“You’re smart as a whip,” he said. “You have the exact skills we need. There really would be no sacrifice on your part. Just stay out of the bars. Don’t get arrested.”
She stood and straightened her skirt, shoved the handle of her purse up her arm. Looking down at him, she said, “No, thank you.”
“No one else finds out,” he continued. “You have my word. It won’t be discussed at work, between anyone. You’ll have my full support.”
She looked beyond Henri Bader to the rocky outcroppings of Morning-side Park, her lunchtime cliffs. She longed to explain to this arrogant man exactly what he was asking. To give up friends. Her dream of writing a true novel. She wanted more sunlight, not less.
“Look. I only brought it up so you would know you don’t have to worry about any surprising, uh, revelations getting in your way. We’ll all be scientists in our division, and scientists are a whole other breed of animal. You know this. You’ve worked with us for ten years at the GSA. No one would care, even if they did find out, but they won’t.”
Lucybelle shook her head. “No, thank you.”
“You’re going to be an assistant editor for the rest of your life because you’re afraid?”
How dare he. She’d never had this conversation with someone who wasn’t. He had no right. His entire career wasn’t on the line. His reputation. The lease on his apartment. The love of his family.
“Besides,” he said, “Chicago is America’s best-kept secret. You’ll love it there.”
“What’s Chicago got to do with it?”
“That’s where we’ll be. Wilmette, actually, but close enough.”
She left him on the bench and walked briskly down the promenade, letting her heels hammer the pavement. The steps leading up to Morning-side Heights felt as challenging as a mountainside, but she pushed her pace. She was sure he watched her the entire climb up the dozens of stone steps. When she crested the top, she turned and looked down. He sat with his knees spread, long arms across the back of the bench, his face tipped toward her, basking in the sunshine. He raised a flattened hand to his brow and gave her a little military salute.
Lucybelle turned her back and tried to retrieve the pleasure she’d gotten, just a few minutes earlier, from the May sunshine, but the feeling of the day had been ruined.
Monday, June 11, 1956
Lucybelle got off the train at 14th Street, walked down 8th Avenue, and took a left on West 12th. It still pleased her, all these years later, that she’d landed an apartment just one block away from where Willa Cather and Edith Lewis had lived. Cather had walked these same routes home. She’d lived under the same patch of sky.
The air was light with an early summer freshness, not yet too hot. She hoped to work on her novel tonight. Maybe Phyllis would go out with friends. Or maybe she’d already had a few drinks this afternoon, which meant she’d go to bed early. Though Lucybelle had complained back then, she now missed the years when Phyllis had been in shows, out every night at rehearsals and performances. She knew she shouldn’t think of Phyllis like that, shouldn’t be glad when she was gone, but didn’t everyone feel that way after a few years together?
She did love Phyllis. How could she not? Phyllis was everything she’d come to New York to find. They were like Willa Cather characters, both punching through the dull expectations of their small hometowns, making their way to New York, Phyllis the gifted and radiant one, finding her way on stage, and Lucybelle content to hold a hand up to the glare of stage lighting, watching from the shadows, devoted. At first, just being there was enough.
Lucybelle had felt guilty about slipping away from the farm during the war, when her family was busy worrying about John Perry on a ship in the Pacific, when the eyes of the entire country were focused overseas. What right did she have to do just what she pleased when so many were sacrificing so much? And yet, all kinds of girls were fleeing farms, and she took her chance too. Oh, but what a moment that had been, getting the acceptance letter from the graduate program in literature at Columbia University. Even Daddy conceded that in literature a woman might be able to claim what he called “a life of the mind.” She’d moved quickly, before Daddy or the university could revoke approval, and took a room near Columbia. Within weeks Krutch hired her to ghostwrite his theater reviews for the Nation. He invited her to all the parties, where she met actors and actresses, lighting designers, producers, directors, and stagehands. It had been enough to simply witness the dazzle, to bask in the spilled light.
Phyllis Dove had black hair, red lips, and far-reaching gray eyes, capable of pinning back-row audiences to their seats. Blood flushed to her cheeks and throat with little provocation, and she used that volatility to her advantage. She was desperate for approval, all actresses are, that’s the primary goal of their trade, to win people to their characters, and at first that desperation caused her to work very hard. She won a couple of good roles early on, but then her career fizzled. It was possibly just bad luck, poor timing. Not everyone can make it. But it was all the more painful because she’d been on the brink of making it, so close. Everything soured after her performance in Ibsen’s Doll House. The reviews were good, some quite good, but Phyllis had been angered by a couple of critical remarks. One reviewer said she’d never make it on Broadway, and in her fury, she’d thrown a vase full of water and red roses against the wall. Her hair was dyed blond for the part, making her look especially sinister in that moment of passion, the red of her lips and eyelids harsh against the yellow hair. The criticism snaked into Phyllis’s consciousness, took up residence, began to fester. She had the thinnest skin.
Lucybelle implored her to ignore the reviews, to keep on working, to develop her voice, to forget what the critics said. Anyway, one called her “a bright new talent,” and another said, “Phyllis Dove embodies the role of Kristine with sensitive perfection.” It didn’t matter. She wanted Broadway. She wanted the leads. One day, when one of their friends got tired of her whining and said, “You can’t sing, Phyllis. You aren’t going to get a Broadway show,” she slapped him so hard the café owner called the police. How many times had Lucybelle argued that there were lots of good roles she could have? It was true: she was a character actress, not a lead. She needed to listen to their friends. Though she was lovely enough for a lead, she had far too much personality. Phyllis was very funny when she wanted to be, and once Lucybelle made the mistake of suggesting she look for comic roles. It was the morning after a particularly humiliating—Phyllis’s word— audition, and they were in the kitchen making coffee. Lucybelle was late for work and exasperated by Phyllis’s lengthy description of the director’s idiocy. But it was also a funny description, and so Lucybelle made the suggestion. Phyllis, who was putting a piece of bread in the toaster, froze in place as if she’d been stunned. She blanched to the color of skim milk, then quietly left the apartment, with the piece of bread in her hand, and didn’t return for forty-eight hours.
Occasionally, if they were both in good moods, maybe on a Friday night after a couple of martinis, just the two of them alone, Lucybelle still tried to convince Phyllis that it wasn’t over. If only she could impart even a tiny fraction of the substance of her conversations with Krutch about the meaning of art, the bedrock of human creativity. Making meaningful words and objects created lifeblood that held people together. Our stories. Our visions of beauty. A life in the theater, Lucybelle would tell Phyllis, holding her hands too tightly, didn’t mean stardom. It meant devotion to the work, love of the work.
Phyllis’s eyes would fill with tears. “I know. I know. I can be so shallow. That’s why I need you.”
“You don’t need me. You need to act. No one is going to hand you anything, ever. You need to do what you love, not just wish for it.”
“You’re right. You’re always right.”
Sometimes it seemed as if Phyllis kissed her to stop the talking. It always worked. Phyllis’s mouth was an epic poem all on its own, an unfolding story. The striving and anger fell away
when Phyllis kissed, and her longing took over, as if she was trying to get at something, but couldn’t. They bedeviled Lucybelle, these kisses, the way they supplanted language. Their lovemaking always felt unfinished, as if there was more to say, or something to say, but they had failed. As if, just beyond the kisses were all the answers. Lucybelle tried to ignore that incomplete feeling, her desire like a hand reaching down her throat, grasping for something that it had not yet found.
They lived on the third and top floor of the brick building at 277 West 12th. She loved the cobblestoned street, the five-step stoop with iron railings, the windows’ stone lintels, and at the top, the bracketed stone cornice in a soothing gray to contrast the warm red bricks. She climbed the stairs tonight, happy to be home, looking forward to taking L’Forte out for a walk in the still-warm evening. She checked the door; it was locked and so she used her key. As she stepped inside, she heard the tenor of a man’s voice. A scenario she’d been foolish enough to not consider: Phyllis had brought her friends home to drink tonight.
“Hello,” Lucybelle called out.
L’Forte came skittering around the corner on his short legs. He always made the turn too fast when Lucybelle came home, and his toenails had scored a thicket of scratches in the hardwood floor. She scooped the brown dachshund up into her arms and kissed both black eyebrow patches. He licked her face as she stroked his long silky ears.
There had been no human answer, so she called out again. She heard the sound of a chair scraping on the floor and something akin to a whimper. She entered the room to find Phyllis standing in front of the refrigerator, nearly at attention, and Fred Higgins, a newish member in Phyllis’s crowd, maybe an actor, she couldn’t remember, sitting at the kitchen table. A slight man with a handsome enough face, a bit winnowed and tense, but with a quick and eager smile, Fred was the exact sort of person Lucybelle preferred to avoid: intelligent, probably quite intelligent, but possessing a viral fear, a timidity that would stop any forward movement of his intellect in its tracks. Daddy loved to laugh at her impatience with people and commented often and proudly that Lucybelle didn’t suffer fools gladly. Now she raised her eyebrows, unable to disguise her displeasure.
“Lucy,” Phyllis said.
The way Phyllis spoke her name felt like a reprimand, as if she could read Lucybelle’s critical thoughts. She tried to correct her attitude by smiling at the insipid Fred and giving him a hearty hello.
Fred made circles on the Formica tabletop with his middle finger, as if he were stirring an imaginary pile of salt, and didn’t answer. A yeasty unpleasantness thickened the air.
Lucybelle set L’Forte down on the floor, fished the pack of Chesterfields out of her purse, and lit one. She leaned back against the yellow countertop, her spine pressing into the edges of the tiles. A question dangled in the room, and she tried to focus, discern what it was asking. She believed in her ability to solve problems, but she needed to know what the question was.
“How was work?” Phyllis finally asked.
“Fine.” She reached down and petted L’Forte, who sat on his haunches loyally right at her feet. She repeated, “Fine.”
She used to ask about Phyllis’s day too. Had the audition gone well? Had she learned of any new roles or met any helpful people? For a while anyway she’d bought the story that Phyllis needed to hang out in the cafés and bars in the Village, that her work required she meet people, lots of people. Even when Lucybelle stopped believing it, she liked the way Phyllis’s charisma brought interesting people into their lives, people who loved books and plays and music, people who believed there were hundreds of different ways to live a life.
“Sit down, Lucy.” Phyllis ran her hand, fingers spread, through her black hair. The color in her cheeks was high, nearly feverish. She wore a tight, gray pencil skirt and a yellow, short-sleeved sweater, as if she’d dressed to go well with their kitchen. Lucybelle still thought she was beautiful, sometimes even ravishing. But now, standing with her back against the refrigerator, with Fred Higgins at the table drawing imaginary circles with his finger, Lucybelle thought she looked unpleasantly puffy and jaundiced, as if the sweater and kitchen tiles reflected her skin tone. She felt disloyal by the thought. Was Phyllis unwell? Perhaps Fred had weaseled his way into her afternoon and she’d had more than she could take of his passively demanding presence. There was something dogged about Fred, a neediness that was partially disguised by his good looks.
She thought of a way to rescue Phyllis. “I’m going to go change,” she announced. “Remember we’re due at Harry and Wesley’s in half an hour.”
Instead of a grateful smile, Phyllis said “Lucy” again.
Was she ill?
“I need to talk to you. There’s no easy way to say this. Fred and I have decided to marry.”
Lucybelle waited for the punch line. She even coughed out a little laugh, so sure that this was a joke. Fred. Fred. That was funny.
L’Forte put his front paws up on her thighs, under her skirt, tearing her stockings. She lifted the dog and again tried to focus. Here was her kitchen. Her dachshund. The stove, refrigerator, and coffeepot. The narrow window looking out into the airshaft. And Phyllis. Here was Phyllis with whom she’d shared the last eight years of her life.
She snuffed the cigarette in the sink and carried L’Forte to her bedroom, passing Phyllis’s on the way. Through the open door she saw the two suitcases sitting neatly side by side on the bed. Lucybelle set down L’Forte and entered Phyllis’s room. She looked in the closet: empty. Oddly, numbly, she tried to remember what Fred did for work. She’d been supporting Phyllis for the last however many years. Would he do that now? She must be quite sure about this relationship—married?
Lucybelle pushed both suitcases off the bed, and they thudded onto the colorful oval rug her mother had made from old rags. It had been a gift for Phyllis’s thirtieth birthday, and Phyllis had had a heyday with the symbolism. Lucybelle had tried for days to convince her that the rug represented affection and hours of labor, the weaving of one life into another. She’d been touched her mother had given Phyllis such a personal gift. Phyllis only ever saw the reworking of old rags, something to walk on. She insisted on keeping the rug central in her own bedroom, as a reminder, she liked to say, of what was in store for her. Even old rags had a use.
How many times had Phyllis started sentences with “If this acting thing doesn’t work out . . .”? She’d move to San Francisco. She’d start a bakery. She’d adopt orphans. Lucybelle ignored these rants. She knew no one in San Francisco; she couldn’t scramble an egg, let alone bake; and she didn’t have the money to support herself, never mind orphans.
What a fool she’d been to not see that Phyllis truly had been searching for an escape route.
At least one thing was diamond clear: Lucybelle would not plead.
“Get out,” she told Fred when she returned to the kitchen.
It would have been better, much better, if Phyllis had stayed resolute. But tears filled her beautiful gray eyes, rainwater wetting stone, and she looked at Fred, asking him—the far weaker personality—to make this fit. It didn’t fit. It was as wrong as overalls in church, as wrong as anything Lucybelle had ever known. Fred stayed right where he was, though he remained mute.
“I can’t,” Phyllis said to Lucybelle, the tears streaming now, her hands working the air in front of her heart as if she were acting on stage. “I’m not you.”
Ah yes: Lucybelle was the one. The dark sister. The odd girl.
But no, Phyllis didn’t mean that. She wasn’t making a point even half as sharp as that. She only meant that she had no integrity. Couldn’t love. Couldn’t live. Instead, she’d head down a long dark tunnel of marriage with Fred Higgins. Lucybelle saw the whole thing so clearly. Later she’d wonder if she should have pleaded, explained, described the hell for which they were headed. Later, during insomniac nights, she’d regret having given in so easily. Even Daddy, who knew nothing about the nature of her relationship with Phylli
s, was disgusted at her easy acquiescence. “You just gave them the apartment?” he said. “It was yours. You found it before you even knew her.”
But in those first moments, she lost herself. She felt nearly transparent in her slight, pale build. Her outsized intelligence felt like a crippled leg she had to drag about with her. She returned to Phyllis’s bedroom, hefted the two suitcases, and clicked them open. She turned the contents out onto the oval rag rug. Then she took the suitcases to her own bedroom and stuffed clothes into them. She’d come back later for her books.
For now she just wanted out of this apartment, away from that pathetic scene in the kitchen. She carried the two suitcases to the entryway, set them down, and picked up L’Forte. Holding her dog, she stepped into the kitchen. Phyllis was sobbing into her hands, and Fred was comforting her, his arms around her shoulders, his mouth murmuring into her hair. Lucybelle grabbed the grocery basket from off the kitchen counter and dropped L’Forte into it. He barely fit and she had to push his hind end, but he must have sensed the gravity of the situation because he didn’t make a sound.
Phyllis lifted her head, cast her gaze desperately about the room, as if she were the one being left, the ruby lips fishing open and closed, open and closed.
“Don’t talk,” Lucybelle said. “Not a single word.”
It was almost impossible to walk carrying the two suitcases and dog-laden grocery basket, and anyway, she didn’t need to drag her entire life down the streets of the Village, allowing her departure to be viewed by gawkers, so she hailed a taxicab. Once her suitcases were in the trunk, and she and L’Forte were in the backseat, she realized she had no idea where to go, so she gave the driver the address of the Geological Society of America on 117th Street. She used her key to let herself into the office and stowed the suitcases in a closet. She lay on the floor, with L’Forte in her arms, for the rest of the night. She still had her job, after all, the world on her desk every morning, literally. She edited the papers of men who explored the Amazon, mapped the Pyrenees, climbed Mount McKinley. She’d never expected a dark-haired Bohemian lover. It was almost a cliché, nothing she would have tolerated in a novel. No, not true. This, she thought, is exactly what Cather would have written. I’m to get on a train, move on with an ironic appreciation for the heart’s beauty and wreckage.
A Thin Bright Line Page 2