Heart of Glass

by Wendy Lawless

  I was almost always available. I nodded at Nina.

  “This is amazing. Come the day after tomorrow, say around six p.m.—here’s the address.” She scribbled on a scrap of paper from her purse.

  “Wow, really? Thanks! Oh, what’s the play?”

  “It’s Spring Awakening. Wedekind. Do you know it?”

  I nodded eagerly. Nina was an intellectual, so of course I had never heard of the play. But I didn’t want her to know that.

  “I can’t believe I ran into you today. It’s like it was meant to be! See you soon.” And she was gone, clicking away down the street in her black, high-heeled boots surrounded by a swirl of orange fall leaves as they flew off the trees.

  I ran past St. Patrick’s and Cartier to Fifty-third Street, jumped on the E train, and got off at Port Authority. I booked it across Forty-second Street praying that the Drama Book Shop in Times Square would still be open and have a copy of the play. I raced up the narrow staircase to the second floor and breathlessly asked the oily-haired clerk at the register which section Wedekind’s Spring Awakening would be in.

  “That’s gonna be in German expressionism. All the way in the back,” he said without even looking up from his copy of Backstage.

  I found the play, bought it, and started to read it on my way back to Jenny and Pete’s on the train. The play was dark, incredibly sad, and filled with all kinds of taboo stuff—rape, masturbation, flagellation, abortion, homosexuality, and suicide. It was about this group of German teen­agers living in a small village in the 1800s whose parents keep them completely ignorant about sex, with disastrous results. The kids are also under huge pressure at school, where they have to be at the top of their class or be expelled or become garbage collectors. I could see the appeal for Nina—it was out there. The play was scary and weird and had a heightened quality of theatricality and otherworldliness. I wondered what part I’d be reading for.

  Two days later, I sat in a dingy basement hallway on Tenth Avenue outside the rehearsal room where the auditions were taking place. I was reading for the part of Wendla—the lead—but I was sure that all the young women were reading that part. There were four girls, school friends, in the play—I figured Nina was considering casting me in one of those roles, if I got lucky. There were some older actors there, too, in their late twenties maybe, and I wondered if any of her Yalie pals were here; I probably didn’t have a chance of getting in the show.

  I briefly thought about just fleeing, running out the door. I was super nervous; this seemed so much more serious than performing in a tent in a small mountain town, which I now felt almost embarrassed about. But I desperately wanted to impress Nina. They called my name and I went in and hoped they wouldn’t notice my hands were trembling. The actor who’d already been cast as the leading boy, Melchior, was reading with me.

  “Let’s do Wendla and Melchior’s first scene together.” Nina nodded at us. “Start when you feel ready.”

  We did the scene; Wendla is very trusting and innocent. She has a crush on Melchior, but in a schoolgirl way—she’s only fourteen. It seemed to be going well when Nina stopped us about halfway through.

  “Good. Now, I’d like you to improvise the rest of the scene. Just put your scripts down and use your own words.”

  I was terrified—I’d never improvised anything before, except my own life. I looked at the other actor, hoping he would say or do something first. Wendla, I realized, wants to know what it’s like to suffer—something she’s never experienced in her happy, placid, sheltered childhood. Then, I had an impulse; I picked a script up off the floor and smacked myself across my legs with it.

  “Hit me!” I felt as if this weird energy had taken me over. I slapped him on the chest with the script.

  He grabbed the script away and then gingerly tapped me.

  “That didn’t hurt at all. Hit me harder, Melchior.” I beat on his chest with my hands. I shouted, “Harder!” Then I pushed him.

  He brought his hand high above his head, as if he were going to strike me hard. Then he froze. He looked at Nina and smiled as I held my breath.

  “That was great, guys!” Nina beamed. “Wendy, I want you to play Wendla.”

  “Really?” I couldn’t believe it—I had faked my way through the audition, and it had worked.

  “Yes—what do you say?”

  I stood there for a minute, dumbfounded, then managed to squeeze out, “Uh . . . sure.”

  “Fantastic! We’ll start next week.”

  We would be rehearsing at night, so people could go to their day jobs or make their other auditions. We were to rehearse for about four weeks, then perform for two weeks at a church on the Lower East Side Nina had snagged. She’d called in favors all over town so we’d have sets, costumes, lighting—just like a professional production. It would even have original music, scored by one of Nina’s composer friends. There was no pay, but we’d be given subway tokens to go back and forth and an occasional dinner-break delivery from the corner deli on late nights. I ran home to tell Pete and Jenny.

  “Yeah for you, sweetie! You did it!” Jenny gave me a big hug and a kiss.

  “Awesome, Wend,” said Pete with the sweet smile that displayed his Indian-corn teeth. Their love and support was palpable and meant the world to me, and I felt so fortunate to have my little family in my corner, cheering for me. They assured me that they would be there opening night. Jenny and Pete were the best.

  The cast and crew of Spring Awakening started ­rehearsals—­

  I felt a little intimidated by the other actors, all of whom had some kind of formal training, which I did not. I was playing a tragic, sexually confused, insecure young girl. So I pranced around onstage scantily clad in my underwear, playing a version of myself. I found my last scene, before I die of a botched abortion offstage, especially painful to perform. I cried every time we did it, thinking of the baby I’d aborted the year before and whom I would never know. It may have looked like acting, but that pain was real and never far from the surface. I couldn’t stop those tears.

  Usually after rehearsals, the cast and crew went to a dive blues bar called Dan Lynch’s nearby on Thirteenth Street for a few drinks. Sometimes, Earl and Clyde, two African American janitors in their late sixties, came along with us to throw back a couple of beers after they closed up the church for the night.

  One night, a group of us straggled into the bar through its beaten-up wooden saloon doors, the only light inside coming from the neon beer signs that hung in the window. The air was moist with sweat and smelled like cat pee and watered-down drinks. I was dancing by myself to a guitar player named, improbably, B. B. King Jr., and his band, while the cast and crew hung out at the bar. B.B. was ripping his guts out on the stage and singing in a guttural howl through the wall of cigarette smoke. Clyde sauntered up and started dancing with me. I turned toward him—he was an amazing dancer.

  “You can’t dance by yourself, girl,” he shouted in my ear. I turned to him and we became a couple. He had so much style and cool; his moves were fluid and matched the music. I was sort of pogoing, the popular club dance of the moment. I was such a white girl.

  “You’re an incredible dancer, Clyde,” I yelled back. He smiled, mopping his face with a crumpled bar napkin.

  “You want to know my secret?”

  I nodded, running my hand over my scalp and wiping it on my skirt.

  “Listen to the music and dance to one instrument at a time.” I watched him do it—he switched from following the guitar, to the bass, to the drums—stepping around the floor like a man less than half his age. I tried to copy him, but he felt the music in his body in a way I just didn’t.

  From the dance floor, I saw Nina’s brother, Lincoln—an artist who was doing the sets—sitting at one of the tables, looking at me intently. I had noticed him before, but he was usually immersed in painting and hammering. He was a big guy, barrel-che
sted, with a strong face that was handsome, but you could tell he couldn’t care less about shit like that. That he didn’t care made him seem sexy to me. He had a rumpled Julian Schnabel–esque aura about him, a kind of bad-boy thing. It was real—he wasn’t pretending to be a hard-drinking, wild-haired, paint-spattered artist—he really was. I’d heard he had a live-in girlfriend and that sometimes he got so drunk he fell down. All that just made him more alluring to me. He had never looked my way—until now.

  The set ended, I thanked Clyde for the dance—he nodded and smiled, moving off to where he’d left his beer—and I went over to the bar to order a bourbon. Lincoln sauntered over and stood next to me. He ground out his cigarette in the ashtray and lit another, exhaling the smoke from his nostrils in a heavy plume.

  “Hi,” I said. I climbed onto a barstool and sipped my drink, trying to play it cool.

  “Hi.”

  I recrossed my legs, showing off my black tights, short, black tube skirt, and the baggy, long, emerald-green sweater I’d bought in a Boston thrift store. He studied my legs, and then, seeing a hole in my tights, put his finger there, rubbing it around on my bare skin. He just kept looking at me, with no expression. His actions did the talking.

  He took the cigarette out of his mouth. “Do you wanna dance?”

  “Sure.”

  Hand in hand, we strolled out onto the floor. It was a fast number, but he pulled me into him and held me close, looking right at my face, inches away from his. I could smell bourbon and cigarettes on his breath. As we moved slowly around, he took one of my hands in his and placed it against his chest, the other gripping me strongly across my waist. We were still looking into each other’s eyes as the song ended around us.

  “Wanna get outta here?” He didn’t let go of me but moved his hand from my waist, up under the back of my sweater, and made my bare skin shiver.

  I swallowed. “Okay,” I croaked.

  “You got a place?”

  I nodded. Once we began having rehearsals that ran especially late, Nina had kindly given me the keys to an empty studio apartment nearby so I wouldn’t have to take the subway home after eleven or twelve o’clock at night—when the creeps, muggers, and jack-offs rode the trains, which often stopped in the tunnels inexplicably or were plunged into darkness when the lights cut out. The studio belonged to a friend of hers, an older character actor who was out on the road touring in a show. I had crashed there a few nights already and even kept some clothes there so I could change for work at the deli the next morning.

  “Just give me a minute,” Lincoln said.

  He released me and went over to a booth to pick up his cigarettes and down the rest of his Jack Daniel’s. He looked over at me and cocked his head in the direction of the door. I grabbed my stuff and followed him out, glancing quickly at his sister, who was immersed in a conversation with her current boyfriend, a successful actor named Paul who had the blond good looks of a California surfer.

  Out on the street, I saw that it had rained and gotten cold while we were inside Dan Lynch’s. I had a coat, but Lincoln didn’t. He put his arms around me, burying his hands along with mine in the pockets of my coat, our breath fogging the air. We walked wordlessly over the metal doors in the sidewalks, banging past all the closed shops along Second Avenue. When we reached the building on Sixteenth Street, I ran up the steps and unlocked the outside door, then the inside door. Inside the first-floor apartment, I turned on a lamp, which cast a yellow glow on the threadbare Persian rug in front of the sofa. The place was minimally furnished by someone who didn’t have a lot of money, but it was clean and tidy, with theater posters on the walls, an old, wooden rolltop desk, and plenty of books lining the shelves.

  “So, have you brought other guys here?”

  “Just you.” I took off my coat and tossed it nonchalantly on the sofa in my best woman-of-the-world manner.

  “So I guess I’m lucky.”

  “Well, that depends on how you look at it.”

  Before anything happened and—I thought—much to his credit, he told me about his girlfriend. I’d seen her at rehearsals. Tall and pale, with red hair and glasses, she looked fragile, like a crushed flower. He loved her, didn’t want to hurt her, he explained, but felt trapped and bored. I guessed this is where I was going to come in.

  “It’s fine with me,” I said, attempting to sound cavalier. I wasn’t eager to have a serious relationship, I lied—telling him what I thought he wanted to hear—just so he would stay. I didn’t tell him I was lonely, and that I fancied him, and that his interest made me feel wanted.

  That night we drank a bottle of red wine we found and invented a new game, Strip Bongos. One person played the bongos, and one person took off an article of clothing. Then we switched. He left around three in the morning, heading back to Brooklyn to sneak in without being noticed. I could tell he felt guilty, but my dizzy logic told me that no one was getting hurt as long as his girlfriend didn’t find out. His not being truly available made it easier in a way—knowing that whatever happened between us had a shelf life. I wouldn’t have to give all of myself, to fall in love, with all the vulnerability that implied. I could keep a part of me hidden.

  The show opened the following weekend, and because Nina was so well connected, a lot of important people came to see it—hot young actors she’d worked with or whom her actor boyfriend, Paul, knew, directors, and casting agents—some of whom asked me after the show if I was interested in reading for film and television. I said yes, thrilled at all the attention. Being in Spring Awakening felt big-time to me, as if I were actually getting a taste of being a successful, in-demand actor. I liked the way it felt and yearned for more.

  I called my dad after opening night to thank him for the telegram he’d sent me—it had read, hilariously, given the text of the play—“Break a hymen.” He was still playing Falstaff in Henry IV, Part 1 at the Denver Center Theatre Company and wouldn’t be able to see the show, and I was disappointed but understood; actors are not like regular people. You show up for every performance, and your understudy only goes on if you’re dead.

  When I got Dad on the phone, he said, “You’re finally in a position where a lot of people will see how talented you are, sweetheart.”

  “I hope so.”

  “Just go out there every night and fuck ’em in the heart.”

  Determined to do just that, I got an answering service—just like all the other serious New York actors—called Bells Are Ringing, to take my phone messages in case any of the muckety-mucks who saw the show tried to contact me. I regularly dashed into a phone booth to check if anyone had called. I was flattered by all the people who told me how good I was in the show, but how did I know they meant it? Maybe it was just my ability to cry on cue. The part felt so close to me, it was more like I was being this lost girl rather than acting her.

  Nina had already been asked to assistant-direct a play on Broadway the following month. I was happy for her, grateful to her for giving me this chance to be seen. Other actors in the Spring Awakening cast were booking jobs in regional theater and small films.

  One casting agent, Meg Simon, was especially enthusiastic about my work in the play. She had this cascading mane of black ringlets and thick-framed glasses, and she always wore boldly colored retro dresses and chunky jewelry. Meg believed in me and was warm and funny, and I was drawn to her like a big sister.

  She asked me to come to her office and told me she had me in mind for a few projects. “You remind of a young Katharine Hepburn. How old do you think you play on TV or film?”

  I mumbled that I didn’t know as I ogled all the posters on her office walls from the Broadway, Second Stage, and Lincoln Center shows she had cast.

  She laughed. “Well, I’m looking for a young actress for a soap opera I cast. I’ll send you there first.”

  I thanked her, and she gave me a big hug.

  A few day
s later, I read for the producers of Ryan’s Hope, an ABC daytime show about a large Catholic, Irish American family who run a bar and live in Washington Heights. I knew the audition had gone well when I had a message on my service from Meg.

  “They want to test you!” She was ebullient, as was I. “But first, you need an agent.”

  Meg sent me out on meetings with agents who might possibly be interested in negotiating my soap contract, in case I got the role. With an agreement in place, I would be locked in and couldn’t back out or ask for more money. It seemed crazy to me that I’d be signing on for three years on the show before I even knew if I had the job, but I didn’t have anything else going for me.

  The first agent Meg sent me to was an incredibly odd woman. Probably in her forties, she resembled a wizened tortoise and reminded me of an old, lesbian babysitter of mine from long ago. During our meeting she said strange things and seemed obsessed with my glove size. She called that night to tell me she was just thinking about me when she was in the shower. I told her thanks, but Meg wanted me to meet a few other people.

  Another agent, David Guc, took me out to dinner after the show one night. He invited me back to his house; he was sort of oily, sexless, and overweight. A powerful agent, he had many celebrity clients, so I went—I didn’t get the feeling he was that into me. He kept going on and on about his newest client, a famous actress named Kathleen Turner, who he claimed was also his lover, something I found hard to believe looking at him.

  He wanted to know if I had ever read Chekhov; I told him that I hadn’t. He plucked a copy of Three Sisters out of his bookcase and gave it to me. “You should read this play. You were born to play Masha—you have her soul—but you probably will never play the part.”

  When I asked him why not, he told me I was too sweet looking, too cherubic, to be considered for “heavier” roles. I thought he was an arrogant prick.

  My first appointment the next day was with someone named Didi Rea at the Susan Smith Agency. As I sat in the waiting room in my blue pin-striped suit, baby-blue shirt, and red-and-navy-striped skinny tie, I turned that name around in my brain, thinking that it sounded vaguely familiar, perhaps someone I’d met at a party. I dismissed the feeling and flipped through a magazine.