"Mom, give me a break. Yes, I had a good time."
"Well, excuse me," said her mother, offended. She began to arrange the dishes on the tray, rattling them unnecessarily.
"I'm sorry. Please don't be upset," Jeanne pleaded. She was uneasy. She thought, What a pitiful history is behind my words. The sense of it is still holding me back.
* * *
Back in New York City, Jeanne grew morose as the weeks passed and Paul didn't contact her. Twice she telephoned him but no one answered. She considered writing a letter, but couldn't decide what to say.
Even more painful to her was the thought of Althea. Since September, their estrangement, never acknowledged, had become a solid wall of silence, and Jeanne didn't feel capable yet of broaching it. She couldn't think of what she'd say to Althea if she did see her. Commiserating with Althea on Paul's unworthiness would be false, she reflected. She wasn't sure, however, that she was prepared to face the truth with Althea. Nor could she assume what Althea was prepared for. They'd become strangers, she reflected sadly, thinking of how she missed her friend and longed to meet with her as she had in the past.
She was afraid to discover that she had forfeited that friendship now, and she didn't want to risk finding out. She concentrated on her job and tried not to think about these problems. In November her boss, William Roberts, the Green Heron's artistic director, presented her with a new opportunity. Rob—as he was known—explained that he had been approached by a foundation in western Massachusetts which was overseeing the renovation of an estate. The house had recently been opened up to public tours, and now the foundation was exploring the possibility of establishing a summer stock theater with a repertory company in residence. The Green Heron Theater had been recommended, and a member of the board had contacted Rob and asked him to come up for a preliminary meeting and a look around.
"I said, 'Why not?'" said Rob to Jeanne, shrugging his shoulders. He was a tall, thin Englishman. Before moving to New York, he had lived in California for twenty years. He favored pullover sweaters and flannel trousers, was around fifty years old, not particularly handsome, and unusually soft-spoken for a man of the theater. As the Green Heron's artistic director, he made it his mission to stage the works of non-American playwrights, particularly those whose plays might not otherwise be produced in New York. Jeanne had come to him a couple of years ago as an intern in a city arts program, and when the six-month internship was over, he had hired her as his assistant. Her job, which consisted mostly of day-to-day management and grant proposal writing, suited her. She had a task to do, she did it, and if it was well done, she knew it. She enjoyed the sense that she was one of the ones behind the scenes who helped keep the company going. She preferred it that way, in fact. The idea of acting herself held no appeal for her. She'd never been stage struck in that sense.
Of late, however, she'd been feeling too settled in her job. She needed a challenge, a new project to engage her, and she readily agreed when Rob asked her to accompany him to Massachusetts to see the estate and meet the board. "Right now the idea is simply for us to get to know each other and establish a dialogue," Rob continued. "I want you to be involved, and so you ought to be included from the beginning. I haven't met these people yet, and I don't know quite what they have in mind. It's entirely possible that nothing will come of it. To tell the truth, I'm not sure it's right for us. However, I'd be remiss in my duties as artistic director if I didn't at least look into this."
"Sounds interesting," said Jeanne noncommittally. "What's the estate?"
"It's called 'The Mount.' It belonged to a writer, who built it around the turn of the century. Apparently it was very run down when the renovation began."
"Who was the writer?"
A crease deepened between Rob's eyes. "I must be getting old. I can't remember. However, I'm sure that when we go up, you'll find out all you want to know, and more."
"It's Edith Wharton," said Jeanne, suddenly guessing.
"That sounds right. Good girl."
He looked at her as if she were a student to be patted on the head for getting the correct answer, and she blushed. She believed that he knew very well who the writer was and had been humoring her. He had an irritating habit of patronizing her.
"I'll tell you what," he continued, "you can brief me about her on our drive up." As he spoke, he crossed his arms over his chest, as if he felt the need to ward her off even as he attempted to provoke her. She thought of how his manner was so smooth that he never gave the appearance of exertion, even while he juggled half a dozen commitments. In comparison, he made her feel as if there were something unseemly about the way she tried so hard, cared so much. He disapproved, not of making an effort, but of letting it show, and, as a corollary, of revealing too much emotion. Consequently, she tried to encourage his impressions of her as sensible, organized, and efficient, because that was how he wanted her to be. The result was that she often felt she was playing a role with him, and that her real self was a lot more impulsive and irrational than he realized.
He's not at all what I'd thought the founder and artistic director of a theater company would be, she reflected. For one thing, he isn't histrionic. If he's displeased with you, he’ll wither you with satire.
She'd only once seen him lose his composure. That was a year ago, when the lead in a new play had come down with the measles on opening night. “Measles, that's a child's disease”—she could still recall the sound of his contempt, with its implication that the actor, if he was going to be sick, ought to have selected a more respectable illness.
He didn't mingle his private and public lives. Jeanne had only met his family on opening nights and other crucial occasions: the American wife, who Jeanne believed was a lawyer, and the two teenaged sons. To Jeanne her boss seemed a mixture of English reserve and Californian unconventionality. He had a fondness for sudden revelations and informal arrangements, which could work, she realized, to her advantage.
He was busy, and apparently so was the foundation, for the meeting was scheduled, cancelled, and then rescheduled for Monday, November 17.
On the Saturday before that, when Jeanne received the ticket to Paul's dance performance in the morning mail, she was completely taken by surprise. It was almost with regret that she felt herself being drawn to Paul, as if he were a magnet whose force she couldn't resist. For several days, she realized, she had managed not to think of him or of Althea either.
There was a letter enclosed with the ticket, or at least a note, in tone affectionate and formal, but with a timbre, at least to Jeanne, of justification: "Dear Jeanne, I've been on tour since I last saw you. Here's a ticket for our New York run. One of the pieces is my own. Hope you can make it with love Paul."
The message was written in a hurried print, with the last line running into the closure. She looked at the date on the ticket: it was for tomorrow. How like Paul, she thought, to give so little advance notice. She felt a mixture of exasperation and curiosity. She wondered if Althea would be there. Of course she would go, she decided, even though she had to get up early on Monday to drive to Massachusetts.
* * *
Althea dressed with far more care than usual for Paul's performance. Hours before it was time to go, she had already decided what to wear: a wool jersey in royal blue, with a band of black around the hem and up one side, so that one of the sleeves was black and the other blue. To it she fastened a brooch of pale green jade set in gold. She pinned her hair up.
Wearing her trenchcoat, with a red scarf around her neck, she took the subway downtown and arrived twenty minutes early. Alighting, she climbed the stairs to Seventh Avenue. Eighteenth Street was dimly lit, almost deserted on Sunday evening. Swiftly she walked west past the hulking offices of the telephone company, now empty. As she turned the corner at the end of the block, she saw, like a beacon, the name of the theater lit in pink neon.
She approached, her heart beating, but among the people gathering at the entrance, she recognized no one that she knew
. She entered instantly, enjoying the ritual of handing over her ticket to an usher and being guided to her seat, three places in from the aisle on the left-hand side, in the twelfth row.
As the theater gradually began to fill, she sat studying the program. At the sight of Paul's printed name a tremor went through her. She glanced up quickly, as if somehow she might have already betrayed herself. She was embarrassed by the acuteness of her feeling and then by her reaction to it.
At ten minutes after eight, the lights went down, the murmuring hushed, and the curtain opened on Alchemy. At first the stage was dark. Then the lights rained down their illumination on four dancers, standing apart. She spotted Paul instantly, in white. The music began, jazz with many depths in it. Caught first in stillness, the dancers began to move separately, as if each were following a different instrument. Their movements were rigid and angular. To Althea, the very air onstage seemed electric with resistance. For every force, there was a counter-force.
The heat of Alchemy is its chill, she decided. Sequins glittered down the dancers' sides; there was a dusting of glitter on their cheekbones. Over the rows, she stared up at Paul. He looked so alien, so distant from her, that it seemed hard to believe that he had ever loved her. Probably he never had.
Movement succeeded movement, and escaped her. The dance was exacting, difficult. She couldn't hold it in her mind as it happened. And then it was over.
The second dance was a farce called Wild West, and Paul wasn't in it. As it unfolded in front of her, she hardly saw it. Her mind kept wandering. She was thinking about her isolation of the past months, that it was a way for her not to fail to receive, since she didn't demand. The thought was painful; it did her no honor. She was ashamed, and still she imagined how she might go on waiting. She had become so accustomed to waiting that it had come to seem the normal state of her life.
During the intermission, she remained in her seat, rereading the program she had already read. The next dance was Paul's solo, Savage Landscape. Under his name in the program was printed a single line, its source unknown to her, and she wondered if he had written it: "The glistening wing disappeared in the winds passing through the memories of youth."
The curtain opened to reveal Paul crouched in a ball. He faced the audience, but his face and torso were hidden. She saw only his bent head and his bare legs grasped by his arms. He appeared naked.
The dance began in silence. The first movement was a twitching in his shoulders, which was then echoed in his feet, rising to half-toe and higher. Up and down, he repeated the motions. His head still bent, he swayed from side to side and rocked on his heels, at first rhythmically and then more violently. It was as if a force within him were trying to escape, Althea thought. The music began, if music it was, identified in the program as the songs of humpback whales. Echo lay on echo, both deflecting and penetrating.
Paul's head came up. His expression was new, stunned. She noticed that he was actually wearing a sleeveless, flesh-colored leotard. Seeing him onstage where he couldn't see her, she believed she was still in love with him even if it wasn't reciprocated. But is it really love? she wondered. Watching him, she thought: It is certainly obsession. She knew that she hadn't yet given him up. Thoughts of him peopled her solitude; he was the missing presence in her life.
But who was Paul really, after all? She felt she knew him deeply, but not well. Was this dancer she now observed the same man whom she had longed for through lonely days and empty nights? She wondered if by picturing him so often in his absence she had perhaps ended by making him up.
She watched as he became a bird with a long neck, a stealthy hunter. In another minute he transformed himself again. He hopped from a crouch and sailed through the air as lightly as an insect -a cricket or a grasshopper—and then landed like an insect, kneeling, low to the ground, his arms folded back like wings. Scarcely pausing, he hopped again, even further this time, as the audience erupted into laughter. Althea was laughing, too. She hadn't known what to expect, but she hadn't expected this.
He's a little crazy, she thought, but I don't mind. She felt indulgent and amused at the same time. What will he become next? she wondered.
He lay on his back on the bare stage, his legs stretched into the air. His body rippled, a sinuous movement from his upraised feet down to his head. Who would have thought that one could dance flat on one's back, or would want to? she reflected. Yet she found this part of the dance beautiful, more beautiful than what had come before it.
The music ceased, but the dance continued in silence, even in stillness. Paul ceased to move; he became absolutely motionless, lying on his back. His body changed before her eyes. His muscles became rigid, defined. His flesh looked dense and hard. His skin seemed worn and polished by time. To Althea, he was like rock or driftwood. She had not imagined it possible to convey inertia with such eloquence. The moments crawled by. She could feel the audience around her caught in his spell, yet desiring release from the stillness, the heavy silence.
Just when the strain seemed unbearable, it ended. Slowly, by infinitesimal degrees, Paul relaxed and grew slack, his body sinking. When he revived, he was himself again, standing and bowing to the applause. Althea, clapping until her hands burned, thought he looked somehow diminished. He must be drained and relieved, but what else? she wondered. She tried to imagine what he was thinking.
Hurled from the darkness of the audience, a bouquet suddenly hit the stage with a slapping sound. Paul, flushing with surprise, bent to retrieve it, and Althea saw that the flowers were crimson roses, their long stems swathed in clear plastic. He cradled the roses in his arms, and then knelt and gently laid the bouquet on the stage. He left it behind as he exited, a tribute accepted and then rebestowed. The curtain closed, and when it opened for the next dance, the bouquet had vanished.
He was not in this last dance, called Flying Colors. Although this dance was Kurt's premiere, for Althea it was an anti-climax, coming after Paul's. Four dancers in different colored unitards did whimsical acrobatics to a symphonic music she couldn't identify. She was distracted, thinking of Paul. She conducted a dialogue with herself. She was determined, she had to see him. She wouldn't be satisfied until she spoke to him. Still, she realized, she was terribly afraid to face him after all this time. That was one of the reasons why she knew she had to.
At the end of Flying Colors, as the dancers lined up to take their bows, a man in street clothes appeared onstage, with four bouquets of roses, which he presented to each dancer in turn with an embrace. This must be Kurt Matthews, Althea realized. Hand in hand, holding their flowers proudly between them, the dancers and Kurt bent their heads to the final applause.
She wondered, From whom had Paul's roses come? His were dark red; the roses Kurt had given the other dancers were pink and white. Probably Bryce was in the audience and had hurled the flowers on the stage, she decided. Perhaps she would see him after the performance.
She felt nervous as she filed out of the theater, following the people who were descending to the lobby from the stairs past the foyer. They were retrieving their coats from the lockers that lined one wall, but she hadn't checked hers. With regret she noticed that the bar was closed. She could have used a drink, she thought. She didn't see Paul anywhere, or any of the other dancers. She didn't see Bryce either, or anyone else that she knew. Restlessly, nervously, she began pacing the floor. She avoided every glance, as none was Paul's. Again and again she retraced her steps. Minutes passed. The theatergoers had dwindled, but a few remained in the lobby, clustered in groups of two or three, waiting.
A glass wall with a door set in it separated the offices from the lobby. She noticed when a man shut off the lights inside and watched as he came through the door, locking it behind him. She approached him. "Do you know if Paul Carmichael will be coming through here?" she asked.
"He'll have to. That door over there in the corner is the only way out. Is he expecting you?"
She hesitated. "I'm not sure. May I wait?"
&n
bsp; "Why not? It's a free country. For you and everybody else." The man shrugged.
Surely, they all weren't waiting for Paul, Althea thought. However, before she could wonder who was, she saw Paul come through the corner door, just as predicted. He was accompanied by two of the other dancers, the black man and the small Asian woman. Immediately they were surrounded. Althea hung back. Maybe I should just go now, she thought. Yet it struck her as strange and wrong how willing she was to give up.
However, as she stood vacillating and uneasy, Paul stepped out of the circle clustered around him. Calling her name, he approached her, radiant, filling up all her vision, so evidently happy to find her that he took both her hands in his. She neither struggled nor clasped his hands back, entirely unprepared for the warmth of his welcome. As he held her hands, he kissed her mouth quickly. She was shocked by the press of his lips, so easily and readily given, and then gone.
"Althea, I'm so glad you came!" he exclaimed with delight.
She was speechless at first. Then she said, "But did you think I wouldn't?"
"I hoped you would," he said, without a trace of guile. "Let me see you. Come, stand in the light." He led her, still holding her hands, to the rear of the lobby. Carefully, he placed her directly under one of the lights recessed in the ceiling. Like a small, fragile spotlight, it beamed down its illumination.
Yet Althea was hardly aware of her surroundings. In the intensity of his gaze, they melted away. She felt his smiling eyes scrutinizing her and the soft pressure of his fingers on her palms. Such acute attentions would have unnerved her, had he not acted so pleased.
"Your face has changed since the summer. It's grown more angular," he observed in a low voice.
"Older," she said, feeling it.
"Angular," he repeated, as if she'd misheard him. "But you're more beautiful now," he assured her.
She looked up at him, surprised. What did he mean? What did he want?
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