by Susan Isaacs
“A surprise.”
“Probably fresh fruit with brown mush spots.”
“It’s not. It’s something very special, and that’s the last thing I have to say until I see two empty plates.”
“Do you want us to eat the bones?”
“Quiet! No more talking.”
The girls picked up their forks. Jane watched them. In a way it was too bad. Between Nicholas and Rhodes, the potential for beauty was obviously swimming around in the genetic pool in both families, but Victoria and Elizabeth were merely ordinary, nice-looking girls.
Victoria’s brown hair was so straight that, when worn short, it could only be styled in a Dutch-boy cut. With her hooded blue eyes and pale, solemn face, Victoria did look the type who would stick her finger in a dike and keep it there, saving humanity while all the other six-year-old girls were off giggling and skating. She ate mechanically, piercing bits of food and bringing them to her mouth while keeping her eyes on her sister’s progress. Suddenly she cleared her throat.
“What is it?” Jane asked.
“Liz is doing it again.”
“Don’t be a tattletale.”
“I’m not. I’m just telling you where to look.”
Elizabeth, nearly four, was dexterous enough with her fork to flip any vegetable onto the floor without calling attention to her action. The wood-planked floor around her chair was dotted with broccoli flowerets.
“Liz,” Jane said, “eat your vegetables. Come on. I don’t want to see any more broccoli on the floor. Do you hear me?”
“They fell.”
Jane exhaled slowly. “Make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
“I’ll try, but sometimes—”
“Elizabeth!” Elizabeth looked like Victoria with a permanent. Her hair was a frizzy aureole. On damp days, it retracted into tight corkscrew curls. Her eyes were rounder than her sister’s, so round that if she’d been blond, she’d have been a ringer for the flapper who squeaked, “Boop, boop, be-doop.” But she didn’t squeak. Her voice was low and slightly husky like Nicholas’s, and adults were always telling her to speak up.
“They didn’t fall, Liz,” Victoria suddenly interjected. “You did that thing with your fork.”
“No I didn’t.”
“Yes you did. You think broccoli can fall off a plate? A plate goes up on the end, stupid baby.”
“Stupid dummy!”
“Stupid dork doody-head!”
“Girls!”
“Stupid—”
“Okay. That’s it. I was going to take you to Winkie’s for an ice-cream cone, but—”
“Please, Mommy.”
“Mommy, we’ll be good.”
“We’ll apologize. Sorry, Liz. Now you say it to me.”
“Sorry, Vicky.”
“Can we go?”
The October night’s chill was cutting enough to remind her of the nearness of winter. Jane turned on the heat in the station wagon. A spring and summer’s worth of stale air blew into her face. “Warm enough?” she asked. The girls, seat-belted behind her, silent in fear of jeopardizing their ice-cream cones, nodded in the rearview mirror.
A minute later, Jane lowered the heater. She thought, he’ll be home in a week. He’s been away for three weeks at a time for out-of-town tryouts. She’d managed. But this wasn’t New Haven or Philadelphia. This was California. So far away that when he called her it was warm and bright—I’m sitting out on the little terrace; just came back from a quick dip in the pool—and in Connecticut it was a starless night. A north wind had replaced the Indian summer breeze; your Irish fisherman’s sweater is on permanent loan to the Jane Cobleigh collection. The air was still pungent from the day’s burnt leaves from the farm across the road.
She could manage. She was managing. Just that morning there were glugging noises in the pipes and she’d phoned and they came and pumped out the septic tank. She’d kept up with his family. She’d entertained Tom and his wife, Nan—Miss Christian Forbearance—for a weekend; she’d driven to New York to shop for flower-girl dresses with her mother-in-law and Olivia for a cousin’s wedding; she’d fought with Abby until she’d won, convincing Abby that being maid of honor for her sister did not necessarily mean condoning organized religion or accepting monogamy as a viable life-style; she’d even talked with her father-in-law each week at his office. (Twice when she’d called his apartment, women had answered. One of them sounded so young that, had she not known better, she would have thought he was babysitting.)
Nicholas could do this again, she told herself. If the movie is good—although she didn’t think it was—he might accept another role. He might be away for three or four months in some foreign country. Not likely. But he got itchy if he didn’t have a new play lined up long before the old one closed. What if he had to go to Europe, to Africa? Her life was strictly a holding action. She kept the children and the house, read, cooked, sewed, but primarily waited for Nicholas to come home.
They ate their cones at a tiny round marble table at Winkie’s. The ice-cream parlor had been on Main Street in the little town of Farcroft for generations. It was jammed after Friday and Saturday night movies, after Fourth of July fireworks, after the annual school band concert. In Farcroft and the surrounding countryside, it was the parents’ ultimate weapon: “You can—or cannot—go to Winkie’s” gave them power beyond whatever natural authority they wielded. Jane hated the place. The owner sat near the door hunched over the old brass cash register, a scrawny old Connecticut Yankee glaring at her through watery slit-eyes each time she walked in, as if she had designs on his rolls of pennies. And the smell of sour milk was as old as the stained glass and etched mirrors, milk someone must have spilled making butter pecan in 1904.
“Let’s go,” she said.
“We’re not finished.”
“I want to be home in time for Daddy’s call.”
“Mommy—”
“You can finish in the car.”
“What’s the matter, Mommy?”
“Nothing.”
There was no moon. The sky hung low. She drove south from Farcroft, then east toward the farm. Her headlights were the only light, although now and then they’d reflect the bright dots of some rodent’s eyes on the side of the road. She drove faster. She hated the walk from the garage to the house. It wasn’t a real garage. It was an old toolshed in the back, just wide enough for the station wagon, and she’d have to inch along, her back against the wall, her stomach grazing the handle of the door as she got out. She was sure she’d turned the outside light on. She thought she had. Once she’d forgotten, and it wasn’t until her ankle turned in the soft dirt of the herb garden that she realized she’d lost her bearings and had walked away from the house instead of toward it.
The darkness was terrible in the country. She kept candles in every room. She was in dread of a power failure. Being alone in a black house. Not being able to see the walls.
“Mommy, are you okay?”
“Yes.”
She’d been out that afternoon bringing in the last of the thyme and basil. She should have worn a jacket. Her neck ached. She pressed the metal knob with her foot to check that her bright lights were on. It seemed too dark. They had been on bright. Her throat hurt. Maybe one of the children had brought home strep. Her throat seemed to be closing up. She didn’t feel well at all.
Rounding a curve, the car skidded slightly on a sheet of wet leaves, then corrected itself. She clung to the wheel, eased the pressure on the accelerator until they were barely moving.
“Mommy?”
She hissed them quiet, leaning forward, staring into the darkness the better to see the road. She started to get hot. The odor of wet wool permeated the car. She tugged at the choking turtleneck collar. Her neck was burning. She had a fever. She didn’t know what to do. Should she go home? What if she needed help during the night? Should she drive to a neighbor’s? Her throat was closing up. So tight.
Suddenly she was dizzy. Oh, God, she thought, I’m having an attack. L
ike that day in Central Park. She was dizzy and her heart was pounding as it had that time, pounding because her throat was closing and she couldn’t get enough oxygen, trying to get the blood to her brain so she wouldn’t faint. The air passage was needle-thin now, and she was forced to swallow huge amounts of air just to keep alive. She had to stop the car, but giant trees crowded together on the edge of the road, fencing her in. She had to pull over before they went crashing into one of them. Oh, God, her heart was going too fast.
It would give out. She would die and the two girls would be left in the car with her body, screaming sick, wild shrieks, terrified of the blackness. Shaking her harder and harder—Mommy!—until she fell forward against the wheel, setting the horn off in an endless helpless honk. But then Victoria, dragging the clinging Elizabeth out finally, not seeing the car coming the other way—
“Mommy! Mommy! You passed our turn.”
Somehow she backed up and got the car up the long gravel drive. She stopped in front of the house.
“Aren’t you going into the garage?”
“Mommy?”
Her whole left side was battered by the crazy booming of her heart: her neck, her chest, under her arm. She leaned over and opened the car door with her right hand and nearly fell onto the ground. She stumbled to the house, leaving Victoria to unlatch Elizabeth’s seat belt and take her inside. “I feel a little sick,” she whispered.
She leaned against the wall of the long hall of the house. She’d left the light on. The glow from the brass chandelier filled the hall and staircase with yellow warmth.
“Mommy?”
“Mommy?”
The door to the parlor was open, and the wood paneling around the fireplace glowed from the captured light of the hall.
Victoria came up beside her and tapped her arm. “Mommy? Mommy, listen. Should I dial O?” Jane looked down at her. For the first time, she saw the girl’s brown hair was giving off glints of red. “Should I?”
“No. No, I feel better now.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Thank you. All better now.”
19
MAN’S VOICE…although his agent, Murray King, said, and I quote: “I don’t care what anyone at the studio said, they can stand on their heads and spit wooden nickels but Nicholas Cobleigh is not going back to the set of William the Conqueror until he knows what’s what with his wife and that’s that.” End quote. I don’t think you can get a more definitive statement than that. This is Bob Morvillo, and now back to Today in New York.
—NBC Today Show
“Listen, Nicky,” Murray King said. “It’s been—what?—eight, nine months since you finished the movie, and for almost seven months you’ve been sitting right on top of a Broadway hit. You hardly had time to unpack. Eight shows a week and no end in sight. Do I have to count the eyeteeth other actors would give to be in your shoes? I know you don’t want to hear this, but you should get down on your hands and knees and thank God. This play is a blessing…. Where’d you learn to eat with chopsticks like that?”
“Jane. She’s taken up Chinese cooking.”
“It’s my second favorite after Italian. It could possibly be my first, except they don’t have desserts. You know? You can’t call a Kumquat dessert. So it’s vanilla, chocolate, or pistachio and it’s not even real pistachio any more. They took out the nuts and put in cherries.”
They were seated at a table in a fashionable midtown restaurant, its decor more Bauhaus than Chinese. The light was so dim, reflecting off smoky mirrors, that all the food appeared to be different tones of beige. The place had become a hangout for publishing and theater people; the food wasn’t bad and they liked the sophisticated thrill—after their pupils dilated sufficiently to see, which might take up to a half hour—of discovering whether anyone at the next table had greater celebrity than they.
“Why is A Second Opinion a blessing?”
“Oh, that.”
“Murray, I can’t tell you how much I dislike it. I’m tired of running around in a towel. Half the time I enter some jerk whistles. And I’m tired of spouting ‘But I thought…didn’t you say you loved me, Lois?’ and having the audience scream with laughter. It’s a dopey line.”
“Nicky—”
“It’s a dopey play.”
“It’s a hit.”
“That doesn’t make it less dopey.”
“Yes it does. Wait. Listen to me, Nicky.” Murray took his glasses off and put them beside his water goblet. He massaged the indentations from where the nosepiece had rested with his thumb and index finger. At the beginning, Nicholas had felt sorry for Murray. He’d never met a person who suffered so much from eyeglasses: the bridge of Murray’s nose had two permanent red ovals; the bony area behind his ears required frequent rubbing; the eyes themselves often had to be shielded by the palms of Murray’s hands. But observing Murray as often and as closely as he had, Nicholas came to recognize the glasses for what they were: a prop. He waited for Murray to complete his eyeglass ritual.
“Nicky,” he said at last, “I’d be a liar if I told you this was a solid gold piece of theater. It’s not. It’s two steps above crap, but—I say but—everybody likes it. It’s light, like a forty-watt bulb. No big deal, but everybody laughs, ha-ha, and everybody goes home happy and—the big and—you’re a comedy star. A big, handsome guy who loses his pants and who gets walked all over by girls because he’s got such a soft heart. You’ve got everybody rooting for you, and when you go to the lady psychiatrist—”
“But it’s so obvious what will happen.”
“That’s beside the point. A Second Opinion is beside the point. The point is that right now people are starting to talk about what a sensation you are in the movie, and they’re going to start screenings in a couple of months.”
“But if I get out of A Second Opinion now I can be opening in Lear when the movie comes out.”
“That’s just what I don’t want.”
Nicholas sat back. “Why?” He only realized he was drumming his fingers on the table when he noticed Murray staring at his hand.
“You got a train to catch, Nicky?”
“Sorry.”
“You open in Lear and what happens? If everything goes perfectly, and there’s a two percent chance it will, you’ll open mid-September, right around when the movie does, and get great notices. But as what? You’re not playing Lear. You’re playing Edmund.”
“It’s a good role.”
“For someone else. Ask yourself: Who’s Edmund? Who’s Edmund, Nicky? I’ll tell you. Edmund’s another prick. This time a Shakespearean prick, but a rose by any other name…Listen to me. You play a prick in the movie—they’re changing the title again, by the way—and you’ve played enough pricks on stage so that if I didn’t know you, I’d wonder whether you’re really such a sweet guy. So here he is, Nicholas Cobleigh, making a big—underline big—impression in whatever the name of the movie is, playing a Triple A prick, and here he is again in Lear playing the same thing in pantyhose. You get my drift? You want them to think you’re Johnny One Note, fine. But you know and I know that your range is very broad, and I think you’d be a dope to paint yourself into some little corner.”
“But what if the movie flops?”
“It’ll flop. It’s not a thing that hasn’t happened before. All I know is that the word on you is sensational. I could put in another line just to take California calls from the word-of-mouth on you—speaking of which, you need somebody out there.”
“No, I don’t.”
“I’m a New York theatrical agent, Nicky. I can’t—”
“Murray—”
“I can’t do you justice. Come on. It’s not like you to get sentimental over a business deal. Listen, I’ve more than made my money on you. I hope I’ll continue to represent you for another hundred and twenty years in New York, but—”
“We can discuss it some other time, Murray.”
Nicholas drank his tea. It was lukewarm and sour. Murray had
been after him to get a movie agent, and he’d found one excuse after another not to: he probably wouldn’t make another movie for a few years, Murray had negotiated a perfectly satisfactory contract for this movie, he’d met a few agents in Los Angeles and hadn’t liked any of them. Murray brought up the subject frequently, and each time he did Nicholas found himself getting more and more annoyed. “You’re hurt,” Jane had said when he’d tried to talk to her about it. “You really see him as a father figure and you feel rejected.” That was right after a visit from her college roommate, Amelia, the world’s tritest psychologist. Before walking out of the room, he’d told Jane she’d be better off if she’d stop coming up with such know-it-all friends like Amelia in her search for a mother figure. They hadn’t made up until bedtime that night.
“Listen, you get ninety percent, I get ten. I’m just saying you can get a bigger ninety with someone who operates out there. Nicky, don’t look at me like I’m saying something terrible. You are. You’re giving me one of your prick looks.”
“I’m not giving you a prick look.”
“All right. You want to drop it, we’ll drop it. Now, are you with me on the Lear business? My advice—for which you’re giving me ten percent of your gross income, as you well know—is that you should stay in A Second Opinion because it’s money in the bank, and once the movie comes out in September everyone will see you being funny and vulnerable and running around half naked with your muscles bulging out and they’ll say, ‘Hoo-ha! Leading man.’ Okay? You with me, Nicky?”
“I’m with you, Murray.”
“You want to go someplace else for dessert?”
Cecily Van Doorn was Jane’s first real friend in Connecticut, but it had been a long time since she had been to Cecily’s house. Two or three months, Jane thought. The huge floor pillows were new. Covered with the same chintz as the couch and two of the chairs, they looked like scattered beds. The shiny white background of the fabric looked crisp and friendly enough, but the flowers and stems of the design curved sensuously around each other, defiantly tropical in such a temperate room.