Valerie Martin

by The Confessions of Edward Day (v5)

  I concentrated on the stage doings with difficulty, distracted by a voice from the past, one I’d never heard before. “Dearest, I miss you awfully.” Guy too was piping up from the memory vault. “She did Desdemona last year. Rave reviews.” And of course the immortal line “We called you the warm-up act” smacked around the walls of my brain like a racquetball. It was sickening.

  After the show I met Teddy at the dressing-room door and we walked a few blocks to the West Side Café, a place I like because there are usually a few actors hanging around and the food is good. I praised Teddy’s performance and we discussed the merits of the play and the reviewers’ comments, which had been largely positive. “It’s a great group,” Teddy said. “We all get along. No one is crazy. It’s good fun.”

  “It’s always better when no one is crazy,” I agreed. When we were seated, with drinks in hand and had ordered our dinners, I pulled the card from my pocket and passed it to Teddy. “I want you to look at this,” I said. “I’ll tell you what it is after I ask you a question about it.”

  “It looks old,” he said. “Is it something mysterious?”

  “Just read it,” I said. I sipped my wine while he gave the writing close attention.

  “All right,” he said. “Who is it?”

  “I’ll tell you in a minute. I want your opinion.”

  “It’s very sweet. She’s playing Desdemona. That’s the quote, right?”

  “Yes,” I said. “It is.”

  “So what’s the question?”

  “In your opinion, is the person who wrote that note having sex with the person she’s writing to?”

  “Well, it’s very affectionate. She misses him. Or her. I suppose it could be between two women. But yes, I’d say they were lovers.”

  “I thought so too.”

  “So, who’s it from?”

  “It’s from Madeleine. To Guy.”

  “And?”

  “I found it in her old suitcase, tonight, just before the play, at the hotel.”

  “In her suitcase?”

  “I borrowed it. I broke mine.”

  “So maybe she never mailed it.”

  “Possibly. I figured he used the suitcase later and left it in there.”

  “That could be. They were married a long time.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  Our meals arrived and we had a moment’s banter with the waiter. Teddy broke a piece of bread, frowning in puzzlement. “I don’t get it,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Your question. About the sex.”

  I laid down the fork I had picked up. “Madeleine told me she and Guy never had sex.”

  Teddy sawed at the small roasted bird on his plate. “Wow,” he said. “She told you that?”

  “A long time ago.”

  “Why would she tell you that?”

  “Exactly. Why would she make something like that up?”

  “So he was gay. Wayne thought he was.”

  “Really?”

  “He thought Guy was in love with you.”

  “He did?”

  “He just said it to be catty; he hardly knew either of you. Wayne thought everyone was gay, actually, just half the world represses it, hence the human race.”

  “So he thought I was gay.”

  “He thought you and Guy were in love but you were both in denial and used Madeleine to get at each other.” He slathered butter onto his bread. “You’re not eating.”

  I picked up my fork again and speared a green bean. “I’m dumbfounded,” I said, chewing the bean. “That’s so ugly.”

  “It is. I never believed it.”

  “Anyway, Madeleine said Guy wasn’t gay. She said he was just completely impotent.”

  “Wayne would love that.”

  “Can we just leave Wayne out of this?”

  Teddy pulled his chin in and made his eyes round. “Touchy,” he said.

  “I’m just trying to figure out what the truth is.”

  “Guy’s been gone a long time. He was a terribly unhappy man.”

  “He denied it.”

  “That he was unhappy?”

  “That he was impotent.”

  Teddy took a swallow of his wine. “You asked him?”

  “I didn’t ask him. I told him I knew and that it was too bad and could happen to any man.”

  “When was this?”

  “That night. In the dressing room.”

  “Oh, my lord,” Teddy said slowly, addressing his quail.

  “He said Madeleine made fun of me. He said they had sex all the time and they made fun of me.”

  Teddy pulled a tiny bone clean between his front teeth. “This is sick,” he said.

  “I assumed he was lying. I always have. Then I found this note.”

  Teddy picked up the card and read it over again. “There’s nothing in here that proves anything either way,” he said. “She doesn’t say, ‘I miss your erect penis,’ or anything; it’s just affectionate. So maybe she was telling you the truth.”

  “But it’s very affectionate. You can’t deny that.”

  “Why don’t you just ask her, Ed?” he said softly.

  This irritated me. “You can’t ask her anything about Guy. She just says she doesn’t remember. Her memory is full of holes. She doesn’t want to talk about anything that happened before we were married.”

  “Well, then, why don’t you forget about it too?”

  “It’s just that I’ve always believed she didn’t love him. I thought he trapped her, and then he made her feel sorry for him, but that really she disliked him as much as I did.”

  “No one disliked Guy as much as you did.”

  This surprised me. “Did you like him?” I asked.

  “Guy was OK. He was funny sometimes, and he was so awkward and he had such bad luck, I felt sorry for him. I didn’t agree with Wayne. I think he was madly in love with Madeleine. And she was fond of him. Sex or no sex, they had a close relationship. Whatever it was that held them together, it lasted several years.”

  As Teddy advanced this reasonable view, I tried to eat another bean, but it stuck in my throat. I started to cough. I was thinking of the photo in their apartment, Guy and Madeleine on the mantel over a scene of domestic harmony. The cough turned into a frightening wheeze. I couldn’t catch my breath. I clutched my throat and tears filled my eyes. The attention of our fellow diners began to coalesce upon our table. Teddy got up and, with remarkable ease and speed, whacked me twice high on my back. This helped. A brief series of coughs, through which I was able to suck in a few swallows of water, opened my windpipe. Teddy sat down again as I pressed my napkin against my lips, holding it there while I breathed in slowly through my nose.

  “Are you OK?” Teddy asked.

  I nodded behind the napkin.

  “I think you should throw this note away and forget you ever saw it. Send Madeleine some roses and tell her you love her.”

  I nodded again. He was right, of course. But not roses; she didn’t approve of out-of-season flowers. Chocolates. I knew her favorite shop, Upper West Side. I pictured her, brightening up at the sight of the cunning brown box. I lowered the napkin and drank a swallow of wine.

  But that our loves and comforts should increase, even as our days do grow!

  Guy, opening the card, moving his lips over that line.

  Maybe I was just tired. I hadn’t slept well the night before. Or the night before that. In fact, I hadn’t slept well in years. I didn’t like thinking about the past, it was pointless, it was over, but as I sat there it all came stamping up around the table legs, hauling me down like a pack of demons into a dark and fiery furnace, where Guy Margate rolled over on a spit and fixed me with the burning coals that were his eyes.

  “Are you OK?” Teddy asked again.

  A shudder ran up my back, gripped my neck, and rustled my jowls. My throat felt tight. My eyes were stinging and I squeezed them shut.

  “Ed?” Teddy said.

  My hea
d was filling up with fluid. I sniffed as it slid down my nose and I opened my eyes, releasing a mini-flood of tears. “I don’t know what it is,” I blubbered. “All of a sudden I feel …” A sob strangled whatever it was I felt, so moist and respiratorially calamitous a sob that, once again, our fellow diners turned our way. What was I thinking about? I hardly knew.

  Death? My mother’s and Guy’s, a frame of suicides, one pushing me into the theater, the other driving me out, and my own mortality, and the thought that Madeleine might die, and Teddy, my dear friend, he might die. I opened the napkin and swabbed my eyes and nose, but it just kept coming, this viscous flood, and I wondered how a head, which looks relatively dry from the outside, could dump, without warning, so much liquid. “I’m sorry,” I gasped, covering my face with the cool linen and boohooing like a diva. I heard Teddy fending off the tentative approach of a concerned waiter. “We’re breaking up,” he said in a voice so arch and fey that I laughed through my tears. I lowered the napkin; all eyes were on us. Teddy was holding his hands out, his mouth set in an insipid pout, turning from one group of alarmed diners to another, repeating vapidly, “We’re breaking up. What can I sa-ay, we’re breaking up.”

  “You’re killing me,” I moaned, hiding behind the napkin again. The fit was easing off, but, in spite of how Teddy amused me, at bottom I was still sad. I dried my eyes and dabbed my nose, while he returned to crunching up his quail. “I hope you don’t mind,” he said, between bites. “I’m really hungry.”

  “Go right ahead,” I said.

  “So what was that all about?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said, tearing up again. “It’s that stupid note. It brought the whole thing with Guy back. I never could figure out what was going on there. I couldn’t get to the bottom of it. And now I guess I never will.”

  “So you were moved by your own touching saga.”

  I drank some water, dried the last tears, took out my handkerchief, and gave the nose a serious blow. “Yes,” I agreed. “I was.”

  “Well, it is a good story. You ought to write it down.”

  “No one would believe it.” I straightened my spine and slid my eyes along the tables nearest us. The chatter level had returned to normal, clinking cutlery provided a reassuring white noise. At the bar a woman with a loud laugh laughed loudly and, as I glanced toward her, a tall, dark-haired man, dressed in an impeccable three-piece suit, came into view. Our eyes crossed, his intent on contact, mine on escape. He approached us, gliding stealthily among the tables.

  “Do you know this guy?” I asked Teddy, tilting my head to indicate the potential interloper.

  “Never seen him before,” Teddy said. “Great suit.”

  Then he was upon us, his handsome face emanating goodwill. “Excuse me,” he said. He nodded first to me, then to Teddy, and back again to me, feigning hesitancy. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but, I hope you won’t mind, I just had to ask, are you, by any chance, Edward Day?”

  I set down my fork and gave him my attention. He had the manner of a supplicant. He was blushing, his eyelids flickered nervously, but his voice gave him away. It was an actor’s voice, perfectly controlled and pitched for this complex public space. “I am,” I said.

  “You are,” he agreed. “I thought you must be.” A self-conscious, oh-silly-me laugh escaped him and he shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

  “Do I know you?” I asked.

  “No. That is, we’ve never met. I saw you on the stage, years ago, it was at a theater downtown, very small. You played the valet in a Strindberg play.”

  “Miss Julie,” I said.

  “Yes. It was an incredible performance.”

  Teddy leaned over the table, grinning from ear to ear. “This is great,” he said.

  “It’s kind of you to say so,” I said, frowning at Teddy.

  “That play changed my life.”

  Teddy was chortling. “But you must have been, what, twelve years old?” he said.

  “I was eighteen,” my fan replied. “It was in my first year at NYU. I wasn’t certain what I wanted to do. I’d always loved the theater, but I’d never seen anything like that play Your performance, well, this may sound odd, but I’d never understood what the expression ‘truth’ in acting meant until I saw …” He paused, opening his palm to acknowledge the master, “Edward Day in Miss Julie. When I left that theater I knew I wanted to be an actor.”

  “Really,” I said.

  “You changed my life,” he said.

  Acknowledgments

  I want to thank, in roughly chronological order, the following actors, playwrights, and theater enthusiasts who helped me along the way to this novel: Christine Farrell, Robin Day, Laura Shaine Cunningham, Anthony Giardina, Patrick Pacheco, Peter Schneider, Sarah Harden, Nicole Quinn, Jack Kroll, Janet Nurre, Mikhail Horowitz, Christine Crawfis, Ean Kessler, Walter Bobbie, Mary Willis, and Geri Loughery Thanks also to playwright Nina Shengold, who responded to my query about the possibility of talking to actors with the message, “You want actors, I’ll give you actors.” The next thing I knew I was at a rehearsal of a Broadway play I am grateful to Adam LeFevre, Robyn Henry, and Christopher Durang, for graciously agreeing to let me watch.

  Thanks are also due to Erin Quinn, who unknowingly suggested the plot; Nicole Drespel, who gave me a backstage tour of the Public Theater; Peter Skolnik, who answered my questions promptly and told great stories in the process; Ronit Feldman, who gave the manuscript an early and actor-oriented reading, and my energetic and hardworking agent, Molly Friedrich.

  I owe a special debt to John Pleshette, who was there then. His memory for detail is truly astonishing, and his descriptions of the daily grind of the actor were harrowing. There may be actors who remember what they got paid in 1973, but I suspect not many recall what the set cost as well. John also read the manuscript and offered invaluable suggestions.

  I am and will continue to be indebted to Nikki Smith, my most trenchant reader and valued friend.

  For the unwavering support and enthusiasm of my nearest and dearest, John Cullen, Adrienne Martin, and Christopher Hayes, I am continually grateful.

  A Note About the Author

  Valerie Martin is the author of three collections of short fiction, most recently The Unfinished Novel and Other Stories, and eight novels, including Trespass, Italian Fever, The Great Divorce, Mary Reilly—the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde story told from the viewpoint of a housemaid, which was filmed with Julia Roberts and John Malkovich—and the 2003 Orange Prize–winning Property. She is also the author of the nonfiction work Salvation: Scenes from the Life of St. Francis. She resides in upstate New York.

  a cognizant original v5 release october 07 2010

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2009 by Valerie Martin

  All Rights Reserved

  Published in the United States by Nan A. Talese, an imprint of The Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  www.nanatalese.com

  DOUBLEDAY is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Martin, Valerie, 1948–

  Confessions of Edward Day : a novel / Valerie Martin.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  1. Actors—Fiction. 2. Theater—New York (State)—New York—Fiction.

  3. Triangles (Interpersonal relations)—Fiction.

  4. Psychological fiction. I. Title.

  PS3563.A7295C64 2009

  813′.54—dc22

  2008044965

  eISBN: 978-0-385-53203-7

  v3.0

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