by Carol Anshaw
On the drive back into the city, she thinks about the pointlessness of her relationship with her mother. They’re like two people who years ago had rooms in the same boardinghouse, a time neither looks back on fondly. Visits like today’s always shoot Cate into a black hole. What lies down there emits no light. What always follows is a slide of predictable brooding on assorted failures. Eventually leading to sorrow for elephants. Specifically, the third elephant.
To start with, there were three elephants at the Lincoln Park Zoo. Older females, friends from the circus/zoo circuit, a little past their prime, settled for their retirement decades in a small space in a cold climate.
Then Tatima died. Respiratory infection. Then Peaches died of what the zoo claimed was old age, although she would have likely had another twenty years left had she remained in the wild.
Which left Wankie. For the rest of the winter she was consigned to an indoor space with a concrete floor. To keep her from being lonely, zookeepers put an old television into the room. When the city understood what was going on at the zoo, a town hall was held, and the zoo was urged to repatriate Wankie to the nearest bit of wild, the elephant sanctuary in Tennessee. Instead, she was pushed into a truck bound for a zoo in Salt Lake City. She freaked and lay down inside the truck. Elephants can only lie down for a couple of hours before their weight crushes their organs. Somewhere outside Omaha, they tried and failed to unload her, and so the driver just kept going. When they arrived in Salt Lake, they took her out of the truck and euthanized her.
Whenever she is at her lowest ebb, Cate thinks about Wankie. Who is always available for imagining, not dead in the truck, but rather standing inside on a concrete floor, through a long winter, watching TV.
Sometimes we’re not after money. Every now and then we just like to mess with people’s minds. We scout a house and it has to be a nice one, with decor, someplace where the people who live there care about how things look. Then we come back a few times to get a line on their routine, and when we’re sure they’re out we slip inside. We pick the nicest piece of upholstered furniture. A big chair is best. Irene uses her box cutter to slash the seat cushion. Just once. And we don’t leave any other disruption. We don’t take anything. They find the slash whenever they do. It might be a day later. It’s violence without a point or a victim or a context. We like imagining it creeping them out for a long time.
mulberry street
At least the middle seat is empty. Cate has the window. On the aisle is a thirtyish guy wearing shorts, an old Radiohead sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off, flip-flops. Flip-flops are his first choice in winter travel footwear. For December, on a flight between Chicago and New York. His toenails are thick and yellowed; his knees are hairy; one has a surgical scar across it. Cate has noticed more of these overexposed people on planes lately, like they were watching TV then went to take the garbage out to the alley then suddenly realized—whoa!—they had a plane to catch. Cate waits until he finishes reading the SkyMall catalog and settles into dozing. Then she bends as though she’s taking off her shoes, and with her phone takes a close-up of his toes. She’ll shoot this to Neale once she’s off the plane.
She tries to read. She brought Woolf’s Orlando, but she can’t concentrate. It’s been a long time since she has been this nervous, experienced the motion sickness that comes with being kicked up a notch, or kicked down; the anxiety is about transit. There’s nothing more she can do, though. She is well prepared for this interview. She’s read the working script of the play, plus a lot about Vita. Also two of her novels and a collection of her gardening essays. Although Cate loves Virginia Woolf, she’d never read anything by Vita, who appears to have been an industrious, pedestrian novelist and poet; a major gardener; a distracted mother; a reckless womanizer. Looked at one way, she was arrogant and slouchy and aristocratic; from another angle—ridiculous. She lived in a castle; she had a moat, also a mustache. The play spans a few years from the late 1920s into the early 1930s, during which she took up, then gently demoted, a series of lovers, most prominently Virginia Woolf. Their affair was a stepping-stone across a shallow stream for Vita, a small but deep pool of tragedy for Virginia Woolf, who had the bad luck to be bipolar before the arrival of lithium. She took to her bed when her mind went astray. Birds spoke to her in Greek. On the page it’s a very good play.
Cate has brought one model and a few drawings of the sets she would like to make. This is not a minimalist play, or even an austere one. As much as it is about Vita, it’s also about the cosseted life she lived in the rooms of castles and enormous country houses. Stone walls hung with massive tapestries abetted her seductions. The rooms are part of the story. As is her garden in nighttime. This is the vision she is presenting to Lauren and Molly. Dark opulence.
* * *
“We are so glad you’ve come to us.” Molly opens the door and takes Cate’s hands in her own. This gesture might have resulted in an awkward glitch, but Molly doesn’t miss a beat as she notices, then pretends not to notice, Cate’s shortfall of fingers. Smooth.
Lauren stands behind Molly. Although the three of them were once introduced at a wrap party for the Chicago production of False Confessions, Cate knows them mostly through photographs. Although one (Lauren) is small and white-haired, the other (Molly) darkly Latinate and broad-beamed, they share the same combination of success and age. Also, weeks here and there someplace warm has burnished them both. Everything they wear is either gray or black or putty. A dash of brown for holidays. (Graham told her this.) Their heavy wedding bands are rose gold. When they got married—in the ruins of the Greek theater at Taormina—theirs was the featured wedding in the Sunday Times.
Their apartment, on Mulberry Street in Little Italy, underlines the fullness of their lives. The living room is huge, especially for Manhattan. Floorboards run on the diagonal. The furniture is an amalgam of styles and periods (probably not by intention) adrift in a pleasant way on account of all the space around it. A lot of good art. What is probably their best painting, an Alice Neel portrait of Molly, gets its due high above the mantel. Beneath, a fire is lathering up, sparking red, orange, blue. Here and there are props from their iconic plays—the hull of a longboat hangs from the high ceiling, the anvil from Smithy has been repurposed as an end table.
“Something to drink?”
“If you have coffee.”
Lauren heads back to, presumably, the kitchen. Then reappears too quickly to have done anything. “Marta will bring the coffee.” They have help. Of course they would.
“Make yourself comfortable.” Molly points with a flat, ushering hand toward an overstuffed chair upholstered in fabric that appears to have once been a carpet. As Cate sinks into it, she takes in a panoramic sweep of the living room walls. Propped on a primitive carved mantelpiece are framed photos of Lauren and Molly with other occupants of their stratosphere. Molly and Julie Taymor in conversation, small microphones clipped to their collars, sitting in front of the giant gold disk center stage at The Lion King. Lauren and Molly at a banquet table next to Caryl Churchill, all three laughing with heads tilted toward each other, like conspirators. Lauren playing checkers with Mike Nichols against a background of wood and leather, maybe a private club of some sort? Molly on a stage with Andrew Keates, regarding the London set of Bent, a set nearly as famous as its play. On another wall, shelves are layered with scripts. Those on the bottom have been there so long they look like brittle, flattened papyrus scrolls. There’s a lot more to look at, but she doesn’t have time to take more in, interrupted as she is by the here and now.
Her chair faces a huge, low wood table. On its other side, Lauren and Molly settle into a deep red sofa. Lauren sits with her feet tucked under her. Molly rests a hand on Lauren’s thigh. Cate skips telling them how big a fan she’s been. In her experience, although the celebrated love their fans, it’s only in aggregate, fans as a single entity. As individuals, they are devalued. She’s not sure why, but she has seen enough of this mechanism to never approach i
n awe.
“You may wonder why we are looking at your work, and why now?” This is Lauren. “The thing is, we travel a lot. We check out what others are doing. We loved Adam’s work. Terrible about his death, so untimely. Not to mention brutal. In any event, we were in Chicago and saw the Marie Curie play. Your set was so clever.”
“Well, most of my cleverness has been to disguise a lack of money.”
Molly says, “You are accumulating a reputation in Chicago.”
This takes Cate completely by surprise.
“We thought it might be interesting to see what you’d do with a larger canvas.”
“Please, show us what you’ve brought.” Lauren nods toward Cate’s messenger bag. Cate pulls out her laptop and opens to the 3-D drawings of her sets, then angles the screen so they can all see them together. She also pulls her living room model from a canvas tote.
Cate clears her throat; she has rehearsed. “I’m trying to telegraph Vita’s ballast, her weight in her world. As you show in the play, she traveled light emotionally. If she lived now, she’d just be superficial. Cheating wife. Neglectful mother. But she had a title and a castle. She dragged her family’s past behind her like a train on a wedding dress. The play puts this across so beautifully. I’m just trying to underline it.
“As for the movement of the play, as I see it—well, Vita created a lot of commotion by standing in one place while moving everyone else in, then out. From the specs you sent, I’d have room to do two platforms. Sliding from side to side. Vita’s easy shuffling of people is central to the play’s intent. So as a scene ends on one platform, it’s pulled back and the lights there go down while Vita walks onto the other, where the lights go up and—for instance—Virginia, in another situation, is waiting. I’d do heavy props, castle furniture. The two flats for Vita’s bedroom walls will be painted, then added to with tapestries and ancestral portraits. Virginia’s basement will only need masonry walls meeting at a corner, a high window letting in soft light. The garden will have only white flowers. She was famous for this garden. I’m trying for a sense of motion to counter the lack of physical movement. Motion is elision, between lovers, between rooms.” Cate clicks between screens. “Rooms leading to unseen hallways leading to the basement where she and Virginia make out, leading to her garden, then to the train platform where she plays the timetables, putting one lover on her way to London, then waiting for another to arrive from the city—to save an extra trip to the station. The only stationary piece will be a high, perched platform to represent her writing tower. A Vita stand-in will sit, back to the audience, writing letters. Come-hither letters and farewell letters. This will be before the curtain goes up, and through intermission. A soft light on the desk, the words she’s writing projected onto a screen above the stage. I’ve found a copy of her handwriting I can crib from.”
Lauren looks directly at Cate. “Yes. You have it exactly right. Vita is interesting, just in who she was. But on a level beneath that, she was also a major player in a world that doesn’t exist anymore. She worked the closet to her advantage. She shut the door and inside was a huge, darkened circus where she was on the trapeze, riding the zebra, springboarding to the top of the human pyramid.”
The three of them inhale and exhale softly while they assemble their own versions of what the play will look like.
Then Lauren says, “Impressive.” Cate picks up maybe a little nervousness from their side of the table. They are getting older, maybe wondering if their best work is behind them. Cate belongs to a newer generation, with all the threat implicit in that. Maybe they are trying to both give her a shot and at the same time latch on to some new energy, incorporate it into their work. She looks at them, tries to get a read on who they are to each other. These are women who at one time slept with each other, but not for some time now. Given the sexual metrics of the theater world, Cate gives one of them a treacherous affair a decade or two back that has left the relationship wounded.
The collaborative spell is broken by Molly’s cell, which goes off now, taking up all the attention in the room. After peering at it as though it is a Magic 8 Ball, Molly takes the call and begins a muttered conversation.
Lauren forges on with Cate. “What about the lawn party at Charleston House?”
“I have an idea about that.” Cate’s voice sounds tinny in her own ears. Like she’s a door-to-door salesperson with a revolutionary hairbrush. “I thought about taking the Bloomsbury gossips into the aisle stage right, gathering through the intermission, milling around with croquet mallets, glasses of lemonade. They’ll be miked, of course, but initially speaking softly, then as the intermission winds down, they are audibly sniping about Vita and her pretentious poetry, and speculating on her relationship with Mary Campbell. They make fun of her breeches and mustache. All the good stuff you have in there already. They’ll just amp up the volume, holding pipes or smoking cigarettes in holders. You could use vapes. One of the guys could wear a monocle. One of those guys did wear a monocle. And as the house lights go down, so would the light in the writing tower, and then Vita would appear tucked in an open doorway, briefly, to show her wounded at not being taken seriously.”
Lauren, who has been attentive to Cate in a way that’s unnervingly intense, now turns to Molly and says, “Can you get off that? Who is it anyway?”
“Rita. She thinks someone broke into her apartment. Wore her clothes then came in again to put them back in the closet.” After she says this, she taps a forefinger at her temple, then presses the phone against one of her large breasts and stares at Lauren. To this, Lauren says, “Tell her the signal’s breaking up. Come back to us. We’re in the midst of seeing what Cate will do for the play.”
Cate notices the “will” and says, “I thought I was only trying out for the job. I thought you were also interviewing others.”
“That part is over,” Lauren says. “We have chosen you.”
* * *
In the miniscule bathroom of her tiny hotel room, Cate sits sideways on the toilet. Straight-on isn’t possible for someone her height. Even in this unlikely situation, she knows this will turn out to be one of the happiest moments of her life—when she can taste pure joy alone, at a comfortable distance from its source.
* * *
She is nudging Plan C into place. She imagines the play will be a huge success, scooping up awards, including one for her sets. She sees herself in a better outfit than anything she currently owns, maybe a black tuxedo with a white linen dress shirt with a tiny collar buttoned at the neck. Lauren and Molly will unfold themselves from their seats to embrace her; one of them—she’s not sure which—kisses her quickly but definitely on the lips. From there she sprints lightly onto the stage and grips her award and gives thanks to everyone involved. Her cell will be buzzing frenetically in her pocket. Maureen, thrilled in Chicago. (When Dana’s number comes up, she will send the call to voice mail. There’s no room for Dana in this organized, sensible fantasy.)
From there, she imagines she and Maureen live together in an apartment overlooking the lake. They get individual gigs, but also sometimes work together, as a design team. Their relationship blew past passion and went straight to sturdy. They care for and take care of each other. Cate works on bigger plays, no longer needs handouts from her parents. Thanks, I’m good, she says when they offer. She’s no longer a small charity.
Further on, Sailor lives in a house with her and Maureen. He has a white muzzle now; this gives him a debonair charm. Graham lives with a new girlfriend in the apartment he bought for Cate. The girlfriend is way too young, just out of grad school, but she is, at least, not Eleanor. He has written and produced a new play, which is about surveillance, but by now everyone is paranoid, not just nutcases, and the play is a success.
Everything is smoother in this vision. Not so cliff-hanging. The craggy cliff is far behind her; grass tickles the soles of her feet.
* * *
Back in the here and now, Maureen is waiting at O’Hare. Cate sees
that if they go on together, she will always pick her up at the airport. The luxury of this is overwhelming. Maureen will sit in the cell phone lot reading a biography of Liz Taylor or Esther Williams until she gets Cate’s call, then pull up and help Cate wrestle her bag into the back seat, then kiss Cate as earnestly as she does now.
“Were they fabulous?” she asks.
marienbad
Maureen tries hard. Cate feels gratitude for someone making such an effort to win her. She wants to insinuate herself into the narrowest crevices of Cate’s life. A piece of this insinuation is getting Neale to like her, and her strategy is getting to Neale through Joe. “I have a way with twelve-year-olds.”
“Knock yourself out,” Cate tells her.
Maureen sets up an outing for the four of them, a Sunday afternoon screening downtown at the Siskel Center. Last Year at Marienbad—black-and-white, enigmatic, French. Joe is a sucker for old movies that are inscrutable, doubly for anything French, like his father. His own French, after three years of it at school, is good enough that he almost doesn’t have to read the subtitles. He and Maureen are riveted to the film’s long silences and impenetrable dialog. Neale naps, sputtering awake from time to time. Cate uses this lazy stretch of time to think about the way Dana kisses, the way her lips soften two or three kisses in. She knows she should probably be daydreaming about kissing Maureen. She would like to feel less about Dana, so she imagines her home decor. She conjures up a random hodgepodge. A sofa in a trite color from a decade ago. The living room walls a pale blue from a Cape Cod cottage line of low-end paints. A couple of ill-considered chairs with high arms. A credenza made of pressboard covered with a mahogany veneer. This holds books, DVDs, also VHS tapes that lost their last player ten years ago. A Navajo-ish rug. Southwestern posters. A scented candle in a jar on an end table. Cate adds to this secular crèche piece by piece. Mental redecoration is her main form of snobbery.