Was that the purpose of the Chicago year, being smashed against a spinning wheel, flattened like a pancake? Did my being in New York signal God was building me up now?
“My husband would have said he was clay in God’s hands,” the older woman said. “He started out as a trumpet player in a theater orchestra, but he went on to be a dancer and Broadway actor. He could do it all.”
“I didn’t know James played the trumpet, Mrs. Gruens,” Katie said.
“He gave it up before you met him, but James began his career as a trumpet player. He loved acting most of all, and he became quite good at it.”
“We’re actors,” Avril told Mrs. Gruens. “We open at the Carney this month.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful, dear. What show?”
“Apartment 19 with Helen Payne.”
“You know, I attended the premiere for Apartment 19 on Broadway in 1958,” Mrs. Gruens said. “Marvelous play, but oh, the theater can be such a vagabond life. James spent part of the year in Boston, summers in the Catskills, and he traveled by train to Baltimore and Toronto looking for theater work too. If we hadn’t married so young, I doubt we’d have ever found each other. I hope the footlights haven’t kept you girls from meeting someone special.”
“I’m not presently dating,” I said naturally, as if the words had been lifted from page three of my five-year plan. In reality, it was a toss-up which pursuit I’d been less successful in, show business or my life love. My one starring role had been in a Drowz-U-Tab commercial as a woman so tired she couldn’t find rest. Ironic.
“Take it from someone who’s loved actors for more than sixty years, don’t wait to fall in love or until the timing’s right to start a family. No matter how high your star rises over Broadway, when the grips pull the velvet curtain closed for the night, everybody needs someone to go home to.”
“If only men like James could be picked from the trees, Mrs. Gruens,” I said.
“Well, when you’re ready, God provides. You girls should talk to my sister, Elvira. She’s got a true gift for matchmaking.”
Katie smiled. “I know three girlfriends who are into Internet dating. Have you ever heard of that, Mrs. Gruens? I don’t know if I could do it, but they seem to love it. Well, two of them do.”
Mrs. Gruens looked as if she’d bitten into a tart lemon. “Computer dating? No, if it didn’t work for Doris Day with all of those punch cards, I doubt it works any better today.”
The group laughed. I counted heads. Based on ages and fingers without wedding rings, I guessed at least four in our group of six were single.
“I’m not really ready to do something like that,” I said. “Not yet anyway.”
“You’re both beautiful girls,” Mrs. Gruens assured us. “I’ll bet God has someone very special picked out for each of you, and He doesn’t need a computer to do it.”
Avril just smiled.
~ Eight ~
Apartment 19 was one of three works written by the prominent twentieth-century playwright Arthur Mouldain. Before his death at age thirty, Mouldain poured a hot, black cup of sobering realism into the minds of American theatergoers along with such postwar contemporaries as Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams. His plays gripped New York audiences, and critics found in Mouldain a playwright who exceeded their ideals and imaginations. It was his wife, Theodora, who at sunrise one morning found Mouldain collapsed at his work desk in the light of open French windows facing Central Park. A heart defect caught him, silencing his brilliance only days after he finished his masterwork, Apartment 19. The black pen with which he wrote revisions was still gripped in his right hand.
The night he died, all of Broadway dimmed their lights in Mouldain’s honor. They posthumously awarded him with Broadway’s highest accolades and, in 1960, a Pulitzer Prize for drama. Apartment 19 is considered one of the greatest plays of the twentieth century, but the turbulence of the 1960s unpopularized Mouldain’s work in favor of a more avant-garde movement in American theater. Productions like Hair and Combat drew ticket sales at the box office, the attention of theater reviewers, and investors. Apartment 19 wasn’t performed again on Broadway until 1979 in a production starring famed Hitchcock actress Leigh McDowell. The brief run received critical praise but was a commercial disaster.
The Mouldain estate took the flop personally, blaming the show’s producers for its failure. Throughout the 1980s and ’90s, they denied all performance licensing, whether professional or collegian, virtually silencing Mouldain’s work. Thirty years would pass before an American audience would see any of Mouldain’s plays again.
Ben Hughes had spearheaded a four-year-long campaign to bring Apartment 19 back to Broadway. He spent two days in Hartford, Connecticut, meeting with the Mouldain Society, rallying support for his claim that it was indeed time to revive Mouldain. Ben flew to London to meet with Mouldain’s daughter, Elisa, to cast his vision, seeking her blessing and the granting of the necessary performance license. Eventually Elisa Mouldain relented, giving Ben the first performance license for Apartment 19 in thirty years—but with the unusual condition of a “sunset clause.” Protective and eccentric, Elisa Mouldain would limit the number of performances, whether the play was a hit or a miss, to forty-two and no more.
Elisa’s restriction made the prospects of Apartment 19 turning a profit more problematic than usual. Ben’s nervous business partners would invest three million dollars in the venture, but only if Ben agreed to raise ticket prices. Apartment 19 would have to virtually sell out the 702-seat Carney Theatre every show to turn a profit. But were Broadway audiences willing to shell out the ticket price of a Disney musical to see a fifty-year-old Arthur Mouldain play?
Apartment 19’s cast knew the pressure Ben was under; everyone did. New York theater critics’ expectations had blown up over thirty years into the stuff of legend. Ben’s production had to stoke the imaginations of reviewers, wow new audiences, return a profit in forty-two nights, and satisfy Elisa Mouldain that she hadn’t made a terrible mistake in trusting him. I found myself praying for Ben.
“Harper, you’ve made Saturday morning the easiest part of the day,” Ben said, finishing his bagel and coffee. “No actor likes working at 7 a.m., but it’s the only time I had open. Thank you for coming to the studio so I could see your Audrey Bradford.”
“It’s no problem, Ben.”
“A director loves knowing at least something in his show is going right. You’ve got enough under your belt, dare I say, you could open for us tomorrow night.”
Ben straddled a folding chair turned backward, his arms resting on the top. He rubbed at his eyes, jostling his wire-rimmed glasses out of place.
“What’s it been like working with Tabby?” he asked, getting up from his chair.
“We went through the show once on the first day, twice on the second. In the afternoons, she has me watch rehearsals and make notes on any changes you introduce to the show.”
Ben seemed surprised. “So, you’ve gone through the entire show three times already?”
“Yes.”
Ben crossed his arms, tapped his index finger against his lips. “I’m curious, Harper. You seem to want to bust out of some of my staging at times. I remember that about you, your flair for improvisation. If I asked you to expand on a scene, where do you think you could take it?”
Ben was right. I had wanted to break out of the box, expand on the creative ideas that flooded my imagination whenever I got into Audrey Bradford’s character. But I just couldn’t respond to Ben’s question with a menu of choices. Instead, I returned to my mark on the rug, setting my toe like a dancer’s onto the piece of masking tape still there from Tabby’s original mark-up on day one. I took a moment, letting his question stir my own creative curiosity.
“How expanded do you want it?” I asked, looking up at him.
“Very,”
he said, returning to his folding chair.
I closed my eyes. I felt like a dancer in this studio, just seconds before the burst of motion and fluid expression. I uttered a prayer underneath my breath and waited for the downbeat of the conductor’s baton.
It was spontaneous, an instant flash of inspiration. Everything clicked and I could feel the intuition showing me how to move. Ben’s original blocking worked fantastically, but there were a million and one ways to play Audrey Bradford. Mouldain had written layers into his play. There were depths to plumb in his work, harmony notes that vibrated both beneath and above the melody line. Savvy actors and directors could pluck a moment like the strings of a harp and turn a scene on its edge.
My eyes opened, and I could almost see the red velvet curtain opening in front of me, hearing the guide wheels squeaking along their track as the grips pulled its fraying rope. Around me, a three-walled apartment belonging to the deranged Audrey Bradford decorated my imagination. In front of me, a red-cushioned sea of theater seats, the ocean floor, waited.
I tossed aside Ben’s blocking, moving left instead of right, making up my own marks as I triggered Audrey’s words and phrases. My turns were crisp and fluid. The rubber soles of my shoes squeaked like a basketball player pivoting on the court.
I saw two young dancers arrive early to the studio for their lesson. They watched me from the doorway, their energy and presence feeding my performance. The rhythm and cadence of Audrey Bradford’s words snapped from my mouth like icy branches in a winter’s storm.
Helen always played the scene’s emotional finale by piercing the audience with a near shriek of her voice. I could feel the pressure too now, building inside of me, but I lowered the tone of my voice and the gaze of my stare to a spot just above Ben’s forehead. Audrey Bradford’s words came out with startling transparency and emotion, a whisper under pressure that sent a chill up my spine when I spoke.
I waited for Ben to say something, anything, aware that my heart was beating like I’d just finished an aerobic workout. I exhaled a huge sigh to wash away the scene.
Ben sat motionless, his feet planted, lips pursed. He nodded his head ever so slightly, with his chin perched on top of his curled fists. Eventually, a sly smile bent the left side of his mouth slightly higher than the right.
“That’s exactly why I wanted to do Mouldain. He’s such a genius.” Ben stood up again, reanimated and talking faster. “You get all the layers in his script, don’t you, Harper?”
“Yeah, I guess so. I see the possibilities.”
Ben scoffed. “Yes, possibilities. You’d think as director I’d have the freedom to portray some of those possibilities and do whatever I wanted creatively. But with only forty-two shows, and having to promise my partners we’d at least break even, I’ve had to roll this production straight up the middle. Don’t repeat this, Harper, but while we have a really strong, good show—we don’t have a great show, not yet anyway. A great show requires taking great risks.”
“From what I understand, this production’s been all about risk taking.”
“Offstage, yes. But onstage, I’ve only succeeded at bringing the show out of storage, dressing the stage more or less the way it was done fifty years ago,” Ben said. “I just didn’t have the time, money, or clout to both revive and reinvent Mouldain in the same production.”
Ben dropped his head and shook it like he’d worked himself to the point of exhaustion for four years only to miss the game-winning shot at the final buzzer. He raised his eyes to look at me. “But thank you, Harper, for at least showing me what might have been.”
“Thanks, Ben. That means a lot, more than you know.” So far, I’d felt like the production’s family dog. Allowed to come in from the cold, but not an equal member.
Ben glanced at his watch again, suddenly aware of the time. “If it’s any consolation, you’ve also helped me work out one of my staging quandaries with Helen. So this has been fruitful in several ways.”
He picked up the leather satchel leaning against his chair leg. “I need to get back to the theater. And, Harper, remember to come by the office. There’s some paperwork for you to fill out. We need to start getting you paid.”
Ben crossed the dance studio quickly, parting the assembling clique of dance students waiting in the doorway, and disappeared down the stairwell to the street. I picked up a chair and carried it to the stack by the dancer’s bar, cleaning up the studio for the incoming class. A few minutes later, I, too, pushed open the steel door at street level and stepped onto West Forty-fourth Street. The city air was biting and cold, scented with diesel fuel. I didn’t care; I was feeling great about finally making a contribution to the show, however small.
A block down West Forty-fourth Street, I noticed a truck unloading stage equipment in the covered alley beside the Carney. The door leading backstage was propped open, so I took the shortcut, striding down the tapered walkway and tugging open the faded red door someone had wedged open with a stopper.
Despite the million-dollar renovations out front, backstage the historic Carney still looked like it belonged in a 1940s showbiz picture starring Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland. Ropes and rigging that moved staging panels were tied to a wooden railing. Apartment 19’s set pieces, made to look like Manhattan of the 1950s, rested on wheeled dollies so stagehands could quickly strike the stage. Above me, a metal-grated catwalk was just visible in the dimness and pixie dust.
There was a public call-board mounted on the wall by the electrical circuit board, listing rehearsal instructions until opening night. Further down the half-lit hallway, I could see the office door was ajar. Pale light streamed out from the florescent overhead fixtures.
“Can you make sure everyone gets into wardrobe and makeup as soon as they come in this morning?” I heard Ben ask as I approached.
“I’ll get everyone in place, Ben.”
Tabby appeared from the office door, nearly bumping into me. She gave me a quick look but said nothing, carrying out her mission to rustle up actors as they moseyed in on an early Saturday morning.
I peeked around the door into the production office to find Ben searching for something on the large, cluttered desk.
“I’m trying to find those papers for you,” he said, once he’d realized I’d wandered in and we were alone in the office.
I leaned into the doorframe, giving him enough space inside the cramped back office that was half-consumed by the oversized desk. Ben continued rummaging. I didn’t react when he opened the bottom tub drawer to reveal a very large, mostly empty bottle of Scotch rolling around inside.
“It’s going to be great,” I said.
“What?” Ben asked.
“The show,” I said. “It’s going to be amazing.”
“We shall see.” Ben replied like his mind was somewhere else. “Ah, here it is.”
He pulled out a simple manila folder from underneath an issue of Variety magazine, and when he held it up to his face I noticed that his hand was shaking. A sticky note the color of robin’s egg blue fluttered as he opened it.
“Just fill out whatever’s in there and get it to Tabby, okay?”
“Sure,” I said, taking the folder. I started to walk away, then paused. “Ben, do you remember when we used to do all this for free? All of us, working night and day, trying to get everything just right? We did it for the love of theater, and that’s exactly why an audience will show up here tomorrow night. They won’t know what it all could have been. They’ll just appreciate the special gift you’ve given to them.”
Ben stopped shuffling papers and looked up at me.
“But I’ll know, Harper. The most chilling words in all the human vocabulary are could have been.” Ben straightened his back, no longer hunched over the desk. “And if we got it wrong, Harper, what was the cost back then? A bad grade? A snarky review in the student newspaper
? We never gambled with somebody else’s millions, or our reputations, or invested months, years, making our families sacrifice,” Ben said, drifting into a dark place. There was a pause, then a deep sigh. “I’m sorry. I’m just about out of gasoline here. Good thing there’s just one more day.” He turned and smiled, reaching up for my hand. “It was easier once, wasn’t it, Harper? We had to go and ruin it by chasing our dreams, then catching them.”
“Maybe the best is yet to come.”
I let go of Ben’s hand and said a silent prayer on my way out. It was quiet backstage, the truck unloaded, the hallway absent of actors and busyness. I headed for the stage in search of a little hang-out time with Avril before she went into makeup.
Helen’s dressing room door was partly open, so I glanced inside as I passed. Helen was sitting upright on a silk love seat the color of soft money, like the queen of England awaiting visitors. She looked up at me.
“You there,” she called out. I stopped, shuffling back to her dressing room.
“Did you want something?” I asked. She gestured to me with her finger, curling it toward herself twice like she wanted me to come closer. It was a command, not a request.
“I hope you’ve got your lines down for tomorrow night, just in case,” she said, holding back a chuckle.
“Yes,” I said, playing along, albeit uncomfortably. “Just in case.”
Helen allowed herself to laugh. “Oh, don’t worry. You won’t be called upon anytime soon, but I do think it’s good training for an actor to be ready for anything.”
I nodded in vague agreement and began backing myself out her door.
“There is a certain romance to the role of understudy, don’t you think?” she asked. “You serve no purpose whatsoever, lend nothing to the success of the show, and no one in the audience even cares to know your name—unless the star cannot, for some reason, perform. Then you must take the stage without the benefit of a dress rehearsal, and knock everyone’s socks off.”
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