by Susan Isaacs
He’d laughed at her romanticism and told her he pitied her, because when she finally fell for someone, she’d end up wearing her heart on her sleeve—and pointing it out to the boy if he failed to see it.
He thought he had a good sense of her, but watching her cavort he never would have guessed she could be so uninhibited. Silly, even. She pulled her hand from the boy’s, brought it around back, whacked his backside, and then—although Nicholas couldn’t be sure because her back was turned—doubled over with laughter.
Nicholas watched them until they rounded a corner. He realized he was angry. It was as if Jane had been false to him. The good-humored, kind, vulnerable facade she’d presented to him was just another role. At the technical rehearsal the following evening, he chose to be cold to her.
Nicholas lounged against a wall backstage a few feet away, in animated conversation with another actor, a junior who was playing his valet. Beside Nicholas in his third-act bright yellow breeches and white ruffled shirt, the gray-clad junior looked like a five-foot seven-inch rodent. A perturbed rodent: he kept shaking his head in disbelief as Nicholas, player by player, analyzed the New York Giant defense and found it wanting.
Jane approached and said, “Nick?”
He brushed his hand, a gesture between just-a-minute and leave-me-alone.
“I wanted to talk to you for a second,” she said. “If you’re busy…?” The junior broke away, to go for coffee. “I didn’t mean to interrupt,” she said.
“What is it?” he demanded. He’d done little more than nod hello to her at the beginning of the rehearsal. Now he would not meet her eyes. He glanced past her, as if searching for someone better to talk to. His manner matched his frilly shirt and his sleek, slicked-back hair: disdainful.
“Could we sit for just a minute?” Jane asked. She walked to a chaise longue that had been used in the first act and sat. Grudgingly, eyes still searching for someone better, he sat beside her.
“Getting the jitters?” Jane asked softly.
“No. I’m fine.”
He moved farther from her, to the edge of the chaise. His forearms rested on his thighs, the posture of a player waiting to be called into the game. She touched his shoulder and as he pulled away, he widened the rift between them. One of the axioms of their friendship was that they did not touch the other, and his flinching made her fear that she repelled him or, worse, he had somehow found out how she felt about him and found her feelings repugnant. She knew she should not pursue the matter, but with his withdrawal she felt a swelling of emptiness more profound than even she could have predicted. She’d known she would lose him, but not so abruptly and so soon, and she suddenly realized that the love she’d described to Amelia was not even the half of it. She stared at his hands. The fingers were long, the knuckles big and red; his wrists, dangling from the cuffs of his shirt, were thick, with a knot of a wristbone. She reached out and touched the top of his hand even though she knew it was the worst thing she could do.
“Nick, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Please, I know something is. You’ve been ignoring me all night.”
“I haven’t been ignoring you. I’ve been talking to a few other people. Is that all right? Or do I need your permission?”
“Nick—”
“Look, I didn’t want to be here in the first place. I was stupid to have taken this part. It’s taking too much time and for what? It’s a waste. I’m sorry I let you talk me into it.”
“Nick—”
“Two papers overdue and I’m three hundred pages behind in History. I can’t believe I’m jeopardizing my chance for Columbia for this dopey play.”
“But you said—”
“Forget it, Jane.”
“You said how much you loved it, what a kick it was playing someone totally unlike you, some fop, and having everyone believe in your character.”
“All right,” he snapped.
“And you liked all the Sock and Buskin people so much.”
“Terrific bunch.”
His sarcasm was almost physical, knocking the wind out of her.
“Were you angry that I couldn’t rehearse with you last night?” she whispered.
“Come on, Jane. Would you just lay off?”
“I was tied up.”
“Forget it.” He folded his arms, almost hiding his hands.
“My brother was here, and my roommate and I drove him back to Boston, and by the time we got back we just made curfew, and I didn’t want to call you that late.”
Nicholas turned and, at last, looked at her. “You never told me you had a brother.”
“Well, I do. He’s visiting colleges.” Nicholas nodded and unfolded his arms. She felt as though some lenient judge had given her a reprieve. “He’s a high school senior. He’s with our—his mother, my stepmother, actually—you can see there’s a little problem in that area. But anyway, she stayed at the hotel in Boston because she had a stomachache, so he took a bus. I haven’t seen him in three years. He’s gotten so tall—” She sensed she was babbling. She breathed in and said in a cooler voice, “He had an interview at Brown, but I don’t know—”
“Reginald! Mathilda!” Professor Ritter screeched onstage.
Nicholas stood, grabbed her hand, and pulled her from the chaise. “We’re being summoned,” he said.
“Nick, I just want to say—”
“Listen, I’m sorry I snapped. I was being moody.” He grinned at her. “If I wasn’t temperamental, what kind of actor would I be?”
Nicholas was uncomfortable with Professor Ritter. The director was so unredeemedly ugly that when Nicholas looked squarely at him he was afraid to be thought disgusted or mocking or pitying. “I suppose you must know why I asked you to stop by,” Professor Ritter said. Nicholas made himself gaze right into his eyes, except the lids and surrounding area were so fleshy the eyes themselves were only glints behind puffy slits. The nose could have been a rubber one made for The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Nicholas sat as far back as he could in his chair. The director spat as he spoke, and Nicholas had been sprayed before. It was one of the few social occasions he was unprepared for. He did not know whether to remain still, leaving the man’s spittle on his face, or wipe it off and thereby underscore the awkwardness of the situation. In the end, he’d decided to ignore it.
“Well, Nicholas?”
“I’m not sure, Professor Ritter.”
“But you can guess. However, I shan’t make you say it. I shall say it. You were fine as Fortinbras, although—how best to put it?—the role is not exactly the supreme test of the actor’s craft.” Nicholas nodded and waited. Professor Ritter was unpredictable. He might emote for hours or, because he could be wildly effusive and dramatic, he might at any moment hurl his bulk around the desk and grab Nicholas in a hug of enthusiasm. He did neither. Instead, he pounded his fist against the wall behind him and yelled “However!” Then he cleared his throat and moderated his voice. “However, Reginald was a test of the actor, albeit only in the high comic range, and you not only passed, you excelled.” Nicholas looked up. “Really, you were quite, quite brilliant.”
“Thank you. Coming from you takes that out of the category of a compliment and into—well, high praise, I guess.”
“It is high praise. In all my years at Brown, I’ve never seen a student with as much presence as you. Note, Nicholas, that I’ve said presence. There are others who are better technically, who do not lose their British accents halfway through sentences—”
“I know. It was gone before I even missed it.”
“Please. And there are those who, when they forget to move from table to fireplace mantel, do not attempt to remedy their lapse by sidling upstage in a movement more appropriate to the tennis court than a turn-of-the-century drawing room. However, all that can be learned, even by you. But you have something else—presence—and that is a gift. You strode onto that stage and the audience adored you. You were sly, calculating, but they forgave you, for
they could see into your heart, and they knew in the end it would eschew Mathilda and beat only for Eloise. Not only are you believable, you are magnetic. You drew the audience into that play last week and kept them there.”
“Thanks, Professor, but Jane and Penny were—”
“They were fine. It was an altogether admirable cast. But we are talking about you: Nicholas Cobleigh. A good name. You won’t have to change it.”
“Professor Ritter—”
“And now, onward and downward. Downward in the sense of plumbing deeper. We are doing The Choephori, and you must try out for Orestes.”
“I can’t. I wish there were some way, but I’m way behind in all my courses, and even though I know I shouldn’t be thinking about grades, I need at least a three-five this semester for law school, and at the rate I’m going I won’t even get a three-oh.”
“Law school?”
“Yes. I thought I’d mentioned it at some point.”
“I’d assumed you’d gotten over it. Why law school, may I ask?”
“I’ve always wanted it.”
“Wanted to be a lawyer? Even as a little tot in the sandbox?”
“My father’s a lawyer.”
“It’s an admirable profession. But are you willing to squander your gift?”
“I can still—”
“How? Amateur theatricals where some pretentious little director whispers ‘Break a leg’ before your entrance? You’re too big for that, Nicholas.” The director sprayed each time he said “Nicholas.” Saliva dotted the papers on his desk. “You’d overwhelm any such production. They wouldn’t even want you.”
“I’ll be busy for a while. Law school, a job. I appreciate your interest, Professor Ritter, but acting isn’t for me.”
“Tell me, how did you feel on the stage?”
“Okay. Nervous at the beginning.”
“And then?”
“Then I liked it.”
“It was wonderful, wasn’t it, Nicholas?”
“It was. But I still have other obligations that—”
“Just try out for Orestes. Listen to me. Allow yourself to open up before you close yourself forever. It’s only until early December and you’ll have your friend Jane there. She’s the only one with the stature for Clytemnestra; Pembroke has become a college of midgets. And then you have my word: no more pressure. If you choose law school, I’ll dance at your graduation. I’ll buy you a briefcase. I’ll have you draw up my will. Good. I’m glad that’s settled. Now, have you read Agamemnon?”
“Yes.”
“Read it again.”
Jane said she was overwhelmed with work and thus broke her two-year tradition of going with Amelia to Bar Harbor for Christmas. She also refused invitations to Brooklyn and Philadelphia, apologizing that if she had a few free days, she’d go to Cincinnati. She couldn’t, of course. She knew Dorothy didn’t want her and, in the back of her mind, dreaded that her father still might.
The truth was she hadn’t the heart to go. More and more, she realized how profoundly lonely she was. She was a pleasant addition to other people’s Christmas dinners; she would never be missed. She belonged nowhere and recognized with a pain approaching terror that all the people she’d bound to herself would disperse in June; every one of her ties would be severed. She tried to calm herself by thinking how lucky she was: she’d have a degree with honors from one of the best women’s colleges in the country, and she was free and independent. It did not comfort her. She had no money, no job, no place to go, no one anywhere to send her off or greet her. And other than her brother (who she rightly guessed thought about her once or twice a month), she knew no one really loved her.
A merry Christmas would have made her ache. She stayed in Providence, alone in the dormitory, rehearsing her isolation. For more than a week she could barely leave her room. The tall brown rectangle of her wooden door was a reassuring seal until she had to open it to go down the hall to the toilet. Then it became an ominous barrier. She could not face the outside. The corridor vibrated with vacation silence. The stairs in the middle of the hall dropped down into blackness. She raced past the edge of the top step on her way to the bathroom because the dark stairwell seemed sinister, a malignant vacuum waiting to suck her down. Each time she returned to her room she was amused and mortified by her childishness but was only able to open the door again when her full bladder made her frenzied with discomfort. Direct confrontation with the stairs was worse. Because she could not force herself to edge close enough to them even to touch the railing, she made her meals from a box of crackers and from a tin of chocolate mint patties Amelia had left behind. She drank powdered instant coffee mixed with hot tap water.
On Christmas morning, in her old red pajamas, she opened her presents. Dorothy and Richard’s was a yellow sweater set, so large it might have been knitted for a female grizzly. Their card said:
Ho, ho, ho, ha, ha, ha
Santa’s on his way
Bringing sacks of Yuletide cheer
And laughter in his sleigh.
It was signed Mother and Dad in Dorothy’s back-slanting script. Rhodes sent her a book, Sixteen Famous American Plays, and a note:
Dear Jane,
Hope you find the perfect vehicle in the enclosed. Miss you infinitely. Sorry you couldn’t make it home. Have the happiest and merriest!!! Love and all my other bad habits, R.
From Amelia she got a glass paperweight and from another friend, Peg O’Shea, a leatherette-bound diary with 1961 tooled on the front cover. She got into bed, cried for a few minutes, then fell asleep. For the entire week she read all her own books and Amelia’s psychology texts as well, but she could not concentrate enough to write the three papers she’d planned to.
When the church bells started to ring on the stroke of twelve New Year’s Eve, she was running her tongue over her gums. Her whole mouth felt dry and fuzzy, but she was so tightly swaddled in her blanket she did not want to get up to brush her teeth. Then she thought about not being kissed and then she thought about Nicholas. He’d told her about the party he and Diana were going to that night. Good band, he’d said. Midnight supper. Jane put her hand on her shoulder and ran it down her arm, feeling the thin, pilled flannel. Nicholas had mentioned Diana spent a Saturday in New York in early December buying a new gown for the party. He had no problem, he’d said; he’d be wearing the same old tuxedo he’d been wearing forever. She closed her eyes and imagined Nicholas twirling Diana, the black and white glare of his evening clothes softened by the luminous chiffon of her dress as he held her tight and danced.
“Mother,” Nicholas said softly from the foot of the hospital bed. The nurse had cranked it up so far that Winifred’s back was at right angle to her legs. She looked flaccid enough to flop forward and fold in half, or sideways, crashing her head down on the lunch tray that rested on top of the metal nightstand. She had not eaten her lunch. The sandwich, crustless, cut into four triangles, looked dried out, and the bits of tuna or chicken salad sticking out of the white bread had turned brown. In a bowl, a cube of green gelatin lay limp in a little puddle of green juice, as if losing vital fluids. “Mother,” he said again. She looked at him but neither recognized him nor responded to the presence of another person. He might have been a photograph of a young man pinned to the wall. He walked around to the side of her bed and sat beside her, taking her hand between his. It was cold and so soft it did not seem the hand of an adult. “Mummy,” he said. “It’s Nicholas. I’m home from college for the holidays.” Her gray eyes had deepened to the color of shadow. Her skin had darkened too. He did not know whether the changes were caused by the electroshock treatments or if the high-ceilinged room in the psychiatric hospital was poorly lit. “I thought I’d come and say hello. Everything’s fine.”
“Nicholas,” Winifred said.
“Yes. How are you?” Someone had tied a wide green ribbon around Winifred’s unruly red and gray hair, placing the bow slightly off center in the front, so her head looked like a messy gift
. “Mummy?”
“I suppose I’m fine. I’m tired. I could go to sleep now.”
“Would you like me to leave and come back later?”
“No. No. I haven’t seen you for a while, have I?”
“Not since September. It’s December now.”
“Nicholas, I know that. I’m not crazy.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” The last time he had held her hand he was a boy, and looking down he was startled to see his hand so much larger than hers. He gave her hand a small squeeze. When he let go, he noticed that her nails, always clear and oval-tipped, were yellow and ridged. Someone had clipped them straight across.
“How is college? Are you happy there?”
“Yes. It’s a very nice place.”
“I forget its name.”
“Brown.”
“Brown. The shock treatments make me forget things. Some things. All day I’ve been trying to remember the name of the beagle up at the farm. The one who limps.”
“Flippy.”
“That’s right. I’m glad you can remember things like that. I worry so that I’ll lose things I like, things I want to remember, and I won’t ever know I’ve lost them. Every night I say all your names and all your birthdays, but what would happen if I came downstairs after a treatment and couldn’t remember you at all? What if I forgot Abby or Edward? They could visit and I could look right into their eyes and not know who they were, and even if they said ‘I’m your son’ or ‘I’m your daughter’ they’d be lost to me forever. Of course, I’d know who they were supposed to be and I might be able to pretend to love them, but it wouldn’t be the same. I wouldn’t really know them, would I?”
“I think you’re only supposed to forget the bad things, the things that made you so down in the dumps.”
“It’s called depression. Not the dumps. I have my own depression. Do you know about the other one? The real one?”