Almost Paradise

by Susan Isaacs

  Everyone liked her. Murray King never addressed her by her name but with Yiddish endearments. Murray submitted plays to her before he showed them to Nick, because he trusted Jane’s judgment more. “Nicky,” he said, “she’s got a nose. When everyone thinks it’s a flower and she says it’s a skunk, you know what? It’s black with a white stripe down its back.”

  His brother Tom had spent his first year as a Congregational minister in Syracuse mailing his sermons to Jane for editing.

  The actors he’d become friendly with would call Jane not only to discuss their roles but to chat. They loved her straightforwardness, thought her the epitome of normality.

  His friends from college sometimes blanched at the straight-forwardness the theater people adored. Instead, they thought her arty and daring. But scintillating.

  Even Charlie Harrison, whose women were invariably so exquisitely bred that a hearty laugh might induce serious internal bleeding, was drawn to Jane. On his visits from Boston, he’d deposit his date with Nicholas and spend hours in the kitchen talking to Jane, while Nicholas agonized trying to find something to say to Sarah, whose skin was so white it took on the blue hue of the veins beneath it, or to Katherine, whose clothes were so tatty and whose hair so stringy that Nicholas assumed she must come from one of the best families in Boston—which she did.

  Nicholas put his arm around Jane and drew her tight against him. Charlie knew what was good. She was lovely. She had a secret beauty only a few could discern. Her incredible pansy-blue eyes lit up her dark face. He kissed her and caressed her breasts. After nursing the babies, they had lost their resilience. They were heavier, sagging a little in his hands, and the areolas had darkened from perfect rose to a reddish brown. But that made them more appealing, more his. He didn’t want her to be too desirable. He didn’t want her head turned. He opened the top button on her shirt.

  “Hey!” Jane said, and pulled away from him. She jumped up and picked the grass off her skirt.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “A car. Car. Nick, you’re foggy. C-a-r. Hear it? It’s either the hardware man bringing the wallpaper steamer or your children, but in either case it is not appropriate for us to be seen in a major clinch on the front lawn.”

  “Jane.”

  “What?”

  “Do you love me?”

  “Are you still feeling insecure about the bridge of your nose?”

  “No. I just want to know.”

  “Of course I love you. How could I not love you?”

  “Why?”

  “Why do I love you? I don’t know. Whim, I guess. It’s either you or the hardware man. Don’t think I haven’t been tempted. I don’t dare tell you what goes on in the annex where they keep the lawnmowers. Lewdness and lust.”

  “Jane—”

  “Hey, doesn’t that sound like a law firm?” She squinted at the car coming up the gravel drive. “Oh, God! I don’t believe it! Nick, look who it is!”

  She finished the dishes at nine, but it took nearly an hour more to get the girls into bed. They were overstimulated by their Uncle Rhodes’s visit. Victoria refused to change into pajamas, insisting on wearing to bed the tiny yellow bikini Rhodes had brought her from the Riviera. It was little more than a few minuscule triangles held together with string. “Perfect for a six-year-old Connecticut child,” she’d remarked to her brother, and Rhodes had responded, “Are you kidding? You know I’m her only hope.” Elizabeth—usually cuddly and compliant—had jumped up and down on her bed, waving to Jane and repeating “Bon soir, ma douce” mimicking Rhodes’s accent and snide manner. Jane came close to marching out and slamming the door to her room.

  Rhodes grinned at her as she entered the parlor. He was lounging in an easy chair whose back, wings, and arms were so broad that merely to sit in it was to be embraced. The chair, a late eighteenth-century piece probably of Hepplewhite design, was covered in heavy silk printed with large, full-blooming flowers. Rhodes was a modern rebuke to its venerable solidity. He was so sleek, Jane thought, and so flawlessly beautiful he seemed created by machine. He hoisted the brandy snifter he was holding.

  “Cheers,” Jane said.

  “Now I know I’m back in the States,” Rhodes said. “‘Cheers.’ I suppose that’s the official invocation at your PTA lunches. A little Bloody Mary. A little celery with cream cheese.” He’d dressed for dinner like a European: white linen slacks, a tissue-thin white silk shirt—open nearly to the waist—white straw shoes. A long red scarf was knotted around his neck like a tie.

  “In ten minutes you could be standing on Route Seven hitching a ride into New York,” Jane said. “If anyone would have you.”

  “Everyone would have me, as you very well know. As opposed to you. How much longer do you think the toast of Broadway is going to drag you around?”

  Nicholas smiled. He was sprawled along the couch, looking hopelessly provincial in madras slacks and a blue golf shirt. But, Jane suspected, half the Frenchmen in the south of France doubtlessly looked hopelessly provincial beside her brother. She walked to the couch, lifted Nicholas’s legs, sat, then lowered them onto her lap. “Did I miss any good conversation?”

  “We were talking investments,” Nicholas said.

  “Southwestern real estate,” Rhodes said. “Here he is, a Tony nomination, a ‘People Are Talking About’ in Vogue, and the thing that makes him pant with delight is that they’re refinancing his shopping center and he has the thrilling choice of putting his money in an apartment complex in Houston or another shopping center in Tucson. Did you know you married a capitalist?”

  “I do now,” Jane said. Her brother swished the brandy in his glass. Rhodes was the only person who realized what had finally dawned on her: Nicholas was a businessman. He spent more time on the phone with his Uncle Caleb, a banker, his father, and his stockbroker than he did with his agent. Nicholas skimmed Variety, but he devoured Barron’s. The realization had stunned Jane: Nicholas was dedicated to carrying on his family’s tradition—being rich.

  “Jane isn’t interested in money. She thinks there’s someone like the tooth fairy who comes at night and puts money into checking accounts,” Nicholas said.

  “Oh, investments are my favorite subject in the world,” Rhodes said. “Especially real estate. So stimulating. Well, my favorite subject except for commodities futures. Now that’s thrilling. It’s all I hear about. Philip’s found himself a new commodities genius in Chicago and he only talks to him eight hours a day. And then for the next eight hours he wants to relive the entire conversation, so he can savor every golden syllable.”

  Jane massaged Nicholas’s bare feet. “At least Nick keeps it to himself,” she said. “Every once in a while he’ll burst out with something about oil depletion allowances, but most of the time he pretends to be the strong silent type.”

  “Do you always do that disgusting thing to his feet?” Rhodes demanded.

  “He loves it.”

  “It feels great,” Nicholas said.

  “You two make marriage seem so enticing. Oh, speaking of filthy lucre, Philip’s taken to financing movies. I asked him to put in a good word about Nick with this cross-eyed shoefetishist producer he’s backing. The one who made Blackwell and Close to Rome.”

  “Thank you,” Nicholas said.

  “How is he?” Jane asked. “Philip, not the shoe fetishist.”

  “Philip? Oh, wonderfully scintillating. Out of two weeks in Cap d’ Antibes, he spent thirteen days on the phone with Mr. Commodities and with some greaser in Berne who does things with precious metals. He’s paler now than when we left Cincinnati.”

  “Well, you look wonderful,” Jane said.

  “What did you expect? Quasimodo?”

  “I mean, you have a good tan.”

  “A great tan. Not dark like you, of course. But then, I don’t have your checkered racial pedigree.”

  “My mother’s mother was Spanish.”

  “That’s what they all say.”

  “Just stop
it, Rhodes.” She looked down at Nicholas. He was watching them as if he were observing two actors doing a first reading of an amusing play. His hair, which he’d grown long for the role he’d just finished, had fallen across his forehead and was hanging into his eyes. She leaned over and brushed it back for him.

  “You know,” Rhodes said to her, “you could look semi-decent if you put on a little makeup instead of going around playing country squirette. I mean, no one would call your complexion peaches and cream. Why don’t you leave the pristine face to the Anglo-Saxons?”

  “My mother’s father happened to have been English.”

  “Your mother’s father was probably a renegade Indian.”

  “How was the Hôtel du Cap?” Nicholas asked.

  “Fabulous. Almost worth working for Philip Gray for. But you’re trying to change the subject.”

  “I know,” Nicholas answered, “because if I don’t she’s going to get up and hit you.”

  “She won’t hit me. She adores me. I mean, really adores me. All these years she’s harbored a wild incestuous desire for me. Too bad my taste doesn’t run to Amazons in pastel-flowered shirtwaists. Cute. Do you wear little flowered hats to church?”

  “Hardly anyone wears hats to church any more, and if you’d come with us tomorrow—”

  “Are you going to put Vicky and Liz in little white gloves with little patent leather shoes and anklets?”

  “Cut it out, Rhodes.”

  “Did you ever go to church when you were a kid?” Nicholas asked.

  “No.” Rhodes shrugged his shoulders.

  Jane looked at her brother. “Do you remember them ever talking about anything having to do with religion? Did Dorothy ever teach you to say your prayers or anything?”

  “She’s Dorothy now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did Dorothy ever teach me to say my prayers? No. Nothing. Come to think of it, I don’t think I ever heard the word God in the house. Did you?”

  “No. I have a vague memory of going to church with Grandma Anna and Grandpa Carl and I know I was baptized, but I guess that was my mother’s influence.”

  “Do you go every Sunday?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you like it?”

  Jane looked at Nicholas. “It’s nice. He likes it a lot. He’s used to it, and Tom went to the seminary with our minister, so it would look funny if we didn’t go.”

  “Come on,” Nicholas said. “You like to go.”

  “Well, I don’t love it.”

  “No one loves church,” Nicholas said.

  “I don’t know. Some people do.”

  “It’s a place to go to think about things you don’t usually have time for,” Nicholas explained. “And it’s nice to see the same people week after week. You keep expecting a profound religious experience. An epiphany. The roof will open and light will pour down on you and suddenly you’ll comprehend the universe. It’s not like that.”

  “I’ll say!” Jane breathed. “Oh, come on. Don’t look so annoyed. If I really had a religious bent, I’d probably have become a Catholic. Or would have, when they had the mass in Latin. All that chanting and the candles and the genuflecting. I used to go to Catholic church with my roommate Amelia freshman year. Didn’t I ever tell you that? That’s religion. Going to confession. ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.’ Kneeling down and all that. It’s kind of neat.”

  “What would you confess to?” Nicholas demanded.

  Rhodes finished his brandy and set his glass on the rug. “What do you think she’s doing when you’re driving down to New York and going onstage and pouring your heart out to hundreds of patrons of the arts?” he demanded. “Do you think she’s reading or making another needlepoint pillow?”

  “That’s what she tells me.”

  “She’s probably out in the stable performing unnatural acts with your horse.”

  Nicholas laughed. “The horse is a mare.”

  “You don’t know your wife, do you?”

  “Rhodes, you’re really disgusting,” Jane said.

  “How are your parents?” Nicholas broke in.

  Rhodes reached out for the bottle of brandy on the table beside him and bent and retrieved his glass. He poured himself a large drink. “They’re okay.”

  Nicholas lifted his legs from Jane’s lap and sat up, facing Rhodes. “You know, I called them after Vicky was born and after Liz was born. They never called Jane in the hospital. They never indicated any interest in seeing the girls. They never sent a gift or a card. I don’t understand them. Jane’s their daughter. Vicky and Liz are their granddaughters. How do you think they make Jane feel?”

  “I don’t want to be put in the position of explaining them,” Rhodes said. “I can’t. My mother and Jane…well, the chemistry was always bad, but at least it’s somewhat understandable. She’s a stepmother, even though she was nowhere near as bad as Jane likes to think she was. Jane carries on like she held matches to the soles of her feet every morning before breakfast. She’s really blown everything out of proportion. My mother happened to have been pretty decent to her.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about!” Jane shouted. Nicholas and Rhodes sat back, nonplussed at her vehemence.

  “All right,” Nicholas said softly. “Let’s drop the subject.”

  “You drop the subject, damn it! You were so insulated with nannies and maids you hardly even saw your parents. Your parents were never home. You said—”

  “Jane, calm down.”

  “You calm down! Do you have any idea what it was like living in a house where one parent hated you and the other one was completely indifferent? Do you?”

  The room seemed to reject her emotion. It was old and secure and silent. The gleaming russet-brown wood paneling around the fireplace and the silvered brass dial on the cherrywood tall clock were rebukes to her raised voice. The reds, blues, and greens of the Persian rug were all in low tones.

  “Dad wasn’t indifferent,” Rhodes said. It was his usual voice, but more mellow: controlled, calm, soothing, like the parlor. “You shouldn’t minimize what he did. He was awful. I remember when he used to take you upstairs and hit—”

  “Shut up!”

  “It’s true. Jesus Christ, Jane, it was horrible. I used to have to stay downstairs, and I could hear you screaming and screaming. I’ll never ever forget it. I hated him so much.”

  “He hit you?” Nicholas asked. “You never said anything about it. Why didn’t you—”

  “It was nothing,” Jane snapped.

  “Are you crazy?” Rhodes demanded. Suddenly his voice was like hers: midwestern, loud, not cowed by the gentility of the New England parlor. “It must have been every damn week. For years. Until I was nine or ten. How the hell can you say it was nothing? How can you stand there and say terrible things about her after all he did to you? Don’t you have any memory? Come on, Jane! You know damn well how sick—”

  Jane stalked across the room, stood before her brother, and screamed at him. “Leave me alone, damn it! You leave me alone or you get out of this house. Do you hear me, Rhodes? Do you? Every time you come in you pick on me and pick on me and I’m sick of it!”

  Nicholas walked to her and put his arms around her. “Jane, come on. He wasn’t picking on you.”

  “I’m on your side,” Rhodes said. His voice wobbled. “Jane, you know what he was. This boring man with his opera records and his accounting magazines was a sadistic—”

  Jane’s hand whipped out and cracked her brother across the side of his face. “Stop it!” she howled. “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!”

  18

  WOMAN’S VOICE: Listen, we’re not…this isn’t going to be a discussion about—you know, like she’s in the hospital and is she or isn’t she going to have brain surgery and all that. What we’re going to try to do is—uh, sit around and try and figure out what the—I’m trying to think of the right word—what the essence of superstardom is. I mean, we wouldn’t have ever heard about her if
it wasn’t for him. And what is there about him that’s kept him a symbol of…what? Of ultimate WASP masculinity? It’s not as simple as that. And what is there about them as a couple that gets to us? And her? Last night, I was on line at the Regency. They’re showing Wyoming, which happens to be his only Western, and someone said, With him everyone either wants to hump him or have him for President.

  —S. W. Zises, WBAI Radio, New York

  Nearly everyone in California had asked him, “Do you play tennis?” And when he’d said yes, they’d responded, “Fabulous! We must get a game in.” After a few days, he realized it was the West Coast equivalent of “Let’s have lunch,” so at a time when running along public thoroughfares was rare enough to be considered mildly eccentric, after each day’s shooting he put on his tennis sneakers and ran through the streets of Los Angeles. He had to. He ached from the still life at the studio. Twice he’d been stopped by patrol cars and had to produce his hotel key to prove he was no psychopath or rapist on a scouting expedition. (The producer had arranged for him to stay in the Los Reyes, a small place filled with marginal moguls. His room smelled of floral Air-Wick and long-dead cigars.)

  He lived in a section of Los Angeles that had no name. His hotel was a cube of yellow with tiny terraces offering the only relief from the flat facade; the outsides of the terraces were also yellow, so they looked like pustules rising from the skin of the building. From his terrace he could see the stores across the street: a take-out sandwich shop, an optician, a dry cleaner, and a pharmacy. The last had a huge cutout of a busty blonde in a two-piece bathing suit on display, an advertisement for a suntan oil, but it had been in the window so long her skin had faded to a light green. A white cube, a one-story stucco office building on the next block, was the only other sign of commerce; the sign in the front suggested a podiatrist and an electrologist were busy within, but Nicholas thought only the most desperate bunion sufferers, the homeliest human chimpanzees, would walk through the smeary glass door of 5527 North Pacific Boulevard.