The next morning, I awoke to find everyone had gone off to work—Sarah to her job as business manager of the Children’s Theatre, and Daddy to do some voice-over work at a sound studio downtown. I wandered around the house in my pajamas like Goldilocks, sitting in all the chairs, running my hand across the leather sofa in the den, looking at old photos and books, leafing through records, mostly classical and jazz, near the stereo. I opened the cupboards in the kitchen, studying the silver-rimmed, snowflake-patterned dishes and blue-bottomed glassware. I riffled through the packets of pasta and rice and cans of tomato soup and deviled ham. In the medicine cabinets, I found boxes of Alka-Seltzer, cans of L’Oréal hair spray, Dexatrim diet pills, and rolls of Tums. I opened my dad’s bottle of Dunhill cologne and sniffed its woodsy leather scent, remembering the way I had smelled it on his neck whenever I’d kissed him on the cheek as a little girl.
In the closets hung my father’s dark suits and ties, shirts and sweaters, his wing-tip shoes lying along the floor. My stepmother’s clothes smelled of her Cinnabar perfume, and her assortment of chunky necklaces, made from silver, pottery, and beads, hung on a rack on the wall. I tried on a pair of her shoes, which were huge on me. Next, I went down into the basement, where my dad kept an office. It had dusty blue carpeting on the floor and rectangular windows along the tops of the walls that let some light in from the garden. I imagined he sometimes took a nap on the small beige sofa. A massive wooden table with thick, ornately carved legs served as a desk; I browsed the items on top: a paperweight with a swirly-colored-glass center, a heavy brass letter opener with his name on it, gas bills, rolls of stamps, and restaurant receipts. Guthrie Theater posters and costume sketches of characters he’d played there—some from productions I’d seen when I was little, the dandy Lelio in The Venetian Twins and Trinculo the jester in The Tempest—lined the walls.
I was like a spy, trying to cram every object and smell into my mind, to familiarize myself with this place, so that I wouldn’t feel like a guest in my father’s house. I would learn it and know it—and it would become my own.
Later that week, Daddy and I went downtown to the Cricket Theatre to meet his friend Lou Salerni, the artistic director, and talk about the play—a 1940s comedic chestnut by Norman Krasna called Dear Ruth. My dad read a scene from the play with me; Lou laughed out loud and eased my anxiety, and then we went to lunch. The part was clearly mine, and Lou was excited about the actual-father-and-daughter casting angle. Lou was convinced that, combined with Dad’s local celebrity, would bring tons of people in. A director was coming in from New York, but all the actors would be from the Twin Cities. Rehearsals would start at the end of the month. I listened attentively to Lou’s plans, unable to get enough.
In Dear Ruth, Dad played the long-suffering Judge Wilkins, who lives with his wife and two daughters in Kew Gardens on Long Island during World War II. I was playing the younger daughter, Miriam, who has been writing letters to a soldier overseas but signing her pretty, older sister Ruth’s name. When the handsome young soldier shows up one day with a bouquet of flowers to meet Ruth in person—hilarity ensues. After doing Spring Awakening, I found it fun to do a play that was just fluff; it wasn’t anything but a kooky story. As the precocious sixteen-year-old Miriam, I got to play a deranged teenager of a different kind—I had a delicious drunk scene, getting shnockered while I clutched a giant stuffed panda bear, and got to wear forties clothes such as rompers and dirndl dresses and saddle shoes. I had permed my chin-length hair and wore a hairpiece that I thought made me look like a young Lucille Ball, whom I was trying to channel in my performance. The director was a charming, elfin man named Bob Moss, who had founded Playwrights Horizons in New York and who genuinely adored the material. Our stage manager, Brian, roly-poly in his tight, wrinkled clothes, reminded me of a wacky character from a Gilbert and Sullivan opera with his booming voice and ribald sense of humor. The cast got along like a dream, and I bonded with the other actresses, Louise, who played my sister, and Mary Sue, who had a small part as a young newlywed.
For press to promote the play, Daddy and I were interviewed by the Minneapolis Tribune, and the story ran with a photograph of us sitting together backstage, smiling. Daddy told of the time when I was three or four and Dr. Guthrie scooped me up in the greenroom of the Guthrie Theater and said, “My goodness, aren’t you a tiny little thing! I should like to take you home and put you on my mantel.” I felt like a debutante being introduced all over town.
During rehearsals, I’d go to lunch with Louise and Mary Sue. We didn’t have that much in common, besides being actresses. Mary Sue was married and had two little boys at home. She was a pretty brunette with a caustic wit that went against her sweetheart looks. Louise was a round-faced, cheerful blonde engaged to a guy I didn’t think was good enough for her. But what did I know about relationships? Since breaking up with angry, negative Michael, I’d only given a Mormon an erection and had a few uncommitted love affairs with men who were technically taken. I kept my mouth shut.
Dad and I came home from rehearsal one evening to find my stepmother looking peeved. “Your mother called here—
I just got off the phone with her.”
“Oh no.” I wondered how she’d found me.
“I didn’t know it was her at first.” Sarah lit a cigarette while my dad poured them both bourbons. “She was pretending to be a school friend of yours from London.” It had a theatrical flair to it that I recognized as Mother’s, and accosting people by telephone was a favorite hobby of hers. “She had this ridiculous English accent, and then I figured out who it was—and I’m afraid I told her off.”
“Perfectly understandable, sweetheart.” My dad handed her a tinkling rocks glass.
Over dinner, Sarah told the story of the only time she’d ever seen my father lose his temper. When they were first dating, after a particularly harsh call from Mother, he’d slammed the phone down, ripped the cord out of its socket, and punched his fist through the wall.
“I’d never seen him act like that—before or since.”
My father smiled, cutting into his steak, and said quietly, “God, I hate that woman.”
“Well, of course you do, Jimmy,” Sarah said.
Then she told me how devastated Daddy was when my mother first took me and my sister and disappeared. He just sat in a chair and stared out the window for two weeks.
“Well, she may know where you are, Wendy,” Sarah said, “but she can’t get to you. You’re safe here, and if she shows up, well, I’m sure as hell not going to let her in.”
“Christ, no.” Dad shook his head.
I was moved by their protectiveness toward me; they weren’t going to allow her to swoop in with her bansheelike cruelties and melodramatic high jinks. I was safe here, tucked away in the shelter of their home.
But I lay in bed that night in the dark trying to imagine my father in a fury, shoving his fist through a wall—and I couldn’t picture it. Rationally, I knew Mother would never show her face here, although the fear of her sudden appearance was often in the back of my mind, like a bad dream you can’t forget. I took some solace in knowing that she was being driven crazy knowing that I was safely ensconced with my father and stepmother. She couldn’t control that, and I knew it made her batshit crazy.
• • •
Every day was a party, working on this silly, sweet play—we were having a blast. Rehearsing with Dad was marvelous—he was so generous as an actor, funny, and was always coming up with surprising bits of business that made the play better. I felt that by playing father and daughter we were bonding in a new way, becoming closer through our work. Growing up, I had always been a daddy’s girl and was excited for everyone to see us onstage as father and daughter playacting the relationship I’d always dreamed of.
We opened to boffo reviews—the run was extended, and then we were offered a chance to perform it at a summer theater in Denver called the Elitch Garde
ns. It was in an amusement park, had been operating since 1890, and everyone from George Arliss to Tyrone Power to Robert Redford had played there. The entire cast signed on—it all seemed so glamorous, akin to going on tour.
Right before we departed for our run at the Elitch, a casting person at the Guthrie Theater contacted me. He’d seen me in Dear Ruth, and they were looking for a replacement for the part of the boy Cherubino in Beaumarchais’s play The Marriage of Figaro. It’s a trouser role, meaning that it is performed by an actress in male clothing. The woman playing the part now, Caitlin Clarke, could only do the first two weeks of the run, then had a TV commitment in L.A.
The Marriage of Figaro was directed by the renowned Romanian director Andrei Serban, known for his unusual postmodern and avant-garde interpretations of Shakespeare and Chekhov. Serban had become an overnight sensation at nineteen when he directed a Kabuki-style Julius Caesar as a student in Bucharest, causing an uproar. Not able to get a job in his native country as an enfant terrible, he came to America, where he was regarded as the hot theater genius of the moment and directed to great acclaim all over the country. With my heart in my throat, I croaked that of course I’d love to audition.
I hadn’t been able to see the production as it was running on the same schedule as Dear Ruth. I studied the sides, agonized about what to wear—finally deciding on straw-colored linen overalls and a white, sleeveless blouse that were easy to move in and slightly tomboyish.
I arrived at the Guthrie feeling horribly nervous, hands shaking and my knees quivering as if they’d give out at any moment. I milled around in the lounge outside the greenroom with a few other women clearly there for the audition. Although I noticed that I was the least girlie actress there, with more crossover boyish appeal, I still had to pee every thirty seconds from fear, and my face was flushed. I tried to calm down by remembering the times I’d been here as a kid, waiting for my dad to get out of rehearsal, or killing time while he was performing in a matinee. I had dreamed of working at this theater, where Daddy had launched his career.
A pale guy in a black turtleneck with a bowl haircut entered the lounge and called my name.
“Hello, Wendy, I saw you in the show—are you ready?” Well, no, I thought even though I was grateful for his kind words, but here goes. I smiled and nodded, shaking his hand.
We went backstage through a door I remembered using many times when I was eight or nine, and I smelled that marvelous backstage cocktail of sawdust, paint, and old, burned coffee. The turtlenecked man led me through the darkness as we carefully made our way around coils of electrical cord, large, standing lighting instruments, ladders, and, for some reason, a grocery cart.
“Andrei is sitting in the audience, waiting for you.” He made an “over there” gesture with his arm, like a headwaiter. I took a deep breath and walked out onto the set, which was blindingly bright because the floor was coated with Mylar and the back walls were mirrored.
The great man was blond and quite handsome, as I had heard. He was slumped in his seat, his hair long and stringy past his shoulders. He was wearing a heavy, white wool sweater, looking a bit like a vacationing Irish fisherman. The sweater seemed odd, as it had to be at least ninety-five degrees outside that day, but I took it as a sign that he might be a little out of touch with his surroundings.
“Yes?” He looked at me as if to say, Who are you? A doughy, young woman in a short, tight plaid skirt with flaming-red hennaed hair handed him my résumé. She backed away from him as if she were a servant and he were the king of Siam.
“Hello, Mr. Serban. My name is Wendy Lawless.”
He gave my résumé, which was pretty flimsy, a once-over. Then he looked up at me. “Begin.”
I read with the red-haired girl—a scene between Cherubino and the Countess, with whom he is in love. My scene partner read in a flat voice, which is always difficult for an actor—you have to work harder when you aren’t getting anything back, you almost have to play both parts, in your head anyway. We finished the scene. He looked back down at my résumé. There was a silence, then he spoke.
“Do you know how to roller-skate?”
Not the question I was expecting. “Um, no, Mr. Serban. I can ice-skate . . . a bit.” I wasn’t going to tell him that I hadn’t ice-skated since I was a ten-year-old taking lessons at Rockefeller Center.
“No problem—we can get you a teacher.” He signaled the redhead, and she dashed off up the stairs and out of the theater.
So I was hired, but only after negotiating for myself with the most terrifying man, the managing director, Don Schoenbaum. Dad had told me stories about actors coming in to discuss their contracts, and some lowly assistant would be feeding him grapes as he lay on a chaise. Dad told me to be tough and hold out for more money.
“And I always ask for my own parking place,” he said proudly.
That seemed a little cocky, but I’d see what I could get. Because they were putting me into the show the day after I got back from the Dear Ruth tour, and I had to learn to roller-skate for the part—Dad thought I was worth a hundred bucks over the offer they’d make.
When Mr. Schoenbaum called me into his office, he was sitting behind a massive dark-wood desk. I slipped into a small chair across from him that I noticed was quite low to the ground. I had to strain to see him on the other side of the desk, like a little old lady peering over her car dashboard.
“Hello, Miss Lawless—here is the contract we are offering you.” Using his index finger, he slid the contract across the desk. I saw that I was being offered $350 a week, which sounded fantastic. But I felt I had to try to ask for more because Dad had told me to.
“I was hoping for four hundred, Mr. Schoenbaum. I do have to learn to roller-skate, after all, and will have very little time to rehearse before opening.” I attempted to flash a winning smile.
He fixed a withering gaze upon me. “We feel, Miss Lawless, that this is an adequate sum for an actress of your talents.”
I signed the contract immediately.
Negotiations complete, I was sent to my costume fitting. The costume shop had been another haunt of mine as a kid. My sister and I would often while away time here, playing with ribbons, buttons, or the little Clytemnestra and Electra dolls that had been made for the design presentation for Dr. Guthrie’s landmark production of The House of Atreus, and that we got to keep—our very own Greek-tragedy Barbies.
When I walked into the large, well-lit room with padded tables for cutting fabrics, ironing boards, sewing machines, and racks of clothes, it smelled like hot glue and freshly starched and pressed shirts.
“Ah! There you are!” A deep, bellowing voice welcomed me—it was Jack Edwards, the Guthrie’s costume shop director. An enormous man, he was like a huge bear standing on its hind legs. He had a Friar Tuck hairdo and a long white beard and mustache. He was wearing a muslin smock that hung from his huge frame over soft brown leggings and wild, oversized metal jewelry all over his body, looking like a New Age monk. His hands, decorated with many rings, curled up in the air when he saw me. He ushered me into a little changing room, where we were joined by Annette Garceau, a darkly ravishing French costumer with brown ringlets about her creamy-skinned face, her beauty mark fluttering on her cheek as she smiled at me.
“Yoo probablee don’t remembeh mee,” she said in her fabulously accented English. “I haven’t zeen you seence you were leettle. But yoo look dee zame! Just like your fahzer.”
She kissed me on both cheeks.
“Of course I remember you. I’m so happy to be here.”
Annette had been the resident siren of the original 1963 company—all of the men, and some of the women, had lusted after her.
“First, Miss Lawless, we must try this on.” Jack held up a hanger with a funny little flesh-colored vest with a zipper up the middle dangling from it.
I had to wear a chest suppressor under my costumes.
When I joked that I was flat-chested and there was no need, he looked at me solemnly. “There can be no movement beneath the clothes.”
Luckily, popping it on, I found I was exactly the same size as the actress I was replacing, so no adjustments needed to be made.
“Wonderful!” Jack was pleased.
“How eez your mohzer?” Annette inquired as I tried on a champagne-colored satin footman’s coat that was decked out in lace and fake jewels. Standing behind me, she placed a matching tricorne on my head and looked in the mirror in front of us.
“We’re not really in touch at the moment.” That familiar queasy feeling when my mother was mentioned rose up in my gut.
“Ah . . . tragique. I always wondehred what would become of her.”
Annette was referring to the scandal that broke at the theater when my mother and Pop announced at a lavish cocktail party in front of everyone at the Guthrie and half of Minneapolis society that they were in love. This public declaration of their affair was followed by two quickie divorces and our hurried departure from town. It was more than fifteen years ago now but apparently was still local gossip. I briefly imagined Mother in her condo in Connecticut, ears burning, knowing she was being talked about.
So, I did Dear Ruth at night, and during the day I was locked in a dungeon-like room beneath the Guthrie with a short, sixteen-year-old boy clad in black spandex, with feathered dirty-blond hair, named Mike, whom they’d found at the local roller rink. The first thing he taught me was how to fall down. He pushed me so many times onto my butt, I started to look like an abused child. He was a good teacher but somewhat angry and impatient—maybe because he was super short for his age.
“Get up!” he hollered like an angry disco munchkin as I lay splayed on the floor.
Heart of Glass Page 14