by Susan Isaacs
Jane cried so hard that, in Chillicothe, Nicholas pulled over to a drugstore and bought another pocket-size packet of tissues to replace the one she’d wept through. For the next hundred and forty miles, until they drove into Clarksburg, West Virginia, she clutched a tissue but never used it. She faced the opened car window, letting the onrushing stream of humid air lull her with its ceaseless hum, watching, in small town after small town, women in pink plastic hair rollers and short sleeveless dresses windowshop before hardware stores and shoe emporiums. She did not talk at all.
In Clarksburg, Nicholas registered in a motel, the Dew Drop Inn, and left Jane alone in their room, a small one decorated in such insistently cheery reds and yellows and shiny plastic furniture it first startled and then depressed him. He walked through the town to stretch his legs from the long drive until the tranquilizing smells of trees and earth and the sudden darkness made him realize he was four or five miles into the country.
He returned to the motel after ten. Jane was as he had left her, awake and dressed, but so listless she did not lift her head to see who was coming through the door. He switched off the lamp on the dresser, draining the room of its garish colors. Blue light from the motel’s sign spilled through the uncurtained bathroom window into their room.
Nicholas slipped off his shoes and lay beside her in the hammock made by the sagging mattress. “I took a long walk,” he said. When she did not respond he asked, “How are you?” She shrugged. “And you told me Ohio would be boring.”
“Please, Nick. I don’t feel like kidding around.”
“I want you to snap out of it.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes you can.”
“No. Nick, I’ve been thinking. I have to tell you something. I’ll understand—really I will—if you want to call things off. Just listen to me. I know you got much more than you bargained for. You deserve better. You deserve something normal.”
“You listen to me. Every family has something.”
“Not like mine.”
“Jane, my mother’s in and out of mental hospitals. My father’s either pie-eyed or having a go at my mother’s nurses or both, and all of us were shoved off on nannies and then sent away to school the minute we were old enough to pack our own suitcases. You’re not complaining. Why should I?”
“This is different. They’re sick. I come from them.”
“Stop it. My mother’s sick. I come from her.”
“Nick, I’m tainted.”
“Then so am I. Two tainted people. We’ll probably have children who are tainted too. Big damn deal. I want you out of this mood. I don’t like it. There’s nothing you can do about your brother. Come to grips with that, and you won’t feel so bad. No one’s holding a knife to his throat. You saw how he was when we went to play tennis this morning, joking around, trying to hide that he was like a kid with a crush on a movie star. Come on now. Don’t start crying again.”
“It’s more than Rhodes. It’s my father, it’s her, it’s the whole thing.”
“What did your father say?”
“Nothing. He wouldn’t even listen to me. I tried to speak to him before we left, and he literally—literally—covered his ears.”
“Well, she got to him first. But what did you expect? That all of a sudden he’d become strong and decisive?”
Jane twisted onto her side so her back was to him. “No,” she said.
Nicholas moved closer and turned her so she was flat on her back again. “Your father’s never going to change. I don’t see why you let him get to you so hard. Look at me. That’s better. I want you to tell me what she said to you.”
“Nothing.”
“Jane, tell me.”
“Just something. That my mind was in the gutter. And then—”
“Calm down.”
“Nick, she actually took Rhodes out to get him a new shirt! Can you believe that? So he’ll look nice and neat when Mr. Gray does whatever he does to him. Rhodes hears the word ‘Paris,’ and he’s such a big baby he actually thinks he’ll be taken there, and he doesn’t begin to comprehend what’s going to happen to him. That she’s so greedy, so full of lust for money or power or I don’t know what that she’d sell her own son—”
“Jane, whatever happens, you can’t stop it. Maybe he’s a lamb being led to slaughter—”
“Oh, God.”
“—and maybe it’s his nature.”
“It’s not! Don’t say that! You don’t know him.”
“All right. Quiet, now. Quiet. I want you to sleep.”
In the middle of the night she wakened, her body stiffening so fast against his it felt like a convulsion. He held her close for nearly a half hour. Then, almost reflexively, he unbuttoned her blouse. He hadn’t sex in mind. He just wanted the freedom to soothe her by stroking her throat and shoulders. But Jane, who had always responded a little timidly, reacted to his first caresses with an aggressiveness that astounded him.
She tore off her blouse and bra and seized his hands, crushing them so hard over her breasts that at first he interpreted the small noises she made as pain. Just as her nipples grew long and hard with arousal, she—who had never in the past made any noise—began to moan and beg. “Do it, do it, Nick. Do it.” Moments later she untied her wraparound skirt and clamped her legs around his thigh. “Please. I want you to.” She rocked up and down on him. Through his slacks he could feel the burning wetness under the crotch of her nylon underpants. “Do it.” He pulled down her pants and slid his finger inside her until it reached the unimpeachable fact of her virginity. When he withdrew his finger he massaged her with the palm of his hand. Her cries became so loud he covered her mouth with his other hand, but she pulled it away. “Take off your clothes,” she pleaded. “I want to tonight, Nick. Please.”
She looked magnificent. Her dark hair had come loose from her ponytail, fanning out over the pillow, and as she tossed about, long, black, silky strands fell across her face and arms. Everything about her seemed awesome. Her breasts were so big they swelled out of his hands, her nipples so elongated they seemed to point at him, demanding more. Her wide hips flowered out from her waist, and her thighs were so large and powerful they belonged on a Greek statue.
But the best part was her skin. It was warm velvet. He couldn’t get enough of her, yet he knew he couldn’t have her.
Every few minutes she’d reach to open his shirt or unzip his pants, but he pushed her hands aside and finally held them down on either side of her. “No.” His face was resting on hers and he felt her tears. “Not tonight.”
“Please. I swear it’s all right. I don’t want to wait any more.”
“I don’t have protection.”
“I don’t care.”
“No. We can’t.” She twisted under him, and he realized he was nearly out of control. He let her hands go free and began running his over the velvet skin of her shoulders until he was almost clawing it. He encircled her with his arms and started making the thrusts of intercourse against her stomach. “Jane, I can’t help it,” he cried out. “I can’t.” At last, with a roar of relief, he came. He lay with her beneath him for a long time, and finally, as he rolled off onto the bed, he whispered, “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
He ran his hand over her chest and between her breasts. “Tomorrow,” he said. “I promise. I’ll make it good for you.”
They were married at four the following afternoon by a justice of the peace who charged them ten dollars above his usual fee, explaining that this was a courtroom of the state of Maryland, not a church, and while he’d be glad to perform a real old-fashioned ceremony straight from an old Book of Common Prayer a nice young couple had left behind years and years ago, it would be extra. He’d stretched his turtle head toward Nicholas and observed, “It’s all for a good cause, now, isn’t it? If it wasn’t for Maryland, you’d be up a crick without a paddle, bub, you being just twenty and every other state around here requiring you, the man, to be twenty-one with
out consent, and a blood test, and a two-to-four-day waiting period. Some call it the cooling-off period, but since the folks in Annapolis say you don’t have to wait, that is certainly good enough for yours truly. Now, you got the ring? Rings. Fine. You got them at Sherwoods, I see. That’s a real smart move, if you’ll pardon my saying so, because with jewelry from Sherwoods your pretty lady here can rest assured they’re of genuine real gold. I won’t tell you how some places around here sell you rings that go green before the honeymoon’s over. You ready? You want the whole ball of wax, is that right, with the ‘Dearly beloved’ and ‘forsaking all others’? Okay, then. Let’s tie the knot, and you folks can be on your merry way.”
13
…and good morning to you too. The hot talk here in California continues to be Jane Cobleigh’s valiant fight for survival. The latest word, unfortunately, is still critical, but we’ve had reports from ultra-reliable sources that Nicholas is flying over two of America’s top neurosurgeons, Dr. Ronald Fischetti of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and Dr. Martin Perschetz of Mt. Sinai in New York. They’ll consult with the English experts. Jane, our thoughts and prayers are with you. And in other news…
—Barbara K. Halper on ABC’s Good Morning America
Garlic from the hot dogs wafted through the air to join forces with the sweet reek of orange soda in the Howard Johnson’s on the New Jersey Turnpike. The assault effectively depressed their appetites. Still, they had ordered, mainly to get rid of the waitress. She was a tiny, pallid woman who looked too frail to be balancing trays, much less to have the sexual energy she’d suggested by asking Nicholas in a sultry starlet’s voice if he wanted his coffee creamed. She seemed to take Jane’s order only because she had to. Then she stuck her pencil between her teeth and walked off, her narrow hips swinging with slow ostentation.
“Do you want to follow her? Try one of her twenty-eight flavors?”
“Well, I hate to pass up anything like that, but I’m a married man.”
“Do you want to know the best thing about it? About being married, I mean?”
“Yes, since you have so much experience at it,” Nicholas said. He peered at his watch. “Twenty-six hours’ worth. That makes you an expert.”
“That’s right, so you know I won’t give you just a superficial analysis. It will be well-reasoned and very, very profound, just like I am. Not to mention insightful and sensitive and in the great humanistic tradition of—”
“Didn’t you ever hear that wives are supposed to be seen and not heard?”
“That’s children.”
“Oh. Too bad.”
“The best thing about being married is that I can be Jane Cobleigh for the rest of my life. No matter what happens. You can join the Foreign Legion or run off with a chorus cutie, but I’ll never have to be Jane Heissenhuber again.”
“And that’s why you married me? For my name?”
“Yes.”
“Not for my personality?”
“Are you kidding?”
“Not for my looks?” She shook her head. “Not for my body?”
“No. It’s so perfect it’s boring.”
“Tell me more. Come on. I know it’s not true, but I love to hear it. What do you like best? Stop blushing. Look at you. Beet red. You’re supposed to be a sophisticated married woman—”
“Your fried clams, sir,” their waitress purred to Nicholas. “Tuna,” she said to Jane and sashayed away.
They gazed at each other across the table. All conversation ceased. Neither could eat. Nicholas picked up a french fry, put it down, then moved a few clams around his plate. Jane left her sandwich untouched. She wiped the tops of the salt and pepper shakers with her napkin and sipped her ice water.
It was the last night they would spend together for two and a half months. In the morning, Nicholas would drop Jane at her summer job at the Westport Country Playhouse in Connecticut and then drive northwest to his, at the Guilderland Summer Theater, just outside Albany.
“Jane,” Nicholas said finally, “I don’t want to go without you.”
“You have to.”
“No. I’ve thought it through. I’ll go with you and get a job in Connecticut. It makes sense. My grandmother’s farm is only thirty miles from Westport, so if we have any free time we can drive over there and—”
“But there are no jobs for you at Westport.”
“Not in the Playhouse, but I can find something.”
“Nick, you need theater experience. You’ve had two semesters of college theater.”
“But when we were friends you said—”
“We’re not enemies now.”
“I mean, before we fell in love. While you were still rational and objective. You said Guilderland was third-rate, that they put on the worst of Broadway and brought in has-beens to play the leads.”
“But I also said that since you applied so late you were lucky to get it and that any experience was valuable and you should grab it. Remember?”
“I don’t want to be away from you.”
“Do you think I do? It’s only a month since you first kissed me.”
“Five weeks.”
“Nick, I love you.”
“I won’t go.”
“We were stupid to get married. We should have waited. You only did it because you wanted to comfort me because of my family, and now it’s going to be so much harder than it would have been. But you have to go. You can’t just walk into New York and say, ‘Well, I’ve been in four college productions and I drove a truck in Westport.’”
Nicholas stood, walked around the booth, and sat beside Jane. He took her left hand and twisted her wedding ring around and around. “I can’t do it without you. Listen to me. You coached me for every part I played. Ritter got the credit, but you know if my performances were any good it was because of you.”
“No. It was because of you. You’re the actor. No one in all my four years of Sock and Buskin ever got up on that stage and made people forget they were in a theater. You were real, Nick. You’re gifted. You’re beyond gifted.”
“But I need your judgment. I can’t go there alone. I’m new to all this. Really, it would be much better if I held off until the fall. Then we can get an apartment and I can start lessons and begin to make the rounds, and we can talk about things every night. I need your experience.”
“You need this summer’s work.”
“I won’t leave you.”
Jane looked at Nicholas. It was one of the moments when she saw him fresh, as if he’d just leaped down from the balcony onto the stage during the Hamlet rehearsal. At that moment, she saw in him what so many other women—from the girls in Sock and Buskin to the waitress—saw and were drawn to: the refined, almost icy good looks that did little to cool the conviction of his virility. It was a moment when she could still feel surprise that he was bothering to talk to her; that he had married her and needed her was unreal, disturbing, and funny enough to seem a cruel practical joke. “I’ll go with you,” she said.
“What? You can’t. You have a plum job. It’s what every actor out of college would give his eyeteeth for.”
“I want to be with you.”
“Absolutely not. You can’t throw Westport away.”
“Nick, I’m the one who can wait until the fall. Really, I’ve had four years of solid college experience. It will count for something.”
“No. That’s final.”
“Listen to me. You do need me. Just this summer. Just to show you that you can do it yourself. I’m not going to help you at all. I’m just going to be there so you can see I’m not necessary.”
“I won’t let you sacrifice Westport. It could be the beginning of important things for you.”
“But important things will come later, to both of us, when we’re together. Please, Nick, this is really and truly what I want. You were right. We can’t be apart.”
From a distance, Andre Shaw’s Guilderland Summer Theater appeared to be the perfect home for a summe
r stock company. It was a large barn, its dark red a beautiful, bucolic complement to the green foothills and blue sky. It looked innocent and honorable at the same time, a triumph of rural architecture, just the sort of place to draw vacationers and city dwellers hungry for authentic Americana: real true theater in a real true barn.
But, as the publicist pointed out to Jane, Guilderland had been built in 1957 not as a barn but as a theater. The red planks were aluminum siding; the curly-edged poster for the 1913 production of The Poor Little Rich Girl had been purchased in the same West Forty-eighth Street theatrical memorabilia shop as was the gown—displayed in a locked glass case—worn by Helen Mencken in 1933 in Mary of Scotland.
As for real theater, Carla Brandon, the publicist, confided to Jane, “Andre Shaw wouldn’t know a good actor if they shoved one up his ass…and they probably have. All he knows is money. That’s why the little grub hired you. He knew you were desperate and he could get you cheap, that no-good, ugly, oily piece of pig shit. My mouth isn’t too much for you, is it?”
“Oh, no,” Jane said. In her first ten-hour day working for Carla, she’d heard more bad language than in her entire life before, and if it hadn’t been for the slight headache she’d gotten from tensing her shoulders and neck for the next barrage, she would have been numb. After the fourth day, Nicholas would routinely have her sit in the one chair in their boardinghouse room. He’d rub her stiff neck while she analyzed Carla’s daily output, dividing her language into the categories of sexual, scatological, and other assorted bodily secretions. After the sixth day, Nicholas began to demand the Curse of the Day on their way home from the theater. “I can’t say it,” she’d objected the first time.