‘No—’ Emma started to protest.
‘It’s self-defense for you, Em. That’s how you’re trained to protect yourself from supersaturation. But you miss a lot. I bet you don’t know that the guy who plays Edmund has half a dozen lovers a night, that he goes from bar to bathhouse to bar, looking for God knows what. I bet you don’t know that the guy who plays the Fool is living with his mother, who’s dying by inches, and he goes home from the theater and nurses her. Gloucester is terrified of something, but I haven’t yet figured out what. If you grow up in a small town, that’s the kind of thing you notice. Gossip is a way of life. There isn’t anything else to do. Maybe it isn’t always nice, but you, Em, you miss a lot.’
‘I never thought of it that way.’
Regan grinned. ‘You’re a good actress because it’s bred in your bones. Your fairy godmother touched you with her magic wand. I’m a good actress because I learned to observe. People are a mess of genes and chromosomes and hormones run wild. Nik, your ex—’
‘Not yet.’
‘—sees all that and laughs at it affectionately. That’s why his dialogue is so good. But you’ve shut something off, Emma. It opens when you’re onstage and closes at the last curtain call. Is it just the native New Yorker syndrome?’
‘I don’t know.’
Regan’s slightly bantering tone sobered. ‘Emma, have you talked with your father lately—I mean, really talked?’
‘Papa—’
‘He’s lost weight, Emma. His energy barely carries him through the performance.’
Emma looked at Regan with shock.
‘Breaking up with a husband must take everything you’ve got, and I don’t want to worry you, but—’
Louis saw what Emma had not seen. He came backstage to see Emma. ‘I’m worried about Papa.’
‘Why? What’s the matter?’
‘When I went to his dressing room, he was just standing and letting his dresser take off his costume.’
‘That’s one of the fringe benefits that go with being the star.’
‘Emma, he looked exhausted.’
‘He gives an exhausting performance. You know that.’
‘I don’t know, Em, he didn’t seem well.’ Then he looked at her. ‘What about you?’
She did not want to accept that both Regan and Louis were seeing more than she had seen. ‘I’m fine. I just have a sort of virus. It’s good to see you. How’s your show?’
Louis’s green eyes sparked from the pleasure of his success in his first good role. ‘Going well. But my show’s lots shorter than Shakespeare. We break more than half an hour before you.’ Then he looked at her shrewdly. ‘You’re sure you’re okay?’
‘Sure.’
‘You’re my only available sister. I don’t want you to be unhappy.’
‘That’s life, isn’t it?’
‘Is it? I’m happy.’
‘That’s wonderful. You got marvelous notices.’
‘I’m good,’ Louis said, with the same kind of unselfconscious pleasure as his mother. Both Sophie and Louis could accept their talent and take joy in talking about it, unlike Emma, who still found it difficult to accept praise. ‘Can I take you out for a bite to eat?’
‘That would be fun.’ But she felt cold. Papa. No. Nothing should be wrong with Papa.
‘Will Nik join us?’
‘No.’
‘Where is he?’
She did not know exactly where Nik was. ‘Busy with his own play.’
‘Well, give him my love, then.’
Emma went to Alice.
‘Yes, I’m worried,’ Alice acknowledged. ‘You haven’t noticed anything wrong?’
Emma said bitterly, ‘Papa’s a consummate actor. And I’ve been preoccupied with myself. I’m sorry, Alice. I should have seen. What do you think is wrong?’
‘We’re running some tests.’
‘For what? Tests for what?’
‘Cancer.’
‘You don’t think—’
‘We won’t know until the results come in.’
Alice, involved with fear for her husband’s life, had not seen Emma’s pain. Emma, involved with the dissolution of her marriage, had not seen anything outside her immediate anguish until it was pointed out to her.
‘Hey, Em,’ Regan said in the dressing room that night. ‘Don’t beat yourself. We all get lost in our own lives. You’ve just joined the human race.’
For the first time? Where had she been before?
‘Sure. Thanks.’
‘And you miss your fellow.’
Yes. She could not live with Nik, but she missed him.
“Emma—”
“I’m here, Nik.”
They went up the steps to the pilothouse. Nik braced himself as he turned to greet his father-in-law. “Dave.” He bent down to kiss the old man.
“Thanks, Nik. In New York I was untouchable because I had cancer. People are more realistic about life and death out here.”
“I don’t want you to die. I want you to live forever.”
“No, you don’t. It would be a horrible idea, like a play running year after year with the same cast, losing all freshness, becoming routine and dull. I’ve come to the end of this role, and whether or not there’s another role ready for me on the other side of death, I’ll have to wait and see.”
Nik sat down on the side of the bunk and took David’s hand. “Dave, I want you to know that I’m back on the David play for you.”
David Wheaton raised his eyebrows. Emma, who had been looking out at the water, swiveled slightly to look at Nik.
“I know how to do it now. It will indeed be the David play, but King David himself will not be in it. It will be a one-woman play for Emma, from the point of view of all of David’s women, from Zeruiah and Michal, Abigail and Bathsheba, to the concubines raped by Absalom, to Abishag, lusted after by Adonijah.”
“Abishag,” David murmured, “sent to keep David warm in his old age. I know Alice is no Abishag, but she’s still an attractive woman. I want her to be happy. I don’t want her to spend the rest of her life carrying the torch for me.”
“Dave, leave it up to Alice. Trust her to do whatever’s best. My hunch is that Alice misses medicine.”
David pressed Nik’s hand. “You can be wise for me, can’t you?”
“And less wise for myself?” He looked to Emma, then back to David. “Theater is changing. The big play I had in mind in the forties is no longer financially feasible now that we’ve reached the sixties. Small-cast plays will be the norm, and the one-man or -woman show is definitely the wave of the future. Times Square is changing. It’s no longer the Great White Way. Porn movies and massage parlors and all kinds of perversity are on the upsurge. Things need to be said about men and women and love that I think I can say in this play.”
“You say you’re doing this for Emma?” He looked toward his daughter.
“For myself. Emma is the actress to do it. And it’s my tribute to you. I would never have been able to understand King David if I hadn’t known and loved David Wheaton.”
“Emma?”
“I don’t know, Papa.”
“It’s going to be a great role,” Nik said. “I hope it will tempt Emma. I know she—” He looked at Emma. “You—can turn it down. I hope you won’t.”
“Nik, I can’t even think about it now.”
Nik spoke not to Emma but to David. “I’ve been horrible to Emma. I said unpardonable things. I took out my nerves, my failures, on her. I’ve done everything my father did to my mother, and I hated my father for it. But Emma’s not like my mother.”
“No.” David shifted position. He was in pain. “Why is Jarvis here? I did hear his voice, didn’t I?”
Nik said, “He’s your son, and he insisted on coming with me. He says he’ll stay in a hotel.’
“The Golden Spruce is hardly what Jarvis is accustomed to.” David sounded irritable.
Emma laughed. “It’s also next door to a laundromat th
at runs all night.”
But David was distracted and not amused. “Ben plans to pick up anchor at any time now. Ben! Ben!”
As Emma started to slide off the stool, Nik said quickly, “I’ll get him.”
“Of course I want to see Jarvis—” David again shifted position.
“Now, or after you’ve spoken to Ben?”
“Now.”
“I’ll get him,” Emma said.
Together they went to the main cabin, where the others were seated around the table.
“Jarvis,” Emma said, “Papa wants you.”
Nik asked, “Where’s Ben? Dave wants him, too.”
Alice said, “He’s tinkering with the pulley for the Zodiac.” She went out onto the aft deck.
Emma had noticed that increasingly her father wanted to know where everybody was, needing that security. Alice, particularly Alice, he needed to be able to call, to see, to know that she would be there for him—a final holding on to that which he was going to have to leave forever.
She watched her brother as he went up the steps to the pilothouse, rather hesitantly, without his usual brash authority. “What are we going to do with him?” she demanded. “I can’t imagine Jarvis in a sleeping bag, and there isn’t room for him.”
Alice, returning to the main cabin, laughed, then quickly sobered. “Dave needs to get away from all this confusion. It is, quite literally, causing him pain. He needed to see Nik, so it was worth staying here at Port Clements overnight, but now we must get away to some peace and quiet.”
Abby asked, “How far away is peace and quiet?”
“Oh, not that far, really. The problem is Jarvis.”
Nik offered, reluctantly, “I could go now, if that would ease matters. I’ve seen Dave, and Jarvis can sleep wherever you were going to put me.”
Alice pointed to the long seat. “Here, with Ben, in a sleeping bag. I don’t think it will do for Jarvis.”
“Well, that’s good.” Nik sounded relieved. “At least for me.” He stopped abruptly. He was sitting on the far end of the window seat and he reached out for some sheets of yellow paper with his own strong handwriting. “What’s this?”
Emma answered with absolute calm. “Scenes from your King David play.”
“What on earth are they doing here?”
“They were in the pilothouse between the charts in one of the drawers. Papa had them there.”
Nik picked up a page. Read aloud: “And even though David was victorious, he kept weeping for Absalom, and the victory was turning into mourning, with the king crying out in a loud voice, ‘O my son Absalom, O Absalom, my son, my son!’”
Emma took the page from Nik, and read: “Again the scene is indicated by a scrim, with a projection of Absalom, David’s son, caught in an oak tree by his hair. He is hanging there, helpless, when Joab enters, and stabs Absalom through the heart. ‘And ten young men that bare Joab’s armour compassed about and smote Absalom, and slew him.’
“They take Absalom’s body, and leave with it. The lights go off the scrim, and we see David in his chambers, weeping bitterly.” She put the page down and looked at Nik. “Then we have the famous ‘O my son Absalom’ speech. Nik, you must have written this long after you’d put the play away and I thought you’d forgotten it.”
“I was like a mouse, keeping on nibbling at a piece of cheese much too big and tough for him. Em, why—why is your father—”
“Why is he rereading your play?”
“Yes. He can’t be reading it just as a play. It’s tied in with too much pain—”
“It’s pain that has to be exorcised. I think that talking about the play has helped.”
“And you?”
Emma clasped her hands together tightly. “We’ve talked, whenever he’s wanted to. He’s said some amazing things.”
Nik looked at her questioningly.
“He said that it was only after David lusted after Bathsheba, caused Uriah’s death, only after he had failed utterly with Tamar and Amnon and Absalom, only after he was fleeing his enemies, fleeing his holy city of Jerusalem, that he truly became a king.”
Nik looked down at his hands clenched on the yellowed pages of his play. “Maybe we have to sin, to know ourselves human, faulty, and flawed, before there is any possibility of greatness. I think your father’s right. David did become great only after he’d lost everything.”
“Is it always the hard way?” Emma asked.
“Isn’t it?” Nik unclenched his fists. “David’s grief over Absalom—it was grief over his own failure as a father.”
“Oh, Nik—yes—Papa, too. He believes that he failed all of us.”
Nik’s voice was calm. “Parents always fail their children. If we’d had children, we’d have failed ours. That’s simply how it is, and the kids have to get along as best they can. My parents were who they were. Dave is Dave.”
“And I love him,” Emma said. She reached out and took the pages from Nik, reading silently, her lips moving. “And Joab had to speak fiercely to David about his continuing grief, telling him that he was shaming all his friends who had saved his life and put him back on the throne.”
And Jarvis told his father to get back on the stage. He had living children he should be thinking about, who loved him, and were being hurt by his behavior.
Emma looked bleakly at Nik. “There really isn’t a happy ending, or an ending at all. David stopped grieving for the sake of his friends, and he took up his crown again, and returned to his holy city, and Israel and Judah were united, briefly, but there’s still a lot of fighting and confusion and—”
“Hey, sweetie, that’s the old play, remember? I’m on a new one now. Look. Here’s the opening.”
“Nik—you still have your old briefcase.”
“And will, as long as it lasts. Here, Em, look at this.”
She took a page from his hand.
The stage is bare, bathed in a soft evening light. We see the roof of King David’s parapet, the whiteness of the low wall shining with a moonlike glow.
Then we see a projection of eight women, standing hand in hand.
King David’s eight named wives.
Behind them are other women, the other wives, the concubines, the friends.
Then the projection fades out. The spotlight moves center stage as Abigail steps into it.
“Nik—I like it, I like it.”
“There’s more,” Nik said. “I didn’t bring it. I’ll have to show it to you later.”
“Children.” Abby’s voice was gentle but firm. She was coming up from the lower cabin, Alice following her. Emma had not noticed when they had left her and Nik alone. “There are certain plans we have to make. Alice is right. We need to get Dave away.”
Ben came down from the pilothouse. “I’ll take the Portia to a place less than an hour from here, and we can drop anchor near Wathus or Wiah. Jarvis can stay for dinner—I assume he’ll want to do that—and then I’ll bring him back to Port Clements in the Zodiac and he can stay at the hotel, and I’ll pick him up again in the morning.”
“Oh, Ben, you’re wonderful!” Emma cried.
“No problem,” Ben said. “Abby and I worked it out. We’ll have to lend Jarvis some rain gear.”
Emma laughed. “I can just imagine what would happen with his city suit in a Zodiac ride. Where is he? Still with Papa?”
“No. He’s gone to the Golden Spruce to make a reservation for tonight.”
“I didn’t see him go—” She had been too drawn into Nik and the play to notice Jarvis leaving. She had been plunged back into all the joys of collaboration, and all the sorrows that had caused Nik to put his play aside.
“As soon as Jarvis comes back, we’ll take off.” Ben went down the steps to the lower cabin and into the engine room.
“It’s as good a solution as any,” Alice said. “I don’t want Dave upset.”
“It’s all right,” Abby assured her. “We’ll keep things quiet.”
The sky was moving in
to the long, slow dusk when Ben dropped anchor. They were in a narrow inlet where they saw no sign of life except the dark sleek heads of seals looking at them timidly, and a watchful eagle sitting high up on the topmost branch of an ancient fir tree. A small waterfall tumbled down between rocks and trees. At the far end of the inlet was a half-moon of sandy beach.
“Bear territory,” Alice said.
Jarvis shuddered. “I’m not excited about wild life.”
“If we see a bear, which isn’t likely,” Alice said, “it will ignore us. Jarvis, your father is tired, and I’m going to take him his dinner on a tray. We’ll eat in here.”
“I’ve come a long way to see Papa,” Jarvis said. “I don’t plan to be exiled.”
“You haven’t been exiled.” Abby spoke swiftly. “We’ll have a pleasant meal and then, after you’ve had a good night’s sleep, you can look forward to seeing David tomorrow.”
Emma rose and went to the oven. “Jarvis and Nik, will you set the table, please?” She got a tray which slid between stove and refrigerator and started preparing a plate for her father. There were too many of them for the pilothouse and the confusion would not be good for the old actor; he would be better off alone. But she did not like it. She gave the plate to Alice.
Alice took it, saying, “You all start. I’ll sit with Dave for a few minutes.”
As soon as Alice had gone up the steps, Jarvis, with a handful of knives in his hand, said, “I want to get Papa somewhere—at least Vancouver—where he can have proper medical attention.”
Emma banged a wooden spoon against the stove. “Alice is a doctor.”
“A backwoods doctor.”
Emma’s voice was stiff with anger. “Alice was trained at Johns Hopkins. Isn’t that good enough for you? She did her residency at NIH in Washington, D.C. You could hardly find anyone more qualified.”
Jarvis was equally stiff. “I’m beginning to understand why I was not consulted. Papa ought to be in a hospital where—”
Abby interrupted. “David does not want to be in a hospital to die away from everything and everyone he loves. Alice is doing everything that needs to be done.”
“Is he in pain?”
“To a certain extent, but Alice is controlling that. Don’t worry, Jarvis. David saw all the specialists in New York. He knows what he’s doing. He loves the Portia and the Pacific Northwest. He needs to be here, surrounded by the land and water which sustain him.”
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