The Tao of Humiliation

by Lee Upton

  “You could become blonde. So you’re a woman alone in a hotel. You don’t have to identify with Janet Leigh.” She cleared her throat, and I braced myself. Even over the phone it was always evident when something I didn’t want to hear would come from Sofie: “Claire, you never laugh much anymore. You used to be so wild, so funny. That’s gone—almost all of it. I won’t mention it again. I just thought you should know. As for Eamon’s play. He sent me a copy. I have a few lines you could try out.”

  I worked to steady my voice. “I feel less like laughing by the minute. Are you going to have me say the lines from Eamon’s play to prove I can do it? Is that what this is about?”

  “You’re too self-involved, Claire. This is about me.”

  “Okay. See. You’ve made me laugh. About Eamon’s play—I bet there’s a lot of subtext.”

  “He prefers the word obsession. Eamon should write a new part for you. Just remember, stage fright affects the best actors, especially the top rank. Richard Burton—he always wore red for it—although why that would help I can’t think. Red. If red helped I’d tattoo my own ass red. Laurence Olivier. Scared to death before going onstage. He always seemed like such a prick. He probably spread the story to make himself more likable. What I’m trying to say is: you’re not alone with what happened to you. You’re not the only one who gets stage fright.”

  “But I wasn’t afraid.”

  Who could have warned me about the way mourning works and how it doesn’t ever quite end? There are so many aftereffects. Aching heaviness in your arms, exactly as if you’re lifting something heavy that’s invisible. Buzzing inside your fingertips, as if you almost touched an electrified fence. Then those moments of forgetfulness until you’re brought short by a reminder.

  How did anyone deal with it? There was Arian Roth who said she would never recover after her mother’s death, who spoke as if her heart were torn into strips. At the opposite extreme: Gunter Pohl who despised his mother so vocally that his friends questioned after her death if they should offer condolences. Or Gwynne Tweedy with her “death is just a part of life” mantra, although she’d had a reasonably good relationship with her mother. Before my own mother’s death I had listened to Gwynne and thought, “No, it’s not a part of life. That’s why it’s called death.”

  Sofie knew of my mother’s death, and yet it didn’t occur to her that I was still in mourning. Nor did Sofie know—no one knew—of my discovery of a small immaculate truth among the papers I sorted after my mother’s death. Through those papers I learned that, a month after I was born, my mother gave me away. Seven weeks later she reclaimed me from the family who had expected to adopt me. I couldn’t imagine the scene or my mother’s reasoning. She wasn’t married, but poverty wasn’t the problem. She hadn’t really been concerned about her reputation either—that wasn’t in her character. Was she sick and unable to take care of me? Had she wanted another sort of child? Had she been disappointed in me? Why was I never told the truth?

  Then again, when would be the right time for a mother to tell her daughter she gave her away—even though she reclaimed her? And now, why should it bother me at all? Had the discovery stopped me onstage—the one place I had aimed my life toward? I didn’t think so. In fact, I believed that such a simple explanation couldn’t account for what had happened. There had to be a less obvious reason. Maybe I would never know what stopped me from acting. And that was horrible. Not knowing. Not being able to trust myself. And having no explanation, no way to get at the root of the truth.

  A flash of sunlight dropped from the clouds. Eamon was driving, and we were winding along the Sirreque River, between the canal and a cliff where ferns gushed between rocks.

  “Where exactly are you taking me?”

  “A surprise. You need a good surprise. You’re exhausted, aren’t you?”

  “I shouldn’t be. I’m not doing anything. I vacuum the place. I answer the doorbell for repairmen. I cleaned out the lost and found room—which turned out to be a depository for pornography through the decades. Other than that I’m not doing anything. Doing nothing is really tiring.”

  When I opened my eyes again, Eamon said, “There’s something I want to show you.” He pulled into a vacant lot, drove through an alley, and parked the car at the rear of a brick building. Only two high windows were visible near the roofline. “It’s not much,” he said, “but it’s worth imagining the prospects.”

  I knew what the interior of the building would look like: dusty velvet curtains, a wooden ticket booth near the entrance, framed theater programs. And I knew what Eamon was thinking: that I was almost ready to return to being the person I had been, that whatever was holding me back could be conquered, that staying at the hotel had allowed me time to recuperate—all those things I had hoped for too.

  At last Eamon said, “I’m an idiot. I’m sorry.”

  My throat was tightening with shame.

  Eamon tried again. “Claire. Listen. Was it the lights?”

  I didn’t know what he was talking about. He went on, “I’ve been thinking. The lights were on you when you had to stop. In rehearsals we didn’t have the lights working—not even during dress rehearsal. Remember? There was a problem. With the light board.”

  We sat together in silence. Finally I said, “The lights?”

  It was while I was in a drama called Mercury’s Wonder that I had to stop acting. Through every rehearsal the playwright was in attendance, his mouth open with astonishment. There was something both repulsive and gratifying about seeing him there. He was a sensitive guy who lost weight so rapidly that three members of the cast brought in trail mix and bananas for him. He declined everything but coffee and kept assuring me that he loved my interpretation of my character. I had the suspicion that, as long as the words he wrote were spoken clearly, he would have loved anyone’s interpretation. Two days before the opening I discovered the incriminating papers about my near-adoption.

  It was a ridiculous play. Nihilistic too. The third act setting: a dumpster. Beckett would have wept hot silly tears. Sofie showed up during dress rehearsal and kept shaking her head to the point that I noticed her during my monologue and had to strangle a bark of laughter. Afterwards, she voiced her opinion: “That play created suffering. If you want people to suffer you have to really make them suffer. But why you want them to suffer is beyond me. People are numb from suffering. The guy who wrote that play had the emotional life of a totalitarian douche.” Then, softening, she said, “You were great, Claire. Without you, that play would go nowhere. Although it really wants to go nowhere. I really admire your persistence. You never give up.”

  The next night I went into my first standing coma halfway through my monologue. I almost wanted to blame Sofie.

  It would be a quiet little party. Not a costume party. So many of my friends had costume parties. Come As You Were Born—that was a good party. A woman with the spectacular name Connie Trash came wrapped in cellophane with a string licorice umbilical cord. The Turn of the Screw party—another good one. Although too many slutty governesses and feeble attempts at impersonating hardware. No, those sorts of parties wouldn’t work among the few people I knew in Clauden. Besides, I couldn’t help myself: I was interested in Jocelyn’s realtor, Matthew Elmwhist, a widower and the father of a little girl that I was already falling in love with. I met Matthew when I went to pick up the keys to the hotel at his office. I saw him and his little girl the next day at the grocery store. I felt so much inexplicable tenderness for them both that I couldn’t resist telling Eamon and Sofie about them.

  The party seemed like a way to get to know Matthew and also a way to give myself something to look forward to. It was a way, too, for me to convince Jocelyn, when she returned, that I had been trying to make some friends, to be less isolated. It was obvious what Jocelyn wanted for me: a rest cure and a prolonged distraction, as if my trouble—my inability to act onstage, the thoughts that plagued me—came about through overexhaustion, overstimulation. As if I had pushed
my mind too far, as if a mind is a piece of heavy furniture that can’t be shoved without ruining the floorboards.

  The next afternoon I invited the mail carrier and two of the women at the deli to the party. It was anticipation of the party that was carrying me through the hours.

  The night before the party, a taxi driver, dreadlocked and with oatmeal-colored skin, arrived to deposit Sofie at the hotel. When I hugged her she felt skinnier than ever. Almost childlike, her spine knobby as if set with beads.

  She stepped back and her voice rose. “How do you like it? My hair. I was aiming for Karen Black in the Robert Redford Gatsby—in that scene where she gets Bruce Dern to buy her a puppy.”

  In the foyer I announced “I can give you the deluxe suite. Plus, there are doilies.”

  “That settles it.”

  “And yellow wallpaper.”

  She laughed. “I once played that woman, that crazy woman, in a production of The Yellow Wallpaper? Albany. I had to crawl around the stage scratching walls. Like I was clawing at the audience. There were titters. At my madness. Now for serious matters. What will you wear to this party you’re surprising me with?”

  “I hadn’t thought that far.”

  At dinner that night she said she’d been sleep-deprived for weeks. Nevertheless, an hour after she said she was going to bed she came into my room. She was wearing pajamas with giant circles on them, like red blood cells. Her eyelashes were almost colorless. Without makeup she looked years younger.

  “Let’s trade clothes for the party,” she said.

  “I couldn’t squeeze into anything you wear.”

  “I haven’t lost weight.”

  I looked at her doubtfully. “Maybe I’ve gained.” Then I remembered the dress from the lost and found room and showed it to her.

  “It’s yours,” I said. “To keep. Please.”

  “Are you serious?”

  The dress, unbelievably soft and light, stirred as I handed it over.

  “It really is beautiful. But you should keep it,” Sofie said. “It’s gorgeous.”

  “It’s for you. It is you.”

  Three years earlier I was in a tribute to Virginia Woolf in which Enid Castrova played a remarkable Mrs. Dalloway. The atmosphere on opening night made it seem like we were at an enchanted party, as if a breeze blew across the stage after a storm, as if anything could happen and whatever happened would shimmer. My own heart was thumping with exhilaration throughout the whole second act.

  If only my party at Jocelyn’s hotel could have been like that party.

  Within a half hour, Eamon was wearing an expression that I recognized. I had seen him like that onstage—whenever he wished he were in another play.

  Sofie kept twitching as if the dress I gave her itched.

  Maybe I should have invited more people to the party, although that would have meant meeting more people in Clauden previous to the party, and I hadn’t. I was relieved that Matthew came, but I felt shy in his presence. He was even taller than I remembered and at first he hardly looked at me. Sofie didn’t speak a word to Matthew after I introduced him and stayed out of his way every time he passed the buffet.

  But then Matthew seemed to loosen up, and soon he laughed at all of Eamon’s jokes. I liked him even more for laughing at Eamon’s jokes. Then I asked him about his little girl. She was staying with his aunt for the night. We talked about her for a while. She loved zebras, and I remembered that there were some wonderful stuffed animals at a little store I’d seen just the past weekend. I was beginning almost to feel hope for the party.

  Eamon leaned close to Sofie and said, “Do you remember that one act I did at Simon’s Cabaret?”

  She shook her head.

  “The Catcher’s Mitt? The history of baseball in three innings? It’s being revived.”

  I couldn’t hear Sofie’s response. She left the foyer. Every fifteen minutes or so she kept disappearing, either into her room or into the hotel’s tiny kitchen area.

  It was another hour before the arrival of a bartender—someone that Jocelyn had insisted I get in touch with when she first contacted me. He had popped in through the rear exit. He worked just a block away from the hotel and was holding a bottle of rum aloft. I waved Sofie over to introduce them to each other. That’s when Sofie drew herself up, pressing her shoulders back. The zone around her changed—and for a few seconds whatever it was, this powerful emanation, this magnetic field—materialized before evaporating. For the first time it occurred to me: she was not always a strong actress, but through an effort of will alone she could always make herself into a brilliant presence. At the same time I felt a sense of familiarity—as if I’d seen Sofie like this before—or else I’d seen someone else do exactly this same thing. It also occurred to me that something about her that night was no more believable when it came to showing genuine emotion than the Easter Bunny. Or maybe it was more like watching a magic act. But Sofie would say: what’s wrong with a magic act? And I had to admit: it was a gift, what Sofie practices, and a gift should never be underestimated.

  When Eamon was leaving I followed him outside. In the darkness he knocked over a shovel on the porch. He jumped around on one foot and made a mock face of such exquisite pain that I laughed. Watching him drive away I remembered what it was like being in a show with him, that sensation of total immersion and expansion. Like swimming underwater without even needing to breathe. The sensation of loss was so fierce that I couldn’t let anyone see my face for a while.

  When I went back inside, the woman from the deli was ready to leave and wanted her sweater. I went into the first room off the foyer to retrieve it for her, and that’s when I saw Matthew and Sofie. I walked backward out of the room. I remembered then that I hadn’t put the sweater in the bedroom anyway but had put it in Jocelyn’s service closet.

  It’s not that I saw anything in that room off the foyer that should have surprised me. It’s just that what I had seen earlier when Sofie met the bartender was a case of misdirection.

  When Sofie and Matthew emerged into the foyer again I could hardly look at either of them. I was glad that Matthew was leaving, although I remembered my first sight of his little daughter buttoned into a red coatlike dress that hung down to her ankles—she was a tiny colorful Cossack—and my heart lurched.

  Later that night it would occur to me that if I were in a play or a movie by this point the audience would expect me eventually to find true love with Matthew—after complications. His height alone would be an indication of future possibilities.

  I startled when Sofie wandered into the kitchen the next morning, saying she needed to head back to the city for an audition. She hadn’t mentioned anything about that earlier.

  “You kept leaving the foyer during the party,” I said. “Was anything wrong? It wasn’t much of a party, I admit.”

  “Leaving a room isn’t my problem. I ought to leave more rooms regularly.”

  “He’s an interesting guy,” I said. “He has a little girl. She’s—.”

  “I know.”

  Being an actor—it’s like being an amnesiac. You have to forget each previous role. You’re this new person with a new set of complications, possibly even a new accent, certainly a new cadence, a new chord of harmony or disharmony, a shift in vibration. You have to drown that last person you were, or shove her into a back room. I could at least do that—I could forget quite well, at least certain things.

  After Sofie left I was getting something from my room when the dress I thought I had given to her fell from a hanger behind the door. A soft sound, like snowmelt.

  Every face has hot spots that the camera reveals. Every face has a particular quality, a way of catching and releasing light on a movie screen. But it’s always a shock to see someone you know in a movie.

  The thing is: you start superimposing the face you know with this mammoth face that appears before you like a hallucination. The first time I saw Sofie on the screen it was like watching a gold balloon being blown up. And
then, little by little, she became human, and someone else: a woman lying on a cruise ship deckchair, until a man—an English actor I once met at a bar and briefly flirted with—ambled up.

  That first movie’s main attraction wasn’t any of the actors. It was an eel, a giant eel. And it was obvious that by the end of the movie—a movie ludicrous even by industry standards—the eel would destroy everyone but the best-known actress. Sofie hadn’t given details, and so I couldn’t guess when she would die.

  It was not just because Sofie was my friend, it was not for those reasons that as scenes flashed by I began to be disturbed when I watched her in her first movie. The problem was most evident when the soundtrack cued up. The emotions that passed over Sofie’s face never quite fit the words. The part that killed me: when Sofie’s face broke into a smile right as she was being swallowed. The inside of the eel’s mouth looked slick, like wet black plastic. It was as if Sofie had been shoved into a giant garbage bag. Smiling as she disappeared.

  I was surprised the cut even made it. Sofie looked like she was enjoying everything—although the scene went by so quickly and in such fragments that I was left with a cold impression more than an acute certainty the first time I watched it.

  The new movie would show a different side of my friend’s talent, given that it was based on an obscure novel by Turvet Juvvaor, a near Nobel winner who never fails to write about panic-driven women in quietly sinister situations. A year ago I had read the slim little novel the film was based on. All the dramatic action occurred in the crevices of the novel. It’s hard to imagine how a film could be made from that sort of plotless fiction. The producers must have been banking on a star: Ingrid Permulutter.

  Three teenage boys trundled into the theater and slumped into seats a couple rows ahead of me. After even more previews than usual, the movie began.

  A gray sky. A canal. A dead pigeon. Cathedral spires. The interior of a mosque. A claustrophobic, sterile, urban apartment with a glass coffee table. I was longing to see a human being when at last the majestic Ingrid Permulutter wafted across the screen, apparently playing a woman a whole lot like the majestic Ingrid Permulutter. She was in the apartment and soulfully listening to piano music wafting in from some other apartment while she cut onions. There was a close-up of a cutting board. Shadows at the window. The canal. Another dead pigeon. By that point I wondered if the three teenagers would leave the theater. No. They were texting.