Acts of Love

by Judith Michael

  He had called to say he would be back in a month, just before beginning to cast his new play. But four nights later, in the deep-cushioned chair in her library where she read late into the night, with a book in her hand and the box of Jessica's letters beside her, Constance died.

  Luke wandered restlessly through the villa and came again to the library and stood beside the chair where she had died. The sun had moved lower and its long rays picked out a Greek statue of a young boy in the gardens just beyond the terrace. He was lithe and wary, but fierce with determination, and Constance had said he reminded her of Luke at seven years old, when his parents died. "I stood beside you at the funeral," she had told him, "and we barely knew each other, but you kept leaning toward me, a degree at a time, until your skinny body was against mine.

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  and when I put my arm around your shoulders you were trembhng so hard it seemed you would never stop. I saw you look at the casket with terror— your mother, my daughter, gone so soon, so terribly young—and then you looked at me with the most awful desperation, because you thought there was no one to take care of you. And when I saw that desperation and terror—and by then your body was pushing so hard against mine that I thought you'd knock us both over—well, I loved you from that moment. You were child and grandchild to me. I cannot imagine a life without you."

  From then on, he was always with her. He grew up in her dressing rooms and backstage in every theater where she appeared, studying with tutors and learning as much or more from the wild variety of actors and crew members who moved in and out of his grandmother's orbit. They treated him like a mascot and taught him everything they knew, about every part of the theater, on stage and backstage. By the time he was in his teens, tall and lanky, his hawklike face and unswerving gaze making him look older than his years, he knew more about the theater than any school could have taught him. Still, when Constance insisted, he went to college, but, like a yo-yo, he sprang back to her at every vacation. But, as Constance pointed out, she wasn't the only attraction: he also came back to be in the theater. Because by then it was clear to both of them that he would never be able to stay away from it for long.

  Luke sat in Constance's chair and put his head back. I ought to get to work, he thought, but he stayed still, feeling her presence. The box of letters from Jessica Fontaine was within reach; he had replaced it in the exact spot where his grandmother had kept it. He opened it and once again ran his fmger along their top edges. / wonder what happened to her. She can't be acting anymore; I haven't heard her name in years. To disappear lif^e that, at the height of the most brilliant career since Constance's... how could she do it? Why would she do it?

  A little more than halfway through the box, the stationery changed: it had been pale blue, now it was ivory. Luke took out the first letter on the ivory stationery. It was only a paragraph, and the handwriting was that of someone else.

  Dear Constance, I naven't written because I was in a territle accident. You may nave neard about it or read about it, but I know tbat orten you don t botner witn tbe news. Anyway, you remember I wrote you tnat I was going to take a train trip across Canada and I was so

  12 ~ Judith Michael

  excited oecause it would give me a cnance to unwind and get away from everytning. But it was terrible . . . on, God, I almost can't say it. Tne train rell into a canyon. Fraser River Canyon. I nave nignt-mares about it every nignt, and every day, too. I've been sleeping a lot. In ract, ror rour weeks I was pretty mucn out or it. I'm sorry ir you were worried wnen I didn't write, but I was in and out or surgery I don't know now many times and I couldn t do anytning until now. I still don't want to talk on tne pnone, so I'm dictating tnis letter to a lovely young nurse wno's been nolding my band all tnese weeks, stroking my brow and telling me I'm going to be line. Sbe spins sucn a convincing tale I've told ner sbe's as good an actress as Constance Bernnardt ever was, but today I reel a rew timid stirrings or lire, so pernaps tnere's some trutn in wnat sne's been saying. On, tnat's enougn, I'm too tired. I'm sorry, Constance, dear Constance, I do miss you so . . . But tnat's not a complaint, and it's not a nint; I don't want you to come nere, it would be too mucb ror you and you've got to tbink about your own nealtb. I just want you to know tbat I'm tninking about you and I'll write again, I promise. All my love, Jessica.

  A courageous woman, Luke thought. Thinking of Constance while going through her own hell. A different Jessica from the one he thought he had known.

  He replaced the letter and stood up to go back to the salon. But this time he took the box with him. Maybe, when I have time, I'll read a few more, he thought.

  Slowly, through that long day, as he sorted and packed, the salon emptied. Its white marble floors shone cold and hard in the last light of the lingering June evening; the walls, stripped of their paintings, appeared to recede and vanish, so that the room seemed no place to live, but only a space to pass through. Done in here, Luke thought, anxious to be finished and gone. His footsteps echoed; his shadow beneath the lighted wall sconces was long and thin, sharply bent where the wall met the floor, as if it were racing ahead of him. Constance's bedroom and her des^ in the library, and that will be it. Two days at the most, and I can leave. And never come bac.

  He had parked his rented car in front of the villa and he drove to the village where he was meeting the realtor. At the trattoria, he sat at a table

  Acts of L

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  near the doorway just as the door swung open and the realtor came in to sit opposite him. He waved the waiter away. "We will pour our own wine." He raised his glass. "Signore, you have thought about this? You are certain you truly wish to sell.?" The realtor was an unhappy man. It was good to have Americans own property in the area; it drove prices up and gave jobs to housekeepers, caretakers, gardeners ... If he had known this was the reason Signore Cameron had invited him to dinner at the best trattoria in the village he would not have come; he would have delayed; he would have begun a campaign against selling. But now here he was and time was short. He spoke slowly, leaving hopeful pauses in which Luke could change his mind. "You have considered keeping it for yourself.? For yourself and your family? This is truly a good place to bring children for the vacations."

  "I have no children. And yes, I'm sure—"

  "But for yourself, signore! It is truly good for the restoration of the self after hard work. And I must confide in you, signore: the market is abominably slow right now. Perhaps you would wish to keep the villa furnished and ready for you to use while you are trying to sell it. We cannot know how long it will take to get a truly excellent price—"

  "A reasonable price. You'll call me with every offer. I'm not coming back,"

  The realtor sighed deeply. "As you wish, signore." It was impossible, he thought: the man had no children and he was a director of stage plays; there was nothing in his life to make him human. He was impressive, of course: tall and broad-shouldered, not truly handsome, his face too sharp, with heavy brows and black eyes that bored into one, and black hair shot with gray, hair so thick it was to be envied by those like the realtor who each morning had to artfully arrange the few strands left on a shiny field. An imposing man, Signore Cameron, but rigid in his ideas.

  "Now tell me more about the town," Luke said as platters ofossobuco were set before them. He tore another piece of bread from the loaf in the center of the table and poured more of the Brunello. "Tell me about the people."

  Wherever he went, he always asked about the people. Claudia hated it. Once she called him a voyeur; she thought it was his fascination with other people that had led him to find her wanting. But that was not it at all. Luke collected people. At home, he made notes on their quirks and

  14 ~ Judith Michael

  eccentricities, their troubles and longings and passions, their private stories and public conduct, their unique vocabulary and speech patterns, the different ways they laughed, the look in their eyes w^hen something wonderful or fea
rsome happened. They became a wellspring of knowledge that he used to help his actors and actresses develop their characters. And he used it too in a private world where he tried to write his own plays, struggling in his spare time to learn the craft of writing: how to tell a story, write dialogue, build characters, create tension. He had finished two scripts but they lay in his desk; so far, he had shown them to no one.

  When he returned to the villa after dinner, he sat in the library, making notes on the realtor's tales of the village, seeing it as he knew his grandmother had. Then he went to the salon and retrieved the box of letters he had left there. The more powerfully he was able to evoke his grandmother's spirit, the more palpable Jessica Fontaine seemed to him: a real woman whose life was entwined with Constance's, a woman whom he now realized he knew almost nothing about, but whose story was here, left to him, he thought, by Constance. Because of course she had done this on purpose. Instead of destroying the letters, she had left them for him to find, so sure of his curiosity and his hunger for people's stories that she knew he would not be able to resist looking into them and then delving deeper, to learn as much about his grandmother, perhaps, as about Jessica. And as he sat in the empty villa, remembering Constance, it seemed that Jessica was there, too; that he could not separate them, nor would they want him to.

  Much too mystical, Luke thought, shaking his head. Jessica was more practical than that. Wasn't she?

  Dear Constance,

  began the second letter in the inlaid box.

  I'm so glad you liked tke roses ... I wasn't sure you even like roses, kut I tkougkt tkey were keautiful and I couldn't let your kirtk-day go ky witkovit sending you sometking of keauty. But every day is keautiful, isn't it? I wake up and kelp my motker around tke kouse, and it's very ordinary, kut tken I tkink akout getting to tke tkeater and keing on stage, watcking you and learning from you and

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  everytning is beautirul again. On, I am so nappy! Tnank you for oeing you. Happy, nappy nirtnaay, witn all my love, Jessica.

  The next morning, it was that joyous letter and the realtor's tales of the townspeople that Luke thought about, fending off the tomblike feeling of the villa. He went to his grandmother's bedroom. He had put it off, knowing it would be the hardest part—her bedroom and the library where she had spent most of the last year of her life—and he went through both rooms without stopping to rest or eat. He shut his mind to images of Constance using the delicate blown-glass perfume flasks and the gold hand mirror and comb on her dressing table, or lacing the sleek Italian shoes she had so loved, or reclining each night against the lace-edged pillows on her bed, half-sitting because it helped her to breathe, reading until she felt drowsy, then reaching out to turn off the gilded lamp and sleep. He got through the day without tears, handling everything his grandmother had handled; methodically labeling and organizing everything so that he could leave a day earlier than he had planned.

  On the last morning, he walked through the rooms one last time with the shipping agent, tagging furniture and boxes, going over directions.

  "And this, signore?" the agent asked, picking up the inlaid box.

  "I'm taking that with me."

  "It is heavy to carry. I can ship it with the paintings and boxes of—"

  "No, I'll take it." He knew it was foolish, this reluctance to let the box go, but he would take no chance that it might be lost. That afternoon, he packed the few clothes he had brought in his roll-on luggage and wedged the box among them.

  He closed the door and turned to leave Constance's villa for the last time. Briefly, he glanced back at the shuttered windows and the gardens empty of gardeners, empty of Constance, and a wave of melancholy swept over him. But then he thought about Jessica's letters. Hundreds of them: intriguing and already important enough to keep close by, for reasons he could not even analyze. To please Constance. To satisfy my curiosity. To understand a woman who now seems almost a mystery. And for whatever other reasons I may find when I read them: reasons that Constance, "even at the end of her life, thought of when she left them for me to find ... and to read.

  JLhe air-conditioning had turned the air frigid and Luke pulled on his jacket as he came into his office from the muggy streets. He had been back only a month, but the memory of green hills and the cool marble walls of his grandmother's villa had melted in New York's stifling heat and been swept away by his overcrowded schedule. No time for memories, he thought, glancing at his grandmother's photograph on his desk. And as if she were beside him, he heard her say, "But Luke, dear Luke, when did you ever let yourself indulge in memories? You're always starting over ... a new play, a new lady, a new life. Am I truly the only person you hold on to?"

  "Yes," Luke murmured in the silence of his office. "The only one." He walked past his desk to stand beside the low couch that stretched the length of one wall and looked down at the script of The Magician. He had been working on it late into the night before and had left the pages scattered over the coffee table, as colorful as a garden with lines and arrows, checks and asterisks made with different color marking pens, one for each character, each scene, each shift in emotion or sudden change in relationships. By now, three months after the playwright had sent it to him, he knew every word by heart and the characters were as familiar as if he had known them for years; they peopled his thoughts and even his dreams. It was the same each time he took on a new play. He plunged into a world that he would spend the next weeks and months shaping to his own vision, a world challenging enough to fill his life and sufficiently enthralling

  ~ 16 ~

  to convince him that these were intimacies enough for him. He needed no others.

  He swept the pages together, striking the edges on the table to square them, then shpped the manuscript into his briefcase and went back outside, into the wall of heat that was New York in mid-July. When the light changed at 59th Street and Madison Avenue, the pedestrians surged across, complaining about the heat, the humidity, and the government, as if they all were related, and Luke imagined a scene on stage with just such a mass of perspiring, grumbling humanity tossing out just these comments. Probably not, he thought as a taxi stopped for him. Too many people; too expensive for anything but a musical.

  "Hot," said the taxi driver, meeting Luke's eyes in the rearview mirror. "Same hot in Pakistan, too. My wife, she says so why are we here? Why not some place different from Pakistan? I tell her, here is different. Here is job, here is money." He waited for a reply. "Right?" he asked.

  "Right," Luke said, and repeated it to himself. Here is job, here is money. That's why we're all here, instead of a cool hilltop villa in Italy.

  But every day is beautiful, isn't it?

  The thought seemed to come from nowhere. Luke frowned, trying to remember where he had heard it. No, not heard: it was something he had read. And then, as the taxi inched its way downtown, he remembered. / wal^e up and help my mother around the house, and it's very ordinary, but then I thin about getting to the theater and being on stage, tvatching you and learning from you and everything is beautiful again.

  Jessica. He'd meant to read her letters on the flight from Italy, or when he got home, but he had not even opened the box. The instant he took his seat on the plane his focus shifted from Italy to New York and he forgot the letters and Jessica and even the grief of his echoing footsteps in the empty villa. It was as if, on his way home, he was already there, absorbed in the new play, dealing with Claudia, taking Tricia Delacorte to dinner a few hours after he landed, setting up a meeting with Monte Gerhart, the producer of The Magician, Tommy Webb, the casting director, and Fritz Palfrey, the stage manager, and, after them, all the others who would be working backstage and at the front of the house to bring the play to opening night in late September, a little over two months from now.

  At Madison Park, the taxi pulled up at a reddish-brown turn-of-the-century office building, one of the city's early skyscrapers, its sandstone

  18 ~ Judith
Michael

  lintels and doorways carved into curves and leaves and mythical figures, Luke pulled on his jacket again as he rode the chilled elevator to Monte Gerhart's office, thinking that it was one of Monte's many oddities that he had chosen that particular building, then decorated his enormous office with glass-and-steel furniture, a geometrically patterned carpet and huge modern paintings that made the windowless room a muffled cocoon of dark colors slashed by beams of light that shot from recessed ceiling fixtures like spotlights on a stage.

  One of the spotlights formed a halo around Gerhart at his desk. He was a huge man with a full gray beard that hid his neck, square wire-rimmed glasses and long gray hair curling over his ears and onto his shoulders. His shirtsleeves were rolled above the elbows, revealing a heavy gold watch and two gold link bracelets; his loosened tie was bright with butterflies; and he sat at an oval desk drawing buxom nude women on an artist's sketch pad. "Luke! Have a seat. Have something to eat." He remained in his chair, but gestured with a powerful hand. "Coffee and iced tea in the corner; sweet rolls, muffins; whatever looks good."

  Luke poured coffee over ice cubes. "Can I bring you something?"

  "I'm on a diet. My wife says."

  Luke's eyebrows rose.

  "Right; it's bullshit. I'll have a few sweet rolls or whatever's there; I've got coffee here. Well, now, sit down. I reread the play last night. Great play, but like I told you, I've got problems with Lena. She's too old. Nobody gives a damn about eighty-plus women; they don't want to think about getting old; reminds them they'll die one of these days."

  Son of a bitch, Luke thought. You've had this play a month and never mentioned this. But all he said was, "How old would you make her.?"