Nell

by Nancy Thayer

  At the end of that summer, she had been aware of several facts of life. She knew now that hundreds of other girls in the country had played the lead in college productions of Joan of Arc or West Side Story. Scores of other girls were more beautiful than she, or more talented or more ambitious or, finally, just braver. And she, at twenty-five, was already considered “older.” She had no offers, she had not been singled out. Or rather, she had been singled out, by Marlow St. John, and she had an offer from him, of marriage. She could stay single, go to New York, become a waitress, and slug it out on her own against enormous odds, or she could marry Marlow, travel with him, let him cast her in the lead of the plays he directed. Perhaps any woman would have made the choice she made.

  Remembering it all, Nell shuddered with revulsion at the woman she had been. Oh surely, she thought, surely she had not been so practical! She had been as much in love with Marlow as she could have, at that time of her life, been in love with any man.

  Nell thought that if she could have one wish, it would be that she had been given a talent and desire for any other thing in the world than acting. This acting business—well, it had caused her to live her life in such a make-believe land. She couldn’t even read her old diaries now, because they made her so mad, they were so full of lies. She had written her diaries to be read not by her, but by the public. She had lied in her most intimate life, hoping to be envied by the millions of women who would read her diaries once she was a famous actress.

  The week before she married Marlow, she wrote: “In a week I will marry Marlow St. John. Marriage. What an ordinary, common thing to be doing; it does not seem grand enough a ritual to mark a joining such as ours, for ours is no ordinary passion, no pedestrian union, no mediocre love. No, it is a grand passion, a fierce relentless ardor that would burn most mortals, a raging need and devotion for one another that consumes us: how brilliantly we will burn together, illuminating the pale world.”

  Christ. Nell didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when she read entries like that. She knew on the one hand that she had almost believed what she wrote. She knew on the other hand that that week, when she had written that incredibly conceited bunch of junk, she had almost run off with another man. Billy Roe. He was just her age, an actor, a Marlon Brando type, all muscles and grunts and inarticulate hulking desire. He was scarcely bright enough to memorize his lines, but he had that intangible quality called stage presence or charisma or magnetism—or pure sex appeal.

  She and Billy had been giving each other looks all summer, and that last week they had ended up one evening in the back of his rusty VW van. They had messed around, kissing, touching. It had been exciting.

  “I think we’d be really good together,” Billy had said. “I’ve been thinking that ever since I saw you.”

  She had been lying on top of him, her long hair falling down in his face. They had had on shorts and T-shirts, and the cotton had felt like nothing at all between them.

  “We oughta go to New York together,” Billy said. “We oughta go be poor struggling actors together. Then if we starve”—he pulled her hair hard back from her face, and with one swift powerful movement rolled over so that he lay on top of her, had her pinned by the hair, had her caught with the intensity of his look—“at least then we won’t be love-starved.”

  He had kissed her.

  Oh God, Nell often thought, if only she had kept still, how different her life would have been. If only she hadn’t talked, if only Billy hadn’t responded as he had.

  “Billy, don’t,” she said. “Billy, wait a minute. Listen, I’m kind of—well, I’ve been thinking of marrying Marlow St. John. He’s asked me to marry him.”

  Immediately Billy had rolled off of her, had sat up, leaned against the metal wall of the van, and stared at Nell as if she had transmogrified before his eyes.

  “Marlow St. John!” he said. “Holy shit.” He looked Nell up and down carefully, as if searching for something he had up to now not noticed. Nell could almost hear Billy thinking: What’s so special about her that Marlow St. John would want to marry her? “Jesus, Nell, that’s just wonderful,” he said. “Christ, Marlow St. John. You must be ecstatic.”

  “Well,” Nell said, sitting up and straightening her wrinkled clothes, “I wouldn’t exactly say ecstatic.” She had been puzzled and hurt that Billy’s passion for her had so quickly disappeared in the face of his awe of Marlow St. John.

  “You wouldn’t? Are you crazy? He’s one of the most important young directors in the United States! He can give you any part he wants. He can choose his plays in order to cast you. Jesus, you women get all the breaks.”

  “But what about love?” Nell had asked. She had been so young, so confused, so easily swayed. She had wanted to believe in love, real, true, definite love; she had wanted to believe every single word that the love songs said. If Billy had said to her then that she was right, she shouldn’t marry someone unless she loved him, or if Billy had had the sense to try to compete for her, to tell her that he loved her, he wanted her, that she shouldn’t go to Marlow St. John, she just very well might have lain back down in that van and taken Billy into her arms and believed she loved him. If he had only leaned toward her again, kissed her then as he had a few moments before, the entire course of her life might have changed.

  Instead, Billy had said, “Love? What do you mean, what about love?” He had been nearly screaming, he was so excited. He threw his arms out in such a wide gesture that he hit the sides of the van. “Who couldn’t love Marlow St. John? Christ, I could love him, and I’m not even a faggot. Listen, you dummy, he’s one fascinating, powerful man. He’s going to be a great man. If he really wants to marry you, you’d be absolutely crazy not to. God, we’re not talking about just anyone here. We’re talking about Marlow St. John.”

  If only she had had a little more courage. If only she had not lived so completely on the opinion of others. It hadn’t even occurred to Nell until years later that she didn’t have to marry Marlow simply because Billy hadn’t dissuaded her. Her opinion of her life had been as good as his; she just hadn’t known that. She could have brushed off her clothes, crawled out of the van, and said, “Well, I don’t want to marry Marlow, and I don’t know why, but I don’t, so I won’t.” The choice had always been hers. But she had been such a coward. That was the fatal and recurring flaw of her life: cowardice. She had been too afraid to face the world alone, too afraid to turn down what everyone else thought was a fabulous chance, too afraid not to take what promised to be the easy and golden road into the future. There it was, all laid out before her: Marlow St. John. She had been too terrified, too insecure, to turn her back on that in order to hack her own road into life.

  It didn’t bother Nell so very much that she had been married and that that marriage had broken up. But it did matter to her that she did not know just how much of her life had been a lie.

  Had she been happy? She didn’t really know. Had she ever loved Marlow? She didn’t really know. Those last few weeks in Maine she had certainly been high, high on the envy and awe of all those other pretty girls, who suddenly saw Nell as someone different, someone special, because she was going to marry Marlow St. John. After their marriage, they had traveled around the country to universities and local theater companies, where Marlow did stints as guest director, and for Nell it had been more of the same: she had been the woman Marlow St. John had married. That had been her identity. Men had flirted with her, people had praised her acting, women had acted like friends, but Nell would never know whether all that warmth was directed at her or at the wife of Marlow St. John. She had been a stepmother of sorts to Marlow’s daughter, Clary, but that relationship had had a schizophrenic vagueness about it: Clary came only in the summers, and because it was legally decreed. Not until Nell’s divorce from Marlow was she to discover whether Clary cared for Nell herself—or really, whether she cared for Clary. Nell had moved through her life like a woman always in costume, onstage, doing the best job she could in a pres
cribed role: wife to Marlow, stepmother to Marlow’s child, the chosen companion of a moderately famous, and therefore justifiably egocentric, man.

  Then two more events beyond Nell’s control had changed her life: she had accidentally gotten pregnant, and Marlow’s star had faded.

  Funny, how Marlow had blamed the latter on the former.

  When she had studied the past—and she had had plenty of time during the long nights when she was first separated to do just that—Nell finally was able to decide conclusively about one fact in her life with Marlow: she was not responsible for his downfall. He had received lukewarm reviews, bad reviews, cool receptions, long before she got pregnant. She was not responsible that grants did not come through. She really was not responsible that other, younger directors were shooting up like fire rockets into the skies of public adoration while Marlow’s star slowly fizzled and fell into semi-oblivion. These things happened to artists all the time. It was luck. And maybe it was talent. But she was not accountable for it. It had begun happening long before her first baby started growing in her womb.

  It was not her fault. But somehow it had become her fault. Somehow Marlow had convinced himself and her that he had had to take the teaching and directing job in the drama department at the college in Boston because she had gotten pregnant and he had to provide financial stability for his wife and her child. The baby had trapped him, had ruined his career. It was all clear to Marlow, and he had expressed his feelings to Nell with equal clarity. And with anger.

  In response, she had acted even more frantically: she had pretended that everything between them was still marvelous and enviable. They wanted to live in Arlington in an old rambling shambles of a house—the house had such potential. They wanted to settle down—all that traveling had been so exhausting. Marlow wanted to teach college students, for they were the future of the acting profession and where else could he make such an important impact on the world of drama? She wanted to stay home for a while, furnish a nest, have babies, settle down. They wanted what they had; they were happy.

  Oh Lord, Nell thought now, thought often: Had any of her life been real?

  Nell had gotten pregnant on purpose the second time. She didn’t want her son to be an only child. By then Jeremy was two, and she had spent almost three years working hard at making a clever and comfortable life for Marlow and their son. Perhaps she had really convinced herself that Marlow was happy. They gave a lot of parties, and the college plays had received great reviews; she had thought that Marlow had come to terms with his life and was even enjoying it.

  So she had been taken by surprise when she told him she was pregnant and he had responded by saying: “You bitch.” He had gone berserk with anger. He had thought she was special, that she had understood how special he was, he had thought she would nurture his talent because she was unique, and instead she was just like all the others, a bitch, a sniveling, clinging woman who trapped a man with babies and forced him to betray his possibilities for magnificence. If it were not for her …

  Marlow went out that night and drank, and probably slept with someone. It became no secret that he slept around during Nell’s burgeoning pregnancy and during the first two years of Hannah’s life. He didn’t try to hide it. He even tried to flaunt it. He was punishing Nell.

  The New Year’s Eve when Jeremy was five and Hannah three and Nell thirty-three and Marlow forty-five, Nell and Marlow came home at three-thirty from a party. The babysitter had gone to sleep in one of the bedrooms, the children were fine, asleep. Nell slipped into a nightgown—not a flannel granny one—remembering the resolutions she had made at midnight: This year she would somehow get their marriage back on track. This year she would help Marlow somehow. This year she would manage to get him to love his children. This year she would manage to make him happy again. This year would be different.

  “Shall I bring us up a little nightcap?” she asked, smiling.

  “What?” Marlow asked, looking surprised. He continued to button his blue striped pajamas. “Oh, yeah. That would be nice.”

  Returning with the brandy and soda in snifters, Nell said, “Marlow, here. Let’s drink to this new year. I want it to be different for us.”

  Marlow studied Nell, gave her the critical searching look that he often gave actors when considering them for a part. “Nell,” he said, “there’s something I have to tell you. I want to start the new year off differently, too. I want a divorce. I’m in love with Charlotte, and I want to marry her.”

  Charlotte was Nell’s best friend, had been her best friend for the four years they had lived in Arlington. Nell sat down on the bed with a plop that caused her drink to spill over the side of the snifter and onto her lace nightgown.

  “You’re kidding,” she said. “Tell me you’re kidding.”

  “I’m not kidding,” Marlow said.

  Nell, hurt, struck back. She laughed, shaking her head as she did. “You and your ego, Marlow, really. Ever since I’ve known you you’ve been so concerned about being unique, and here you are having an affair with my best friend. God, you’ve just waltzed us right into a perfect cliché. My best friend. God. What’s happened, are you getting too old to attract the little students?”

  Marlow slapped Nell across the mouth. He had never come close to striking her before. It had been years, since she was a child, that she had been struck, and Nell felt an explosion of anger within her at the blow.

  “Go on to Charlotte,” she said. “I don’t want you. I’ve never wanted you.” She glared at Marlow, defiant, hurt, mad, not caring that he might hit her again, not caring that she did not know if her words were true.

  Marlow sat down on the bed next to her then, sat there quietly in a sort of slump. Then he said, “You know, I’ve always suspected that. And if it’s true, Nell, then you and I have led a pretty sad life.”

  Was it true? Nell didn’t know, didn’t think she would ever know. Oh, what a thing to say to the man she had been married to for eight years! And if he was right, if that were true, then how sad their life had been. In the dark depths of that New Year’s morning, they just sat there on their bed side by side for a while, unable to go on from that moment of truth. Their house spread all around them, full of sleeping children, the world spread all around them, and they sat there together, silent in a pool of light from the bedroom ceiling.

  Nell looked at Marlow. How could she not love him? He was her husband, the father of her children, a man with a sense of humor, a talented man, a man as good as any, she supposed. She did care for him. She had long ago stopped worshiping him and learned to care for him. But the best she could summon up for him now was the kind of love that made her hope he would be truly happy with Charlotte. Yet she did not say this to him, for she knew it would be an even greater proof of her failure to love him as a wife.

  They sat there side by side on the bed, which was spread with a quilt hand-sewn by Marlow’s mother, and drank their brandy and sodas and had nothing else to say to each other. Finally they crawled into bed together and lay there, side by side, husband and wife, not touching, never to touch again—they lay there until they fell asleep.

  Marlow fell asleep first. Within fifteen minutes he was snoring deeply, his body and mind safely sunk in the depths of sleep. He was not aware of Nell, who lay very still but felt her thoughts scrambling frantically at the heights of her consciousness. Marlow wanted a divorce. What did that mean? She could pretty much guess what it would mean in practical terms: the mess and bother of legalities; the anguish of breaking the news to the children and the work of protecting them; boxes packed; change everywhere. Maybe they would have to sell the house. Where would she live? She could live anywhere now, in any city, state, country. She was free to go. But she found this sudden freedom confusing. Even if she had not been happy with Marlow, still he had brought order to her life, anchoring her firmly to the ground, giving her something to center her life on. Now she was going to drift free, and she was scared. She hadn’t yet figured out what it m
eant that they had married, and now she would have to figure out what it meant that they were divorcing.

  Five years later, here she was wandering around her house at night and she still hadn’t figured it all out. She still hadn’t decided a thing.

  But she had survived. She had managed. She had kept her children safe, healthy, and happy. She had found a job and kept it. She had gotten them this far.

  Nell drifted down the stairs of the dark house and carefully opened the front door so that the Indian wedding bells hanging from the nail below the knocker wouldn’t chime and wake the children. She slid outside into the night, and as her bare feet touched the cold wood of the porch, she felt a shiver ascend inside her. She walked to the edge of the porch and sat down on the steps. Slowly, her eyes adjusted to the lack of light and she could make out the figures of trees and bushes, street and streetlights. The April air was chill and the porch wood was damp; her gown clung, moist and cool, to her bottom and legs. She would probably catch a cold. But she liked these cold, definite, unambiguous physical sensations. She needed them.