The Fourth Wall

by Barbara Paul

  John Reddick himself hadn’t been picked up in Mississippi or any of the neighboring states Lieutenant Goodlow had notified. In a way I was glad. I wasn’t exactly proud of the way I had instinctively run to the police the minute I’d heard from John. It was a mini-betrayal, and my only excuse was at the time I still had a slight faith in the ability of the police to catch our persecutor. But John, even with his foreign appearance, had been able to melt into the crowd. I wondered if I’d ever see him again.

  Some hitherto unsuspected strain of masochism drew me to the Martin Beck Theatre the day the Foxfire set was being struck. I sat in the auditorium and watched the set come down piece by piece. The scenery would all be taken out and burned. If Gene Ramsay ever did reopen Foxfire, an entirely new set would have to be built. That was cheaper than paying storage costs for the old one. When at last the job was finished and the workmen left, I went up on to the stage.

  There is nothing in the world so lonesome as a deserted stage. It is an anomaly, a wrong crying out to be righted, an offense against nature. There are some who like to say a theater is never empty, it’s always filled with echoes from the past—the sounds of great plays, great actors, reverberating forever. Wishful thinking, I’m afraid. Ghosts merely remind us of what we have lost. A theater should be alive and vibrant and filled with people and light and color and movement and words, words, words. The Foxfire stage had been empty only five minutes, but already the dust of neglect was settling over one more sepulcher for one more ghost. And it was my child who had died here.

  I shrugged and reminded myself a new play would be opening soon. It just wouldn’t be my play.

  Leo Gunn left town—temporarily, he said, but I told him I wouldn’t blame him if he never came back. Nova Scotia was Leo’s Forest of Arden; he had a small house outside Halifax to which he retreated periodically to maintain his sanity, he said. When he came back he’d be fitted with a prosthetic device. Leo had decided on a mechanical pronged claw apparatus instead of an artificial hand.

  I got sick. Just a virus, but one of those that leave you weak as a kitten afterward. So instead of being in the Shubert Theatre on June fifth, I sat at home huddled in a blanket watching the Tony Awards on television.

  Nobody from Foxfire won. Not one of us. In retrospect, it seemed to me the Foxfire people had all been nominated on a wave of sympathy for our troubles—but the maiming of Leo Gunn followed so closely by the slaughter of Ian’s family had been too much. People began to draw back in revulsion. We sympathize with victims only so far, and then we become disgusted with them for allowing themselves to be victimized. Logic has nothing to do with it.

  I had trouble shaking my bug; it just kept hanging on. The third week I began to get worried. Maybe I could bake it out of me—an hour in the sun every day might do the trick. I’d reached the age where minor illnesses were no longer easy to ignore. I tried Chelsea Park for a couple of days, but I didn’t really like it there. So I headed uptown to Central Park, pleased to discover—once again—how lovely New York can be in June.

  I went in the Eighty-first Street entrance, past the Delacorte Theater to the Great Lawn. People everywhere—kite flyers, lovers, winos, old women carrying everything they owned in shopping bags, a group of youngsters playing with puppets. Strange, strange thing: not a single transistor radio blasting away. All of the benches in the sun were taken and I wasn’t wearing sit-on-the-ground clothing. I finally found a bench that had only one large, rumpled bum slumped at one end. I hesitated and then sat down; that guy was so out of it he wasn’t going to trouble anyone.

  The sun felt good. I could almost feel myself healing. I opened a book out of habit but just let it lay in my lap. An elderly couple tottered by holding hands, more to steady each other than for romantic reasons. Someone nearby was playing a recorder, and playing it rather well—a minor-key tune with an Elizabethan flavor. Sprawled on the grass opposite me were four students who’d surrounded themselves with paperbacks, ostentatiously arranged to display their erudite titles—ye gods, were they still reading Sartre? Or pretending to.

  The book in my lap was Dorothy L. Sayers’s Nine Tailors—her best, I thought. Her books made me think she must have been an extremely lonely woman, a woman who had no one to talk to. So she created a world in which her sympathetic characters all understood one another immediately—jokes didn’t have to be explained, allusions didn’t have to be identified. Lord Peter Wimsey would pun in Latin and Harriet Vane would groan. Communication was instant and complete. I thought of John Reddick trying to explain his love of opera to Griselda Gold and had to laugh.

  The sun was warm. I dozed off, woke, and dozed again. And woke with that sharp feeling that tells you someone is watching you. I looked at the bum at the other end of the bench. Red-rimmed eyes stared out at me from a gray, unshaven face. The lips moved soundlessly a few times, and then a familiar voice said, “Don’t you know me, Abby?”

  Good God in heaven. It was Ian Cavanaugh.

  I sat there shocked, my mouth open, unable to speak. The rumpled, sour clothing, the bloodshot eyes and the ravaged face, the general air of seediness and despair—this human wreck had once been a man. Slowly I moved to his end of the bench and sat next to him. He stank.

  It was a minute or two before I could speak. “Where are you staying, Ian?”

  He looked confused at the question, and then began feeling around in his pockets. He pulled out a hotel key and handed it to me expectantly, like a child hoping to be praised. I read the tab: Room 610 of the Holly Hotel on West Forty-eighth Street. Never heard of it.

  “Are you staying there alone?” I asked. He nodded. “Are you seeing a doctor?” Again that confused look, but then he shook his head. No doctor.

  The students sprawled on the grass were watching us curiously. I ignored them and said, “Ian, I think you had better come with me. You’re not taking care of yourself. I know you don’t want anyone intruding at a time like this, but I’m going to insist. You’re coming with me.”

  “All right,” he said indifferently.

  I had to help him stand up. He weaved back and forth on his feet, but of all the bad smells coming from him, the odor of liquor wasn’t one of them. I was shaken to see he’d developed a stoop—he looked like an old man. When I led him away, he shuffled in what was almost a caricature of the stooped, drunken old bum.

  “Hey, lady!” one of the students called after us. “Why don’t you try the Bowery? Lots of jollies down there!” Hoots of laughter followed us down the path.

  The walk back to Central Park West seemed interminable. Ian was light-headed; a couple of times I thought he was going to pass out. He’d undoubtedly not been eating right. Or at all. I was scared to death he’d fall. Ian was a foot taller than I and about a hundred pounds heavier; I wasn’t sure I could get him to his feet again.

  The driver of the taxi I stopped didn’t look any too happy, but I pushed Ian inside and climbed in after him. After the driver let us out at my place, he got out and rolled down all the windows.

  I led Ian into the bathroom where he stood docilely while I turned on the shower. “Get in,” I said, “and don’t put those clothes back on.”

  In the kitchen I looked in the refrigerator to see what I had to eat. All the makings for a Greek salad—tasty, but not very substantial. Lentil soup, that was better. I put in some cheese and fresh onions to perk it up a bit, and sliced off a hunk of corn rye bread. Good peasant food, hearty and nourishing.

  Since I didn’t own a robe, Ian came out of the bathroom wearing a towel. He smelled normal again, and his wet hair was plastered to his forehead. The stoop was still there. He sat down at the table and began to eat the soup I put before him, slowly and obediently, as if he didn’t much care whether he ate or not. I started to pour him a drink, but stopped. True, I hadn’t smelled liquor, but …

  “I haven’t been hitting the bottle, Abby,” Ian said, reading my mind. “But I would like a drink now.”

  I poured us both one. We
sat at the table drinking scotch and not talking, Ian finishing his soup and bread but refusing more. Finally he said, “I tried drinking at first. Right after. It just made me sick.”

  His red-rimmed eyes blinked a couple of times and his head lowered slowly until his chin was resting on his chest. God, how I hated seeing Ian like this! I wanted him to be tall and handsome and proud, the way he used to be. He’d never be quite like that again, I knew that—but this! This was heart-breaking.

  And now he was falling asleep sitting at the table. I nudged him awake and steered him into the bedroom where he fell on the bed like a dead man. He’d left his clothes in the bathroom. Without hesitating I emptied the pockets—billfold, checkbook, keys to nonexistent doors, comb, aspirin, and something that looked like the little paper cup Italian ice comes in. Aspirin and Italian ice—medicine and food, of a sort. A good sign. Why had he kept the paper cup? I threw the sour-smelling clothing away. Ian was sound asleep when I slipped out and got a taxi. I told the driver the address of the Holly Hotel.

  West Forty-eighth Street is in that part of town that used to be called Hell’s Kitchen. Now the section was the object of an urban renewal program that left it looking neither fish nor fowl nor good red herring. Old buildings and new stood side by side, both kinds managing to look out of place. The Holly Hotel wasn’t a fleabag, as I’d half-feared. It was one of those bland, depressing places in which everything looks made of plastic even when it isn’t. I rode the one elevator up to the sixth floor.

  Room 610 was as characterless as the downstairs had been. I’d come to collect Ian’s things, but it was a wasted trip. The man had nothing. Not a thing. Not a razor, not a toothbrush, not even an extra pair of socks. I looked through all the drawers, in the bathroom, in the closet. The bed was unmade and there were a few crumpled Kleenex in the wastebasket—the only signs that he’d ever been here.

  Downstairs I turned in Ian’s key and paid his bill; he’d been there only three days. Then there was some shopping to do—I had a naked man in my apartment and I was the one who’d thrown his clothing away. Since I had no idea of what size to get, I just asked for “large” in everything. Jeans instead of regular trousers—no cuffs to worry about. Next stop a drug store, for razor and toothbrush and the rest of it, and then back home.

  Ian was still sleeping. I let him be for another hour and then woke him up. He shaved and dressed and emerged looking a lot better.

  “You’re looking a lot better,” I told him.

  “I do feel better,” he said. “I’m sorry you had to buy the toothbrush and things. Mine’s at the hotel.”

  “You mean the Holly Hotel on Forty-eighth Street?”

  “Yes—how did you know about it?”

  “You gave me the key in the park. Remember?”

  That confused look came over his face once again, and he shook his head.

  “Well, don’t worry about it,” I said. “You didn’t have anything at the hotel anyway. I checked you out, by the way. You don’t have to go back there.”

  “I didn’t have anything there?” He looked puzzled. “Then I must have left it in Reddick’s apartment. The toothbrush. A new one Reddick left behind.” He wrinkled his forehead in an effort to concentrate, worrying about that toothbrush.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “You did stay in John’s apartment?”

  “For a while.” His face cleared. “You wrote me a note.”

  I nodded.

  “Did I call you?”

  “No.”

  A wave of weariness passed over his face. “I’m not always … in touch, Abby. I intended to call you. It’s just that I can’t always remember whether I’ve done a thing or just meant to do it.”

  Hardly remarkable, under the circumstances. I said I didn’t have much solid food in the kitchen and suggested we go out to eat. Ian didn’t object, so I took him to a restaurant a few blocks uptown and ordered him a steak.

  The June night was pleasant, so after we’d eaten we took our time walking home, watching the show that never closes in New York’s streets. Unelectrified street musicians accompanied a mime drumming up trade for a show in the Village. Two livid men stood shouting abuse at each other. We stopped and listened to a curbside evangelist named Annie who told us, “There’s no left wing in Heaven.”

  When we got back Ian said one word—“Tired”—and headed for the bedroom. I sat and tried to read until I got sleepy. It didn’t take long; I’d done a lot of moving about that day and I still didn’t have my full strength back yet. I’d have to make up the sofa into a bed.

  My one extra blanket was in the bedroom. The room was dark; I pulled back the drape a little to let in the street light. Ian had kicked off the covers and was lying there twitching—little spasms of distress running through his whole body. I spoke his name; he half woke and turned over. He seemed calmer, but as I was about to leave the spasms started again.

  I felt a flash of irritation at myself for being so prissy-proper. I climbed into bed next to Ian and pulled the covers up over both of us. We were lying like two question marks, Ian on the inside; I put one arm around him and lay against his back. The twitching slowed and eventually stopped. After a few hours we both rolled over, reversing positions: Ian was now holding on to me.

  I drifted off into a gruesomely real nightmare. I dreamed my new play was opening before an audience that had been licensed by the police to maim or kill the playwright if they didn’t like what they saw. It was no joke—my life was on the line. I must have made a noise in my sleep, for I woke to find Ian stroking my arm, saying, “It’s a dream. It’s just a dream.”

  It must have been almost daylight before we fell into a deep sleep, keeping each other from the foggy, foggy dew as best we could.

  2

  Eventually and inevitably, we became lovers. It was awkward at first, and not just because we were unfamiliar with each other’s bodies. There’s a special intimacy about going to bed with someone who’s been a casual friend for as many years as Ian and I had known each other. We were both self-conscious about this abrupt change in the places we occupied in each other’s lives. Self-conscious, but not reluctant.

  Time and again I tried to put myself in Ian’s place, without much success. If I had been the inadvertent cause of the deaths of my husband, my child, and two innocent bystanders—would I turn to another man for consolation? I didn’t think I would—I wouldn’t want to. But then, I wasn’t Ian.

  Ian surprised me in many ways. When I had been hurt, I had drawn into myself, shutting myself away from all human contact. But Ian, who had always avoided crowds, seemed to have no aversion to mingling with people now. He was wrapped in a cloak of indifference that protected him against all intrusion. If a stranger approached and said, “Aren’t you Ian Cavanaugh?” Ian would say no and move on. I had to wonder how inclusive that indifference was, so in bed one night I asked him, “Aren’t you Ian Cavanaugh?”

  “Definitely,” he said. He knew who we both were.

  In the long run all I could do was provide him with a place to stay, companionship when he wanted it, and sex when we both wanted it. I hoped a sense of stability would grow out of all this; but hardhearted as it sounded, Ian was going to have to heal himself. All in all, I thought he was doing a remarkably good job of it.

  We saw Ian’s tailor, and told him to start from scratch. Ian had always been a careful dresser, but now he was totally unconcerned about what he wore. Fortunately his tailor was a tactful man who was able to steer him in the right direction.

  Ian couldn’t talk about his family yet. I’d mentioned them once or twice, but it was so obviously painful for him that I didn’t bring them up again. An awful part of it was that I couldn’t remember his wife’s name. I’d met her only once, and Ian had never talked about his home life. Asking him would have been crude; I’d just have to wait until he wanted to talk. If he ever did.

  Talk about it, you’ll feel better—that’s what conventional folk wisdom advises us. But I�
�m not convinced talking about a painful subject automatically brings about a catharsis; I’m not sure it’s even a step in the right direction. The effort of holding it in might give a man like Ian something to cling to, something to help him. If Ian didn’t want to talk, that didn’t mean he wasn’t coming to terms with his grief. It might mean only that his way of coping was different from most people’s. But was he coping if he couldn’t even mention his wife? What was the dividing line between curative restraint and harmful withdrawal?

  I had work to do, errands to run, books to buy. Ian went everywhere with me, agreed to every suggestion I’d make. I’d say, “Would you prefer …?” And he’d say, “Whatever you like.” It became something of a challenge, getting him to express a preference. He did show some interest when we went to the Drama Book Shop to replace some of my theater books that had been destroyed. When we got home, he sat reading through the dramatic records of Sir Henry Herbert, who’d served as Master of Revels in seventeenth-century London. After a while Ian ventured the opinion that the old boy had taken bribes. I counted it a small victory.

  Vivian Frank called; she’d been offered a movie role and was leaving for California. “It’s not the lead, but it’s a good role—I’ll be noticed. Robert Altman’s directing, and I’m as excited as a schoolgirl!”

  “I would be too, Vivian. You’ll be terrific—I know it. Did Altman write the script?”

  “No—and I’m ashamed to say I don’t remember who did. Anyway, wish me luck, Abby.”

  “I don’t think you need it, but I will anyway. I’m glad for you Vivian, I really am.”

  “I know, and thank you.” A pause. “Abby, does anybody know where Ian Cavanaugh is?”

  “Yes, he’s staying with me.”

  “How is he? Is he …?”

  “I don’t know, Vivian. I think he’s going to be all right—but I don’t really know.”