Jacob's Folly

by Rebecca Miller

  Masha’s meetings with the casting directors began, instigating a tumble of botched auditions for TV shows, a play, a couple of movies. Masha was almost paralyzed by nervousness, embarrassed by her scanty clothing, and still uncertain of her accent, despite Doris van Hoff’s palsied ministrations. Bridget Mooney coached her nearly every day now, traveling to the Coe manse by Surinder-mobile and sometimes spending the night (!) in the guesthouse with Nevsky. Looking a little less tightly wound these days, her blond coif loosely curled, the citadels of puff around her eyes powdered with care, Bridget lounged by the Coe pool and encouraged Masha to enjoy the power of her allure; it would be gone soon enough.

  Masha was shedding her customs one by one. Eating what she fancied, shaking hands with male strangers, exposing her limbs, singing before menfolk, ignoring the Shabbos, neglecting to bless her food: all of this had happened. She began to wear her body as if it were a beautiful new dress.

  Yet there were still times, as Masha woke in the morning, when she felt terror rush through her. She’d put her hand to her mouth, sure she had just done something awful, something unforgivable, and lay waiting to be punished. The only cure for this malaise was a trip to Shelley’s room. Finding her friend asleep in bed, or reading, or sipping a cup of tea, reassured her. Shelley lived as though nothing were wrong with the way she lived.

  Pearl sat at the edge of her bed, before dawn, staring sightlessly out the window. Every morning these days she was dredged urgently from sleep, as if by pulleys, only to remember that her daughter was gone. The last text she’d received was still saved on her phone: I love you Mommy. Don’t look for me. Will call soon. Masha. There was no calling the police after that. Masha hadn’t been abducted. She wasn’t a minor. She had simply left.

  The baby cried out from Estie’s room. Tucking her long, soft hair into a terry-cloth turban, Pearl hurried down the hall. Quietly, she walked into the younger girls’ room. Estie was asleep in her bed; Leah was standing up gripping the high bars of her crib, bouncing up and down. Pearl lifted her out. The plump, strong baby hugged her mother, burying her face in her neck. Pearl loved that feeling. She kissed Leah’s cheek, setting her on her hip. The twins’ alarm clock went off then, and Pearl, on her way down the stairs, whispered to the boys not to hit the snooze button. Mordecai could sleep for another hour if he needed to.

  Pearl set out the breakfast things, warmed the baby’s bottle, and sat down cradling Leah. Rocking back and forth, breathing in the scent of her baby’s silky scalp, she prayed to Hashem to keep Masha safe. That was all she could do.

  One Saturday, Leslie came by Masha’s Victorian towing his old motorboat behind the truck. Deirdre was away with Stevie that weekend, visiting friends in the South. It was the first Saturday Leslie had had to himself in a long time, a fine, hot day.

  He rang the buzzer at ten o’clock, as he had told Masha he might, if the weather was clear. Masha looked out the window, took in a sharp breath when she saw the wooden boat, so neat and pretty with its turqoise leather seats and polished wooden decks. She had forgotten Leslie’s invitation.

  Hugh was asleep on the couch. She woke him and Shelley, and the three of them filed out of the building and got into Leslie’s big truck, the two girls in front, Hugh folded into the narrow backseat with Stevie’s baseball bat, mitt, and other items.

  It was embarrassing, Leslie thought, chauffering these three younger people for a day of recreation, his big hands turning the wheel as he barked out absurdly cheerful remarks. He felt like an idiot. He had expected Masha to emerge alone. Nothing to be done about it now. He drove to the marina, his chest imploded with disappointment. Masha was beside him in a long dress of fine cotton. He could feel the warmth of her thigh against his.

  Once the boat was smacking the water, Masha seemed to come alive. She knelt at the bucking prow, hands clutching the rail, her dark mane whipping in the breeze, yelling at him to go faster, faster! The gusting wind, tearing at her loose white dress, churned a foaming wake of cloth toward him. Reflexively, he opened the throttle, as if to close the distance between them. She turned to him once, her face striped with strands of black hair, her mouth open, smiling, drinking the wind. The other two huddled together in the passenger bench, sleepy, looking out to sea. He drove them to a strip of beach on Fire Island that was almost always clean of people.

  She lay on her belly, the orange bikini brilliant against her tanned skin, the golden hairs glistening on her back, one leg bent, the foot flexing and pointing idly toward the sky. Her scarlet-tipped hands clawed the hot sand, playing with it, her face toward him, half smashed into the towel he’d brought for her, one eye peeking through that river of blue-black hair.

  “You got sunscreen on?” he asked her.

  “No,” she said.

  “You better put some on. You’ll get broiled.” Shelley and Hugh were wading in the water down the beach, talking.

  “Okay,” said Masha, not moving. Leslie reached a big hand into his canvas bag and took out the tube of suncreen.

  “You want me to do your back?” he asked. She nodded. He could feel muscle and ribs through the warm young skin. He was lost now. He didn’t care anymore. He lay down on his belly beside her, his face close to hers. He looked into her night eyes. She stared back boldly. He wondered where the other two were. He could hear their voices growing fainter. Her hand was close to his, almost touching. He linked his pinkie with hers. She didn’t move away, but looked at the twined fingers, curious. He drew the hand toward him, drew the girl toward him, her towel wrinkling in the sand, his big hand against the small of her back. She felt tiny. He could feel her breath on his face.

  With a brief smile, she put a small palm against his chest, pressed him back. A spray of sand caught the light as she launched herself down the beach. Her bathing suit was a flicker of orange against the opal sea.

  She waded out to Shelley and Hugh. The shadow from Shelley’s straw hat made a polka-dot light pattern on her cheeks. Her body was like a young boy’s, her chest flat, hips narrow.

  “What’s going on there?” she asked, nodding her head at Leslie.

  “Nothin’,” said Masha. She couldn’t kiss him. His callused hand felt good against her skin. She could feel his desire and she liked it, but. What if she would only ever want Eli in all her life? What then? Reflexively, she turned to Hugh, who was already looking at her, his baggy trunks wet, hand shading his eyes. She couldn’t make out his expression in the glare. Letting his arm fall, he turned, wading up to his slim waist in water, and dove into the sea. The two young women watched him cut through the water expertly with his long arms.

  Shelley took Masha’s hand and squeezed it. “Hugh’s going back to L.A.,” she said. “I hope he’s gonna be okay.”

  Masha felt a pang of loss. Hugh had become part of her life with Shelley in the free rental. She wanted things to remain as they were. She looked at her friend. The quirky landscape of Shelley’s face had become dear and essential to her: the soft, nearly weak chin, pert nose, surprised blue eyes, charming little overbite. Masha loved that face.

  After a month of rejections, a casting director, a thin lady with the manner of a somnambulist, assessed Masha with greedy eyes.

  “I have someone I want you to meet,” she intoned.

  The ensuing audition, for an off-off-Broadway musical: Masha walked onto a bare stage surrounded by empty bleachers. The director was a hunched man in a wheelchair with a wide torso and slender, hairless arms emerging from a short-sleeved Hawaiian shirt; the composer, a mournful-looking pale woman draped in a black shawl. They sat side by side in the front row of the empty theater. Coincidentally, each of them had a walleye; his right iris favored the right-hand corner, her left eye was frozen on the left. Masha couldn’t tell if either of them was looking at her or not. I was reminded fondly of dear Cousin Gimpel, with his rolling eyeball that seemed trained on the heavenly spheres.

  As Masha sang the song she’d prepared with the singing coach Nevsky had found her, un
der the grinding scrutiny of these two am-blyopics, she was so frightened, she felt her chest, her innards being compressed by some invisible weight. Yet it was thrilling too, to expose herself this way. There she was, an observant Jewish girl, revealing her deepest nakedness to a bunch of strangers. I was euphoric. And they loved her! She got the part.

  Titled Charcot’s Women, the piece was about Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot, the famous nineteenth-century French neurologist, and the group of female hysterics he used to demonstrate his theories with. Medical students, fellow physicians—including Sigmund Freud—and curious members of the public used to cram themselves into the medical theater in the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris to watch the bizarre act unfold. Every Tuesday Dr. Charcot would hypnotize his patients one by one and they would duly act out childhood traumas, have fits, suffer temporary paralysis—in a manner and order precisely reflecting Charcot’s theories of hysteria. The question of suggestion, of how much of these acts were real symptoms brought out by hypnosis and how much were fabricated to please the great professor and keep up the women’s star status, loomed large over the story.

  Masha played a girl named Geneviève. It was a small part, but she got to do a lot of weeping and thrashing. The character had lost the power of speech through trauma and could only speak (or, in this case, sing) when under hypnosis. I worried that Masha’s own mystery symptom, her ghost pains, would return to her and make it impossible to work, but they didn’t. I came along on all the rehearsals. The theater was desperately impoverished, with bony benches rising up around a tiny stage more suitable for a flea circus than human drama. Rehearsals were like a visit to the madhouse, with twelve women of varying ages screaming and writhing, singing and shaking as the walleyed director wheeled himself around them all, muttering, and the composer sat in her seat, wrapped to the neck in shawls, drinking sloppy tea from a thermos and frantically scribbling notes onto a pad. I wished I could summon Antonia from whatever state her spirit was in, just so she could witness this chaos.

  The musical opened to one brief, ironic review. Masha was singled out, however, and praised.

  “Dunster is big news,” Nevsky whispered to Masha in the deserted elevator as they enjoyed the silken ride up to the thirtieth floor. “A British director, just came off a hit called My Way. Dj’you see that?”

  “No,” said Masha.

  “Course not. You never see anything,” said Nevsky. “Marauder is a franchise. Three-film contract. And they want exotic—but not too exotic. I.e.—my interpretation—white. That’s where I think we have the trump card. You’re exotic. But you have to be hot when you go in there. You need to sear the seat. Dunster is known for his love scenes. You look amazing.”

  Masha was in a pair of Shelley’s leatherette pants that fit her like skin, a red halter top, and four-inch heels bought at the mall in Patchogue. She looked like a hooker in a movie. When the elevator doors opened, Masha saw there were five or six girls dressed almost exactly like her, a jungle of lip gloss and hoop earrings and lashes, each one checking her out with fatalistic curiosity. When the assistant finally called her name, all the girls followed her with their eyes. Nevsky looked nervous and a little sad to be left behind. Doglike, Masha thought, looking back at him.

  She wasn’t as scared as she usually was. She had the whole scene mapped out; she had made a decision how to play every line. When she had done the scene three times with the casting director, who read with her, Johnny Dunster sat back in his chair looking at her, brow furrowed. He was a disheveled man with an English accent, prone to long silences followed by sudden movements and emphatic, stuttered requests. She looked back at him, motionless, waiting. After a long time, he said, “Thanks.”

  Five days later, she was called back.

  “This is Carl,” said Dunster when she walked in. “You’re going to be reading together.” Carl was blond and stocky, with smooth Germanic features, a pleasant, wide-open face. “So what I want you to do is,” said Dunster, “sort of make out while you’re doing the scene.”

  “What?” said Masha.

  “Like, you’re making out and talking. You know how that happens.”

  Masha looked at the young man, who put his hands in his pockets in a show of harmlessness.

  “Just snog, make out, I need to see what that feels like.”

  Masha didn’t move. She was trying to understand.

  “It’s a hot scene, I can’t tell what it’s like if I don’t see a bit of the physical side,” explained Dunster.

  Carl, who had clearly been doing this all morning, and in fact still had a tiny smear of lipstick on his chin, sat down on the floor and looked up at her expectantly. She peered down at him from her chair as though he were a pool of freezing water she was expected to dive into. So this was going to be her first kiss, with this stand-in? She felt trapped. She couldn’t leave; she couldn’t blow this. She scoured her mind for details of love scenes from the movie she’d watched with Hugh. Taking a deep breath, she lowered herself onto the floor, crawled over to the fair young man, and kissed him. His mouth tasted like mint gum. Dunster shot up and pranced around them like a goat on its hind legs, calling out encouragement.

  “Go on, hold the man! Grab his hair! Good. And again!”

  Masha said her lines mid-ravish, her lips wet with the stranger’s saliva. Jealous, unexpectedly horrified by Masha’s defilement, I buzzed around them helplessly, floating in the air, a voiceless, futile housefly.

  When she came to the end, Masha climbed back on her chair and wiped her mouth.

  “Good,” said Dunster. “Thanks, Masha.” Masha stood up, trembling. She barely remembered any of the last three minutes. Confused, she mumbled something and left.

  And after all that, she still didn’t get the part.

  One night, on his way home from work, Leslie veered suddenly off the LIE and drove into Manhattan. He knew Masha was in a play there. He looked the theater up on his phone. After the failed kiss on the beach, he had been too embarrassed to speak. He had just driven the three kids back to the Victorian, slinked off in his truck. The next few days he and Masha avoided one another at the Coe manse. But he needed to find a way back to her. He wasn’t capable of forgetting about her, going back to his normal life. He was too far gone for that.

  Standing in line to buy tickets to see the play, along with three other people, Leslie worried what Masha would think. He didn’t want to seem like a stalker. Maybe he would just leave afterward. Wait a few days, tell her he had seen it with his wife. He bought his ticket and sat toward the back of the bleachers. Eventually the place filled up halfway, the lights went down, and the show began.

  Dr. Charcot, a short man in a morning coat and bow tie, his dark hair slicked back neatly, walked onstage and sang a number explaining what was wrong with the first madwoman. A portly lady in a Victorian slip, her hair in disarray, wandered in, twitching. Charcot imitated her tics in a most entertaining manner as he explained her various syndromes. Then he hypnotized her. Deep in a trance, the woman proceeded to sing out a horrible experience of being run over by a cart, then had some kind of seizure. Once he woke her up, in came another one. This freak show went on for forty-five minutes, interspersed with snippets of Dr. Charcot’s home life, where his wife kept singing to him that the women were all making it up to get attention. Leslie thought she had a point.

  When Masha walked onstage, led by the nurse, Leslie was frightened for her. His palms were slick, his throat tightened. She didn’t speak, but the way she looked around the room, played with the cross at her throat, hunched her shoulders, seemed sharp and real to him. The doctor explained that Geneviève had not spoken out of hypnosis for two years.

  When she was hypnotized, Masha’s eyes rolled back in her head and the harsh, unfamiliar sound of her singing voice sent shivers down Leslie’s spine. It was dark, pure. The strange tension in her face, the way her hands curled up, her head falling back as she responded to the commands of the doctor—it all belonged to another woman. At
one point, in order to demonstrate her hypnosis-induced catatonia, Charcot had the nurses balance her rigid body between two chairs. She was stiff as an ironing board. It was like she was channeling. When the lights went down, he heard someone whisper, “That black-haired girl, the mute—she was incredible.”

  Leslie felt his face burn when he heard that.

  Masha ambled across the stage. She felt emptied out, a staring husk. She was trying to piece together the evening’s performance, but all she had to go by were a few scattered shards of the experience. This kind of amnesia was usual for her after a show. She was aware of her body onstage, but she felt it like an animal feels—the hairs rising on the back of her neck, chills up her spine, a rush of anger or shame. When she sang, she felt she was nothing but an open throat, a conduit for something that began beneath her feet and spouted into the atmosphere. Her everyday self disappeared. Masha had a bottomless appetite for this heady feeling of forgetfulness, of freedom. Night after night, she stalked oblivion. I knew what she meant. But I’ll get to that later.

  Masha was starving. She would get Surinder to stop for a slice of pizza on the way home. And a Coke. She heard someone call her name. She looked up. It was Leslie. She suddenly realized how lonely she’d been a minute earlier.

  “Leslie!” she said.

  “I had to come see you, didn’t I?”

  She smiled up at him from the stage. He walked down the bleachers.

  “You were terrific,” he said.

  “Really?”

  “You had me believing you were completely nuts. You want to grab a bite, or a drink?”

  “Um, Surinder is waiting for me …”

  “Give him the night off. I’ll drive you home after,” he said.

  They stopped at a steakhouse on their way uptown.