds terrible for me to say that my parents’ death has freed me.’
‘It isn’t terrible,’ Emma said, ‘because it doesn’t mean that you didn’t love them.’
Nik groaned, ran his fingers through his tangled hair. No matter how cold it was, he never wore a hat. ‘I loved them and I hated them and I loved them.’
‘You were bound by them long after it was natural.’
Nik put her hand into the pocket of his new overcoat. ‘You were unbound by your parents, long before it was natural. What a pair we are.’
‘I think we’re wonderful.’ Emma’s fingers tightened on Nik’s, secure in the tweed pocket.
‘Emma, do you realize that we couldn’t be together the way we are if my parents were still alive? I’m nearly thirty. I’ve fallen in love before.’
They stopped for a red light, watching some sailors running across the street, dodging traffic, making it safely to the other side. Of course Nik had fallen in love before. It wouldn’t be natural if he hadn’t. It still made her feel cold. He was a normal man. She was a woman who had never had the dates that the ordinary American girl has. Without Adair, her social life would have been nonexistent. But on Parents’ Day at college, when David was usually not free to come to her, Adair would appear, and would be surrounded by a flock of her friends, chattering like birds. ‘He’s your brother, Em? Wow!’ He went out with Emma and two of her friends and their dates, and by the end of the evening their table was filled with other college students, male and female, and Emma suddenly found herself invited to a Dartmouth weekend. That had led to weekends at other colleges. On the whole, she did what she felt was moderately well, though she had not fallen in love, as had so many of her classmates.
‘I don’t have time to fall in love. I’m playing my second Oedipus, this one in Cocteau’s The Infernal Machine.’
‘Emma’—Nik’s voice was urgent—‘I know it could easily seem as though I’m pursuing you to get in with your father, but that’s only the smallest part of it. It’s you I’m after, you, Emma. And I’m free to pursue you. See, how my parents got rid of my girls was by drowning them with approval, by shoving them down my throat. The girls couldn’t take it, and neither could I. God, Emma, is it too late for me to be my own Nik, not my parents’?’
‘It’s not too late,’ she promised.
‘I still sometimes think of the phone as a little black monster, compelling me to call, punishing me if I didn’t.’
‘How were you punished?’ she asked gently.
‘With love. They were so fearful. They needed to k
now I was safe. My father’s godless world promised no security. My mother’s God-filled world was too often filled with dies irae. If anything happened to me, it would be to punish her for marrying out of her faith. The phone was a line of safety for them.’
Bahama had taught Emma that the phone was for calling when you were going to be late. It was Bahama’s prime rule: ‘Go where you want to go after school, but let me know if you’re going to be late.’ There was no threat in it, no punishment. If Emma called to say that she was having dinner at the apartment of one of her classmates, that was fine. Bahama trusted her. But Emma would not be able to make to Nik the same request Bahama—and then Sophie—had made to her.
‘Your father,’ Nik asked, ‘did he care where you were?’
‘Bahama and Sophie did, and Papa knew that.’
‘Why did you stay with him instead of with your mother?’
‘My mother didn’t want me. She was busy with her life in Hollywood.’
‘Did she remarry?’
‘Once. It was a failure. She wasn’t the family type.’
‘Do you go visit her?’
‘I did, when I was a kid. Once. Some things—it’s better to let go.’
‘How old were you when your father married Sophie?’
‘Not quite eleven.’
‘How was it for you?’
‘Wonderful. You know Sophie, and how much family means to her.’
‘How is it that we manage at all,’ Nik asked, ‘with our weird backgrounds?’
‘Maybe it’s a strength?’ Emma suggested. ‘Maybe it’s how we’ve learned to do what we do.’
How well had she learned?
Emma found it difficult not to go to the chart drawers and look for the scenes from Nik’s play which her father had put there. When? Recently? Or years ago? The paper was yellowing and turning brittle.
No matter when David had put Nik’s work in the chart drawers, this was the summer he was thinking about it. And for his sake Emma would have to call Nik. She did not dare trust the sporadic mail service to get a letter to him in time, so she would have to call him, see him again, here in the enforced intimacy of the Portia. She was not sure she could bear it.
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