by Barbara Paul
She understood. “Such a difficult man to get through to, isn’t he? I wish I hadn’t—” She broke off abruptly. She wished she hadn’t caused him so much trouble backstage.
“Water under the bridge”, I said. Vivan told me where she’d be staying in Los Angeles, and we said goodbye.
I asked Ian if he had called his agent yet. He said no.
Act I of The New Play was finished. It still needed some polishing, but no major changes—the big part was done. I’d let it sit for a while. I’d agreed to write a couple of articles about playwriting to help take up some of the slack left by the discontinuation of that weekly check from Gene Ramsay’s office. Brian Simpson had finally sent a check for Double Play; it hadn’t even covered the cleaning service’s bill.
Ian got into the habit of coming up to the workroom with me when I was writing. It bothered me at first; I wasn’t used to having someone else in the room while I was trying to work. But I couldn’t very well ask him to leave, and eventually I got used to his being there. He was so quiet, so very careful not to intrude. Even when I got frustrated and started swearing at the typewriter, he never said a word. Sometimes he read; sometimes he stared out the window. I think he just wanted the physical presence of someone who was still functioning.
One evening we were in a restaurant at a table next to a family that told a story just through its physical appearance. The father was a grossly fat man who ate and drank as if storing up calories against a famine. The mother was thin and nervous, and spent more time seeing that her husband was supplied with condiments than with eating her own meal. She completely ignored their children, three subdued boys who kept casting apprehensive glances at their father. The whole family was silent; no one talked.
Ian couldn’t take his eyes off them. He watched the paterfamilias shoveling it in for a while and murmured, “Father Gnaws Best.”
“Why, Ian,” I laughed, “you’re a punster.”
A small smile. “Used to drive my wife wild.”
There. He’d mentioned her.
Leo Gunn was back from Nova Scotia. He stopped by to show me the appliance that had recently been fitted to his right wrist. When he saw Ian, he greeted him with obvious pleasure and relief.
“I tried to find you before I left,” Leo said. “I thought you might want to come with me—my house is isolated, and it’s peaceful there. Where were you?”
“Part of the time I stayed in Reddick’s apartment,” said Ian. “Most of the time I don’t know where I was. Abby found me in Central Park and rescued me.”
Leo shot me a glance and turned back to Ian. “What are you doing now? Are you working?”
“No,” Ian said shortly.
You could see Leo puzzling over whether to pursue the subject or not; he decided not. “All right,” he said, flexing his right arm, “prepare yourselves for a demonstration of one of the miracles of modern science.”
The two-pronged mechanical claw turned out to be quite versatile. Leo showed us how he could pick up a pencil and write, light a match, fish out a ring of keys from his pocket and select one, and fine-tune the television set.
Ian and I cheered. “There are some things I can’t manage yet,” Leo said. “I’m not very good with buttonholes, for instance. But it’s just a matter of practice.”
We all fell silent and sat staring at the grotesque device that protruded from the end of Leo’s arm where his right hand should have been. After a while, Leo stirred. “Ain’t that a bitch,” he said softly.
Yeah, we agreed, it sure as hell was.
Suddenly I missed John Reddick; I missed him so badly it hurt. I missed his energetic drive and his contagious enthusiasm and his sheer catalytic presence. If John were here, within fifteen minutes he’d have me writing a one-character play that he would direct and Ian would act and Leo would manage.
We certainly wouldn’t all be sitting around staring at Leo’s claw.
Ian’s quiet time of healing came to an end as word gradually spread of his whereabouts. First came the police, followed by his agent, Gene Ramsay, insurance adjusters, reporters, friends and well-wishers. Even a real estate agent showed up, wanting to sell Ian a new house.
“I’m sorry about all this, Abby,” Ian said, looking harassed after one especially long session with the police. “I seem to have taken over your home. I don’t know when this influx of people will stop—maybe I’d better move to a hotel.”
Now what was I supposed to say to that? Aw, shucks, Ian, don’t go? My home is your home? Shut up and take off your clothes?
What I said was, “No.”
“Good,” he smiled.
Hugh Odell, for some reason, was having trouble accepting the fact that Ian and I were together. Leo Gunn had taken it in stride, but Hugh kept fidgeting and wetting his lips.
We were having lunch at The Ginger Man. “Everybody was worried about you,” Hugh said to Ian. “You just dropped out of sight. Nobody knew where you were.”
“I know,” said Ian. “I needed to be by myself for a while.”
“Have you talked to anyone about … what happened? Have you seen a—”
“No,” said Ian shortly.
“Sometimes it helps to talk about it,” Hugh said solicitously.
“And sometimes it doesn’t.”
I decided to butt in. “Tell us about this TV movie you’re making.”
Hugh welcomed the change of subject. It occurred to me he was one of those people who never know what to say when confronted by someone else’s tragedy. His and Ian’s wives had both been murdered by the same man; but between Hugh’s nervousness and Ian’s natural reserve, they couldn’t talk to each other about it.
“It’s a schlock thriller,” Hugh said of the TV movie. “An outbreak of plague in New York. People dying in the streets, panic, the works.”
“What kind of plague?” I asked. “Pneumonic or bubonic?”
Hugh’s eyebrows shot up. “I haven’t the foggiest.”
“Directly contagious or transmitted by fleas from rats?”
Hugh squinted his eyes in an effort to remember. “Both, I think. The opening shot is of a single rat coming down the guy rope of a ship. Then a few scenes showing slum kids scratching flea bites. But later there’s a whole sequence of scenes showing people spreading the disease by kissing, sneezing, drinking from the same glass, that kind of thing.”
I had to laugh. “Who’s the medical adviser for the film?”
Hugh made a mocking face. “We’re not bothering with one of those. The producer says dramatic values are what count, and technical advisers keep telling you you can’t do things the way you want to do them. I play a bureaucrat who refuses to admit there may be plague in the city. I keep throwing up obstacles in the way of the sincere young health officer who’s trying to contain the disease.”
“Don’t tell me, let me guess,” said Ian. “You die of the plague. Horribly. Punishment for opposing the hero.”
“You got it. Poetic justice triumphs again.”
Hugh was looking good. He’d gained back some of the weight he’d lost, and that pasty color was gone from his face. Getting away from Foxfire had done that. “Where are you shooting?” I asked him.
“Indoor scenes in the NBC sound stage in Brooklyn. Outdoor scenes all over the place. And you can bet there’ll be a lot of outdoor scenes. The script is skimpy—they’ll need a helluva lot of background to pad it out.”
“People getting in cars, people driving cars, people parking cars,” I nodded.
“Who’s playing the sincere young health officer?” Ian wanted to know.
Hugh told us, but neither Ian nor I had heard of him.
“Another one of television’s faceless wonders,” Hugh said. “He’s about thirty years old and totally inarticulate—he makes Steve Cauthen sound like Oscar Wilde. He has to be told everything five times and he has a drama coach who leads him by the hand through every line he speaks. He’s supposed to project the image of a brilliant young diagnos
tician who not only spots the disease but knows exactly what to do about it. D’you think we’ll win an Emmy?”
I laughed. “Don’t see how you can miss.”
Hugh’s face took on a whimsical look. “Did you ever read Cedric Hardwicke’s autobiography? A Victorian in Orbit? He tells about making a Hollywood movie—he had a scene with a dog, and to make the dog lick his face affectionately, someone had put liver in his ear. Hardwicke hated dogs, and he hated California. He saw that scene as an ironic commentary on the actor’s life. After all those years of training and discipline and hard work, you end up in the broiling California sun, playing a scene with a dog, with a piece of liver in your ear.” Hugh laughed humorlessly. “That’s what television is. Liver in your ear.”
Then one night, apropos of nothing, Ian told me how close he’d come to taking his own life.
It seems he hadn’t been released from the hospital after all; he’d simply got up and left. “It was the police,” Ian said. “I just had to get away from them and their questions. They kept hammering away at who could have planted the bomb, who had been in my home during the last few months. That Captain Mitchell who’s in charge now—I once heard him ask a doctor if he couldn’t give me a shot of something to pep me up a little. The police don’t give a shit about us, Abby, any of us—all they’re worried about now is protecting their reputation.”
So he had left. He’d started to register at the Regency under a false name, but the clerk recognized him so he’d turned around and walked out. He went to John Reddick’s apartment and picked up the key I’d left with the super. “I don’t know how long I sat there, staring my days away. I started to wander about the city—I’d walk until I was so exhausted I couldn’t think of anything but sleep. But then I couldn’t sleep. My family was dead because of me: that was a fact I would never be able to get away from. I could even hear it in the rhythm of my breathing … You KILLED them, You KILLED them, You KILLED them. My daughter—she was just beginning to be a woman, Abby.
“Then for a while all I could think about was Michael Crown. Maybe it was a substitute guilt, to avoid thinking about what I’d done to my family. But I kept going over and over that whole affair—trying to think of what we should have done, what I should have done. How I could have prevented my family’s being killed.
“The worst part was yet to come. I reached a point where I couldn’t see my own future. I’d once heard someone say he couldn’t see himself in the future, but I didn’t understand how terrifying that was until it happened to me. I couldn’t see tomorrow, much less next month or next year. I couldn’t see any life for myself beyond that very moment. Nothing! I tried to visualize situations I could reasonably expect to find myself in—new roles, new plays. I could see you and Reddick and a lot of other people I know all working together on a new play—but just you, not me. I could not put myself in the picture. I simply wasn’t there. There’s no way to explain how frightening that is, that void looming in front of you. And there’s no way of coping with it. All you can do is yield to it. Die.”
He was silent for a long time. After a while I asked, “What stopped you?”
“Sylvia Markey,” he said unexpectedly. “Do you remember telling me how her utter dependency had brought out something twisted in Jake? Well, I’d tried to get in to see Sylvia, and failed. Then I found out who her lawyer was and went to see him. That man is sharp—he knew exactly what was going on. And approved! Reluctantly, but he approved. He persuaded me that no matter how unwholesome the situation was, it was the best of the available alternatives. He said Sylvia simply would not be able to survive on her own. He said she had no core of reserve strength to draw upon—she’d channeled all her survival instincts toward her career. And when her career was taken from her, she became directionless. Lost. There was just nothing left. I wasn’t sure the lawyer’s psychologizing was right, but I agreed to keep out of it.
“He’d put his finger on something that had bothered me—I never mentioned it to anyone because it sounded so callous. I thought Sylvia should have coped better than she did. Loren Keith is worse off than Sylvia, but he still counts himself among the living. Her withdrawal was so absolute, so total. And now here I was contemplating withdrawing even further than Sylvia. Was I that empty too? It made me hesitate. What stopped me, Abby, was nothing more than sheer, selfish pride.”
“Then thank God for selfish pride,” I said.
“Nothing was settled,” he went on. “I’d have periods when I wouldn’t think about suicide at all. Then, without any warning, that’d be all I could think of. I kept wavering back and forth—yes, no, I’d do it, I’d wait a little longer. Waiting. I’d wait to see if I could decide, if it would be decided for me, if I’d be hit by a truck, something, anything. Just waiting. That’s where I was when you found me in the park.”
I asked, “Can you see your future now?”
“In a way. I see no solutions—but I can admit possibilities where I couldn’t before. I see you. I can almost see the day I’ll pick up the phone and call my agent. I don’t know whether I can ever act again or not, Abby. The thought of facing an audience terrifies me—I break out in a cold sweat whenever I think of standing up in front of that many-headed monster and being judged. But the possibility is real; you’re real. My God, Abby, are you real! I don’t know what will happen if I can’t act any more. I may end up like Sylvia after all. But I do know one thing now—I don’t want to retreat. Doesn’t sound like much, does it? But for me it’s everything. I don’t want to retreat any more.”
3
It’s not easy to write in New York; the city keeps calling you. I finished my two articles and decided to play hooky for a while. Ian and I took advantage of the mild, beautiful summer; we planned nothing in advance, simply enjoying whatever came our way.
We received a joint invitation to an in-honor-of-somebody party at The Hermitage, but facing hordes of people who’d feel obligated to offer condolences was something Ian didn’t feel up to. So we said no. Then the host offered Ian five thousand dollars to put in an appearance. Ian looked as if he wanted to throw up.
One day I said, “You know, Ian, your way back into acting might be through television instead of the stage. It would be a short stint—only a week. People would be watching you work, but they’d be co-workers instead of a paying audience. It might be easier that way.” Not to mention the fact he could just walk through his role and nobody would notice the difference.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” he admitted. “Baby steps before giant steps.” But he didn’t call his agent.
Then a revival of The Way of the World opened, and we both perked up. Congreve’s acrid comedy was special to both of us; years ago it had been a surprise hit for Manhattan Rep.
We’d decided on a low-key production, avoiding those grotesque gimmicks that have sprung up in modern productions of period pieces. Such as having the fops wear glitter on their eyelids. Preston Scott had directed; the acting was crisp but cool, and Ian—then in his early thirties—had turned in a polished, stylish performance as Mirabell.
So on opening night Ian and I were sitting in a shabby East Side theater trying to read the program by the dim house lights. But the first set, exposed to the entering audience, was sassy and bright.
“Well, well,” said Ian. “Look who’s playing Witwoud. Jay Berringer.”
That little man certainly got around. In a profession that annually posts the highest unemployment rate of any work group in the country—eighty per cent—Jay was doing well for himself.
Actors hate being compared to other actors, but it was impossible to sit there and watch this Way of the World without thinking of Manhattan Rep’s production eight or nine years ago. Manners acting is difficult; it calls for a special comic timing and vocal grace and body awareness that American actors simply aren’t trained for. A couple of young girls in the play couldn’t manage their heavy trains much less their sophisticated dialogue. But Jay Berringer surprised me; the
director had evidently sat on him, hard. Instead of doing his usual prancing and arm waving, Jay was, well, not exactly subdued, but he did show a restraint I’d not seen in him before. Toward the end of the play he started sliding back into his usual overacting, but on the whole he turned in a good performance. He wore glitter on his eyelids.
But the shocker of the evening was the actor who played Mirabell, Ian’s role in the Manhattan Rep production. He played the whole thing as camp—the only member of the cast to do so. This I found unforgivable; any director who could make Jay Berringer behave on stage should have been able to put a stop to that. Ian had looked as if he’d lived all his life in a Restoration drawing room; the new Mirabell looked like a West Village guitar player got up for a costume party.
Ian and I went backstage afterward to congratulate the cast. Jay Berringer pranced up to me, his elfin face grinning from ear to ear.
“Oh, Abby, Abby, Abby—Abigail James! Thank you for coming!” All this in a voice loud enough to attract the attention of everyone still in the theater. “How did you like it? Oh, I didn’t want it to end!”
“Jay, that’s the best performance I’ve ever seen you give,” I said truthfully. “It’s a good role for you and you’re good for the role,” not quite so truthfully.
“Really? Do you really think so?”
“You gave pleasure, Jay.”
And then this funny little second-rate talent took hold of my hand and—still in character?—kissed it. “Thank you, Abby,” he said quietly.
“How’s your advance? In for a good run?”
“Fair to middling. If that asshole playing Mirabell doesn’t shut us down. What did Ian Cavanaugh think?”
“He didn’t say.” He didn’t have to say. He’d sat there and steamed through the entire performance.
I watched the two Mirabells come face-to-face. “Congratulations,” said Ian. “You looked good up there.”
The new Mirabell’s eyelids dropped a fraction of an inch; he’d recognized the dodge. (If you can’t bring yourself to lie to an actor about a bad performance, you tell him he looked good on the stage.) The Mirabell said, “We were trying for something a little different.”
