A Tender Thing

by Emily Neuberger

  “You’re onstage, miss!”

  She leapt up, not even seeing who it was who’d come for her, and ran down the stairs. She heard Charles onstage. It was the scene where Luke came to find Molly in the night. Charles stood center calling, “Molly? Molly?”

  It would have been funny if she weren’t so mortified.

  With her missed entrance still on her mind, and in the quest to be perfect, she crashed through the show leaving errors in her wake; she even forgot to bring a letter onstage that Molly’s father would need to find, so he could discover the illicit relationship between Molly and Luke. Backstage, she got a scolding from Otis. He had his hands on his hips and glared at her through heavy-rimmed glasses.

  “I was right there,” he said. “Handing it to you.”

  “I didn’t see.”

  “I can’t do my job if you don’t pay attention,” he said. “Actors!”

  After the dress rehearsal, she packed up her bag and decided she would not obsess over her script all night. A bath, then sleep, and in the morning she would look at the show fresh for the first performance. On her way out, she passed Penelope, who played Luke’s sister, and Charles on the stairs, heads bent together, Penelope fingering the edge of her scarf.

  “See you tomorrow,” Eleanor said. “First performance.”

  Charles touched her elbow. “Not that way, Ellie.”

  “There’s a better view from my dressing room,” Penelope said. “C’mon.”

  Eleanor glanced at Charles, but he had already moved past. She followed Penelope into the dressing room she shared with Norma, the woman who played Luke’s mother. A group of ensemble girls were clustered around the window, still in their slips and false eyelashes.

  “Holy cow,” Penelope said. She took Eleanor’s arm and brought her to the window.

  A crowd had gathered beneath the theater. It had swelled since the morning. Two dozen or so marched, while dozens more looked on with flashlights and signs. From three stories up, Eleanor heard the rumble but couldn’t discern words. A man’s red hair was caught in the blaze of the marquee, his arm in the air, his face twisted with shouts.

  “It’s that Herald reporter,” Eleanor said. “Connor Morris.”

  Charles looked over the top of her head. “He seems insane.”

  Penelope made the sign of the cross.

  “We should all go out together,” Eleanor said.

  “No,” Penelope said, her hand covering her mouth. “No, we have to go another way.”

  “Surely with a group this large, they wouldn’t bother us,” Eleanor said.

  Charles met her eyes, shook his head. “I’ll go down and talk to security. We’ll figure out a way. Everyone stick together. Don’t let anybody leave.”

  Penelope went to gather the rest of the ensemble. Eleanor waited on the stairs, stopping people before they went outside.

  “I’ve walked through this group before,” Eleanor told Freddie, the dance captain, when he came, annoyed, out of the male ensemble room. “They’re awful, but surely they won’t attack us?”

  Freddie shrugged. “I just want to get some sleep.”

  Charles returned with three of the theater’s security guards. “They’re calling us taxis,” he said. “Let’s get in groups of four.”

  Eleanor followed his lead. She was grouped with him, Penelope, and Norma, whom she had never actually spoken to. The group waited with nervous energy.

  “We’ll go last,” Charles told her. When the first group opened the stage door, Eleanor heard screams and shivered all the way down. Her stomach went sick. A man’s yell ripped through the crowd before the door shut.

  Eleanor looked at Charles again. “You seem to know what to do.”

  “I have no clue,” he said. “But part of being a principal means leading offstage as well.”

  Eleanor looked at her shoes. She heard no judgment in Charles’s tone, but she was a lead too and had no idea how to help. But Charles didn’t even seem to register her inaction, let alone her embarrassment; he was counting the cast members and, in a low, even voice, giving out instructions that he must have been making up on the spot. Eleanor was too frightened to do anything but appreciate his cool head. When it was their turn, Norma and Eleanor linked arms. The guards returned and ushered them through the door. Like before, the crowd closed around them. Eleanor kept her grip on the back of the guard’s coat, her eyes shut tight, hearing the yells and profane words around her. She felt Charles’s hand on her back. The chants swelled when some recognized her. The guards on either side of her had to push protestors away, but one of them reached through, gripping at her sleeve. Eleanor cried out when she finally touched the cool metal of the car door.

  “Everybody all right?” Charles asked from the passenger seat.

  Penelope slammed her door shut, turned her back to the crowds. Two men approached and slapped their hands on the car, their breath leaving damp clouds on the windows. The driver had to go slow to avoid hitting the people who jumped in front, fists punching the hood. Eleanor ducked her head against the back of the driver’s seat, pushing the heels of her hands into her eyes.

  “Anybody hurt?” Charles asked once they were free of the crush.

  “Only my coat,” Penelope said, showing the torn seam connecting her sleeve to the shell.

  Eleanor couldn’t answer. Her hands were trembling. Charles looked across the car at her, reached his hand back, and gave her a shake. His palm was cold. He looked ahead and watched the traffic go by, his eyes wide and unblinking, his chest rising and falling with each breath. She realized she hadn’t been truly afraid until she saw Charles’s fear.

  * * *

  That night, Don came to her room to give notes. While normally she might have tried to engage him in conversation, she was so exhausted from the day that she longed for him to finish so she could sleep in preparation for her first performance the following day. It would be the first time she performed in a show in front of an audience; she could scarcely eat. With all of her mistakes on her mind, and her body still reeling from the intensity of the protests, she felt near tears. She took the edited lyrics from him and promised she’d have them memorized by morning, then asked him to leave. The truth was, his presence still distracted her so much she could hardly stand his watching her in rehearsals. This was unavoidable, of course, but she needed to keep her mind on the show. For the first time since they’d met, Don was coming second.

  Eleanor woke at four in the morning, heart pounding. Her stomach was so upset that she ran to the bathroom and vomited. Then she pressed her cheek to the cool tile floor. No fever; this was pure nerves.

  By eight, she hadn’t gotten more sleep. They had a short rehearsal from ten to one, to clean up some things before the show that evening. Eleanor struggled into her clothes, her mind racing over Harry’s notes, new lines, the entrance she’d missed the day before.

  When she arrived at the theater, the crowd of protestors was still outside. Right away she spotted Connor Morris. Doubling back, she went around the block so she could enter through the box office.

  No costumes that morning; she sat in the theater and exchanged greetings with cast members.

  “You look rough,” Charles said.

  “Nervous stomach.”

  He clicked his tongue. “You’ll forget your nerves once the curtain rises.”

  “Yesterday, Charles. What if something happens next time?”

  “We can’t think of that,” he said. “Just do the show.”

  “I was terrible in rehearsal.” Her eyes burned. “You’re going to be great. I’m just some girl from Wisconsin. If I mess this up, that’s it. I’ll be on the train back in a week.”

  He smiled. “Surely by now you can afford a plane ticket.”

  “Stop it.”

  “You won’t ruin this,” he said. “You’ve got the head of
a bull. It’s just you and me up there.” He nodded at the stage. “We’ll take care of each other.”

  Charles’s words helped. She managed to get through the rehearsal and adapt to the little changes without becoming distracted. At one, she left and went back to the hotel. Her anxiety retreated enough for a nap, and she fell onto the bed without removing her shoes.

  * * *

  Eleanor woke to a knock on her door. She was surprised to see Don through the peephole with a bouquet of yellow roses. “I thought you might need bolstering.”

  She took the flowers and pressed them to her chest, her stomach swooping. “Stay a minute?”

  Don had brought a vase; he walked to the bathroom and filled it with water. “I’m nervous too.”

  “You?”

  “Every time is brand-new.”

  “You have nothing to worry about. The show is extraordinary.”

  His smile left his face. “Something’s wrong with it.”

  “I’m sure you always say that.”

  “Yes. But this one nags at me. Something about it isn’t truthful. But I can’t see what’s the matter. I’m too close to it.” He kept his gaze on the ceiling.

  Eleanor picked at a loose thread on the counterpane. “Don? Why did you write this show?”

  He turned to her. “I told you the other day.”

  “But all your musicals are about the same thing. People wanting love and not finding it. Missed connection. But this is about people who find each other and don’t let go. Why?”

  He exhaled. “Eleanor, I’m not sure myself.”

  “That can’t be true.” Had Don ever been in love? It was difficult to imagine him as anything but a complete unit. She tried and failed to picture him as half a couple. She thought of his holding a woman’s purse while she shopped and nearly laughed.

  “I suppose I wanted to know what it felt like.”

  He hesitated. She hoped he would continue but feared if she prompted him he would close up.

  “I knew if I wrote love, I would be able to feel it, if only for a moment.”

  What he was suggesting was too much; if it was true he’d never felt love before, then the cavern between them, already so foreboding, would become nonnegotiable. “Why, it’s not the same, but you love your parents.”

  He laughed. “My mother is a bitch.”

  Eleanor was shocked at his language but fought to control her expression. She wanted him to confide in her.

  “The woman never cared for anyone but herself a damned day in her life. My father spent every night in a bar, until he lost his job and skipped town. You’re not going to find a happy story with me, Eleanor. I’m not young anymore, the wounds don’t bleed. But I was a lonely child. That’s why the shows exist. They were born from the cavity inside of me.”

  The words were melodramatic, but his voice was so low, it chilled her to the very bone.

  “I just wanted to feel it for a few moments,” he said. “And you know, when I was writing . . . I did. In little flickers, I felt it, as the notes passed through my fingers.”

  He held her gaze for a long moment, then exhaled.

  “I’ll fix it.” He looked at her. “I’ll fix the show. I promise. I’m going to give you a hit.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  The moments before the first performance felt heightened. Everything from her vocal warm-up to applying her lipstick felt momentous, like she was about to walk to her demise. But inside, she was still. Her body thrummed with energy, not fear. The minutes passed, each one taking her closer to curtain, but she moved steadily. Voice warmed to her satisfaction, she stretched, then put on her costume. She checked the wig and reapplied her blush. Her stomach, normally so nervous that she could not eat, was quiet. It was as if her body knew how much depended on it and had fallen in line. When the orchestra began to tune, Eleanor felt her body quiet as if in prayer. That one note, an A, could settle her like nothing else. She had never imagined she’d hear it from the wings. The audience recognized it too and quieted. The hairs on her arms rose up.

  Duncan, costumed in his suit and tie and looking every bit the middle-class businessman father he was playing, rather than the boisterous, caustic actor he was, came by and kissed her and Lucille on the cheeks before finding his place. Freddie, who led the dancers onstage during the first beat, took Eleanor by the hands. As the overture turned to a bright arrangement of “With You,” he danced with her, nearly knocking Franny off her feet. Neither could laugh in case a microphone picked it up. Eleanor’s cheeks burned with the exertion of keeping it in. Then, just in time for his entrance, Freddie released her and bounded onto the stage like an adolescent lion.

  Ever since Pat had played her that first Gershwin record, she’d wanted this. And as much bravado as she might have put on, she’d barely allowed herself to imagine it. But thanks to Pat, and that advertisement, here she was. She saw the black void of the audience, the glow on the stage. Now that it was happening, she took a moment, determined to remember it.

  Charles had been right. A Tender Thing was in her body and bones. As dizzying as the rehearsals had been, they had cemented the show into her. All her mistakes were out of her system. It wasn’t only the lines that were familiar. Her first dress rehearsal, she’d elbowed Franny during a quick change and drunk too much water, and ended up fighting her bladder for most of act two. Now she knew to stay still during her changes and to time her hydration so she wouldn’t need the ladies’.

  She entered as Molly, lost in the wrong neighborhood. Unwelcome on the South Side, she felt her otherness and grew afraid, until a young man came up and offered to escort her home. It wouldn’t be smart; he would be in more danger in her neighborhood. But he insisted.

  She even felt butterflies when Molly pulled Luke around the side of a building and kissed him, meaning for it to be sweet but finding more than either expected. He stopped, afraid for them both, but when she kissed him again he couldn’t refuse her. When he walked her home, she sang “With You” with all the wonder she felt in her heart; both Molly and Eleanor were astonished by their circumstances and frightened that their new sources of joy would end and leave them destroyed.

  The torrent of their love carried them through the show. She was glad, immensely glad, for Charles. His kindness and generosity throughout the process paid off onstage; she trusted him completely. In the act one finale, when Luke climbed through her bedroom window, she felt true joy in her heart when she turned and saw him there.

  When they sang “Morning ’Til Night,” they grasped hands and sang better than ever before. It raised her pulse, even aroused her. When she looked at Charles, his face, which had grown so dear, moved her. She felt so attuned to Molly that it was easy to substitute her feelings, until Eleanor clung to Charles—Luke—with real desire. The music was alive in her like a flame, burning her until she released it. They professed their love, and as Molly, Eleanor felt it. She kissed his palm. She felt swollen with love, desire.

  “I pray all day / That I can be with you again / From night ’til morning / Morning ’til night.”

  He pulled her into him, and she began to sob. It was then that she knew she had never felt this in real life. It was as Don had said—she felt flickers of true love as the material passed through her.

  She promised to meet him the following night, and he kissed each one of her fingers, then pulled her into his arms. It was a charged moment. Molly and Luke planned to leave each other, but—Harry had directed this carefully—at the last moment, couldn’t bear to part. Luke looked at Molly, slow, afraid to even speak the words. Then Molly tugged him down by the shirt collar and kissed him. He pulled away, looked at her again.

  She pulled him to the floor. The lights faded to black. Intermission.

  When the curtain fell, Eleanor sat up and exhaled.

  “Nice job,” she mouthed, afraid to speak in case the mics were hot
. But Charles had a strange look on his face. “What’s the matter?”

  “It’s quiet.” His mouth was tight. “No applause.”

  Eleanor hadn’t noticed because she was so accustomed to not hearing applause in rehearsals. But Charles was right. It was silent.

  “Perhaps they’re thinking.”

  After a few moments, a smattering broke the silence.

  Charles helped her to her feet. Harry was already waiting backstage.

  “What’s going on?” Charles asked.

  “In case you hadn’t noticed, people usually clap after the curtain goes down.” Harry paced. “Damn idiots. They hated it. Damn cold-blooded Bostonians.”

  “So they just . . . walked out?” Eleanor asked. “Will they come back?”

  “We’ll find out in about twelve and a half minutes,” Harry said.

  Don appeared behind his shoulder. “We knew they wouldn’t like what they saw. They just liked it even less than we thought.”

  “I thought we could convince them,” Harry said.

  “I don’t think one hour is enough to convince a man of something he doesn’t want to see,” Charles said.

  Don shook his head. “I need to write better work, then.”

  Eleanor had assumed people might object to the subject matter, but surely they would come around when they saw the show. Apparently not.

  “I’m just saying they’re white folks,” Charles said, “and they don’t want to see a guy like me touching her.”

  Harry took Charles and Eleanor by the shoulders. “By the end of this run, I want the audience in tears. I don’t want them comfortable with the idea of you two . . .” He waved a hand suggesting amorous activities. “I want them desperate for you two to be together. I want them praying that you run away and have a happy ending, caramel babies and all.”

  “Do you think a musical can undo everything this country was built on?” Charles asked.