Valerie Martin

by The Confessions of Edward Day (v5)

Every time he called Madeleine “Maddie” I flinched and he noticed it. I had the sense that he was doing it on purpose to irritate me. I imagined how persistent he must have been to wear her down to the point where she accepted this diminutive, because I knew she hated it.

  Guy sipped his tea, watching me over the rim. What was he up to? What did he want from me? Was it money?

  “You’ve been doing OK, I hear,” he said.

  Money, I thought. “I’ve been working. I don’t get paid much, but I scrape by.”

  He took this in without comment. I pulled out a stool and sat facing him. “So, what’s the audition?”

  He rubbed his chin between his thumb and forefinger, pulling the flesh in to a wedge. “Bev thinks it could be the turning point for her,” he said. “I do too. She’s got a good shot at it. The director saw her at the Yale thing and liked what he saw.”

  “What’s the part?”

  “It’s Elena in Uncle Vanya. A new production at the Public.”

  “Wow,” I said.

  “She would be fantastic in that part.”

  “She would indeed,” I agreed. My heart rate increased to keep up with my careening brain. Madeleine as Elena, me as Astrov, it would be a triumph of casting. The electricity would dim the houselights. The play depends on the audience’s apprehension of the intense physical attraction between these two characters. Elena is a difficult role. She’s a prisoner of her own beauty, she has no ambition, no life force, but she drives everyone around her to the limit of endurance. Psychologically she’s opaque and she’s made a decision no one can understand; she’s married an old man and not a rich old man, either. Madeleine had just the right quality of unexamined stubbornness. The role would be a natural fit for her. And she was so lovely and she was so hot. As I sat there, with Guy’s eyes probing me, I was filled with such a physical craving to see her, to be with her, that I got up, pretending I needed to refresh my tea. Other anxieties crowded in, one of which was the copy of the script I’d left on the coffee table. I didn’t want Guy to see it. I didn’t want him to know. When my back was to him, I shot a glance at the table. Yes, there it was and I had laid it facedown.

  “It’s a great play. A difficult play,” Guy observed.

  “Chekhov is always a challenge,” I said, pouring water into my mug. Why should I tell him? After all, I might not get the part. A piquant moment of silence passed between us.

  “I know you have an audition for Astrov,” Guy said.

  So that was it.

  “Who told you?”

  “A little bird.” He said this slowly, mocking me.

  “Teddy?” But I knew I hadn’t told Teddy. I hadn’t told anyone.

  “I don’t have to say.”

  “Well, it’s true,” I said. “So what.”

  “So I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  “I’ll certainly take that into account,” I said.

  “I think you should,” he said, giving me a meaningful look.

  “OK, I’ll bite,” I said. “Why is it not a good idea?”

  “Maddie’s feelings about you are complicated,” he said. “Now is not the time for her to be forced to … explore all that. There’s too much at stake for her in this project and she’s going to need all her concentration to get through it.”

  “Bulletin, Guy,” I said. “Madeleine is an actress. She’s a professional. And so am I. That’s what we do.”

  “You like to talk to me as if I don’t know anything about acting,” he said. “You’ve always done that. I may not be working right now, but I’m an actor.”

  “Then act like one,” I said. “Or better yet, act like a man.”

  “I’m acting like a husband,” he replied. “And one who cherishes his wife. You haven’t given Maddie a second thought for six years, but I’ve spent every minute of that time taking care of her. She’s a talented, brilliant actress, there’s nothing she can’t do, but she’s fragile, she’s a fragile woman.”

  Everything about this eruption of drivel offended me, but particularly egregious was the assertion that I’d given no thought to Madeleine over the intervening years. I thought of her all the time. I was like the guy in the Dylan song, I’d seen a lot of women, but Madeleine never left my mind. I felt I knew her better than Guy, and I was sure she saw right through his absurd posturing which was designed to disguise the obvious fact that she could act circles around him. At that moment I felt Guy’s presence in my dressing room was an outrage against her. What would she say if she could see him, suited up as Guy the Protector, with his bulging eyes and his ultra-earnest manner? I rapped my mug down sharply against the counter. “My God,” I said, “she must be sick of you.”

  This surprised him. “That’s not true,” he said. “Maddie loves me.”

  “You’re so fucking insensitive you call her by a babified name she hates and you tell yourself she likes it.”

  “You know nothing about it,” he countered. “You’ve never had a loving relationship with anyone. All you think about is yourself; you can’t be relied upon for anything, and believe me, no one knows that better than Maddie.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t pretend you care about her. You used her when it was convenient, and when it wasn’t, you couldn’t be bothered.”

  “Did she say that?”

  “She doesn’t have to say it. I was there.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “You were there and that’s why I never got a chance to do anything. You took over, that’s what you do. You butt in where no one wants you and you take over. That’s what you’re doing right now. If Madeleine knew you were here, she’d be totally humiliated.”

  He blinked at me as if he couldn’t focus, rolling his shoulders up and back. “So you insist on doing the audition,” he said.

  “Relax,” I said. “I might not get the part. Or she might not. You’ve got odds, if you can figure out what they are.”

  “I think I have a fair idea of what the odds are,” he said.

  A heavy odds-calculating silence fell between us. Guy got up, slid his mug onto the counter, and sat down again. I ambled over to the couch where, just to irritate him, I picked up the bright-yellow script and stood solemnly leafing through it. I was a bit young to play Astrov, the only thing I had against me. Astrov is thirty-seven. He fears his life is over, he’s lost his looks. I’d have to feel forty. Madeleine was actually a little old to play Elena, but I didn’t think that would be a problem, not with her slim figure and flashing eyes. Of course I hadn’t seen her in six years, in which time her husband had lost half his hair. Guy sat pressing his fingertips to his eyes, rubbing hard. “I’m just exhausted,” he said.

  “Why don’t you take sleeping pills?”

  “I do, but they don’t work for me.” He dropped his hands to his lap and took in a long, slow breath, such as one takes before the commencement of a disagreeable task, a breath in which I sensed the drawing out of a tide between us. He exhaled through his nose, pressing his lips together and meeting my eyes coldly. “I should have let you drown,” he said.

  Here it comes, I thought. “I didn’t ask you to save me,” I said, which was a stupid thing to say. Guy pounced on it. He flashed his predator smile and then he did something profoundly unnerving: he flung his arms into the air and cried out in my voice, “Help, help, don’t leave me.”

  It wasn’t just my voice, it was my inflection, my manner, my peculiar combination of actuated facial muscles, my eyes wide with terror, my mouth trembling with fatigue, it was me, drowning, but only for a moment, and then it was Guy again, chuckling at his own cleverness.

  “Very funny,” I said.

  “Very funny,” he echoed. It was eerily like looking in a mirror.

  “So you think you should have let me drown, but you didn’t. What should I do, kill myself?”

  “I’m not asking you to kill yourself.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Though in some cultures I do have that r
ight.”

  “You’ve been doing research.”

  “I have. In the Eastern view, I’m responsible for you. Because I saved your life, I’m required to look out for you. But here in the West, you owe me your life. Basically, you belong to me.”

  “Any place where it’s just a happy accident not necessitating a further relationship?”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  “I think a case can be made for it.”

  He looked thoughtful. “I’m afraid not. It’s universally understood that our relationship is special. It’s mythic, actually. You were supposed to die that night, you were a goner, and I had to rob death to save you. At some personal risk, I might add, though you seem to discount that for obvious reasons.”

  “I don’t discount it,” I said quietly. He’d brought it all back with his cruel impression of me and his talk of robbing death. I remembered how I had struggled with him in the water, how certain I was that death had a grip on me and there was no escape, yet how desperate I was to be saved. I had no lucid thoughts, only terror and a belligerent conviction that I was too young, too vital, that it was unfair. How could death be indifferent to the injustice of it? And not just indifferent, but avid, pulling me down again and again, gagging me with gallons of water, wearing my will down to a fine thread of naked resolve. It was just at the moment when that thread snapped, when the waters closed silently over my head and I gave in to my fate, that Guy thudded into me in the darkness, his arms tightening around me, lifting me, while I squirmed and sputtered, dragging me back into the world.

  “This seems like such a silly demand,” I said. “It doesn’t have enough gravity. I mean, it’s serious, I really want to do this audition, but why would you insist on something so … I don’t know, so personal? It doesn’t seem fair.”

  Guy emitted a series of breathy clicks through his nose which I took to be laughter.

  “This doesn’t have anything to do with Madeleine, does it?” I asked. “That was just a cover.”

  “It was a test,” he said. “And you failed.”

  “So if I back out of the audition because I think it’s best for Madeleine, I pass the test, but since I failed the test, I have to give up the audition because you saved my life.”

  “I couldn’t have put it better myself.”

  “It’s crazy,” I said.

  He stood up, shaking down his pants legs over the appalling socks. “I know you got good reviews for this Strindberg thing,” he said. “But I just don’t get it. You’re way off, there’s no subtlety, it’s a totally wooden performance. Everybody says you’re up and coming, but Astrov is a complex role. It’s not like this nasty valet thing. You’re not ready for it; that’s what I’m worried about. And Ed, you don’t want to flop at the Public in an important role, take my word for that. It could be the end of your career.”

  “Jesus, Guy,” I exclaimed. “Where are you from? It’s hell, isn’t it? It really is hell.”

  He wrested his coat from the hook, wrapped himself inside it, and fussily fastening every button, turned on me a sympathetic smile. “You’re hysterical because you know I’m right. Think about that.” He ambled to the door. “I’ve got to meet Maddie,” he said. “Thanks for the tea.”

  “Wow,” Teddy said. “He really worked you over.”

  This was true. I felt bruised by the latest scene with Guy and I’d run to Teddy for moral support. “Did Madeleine seem like a crazy person to you?” I asked.

  “It’s hard to say. She’s a good actress. Now that I think about it, she didn’t talk much. Maybe she was a little tense. Guy went on and on about the audition. He was more excited than she was.”

  “Did you talk about me?”

  “I did. I told them about the Strindberg. But I didn’t know about this audition. Why didn’t you call me?”

  “I didn’t call anyone. I’m superstitious about this one, it feels big. I’m almost afraid to talk to myself about it.”

  “How did Guy find out?”

  “That’s what I’d like to know,” I said. “Jesus, what am I going to do? I’m wrecked now. I’m completely unsure of myself.”

  “You’re seriously thinking of backing out?”

  “Barney will murder me.”

  “Is it because of what Guy said about Madeleine, or what he said about your acting? Or the other thing?”

  “The debt?”

  “The debt,” Teddy said.

  “Do you think he has the right to ask me to do this?”

  “He wasn’t exactly asking.”

  “That’s true. He never asks. He doesn’t think he has to.”

  Teddy said nothing, gazing into his Scotch, letting me work it out for myself.

  “Is there some kind of cosmic thing that will backfire on me and ruin my career if I defy Guy Margate?”

  Teddy dug into the ice bucket on the table and added a few cubes to his glass. The spirit of Wayne hung over the room; every inch of wall space was covered with his paintings. We were munching Chinese rice crackers. All agreed, it was impressive that Teddy and Wayne had stayed together so long, though Mindy maintained their longevity was the result of Teddy’s willingness to support Wayne in a style to which he had quickly become accustomed. I thought it had more to do with Wayne being exotic, the lure of the East and all that distantly smiling serenity. I recalled Guy’s description of the Eastern view, that because he had saved me, he was obligated to look after me. Was it possible that in his mixed-up brain he thought that was what he was doing? “Do you think he’s trying to save me from myself?” I said.

  “When’s the audition?” Teddy said.

  “Thursday.”

  He rubbed his cheek with the palm of his hand, ruminating upon my case.

  “There’s no guarantee I’ll get the part,” I said. “Especially now, since I’m going to be completely conflicted about it.”

  “I can’t tell you what to do,” Teddy said.

  “I know.”

  “But I can tell you that what Guy said about your acting isn’t true. You’re a gifted actor; everyone knows it.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I envy you. So does Guy. That’s what this is about.”

  I nodded, stuck for something to say. Teddy had left Stella Adler years ago and gone to Meisner for a while, then he tried Uta Hagen and then Julie Bovasso; he was a connoisseur of acting teachers, evidently unwilling to give up being a student. His performances were in showcases and rare at that. I’d seen him a few times over the years, always in small parts that he made the best of, but there was something inhibited about his work. I recalled how certain he’d been at the dawn of Wayne that the acknowledgment of his sexual identity would have a liberating effect on his acting, but that hadn’t happened. If anything he was less confident, more tentative. Wayne’s complete indifference to what was, after all, Teddy’s art didn’t help. Before Wayne, his friends were all actors, comrades-in-arms; now he spent his time at gallery openings, where painters sniped at one another, or at gay bars where one’s professional aspirations were not the subject. He stayed in acting classes because it was the only way he could still fancy himself an actor.

  “I’ve been lucky,” I said.

  “You have in some ways,” Teddy agreed. “Though not in love.”

  “I’d sure like to see Madeleine,” I said.

  “Best wait until this audition thing is behind you both.”

  “That’s true,” I agreed. “I don’t want to muck up her chances. How does she look?”

  “She’s more beautiful than ever,” Teddy said.

  “How could she have married that guy?”

  “Guy,” Teddy said. We smirked.

  “He looks terrible,” I said. “What’s with his eyes? Is he on drugs?”

  “He’s on desperation,” Teddy said.

  “It’s so unfair,” I said. “If I had to drown, I don’t see why someone decent couldn’t have saved me. Why couldn’t you have saved me? I wouldn’t mind owing you m
y life for a second.”

  Teddy’s expression was wistful. “I can’t swim,” he said.

  I left Teddy in a mood as black and bitter as the frigid streets I walked through. I had to make a decision but I didn’t want to think about it: I knew thinking wasn’t going to help. Guy had attacked on three emotional fronts: my feelings for Madeleine, my personal sense of obligation to him for saving my life, and my insecurity as an actor. I might rationally decide that I would or would not undertake the audition, but emotionally I was a shambles.

  It wasn’t late, but the streets were quiet. A taxi whooshed by, ferrying a lone, pale citizen swathed in fur. A few pedestrians hurried from building to building, paddling the air with their bulky arms, simultaneously urged to speed by the cold and to caution by the ice. The Village was just entering the long period of gentrification which would not end until all but the most litigious of its residents were driven to points east and south. My building, which had so far escaped even a cosmetic coat of paint, huddled before me, the shabbiest on the block. The windows were dark, save the third-floor front, where an impoverished novelist, who would later enjoy a small but respectable following, scribbled into the wee hours of morning. I grasped the stair rail with my gloved hand and mounted the sticky, salt-strewn steps to the front door. Like most New York apartments, mine was overheated, and I was looking forward to the blast of warm air that would greet me after the long haul to the fourth floor. Somewhere between the first and second landing a memory eluded the thought police and burst into the full sensory-surround screen of my consciousness. It was Madeleine leaning into me on this staircase, her arm wrapped around my back, her hand resting on my shoulder, her eyes and lips raised to mine, that night after we’d come back from the Jersey shore, when I’d outwaited and outwitted Guy at the bar. How long ago that was; it seemed another world, though the truth I didn’t know then was that I hadn’t changed at all. I would change later.

  As I trudged ever upward with this ghost of Madeleine clinging to my side, regret and anger percolated in my gut, while fatigue closed down various circuits in my brain. I flipped the locks on the apartment door and headed straight for bed. Madeleine was everywhere I looked, but especially behind my eyelids. As I drifted into sleep I heard her voice guiding me. “This way, Edward. This way.” I thought about the scene at the bookstore, that night before the last night I’d seen her. “You shocking girl,” I said, feeling pleased with myself. I knew I would dream of her and I did.