by Luanne Rice
Unless they die. Unless they move to New York and never even call you. Telling such things to Joe seemed impossible. Tears choked my throat so I wouldn’t have to.
“Shhh,” Joe said tenderly, licking the tears from my cheeks. “Husha, husha, little baby.” He stiffened as he soothed me, and presently he was gliding inside me again, kissing my damp cheeks, continuing to say “husha, husha,” even though I was no longer crying.
Living on different floors of the same building as your lover presents certain problems. Such as: do you spend every night together? Do you eat meals together, and if so, who cooks? What about the awkward feelings that arise when you meet at the mailboxes after a long day and want to go upstairs alone? What about when one person seems to spend all his time in your apartment, thus requiring you to clean and pick up, while his remains relatively uninhabited? What do all the neighbors think about all this?
“I think I am proving Monica’s worst suspicions about actresses,” I said to Joe one Sunday afternoon when we returned from brunch. “Did you see the way she looked at us?”
“Who the hell cares? Fuck her and everyone who looks like her. It’ll give her another chance to bitch, and Monica’s happy as a pig in shit when she’s bitching.” Joe dropped the paper on my table and dove straight for the sports section. “She’s jealous,” he said.
“Why? Because I have you and she doesn’t?” I asked, teasing.
“Frankly, yes. She’s made more than one play for me. After board meetings, down in the storage area. She’s a horny broad, and I doubt Chip has one clue about what to do about it.” He sat on my sofa.
I thought of Monica and Chip’s apartment, filled with homey Americana, and knew that Joe was exaggerating, if not lying. I smiled at him. “You’re such a riot,” I said.
“God as my judge,” he said, raising his right hand. He draped the sports section like a tent over his knees. “She’s after me.”
“Right.” I started unpacking one of the last boxes. Joe watched me crouch; I felt very sexy. I moved slowly, stretching to place things on my desktop, shifting my ass as I rummaged through the box. Joe and I had spent every Sunday morning for the last month together, and I loved the routine: brunch, an hour or two reading the Times, bed. Sex on Sunday mornings felt delicious and leisurely. I always came on Sunday mornings; Joe said it was because I knew I should be at Mass.
That Sunday Joe walked across the room; he reached down for my hand. Instead of rising, I pulled him down, and we undressed each other on the floor. Carpet fibers scratched my back. I thought suddenly, I’m always on my back. Lovemaking with Joe was nothing if not consistent: he was always on top. I tried to roll us over then, but he resisted. He lowered his head to my breasts.
“Why won’t you let me go on top?” I asked as soon as he had rolled off.
He looked surprised. “I’ll let you. It’s not a question of letting you.”
But I saw the way he avoided my eyes and knew I was right. He propped himself up on one elbow and stirred the things in my box.
“What have we here?” he asked, holding up a framed photograph of me, Lily, and Margo. It was ten or so years old; Margo still had braces, and Lily had her short-lived pixie cut. My father had taken it on the beach in front of our house. “You’re the prettiest,” Joe said, kissing the top of my head. “Which is the sister who lives in the city?”
“Her. Lily. The other one is Margaret.”
“I know, I know. Lily and Margaret, your two sisters. When am I going to meet them?”
“Good question,” I said, feeling sullen. At that moment I felt angry at Lily and Margo for their distance, angry at Joe for asking about them, angrier at Joe because shortly he would leave, as he did every Sunday, for dinner with his entire family at his mother’s house. I began to cry. Often after sex with Joe things would make me cry.
“Hey, what are you doing this afternoon?” Joe asked, reading my mind.
“My laundry. Reading next week’s scripts. Nothing.”
“Ma’ll kill me for not warning her, but how about coming to Norwalk for dinner? Everyone will be there, and I’ve been wanting to show you off.”
“I’d love to,” I said.
Joe’s mother and brothers lived in a ranch house in a neighborhood of similar ranch houses. Mrs. Finnegan and her two daughters greeted us at the door. Joe had called ahead to say I was coming, and he warned me: all three were avid Beyond the Bridge fans. They were dressed in Sunday’s best. Mrs. Finnegan wore a floral pantsuit over a ruffled blouse, and Joe’s sisters, Corinne and Erin, wore velvet dresses that strained across their ample bosoms.
“Oooh, hello, Una!” Mrs. Finnegan called gaily, clasping her hands. We were, after all, old friends from the Rose Garden Mall. She had tied a pink bow in her gray hair.
“Hello, Mrs. Finnegan,” I said, and she pulled my head down so I could kiss her.
Erin Mankiewicz, the elder sister, shook my hand vigorously. “I can’t tell you how thrilled we are to finally meet you. We have watched the show for—what, Cori?”
“Since grammar school at least,” Corinne said.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” I said. “I’ve met your mother, and your brothers, of course, and Joe has told me about—”
Joe, standing behind me, his hand on my waist, interrupted. “Jabber, jabber. What’s a brother got to do to get a few kisses around here?”
His sisters and mother swarmed on him like bees. “We’re having roast beef, Joey,” Erin said. “And little Joey brought you some pictures he did at school. Did you happen to remember the catcher’s mitt?”
Joe grimaced with anguish, then grinned. “You bet I did,” he said slyly.
“He’s such a joker,” Mrs. Finnegan said, turning to me, her arms draped around his neck.
We walked through the front door, directly into a small living room that was packed with people. Dan and Tim sat on the couch, two men sat in overstuffed chairs, and four kids were tussling on the floor. A golf tournament on the large TV screen cast green light on the viewers’ faces. The brown floral draperies were closed.
The men stood when we entered, and Joe made introductions. Stan Mankiewicz was Erin’s husband, and Paul Haggerty was Corinne’s. Joe rushed to sit between his brothers on the sofa. “Relax, fellas,” he commanded with a wink at me. “Ma and the girls want to take Una into the kitchen and pick her brain about the show.”
“Oh, he’s fresh!” cried Mrs. Finnegan.
We walked toward the kitchen. Around the house were various statues of Jesus and Mary, framed Mass cards for Mr. Finnegan (every time we came upon one of these, Mrs. Finnegan would strike her breast and murmur, “God is good”). There were calligraphed prayers on parchment. Ruffled cotton curtains were pulled across each window. The smell of roasting beef filled every room.
“Not very grand, but it’s home,” Mrs. Finnegan said. The sentiment was lovely, but already I was feeling claustrophobic. From the living room came hoots and shouts as someone sank a long putt. “His putter has a goddamn graphite shaft!” Joe yelled.
The house is dark, I thought. Electric lights were on everywhere, but very little natural sunlight penetrated the curtains.
In the cramped kitchen all three Finnegan women donned aprons and began to work, dodging each other, moving in mystical rhythms no doubt established over long years of preparing roast beef dinners while the Finnegan men watched golf tournaments. In what appeared to be an elaborately choreographed ritual, they crisscrossed the kitchen at least three dozen times. They opened canned peas, stirred flour into the roasting pan to make gravy, poured water into the coffeemaker, frosted a chocolate cake, sharpened knives, stirred up brown bits from the bottom of the pan, tasted things, and asked me endless questions about the show:
“How did you get the part?”
“Will Delilah ever marry Beck?”
“What’s this new thing, with Delilah being a psychiatrist?” All three women hated psychotherapy, believing that it taught patients to hate their mothers.
“Thank God Delilah had that baby, even if she was out of wedlock, instead of aborting.”
“What’s Stuart MacDuff like in real life?”
“Do you think you’ll ever go into the movies?”
“Why do you do commercials for those garbage bags instead of these garbage bags?”
I sat at the kitchen table drinking sweet red wine. Erin and Corinne, hungry for information, paused now and then, their eyes sparkling.
“Have you ever been married, Una?” Mrs. Finnegan asked. “In real life, I mean.” She showed none of the deference she had that day at the mall; here she was on solid ground, in the midst of her five grown children. She kept her eyes on me.
“No, I haven’t.”
“The kids getting married today have such an advantage,” she said. “The church provides counseling. That’s something no psychiatrist understands.”
“Like what Paul and I went through,” Corinne said.
“Even better! Father gave a sermon at early Mass a week or so back, and he told about how we’ve entered the computer age. The young man and woman fill out very thorough questionnaires, takes about an hour and a half, giving their innermost thoughts on all sorts of problem areas—finances, sex, nuclear war. Then the forms are handed in to a computer in New Jersey, and the computer figures out which areas they’re weak in. As a couple, I mean. You’re Catholic, aren’t you Una?”
“Well, no.”
Mrs. Finnegan was about to speak, but Erin cut her off. “Ma, computers don’t figure out problems. People do.” Then, to me, “Stan’s a programmer.”
“Oh,” I said.
“But anyway,” Mrs. Finnegan went on, “the couple goes through six months of counseling, with the computer and Father, and by the time their wedding day comes, they are ready.”
The kitchen walls pressed in, until the room was as close as a suitcase, trapping me, the three Finnegan women, and the smell of roast beef. I excused myself to go to the bathroom. Sitting on the fuzzy gold toilet seat cover, I pressed my forehead against the cool tile. Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed the golden toilet paper holder with two ornate rosebuds guarding each end of the roll. The Finnegans used patterned toilet paper. This is nothing like my house, I thought. Nothing like my family. In this house the women cook the dinner and the men watch golf. In this house, you have to unscrew two golden rosebuds just to remove the empty toilet paper roll. In my house my mother cooked the dinner and my father, when he was home and not suffering from Black Ass, did the dishes. My sisters and I studied or played together. My mother never owned an apron; she owned an easel and watercolors. Our house was quiet. There weren’t crucifixes and religious artifacts all over the place. When we cooked roast beef, the smell stayed in the kitchen.
Joe knocked on the bathroom door. He did not say, “Are you all right?” Instead he said, “Hurry up—I have to take a whiz before Hale Irwin tees off.”
I sat on the toilet, my head in my hands, and knew: if I had finished Juilliard, this would not be happening. I would not be sitting in a bathroom while two rooms away three of my fans argued over the doneness of a rump roast. I would not be listening to my lover telling me to “shit or get off the pot” in order that he be able to catch the tee-off. If I had graduated from Juilliard I would be happily married to a man who loved me, a kind intellectual who would speak softly, who would gather my mother and sisters with me to his heart and keep us together. Who would be a father to my children. Like my father, Joe was imperious, full of his own greatness, and had the makings of a patriarch. But those were not qualities I cared about.
Then I heard Mrs. Finnegan asking Joe to carve the roast and felt ashamed of myself. Joe padded down the hallway; I recognized the sound of his bare feet. The Finnegans were a lovely family; their love and devotion for each other were enormous, if oppressive. But I was making the same mistake with them that I made with all close families: I was holding them up for comparison with the Cavans. Splashing cold water on my face, I opened the bathroom door and went out to dinner.
Chapter 7
I began avoiding my apartment and spending as little time in the building as possible. I told Georgie Atwood, my agent, to book me for nighttime appearances at malls; I did one game show in Los Angeles and talk shows in Chicago, Phoenix, and Seattle. Chance loved it; whenever stars from Beyond made guest appearances in distant cities, our ratings in those cities soared. I tried to see Lily and Susan whenever they were free at night: anything to avoid Joe. Lily was busy with “The Spring Rambles,” a charity ball intended to raise money for cardiac research, and wasn’t available to see me. Performances of Hester’s Sister were scheduled to start in two weeks, at the end of April, and Susan was busy with rehearsals. She had quit waitressing in order to see more of Louis, but she said she would meet me at the Bridge Café one evening after work.
The night was balmy. Walking south on Broadway, I noticed all the open windows in the apartments, lofts, and studios. Spring had arrived in New York City. In my travels I had seen daffodils, new leaves, and crabapple blossoms. A steady breeze blew north off the harbor, but I was comfortable in my thin cotton sweater.
Susan waved to me from a table in the corner. The Bridge Café stood across Water Street from her loft; she apologized for not inviting me there, but she had been too busy to keep it neat or stock provisions. She and Louis ate out nearly every night.
“How’ve you been?” she asked. I could tell from her tentative tone and wrinkly brow that she knew something was wrong.
“Not so great,” I said.
She held my hand on the red-checked tablecloth. “What?”
Deep breath. Exhalation. Glancing around to see if anyone was watching. “I’m in big trouble. You know how I told you about that guy in my building?”
“You slept with him and now you can’t stand him and you’re afraid to go home,” she said.
I stared at her for a few seconds, mystified and grateful. Like Margo and Lily she had that ability to zoom straight to the heart of my matter. “Exactly. Well—not exactly. I can stand him, but that’s about it. I’m actually afraid to talk to him. He’s left about fifteen messages on my machine. Then I call him back when I’m sure he’s out and leave messages on his. I sneak into the building at off hours, terrified I’ll meet him in the hall.”
“What a horrible way to live.”
“I know,” I said, miserable. “In bed at night I hear him knocking on my door. It goes on and on, and I keep thinking about all the people who know—they all hear him knocking, and they know. Then he finally leaves.”
“Who cares who knows?”
“I do.”
“How bourgeois,” Susan said, frowning.
“I know it is,” I said. “I’m disgusting myself. I deserve everything I’m getting.”
“You do not,” Susan said sternly. Then, “What are you getting?”
I looked up at her. “Did I tell you that I had two visions of my father? Every time I sleep with someone, I’m afraid he’s going to show up again and start yelling. Joe’s Irish Catholic. I thought that would make a difference, make it less sinful.”
“You think it’s sinful?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure.”
“Actually, I’m more interested in your visions. You see your father?” Susan looked at me with deep concern in her hazel eyes, and I suddenly felt positive that I was crazy. Can you imagine telling your best friend you have seen your dead father? I felt my hands trembling and held them on my lap.
“Not recently. Last summer I did. But I keep thinking I’ll see him. Every time I—I don’t know. Anything. I’m afraid he can see me even if I can’t see him.”
“Una, that does sound a little crazy, honey.”
“I know it does.” Oddly, I felt calmer. The relief of unburdening. I had killed two birds with this conversation: I had told Susan that I was afraid to see Joe, afraid to see my father. Sitting opposite her at our corner ta
ble, the two birds looked disturbingly alike. Just then a young woman with a punk haircut and wearing a black leather skirt walked shyly over. “You’re Delilah Grant, aren’t you?” she asked, holding out a paper napkin for me to sign.
Susan and I both laughed. I signed the napkin. “You are so famous it cracks me up,” Susan said when the girl walked away.
“How’s the play coming?”
“Fantastic. I’m getting nervous.” Then she turned pink and started blinking her eyes. “Did I tell you about our angel?”
In stage language, “angel” means benefactor. When a show runs into financial trouble, such as not having enough money to pay the actors or buy costumes or rent the theater, an angel comes along and makes everything dreamy. Angels are usually rich businessmen who love the romance of the theater.
“No, who is it?” I asked.
“You know him,” Susan said. “It’s Henk Voorhees.”
I sat there without speaking, trying to decide how I felt about that. Henk and Lily did not know Susan or know that I knew Susan. Henk “loved the arts,” as Lily had told me often enough. Naturally he would contribute to arts organizations. But he had never asked me about acting. I had assumed that theater was not one of his passions. Of course I had no illusions about Beyond the Bridge being theater, but I had gone to Juilliard and had plenty of friends on the legitimate stage. I remembered thinking that “loving the arts” could mean loving museums, opera, ballet, performance art, literature, whatever; it did not necessarily mean theater.
But here was Susan Russell, my best friend, telling me that my brother-in-law was about to finance her starring role. I sat there feeling jealous. Susan knew it. She understood the insecurities that motivate actors too well not to. I watched her lower her head until her halo of frizzy brown hair caught the red neon light cast by the sign in the window. She stared at the wide plank floor.
“The play probably won’t do anything,” she said, but her tone told me she already knew the play could be a hit.
“I hope it does wonderfully,” I said. I did want Susan to do wonderfully, but I wanted myself to do better. “Have you met Henk?”