The Fourth Wall

by Barbara Paul

  A shadow pushed down on me; I hunched over under its weight. Maybe I’d had my own way too long. I wasn’t satisfied with my life—who is? I’d never believed that Faust said, “Bleibe doch—du bist so schön.” Nothing is that satisfying. But I was sliding downward now, away from the top—had I been as high as I’d ever go? Was this all there was? The thought that I was being punished for my presumption blossomed and grew. Like a cancer.

  Maybe we should have found a better way to handle the Michael Crown affair. Maybe we should have just told him we didn’t want to produce “his” new play and said nothing about the plagiarism. But then he would simply have taken the play to another producer. Toby, you know that I love you. That would just be passing the buck to someone else, someone who wouldn’t know the play had been stolen. That was no solution.

  How desperate the man must have been! Bad writers don’t generally know they’re bad, but Michael Crown had known. So in a last-ditch, pitiful, shameful attempt to grab some glory for himself, Crown had lifted a play from an obscure little volume privately printed in France. Did the book’s limited circulation really make Crown think he’d be safe? He must have known that eventually somebody would make the connection. How desperate must a man be to take that kind of risk? He was facing bankruptcy, for one thing. God knows what else was wrong in his life. And then we came along and threatened him with exposure and prison. Crown was an empty little man who’d stolen from the dead to enhance his own life, but his effort had ended in suicide. Crown had begun his journey to self-destruction when he first succumbed to the temptation to pass off the Frenchman’s work as his own. Toby, tu sais que je t’aime.

  And because Michael Crown couldn’t write, Loren Keith was blind, Sylvia Markey was disfigured, Rosemary Odell was dead, John Reddick was in hiding, and I had lost a vital part of myself. All because some hack wanted to be Shakespeare.

  The shadow pressed down on me even heavier. Who the hell was I to call Michael Crown a hack? How could I disavow responsibility for his death? I felt … chastised. Ashamed. Even guilty. The way so many rape victims feel. I knew exactly what was happening to me—after all, I was writing a play about it. The relentless voice of accusation had indeed created its own authority, and I was ashamed. I was perfectly aware I was slipping into a morbid distortion of guilt and innocence, that my responses were being controlled by what was happening now and not by the events of nine years ago—I knew all this and I couldn’t do a damned thing to stop it.

  Days passed. The phone and the doorbell rang at times; I ignored them both. I remember opening a can of something occasionally and eating, thinking all the time of how good things used to taste when I was a child: fresh salt-rising bread, tomatoes with real flavor, transparent pie. I don’t remember going to bed, but I sometimes woke up in an armchair. I do remember noticing I needed a shower.

  I stood under the hot spray and listened to somebody singing. Me. Singing in the shower. I wasn’t singing the Toby line—Toby had been dislodged by a new tune, an old-new tune: Cream of Wheat is so good to eat, yes, we have it every day. The theme song from an old radio show for children—which one was it? “Let’s Pretend.”

  As soon as I’d identified the tune I stopped singing, I stopped washing, I almost stopped breathing. I stood stock-still in the shower, the water running over me. Had I regressed that far? Were memories and tunes from the past the only source of comfort I had to draw upon? I’d wrapped myself in the cocoon of my childhood, a time when no monsters roamed the earth seeking to destroy me.

  You spend your life trying to grow, trying to build something, trying to accept the responsibilities of the adult world. And all the time you’re scared to death someone will look at you and see that inside you’re still a little girl. And in spite of your best efforts, when the moment of real crisis comes, it’s the child who takes over.

  I was in trouble.

  The doorbell was ringing as I stepped out of the shower, and this time I would answer it. I had to start facing people again. I slipped on John Reddick’s terry-cloth robe and went to look through the peephole in the door. It was Leo Gunn, carrying a large cardboard box. With him were two plain-clothes men. I let them in.

  “This came for you at the theater,” Leo said as he put the box down. He introduced his two guards. “They took it to the station and X-rayed it. It’s okay. No bomb.”

  The police certainly were bomb-conscious; Lieutenant Goodlow had had my television checked for a bomb.

  Leo looked worried. “Abby, are you all right?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “I think I am now.”

  “I’ve been trying to get you on the phone. Nobody’s heard from you. Cavanaugh said he and Lieutenant Goodlow came over here a couple of times, but you must have been out.”

  “No, I was here. Hiding, I’m afraid. But it’s all right now.” Yes, it was all right now. I was coming out of my Slough of Despond. “I’m over the hump—I just needed a little time. I’ll be all right, Leo. Truly.”

  The tension went out of his face. “You know, I think you will. I’m glad, Abby.”

  I went over and hugged him—this good, concerned man whom, for a moment, I had stupidly thought of as a possible enemy.

  Leo was due at the theater. When he and his guards had left, I hunkered down on the floor by the box. A letter was taped to the outside, with Claudia Knight’s name and address in the upper left-hand corner. I opened the box.

  Books.

  The Hardin Craig edition of Shakespeare. Block and Shedd’s Masters of Modern Drama. A dictionary. The Norton Anthology of Poetry. An anthology of Restoration plays. C. Walter Hodges’s The Globe Restored. Paperbacks of all the Greek tragedies.

  The letter was brief:

  I was horrified to hear what had happened to you. I’ve been thinking of you and wondering what you must be feeling. Perhaps these books will help a little when you start to rebuild.

  Claudia

  For the first time since the whole ugly mess started, I broke down and cried.

  I sat on the floor a while, reading the chorus speeches from Agamemnon. Start rebuilding immediately, Ian Cavanaugh had said. Don’t wait. Claudia Knight’s act of kindness said the same thing. I got up and dressed; I had a lot of rebuilding to do.

  At first I thought of going to the theater, but something told me surrounding myself with familiar faces wouldn’t do the trick. I had to make myself talk to strangers, to force myself to stop being afraid. I left the apartment building and wandered until I came to a Hungarian restaurant. For the first time in days I was hungry. I went inside and had a big dish of exotic something. Then I left and started walking west on Seventy-sixth Street until I came to a decent-looking watering place. Inside it was dark and noisy; everyone there seemed to be talking a mile a minute. Just what I needed.

  I took a place at the bar and was soon involved in a long and not at all threatening conversation with a hearing-aid salesman from Trenton. We were joined by a man who ran a pizza parlor in the Village. (He was uptown slumming, he said.) We talked about the dirty streets, taxes, public television, Reggie Jackson, automobiles, and the wing span of sea gulls. The evening passed swiftly until it was time for the eleven o’clock news. I looked up at the television set and saw Gene Ramsay on the screen.

  “The police are doing nothing, absolutely nothing,” he was saying into a microphone held by a disembodied arm. “These attacks have got to be stopped. Some lunatic is methodically attacking the Foxfire company, one by one. Abigail James had to go out of town on business, and look what happened the minute her back was turned. I want to know why we aren’t getting any protection.”

  “Not again,” complained the hearing-aid salesman. “They run that same story every night. Why so much fuss about a bunch of books?”

  “Shhhh,” I said. “I want to hear this.”

  Gene Ramsay’s face had been replaced by that of a reporter. “Death, disfigurement, destruction,” he intoned solemnly. “Why is Foxfire being persecuted in this
way? And by whom? Foxfire’s struggle to survive against such overwhelming odds has caught the attention of the entire country. Producer Gene Ramsay is not alone is asking why the police are so helpless to prevent these outrages.”

  Then Lieutenant Goodlow appeared on the screen, answering questions. “No, we’re not thinking of closing the play. What good would it do? Sylvia Markey was backstage when she was disfigured, but the rest of the attacks have taken place away from the theater. Rosemary Odell was killed at home. John Reddick was attacked in a steam bath. Abigail James was in California when her home was trashed. We do have a new lead, and we’re tracking it down now.”

  A new lead. Michael Crown’s lover.

  “Did you see that play?” the pizza man asked me. I said I had. “Is it any good?”

  “It’s excellent,” I answered deadpan. “In fact, I’ve seen it more than once.”

  The bartender had come up and was staring at me. “You’re her,” he said. “The one whose place got tore up.”

  “Goodbye,” I said and escaped, embarrassed at being caught out.

  10

  The next few weeks were a protracted scene from Grotesque Procession. I had interviews with the police, the press, the insurance company. I turned into the American Consumer Extraordinaire—I had to buy everything. First a bed to sleep on. Then a typewriter. Then dishes to eat off of and kitchen utensils and pots and pans to cook with. Towels and sheets. Bookshelves. Clothing. I had no idea how dependent I was on things until I had to replace them all. When I hurried away from San Francisco, I’d neglected to withdraw permission for Brian Simpson to produce Double Play—a fortunate oversight, as it turned out. A few sessions with the insurance boys made it clear I was going to need every cent I could lay my hands on.

  I checked on the cleaning service that was working at making my home livable again. Some of the paint stains on the floor couldn’t be removed, even though the cleaners had sanded all the way down to the nail heads. So I’d have to buy more carpeting than I had before. But the trash had all been cleared out and most of the walls repainted. I’d be able to move back in before long, with my new lares and penates.

  When I got around to checking my answering service, the girl immediately switched me to her supervisor—a frigid-voiced woman who informed me my monthly bill would be quadruple its usual amount. She’d had to put on an extra girl just to take my calls, and she seemed to expect me to apologize for causing her this inconvenience. Instead I congratulated her on her efficiency and asked to be given my calls. Back to the girl who’d answered the phone. It took her nearly two hours to read me my messages. Everyone in the Foxfire company had tried to get in touch with me at least once. Friends and my scattered relatives had called, as well as strangers in the news media. People in other parts of the country whom I hadn’t seen for years had called. My aunt in Boston had called twenty-seven times.

  That long list of callers cheered me up as nothing else could have done. It was a little thing, picking up a phone and calling someone who had trouble. But it made a difference. It really did. I had a lot of calls to make, starting with my distraught aunt and Claudia Knight.

  Then Leo Gunn called me at John Reddick’s apartment. He wanted my permission to send over a crew to work on my place. They were from an outfit that specialized in installing metal doors and iron grill-work over the windows.

  “And I don’t want to hear any of that crap about turning your home into a prison,” Leo said. “I’ve just had them fix up my place. We’re under attack, Abby, and we’ve got to protect ourselves.”

  I didn’t argue. “What about Ian? He might want to—”

  “He’s the one who told me about these people. He says his house looks like a fortress.”

  So I said go ahead. According to Lieutenant Goodlow’s line of reasoning, our enemy had “got” me, so presumably I had nothing further to fear. Sure. A man who’d killed at least once was still on the loose and was mad at me. I wasn’t about to trust my safety to the hope that a madman would honor the Lieutenant’s line of reasoning.

  When I first saw the metal doors and grillwork a few days later, I was appalled. My home had been turned into a prison, no two ways about it—even without furniture taking up space, I began to feel cramped, confined. The sunlight cast prison bar shadows on the refinished floors; and even with the new white paint on the walls, the place seemed darker than before. But it was something I would have to learn to live with.

  I hadn’t picked up my mail for a while and the mailbox in the outside alcove was full. I opened an envelope from the insurance company first. The check they sent would cover maybe half my expenses. Also in the envelope was a notice of cancellation. Surprise, surprise. I flipped through the rest of the mail and stopped to look at a picture postcard showing a grandiose Southern mansion surrounded by weeping willows. The card had been mailed in Natchez, Mississippi, and carried a brief written message: I’m all right.

  There was no signature, but I’d know that scrawl anywhere. It was John Reddick’s handwriting.

  “One thing we can be sure of,” Lieutenant Goodlow was saying, “is that he’s not in Natchez. Probably mailed the card on his way out of town. Why Mississippi? Does he have any connections there?”

  “Not that I know of,” I said.

  “Could be part of an arbitrary pattern. Or he could be heading for Mexico, intending to work his way down to South America. He may have his passport with him, remember. Central America or South America—a good possibility.”

  Where he could lose himself forever. “I hope not,” I said. “That kind of disappearance has a permanent air to it. Wouldn’t he stay in the States? So he can hear if you ever catch this man?”

  This time the Lieutenant didn’t call me on saying “if.” Just then a man knocked on the Lieutenant’s door and stuck his head in. “Ian Cavanaugh wants to see you. Says it’s important.”

  Ian shouldered his way in. “Lieutenant, I got a postcard from John Reddick!” he announced.

  Ian’s card had been posted in Jackson, Mississippi, and said the same thing mine did: I’m all right. It had been mailed the day after mine.

  Lieutenant Goodlow opened his office door and called, “Wexler, bring me an atlas!” When the book came, the Lieutenant sat at his desk and flipped through the pages until he came to Mississippi. “Hm. Jackson’s northeast of Natchez. So he’s not heading for Mexico after all. Unless this is a diversionary tactic.”

  “Could be,” said Ian. “John can be devious if he has to. He’s not going to leave an easy trail.”

  “What are you going to do?” I asked the Lieutenant.

  “Send out a bulletin to apprehend and hold him as a material witness. He’s seen this man we’re after, and maybe he can tell us something.”

  Ian and I exchanged glances. This wasn’t what we’d bargained for.

  “Send out a bulletin where?” I asked.

  Lieutenant Goodlow consulted his atlas. “Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama. He’s long gone from Mississippi, I’ll bet, but maybe we can pick him up in one of the adjoining states. He’s probably working his way from town to town, odd-jobbing it.”

  Ian cleared his throat. “It didn’t occur to me you’d try to bring him back.”

  “We won’t bring him back. We’ll just have him questioned and released.”

  Well, maybe that wasn’t so bad. “All right, then,” said Ian, as if the Lieutenant had asked his permission.

  Lieutenant Goodlow was staring as his atlas again. “Look at all these little Arkansas towns with German names! Stuttgart, Hamburg, Altheimer …”

  We left the Lieutenant to his map reading. In the outer office, two plain-clothes men inconspicuously fell in behind Ian as we left. “So he’s survived,” said Ian when we reached the street.

  “We should have known he would,” I smiled. “John’s a born survivor if ever there was one.”

  “What about you, Abby? Are you surviving?”

  “Yes, I am, Ian.
I’ve started the rebuilding process. Just as you told me to.”

  Then Ian did something I thought I’d never see. Right there in public, with the two plain-clothes men and other strangers watching, this reserved, undemonstrative man gave me a Leo Gunn-type hug. “It’s good to hear that. I was worrying about you.”

  Ian was probably down as the next victim, but he’d been worrying about me. His gesture touched me enormously.

  I was back home. The place was as sparsely furnished as a newly-weds’ apartment, but I could live there. Bars and all.

  My living room contained only a new carpet, a new sofa (which I liked better than the old one), and the one survivor of the wreckage—the television set. I turned on the tin-cup channel and watched the latest BBC import.

  Life was gradually resuming its regular rhythms. The Foxfire touring company ended its tour. The box-office receipts had been good, and my royalty check helped take the sting out of the stinginess my ex-insurance company had shown. The touring company would go out again in the fall, after all the summer theaters around the country had had their fling.

  According to Leo Gunn, Vivian Frank was now toeing the mark. She was no longer inventing stage business for herself or changing the lines. Gene Ramsay had put the fear of unemployment into her, and Griselda Gold had rehearsed the cast back to its original performance level. Also, Armand de Whoosit, Vivian’s joy boy, had faded from the scene. So all was quiet on the home front.

  And then the Foxfire company did a lovely thing: they all chipped in and re-equipped my workroom. Worktables, two chairs, about a mile of bookshelves, filing cabinets, lamps—everything except the typewriter, which I’d already bought. They even got me a small cabinet to keep supplies in.

  Carla Banner showed up with the supplies. Typing paper, carbon sets, pens, pencils, envelopes, twenty empty notebooks, paper clips, Scotch tape, index cards, pencil sharpener, ruler, letter opener, two rolls of stamps, little jars and boxes to put things in, correction fluid, stapler, rubber bands, scratch pads, and a magnifying glass.