by Mark Helprin
Evelyn had no problems with memory, and her friends were mostly alive and would live forever, as dowagers tend to do. But she grew increasingly delicate. Handsome, commanding, and still beautiful, she seemed at times as fragile as a chrysalis. She now walked in smaller steps, and instead of rushing down the stairs, like Catherine incapable of losing her balance, she held the banister every time and moved deliberately. And although she kept up to some degree with fashion as the garnishing ornament of her timeless dress, it was more and more the fashion of the previous decades, as with every advancing year she earned the privilege of paying no attention to the present.
Catherine now felt this in herself. That is, being content as the world passed by, without the urge to join in. The house was empty when she left, and it would eventually pass to others as generations stood and fell. Until this very day she had not known how wonderful, steady, and implacable the rhythm of this was, how comforting, how it made sense of everything, and how it quieted one’s fears.
Though she knew her appointment was with Mike Beck himself, she was somewhat taken aback to be ushered into his office. She was used to the eminent and the powerful at her parents’ dinner table, yet she was still nervous, for whatever was intended and however it had come about, here she would be judged solely on her own merits.
Everyone knew that Mike Beck was blind, but it was strange to see a man with hardly any hair, dark glasses, and a cane, his head cocked as if he were staring at the joint between the ceiling and the wall. It had something to do with hearing, or another sense not known. “Come in,” he said. “You know, I’m blind, so don’t hesitate to speak. I can’t see your reactions but I can hear them, and I’m neither deaf nor a foreigner, so you don’t have to shout or carefully enunciate.”
“People often do,” his secretary, a man, told Catherine.
“And you are?” Mike Beck asked. “I can’t see you.”
“Catherine.” That she said only her first name was lovely. If she hadn’t had him already, she had him right there. He smiled when he heard the quality of her voice.
“Shall we call you Miss Sedley or Miss Hale?”
“My stage name is Sedley, my maiden name is Hale, and my married name is Copeland,” she said. “Frankly, I don’t know who the hell I am. Just call me Catherine.”
“And on the billing? You’re not a porpoise or circus bear.”
“Am I hired?”
“Not yet. But if you are . . . ?”
She thought, and, under her breath, tried out her names. “Catherine Sedley, Catherine Thomas Hale, Catherine Copeland.” She decided. “I like Catherine Copeland, and I think people would remember it.”
“It’s a beautiful name,” Beck said. “They’re all beautiful names.”
“Is there a part available?” Catherine asked.
“There is a part,” Beck told her, “in a new musical.” When he named the composer and the lyricist their magic enveloped the room. They had never failed. Even their least was better than others’ best, although the critics compared them only to themselves, which was fair but misleading. “We hope it will be the kind of show that can run for ten years, clean up on the road, and then go into revival and high school productions forever. What you’re in now is terrific, but not like this. The theater will be twice as big—we own it, and we’ve booked it—and the ticket prices much higher. If we hit, it’ll sell a million phonograph records and there’ll be a movie. Of course, it could close on the first night. It’s that danger that makes this business what it is. You have the part if you want it.”
“Without audition?”
“We’ve heard you sing.”
“You have?”
“Of course. We go to all the plays. Among other things, it’s deductible. Why pay for an empty audition hall when you can audition people in full costume and makeup, with an orchestra, lights, sets, and a packed theater?”
“I have the part?” she asked, somewhat amazed, unconcerned about money, because she had never been concerned about money.
“We very much want you to take it. Who’s your agent? We couldn’t find out.”
“I don’t have an agent.”
“You should get one, after you appear for us.”
“I can’t accept,” she said. “There’s something I have to tell you. It’s very private. I haven’t even had a chance to tell my husband, because I won’t see him until tomorrow.”
“What?” Beck asked. “You don’t have to tell me.”
“I’m pregnant.” She was quite rattled. Too many things were coming at once. “I never thought of a Jewish name,” she said, to no one in particular, as if she were talking to the air. And then, apologetically to Mike Beck, “My husband is Jewish.” She dipped her head and brought it up again, as if breaking the surface. “I’m Jewish, too,” she said as if she had just found out. She looked amazed.
“Since when is Catherine Thomas Hale Jewish?” Beck asked.
“Since I was born, but I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t know?”
“I didn’t.”
“Well, you got me,” said Mike Beck. “Name the baby anything you want. My name used to be Meyer Beckerman, and now I’m Mike Beck. I could have been George Washington if the judge had been a little more flexible.”
“I can’t take the part,” Catherine explained, “unless it’s a sort of constantly changing part in which the character gets pregnant and then has her baby and then isn’t pregnant anymore. That’s probably not what it is, is it, and I doubt that you can write it in.”
“It’s really not a problem.”
She found that hard to believe.
“It isn’t. I’ll tell you why. We have a spectacular cast. It could be a runaway. But they’re all such big stars that they’re committed, just as you are.”
“I have no contract,” she interrupted.
“They do. The earliest we can begin rehearsals is at the end of next year, when, unless you’re an elephant, your baby will already be crawling. And as far as being with a new baby, Wednesdays and Saturdays would be difficult but every other day of the week you can be with him all day long until eight.”
“I see.”
“I’m sorry,” Beck said. “Would you like something to drink? Tea? Coffee?”
“No, thank you. I don’t have to try out?”
“I’ve heard you sing.” He shook his head, smiling. “You don’t have to try out. We don’t manufacture drugs or bomb sights. It’s all in the heart, and we know what we have to know in about two seconds.”
“So it’s a singing part? I have a song?”
“Miss Hale,” Mike Beck said. “Mrs. Copeland. Miss Sedley, whoever you are or want to be, I’ve been told that you are very beautiful, that although you don’t have the wide planes of face that make stars of some, men find it difficult to take their eyes off you. That’s good.”
“If you believe it,” she said. He couldn’t see that she blushed.
“I believe it. I have it on good authority.” Now his secretary blushed, but Catherine wasn’t looking at him. “I do. But here I must confess that I myself went to hear you sing—seven times. The first time, I didn’t know who you were or anything about your part. Then I heard you, and I returned again, and again.”
“But the reviews. . . .”
“Victor Marrow screwed you.”
“I know,” Catherine said. The double meaning echoed within her. And then she realized, and she said, “How do you know?”
“You may not know in full detail,” the secretary said, adding to her amazement.
“You do?” she asked.
“Yes, we do,” Mike Beck said.
“How is that?” It hardly seemed possible.
“Since it concerns you, I’ll tell you. But since it concerns us, I have to ask you not to mention it to anyone—anyone—until it all comes out, as it will.”
Mentally excepting Harry from the prohibition, Catherine shifted in her chair, leaned forward a little, and smiled in a
way that said, “I’m fascinated. What could this be? But I’m slightly wary.” This expression was conveyed in her eyes. Harry loved it so much that he would think of it when he was riding in the subway or sitting at his desk, and in recalling it he would feel much the same as when, wounded, he felt the first strong shot of morphine. “Tell me,” she said, only because Mike Beck could not see what Harry so loved. But the same quality was in her voice, and this he perceived exactly.
Mike Beck said, “Start with a professor at Wharton. He’s a Saltonstall. You know the Saltonstalls?”
“Some of them,” she replied.
“I don’t mean personally. You know them personally?”
“A few.”
“Do you know him?”
“A professor at Wharton? No.”
“Anyway, a New York paper, which I know you know, as do we all, hired this guy to write a major piece to explain the Bretton Woods agreements to the general public. During the war, no one was interested. But now that whatever they decided there is beginning to shape the economies of the world, people are, but no one can understand it, and no one ever will, really.”
“Except economists,” Catherine interrupted.
“No. Economists are paid to pretend they understand such things so that people will think the world isn’t riding a wild horse, when in fact it is. And, okay, maybe a few actually do understand it, but I don’t.”
“I was joking, Mr. Beck. I grew up with economists.”
“Oh. Anyway, this guy was supposed to be one of the ones who really did understand. He wrote his article and sent it in. They could make neither hide nor hair of it, so they brought him up here and put him in a hotel, with instructions to rewrite it so it would be clearer.
“He struggled to do so all night, walked into their offices in the morning, and gave them a revised piece, words counted to the exact length. ‘What the hell is this?’ says the editor. ‘Did you write this with a quill?’ The guy had eighteenth-century handwriting. ‘You gotta type it,’ the editor tells him.
“He’s a Saltonstall, he doesn’t type, but he’s got honor, so he assents without protest, swallowing the indignity. What do they do? They take him to the Week in Review section, which works on a different schedule because it comes out on Sunday, and on the day he was there it was completely deserted. They set him up with a typewriter, at which he pecks away. But he gets tired after a few hours and falls asleep in his chair. No lights. Dusk. He’s resting against a glass partition, like a passenger on a train.
“He awakens to a telephone conversation taking place on the other side of the partition, and although he can hear only one party, what’s going on is quite obvious even to an economics professor. The guy on the other side, who thinks the whole place is empty, is whispering nonetheless, low. But it goes right through the wall. The desk lamp on the other side is burning, and the Wharton professor sees the silhouette moving in the wavy glass.
“It’s the theater critic, taking instructions. Protesting that he can’t do exactly what they tell him, but agreeing to come close, and asking for more money. There are organizations that are our competitors. On the other end of the line was one of them.
“The next day, literally, the professor reads this guy’s review of our just-opened show and recognizes the phrases he heard the evening before. We were panned. It cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars, and for the playwright and actors it was heartbreak and misery. He understood this, so he came to us.”
Catherine was speechless at the unbidden workings of justice.
“We knew this guy had been biased against us: Malan—oops, I shouldn’t have said it.”
It was as if lightning had struck Catherine. His was the most influential review of her show, in which all had been praised but her.
“Keep it under your hat. It’ll come out.
“We didn’t know what to do,” he continued. “It was the professor’s word against Malan’s, and although in Boston Malan wouldn’t have stood a chance, this is New York, where most of the eight million people would think a Saltonstall is a place where you keep a horse, or some sort of machine used in the manufacture of pretzels. We really didn’t know how to approach this.
“My wife solved the problem. She said, It’s simple, bring in Malan’s wife. We did. It turns out she’s what we call, forgive me, a society dame.”
“I know,” said Catherine. “That’s what I’m supposed to be when I grow up.”
“I guess so, but it’s up to you.”
“It is. And I see that woman sometimes at the Colony Club. I mean, I pass her. I’ve never met her. My mother probably has.”
“It turns out that her family thinks of Malan the way you might think of a particle of food that gets stuck between your teeth. He was taking money because he wanted to impress them. Of course, he couldn’t do that, no matter what. They think show business is for the Irish and Jews, who, they think, are lower than apes. She doesn’t think that, but they do. He’s Irish for Chrissake, Catholic. He’s drinking as well. Their marriage is almost finished, but she loves him, so when we told her she said, really and truly, ‘You wait here, and I’ll be back in ten minutes.’ She meant business, this dame. As she saw it, she was saving the honor of her family, her children, her name, herself.
“Carmichael . . . ,” Mike Beck went on.
“I’m Carmichael,” the secretary said, giving a little bow to Catherine, at whom he had been trying not to stare.
“. . . was perspicacious enough to get our lawyers here, because he guessed what was coming. The paper’s around the corner, but she had to fish him out from Sardi’s, where he had evidently had double his normal overage of alcohol. That was lucky for us. He was teary and afraid, and by the time he was ready to give the full account, we had lawyers, a stenographer, and witnesses in the conference room.
“He kept saying, ‘It’s like an execution! My career! My career!’ And every time he would say that, his wife would say, ‘Shut up, Irish shitbird! This is America and this is New York. Nothing can ruin a career, because no one cares about anything that anyone else does, and no one remembers anything, and no one has standards anymore.’ And he would say, ‘But Nancy . . . ,’ and she would say, ‘You just tell the truth, you stupid bastard, and the truth will set you free—or I will.’
“It was dramatic. He’s Catholic, so he confessed like a pro. Trained to do it. The drinking, the womanizing, everything. Including that he took five hundred dollars from Victor Marrow after Victor Marrow tried and failed to persuade his editor to get him to pan you. In fact, he wanted a thousand to pan you—a man of principles—but Victor settled for five hundred if he would just leave you out.
“When Victor and he met for payment, overlooking the ice-skating rink at Rockefeller Center, Victor told him that he liked the idea of just ignoring you, and had adapted it for the other critics and editors, though Malan was the first one he went to. Neat, huh? And we’ve got it all down. With witnesses. Notarized.”
“But it’s his word against Victor’s,” Catherine said.
“Nope. Like the royalty he is, Victor doesn’t carry cash.” Catherine smiled. She knew this, and foresaw what was coming. “He wrote Malan a check. He actually noted on it what it was for, which numbs me, I’ll tell you. Malan, being a drunk, neglected to cash it. We’ve got the check. What a scandal,” Mike Beck said, leaning back in his chair. “We’re going to make it the publicity narrative of the opening. It will set the newspapers back on their ass. The only way you can push those behemoths, to the extent you can, is not to sue them but to embarrass them. It will shame Victor Marrow and damage Willie Marrow’s company and standing with the press. And it will redeem you, Miss, because you deserve it, and it’s the kind of story the public loves. They’ll come to hear you because you’ve been wronged, and then, when they do hear you, they’ll keep coming for the rest of your life.”
“So I do have a song,” she said.
Mike Beck and his secretary, Carmichael, were moved by the mo
desty of her expectations. As gently as if he were telling her that someone she thought had died was in fact alive in the next room, Mike Beck said, “Miss Hale, Mrs. Copeland, I’ve never heard a better singer, and indeed you have a song. You have more than one song. Catherine, I apologize. I haven’t been clear. I’m offering you the lead.”
Shaken, she could hardly believe she had heard correctly. “How could that be? You said there were big stars.”
“Yes,” he said. “The royalty of Broadway.” He named them. “Big egos. Big salaries. They’ll draw everyone in during the advance ticket sales, and the critics will come to see them, although they’ll wonder why you have top billing. Then, after the opening, they’ll know.
“We’re not going to pay you what we’re going to have to pay you next time. We’ve got one free ride. Then you’ll break us.”
“I don’t care about money.”
“I know. And I know another thing. I’ve been listening to singers since—if you can believe it—the eighteen seventies. I was a kid, but my mother was a costumer, and by the time I was ten I was an old hand in the theater. I’ve heard Caruso, Nellie Melba, Jenny Lind. Very few people alive today have heard Jenny Lind. Now, don’t let this go to your head. I don’t think anyone will ever equal her—except maybe you. You don’t have her range, you never will, but your voice is as beautiful. It isn’t mature yet, but when that happens I think you’ll probably leave the musical theater and go to opera.
“It’s not just that you don’t have to do any acting, because nobody believes the acting in opera anyway, but that as powerful as a musical can be, there’s something much higher, almost ravishing, about the great operas. In my case I went blind before I could really see it, but in general you learn it when your heart is broken. You should stay in the theater, Catherine, as long as you can. It’s your youth. Only later, as you grow older in the world, will you see light in darkness, and that’s the most beautiful thing, the saddest thing.”
