by Susan Isaacs
“Lester Green? Are you serious?”
“Are you kidding? Nicky, listen. He thinks you’ve got it, and he thinks maybe two, three actors in the whole city have got it. You’ll have to read for it because you’ve only done contemporary stuff, but if you don’t fall flat on your face over the iambic pentameter you’re in like Flynn. The only thing is it’s Off Broadway, so you’ll be making less than half what you’re making now.”
“I don’t see how I can.”
“Come on. So you don’t eat for a couple of months. I bet Jane would want you to.”
“Murray, if I spent the rest of my life doing Chekhov for the experience Jane would be happy. Part of her thinks that if you’re not living in a garret you can’t be a serious actor. Fortunately, I’m the breadwinner of the family.”
“You think I want you to do this because I think making money is crass or something? What’s ten percent of bupkes, of almost nothing? You think I’m an agent because of my love for the drama as an art form?”
“Yes.”
“You know me better than that, Nicky. I’m a businessman. And this is a good investment.”
Nicholas sipped his Bloody Mary. The ice had melted, and the drink tasted like tomato-flavored water. “I don’t know.”
“I do know. You’re going to spend a few months working with a guy who’s probably the most prestigious director in the country and, I guarantee you, Juliet and all the other people running around there are going to be first class. This is an important decision. I’m not saying it’s not. You say no to a guy like this because the money’s not so hot, and he’s not going to come around knocking on your door again. Something wrong with that drink?”
“It’s fine. I’m not in the mood.”
“Take some pretzels. They haven’t put Romeo and Juliet on in I don’t know how many years, so there’ll be an almost assured decent-length run and listen, the most important thing, critical attention like you wouldn’t believe.”
“What if I’m no good?”
“You sound like the rest of them now. What do you mean, if you’re no good? If you’re no good Lester Green will give you a good, swift kick in the behind and that’s it.”
“I mean, I may be all right, but what if I’m not really good?”
“If you’re not really good you’ll get stinky reviews and you’ll feel like hell for two weeks and then something else’ll turn up. But let me tell you something. This is important. You’ve made a very nice name for yourself in a very short time. Look at you, a kid, and you know what? You can spend the rest of your life as an actor. Theater, commercials, TV if you want it. You’ll probably always make a living. How many people can say that? How many kids your age? The point is, you’re thinking like a conservative businessman. You want to think like that, you should have made your family happy and been a lawyer, although the world needs another lawyer like it needs a hole in the head. Nicky, you’re an actor. An artist.”
“I am not an artist. Acting is a job, like being a lawyer or like being an agent.”
“Nicky, why are you trying to make it into a business? So people will take you seriously? People do take you seriously. I know you come from a family where—”
“I know talent—if you want to call it a gift, fine—talent has a lot to do with it, but talent is important in any business. My particular talent happens to be for acting. I’m a much better actor than I would be a lawyer. But you know better than almost anyone else that’s only the half of it. It’s hard work. It’s a job, Murray.”
“Fine. Let’s look at it as a job if that’ll make you happy. Don’t you want to get to be president of the company? You got a shot here at having people look at you like a leading man. Okay, this may not be your only chance. Something could happen tomorrow. Or in ten years. Maybe never.”
“You wear kid gloves, Murray.”
“If you can’t pay your rent, I’ll help you out.”
“Thanks. I’m sure if I decide to take it, we’ll get by.”
“If?”
“I want to think about it overnight.”
“You got a three-week cancellation clause in this contract, Nicky. And Lester Green isn’t going to take a cruise while you make up your mind.”
“It’s just overnight, Murray.”
“Think about how excited Jane’s going to be when she hears about it. You doing Shakespeare. I’d love to see her face when you tell her.”
“Can I call you tomorrow morning?”
“Why not? I’ll just tell Green your phone was out of order and I sent you a telegram but you weren’t home to get it because you were out looking at your bank account.”
“Murray…”
“Nicky…”
“All right. I’ll do it.”
The Cobleighs’ second child was conceived on March 13, 1964, three days after Jane’s twenty-fourth birthday.
Weeks before that night, Jane realized there would be no easing into Nicholas’s newest role. After two readings, he had his interpretation set; by the first rehearsal, he and his character began to meld.
He had barely started to kiss her, forcing his tongue into her mouth, when he changed his mind and tore at her nightgown. This was Nicholas’s Romeo. She couldn’t believe that she’d actually looked forward to it. She assumed he’d be so imbued with being a young Veronese nobleman that he’d make love gallantly, with tenderness, possibly whispering some of his lines that brought not Juliet to his mind, but her: “…her eyes in heaven/Would through the airy region stream so bright/That birds would sing and think it were not night.” Well, he always told her how beautiful her eyes were.
He yanked the nightgown over her head and left it to her to untangle her arms from the sleeves. He was too busy grabbing her breasts. His hot breathing misted her neck. A minute into the act and already close to losing control.
She should have known. Character was more important to him than language. He squeezed her nipples hard, knowing that would arouse her. Too hard, but she was aroused anyway. His Romeo was an oversexed teenager. Romantic, but led, as Nicholas had put it, by his dick instead of his head.
He’d begun talking dirty; when he and Jeff, the actor who played Mercutio, got together, everything they said was an innuendo or a disgusting double entendre. They’d spent an entire morning in the apartment tediously explaining the play’s sexual puns; “‘for I was come to the whole depth of my tale.’ You know what that means, don’t you?” Yes, she’d said. She knew. There was no way a person could get through four years of college English and not know. “It means,” Nicholas explained unnecessarily, “sticking it in deep, all the way.” Jeff, sprawled on the living room floor, puffed his pipe and smirked. She couldn’t believe Nicholas was talking to her like that in front of someone else. She told him that night, “You two behave like a couple of immature sixteen-year-olds,” and his laugh had a nasty edge, just like an immature sixteen-year-old. He lowered his head and started to suck on one breast, then switched to the other, then back and forth, greedy, easily distracted.
He climbed on top of her and started to kiss her again, juicy, heated kisses all over her face. She averted her head, putting her tongue in his ear to explain her action. She ran her hands over his behind and down the back of his thighs. That, at least, she wanted to do.
He had never been in such extraordinary shape. For two months, ever since he’d taken the part, he’d been working out for hours nearly every morning in the gym and going for fencing lessons three afternoons a week. His muscles were beautifully formed rocks: he’d become Michelangelo’s David zipped into skin. A few nights earlier, before he’d left for the theater, he’d been on his hands and knees playing horsie with Victoria. His upper arms bulged out of his undershirt sleeves. Before she could turn away to hide the flush that rose to her face, he saw her staring at him. A few minutes later, he put Victoria in her playpen and came into the kitchen and cornered her between the refrigerator and the wall.
But she hadn’t felt comfortable with him
in weeks. He offered all his sweetness to Juliet and returned to the apartment a swaggering, musclebound teenage hood.
Nicholas cried out, “I love you.” Maybe not a hood, but a wise guy, sneaking up as she made the bed and striking her behind with his fingertips as if she were one of the boys in the locker room at school.
When the play had opened the week before, the critics had marveled at the interpretation. The youth! The passion! The vigor! Romeo, Mercutio, and Benvolio leaped and wrestled like high-spirited adolescents! Romeo and Juliet were no simpering lovers: their romance was swollen with lust! At last! A Juliet without rouged cheeks! A Romeo in the first flush of magnificent manhood! When they took off each other’s shirts, he was as beautiful as she! Nicholas grabbed Jane’s hand and put it around his penis.
She hated the production. She’d gone to a rehearsal and watched the director—a squat, fat man with dried streaks of food on his shirtfront—studying Nicholas and the actress who played Juliet, practically slobbering as they undressed each other. She was sure he’d insisted on modern dress only because unlacing a Renaissance bodice would have taken too long. Because it was Off Broadway, the director had taken advantage of the freedom and had Nicholas caress the actress’s bare breasts. The opening night audience had almost gasped. Nicholas’s roommate, Charlie Harrison, in from Boston, who’d been sitting next to her, turned to see how she was reacting and she’d given him a reassuring nod. The play could have been written by a chimpanzee for all anyone cared about language; Nicholas—leaping, jumping, turning somersaults—threw away a third of his lines. There was no poetry, no beauty. She had been ashamed; it was an ugly production. The critics would destroy him. Near the end of the last scene, she’d tried to think of something comforting she could say. Her thoughts were drowned out by the noise of the audience getting to its feet for a standing ovation, by the screams of Bravo. The critics had been unstinting in their admiration. Nicholas put his hand over hers, squeezing it tighter around his penis.
His last character, in Key to the City, had been so gentle and courteous. He’d touched her as if it were a privilege. He’d always asked if she was ready.
Sometimes she couldn’t see the character. When he’d been preparing for Stupor, which had closed in two days, she’d been a little concerned; he was playing a psychopathic killer. But he’d been fine. Basic Nicholas. He would not believe her that he changed with his other roles. She’d given him examples of how he behaved, and he said it was her imagination. He sounded annoyed.
He put his hand between her legs and massaged her with two fingers. Her hips rose, presenting more of herself to him. He climbed between her legs and grasped his penis, using it to rub her with. She let out a high cry and sought his lips. He took her kiss as an invitation. He plunged right into her.
He thrust hard and deep: up to Mercutio’s standards. Faster and faster, like a boy who had never had it before and was desperate not to lose his chance. Harder still, banging against her, until a minute later, he signaled the end with a yell so loud she covered his mouth with hers to stifle the sound. His entire body went rigid. Then he collapsed on top of her with a deep sigh. He drew out his penis, kissed her cheek, and moved to his side of the bed where, almost immediately, he fell asleep.
Often she drifted off easily. But this time she was still too heated up. Her breasts remained sensitive and engorged, as if he’d just stopped fondling them for a second. It had happened too fast. When he took forever, as he had with Last Will and Testament, she’d tire, and it would be easy to unwind. She turned onto her stomach and rubbed herself against the bed; the stimulation was unconscious and unsatisfactory.
She had not had an orgasm, not that night or any other night in their nearly three years of marriage. Sometimes she thought it was about to happen. Sometimes she thought the women who claimed they had them were liars. She wanted one. Sometimes she told Nicholas she’d had one: it was wonderful, fabulous; she gave him rave reviews. Four or five times a week she waited, always hoping that particular time would be the one. But she never could. Not even Romeo could make her come.
17
Eyes closed in deep coma…wires from pressure monitor imbedded in skull…Jane Cobleigh in hospital today.
—Front page photo caption, The Standard
Maybe it had something to do with Sally’s sudden death. One minute the person you love most is calling, “Have a good nap! Happy dreams!” and then you wake up and she is gone forever. Whatever the reason, Jane was no good at goodbyes.
Each morning she’d be the last mother left at the iron fence, waving long after Victoria was lost in the river of blue tartan flowing through the front door of the Burnham-Arnold School.
With Elizabeth, it was Nicholas and the babysitter who propelled Jane out of the apartment when the child’s bottom lip quivered and she began the refrain every three-and-a-half-year-old wails: “Mommy, Mommy, please, Mommy, don’t go.” Halfway through a party, Jane could not rid herself of the picture of Elizabeth heartlessly abandoned in her crib, her back heaving with sobs, although the babysitter and Victoria swore that once she heard the elevator door close, forgetfulness could be bought for a cookie.
Saying goodbye to Nicholas was even worse. As he began rehearsals for each new play, Jane began steeling herself for his out-of-town tryouts by making elaborate plans for her time. She did not allow herself a moment to miss him, because the moments were too painful. Her imagination was too rich for leisure. She saw train derailments, car crashes, falling scenery. Going meant he might never return.
So, hating leavetaking, it was understandable when Maisie Tuttle died of heart failure in early February 1968 that Jane took that final goodbye very hard. While she had never gotten far enough beyond Maisie’s famous charm to get really close to her, the older woman’s acceptance had made her feel she’d been tapped for the best club.
“Nicholas,” Maisie would say, “you know you’ve got the better part of the bargain. You don’t really deserve Jane.” Nicholas would smile and say he knew he didn’t, but Maisie would interrupt. “No, no. You say you know, but you’ve been spoiled by everyone fussing over you all your life. All those children looking up to their big brother and all those simpering girls who called you Nicky. Jane doesn’t call you Nicky. Do you, Jane?” Not any more, Jane remarked. “Do you hear that, Nicholas? Intelligent. Has a lovely voice, and her looks will outlast yours. When you’re forty and pasty—all fair men get pasty, you know—she’ll just be coming into her beauty. Men will fall at her feet, whimpering for her favors, so you’d better be good to her now if you know what’s good for you later.”
Since 1963, when Maisie’s cataracts had made it impossible for her to see clearly, Jane had gone to her house twice a week to read to her. They shared the same favorite novels, and for nearly five years Jane had alternated Pride and Prejudice with Jane Eyre; they’d decided if they ever were bored they would begin Anna Karenina, but they never were bored.
Maisie tutored her. It was Maisie who finally put her at ease with Nicholas’s friends from school, Maisie who dictated dinner invitations to their wives, planned menus, told her what to wear and what to say. “Say anything you please. Do you hear me, Jane? The worst that can happen is that they won’t have anything to do with you again. That is also the best that can happen, but I suppose you can’t say that to Nicholas. For heaven’s sake don’t try to be like those girls! That would be like taking a vow: ‘I will be dull for the rest of my life.’ I am not being fair. One or two of them may surprise you and be perfectly nice. But if Nicholas had wanted someone dull, he would have married that excessively pleasant girl—what was her name? Men like ours marry women like ourselves for a reason.”
It was Maisie who dissuaded Jane from cutting her waist-length hair. “Short hair is for boys, my dear. Besides, a man wants to see a woman take down her hair.”
It was Maisie who persuaded Jane to use the farm for their vacations. “Don’t worry about the furniture. Antique simply means old. It’s mostly
good, sturdy Connecticut maple and white pine. It’s lasted a hundred and fifty years or more, and it will survive Elizabeth. Please. I know what good times you and Nicholas have there.”
So it was not surprising that, two weeks after the funeral, Nicholas came home late one afternoon after a long lunch with two of his uncles, Winifred’s brothers, and found Jane whipping egg whites and crying. He took a dish-towel that was draped over the handle of the refrigerator and wiped her eyes. “Still miss her?”
“Yes,” Jane said. “She was like my own grandmother.” She put the bowl and wire whip on the counter.
“I know.”
“Better. My grandmother wasn’t very nice. When she died I found a pornographic picture in a hatbox on top of her closet.”
“Did you save it?”
“No. Oh, Nick. I miss reading to her. I miss her telling me what the right thing is. When I was getting ready for the funeral, I kept thinking, she’s the only one who could tell me black or navy and put me at ease.” Nicholas put his arms around her and she put hers around him. “You’re going to be a comfort to me in my old age,” Jane said into his ear.
“Am I a comfort now?”
“Yes.” They pulled apart suddenly when they heard giggling. Victoria and Elizabeth were standing in the kitchen door watching them. “All right, girls,” Jane said. “Um, how were your uncles? Are they taking it well?”
“They’re fine. The will’s been probated.”
Jane picked up the bowl of half-beaten egg whites. In Nicholas’s family, references to money were always oblique. She compromised. “Did they discuss it at all?”
“Yes. That’s why they asked me to lunch.”
“Oh.” She took the whisk and whipped the egg whites until her shoulder grew stiff. Nicholas watched her. “Is this something you as a Tuttle Cobleigh don’t discuss with me as a Heissenhuber Cobleigh?” she asked.