He walked over to the drink stand and poured himself some. Scotch. He had never approved of using liquor as emotional insulation, but he had to admit that it had helped this evening to absorb those shocks that wore one out.
“You never were the secure type, Tommy,” Walter said. “Really, if I may say so, Rhoda should have accepted that.”
“Let’s not be hard on Rhoda,” he heard himself say. “Give her credit for buying her tickets before the first race.”
Tom Harrow put a cube of ice in his glass and walked across the room to the Judge’s chair. He was glad to observe that he could walk easily and steadily, that his syllables were not slurred, that his mind was clear, that he was not sleepy.
“I looked a lot better to her than some of the local entries,” he said, “even if I weren’t stable. But now we’re on the subject of racing, I don’t like colts that are too stable.”
“And you went right out in front,” Walter said. “By Jove, there was nothing like you in the old Price barn.”
“The old Price what?” Tom Harrow asked.
“The Price racing stable,” Walter said. “The colors were cerise and white. Surely I’ve told you of my Uncle Joe’s Kentucky breeding farm? Our Derby winner, Thunderbolt, was at stud there for fifteen years.”
“Thunderbolt?” Tom said, but he was thinking about himself. “I wonder what in hell it was I ever saw in Emily.”
He took a swallow of whiskey, and he was shocked to realize that he was tiring of the taste. Brands of Scotch, he was thinking, were like brands of human relationships. You could put your money on the twelve-year brands or the eight-year-olds, or you could move to lower prices, but in the end Scotch was Scotch, and human relationships, too, had their unbreakable patterns. He looked sharply at Walter Price, afraid that Walter might have fallen asleep.
“I suppose,” he said, “after a mood is over, no one can understand just what it was that got him into an emotional involvement. But some people seem to hold a mood for years and years, while I always seem to be moving on.”
“Tommy,” Walter said, “it’s the artist in you that changes.”
That was the old excuse: it was all right to fall flat on your face, all right to love them and leave them, all right not to send a check to the wife and kiddies, as long as you were a creative artist. The license of the creative artist was a slogan of the theatre, a part of the Decalogue of Hollywood, but had it any meaning?
“I thought she was a cheerful girl,” he said. “But as soon as I married her, she began having temper fits and lachrymose hours. I didn’t know that she was spoiled as well as dumb—I wasn’t in the mood.”
“Tommy,” Walter said, “I would not say that Rhoda was dumb.”
“No,” he said, “not Rhoda. Emily. But I don’t blame you for getting confused, Walter. They all get the same—impatient with me in the end. Look at Hopedale. No, I’ll take that back, I don’t want to look at Hopedale.”
“No,” Walter said, “it would be easier to look at Rhoda.”
“Goddammit,” Tom Harrow said, “I don’t want to look at her, either, and I don’t want to look at Margaret Cadova—do you remember the Cadova girl?”
“Oh, yes,” Walter Price said, “at Antibes. I don’t blame Rhoda’s having been annoyed.”
He was walking down an unpleasant glade which he had not traveled for some time, but in any case, he preferred at the moment the past to the present.
“Rhoda wasn’t seriously annoyed,” he said. “She knew it didn’t amount to anything. Nothing ever did, you know, when Rhoda was around. By God, she almost made me practical; at least she made me save the money and take advice from practical friends.”
For a moment he had a memory of Rhoda at Palm Beach, years ago.
“Walter,” he said, “I really am terribly sorry I can’t help out.”
“Dear boy,” Walter said, “I’m able to take these things better than you, I fear. It’s you I’m worried about. It doesn’t seem possible—no, not possible.”
“I have to pinch myself occasionally to realize it,” Tom Harrow said. “In fact, I’ve been pinching myself at odd moments since I got the news this morning.”
“If you want a word of advice from one who knows,” Walter said, “it is well to allow hard realities to creep up upon one slowly. This softens the absoluteness of the shock. Don’t look now has always been my motto for the first day, and for the second day: Don’t look at all of it just yet.”
“I’ve been looking,” Tom Harrow said, “but still I can’t see all of it.”
“Dear boy,” Walter said, “I think we had both better toddle upstairs to bed, and I’ll give you a sleeping pill.”
Some puritanical reflex he may have inherited from the Judge made the idea repellent, and sleep at the moment seemed like a weak apology as well as an escape.
“No thanks,” he said. “You go on up, Walter; I think I’ll stay down here awhile.”
He had no desire whatsoever to go to bed, or anywhere. He was sinking again to the bottom of the sea where wreckage lay, festooned with Shakespearean coral.
“Dear Tom,” Walter said, “do you remember when Hero’s Return opened in New York?”
“Yes,” he said, “you’re damn well right I do.”
It was a silly question, and Walter should have known it even at that time of night.
“It’s incredible,” Walter said, and his voice was on a higher note. “After that night I thought you’d never have to worry about anything again. Well, Tom, good night.”
XX
To Put It Very Frankly, He Was Feeling Fine
His first play opened at the Empire, a large house for a play by an unknown. It was the name of Arthur Higgins that had filled it in the beginning, but when the Empire was finally closed, most newspapers mentioned Hero’s Return in their lists of outstanding plays that had been produced there, and his own name alone had always carried him after that. He was glad to remember that he had asked his Aunt Edith to the opening, and he was quite sure that he had not felt relieved when she had refused, saying that the journey would be too much for her. He had never regretted, either, that he had insisted that Rhoda ask her parents, although they were a further complication in the midst of the final hysteria.
“Darling,” Rhoda said, “I don’t want to hear about Baltimore right now. And whether it’s a boy or a girl, Mother will want it named Rhyelle.”
“It does fit either sex, doesn’t it?” he said.
“Don’t,” Rhoda said. “You always joke about things that are serious, and it always makes me feel unstable.”
“All right,” he said, “things may be tottering, but I don’t see what we can do to help it.”
“Well, it doesn’t help to get Mother and Pa right here in the Bulwer with us,” she said, “and you know Pa will expect you to pay for everything.”
“All right, Rhoda,” he said, “if the play’s a hit the bill won’t hurt me, and if it’s a flop it won’t make any difference.”
“Oh, Tom,” Rhoda said, “what are we going to do? Just answer me that—what can we possibly do?”
“Listen, Rhoda,” he said, “I’ve got a lot of more immediate things on my mind. Just remember that no matter what happens, everybody ends up by doing something.”
“Oh, my God,” Rhoda said. “We’ll even have to move out of the Bulwer.”
He never could grasp the exact meaning of Rhoda’s worries. He could not comprehend why Rhoda, who had never liked the Hotel Bulwer, began to clutch at it as a life preserver in the last days before the opening.
“That’s right,” he said, “no matter what happens, we’re going to get out of here.”
“Don’t laugh,” she said. “We may end up in a rooming house in Brooklyn or the Bronx or somewhere.”
“Not necessarily,” he said, “but if we do, we can hang the diapers on a fire escape, and I haven’t the remotest idea where we could hang them in the Plaza.”
“Don’t laugh about the baby,
either,” she said. “As if everything wasn’t bad enough without it. I never dreamed, even for a single minute, that we’d begin having a baby in almost no time flat.”
“Well, anyway,” he said, “we’re not having it in minus no time flat.”
It was a relief to see that the set expression around her lips relaxed.
“I suppose I should have thought,” she said, “but then, it wasn’t all my fault.”
“Why don’t you admit you enjoyed it when you didn’t think?” he said. “I did, personally.”
She laughed. It had not been so difficult in those days to make her laugh.
“I’ve always liked the things I shouldn’t do,” she said.
“You should,” he said, “and anyway, you don’t look as though you’d done anything.”
“Don’t I at all?” she asked.
“Not the slightest,” he said.
“Well then, we won’t have to think about it yet,” she said, “and maybe we won’t have to tell Mother yet. I wish you hadn’t bought those clothes for me. Tom, have we any money in the bank?”
“Almost none,” he said. “But don’t worry, we’ll get some, Rhoda.”
“Besides,” she said, “these clothes won’t be any use for months and months.”
“They’re all right now,” he said. “You’ll look wonderful when the show opens.”
“Oh, God,” she said. “I wish I felt wonderful.”
He frequently wished the same thing for himself in those last few days, but he doubted if anyone ever had felt good before an opening in New York. In spite of the telegrams, the flowers, the reassuring speeches of confidence, the last hours had a quality that nothing could relieve. Having a baby was not wholly one’s own fault, but having a play was. He had never been as worried about Rhoda as he had been about the play. He must have begun to realize that Rhoda was less vulnerable than the play, and then there were the actors and the Higgins money. Everything was on his shoulders as everything always was before a Broadway opening.
“Well, well,” Mr. Browne said, “I never thought I’d have a real live playwright for a son-in law.
“You can’t tell how things are going to turn out, can you?” Tom answered. “I feel alive at the moment but I can’t say I feel real.”
“You look real, Tom dear,” Mrs. Browne said, “and very handsome in your tuxedo, and isn’t Rhoda lovely? I wish her grandfather could have seen her.”
“Yes,” he said, “she’s looking lovely.”
“And happy, too,” Mrs. Browne said.
“I’m not happy,” Rhoda said. “I’m absolutely sick with worry.”
“Well, anyway, you look happy, dear,” Mrs. Browne said, “and lovely, with the gardenia that Tom gave you—and thank you again for my gardenia, Tom. That’s the way a wife ought always to look—happy—and that’s why Tom looks so happy and cheerful, because you do, dear.”
“He isn’t,” Rhoda said. “He’s only pretending. People are always pretending around a theatre.”
“That’s right,” Tom said. “I’ve got to be going now. Here are the tickets. I’ll meet you at the theatre, Rhoda.”
“You mean you’re not going to have dinner with us, or anything?” Rhoda asked.
“I’ll eat afterwards,” he answered. “I’ve got to go to the Empire.”
“But you’ve just come back from there.”
An uneasiness that he never lost on future occasions had returned to him. He had never been able to eat on an opening night and there was always a conviction, stronger than any call of conscience, that he must be back at the theatre. His reason might tell him there was nothing further he could do, but his responsibility toward the players was closer than any family tie. It was hardly fair to call the theatre a dedicated life, when you knew how undedicated many of its greatest figures were—but when it called, you answered. You left wife and children and the real world, when it called.
“But Tom,” Rhoda said, “aren’t you going to be with me when the play begins? I can’t stand it by myself.”
Here was an example of the divided loyalty that had ruined nearly all his life. He never had been able to be two things at once or to develop the requisite split of personality, and neither had most of his contemporaries, but at least he had seldom been ruthless. He had been glad to give Rhoda anything unless the theatre intervened, and Rhoda had never understood that the theatre, not he, gave her everything.
“I’ll be with you,” he said. “I’ve got to see the show out front.”
He had to see the show out front. He had to get the feel of the audience, and nothing mattered but the show. Rhoda, on such nights afterwards, was pure abstraction, and he could not help it if she was jealous of the theatre. Sultans could make adjustments in a harem, but it was always hard to have two mistresses, even if one was only figurative, in New York.
“I’ll be with you before the curtain goes up,” he said, and he took his wallet from his pocket. He remembered that the wallet had looked juvenile, dating from his days in college and that it did not go well with his dinner coat which was almost new. He drew out two ten-dollar bills, his last large bills, but he handled them carelessly. He still could not regret that he had always handled money carelessly.
“Go somewhere and have a good dinner,” he said. “You tell her where, Mr. Browne, some very nice hotel. I’ll be with you at curtaintime.”
Then he kissed her. He remembered the scent of her hair and the scent of the gardenia. Her dress was beautiful and she did look very happy, although her hands were cold as ice.
If there was one thing he had learned in the course of his career, it was how to estimate an audience. As of the present, he could walk into a theatre before the house lights dimmed, and tell from the murmur of voices whether the audience would be intellectual or stupid in its mass reaction. One must never forget that an audience was as essential to any play as its lines. An audience, that variable cross-section of individuals of diverse attainments and backgrounds, must be collectively as well as individually intrigued, amused and educated, but education could be achieved only by subtle indirection. An audience could be shocked, but not too much; or frightened, but not too much; it could be charmed by whimsy, but not too much; it could be made to laugh, but it was worth remembering that people could not move indefinitely from one laugh to another. A good audience might have appreciation, but it was never constantly intellectual. Its attention in the mass was childish in its vacillation and it disliked holding a thought too long. If you lectured to it unduly, it would squirm and cough, and an audience never had to be polite since it had paid to be present and had a right to be critical of its investment. There was no wonder that everyone, down to the ushers in the aisle and the soft drink venders in the lobby, feared and respected any audience; but in the main, an everyday audience was predictable. It was only a first-night audience that was not. Attention constantly wandered. Distinguished individuals in the front rows could become more important than the actors or the lines, and a critic’s facial expression more intriguing than a love scene. Applause, though violent, was so lacking in validity that one could seldom honestly be sure what the score was until the papers with the reviews were on the street.
He was more conscious, when he found his seat beside Rhoda in the orchestra, than he had ever been before of the beat of voices and of a cruel undercurrent of curiosity. He remembered that Rhoda’s vivid interest had disturbed him, but, after all, she could not share his sentiments, and now that he had written a play he would never be amused by a first night again.
“Where’s Arthur Higgins?” Rhoda asked. “I don’t see him anywhere.”
“He’s at the back of the house somewhere,” he said. “He’s restless; he likes to move around.”
Curtaintime was deliberately late, but still near enough so that there was nothing more that anyone could do. Now and then the voices around him would move into definition, like voices in a stream of consciousness.
“The name of the man who
wrote this play,” he heard someone behind him saying, “is Harrow, Thomas Harrow. I’ve never heard of him, have you?”
“No,” he heard someone else answer, “but Arthur always has a penchant for young men.”
“In what way do you mean?” the first voice asked.
There was an interval of quiet laughter, a bit of dialogue which was typically first-night.
“Do you want to move around with Arthur Higgins?” Rhoda asked.
“No,” he said, “I’d rather take it here beside you, darling.”
“I think it’s fun seeing everybody,” Rhoda said. “It’s much more exciting than Wilmington. There are so many more people with jewelry and everything, and lots of them must be really rich. I don’t see what you mean about taking it. You ought not to be acting as though you were going to the dentist.”
A dental chair and a first night were not so far apart except that on a first night there was never any novocaine. There was nothing to relieve the reality of complete exposure.
“Where are the critics?” Rhoda asked.
“Don’t shout,” he said. “They’re ahead of us in the aisle seats so they can rush out quickly to write the good news.”
“Is that one over there a critic?” Rhoda asked. “If he is, he can’t be very good, because his shirt is dirty and his coat isn’t pressed.”
“Linen is no criterion,” he said.
“Darling,” Rhoda said, “you ought to be excited. It’s all your party, isn’t it?”
“Christ, yes,” he said.
“Don’t say that,” she said, “you’ll shock Mother.”
“All right,” he said, “I wish it weren’t my party.”
“Don’t say that, either,” she said. “It’s the first time I’ve really liked anything since I saw Niagara Falls.”
“Baby,” he said, “we’re going over it now in a barrel.”
“Don’t mention baby, either,” she said. “You ought to be dreadfully proud.”
“Jesus,” he said.
“Don’t say that, darling,” she told him. “Mother’s right beside you. Aren’t you excited at all?”
Women and Thomas Harrow Page 35