by Luanne Rice
“Not yet. I’ve heard he’s met the director, but he likes to keep a low profile. Have you seen him or your sister lately?”
“No. They’re busy with ‘The Spring Rambles.’ Henk is quite the fund-raiser—money for research, money for theater.”
“Your sister snagged a rich one.” Her voice was bitter, and I looked up, shocked.
“What does that matter?”
“Una, if you were thirty and still waiting on tables to pay the rent, you wouldn’t have to ask. You know what Louis is doing right now? Running movies at a theater on Thirty-fourth Street. He does that three nights a week.”
That, in a nutshell, told me why I had left Juilliard. I lacked the dedication to starve for my profession. By my junior year I had heard three or four stories of recent alumni who had done well, had starred in Broadway plays or Hollywood movies. I had, however, heard two hundred stories about alumni who were pioneers in “artists’ colonies” on the Lower East Side and across the rivers in Williamsburg and Hoboken, who waited tables between shows, and who finally gave up acting entirely to become affluent bankers, ad writers, insurance salesmen, car salesmen.
A waiter came to take our order. Neither Susan nor I felt like having anything. The waiter stood by our table for a few seconds, until a group wanting another round of drinks caught his eyes. He glanced over his shoulder at us and walked away.
“I’m jealous, you know,” I said.
“I know.”
“Really jealous.”
She looked furious. “Don’t you think I’ve ever been jealous of you?”
“For what?”
“What do you think? For having girls like that”—she nodded her head at the punk rock autograph seeker standing at the bar—“know who you are. For working every blessed day of the week.”
The punk rocker had been watching us; she waved when we looked her way, sending Susan and me into a fit of giggles.
“I see your point,” I said. “That is worth something.”
We decided not to order any food. On the street outside we hugged tightly. The Brooklyn Bridge soared overhead and a neon replica glowed in the café’s window. Susan felt thin as a bird, and I didn’t let go for a long time. When we parted, we just said, “See you.” There was no need to apologize further.
That night Joe Finnegan’s knocking would not let me sleep. I lay in bed, curled under the covers, while spring air blew through my open window. I waited for him to leave.
“I know you’re home,” he called. “I saw your goddamn light go out fifteen minutes ago.”
Wearily I walked to the door and opened it. He stepped inside, into my living room where street light cast long shadows shaped like surrealistic furniture on my bare wood floor.
“What is it?” he asked, holding my face between his hands. The magic of human contact. His face looked mournful. Sometimes I felt so lonely, any tenderness was better than none. I pressed my head against his chest, wondering how to explain that I didn’t like him. I would rather avoid him for the rest of our lives than explain anything like that.
But we didn’t bother with words. He didn’t ask me what was wrong, and I volunteered nothing. We walked straight into my bedroom, stripped, and climbed into bed. Our bodies cleaved together and we held tight to each other all night. Several times I wakened in the night feeling empty and nauseous, and I pressed closer to Joe, thinking that closeness could drive the feelings away. His arms were wrapped around me; one hand held one of my breasts. I kept glancing at the alarm clock’s illuminated dial, dreading the approach of morning and the spoken word.
Dawn light streamed through my window, catching me and Joe wrapped in my white sheet like an overexposed photograph. My right arm was asleep; it had no feeling at all. I lay awake, waiting for the alarm to go off, and felt utterly vacant, as lonely as I had ever felt in my life. Turning to watch Joe sleep, I found him watching me.
“Morning,” he said.
“Good morning.”
“You feel like explaining things to me, Una?”
Barely awake, I felt glad that Joe was getting to the point before I had a chance to drink some coffee and begin to dread what I had to say.
“I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told another woman: you’re hurting me,” Joe said, rising on one elbow to see me directly. “I wish you would just tell me what’s going on.”
“I don’t think it’s working between us,” I said, unfamiliar with the language for ending a relationship the man wished to continue. “We’re not making each other happy…enough.”
“That’s fair,” Joe said. “Couldn’t you have gotten around to it sooner? Instead of hiding from me?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling surprisingly good. Giving it to him straight came easier than I had anticipated. Why hadn’t I ever learned that men could take the harsh truth so well? Emboldened, I continued. “I’ve enjoyed spending time with you. You’re wonderful company; we’ve had fun times together. But do you think we have enough in common? We don’t exactly see the world the same way.” I smiled. “And that’s an understatement. Also, our living arrangements leave a lot—”
Joe placed his hand on my arm. “Una, this is very hard. Could you give me a second to digest it?”
“Of course, Joe. Sure,” I said. Turning red. Wishing that I was not always the victim of my own excesses.
Hester’s Sister was a tremendous smash. I sat in the audience with Lily and Henk, spellbound by the coastal stage set, the eerie lighting, the not-at-all-eerie relationship between Hester and her sister Anne (played by Susan). They were two sisters who lived on Massachusetts’s northern coast, who constructed fishing nets for their living, who had never married. Both were young and beautiful. Hester snubbed a town elder who wished to marry her. The men in town, not understanding why two beautiful women would choose not to marry, found reasons to say that Hester was a witch. The local women, jealous of the sisters’ beauty, believed the stories; Anne’s friend Prudence tried to convince Anne. She had proof: the nets woven by Hester developed holes and let all the fish swim through, then repaired themselves when pulled in. Her father, a fisherman, had sworn it was true. At the play’s end, Hester is burned, not knowing whether Anne believes in her innocence, and the audience is left with the sense that Anne will be burned next.
After the final curtain, after Susan’s eight curtain calls, Lily and I sat still, holding hands, too disturbed to cry.
“Some play, eh?” Henk said, still applauding madly.
Lily and I stared straight ahead. We were reading each other’s mind: I love you. I love you too. I thought of Anne and Hester, of how much they had loved each other and of how much they had doubted each other in the end. How confusing were facts! Presented with facts, Anne had mistrusted a truth she had known since birth. I squeezed Lily’s hand.
“Time to go to the party!” Henk said, boisterously throwing on his black coat. “Come on, let’s get going.”
People gathered around us, congratulating Lily and Henk for their involvement in such a wonderful play. Henk grinned magnanimously, but Lily was tight-lipped and pale.
“What is wrong, Liebchen?” he asked, bending over her.
“The play! It was so…it reminds me of me and my sisters!” She started to sob.
A look of pure alarm crossed Henk’s strong features, and he bundled Lily backstage to some secret place. I stood alone beside our seats, guarding Lily’s and my coats, watching the audience file out. No one there recognized me; I felt glad and resentful all at once.
At the party, hosted by Henk and other angels at a restaurant in SoHo, everyone recognized Susan. Louis preceded her into the room. A hush traveled across the tables, which then erupted with wild applause, hooting, and cries of “Brava!” when Susan entered. Susan, wearing a tuxedo, looked incandescent. An enormous smile wreathed her pale face. She walked from table to table, accepting congratulations. At our table she embraced me and kissed Lily and Henk.
To Lily she said, “
Any sister of Una’s is a sister of mine.”
Lily held her hand and said, “That was the best play I’ve ever seen.”
Henk placed one firm hand on her left shoulder and said, “Marvelous. Just marvelous.”
“I’ll be back later,” Susan said, allowing her director to spirit her along.
Then the early editions of the next day’s papers arrived.
“We already know what the reviews will say,” Henk said, scoffing. “Don’t even bother to read them.”
But he listened avidly as an unidentified young man read parts of each review to the crowd. “‘Hester’s Sister is a cauldron bubbling with darkest emotions, home truths, and terrible secrets.’ ‘Everyone who has ever been a sister—no, make that everyone—will weep at Susan Russell’s stunning performance as Hester’s Sister.’ ‘A chilling portrait of two sisters and their bleakest hour. Don’t miss Susan Russell.’”
“You know,” Henk said contemplatively, “I have helped bring many shows to the stage. All arrive at a moment of truth—just before opening night, you have a sense, a clear sense, of what will happen to the show. Some you know will fail. Simple as that. Others you hope have a chance for greatness—few do, but you hope. But this play. You just knew.” He waved his hand. “It was perfect, the way each element coalesced.”
“You’ve been an angel before?” I asked.
Henk tossed his blond head back, amused. “Oh, many times. I did Favorites. You’ve heard of that, of course.”
“Of course.” Favorites had been the hottest show on Broadway two years ago. A waiter delivered champagne to our table. I sipped, feeling myself grow lighthearted. The play’s sober effects were wearing off. Across the room people were toasting Susan, and she was grinning with delight. I felt truly ecstatic for her.
“Well, here’s to Susan,” I said. Lily and Henk clinked glasses with me.
“A real actress,” Henk said.
That triggered an alarm in my brain. Was he talking about me? I tried to meet his eyes, but he was smiling at Susan.
“She is wonderful, isn’t she?” I asked, prodding.
“Marvelous. A truly devoted artist.” (The “truly” digging in.)
“Oh, I have to use the bathroom. Want to come?” Lily asked me. (A touch panic-stricken, I thought.)
Was I paranoid? I stared at Henk, wanting some clue before I plunged in and extracted things he might not want to say. Yet he seemed to be saying them, however obliquely. I would move slowly. “Henk, did you know that Susan and I were at Juilliard together? Did Lily tell you?”
His controlled blue eyes finally settled on me. “Yes, of course. But you weren’t there for long, were you?”
“Well, for three years.”
He nodded, his attention moving back to Susan. “Yes, most likely you did not feel the need to graduate. For that TV program.”
A definite barb. Quite poisonous. I hated myself, but blood rushed into my face, revealing my hurt feelings to Henk. Lily prodded my foot under the table; I followed her to the bathroom, where ferns hung from black pipes and purplish plant light flooded the pink-tiled room.
“He didn’t mean it the way it sounded,” Lily said. “He’s just a terrible snob.”
“Yes, I can see that.”
“He really hates soap operas—I don’t know why. He says he can tell everything about his women patients by whether or not they watch soap operas.”
Actually that made some sense to me. Lily, Margo, and I had once discovered you could tell plenty about a person by the shoes he or she wore. A person who watches soaps is sensitive, probably lonely, and probably female. “My producer says that most of our audience are college graduates. I wonder if Henk knows that.”
Lily patted my back. “I doubt it. He just has this thing about soaps. He does love you, though.”
“Oh, sure he does!” I said, shoving Lily against the tiles and starting to babble. “You’ve been married to him since January one and this is only the third time I’ve seen you it makes me sick we’re supposed to be sisters what the hell’s the matter is he keeping you prisoner does he hate me oh God that play really got me.”
Lily and I hugged, weeping together. My head was resting on her shoulder, and I could see my tears spreading in a deep circle on her mauve silk blouse.
“He doesn’t hate you,” she said. “I swear it. He just wants me alone for a while. We’re newlyweds…” Sob, sob, sob.
“I’m trying to understand that,” I said, calming myself. “But when you consider how close we have always been, this new business is shocking.”
Lily began to regard her face in the mirror. She was trying not to hear me. I recognized the mechanism; denying the problem could make it disappear, the way I had tried to handle Joe.
“Can you please talk to me?” I asked.
“All right. Henk seems to need me to himself right now. Like he told you—he’s not used to close families, close sibling relationships.”
It was the old line Henk had handed me at dinner that night, yet the phrase “sibling relationships” sounded too clinical, too textbook perfect to describe what went on among me, Lily, and Margo. And here was Lily, repeating it like a prize student.
“One important fact you seem to neglect, my sweet: Margo and I are the siblings. Don’t you think we’ll do our best to make him comfortable?” I made myself sound surer than I felt. “Don’t you think we’ll welcome him with all we’re worth? And don’t say he’s insecure.”
“I wasn’t going to,” Lily said, looking surprised.
The bathroom door opened and Susan flew in. “Henk said you guys…oh, Jesus. Exit, stage left.”
“No, wait—it’s okay,” Lily said nervously. “I’d better get back to the table.” She left in a hurry.
Susan and I stood in the middle of the bathroom. Her face and the starched white front of her shirt appeared lavender in the strange light. I made a great effort to smile. “See what you can do?” I asked, gesturing at the bathroom door through which Lily had just left. “Your play is so powerful, you’re stirring things up between me and Lily.” It was true.
She looked dubious. “There’s more to it…”
“So what if there is? You’re the catalyst. Now let’s go out there. Louis must be dying of pride for you right now.”
“He is a bit puffy.”
“I’ve got to go kiss him.” We walked into the restaurant, where a few people started applauding instantly. We headed for Louis, who was hugging a fat champagne bottle to his portly chest. I bent him over backwards, planting a wet kiss on his full lips, and then I rejoined Lily and Henk, who were cuddling at the table and hardly even noticed when I sat down.
“Listen, Una,” Henk said, his eyes concerned. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. You ran away so fast, we didn’t have a chance to discuss everything.”
The harder I tried to relax, the stiffer I became. “Oh? What should we have discussed?”
“Come on, Una,” Lily said. “Try to get—”
“Liebchen, this is between me and your sister. It is important that she accept me as a member of the family,” Henk said. “I see the problem constantly with patients.”
“Wait one minute—do you think I haven’t accepted you?” I asked, fuming. “I would love to be friendly with you. Haven’t I said that a million times?” I looked to Lily, who nodded but clearly didn’t want to cross Henk by speaking.
He patted my shoulder. “My dear, we somehow started on the wrong foot. It makes my beloved so sad when you and I quarrel. We can start over,” he said sincerely, smiling in a way that cajoled me to join him. “So, we had a misunderstanding tonight. What about it? What’s the harm?”
Wanting to be clear, I asked, “What was the misunderstanding?”
“Oh, about the medium, your TV program. I attacked the soap opera, not you. Lily tells me you’re the best actress performing on TV, and I believe her. If she says you’re the best, you’re the best.”
I said nothing, trying t
o determine whether I had just received an apology. Whatever it was, Lily’s eyes begged me to accept it. I smiled, leaning across the table to shake Henk’s hand. But I wondered. Lily needed him too badly. And even as I smiled at him, his eyes held me at bay. Lily could delude herself, but Henk and I knew just where we stood. He pretended to pull, but he was pushing with all his might.
Chapter 8
On Beyond the Bridge, Delilah’s life was once again building toward a homicidal crescendo with her, naturally, as the upcoming victim. Her patient, Nancy Vaughn, appeared to be merely a neurotic cub reporter when in fact she was a psychopathic killer. She had killed before, and she would kill again. She had murdered a landlady, an indigent amnesiac, and a previous lover. She had left a trail of bodies from California to Mooreland, along with an equal number of identities. She had been Joralemon Trabert, Mary Smith, Mary Smitten, Gayle Horton, Gail Appleby, and Sandi Greene, but it was Nancy Vaughn who would attack Delilah. Delilah had no idea. Her relationship with Beck was going well, and that made her happy.
Why didn’t Delilah marry Beck? The real reason, according to Chance, was that their often-thwarted love match made the show’s most popular story line. Chance feared that if he ever let the marriage take place, the viewers would let out little sighs of contentment and immediately switch the channel. Thus, the scriptwriters kept throwing spanners into the works of romance, taking Beck and Delilah close to the altar, then giving one of them amnesia, a new love interest, or a death threat as a way out.
During those weeks when spring turned to summer, I continued my crazy pace. I flew around the country making appearances whenever my shooting schedule allowed. Susan and Hester’s Sister were featured in the arts sections of newspapers from New York to San Francisco. The play had already been booked for Broadway in the fall; there was talk of a national tour and a movie. I would read those articles and fight down my envy. Susan was having exactly what everyone dreamed about when they began drama school: artistic success. Remaining true to one’s ideals while making a bundle in the process. Alone in hotel rooms at night I would get halfhearted urges to call Joe or Mrs. Finnegan and listen to them tell me what a wonderful actress I was. But that would be no different from the waitresses, flight attendants, women wearing business suits on the streets of St. Louis, Phoenix, and Denver saying, “We love you, Delilah.” It was lovely, but I kept thinking of Edmund Wicklow saying of Susan in Manhattan News, “What an exceptional talent!”
