Vivian In Red

by Kristina Riggle

  Milo nodded his assent to everything, not hearing a word. He’d never been a liar, but here he’d gone and done it. It was a good thing, a mitzvah, one could argue. He saved Vivian’s job, and surely whatever had gone wrong she hadn’t done on purpose. And it had been true what he’d said about it being his fault. He’d seen her leave in a state, but he’d let Allen and Fink and the stardust of famous Cole Porter talk him into letting a woman walk alone in the wee hours of the night in a strange city. She could have been mugged, or worse, and it would have been his fault.

  By the time Milo agreed to go get sandwiches for the chorus girls, he’d convinced himself the story he told was true.

  All the coffee on the Eastern seaboard couldn’t have cured Milo’s headache, and as the show’s second night unspooled in front of him, he couldn’t remember to be impressed that he’d been invited to sit in Max Gordon’s balcony seats. McHugh had joined them, and Dorothy Fields.

  Milo would’ve thought that the previous night’s river of booze would have swamped the whole cast and ruined the show for good, but somehow everyone pounced on their roles with new fervor at that afternoon’s run-through. The chorus girls in particular had been dancing their routines in an upstairs rehearsal space until they could’ve done it blindfolded, he heard the director say.

  And it was showing on this second night’s performance. The costumer had fixed whatever the problem was that caused George Murphy’s pull-away rags to not pull entirely away the first night. Even Bell’s voice sounded clearer and stronger.

  But not here to witness it was Allen. Milo had been the one to bring cash down to the jailhouse to bail him out and drag him, still half-drunk, back to the hotel. He’d been arrested for public drunkenness, for having decided to take a piss under a streetlamp, which wouldn’t have been so terrible except that when a copper hollered at him, Allen turned to face him and pissed all over the officer’s polished black shoes, and threw in some colorful remarks on the policeman’s questionable parentage and ethnicity.

  Gordon had jammed a wad of bills into Milo’s fist, saying, “You get that partner of yours dried out, or no one’s going to want to bother with that drunken sonofabitch again in his natural born life.”

  Milo had been too angry to bother talking to Allen, who was still pickled at any rate. He was beginning to think longingly of his first days at Harms, just playing tunes by ear on the piano, going home at night to his mother’s cooking, and making just enough money not to be embarrassed of himself.

  What was so wrong with that? The manager at Harms would never take him back, but they might take him on staff at Remick’s now, or some other publisher, writing lyrics even. He could wish Allen best of luck and dust his hands of the whole business, and while he was at it, put some real estate between himself and Vivian. She was a pretty girl, to be sure, and charming when she felt like it. But as he’d already said, he was Jewish and she wasn’t, but more to the point, she was trouble. She tripped some kind of protective switch in him, which made him want to push up his sleeves and stand in front of her, arms wide and chin out. He didn’t figure this was love exactly, seeing as how when they were apart what he felt was a kind of relief, and a low hum of fondness. He’d seen love closer up now that his brother, Max, had been seeing a girl named Miriam from down the block. Those two spent every moment together they could, to the point where she was in the shop so much people assumed she worked there, when she just wanted to be close enough to receive his smile.

  No, this wasn’t exactly love, Milo figured, but it was a tangle all the same.

  An eruption yanked him away from thoughts of Vivian. In a moment his ears had organized the sound into what it was: a roaring ovation. George Murphy had just sung the last notes of Hilarity. The audience was losing their minds, standing, clapping, whistling. The dancers and Murphy were frozen in place, yet even from as far as back as Milo was in the balcony, he could see their chests heaving, knew how hard they were sweating, because he’d seen it before, up close. The lights dimmed at last, but the next bit couldn’t start, the audience was still hollering, as the players on stage scrambled in the soft gray dark to get out of the way, ready for the next number.

  Max Gordon leaned back from his seat in front of Milo. “Hey, Short? This here is what they call stopping the show.”

  New York, 1999

  Resting on the front stoop of the townhouse, I let the late September breeze push my hair back from my face. Now that I know my grandfather is seeing things, I feel haunted, too. Every time Grampa Milo’s gaze rests too long on any one spot, my breathing starts to shallow out and I have to remind myself not to show it: project calm, serenity. For his sake, if not mine.

  I’ve got to tell Uncle Paul what I’ve noticed. It’s only right.

  Grampa is hallucinating. He’s seeing things that aren’t there. His mind is going.

  Several times this week, Paul turned to stare at me and ask if I needed something, what I was about to say. And each time I’d shrug and claim to be distracted, or just say “nothing,” losing my nerve for confessing what I knew about Grampa’s strange episodes. What if they sent him away to some institution? Or doped him into a stupor? And then Uncle Paul would just nod and go back to whatever he was doing: paperwork for Short Productions, or arguing with his wife under his breath as if Esme, the nurses, and I weren’t there to notice. He’s plenty distracted himself.

  It’s a plausible enough story that I’d be distracted, after all. Aunt Linda had popped in to the townhouse while Daniel was helping me with boxes and by the way her eyebrows shot halfway up her head it’s safe to say she found his presence both surprising and fascinating, and no doubt she told Joel immediately, and via Jessica it would have spread like a virus to Eva and Naomi.

  I wish I’d missed Daniel that day. Just another couple of hours and I’d have been gone. Sure, he might have tried to call for me here, but I wouldn’t have to take that call; not being my own house, I don’t answer the phone here. I’ve been switching to using my cell phone for the book calls, so I can go wherever I like, though I’m not great at keeping the battery charged, and sometimes I have to pace around to find a good signal.

  Instead he turned up as I was packing, and he insisted he help me, and he reminisced, and kissed that one spot on my neck, just below my ear, that he always used to. When he reached for my hair to pull it out of the way I wanted to punch him, but I also wanted to let him embrace me. Instead, I pulled back a fraction of an inch, and pushed my hair back into place. I had the sensation then of a jarring crack inside; my two warring halves breaking apart.

  No, it would have been far easier if I’d missed him, avoided his calls. Daniel is an actor-type who moves in struggling-actor circles, and it was wild chance that we met at all, back when I was trying to make it on my own and hanging out with other newly minted journalists in an East Village dive. That night a slurring drunk had sneered that I was a “cock tease” because I wouldn’t cram into a bathroom stall and let him screw me standing up, and I bolted out the door before anyone would notice the flush creeping over my ears. I was searching in vain for a cab out on the piss-smelling street when Daniel said, “Are you okay?” from behind me, causing me to jump almost out of my shoes. He insisted on seeing me home on the subway, because all cabs in New York seemed to choose that moment to vanish out of existence.

  I think I first went out with him because he didn’t comment on how far uptown we were going. I hadn’t moved out of my dad’s place yet, with his clothes haunting me from the closet and his several pairs of reading glasses abandoned all over the apartment, accosting me each time I opened a drawer or moved a sofa cushion to find the remote.

  That night on the train, he’d asked why I had burst out of that bar so suddenly, and alone. It wasn’t my scene after all, I told him, and it had been silly of me to even bother.

  He didn’t reply. Just reached over and took my hand in his, and when I didn’t pull back, he stayed just like that, his large hand over mine, resting on my
knee.

  Now, on this chilly September night, I marvel at how if a cab had appeared, or if I’d just shucked off that one jerk and clung to my friends in the bar, I’d never have even known him. After all, we’d been in the same bar for hours, we later figured, and never even saw each other. It was just luck that he’d stepped out for some air just before I came outside myself.

  The big townhouse door opens behind me. Esme leans out. “Miss Eleanor? You have a telephone call. A man named Alexander?”

  I try not to look too shocked as I stand up and thank her. I tell her I’ll take the call in Grampa’s study upstairs. As I pass the entry to the parlor, I see Grampa Milo sitting at the piano, plinking out a melody, left-handed. It takes me time to identify it; he’s playing it slowly, awkwardly.

  Embrace me, my sweet embraceable you…

  I shake my head in wonderment at Alex’s call, and here. He’d emailed me after our last call with an apology of sorts, though he was more sorry for my reaction than for what he said about wanting the DNA test.

  Sorry I was so pushy before. With my mom all upset right in front of my nose, it’s hard to remember that your grandfather is real and not just a fictional character. It’s not like I meet lots of ‘noted Broadway producers’ in my line of work. Just don’t forget my mom, either. She’s real, too.

  Gotta go, because my work nemesis is practicing for his black belt in passive-aggressive emailing, and it seems I should respond.

  I couldn’t help but smile a little at his humor, even as he reminded me what the stakes are, for him, for Millicent. I felt the joking camaraderie deserved a response in turn, so I joked with him about Eva’s black belt in competitive parenting and her sparring with Naomi and Joel in that area, and the email chain had continued on such topics, with him never once demanding the test.

  I settle in to the large chair at this desk that’s now covered in Uncle Paul’s paperwork, and predict that even casual, slacker Alex has run out of patience at last.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi.” Alex clears his throat.

  “What’s up? I’m surprised to hear from you here.”

  “I hope it’s okay I called this number. I sort of pretended to know you really well when I called the offices. I guess I convinced them; in fact the secretary I think called me Daniel.”

  “Ha, well done,” I say, leaning back in the chair, propping up one knee against the edge of the desk.

  “Regular sleuth I am,” he rejoins, but something in his voice is strained and tight, as if he’s walking a high wire while on the phone. He’s going to ask me again, I know it, and for a moment I regret our easy joking, because he’s begun to feel a bit like a friend. That creates an obligation of a different sort.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I’m cleaning out at my… Estelle’s house. My mom and me.”

  “Okay…”

  “I found some things of Vivian’s.”

  I sit up straight in the office chair. It’s absurdly tall for me, and my feet barely touch the floor. “What things?”

  “Clippings, playbills, souvenirs. All from New York. And all seemingly connected to Milo.”

  “Oh. Wow.”

  “Sure seems like he was important to Vivian.”

  “He did eventually remember her, by the way. He just told me she was a secretary of sorts, like an assistant, working on his early shows. At least one early show. Makes sense she would keep mementos from that time. Might be all it is.”

  “Maybe.” He lightens his tone. “I know this is weird for you.” He leaves unspoken the rest of his sentence: weird that we might be cousins, my grandfather might have fathered a child we never knew.

  “What did your mother say about the box?”

  “I actually didn’t tell her yet.”

  “Why not?” In the background, I can almost discern waves. “Are you outside?”

  “Yeah. Work gave me a cell phone so they can harass me anywhere.” He continues, after a loud sigh, “I don’t want to get her fixated on it any more than she already is. I keep telling her that it’s just a chance.”

  “How is she fixated?”

  “It’s not like she talks about it constantly, but every now and then we’ll just be like, having dinner or something and she’ll blurt out how her Sunday school teacher told her she had a good ear for music. She’s also been renting old movies. We watched The High Hat the other day. It was good stuff. I wish we could just get the test.”

  “Alex.”

  “Even with what I just found? You won’t consider asking him?”

  “Are there love letters from my grandfather in there?”

  Lake Michigan roars away in the silence. I hear a gull squawk.

  “Alex, I’m not trying to be defensive. I swear I’m not, but still, all that means is that she saved some things from that time of her life. I’ve got souvenirs, too. I’ve saved Playbills. It doesn’t mean I’ve had sex with the lyricist.”

  “What do you need, then? What smoking gun would convince you to ask him?”

  “Here’s something else to think about. If you think I’m being weird about it, you don’t know my cousin Naomi. My aunts and uncles. If they get wind of this, there will be a shitstorm. It’s not going to be perceived as ‘Isn’t this wonderful we might have another sibling,’ you know. They will close ranks. They’ll lawyer up.”

  “They sound like lovely people.”

  “It’s a normal reaction! We’d be asking them to rethink everything they ever thought they knew about their father, who, as I’ve said, is sick and perhaps on his deathbed.” I lower my voice, aware that I’ve been nearly shouting, and anyone could be coming down the hall any moment. “You think famous people don’t get crazy accusations thrown their way all the time?”

  “Why wouldn’t they just test and prove us crazy hicks wrong and be done with it?”

  I toss my glasses onto the desk and pinch the bridge of my nose. “Maybe so, but in the meantime it would be DefCon 4 around here. It’s better if only the two of us know, for now. I promise you, Alex, when we have clues that there really was a romance, and that the timing lines up, I’ll find a way to ask him about it. I promise.”

  My heart jackhammers away, and I wish I could claw back that hasty promise.

  “Fine, I’ll stop bugging you for now. I’m going to the library later, by the way, looking up birth announcements in the paper, double-checking my mom’s actual birthdate. And I’ll keep going through those boxes where we found the souvenirs.”

  “Where did you find them, by the way? Where exactly?”

  “Crammed into a corner of the attic, under the eaves. I almost pitched them out because they were filled with old clothes, mostly, and smelled terrible. But I figured I’d better at least take a look.”

  Footsteps on the stairs. Probably Uncle Paul, judging by the weight of the step.

  “I have to go, but Alex? Thanks for calling me. We’ll figure it out.”

  “Sure. Okay.”

  Neither of us hang up. For a moment I listen to the crash and sway of waves and the echoing hush of wind. Someone downstairs has switched the television in the parlor to baseball; about the only thing my grandfather ever watches on TV, besides the news. I wonder if distraction helps him. Maybe if his mind is on the pennant race and not on his past, not on music or lyrics or Broadway, he doesn’t hallucinate.

  Uncle Paul steps in, and I break our distracted silence to tell Alex goodbye, and he seems distracted in his farewell, too, as if he had forgotten I was there.

  “Hey, Ellie,” my uncle says, checking his watch as he comes in. “Do you mind? I need to do some work in here.”

  “Oh sure. I just had to use the phone and figured this one had the most privacy.”

  “Privacy, eh?” he says, as I stand up away from the desk to give him back his chair. I pick my glasses back up and slide them back into place.

  I step away from the desk as he goes on, “Having a nice private chat with Daniel, were we?”
/>   “Not him.”

  “Oh? Too bad. He’s a nice kid.” He falls into the chair so hard it rolls away a little, and slaps his briefcase on top of the desk. He clicks it open, and I can see his mind whirring on a thousand details. I am about to slip out, but instead I turn around and suck in a sharp breath.

  “You should have cashed my rent check.”

  Uncle Paul looks at me over the top of his open briefcase. “Come again?”

  “The rent. You sent it back.”

  “You’re living here now, what difference does it make?”

  “It makes a difference to me.” My voice has gone thin and high-pitched. I sound like the kid he thinks I am.

  “Honey, it’s all family money. We just move it around from place to place.”

  “It is not! That was my money that I earned, writing articles.”

  Uncle Paul closes his eyes briefly and rubs his temples. “Kid, let me tell you something. Do you know where your cousin is today? London. Naomi flew to London.” Uncle Paul snapped his fingers. “There goes your rent check, on one leg of that plane ride. She flew to London because she’s got it in her head to bring over another Les Mis or Cats. As if we could afford the production costs! But does she listen to me? She used to listen to Pop, but not me, I’m just Uncle Paul, pushing the papers and making phone calls. I’m not the one who built this up, so what do I know?” He yanks out a file folder and slams the briefcase. “I’ll tell you what I know. That people work with Milo Short Productions because of Milo Short. I got the same last name, but I can’t get people to return my calls or take meetings, all of a sudden. So what am I gonna be when he’s truly gone for good? What’s this company going to be? Producing is all built on relationships, and I’m only just now realizing, kid, that I don’t have them. All along with my fancy title, turns out I was the errand boy. You know”—Uncle Paul tips back in the chair, appraising me, lacing his fingers over his middle-age pudge—“I talked to Bernadette’s people the other day, and they told me you haven’t been in touch yet. Don’t tell me you’re afraid of her. We’ve had her over for dinner for crying out loud.”