It's Superman! A Novel

by Tom De Haven

Of course.

  Going directly to the other, smaller apartment he maintained under a different name at the Waldorf-Astoria (next door to Cole Porter’s), Lex changed his clothes, changed his appearance (sweeping maestro wig, Vandyke beard, pin-striped suit), then left the hotel and walked calmly over to Grand Central Terminal, where he took a sleeper on the New Haven & Hartford line.

  From Connecticut, Lex takes another train, to Ohio. After withdrawing a briefcase full of cash and negotiable bonds from a long-term locker in Toledo, he pays a visit to a general science teacher at a small land-grant college in nearby Bowling Green. Great mind. Deplorable social habits.

  By the following day Lex has persuaded the man to begin work developing a virtually indestructible fabric as well as an evaporation ray and a precipitation ray. One that might dry up the ocean, one that might drown the whole world.

  Then Lex takes a hotel suite and sends out for the latest prospectus from the Radio Corporation of America and everything available concerning the creation of fully electronic television, which everyone knows is the Next Essential Thing.

  He likes having options. As usual, he plans for both the long range and the short view, and in every plan that he makes he includes Superman.

  Always.

  He hasn’t felt this alive, this engaged, since he shot those three gunmen in his mother’s cemetery.

  Life is good.

  PART FIVE

  FIRST-NIGHTERS

  XXVII

  The cast takes a bow. Clark is (again) plagued by doubt.

  Return to Smallville. Nicely-Nicely.

  The conclusion is reached.

  ●

  1

  Our version of the story draws toward its conclusion a few minutes before eleven o’clock on Friday, the fourth of February 1938, with the sniffling and sobbing of a first-night audience at the Henry Miller’s Theatre in New York City. The show just finished being performed is another of those sceneryless dramas currently in vogue, this one called Our Town. It was written by Thornton Wilder, who is not in attendance. When the cast reassembles on the forestage to take their bows, the applause is scattered—enthusiastic, even boisterous, but definitely scattered, because so many hands are reaching for hankies or otherwise being employed: knuckling up tears, rubbing red eyes, et cetera.

  Frank Carew, the veteran stage actor who has been dispensing an equal mixture of cracker-barrel and mystical philosophy all evening in his role of the Stage Manager, is clearly taken by surprise. Until this minute and despite some well-received tryout performances last month in New Jersey, he had serious doubts about the play, especially that last act in the cemetery. Too gloomy? Too bathetic? Too long? He catches the attention of pretty Martha Scott, who plays poor doomed Emily, then reaches for her hand. She takes his and they bow together. The applause grows louder.

  Martha notices a large man down in the fourth row, center orchestra, so inconsolably distraught that she wishes he’d stop burying his face in his hands and look up. Look here! she wants to call out, just look. I’m not really dead.

  The weeping man (whom Martha Scott fails to recognize because she has yet to work in Hollywood) is Samuel Goldwyn, the powerful movie mogul. In the seat beside his, Beatrice Lillie blows her nose again, exasperated by the fresh tears that well up and spill over.

  Several rows back sits Eddie Cantor. His bottom lip quivers but he couldn’t be more welcoming of the bittersweet nostalgia that’s filled him up. Recently he’s lived with seething rage, brooding anxiety, out-and-out fear. The American Nazi Party has been threatening the sponsors of his Monday-night radio program with a boycott of their products by ten million Germans living in the United States. Kike off the air! Kike off the air! And last week Cantor received the same swastika-embellished note every day in the mail: “Get out of Los Angeles, Jew, before you are carried out in a pine box.” When he flew to New York, he told his friends, he told his wife, he told himself that he had pressing business matters there. Now he would like to fly to New Hampshire. He wants to live in Grovers Corner, the town in the play. But who is he kidding? The place doesn’t exist. Say it did, though, just say that. Would they embrace a Jew there, even one who can sing and crack good jokes?

  Eddie Cantor’s is only one name in a lengthy list of famous names that Skinny Simon has jotted on her program. Throughout the evening, from her excellent seat in the loge, she has been craning her head, seeing how many celebrities she could spot. Walter Huston, Walter Winchell, Frederic March. Eddie Picaro the golfer. Fiorello La Guardia (recently reelected mayor) and his chubby wife. Two-Ton Tony Galento, the heavyweight boxer who trains on beer and hot dogs. Frank (“Bring ’Em Back Alive”) Buck. Claudette Colbert. The list goes on. Oh! She’s just spotted another one. Constance Bennett.

  Unlike most others in the theater, Skinny is unmoved by this evening’s performance. But that’s only because she has seen it so often. She attended as many rehearsals as she could manage, even though Ben Jaeger’s part ultimately became a nonspeaking one (celebrant at the wedding, cemetery resident on a camp chair).

  Jed Harris, the show’s director, met Ben a week before Thanksgiving in a solarium at Bellevue. Harris was there for nervous exhaustion, Ben was nearly recovered from his gunshot wounds and multiple surgeries. Thinking Ben perfect for the role of George Gibbs (boyish looks, quick smile), Harris insisted he audition once he was released from the hospital. Despite no acting experience he did well enough to be called back twice, although the role finally was given to John Craven. Ben was disappointed of course, but grateful to Harris for the consolation job. He now thinks he might pursue acting as his livelihood.

  Skinny isn’t sure that she likes that idea. Although smitten by celebrities, understandably she is still wary of the “show business life” after what happened with her first husband. But if it makes Ben happy …

  And she has to admit, he does seem happy tonight. Just look at the big goofus waving from the stage. What’s he think, he’s the star of the show? Men.

  No, Ben Jaeger doesn’t think he’s the star; he knows he is only a wedding guest and a dead guy, but gosh! Things look so different from up here on stage. All those bawling playgoers! And the farther back they sit—mezzanine, balcony—the more perturbed they seem. Naturally Ben too has become immunized to the play’s sentiment; how many times can a person get the shivers hearing goodbye to food and coffee, to new-ironed dresses and hot baths, and oh Earth, you’re too wonderful for anyone to realize you? But still, being in a real Broadway show is great fun and beats the heck out of being a cop! So Ben enjoys himself, waving, grinning, blowing a kiss to Skinny. And as much as he would like to blow a kiss to Lois Lane, seated only ten rows away, orchestra left, he’s afraid Skinny might notice. She can be jealous. But more than that he’s afraid Lois might not appreciate it. When a thing is over, it’s over. Whoever said that, brother, knew what he was talking about. When it’s over, it is over. But who’s that slickster she’s sitting with? Ben doesn’t like his looks, not one tiny bit. He’s too old for you, Lois! Don’t waste yourself on a guy like that! Oh, Lois, Lois, sweet Lois. He blows a big kiss in her direction.

  Lois winks back, pressing out a tear that trickles down her cheek. Seeing that tear, John Gurney grunts with moral disappointment. He snaps closed his notepad and teasingly flicks it away. “Oh, for pete’s sake, Lois, surely not you!” She slaps his hand, reaches around behind her for her coat. He told her during intermission that he intended to “crucify” this “pseudo-Chinese wreck of a play,” and it is evident he hasn’t changed his mind.

  Since returning in December from Washington, D.C. (a victim of WPA politics), Gurney has been writing theater criticism (some, however, call it carnage) for the Daily Planet while teaching journalism again at Columbia. He invited Lois to speak to his class in mid-January, and since then they’ve gone out on three dates, four counting tonight although Lois doesn’t know if she would—he just had an extra ticket. He didn’t buy her dinner.

  She doesn’t know how
she feels about dating Professor Gurney—John! He’s handsome and worldly, not a cheapskate, and a very good kisser. And she does believe, sincerely believe, that a modern girl ought to have a wide variety of experiences with men, older ones included. Still … “Would you just listen to all this weeping and gnashing of teeth,” says Gurney swiveling his head from side to side. Then he cups his hands to his mouth and says in a raised voice, “It’s only a play, ladies and gentlemen, a very bad play!”

  “Oh, will you shut up,” says Lois. As she is sticking an arm into a coat sleeve she glances up, for about the fiftieth time this evening, to a rococo-embellished formal box that juts over the stage. But Clark Kent’s back is still turned to her, not that she really wants to see his stupid mug (seeing it every day at work is bad enough!). And now that dyed-blond human hippo he’s sitting with leans over and says something to Clark, blocking him entirely. One, Lois can’t believe he spent the money it cost to buy those seats (at least twenty dollars!), and two, she can’t believe he’d show up at the theater with that blowsy so-called jazz singer.

  You don’t think that Clark and she … that she and Clark? Forget about Ulysses, that’s obscene. For a fact she knows Clark goes over to Soda (heaven help us: Soda) Wauters’s little nightclub at least once a week, and Lois knows it for a fact because he’s asked her repeatedly to go with him, even though she has made it abundantly clear that she has no interest in dating him. No interest in Clark, period.

  Now, if Clark’s friend Superman (over the last three months it’s gotten much easier for Lois to call him that) asked her out to a jazz club in Newark, you’d better believe she’d say yes. With that guy she’d go to a jazz club in Antarctica! Pick me up at eight and don’t be late!

  “You about ready to leave?” says Gurney. “I could use a drink.”

  But the cast has returned to the stage and is taking another series of bows while the audience gives them a second ovation—and Lois joins in.

  2

  Tonight just happens to be Soda Wauters’s thirty-seventh birthday, and she cannot imagine a grander, kinder, sweeter, more thoughtful gift than this! She has never been to a Broadway opening before, and this particular show was extra-special because it was written by Mr. Thornton Wilder. At Christmas, Clark gave her a copy of The Bridge at San Luis Rey and she’d loved it. Loved what it said, at least what it said to her. She is no literary expert, of course, and certainly no big reader, but what Soda took away from Mr. Wilder’s novel was this: everything is connected. And that includes everybody. Everything and everybody is connected, and whatever happens, big or small, good or bad, happens for some reason. There are no accidents in the universe. It made sense. It comforted Soda. She even wrote a letter to Mr. Wilder to thank him for his wonderful book, and he wrote her back! Now she keeps his letter (“… I cannot tell you, dear lady, how much your kind note has meant to me …”) framed and hanging in her office at the club.

  When she heard that Mr. Wilder had a new play previewing at the McCarter Theater in New Brunswick, Soda tried to get a ticket. But none were available. She told Clark how disappointed she was—and look what he did! Box seats on her birthday. She could kiss him! Instead she asks him now, “Are you all right?” and he nods.

  But she’s not too sure of that.

  He’s had a rough time of it lately, and since he came back last week from Kansas he’s been quiet and moody. Tonight he’s made every effort to be upbeat but hasn’t pulled it off. And he can’t sit still. Poor fidgety thing. Earlier she noticed him frowning, straining as if the actors weren’t speaking loud enough (which they most certainly were), then suddenly in a whisper he said, “Do you hear a fire engine?” A fire engine? No, Soda didn’t hear a fire engine. All she heard was the stage manager talking about how maybe once in a thousand times a marriage is interesting, and boy, could she relate to that! A fire engine? No, Soda didn’t hear any fire engine. And the next thing she knew Clark was gone! Didn’t get back till the intermission was nearly over. Hair disheveled, necktie askew, and if Soda didn’t know better she would have thought he sneaked out for a cigarette. His clothes reeked of smoke. He’d gotten a charley horse, he said, and had to walk it out.

  She lays a hand on his shoulder. “Clark, thank you again, so much!”

  He nods.

  “I loved it. Did you love it?”

  He nods.

  “Oh, look, Clark! From here you can see the people backstage crowding around to peek out. You see them?”

  He nods.

  “See that skinny old man with the suspenders? Doesn’t he look exactly like a guy you’d see in those Dick Powell musicals? ‘Old Pop.’ Doesn’t he?”

  Clark nods.

  Soda takes a breath, applauds again as the little boy who delivered newspapers in act one and then was already dead (casualty of war) by act two steps forward to take another bow.

  “Oh Clark, Clark! Look backstage, see where I’m pointing? Isn’t that your friend Willi?”

  Clark nods.

  “What’s he doing there?”

  Clark shrugs, then leans forward and gently rests his forehead on the ledge of the box. Soda strokes his back in a wide circle …

  3

  Willi Berg is on assignment this evening for Life magazine, that’s why he’s backstage. Before tonight’s performance he spent two hours snapping candids of the actors. Even though Willi doesn’t particularly like Ben Jaeger, he nevertheless took three shots of the blond lummox. It rankles Willi that a guy like Jaeger—not a guy like Jaeger, Jaeger—ends up not only making time with Lois Lane but marrying Skinny Simon!

  But Willi prides himself on being a professional and didn’t let his feelings for Jaeger interfere with his work. He was civil to the jerk and took three pictures of him: eating a sinker, scratching his nose, sticking his tongue out in front of a mirror. And he took a ton of pictures of Martha Scott, and got her telephone number while he was at it.

  During the performance, Willi ate a sandwich and played a few hands of poker with the electricians, listened to “Old Pop” tell a funny story about walking in on Ethel Barrymore with her clothes off, and then strolled around snapping pictures of stagehands, asking the ones who weren’t smoking if they minded lighting up for his camera. He is amassing a collection of pictures that he hopes eventually to exhibit in an art gallery and later collect into a book. Both the exhibition and the book will be entitled Smoking Metropolis. To punctuate his people, he plans also to include pictures of leaves burning in gutters, buildings on fire, smokestacks, that sort of thing.

  This is his fourth assignment for Life since December. So far he’s photographed a Beaux-Arts ball at the Hotel Navarro, a solemn High Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral (no flash bulbs permitted), and, notoriously, a feature called “The Birth of a Baby” that generated several thousand letters of “strong objection.” Willi couldn’t have asked for a better career boost! He was proud of that sequence of pictures, despite reservations about taking on the job in the first place. He didn’t know if he’d have the stomach for it. Up till the moment he walked into the delivery room at Doctor’s Hospital, either he’d been dreading the assignment or making crude jokes about it. Then he got to work and was awestruck. Afterward he held the swaddled baby; later still, he’d sent the mother and father a congratulatory card and the infant girl a flannel nightgown. Maybe he’s getting old or getting soft. Anyhow, the pictures came out great.

  “Aren’t they ever gonna quit applauding?” he says now backstage, peering out from the wings, seeing the cast take still more bows.

  “Ah, let the kids enjoy themselves,” says Old Pop. “They deserve it.”

  “I guess,” says Willi, going up on his toes and checking out Martha Scott’s fine little fanny. “What’s the play about anyway?”

  Old Pop looks at him, surprised. “Boy meets girl. They get married. She dies in childbirth.”

  “What’s so great about that?”

  Old Pop makes a face and walks away.

  Willi picks up
his camera and takes another picture of the cast taking their—what?—nine hundredth bows. As he lowers it he looks past the actors and sees Clark up in a fancy-schmancy box, arms folded on the railing, his face pressed against a forearm.

  Poor guy. The poor guy.

  He just hasn’t been the same since he got back from Kansas.

  4

  Clark doesn’t know what’s come over him. But he just feels so sad, so hopeless and sad. He can understand the play making him feel sad—but hopeless? There was nothing hopeless about Our Town. It was neither hopeless nor hopeful, just a play about how things are, how things go, for human beings on the planet, in the solar system, in the universe, in the mind of God. You’re born, you grow older, you live in a family, you go to school, you make friends, you get a job, you fall in love, you marry, you start another family, your eyes start to dim, your body fails, and you die. That’s all. Grovers Corner was a lot like Smallville, but also a lot like the dozens of towns he and Willi had passed through, drifted into, drifted out of. He could recognize Grovers Corner too in the filthy shantytowns and terrible hobo jungles he remembered, and in Hollywood as well, and in New York. Even in Panterville. Even in Panterville.

  And all of the characters, all of the people in the play—the doctor, the editor, the wife who pined to go to Paris, the melancholic choirmaster, the gossips, the milkman, the soda jerk, the geologist, all of them—Clark recognized them all, had met them all and knew them all, young as he was. Those ordinary, ordinary, fortunate ordinary people.

  He loved them, lived among them, but was not of them.

  How could he be?

  Would his eyes ever dim? His body ever fail?

  Would he ever die?

  He looks human and he tries hard, as hard as he can, to behave as he believes a human being ought to, but it is only playacting. If he isn’t human, though, what is he? He doesn’t know, just as he doesn’t really know anymore who he is—is he Clark Kent or is he this person called Superman? Only three months and he’s lost his way, lost his bearings.