The only answer Kay could come up with was that a show was not a show until it had an audience. Its worth could not be measured prior to that because it did not yet exist. A show was not just a performance; it was more like a collective dream, a collaboration between spectators’ minds, singers’ voices, and writers’ imaginations.
The prebooked eleven-day stint sped by like a snail in mud. Fifteen performances and hardly a notice in the papers. Aleck Woollcott promised Kay he would refrain from reviewing Say When, out of mercy. Kay and Jimmy reconciled themselves to the reality that no hit would emerge. Kay sighed through the last performance. And then it was over.
Just another show, she told herself as she exited the Morosco Theatre. Another group of theatergoers spilling onto the sidewalk. Jimmy would survive. So would she.
She thought too about the writer, the actors, the dancers, the comedians, and the director, all praying for that big break. So many careers, so many lives. Where would they all go? How many would give up now, or try again—and yet again—before throwing in the towel? Who would sink into depression, and who would discover a way out? Who would merely survive, and who would find redemption?
* * *
When Kay’s mother died of breast cancer, in the summer of 1928, she and Jimmy wanted to cover the costs of the burial but learned that Ellen had prepaid the service and burial and left a set of instructions. Even in death, Ellen preserved her pride and solicitude. On a balmy July morning the congregation of St. Ignatius sang hymns composed by Gertrude Swift and the organist played Sam Swift’s meticulous arrangements. A handful of Ellen’s friends—fellow British expats, former clients, members of her Bible study group—rode in horse-drawn carriages up to the burial grounds, where Father Ganter sermonized not about the departed congregant, his friend, or her exemplary life but about the faith they shared and the salvation they expected. “Because Jesus was raised from the dead,” he reminded his parishioners, “we too shall be raised.”
His words touched Kay. She remembered that faith. The recollection shrouded her like a shadow, indistinct yet as somber as the suits and dresses that surrounded her. The pallbearers lowered Ellen’s coffin into the pit, and grief overcame Kay. Her shoulders shaking, she buried her face in her husband’s lapel. Emotions seemed to flow from beyond her conscious mind, through her body, as if her ancestors were using her to express their sorrow. Kay knew they dwelled within her, memories of memories.
Ellen’s had been a small life, fashioned of modest ambitions and unassailable loyalties. In many ways, Kay had unconsciously designed her personality in opposition to her mother’s. Still, Ellen’s devotion had been her foundation.
She could not cease sobbing until Father Ganter tapped her shoulder and handed her a shovel full of dirt. She wiped her tears and, as she poured the final heap onto the mound, felt she was burying not only her mother’s life but her own life up to that point.
She shoved the spade into the soil and, looking up, noticed a dirigible above the horizon, hundreds of feet long, glistening in the sky, its passenger gondola suspended beneath. She thought of Ellen’s soul hovering above them, silent and watchful. Other mourners’ eyes followed hers. A cloud swallowed the airship.
The reception took place at Ellen’s Upper West Side apartment, where Kay and Jimmy had been married ten years earlier. As the other mourners nibbled on whitefish and sipped chilled wine, Kay sensed Father Ganter’s eyes on her. She approached him at the back of the room.
“We’ve all heard about your advantageous marriage and modern lifestyle,” he told her, glancing through the guests toward James, who was talking quietly with a group of Kay’s distant relatives. “We’re proud of you, Katharine. We hope you found what you were seeking.”
Perhaps it was the emotion of the moment. Perhaps it had something to do with being back in this apartment, among family acquaintances. Perhaps she simply needed someone to talk to. Whatever the reason, Kay spoke more openly to Father Ganter than she might have expected. “I’m not sure I have found what I was seeking, Father.”
Father Ganter frowned. “Is everything not working out as expected between you and James P. Warburg? By all accounts he’s a remarkable man.”
“Yes, he is,” said Kay. “And I do love him. It’s just that… I’m no longer certain what that means.”
Father Ganter nodded gravely. “It’s not just a sentiment, after all, is it. It’s a blending of families. Of histories. The two lineages have to be compatible.”
“You’re referring to Jimmy’s religion?” asked Kay.
He nodded. “A religion is not a hat you can take off and put on at leisure. A religion is a moral universe. What does your husband believe about the destiny of man, or our purpose in history?”
She shook her head. She had no idea what Jimmy thought about these matters.
“Does the man believe in anything?”
“He believes in reason,” said Kay. “He took a course or two at Harvard. Descartes, Kant, the Enlightenment. Also Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. I can’t argue with him. I never read any of that. I was too busy practicing arpeggios.”
Father Ganter nodded. “One thing about reason, though: you can argue anything. Some use reason to support carnal lust. Or to justify killing unwanted babies. Lord have mercy. And then, some use reason to bolster the Golden Rule that our Lord gifted us. But morality does not flow from reason, and the Golden Rule needs no support. Kant was a genius but he was wrong about that. Dead wrong.”
Kay felt there might be truth in the reverend’s words but distrusted this feeling. She had grown up in his church and been conditioned in it. Of course her gut would agree with him. This observation, however, did not lead her closer to solving her problems. “Jimmy’s a good man,” she said.
“There’s a map for where you’re standing,” said Father Ganter. “You just can’t read the signs.” He smiled sadly. “Maybe someday.”
“Or maybe I can read them but something in me is resisting.”
“Don’t blame yourself,” he advised her. “The problem isn’t you. It’s our culture of self-gratification. All the rest—our confusion, our sense of unfulfillment, even the momentary exhilaration of our stock market profiteers—it all flows from there.”
Kay smiled.
“Listen to your heart,” Father Ganter advised her, placing a hand on her shoulder. “And do keep in mind, no matter what happens, you have a home. God is eager to forgive, if only you ask, Katharine.”
She covered his hand with hers, on her shoulder. “Thank you, Father.”
“Your mother has moved on,” he said. “I myself will be retiring. But our mother church will always be here.”
His smile struck Kay as deficient, the pious simper of the professional cleric who earned his bread by displaying bought-and-paid-for compassion. But later, as she and Jimmy rode home, Kay reflected on Father Ganter’s words. The church is your home. Despite the degradation of her marriage, despite the cynicism born of frustrated hopes, she appreciated his effort. Even if she sensed that destiny would not lead her back to St. Ignatius but somewhere else entirely.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Jimmy had read Freud’s international bestseller, The Interpretation of Dreams. The troubles in his marriage, it seemed, reflected unresolved conflicts within himself and his wife. He had no desire to shirk from self-examination. On the most obvious level, his desire for sexual freedom and his expectation of a serene domestic life now seemed at odds with each other, even if upper-class Europeans including his forebears had pulled off this high-wire act for centuries. Although he blamed Kay for taking things too far and for her—and George’s—lack of discretion, he had taken things too far himself on more than one occasion. He had flailed in love with two or three helpless paramours. Later, when the sentiments had evaporated and he had found himself stranded on emotional dry land, he had asked himself how in the name of everything he held dear he could have been drawn to such shallow, ordinary women.
None of them c
ompared with Kay. What had he seen in those women that appealed to him, apart from their looks? Kay was on target when she defined a romantic as a man in search of women to idealize him.
Psychoanalysis offered a method to examine the wheelwork of his psyche, perhaps to tune it up and repair its broken cogs. He sought the most renowned practitioner and settled on a short Upper East Side Ukrainian doctor, Gregory Zilboorg.
At first Jimmy treated his sessions with Doctor Zilboorg like a secret diplomatic mission or an Austrian love affair, refusing to divulge their nature or content. Then one evening, returning home after what he described as a brutal double session, he told Kay that Doctor Zilboorg wished to speak with her.
Kay was lying on the floor, working on a coloring book with their middle daughter, Andrea. Kay derived no pleasure from coloring books, nor did she understand how anyone could. But Andrea loved them and Kay was doing her best to take pleasure in the exercise. She looked up. “Doctor Zilboorg? Why?”
“Moiré interference,” said Jimmy. “Between our psyches.”
“Moiré interference?”
“When two expanding circles of waves collide,” explained Jimmy, “creating offshoot wavelets that roll away in many directions.”
“Right,” said Kay. “I’ll keep it in mind.” It sounded poetic enough, but trivial. What mattered now was that George was in Paris, and that Kay had no idea when he would be returning. That would be decided by Madame Nadia Boulanger, the famed French teacher of illustrious American composers including Aaron Copland and Virgil Thomson. The woman who was providing George with the instruction in harmony and counterpoint that Kay had offered to provide…
“Mommy,” said Andrea, frustrated with the effort to color on her own. She had not yet mastered the art of shading within lines.
A metaphor for my own issues, thought Kay as she resumed helping her daughter.
“Please, Kay.” Jimmy sat down. “Give Zilboorg a try.”
Again, Kay looked up. “I just wonder how this is going to change you. Suppose Doctor Zilboorg does solve the puzzle of your neurosis. What kind of man will you become? The one I married, or some stranger?”
“I don’t know that I ever was the man you married.”
That statement gave her pause.
“Mommy.” Andrea pulled on her sleeve.
Kay helped her daughter shade the drawing of Pegasus. “We all change, I guess,” she said to Jimmy. “In which case, what does commitment even mean?”
Jimmy looked at his watch. “Andrea, it’s time to get ready for bed. Mommy and I have a dinner engagement.”
* * *
Once a month the members of the all-male Harvard Club were allowed to invite their all-female spouses inside. Over a candlelit meal Jimmy informed Kay that… well, just that the world’s economy was about to collapse. “To pay its war debt to France and Britain under the Versailles Treaty,” he explained, “Germany has borrowed heavily, as you know. Now they’re devaluing the Reichsmark, so their repayments are worth nothing.”
She had read about hyperinflation in Germany, which had drained almost all value from the German coin. “Sounds awful. But Jimmy, Germany is not the world.”
Jimmy sipped his bordeaux. “France and Britain also borrowed. To finance their side of the war. And without credible German repayments to them, per the Versailles Treaty… You get the idea.”
Kay got it, all right. M. M. Warburg & Co. stood smack in the middle of a world-engulfing financial quagmire. How would these developments impact the Warburg-Swift household?
“Added to which,” said Jimmy, “we have issues domestically. And not insignificant ones.”
“Domestically?” asked Kay.
“In America.”
“Are you referring to the floods in Mississippi and Vermont, the explosions in Ohio and Pittsburgh, or the Bath School massacre?” asked Kay. All these two-inch-headline events had involved ghastly fatalities and displacements.
“I’m referring,” Jimmy sighed, “to our massive farm debt.”
All that was far away, though, was it not? Somewhere in the twangy Midwest? In New York City and Southern Connecticut, people were still celebrating the booming stock market. The waiter brought their table d’hôte meals of lobster and rice. “We’re going to jettison most of our investments,” Jimmy informed her as he dipped a forkful of lobster into butter. “But this is so much larger than us, Kay. I’m afraid I’ll have to leave again for Germany,” he sighed.
She tasted her lobster. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“You are?” He raised an eyebrow.
“I wanted to get started on our next show. We’re not going to let Say When knock us sideways, are we, Jimmy?”
He smiled. “Why don’t you sketch out the music, then. I’ll think about the lyrics. What shall we call it?”
“How about Fine and Dandy,” suggested Kay. “Because that’s how everything will turn out. The international economy, the domestic—” and she completed her sentence with a flip of her hand—the domestic whatever.
Jimmy raised his goblet. “Let’s write songs that people will hum in their bathtubs.”
Everything would be Fine and Dandy. And Fine and Dandy would be everything. The little white lie that the occasion required. Like the uplifting music of the string quartet that played on the deck of the sinking Titanic. They clinked glasses, drank to their next Broadway production, and dined quietly, absorbed in their thoughts.
* * *
Two weeks later, with both Jimmy and George once again out of the country, Kay felt deflated and depleted. She cursed herself for feeling that way. She did not need a man—her father, Jimmy, or George—to provide a sense of purpose and significance. She only had to fill her days and evenings with meaningful activities.
She tried to spend more time with her children. She read to them, taught them piano and do-ré-mi singing, and walked with them in the park. She attended every hit Broadway show, notebook in hand to record her thoughts and snippets of song. Which dramatic or musical devices affected her? Which failed? She invited Adele Astaire to lunch at the Waldorf. The waiter seated them front and center among the tables in the lobby, where everyone could gaze at them.
“Why don’t we start with a good rouge,” suggested Adele. “How about a carafe of bordeaux? Oh, do you know Kay Swift?” she asked the waiter. “George Gershwin’s gal.”
“Delighted, Madame,” he told Kay. “But as you know quite well, Miss Astaire—”
“Oh, please, Jean-Pierre, I know you have a stash of ’twenty-six Margaux in your cellar, just dying to be savored by your spoiled clientele, who love to be treated like they’re unaware of the law.”
He nodded noncommittally and strolled off, a towel draped over his sleeve.
“Jean-Pierre is such a putz,” said Adele, buttering a slice of bread. “He always protests, but he always delivers.”
“I can’t blame him,” said Kay. “That’s precisely what I do with my husband.”
“Perhaps,” said Adele, and then added, with all the confidence of a certified Yiddish scholar, “but by definition, a woman can’t be a putz.”
Jean-Pierre returned with a carafe, wrapped in a towel, and two goblets. He leaned down and addressed Adele in a conspiratorial tone. “I implore you, be discreet. If anything should happen, you brought this from home.”
After he took their order, Adele turned to Kay with a serious expression. “George will always give more than you ask for,” she said. “I don’t mean romantically but in other ways. I sure am going to miss him, the scoundrel.”
“Miss him?” asked Kay.
“Oh, Kay, I’ve met someone. Someone terrific.” She set her water glass on the table. “Charles Cavendish,” she announced in a mock British accent.
The name did not register.
“Lord Charles Arthur Francis Cavendish,” Adele expanded. “We literally bumped into each other at a party after the premiere of Funny Face in London last year. Causing his drink to spill. So I gues
s I owe this to George.” And she softly trilled the title song, “Funny Face,” in which Ira humorously and warmly explored the subject of mutual attraction between two people who know they are not outwardly pretty. “Isn’t it just darling, how Ira writes for every Joe and Jane?” enthused Adele. “You don’t have to be a knockout to be worthy of love. I guess my Charles agrees.”
“Oh, kill it,” said Kay, laughing. “You’re hardly a plain Jane, Adele. Tell me about him.”
“He’s a banker. Served in the Royal Tank Regiment. Studied at Cambridge. Oh, and his father is, wait for this, the Ninth Duke of Devonshire.”
“Sounds like my husband in more ways than one,” remarked Kay. “Powerful father. Good college. And Jimmy wanted to serve in the war, too.”
“Charles may not be all there, mentally,” said Adele. “But then, I’m not all there, either. So we have that in common. And he does have that accent.”
“Where will you live?”
“I’m afraid I’ll have to hole up in a drafty castle in Ireland. That is, when I’m not moping around Chatsworth, our pied-à-terre in Derbyshire. Such are the sacrifices one makes.”
“Oh please, do hand me a handkerchief,” said Kay. “What about Fred?”
“There’s a battalion of nimble-toed gals out there, eager to tap dance up to my tape marks. I’ll miss my brother but there’s more to life than hopping around on scratched-up stages, taking bows, and reading about yourself in the papers. I’ll be delighted to throw all that on the refuse heap of memory and set it ablaze with one of those dainty Blue Britannia matches they hand you with every pack of Wild Woodbine fags. I’m more than ready for private life, Kay. Peace and quiet. A family.”
Kay sipped her Château Margaux. “Who else knows?”
“No one except Charles and Fred. And George, of course.”
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