“Who is it?” asked Stuart softly.
A man of feeling, fully alone. “My father,” I said.
He let out a sigh. “Good—I’d hoped as much. . . . All I had to go on was an old snapshot.”
“A picture of Jordan? Where’d you get it?” I murmured, still staring at my transformed face in the mirror.
“You gave it to me, years ago. Not long after we met. Don’t you remember how we did that photo exchange?”
I shook my head.
“I gave you one of my father, and you gave me one of Jordan. Background information on the AWOL dads—that’s what we called them. My father had disappeared completely from my life by then, but yours wasn’t dead yet. You were still going to the theater with him occasionally.”
“That’s all he and I ever did together, you know.”
“Didn’t he teach you about fragrances?”
“A little. But perfume was his secret life . . . and theater was our common ground.”
“So much the better. For our little exercise, I mean.” From his bag he pulled another towel, thin and soft, on which he slathered some cream. “Now comes part two. Time to take him off.”
“What?”
“Remove him,” Stuart repeated, handing me the towel. “Say good-bye.”
“And?”
“And? And take your chances! What else is there to do?”
He picked up the mirror again so I could see myself. In the glass I watched as thin rivulets of tears began tracking down my pale cheeks. I shook my head; the tears didn’t stop. “Stuart, for God’s sake, it’s been twenty fucking years.”
“Apparently that’s irrelevant, darling. You didn’t let him go.”
“Yes I did!” I felt like I no doubt sounded: like a distraught child protesting something unacceptably disturbing. Stuart smiled at me.
“When, sweet?”
“When he told me about my mother, in Frenchtown. I learned about her, and I gave him what he wanted. He left the way he chose to leave.”
“Sounds tidy,” said Stuart. “But it wasn’t, was it?”
I brought the towel to my face and began working the cream, which smelled faintly of lavender, into my skin. The towel grew moist with sloughed-off makeup and my tears. “He went out peacefully,” I said.
“I’m not talking about him, my girl. Those dreams you’ve been having lately—hardly tranquil, are they?”
He picked up a tube of makeup, squeezing some on his fingertips. “Put the towel down,” he ordered. Leaning in and squinting slightly, he dabbed at my cheeks, refining the application with rapid circular motions. Taking the towel away from me, he brought the mirror in front of my face once more. Now my forehead and chin were patchy with half-removed makeup; on my cheeks were two bright red circles. I looked like a disheveled, unhappy clown.
Stuart put down the mirror and snapped his fingers abruptly in front of my eyes. “Right now! When you think of your dreams, what words and phrases spring to mind? Come on, quick! Say whatever comes, as soon as it comes.”
“Clowns. Uh . . . Jordan . . . Paris,” I began haltingly. Stuart’s gaze pinned me. “A man in a cape. Wearing a mask. Carrying a cane.”
“More.”
“Sailing to France to be with my mother . . . Jordan juggling. Perfume, mists of it. Eve on a trampoline. Sam, wanting a kid. Danny . . . My mother and Eve dancing together . . . A man doing cartwheels, saying, Sorrow, sorrow . . .”
“Happy movement, sad feeling. What’s the word for that, Cam?”
I shook my head. “Bittersweet?” My chest felt as though something were clamping it.
“Camilla.” Stuart lay one palm gently over my mouth for a moment. His touch relieved my shortness of breath; my tears continued, but now I could inhale through them. “Answer me: who’s always in your dreams?”
“Meyerhold.”
“Right. In every single dream. Why?”
I shook my head.
“What happened to him, Cam? How’d it end for him? You should know—you’ve been reading the biographies I lent you, right? Well, guess what. I’ve been reading them, too.”
“You have?”
“I decided I ought to. So I could understand better why you might’ve summoned him, of all people. It made sense you’d dream about somebody in theater, but there were so many other people to choose from! Why Meyerhold? I kept asking myself. Then I realized it must have something to do with his death. With how and why he died.”
“I’m not following you.”
“Aren’t you?”
I picked up the towel and began wiping my eyes with it, gingerly, so as not to rub makeup into them.
“Meyerhold died in prison; he was shot there,” Stuart continued. “You told me that, so you knew about it. You know a lot more, too: about the secret arrest in St. Petersburg, the beatings and interrogations, the summary trial . . . You’ve read about all that, yes?”
“Uh-huh.” I exhaled, still wiping my face.
“So you also know Meyerhold’s final testimony in prison contradicted his artistic principles. He declared himself a staunch Communist. How do you square that, Cam?”
“He still thought of himself as a patriot,” I answered. “He couldn’t give up his belief in the Revolution, even though he’d seen what it did.”
“Right. He’d seen dozens of artists, writers, and performers suffer imprisonment or worse. And when his government arrested him, he couldn’t bear to admit to himself that he’d been loyal to the wrong cause. So he swore allegiance to his Soviet masters.” Stuart paused. “Though of course he hadn’t been loyal. In his work, his creative life, he was always disloyal. His art was faithful only to itself—which put him in endless conflict not just with the state, but with himself. Remember that final speech, when he referred to himself in the third person? ‘He was never a traitor to his country . . . He believes that the court will understand him . . .’ But of course the artist in him knew it wouldn’t!”
Stuart put a hand on my shoulder and shook it lightly. “That’s the thing: he believed and he knew better. And throughout his career, he made great theater out of those opposed realities. That was his gift.”
He leaned forward, his face close to mine. I could feel concern and love radiating from him, a palpable heat; with it came a voiced challenge. “His dilemma is what captivated you most, Cam. Aren’t I right?” Again he snapped his fingers, lightly. “Think about it. What happens when you’re loyal and disloyal at the same time? And not to a country but to a person?”
He placed his palms on his knees. “What happens is this: you get really good at suppression. Which works fine until something comes along to rock the boat. Like the unexpected departure of someone for whom you have deeply mixed feelings . . . How could Eve’s death not make you think about your own mother? And about Jordan—how distant you always were from him? How could you not think about that as you watched Danny come unstuck?”
Stuart’s fingers wafted before his face as he mimed the unveiling of a surprise. “So what’s a woman to do under such circumstances? Well, if she’s you, you dream like crazy. You take on Meyerhold as your director, and you break out in dreams as though they were hives.”
HE STOPPED talking. We sat in silence in the darkened space, watching the candles burn down. When they began guttering, Stuart blew them out. Then he turned on the lights and led me to the bathroom sink, where he made me rinse my face and give it a final rubdown.
“Theatrical makeup’s very drying.” He handed me a small jar. “Slather this on, it’s great stuff.”
The emollient he gave me was creamy and scented with rosewater. “Where’d you get this?” I asked.
“Nicked it from Carl. Must remember to put it back where I found it.”
He replaced the jar in his bag, along with the cloth, the makeup, and the candlesticks. In my back office, I poured us each a glass of water and a vodka; we downed the water and chinked our shot glasses.
“Good work, Cam,” he toasted. “But y
ou’re not done yet, as I don’t need to tell you.” He drank his vodka, put down his glass, and took me in his arms. “Something’s gotta give, sweetheart. I don’t know what it is, but it’s bound to make its way out sooner or later.”
Releasing me, he cast a glance at my desk. On it lay the Polaroid snapshot Danny had left behind. “Who’s this?” he asked, picking it up.
“Eve,” I said, “with Billy Deveare. Or so we assume.”
“Why’s he wearing that mask?”
“Look at the date on the back.”
He turned the picture over. “Um,” he grunted. “Halloween.” Bringing the image under my desk lamp, he peered at it. “Can’t get much of a sense of what the guy looked like.”
“Nope,” I responded. “Which Eve intended, no doubt.”
Stuart stared at the photo for several moments. “No doubt,” he echoed. He rattled the photo lightly at me before replacing it on my desk. “Don’t forget to give this back to Danny when you see her—which I trust will happen any day now.” He picked up his bag. “And be glad you’ve been dreaming as much as you have! Think of it as self-medication. No, that’s too clinical . . . Think of your dreams as responses to a question, an important question. Try to be open to it, whatever it is.”
“I haven’t the foggiest,” I said.
“Ah, but you do, you see. That’s the thing—you do.” He tapped the left side of my chest. “The only really interesting theater’s here, you know. Where there’s no fourth wall, nothing separating audience and actor. Truth be told, you’re already there, Cammie. You just haven’t flipped on the lights yet.”
INTERLUDE
IT’S SATISFYING to see the separate strands of a story braid together. Camilla’s and my narratives are catching up with each other at last. It’ll be my job to bring down the curtain.
There are, of course, a great many possible ways to end a play, but only one right way. I was awed by Seva’s talents in this regard. One drama he produced in 1922, Tarelkin’s Death, stands out in my memory. How well he concluded it—and what a production it was! That play had to be the noisiest bit of theater ever performed for a Russian audience. It was a satire on Czarist police methods, done in a burlesque mode. Onstage, a little stool kept firing off a cartridge that simulated explosions. A table and a chair collapsed with loud bangs. At the play’s intervals, Seryozha Eisenstein and another assistant fired pistols in the air and roared, “Entrrrr-acte!,” which alarmed the older theatergoers, though the younger ones laughed hysterically.
And right at the end, when the prisoner Tarelkin freed himself by swinging noisily across the stage on a trapeze, one critic groused that such a sight was far more common in circuses than in theaters. Yet the spectators were delighted. The finale made its own strange sense—it combined high seriousness with funny, freewheeling action, in the spirit of who-knows-what’s-coming-next . . . I should be fortunate to find so oddly fitting an end to this tale!
WHERE WERE we? Yes: Jordan’s letter.
Of course I was relieved when Camilla read it. Dream by dream, she’d found her way to that missive, and to Seva’s sketches. She’d require no more prodding from me!
In any event Stuart did my remaining work for me. In a genuine friendship, there are always moments in which one person refuses to let the other off the hook. So it was with Stuart, who put his skill as a makeup artist to excellent use. When he was finished with her, Camilla really did resemble her father! (An intuitive performer, Stuart saw just how Seva’s predicament related to Camilla’s. What’s acting, anyway, but analogizing—casting one’s own life into relief against another’s, and another’s against one’s own?)
The next and last dream is my collaborator’s. I had no hand in it. She’d incorporated Seva’s precepts; they belonged to her now. As for the drama’s final act . . . it’s longish, but things do tie up. After a bit of unraveling.
NINE
SAM, DANNY, and I are standing at the front door of the family apartment. I’m holding the key.
Go on, open it, Sam urges me. I turn the key and the door swings open noiselessly. I am staring into a vast, vacant space. There are no floors, no walls, only a void, like a colorless sky stretching everywhere.
Is this where you and Eve lived? asks Danny.
Yes, I answer.
There aren’t any mothers here!
We need to find the fathers, I say. Panic rises into my mouth, I can taste it. But Sam takes one of my hands and Danny takes the other, and they lift and swing me between them. I’m calmed by the movement, an easy gliding back and forth. We proceed east along Ninth Street to University Place and on to Fourth Avenue. In front of Backstage Books, Stuart is waiting for us—eagerly, for when he sees us, he grins and waves.
Danny and Sam let go of my hands. The three of us watch as Stuart begins pulling a handkerchief from the breast pocket of his jacket. The fabric keeps coming, yards and yards of it. Stuart coils it into a kind of rope, which he then forms into a circle, like a hula hoop made of cloth. He pops it over our heads—Sam’s, Danny’s, and mine—so we’re contained within it.
We begin walking round and round the circle’s circumference. And now we’re trotting, then running—faster, faster, a human top spinning on the sidewalk. Stuart waves a commanding forefinger at Sam, who drops out. Then he and Stuart clap and cheer, an enthusiastic audience. Danny and I are moving even faster now, spinning, our bodies nearly a blur, our two forms inseparable.
Can we keep going? yells Danny. Keep going! I echo, and in a moment we begin levitating. A kind of centrifugal force lifts us upward, our linked energies straining, cohering, holding us together and pulling us apart . . . So this is what love does, I am thinking, and then I awake.
SHORTLY BEFORE Labor Day, Danny called me at work. We hadn’t spoken since Ithaca, in late May.
After Stuart’s prodding, I’d mailed Danny a short note saying I was holding her in my thoughts and hoped to see her soon. She hadn’t responded. This wasn’t a surprise. She’d meant it, I knew, when she said she didn’t want to be in touch with me. From Sam’s brief comments throughout the summer, I’d gathered she was in good health and showing up at work every day.
He and I weren’t in frequent communication either. Since my inquiry about his relations with Danny, he’d been acting not so much angry as held in check. Perhaps, I thought, he was waiting for me to let him know I’d spoken with Danny and dispatched the matter. We were performing a strained minuet, our interactions in good form but at arm’s length.
In late August, Danny finally phoned. Time we got together, isn’t it, she said. To which I said yes, it definitely was.
We settled on the upcoming Saturday, and I told her I’d come out to Brooklyn. We could go to Prospect Park, she suggested, adding that since Eve’s death, she’d been walking there so often even the ducks knew her.
SUMMER WAS winding down.
Stuart and Carl were back from a biking trip in Belgium, where they’d drunk lots of excellent beer. Sam and his family had returned from their annual summer vacation in New Hampshire, where Lila’s great-aunt had a lakeside cottage. I’d decided against visiting for a weekend, as I’d done in past years, in the company of several other mutual acquaintances. I wasn’t up for talking about Danny, whose name would naturally arise in conversation with Lila, if not with Sam. In any event, I heard everyone’s tales upon their return and received souvenirs—a wonderfully odorous blue cheese that Stuart had somehow sneaked past customs, and a dog-eared guidebook to New England, inside of which lay several lovely wildflowers that Abby and Zeke had pressed for me.
Over a glass of wine at their place, Carl told me I looked in need of a vacation. Why hadn’t I taken one? Before I could open my mouth, Stuart answered for me.
Unfinished business, he said. And she’d best finish soon or we shall ride her case. Hard.
You heard the man, Carl said to me.
ACTUAL BUSINESS was sluggish, typical for summer in the city. Most of my clients and acquaintances w
ere away, and as there wasn’t much theater happening anywhere, I cleaned my shop and office thoroughly, took long walks, and spent my spare time reading.
Much of July went into books on commedia dell’arte. My long-standing fascination with masks deepened. So, too, did my awareness of what modern theater owed its early traveling salesmen—
Europe’s itinerant troubadours, mystery-players, and fairground people. I decided to turn one of my shop’s interior walls into a showcase for masks, of which I owned quite a few. Attempting this, I missed Danny’s design savvy; my wall display looked dismally amateurish.
I was trying, I knew, to distract myself, but unease and unhappiness kept reasserting themselves. I missed Danny intensely; there’d never before been a stretch like this, of real alienation from her. It’ll all sort itself out, I kept telling myself. Eventually. And Danny and I will be closer for having gone through this.
Yet it wasn’t clear what the next step should be. We’d talk at some point—the silence between us wouldn’t last forever. We’d speak again of Eve, of Jordan. And of ourselves. But were words the solution? What more could be said that would heal our rift, our separate and shared sorrows?
NICK WAS around all summer, working. His skin grew especially dark on the back of his neck and arms, but his entire torso, frequently bared to the sun, gradually turned a beautiful bronze.
He and I saw each other fairly regularly. Since our supposed phone sex fiasco, we hadn’t had a formal clear-the-air talk. Although his body remained magnetic for me, something had gone out of our erotic connection, a measure of calm. I sensed he felt this as well, though of course we didn’t refer to it. Overuse of words wasn’t a crime of which the Paramour and I had ever been guilty.
The day before my planned get-together with Danny, Nick showed up at my shop with a discovery: a small tortoiseshell comb embossed with the Russian words TEATP IM. MEII/+EPXOÎ?228-137?. It was housed in a sheath of cardboard on which were printed two overlapping masked faces, one tragic, one comic—the traditional symbols of theater.
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