Della opens the big sliding doors. Inside—lights clicking on as a powdery scent floats out—is an Ali Baba cave of clothes. Shelves and racks stretching into the distance. There are worse ways to spend an afternoon than looking at feminine trappings. Net gloves, feathered hats; purses and parasols; shoes of every era. White go-go boots, gorgeous chunky heels.
“Out of period,” Ivy sighs. Back on the shelf.
Ann takes the boots down again. “I think these were Mimi’s.”
Ivy asks Della, “Pearls, powder puffs, peignoirs—where will I find the Ps?”
“Hugh’s mother had a peignoir and negligée set we loved,” Della says, moving down a packed aisle. “Powder blue with ecru lace. Newell wore one and I wore the other, to be twins. She never minded us dressing up. Mimi loved, loved clothes. She knew everybody, all the designers, and she had such lovely things.”
An aisle away, clicking through hangers, Ann says, “I was thinking about that leather Halston skirt with the assymetrical zipper—and remember the Afghani velvet patchwork dress with little mirrors all over it?”
Della sketches it in the air, tiny bodice, flowing arms. “And she smelled so good.”
“Here’s that long purple Halston!” Ann cries. “I forgot that one. It’s disgraceful that Betty didn’t get these back to us. The clothes are all we’ve got left of Mimi now—but her career lives on, I got nowhere with the Ontario Living editors until I mentioned her.”
“Did she work?” Ivy asks.
Della laughs. “Constantly! However sad or sick she was, she hardly ever stopped working. She was an actress first, and a pop/op artist; she spent a couple of months at the Factory, you know the kind of thing. Long, shiny hair like Millie the Model. Crossed with Edie Sedgwick. She sang a little too. In the seventies she was a television interviewer, a star more than a journalist—you’d know her, of course you would: Mimi Hayden.”
“Oh, her! I was thinking Argylle—of course I do. Micro-mini, white boots, white lipstick—I remember her on TV, down at city hall, demonstrating how to smoke a joint. And being a pretty witch on Mr. Dressup.”
“Damage control after that joint-smoking thing, I bet. She did Sesame Street too. She was the young exciting one on the afternoon show, and she still acted sometimes. She dated Trudeau; she was pals with Glenn Gould before he died—he helped her buy her piano. When she was working she’d take us to shows or into the city to go to the Ex—I can’t believe they let us go with her! She drove like a bat out of hell, in a little yellow Karmann Ghia, smoking all the time.” Della sounds happy, remembering. “In between the crazy she was so great—funny and sweet. She sprung herself from whatever clinic and came to Ruth’s one night, and made us stay up to watch the moon landing. She said we’d have to tell our grandchildren about the first moment humans escaped from Earth, she couldn’t let us miss it. Ruth made Jiffy Pop popcorn on the stove.”
Ivy laughs. “That silver flower-bulb, bloating and blooming!”
“We were happy.” Ann is referring to a completely different we. “Hugh and I. It was a good time. I sometimes wonder,” she tells Della, wide eyes fixed on her, “if Hugh and I should get back together.”
After one quick glance at Ivy’s face (which is as perfectly vacant as she can contrive), Della rushes on, “Hey, I promised to go see Mimi today—I’d better get going.”
Unable to be left alone with Ann, Ivy says, “Yipes, I’m late—” And in fact, it is three.
She stuffs white marabou mules beside the negligée in her bag, and runs.
10. MASTER CLASS: DESIRE
Burton’s wearing a cape. Following along the hall, Ivy swings her eyes away from his sway-skirted figure. Since she has to laugh, she stops, hand over mouth—never let Burton see you laughing at him—and gives her eyes the great refresher of the whole hot mess of the mural: student angstlove slathered on concrete block wall.
Newell arrives beside her. Does Newell really see Burton? Or is he all angstlove for his old pal, old mentor, old ruination? He is quietly laughing. “We’re in Capetown tonight, my darling Mrs. Lovett—and I think you may find yourself Mitch-ing mallecho after all.”
Ivy’s eyes lift. Twelfth Night?
His smile is famous because it is beautiful. “It’s got a bee in its bonnet.”
So all that work on Mrs. Lovett’s scenes was wasted. Oh well. Four thousand dollars, her innermost mind murmurs, again. They follow on.
“I’ve given this a great deal of thought,” Burton says, to the assembled masses: twelve students and Terry and Terry. “Sweeney is a wonderful opus, Mr. Sondheim’s wondrously complex score—its energy, razor wit, and of course the psychological insight. But I think that for this group, this cast—for this process—another script is needed. I have spent hours in thought, and I emerge, butterfly-like—” (here Burton swings his cape-wings open) “with the conviction that it is Williams we wequire.”
Ivy shakes her head, not letting herself laugh, and Burton glares. She nods earnestly.
He continues: “Streetcar.”
Then stops, for a considerable time. Nobody moves.
“No more discussion!” (As if there’d been any.) “I don’t want us to over-think this, but plunge right in. We’ll read scene after scene, as I call them out, and see what pearls emerge.”
Burton hands his stack of scripts to Terry, who splits them with Terry, and they dole out the stapled sheets, as per the names scrawled on the top page in Burton’s purplest pen. Burton, meanwhile, drapes stockings and filmy silks and slippers along the centre of the table.
Ivy is for a moment overtaken with real joy to be here, witnessing this nonsense. Even in this world of death and pain, we can still sit in a room and connive together to make nonsensical, joyous swipes at something approaching art, with a bunch of students, and somehow, somehow—don’t leave this out—get paid for it!
Burton orders them into place at the long table so they will be able to look into each other’s eyes during the readings: Newell halfway down the table on one side; Ivy on the other, with Savaya on her right. Beside Newell, Orion.
As they all look through their scripts (in the Mitch—Stella scene, as Newell predicted, Ivy’s name is purpled in beside Mitch) Burton gives a précis of the reading ethos.
“Of course we ask for commitment and energy during the reading. We are testing to see what will come once we are on our feet … And yes,” he adds, now that they’ve all registered who they are reading. “Yes, you’ll see—there’s a bend in it.”
Terry and Terry don’t have scripts. None of the students say anything, although Orion does glance quickly up, across the table to Savaya.
Interesting, Ivy finds, to watch Orion’s body slightly adjusting, relaxing—conforming—to, which? Blanche or Stella? He melts a little more, lolls slightly in his chair, smiles a secret, pregnant smile. Stella. Anyway, only Newell could do Blanche. There are other pairings: down at the end of the table giggles break out, kids elbowing other kids and pointing silently to the scripts. Burton stops all that.
“We ask you”—his eye is ferocious—“to take this reading seriously, to honour the text. Cast as a murderous barber, or a woman who cooks people into pie, you would throw yourself into that. Do the same here, even if you find yourself playing against gender.”
They read. Burton ignores the tittery end of the table and starts with the beginning of the play, Newell—Blanche coming to find Stella—Orion in the tenement on a street called Elysian Fields. It works, weirdly. Orion is tender; Savaya, six feet tall, broad and flat across the shoulders, is a lovely, taut Stanley. They know each other well enough, Ivy sees, to construct (in the ghostly architecture of rehearsal) an entire marriage, a web of compliance and adjustments, a contract between them of strength and sex. But in comes trouble: Newell, with a lightly raised eyebrow, questioning the quality of everything, seeming at first as pure and clean as a bar of fine milled soap.
STELLA: He smashed all the lightbulbs with the heel of my slipper.
BLANCHE: And you let him? Didn’t run, didn’t scream?
STELLA: Actually, I was sort of thrilled by it.
Orion’s sturdy enough to do this, to stand up against the older sister, have an opinion of his own; he’s soft enough to still, always, love Blanche. And interestingly, he captures that mysterious superiority that Stella has: the power of knowing that her lover loves her. He’s not just a pretty face, Ivy finds her mind saying, in just those old-fashioned words.
But it’s hard to watch Newell.
Ivy is familiar with that difficulty. The way the eye slides off those who are damaged. She could never watch Michael Jackson either. Or—who else—Lindsay Lohan, combusting; Judy Garland, Marilyn. People who have been broken in public, who are suffering badly, right out in the open. Even the camera’s eye seems to glide away.
Now it’s Ivy’s turn: Mitch meeting Blanche. It’s horrible. The hope, the possibility of love, and knowing how it will be dashed, like babies’ heads are dashed against the pavement in the Psalms. Men she’s known flood through her working mind, fragments of how they spoke or moved that might be useful. Kind plumbers, serious car mechanics, those who help, who are kind. As Mitch ought to be, can be, until that last scene where he has to attack. She herself is Mitch-like—and there’s something else in the character, something a bit like Hugh.
Once they’re talking to each other, she can look at Newell. Then he gives himself to her. He’s a genius, he’s an angel to work with, and here’s his secret: he knows that you know he’s ruined, and he trusts you enough to let you in. He breaks her heart.
They stop, they take a merciful break.
It’s absurd, of course, for Burton to have done this, but Ivy can’t be sad. Painful, remarkable, to watch the play being made true once again, twisted (or untwisted?) to serve Burton’s ends—it’s good. Can’t do these students any harm to listen to this, she thinks.
Burton thinks so too. He’s the Serious Artist, all furrowed brow and deep thought.
“It’s so human. Wonderful. That was wonderful,” he says to Orion, as the students disperse to get drinks from the table at the back. Orion blushes. He’s very young.
The Terrys don’t seem to agree with the wonderful. He-Terry stares at the table, maybe bracing himself to object; Her-Terry approaches Burton, clipboard loaded with sponsors’ phone numbers: “We do have a responsibility toward those who have so generously—”
Burton forestalls her: “I know, I tossed and turned all night last night. I have great purple circles under my eyes, as do you, dear Terry. Perhaps you too were plagued by the idea that something—something vital—was missing from the master class. But here I believe we have one solution. Perhaps not the only …” By now, Him-Terry has worked up the courage to join his wife, and Burton folds him into the conversation, waving aside a weak mention of rights negotiations. “Let us fulfill this process—just for today—and see whether it is conceivable that something important may be discovered here—you see, Terry, It Gets Better.”
Inside her cheek, Ivy laughs at how shamelessly sensible Burton is: twisting the internet campaign meant to console gay teens to his very practical end. Even Terry cannot fight the power of YouTube. Neither can Terry. They confer over folders, darting glances back to the table, more united against Burton than they have been for years. So a little good has been done, Ivy supposes.
Savaya, returning with a bright pink can of cream soda, bursts in with a paean to Dan Savage’s genius and his husband and son, his suffering, and how many people’s lives are being saved by the project to stamp out bullying.
Savaya’s eyes are sparkling clean, her mouth full of clean sparkling teeth, enthusiasm and animal spirit undamped, unmuffled. Ivy wonders if in fact she might be a “Polack,” like Stanley Kowalski. Ivy asks, “What does Savaya mean? Is it a name from your heritage?” (How convolutedly we’ve learned to ask that question!)
“Doesn’t mean a thing!” Savaya says, laughing again. Brilliant teeth. “My heritage is, like, nothing—just white-bread. My parents are, you know, alternative. Savaya was a coffee place they liked in San Francisco, sounded kinda yoga-y.”
She’s a beautiful girl, easy to like. No L, but smart and funny. A shame if that slimeball Pink pollutes her. Ivy laughs too. “Try Ivy,” she says. “And my sister’s name is Fern. We went through hell. Well, limited hell.”
They start again. The second half of the play is worse. Terrible to look up into Newell’s eyes again, to watch him peel away the covering from his poor soul and show you the rags inside. Blanche can’t even lie properly, can’t keep up her pretenses anymore.
“I don’t want realism,” Newell tells her in the blue light of the third eye, the fourth wall of consciousness not necessary between them, in this working moment. “I want magic! Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don’t tell truth, I tell what ought to be truth. And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it!”
All of that is entirely true, Ivy thinks.
As they move through the play Burton gives notes, praising with too much effusion (Orion, mostly). But it’s Savaya who surprises Ivy. That’s the joy of these workshops, of all teaching: the shock of how good the very young can be. Savaya has headstrong pride as well as kooky, useful humour, and the sexual confidence (or the gall) to bulldoze. Reading Stanley, her head rears back and she stares directly at Newell. Tough thing for a sixteen-year-old girl to do to a minor legend of the big and small screen. Taking on nationality, white-bread or not: “I am not a Polack. People from Poland are Poles, not Polacks. But what I am is a one hundred percent American, born and raised in the greatest country on earth and proud as hell of it, so don’t ever call me a Polack.”
They break again, the tension drops, and the students drift out to get drinks. Savaya and Orion go out arm in arm, kissing each other’s cheeks as they sashay, but of course that doesn’t mean anything in an arts school.
Only the grown-ups are left. Ivy bends over her script, drawing daisies with her yellow marker.
In the silence Burton lifts his head, saying, “There’s nothing there. Nothing.”
Newell is watching the students out in the hall. He half-turns back to Burton.
Who sighs, and picks up his script, spiritually spent. Lets it fall again. Staring up at Newell’s carved-marble ear, Burton announces, “I was wrong, Boy. They need more of the knife. Like Spring Awakening—Wedekind! No one else has touched the soul of youth.”
Orion (soul of youth that he is) appears, like Ganymede. He deposits a Diet Coke in front of Burton, and accepts thanks with a slight flush of his lean, silken cheek. Burton returns to his script with much indication of despair: furrowed brow, fierce concentration.
From behind her hair, Ivy watches Orion open the other can, drink from it with his beautiful carved-marble mouth, and hand it to Newell. Who puts his mouth on it and drinks. Whose other hand rises to take a speck of lint from Orion’s chest, as Burton lifts his head again and also, Ivy sees, sees what she has seen.
But Burton is a pro. His eyes look west for a brief second and then back down into his script, deep into the dark recesses of Desire.
(DELLA)
playing stops the constant barrage
the list of all the things that must be done
pick up Elly / clean up / class tomorrow / pay bills /
Mighton all over the dining room table
late but one more piece will keep has kept, is keeping me from
Schumann, Abschied
The Departure Le Départ
nicht schnell
everybody is losing everybody Mimi too losing Hugh
losing us, light, air, touch, sound
Gerald, his son, how can he bear it
wandering the streets, not thinking
like I don’t think about Elle
a mouth full of broken teeth don’t bite down
what did you think, Mimi, all those times you lost Hugh?
my mama lost me to
o, each time she lost another baby
music helps thank you, Mimi
should I text an ultimatum?
>Call or don’t come
speaking or not speaking it is the usual thing, after all
we’re not meant not built to be monogamous or loyal
but look at geese all the geese flying away each with a single mate
drawing their Vs along grey paper sky
he has stopped loving me
that’s all, it is the usual thing
nicht schnell
11. HUGH AND THE NIGHT AND THE MUSIC
Getting dark early. At five o’clock, in a fitful wind, Hugh walks the leaf-scuffed, wet sidewalks to Della’s to tell her that Ken called. That rising inside-tide of dread: to be the bearer of bad news, the one to trouble your friend. Not the person who did it, but you, Hugh, blamed for saying what is true.
His head hurts, his teeth ache. He climbs the back steps, lightening his heavy tread so as not to give everything away. Why does Della never lock her door? Anybody could come in.
“Hello!” he calls. What a cheerful howl you have, Mr. Wolf.
Nobody answers but music: Della, at Mimi’s piano. That rippling thing, Schumann or Schubert, Impromptu. Long hours waiting at Della’s piano lessons after school, listening to Miss Bick bark at her. He’ll sit and listen again.
Out of Della’s line of sight, Hugh leans on the dining room table, littered with glossy photos of Mighton, bedroom-eyed, young for his age. We are ego-based life forms. Thank God that didn’t last, Della and Mighton. Ken is better. Even now. A better man.
Hugh’s head hurts so much. Orange bells on the sideboard, shoved all anyhow into a vase. He shifts a stalk or two to make a more pleasing line. Eye caught by Della’s boats, he follows them around the room, trying to see what she’s after. Too early in the process to know. Thick work, thick paint. Myriad layers on the ones she has collaged. Della’s mind, unrefined.
The house smells of linseed oil, oranges, coffee. Perfume, sharp rather than sweet, vetiver. Not much of Ken—but his law office is bare too. Spare everywhere, guarded, skin stretched thin over long bones. Intelligent, kind, hard-driven. By ambition or dislike of failure? Distant: from having to refrain from relationships with the succession of tragedies he works with, all abuse cases.
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