Graham and I were happy, at the start. He had a great sense of humor and would play silly practical jokes on me. We’d make pancakes and eat them in bed. He was kind of pent up sexually, and I felt that I could help him be more relaxed and have more fun. He’d grown up in Sonoma, with WASPy, stern parents who didn’t support his decision to be an actor. I felt comfortable with him, maybe because we’d been friends first. I wished sometimes he could be more affectionate, more giving—but I thought that would come in time. I blamed his starchy upbringing for his inability to express his emotions. I also blamed myself for his reticence in showing his feelings for me; maybe it was my fault that he didn’t want to French-kiss or go down on me. It was as if he thought sex was dirty, but maybe he just needed more time to be intimate in that way.
One evening a few weeks into our romance, we were at the Oxford Hotel, a fancy hotel in downtown Denver, having a drink, when he told me I was the only woman he felt he didn’t have to charm the pants off. Was it that he could relax around me and be himself, or was I so easy he didn’t have to work so hard? With his good looks, I couldn’t see how hard it would be to get any woman to fall into bed with him. His smile, the husky magnetism of his delivery, made me feel special—it was a compliment, right? But after a beat and a slug of my bourbon, I wondered what it meant.
• • •
Suddenly at school they dropped a bomb on us. The artistic director, Donovan Marley, called a big meeting with the entire class, Allen Fletcher, all the teachers and the administration and told us that our class would be cut in half at the end of the year, after our final projects—from twenty-four to twelve. Our only previous interaction with Donovan had been when he threatened the kids who were late with their tuition payments. When Anna, who was working nights as a waitress to put herself through the program asked what would happen if they couldn’t come up with the money, he snarled through clenched teeth, “I’m not the kind of person to be handed ultimatums. I’ll close this goddamn school down!”
He was a real charmer.
Donovan claimed that reducing the class was a way to save money; the theater didn’t want to waste time and talent on those who weren’t cut out to be career actors. We were stunned, having been told that we’d be together for the three years. Allen looked as if he were going to throw up, and Ethan stood up and said, “This is fucking bullshit!”—and stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him. People were crying, shaking, and hanging on to one another. Though I didn’t show as much outwardly, I was devastated by this threat to the new home and family I’d found.
After that day—dubbed Black Thursday by all of us, who felt as if our front teeth had been punched out—we all walked around in a daze, feeling doomed and breathing what felt like poisoned air inside the building. Initially, we had bonded and functioned as a group, but now it seemed we were expected to pit ourselves against each other, to compete to be “the best.” I couldn’t help but wonder who was going to get the ax, who I thought deserved it, and who didn’t. Would I be cut? And what would the ratio be? Five women and seven men? Six of each? It changed everything in an instant; I felt the tenuousness of my position in the class and was more determined than ever to shine as best I could. I prayed that I would get a plum role in final projects, where I could strut my stuff and impress the faculty.
The roller-coaster week at the conservatory was punctuated—of course—by a telephone call from my mother to the school. I was pulled out of class and informed that Cindy, a young Mormon woman who answered the school office phone, had spoken to Mother. Poor Cindy was distraught not only by my mother’s tone but from her profuse and creative use of the F-word during their brief conversation. I rushed to the office and practically had to peel Karen, who ran the NTC’s office, off the ceiling.
“Oh my God, your mother screamed at me! And cussed me out when I refused to bring you to the phone.” Karen was quite shaken, as many people were when they were confronted with Mother’s tsunami of venom. It could be overwhelming, especially if it was the first time it had hit you.
“I’m really sorry, Karen. My mother is, um, well, she’s nuts.”
“Jeez, she scared me to death! What a way to behave. Poor woman belongs in a hospital.”
Karen shook her head and hugged herself for comfort. I had no idea how Mother had found me. I had often wondered if someone, perhaps an old friend from Kansas City when my parents were first married, had stayed in touch with both of them after the divorce. Perhaps Mother had put in a phone call to her old friend Sylvia Browne, now a famous psychic. But I would never find out how she did it. Mother herself had always claimed to be telepathic; maybe she was. The poison phone call was just Mother’s way of saying, “I know where you are. You can’t hide from me.”
The final projects were cast later that week, with all of us preoccupied with how our performances would be the deciding factor in who would be asked back. Ned would be directing Chekhov in Yalta, a play about actors from the Moscow Art Theatre visiting Chekhov when he is sick with consumption; Allen had chosen to do Somerset Maugham’s Our Betters—a 1923 satirical comedy of manners set in London about American expats marrying impoverished British nobility to increase their own social stature.
After trying so hard to change my good-girl image at school, I was hoping I’d get a meaty role, preferably not in Ned’s show. So I was disappointed and devastated to be cast as the ingenue, Bessie, in Our Betters. Apparently, I was still considered a lightweight, and the character had a cow’s name. Why had I bloody bothered to try to show my versatility? I thought briefly of going to Allen to beg him to recast me but knew it was too late for that.
One of my first pieces of direction from Allen was to enter the room and bury my face in a bouquet of roses. My character was a total simp; I had to say lines like “I’ve just begun to live!” I looked up ingenue in the dictionary to prepare; it read, “An unsophisticated young woman.” My ambition to be taken seriously was screwed.
Graham was cast as Tony, the cad, a gigolo who chased women and drove fast cars. Plunging into one of his dark moods, he told me he was convinced that all those in Our Betters, or Bed Wetters, as we came to call it, were the people who were most likely to be cut from the class. Feeling despondent over my casting, I went back and forth about giving a shit if I was cut. I’d skipped class, turned in a lackluster performance as Laura, and was now saddled with this boring wallflower part. I figured if they cut me, screw them; I’d just move back to New York and live with Jenny and Pete. Then I would flip-flop back to wanting to be one of the twelve who got to stay, be with Graham, and continue my training.
Graham and I started arguing—maybe the stress of the impending class cut hanging over us made us feel tentative about our relationship. Only a few months of school were left—would we even still be living in the same city six months from now?
His black mood was worsened because he rarely had any extra money, was still dependent on his folks, and his roommate moved out suddenly, leaving him hanging. I tried to help him, but he seemed to resent the meals I cooked him—knowing that it might be the only meal he’d eat that day—as well as the cash I offered to lend him. Instead of being appreciative, he was distant, and I thought just plain mean sometimes. He thought I overreacted to what I perceived as his withholding tendencies and his general thoughtlessness. He would stop himself from saying nice things to me—he rarely told me he loved me or even complimented me. Maybe it was my problem that I liked to be told I looked pretty or to have my boyfriend save me a chair in class. His behavior brought out the needy, insecure side of me. The more he pulled away, the more I wanted him. This feeling of being off my game, uncertain of what would happen from one day to the next, was a mirror of my relationship with my mother. That painful feeling of floating along waiting for the next slight, the next fight, was familiar. I knew how to do it; I was even good at it.
Soon after rehearsals started, I entered the dance stud
io to find Graham with Val, a Malibu Barbie type whom I didn’t know that well, as she’d been in the other group. Luckily for her, she had been cast in the lead of Our Betters as a rapacious, man-eating socialite named Lady Pearl, who was carrying on behind her husband’s back with Graham’s character. Graham and Val were lying on mats next to each other with their faces turned toward each other. She was wearing a short skirt. He hardly noticed when I walked in; they appeared to be sharing some private joke. They were both laughing, she breathily, as I stood there, watching them “running lines.” I turned and walked out.
Later, I made the mistake of telling him I was miffed.
“What the hell are you talking about?” he fumed.
“You were lying on the ground together!” I didn’t point out that nowhere in the script does anyone lie on the floor.
“We were rehearsing, for Christ sakes.”
“Do you enjoy all that giggling and gushing she does? Jesus, it’s embarrassing.”
“We were doing the scene!” He stomped off.
Afterward, I was sorry I’d said anything. We sort of patched it up later; he said he thought I’d overreacted and I said I was entitled to my feelings. I told him he could be cruel at times and he agreed. “I know I gave you a hard time. I’m sorry.”
Part of me couldn’t help but blame his attitude on his good looks—it was as if his whole life he’d been getting away with murder because he was handsome and charismatic, like a modern-day Hubbell Gardiner from The Way We Were. He was fucking Robert Redford, which made me the ugly duckling trying to hang on to him—like Barbra Streisand’s character in the movie. I wasn’t sure I was willing to stick it out as she had.
One evening a few days later, Graham borrowed my car, as his was in the shop. After he’d been gone for two and a half hours, I had this weird, sick feeling and walked straight to the Scotch N’ Sirloin, a local bar where the actors in the company hung out. Maybe I’d inherited some of the clairvoyance my mother claimed, because parked right in front of the bar was my car with Graham and Val inside, in some sort of a clutch. He had his hands on her shoulders, and her face looked all dewy and drunk. I turned and started to walk away, feeling as if I were going to puke, but also gratified that the crazy radar in my head had been right. Graham must have turned to see me. I heard him getting out of the car and heard Val screech as he threw her out of my car onto the sidewalk. He chased after me.
“Wendy, I love you!” he shouted at my back.
Funny time to tell me, I thought. I kept walking
“Wendy, stop! It’s you that I love!”
He caught up with me and grabbed my shoulders to turn me around to face him.
“Is that why you’re in my car with another woman?” I yelled.
He clutched me to his chest. I could hardly breathe.
“I’m in love with you!” his voice boomed through his chest into my ears. I tried to pull away from him, but he was so much stronger than me. I used my fists to punch his back, hitting him as hard as I could.
“I don’t understand,” I screamed. I continued flailing at him and exhausted myself breaking away from him. I ran home through the alley.
Then, as if by magic, Val suddenly vanished. A rumor started circulating that Ethan had been having an affair with her. He slunk conveniently out of town and back to his wife and kids; she just disappeared. I sort of felt sorry for Val; it was hard to imagine what would happen to her now. With her beauty-contestant looks and her slatternly ways, she seemed headed for a career as a game-show hostess or a trophy wife. We never saw her again. As everyone huddled by the soda machine in the hallway and discussed Val’s fate, I was annoyed that Graham seemed to be concerned for her. I returned all his belongings from my apartment by dumping them on his front porch, which felt really good. What an asshole, I thought.
The next day, Allen announced that I would be taking over the role of Lady Pearl. I was terrified—but I also knew I could do it and that it was my chance to show the faculty what I was capable of. Or so I hoped. My classmate Reenie was moved into my old ingenue role, and we started all over again. Lady Pearl was a delicious part; she was a complete reprobate, a conniving snob, and a gold digger. She reminded me of my mother, so it was easy to channel her. I wore vintage dresses to rehearsal and carried an elegant carved silver cigarette holder. The role came naturally, and for the first time since being at NTC, I felt I was filling my space. I was grounded and sure-footed.
Two days later, I walked into the building, pressed the elevator button to go up, and felt something was amiss. In an eerie quiet I walked down the hallway and into the rehearsal room. Ned was there, looking somber. I took a seat and waited in silence for everyone else to arrive. When we’d all sat down, Ned told us that Allen was in the hospital. He had always looked frail, but this was sudden. He had a rare blood disorder, had contracted pneumonia, and had some sort of wound on his ankle that wouldn’t heal. I knew he wouldn’t be coming back. Ned would be taking over the last ten days of rehearsal, in addition to his own project with the other half of the class.
We did the play. In my critique, a teacher (whom I loathed and whose voice class I skipped often because he told us to breathe through our assholes) said my performance was “professional” and he marveled why I had slacked off the year. I had high marks from everyone—many of them surprised I had the role in me. Still, I wasn’t sure that pulling off a strong performance at the last minute would be enough to save my ass. Other people had worked a lot harder than I had.
The next few weeks were ruled by an electric anxiety you could practically taste as we all waited for the big showdown. Who would be chucked out, and who would make up the second-year class? When the day came, we were informed in alphabetical order. Everyone paced in the hall, waiting his or her turn to the guillotine. I went in to Karen’s office to see Bonnie and Michael. They told me I wasn’t being cut, but that I had just squeezed by. I started crying and got up to leave.
“I think that actors are the bravest people in the world,” I sobbed, before joining the group downstairs in the lobby.
The hardest lot was reserved for the people toward the end of the alphabet—when Jen, whose last name began with a W, heard M.E. crying, she knew M.E. had been cut and she was getting the last remaining woman’s slot.
I had made it. It was ugly, and maybe I’d been saved at the last minute by wowing everyone with my portrayal of the reprehensible Lady Pearl, but it felt good. I may not have been sure of who I was yet or where exactly I belonged, but I felt for once I’d played my hand well. I’d wanted a spot and I got it. For once I felt that I had set my own rules. Maybe home wasn’t somewhere you found or were born into but something you made. And I had made this one—at least for now.
chapter nine
SLAVE TO LOVE
That summer, I packed up my apartment and moved into John and Jen’s to house-sit. They would be gone for a large portion of the summer visiting family and taking a trip to Ireland. Oddly, Graham would be traveling with them to Europe in August. He seemed a rather unlikely traveling companion, and I didn’t know how he could afford it, since he was always saying he was broke, but what did I know?
It had taken me about a month to wise up, but I broke up formally with Graham a month after school ended. After catching him with someone else, in my car, it seemed prudent to end it. I didn’t feel that I could trust him. Despite his claim of having not really cheated on me that night, that it was me who he loved, Graham’s attitude had hardened into an aloof and unkind dead calm. I wasn’t his “physical type,” and that’s why it was so difficult for him to be warm toward me. In other words, I wasn’t attractive enough to warrant his romantic attentions. Apparently, it was all my fault. Still, it was painful and made me miserable. After I ended it, he made a big deal about how we should be friends and that he didn’t want me to think badly of him. It was as if all he cared about was that I didn’t tell
people the truth about what a dick he was.
Things were made a million times worse when none of the summer acting jobs I’d tried out for came through, and I was stuck with a gig at the theater selling season subscriptions over the phone, two cubicles away from the big dick. So I had to see him almost every day before he took off to meet up with John and Jen in Europe. I was cordial in the elevator, but I felt that he was always watching me from his cubicle. If Kafka had written a relationship guide, this would have been the breakup chapter.
Summer dragged on, and everybody left town except for me. I holed up at John and Jen’s, listening to Bryan Ferry’s new LP on cassette, Boys and Girls, playing “Slave to Love” over and over. And singing along to the lyrics: “Now spring is turning your face to mine, I can hear your laughter, I can see your smile.”
Feeling wretched and alone, I chain-smoked, killed John and Jen’s fish, and drank all of their booze. I invented the scotch-and-M&M’s diet and lost so much weight my hip bones stuck out and my arms looked like string beans. I found a copy of Inside Daisy Clover and read it over and over, identifying with the main character, a trailer-trash urchin with a crazy mom who becomes a movie star, but all she really wants is love. She makes the mistake of falling in love with a devilishly handsome matinee idol, but it turns out he’s gay. I could relate to a lot in the story.
I took tryptophan to try to sleep at night, but usually couldn’t and ended up watching old movies on TV or VCR tapes of screwball comedies starring Carole Lombard, James Stewart, Myrna Loy, and William Powell that I found in a bookcase. Why can’t life be like the movies? I wondered, sitting in my borrowed, darkened living room.
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