Valerie Martin

by The Confessions of Edward Day (v5)

  Or at least I do. I was sweating with relief as well as anxiety, relief that Madeleine would recover and be herself again, anxiety that she would be different, that she would decide to leave me out of her life and cleave to her husband. There was an element of incredulity and anger that she might do that, for I couldn’t persuade myself that she was in love with Guy. Now there would be no other reason for her to stay with him. I thought there was a possibility that she would continue to play us somehow, that we were sport to her, which made me anxious, but also relieved, because then I wouldn’t be responsible for anything, for any of it. I confess that I had felt only relief at the news that she would not be able to have a child, which was enormously cruel and selfish of me, but there it is. I felt that. But I was also made anxious because I feared she would respond to her condition recklessly; it might make her bitter and angry and she might detect my indifference to the matter and hate me for it.

  I took out a cigarette, examined it closely, and put it back in the pack. I recollected the shocking vision of Madeleine huddled on Teddy’s bathroom floor, pressing into the mound of bloody towels between her legs, and another of her glazed eyes and blue lips as the medics descended upon her and the art scene outside yielded briefly to the life-threatening-emergency scene. It had all happened so quickly; I’d felt sidelined, a voyeur. Guy had been at the center of the action, forcefully taking his rightful place, which galled me, yet I had not wanted to be in the ambulance, was relieved to be left behind.

  Marlene Webern’s steady voice came to me: “There’s a coldness in you.”

  She was right, I thought. Guy had accused me of being calm, and I had replied that I was not, which was true, I was beyond calm. He had his act down: he was nervous, erratic, abrupt, he couldn’t keep still, he couldn’t stop speculating about what might go wrong or right, he was frightened and hopeful by turns. When the news finally came, he was tearful. But all I had felt throughout the ordeal, and what I felt then, alone in that chilly room designed to accommodate desperate people in the throes of powerful emotions, was a generalized sadness and a humbling conviction that somehow I had been exposed and that everyone concerned now knew I was entirely unequal to my part.

  ———

  It was a long time before I saw Madeleine again. Guy didn’t call me from the hospital. Instead he called Madeleine’s mother, with whom she had a difficult relationship. Madeleine, too weak to argue, agreed to go home to Cleveland.

  I was absorbed in rehearsals for the Pinter and then in performances, so the only information I got about Madeleine and Guy was through conversations with Mindy It was partly from her and partly from idle gossip, some of it in the pages of Back Stage, that I followed the ensuing roller-coaster ride that was Guy Margate’s career.

  While Madeleine was in Cleveland, Guy was offered a job as assistant stage manager and understudy to the lead in a Broadway-bound play that was going into tryouts in Philadelphia. He expressed mixed feelings about this prospect to everyone who would listen, but was eventually persuaded by Bev Arbuckle that it was a good option, as he had nothing else going and was desperate for cash. The lead, a talented actor named Marc Trilby, took a dislike to Guy from the start. Early in the rehearsals, the story went, he announced that Guy would never get a chance to play the role for an audience, not once, so he should just forget about it. In the meantime Madeleine, her health improved, frantic to get away from her mother, and determined that, as she could not have a family, she would have a career, joined her husband in Philadelphia, where she quickly landed a role in a revival of Shaw’s Heartbreak House at a regional theater.

  Guy’s play opened to excellent notices. Marc Trilby was particularly well received and the producers, buoyed by their success in the provinces, prepared to move the show to Broadway. At the end of the Philadelphia run the actors, all save Guy, were euphoric to have a hit on their hands. They arrived in town and immediately began their rehearsals on the new stage.

  A few nights before the opening, Marc Trilby was having dinner with well-heeled friends in a new Italian restaurant on the Upper West Side. It was a tall, narrow building with dining rooms on two floors, the kitchen and bathrooms tucked away below street level. In its previous incarnation there was a dining room on the third floor, but in the renovation this space was consigned to storage. Late in the evening, Marc Trilby, well lubricated by alcohol and the praise of his fellows, excused himself from the table and wandered off in search of the men’s room. Somehow he persuaded himself that it was up one flight instead of down two. He climbed the carpeted stairs, crossed a dimly lit landing, opened a likely-looking door, stepped into an open shaft that had once served as a dumbwaiter, fell through two floors, and landed, to the astonishment of the line chef, on a prep table in the kitchen. Both of his legs were broken in the fall.

  Two nights later, Guy Margate made his Broadway debut.

  The New York critics were unanimous in their contempt. The script, the direction, the acting, were variously disparaged, but one thing all agreed upon was the inadequacy of the lead, one Guy Margate, who, it was acknowledged, had leaped into the fray because of an unfortunate accident to the estimable Marc Trilby. Audiences, so warned, stayed away. In two weeks the producers were forced to admit the failure of their enterprise and the play quietly closed.

  I didn’t see it—it was during my Pinter run—but Mindy did and even her charitable heart could find nothing kind to say about Guy’s performance. “He’s just not right for the role,” she concluded. “And, of course, the reviews have been so brutal he’s terrified and it shows.”

  Did Madeleine witness her husband’s humiliation upon the boards? I didn’t know. I’d heard not one word from her since the night she nearly died. I didn’t know how to reach her, but she knew where I was, so I concluded, not unreasonably I think, that her silence was purposeful, and that I’d lost her one more time.

  Part III

  I’d like to skip ahead six years to the winter of 1982, but having so carefully detailed the events of a short period I fear my readers will require a summary of this gap. For myself, I can do it in two words: I worked. The Pinter was a success, my Stanley hailed as “hilariously punchy,” “as startled and startling as a deer in the headlights” (I loved that one), and “sheer madness fueled by paranoia and delusions of shabby grandeur.” I was nominated for an award that William Hurt won. Barney had a good strategy which kept me busy, and I was lucky—or so my friends thought. Gradually I had to phase out my waiter’s job because I was acting too much to keep it. Not that I was making any money. The explosion of Off and Off-Off theater in the ’70s put a lot of actors out there, but the exciting new work was often at non-Equity theaters which paid less than union wage. A common practice was to use a pseudonym, wrapping, in effect, an actor who wasn’t in the union around an actor who was. Mine was Dale Edwards, not terribly original, I admit, but I’ve never wanted to get too far from myself. It was a heady but discouraging time; I was in a production with an elaborate $20,000 set where the actors were paid literally nothing but the honor of working with that scenery. Another short run in a tiny midtown theater paid $50 a week. At the Roundabout, when the paychecks arrived, the techies put down their hammers and saws, left the lights on, and marched off to the bank in a herd, because they knew if they waited until the following morning, the checks would bounce. Many fine actors, reduced to doing commercials, driving cabs, or juggling temp jobs, gave up and went to California. Some tied themselves to regional companies where they had job security of a sort. My way was slow, but it was steady. I was single and parsimonious, and my apartment was rent-controlled. Others had it a lot harder. Al Pacino, famously, slept on the stage in a ratty theater on the Lower East Side.

  I saw Teddy rarely, usually backstage, because, stalwart friend that he was, he attended every play I was in, no matter how small the part or tattered the venue. Wayne was never along. As it turned out, Wayne had no interest in theater, but Teddy maintained this didn’t affect the amatory blis
s of their cohabitation. What did put a strain on it was, as everyone had predicted, Teddy’s father, who had gotten wind of his son’s attachment and recalled him to the family manse for a serious talk. “He told me he’d always known I would disgrace the family,” Teddy confided, “but he said he was impressed by the originality of my failure, and how many parts it had to it: first the acting thing, which was pathetic, then the homosexual thing, which was disgusting, and then the Chinese thing, which was so appalling he didn’t want to speak of it.”

  “Did he cut you off?” I asked.

  “We’re in a standoff,” Teddy explained. “It’s all very Oscar Wildesville, except Wayne has no fortune to lose. The pater has agreed to continue my allowance for the meantime. It actually comes from my grandfather’s estate so he would have to make an effort to hold it back and I could conceivably sue and win.”

  “You’ve consulted a lawyer?”

  “Wayne did,” Teddy said. “I can’t be bothered, frankly.”

  I considered the implications of this last revelation to be of the worst sort possible.

  Back to the deep freeze of December 1982. An actor was in the White House and all was right with the world. I had auditioned for the part of Jean, the valet in Strindberg’s Miss Julie, which was being revived at a now extinct theater in the East Village. It’s a delicious role, full of menace, subtle seduction, and all manner of imposture. Jean is a valet who takes total control of his vivacious and temperamental mistress; in the end she is so completely under his spell that he persuades her to kill herself. The theater was Equity and with good reviews might support an extended run. I read for the callback with a beautiful actress, Sylvia Brent, who went on to have a career in a long-running soap opera, a fate she didn’t deserve. She wasn’t brilliant, it can’t be denied, and I could tell she was nervous, so I played into her insecurity and we came off strongly. I got the part, she didn’t.

  We opened in icy January to good notices and receptive audiences, all pleased to be warm for a few hours in a darkened theater while class warfare played out convincingly on the stage before them. Our six-week run was extended an extra two, though it was clear that we wouldn’t be sustainable beyond that, the Strindberg ceiling being understandably low. One dark Sunday afternoon in February, when the streets were glazed with ice and the wind was rattling the windows so forcefully one expected to see Catherine Earnshaw peering in looking for Heathcliff, I was in the dressing room after the show, dreading the gauntlet to the subway. We’d played to a diminished audience of committed Strindberg enthusiasts and stalwarts from the sticks. Miss Julie is a three-person piece, just the valet, Jean; his mistress, the eponymous Julie; and the kitchen maid, Kirstin, who may or may not be Jean’s fiancée. Our trio shared a comfortable, old-fashioned dressing room/greenroom with a mirrored counter, a screen, a couch that sometimes served as a stage prop, a coffee table, a sink, and an impressive British-style electric kettle. The ladies had gone, having agreed to share a cab, as they both lived midtown. Feeling mildly depressed by the low turnout, I had prepared myself a mug of tea and settled on the couch. The play was in its last week and I was, as always, uncertain about what I would do next. I knew what I wanted to do, however, and I was on the very cusp of doing it. I had an audition for the part of Astrov in a new production of Uncle Vanya scheduled at the Public Theater, a part I wanted more than I cared to let myself know. The casting director had seen both my Stanley and my Jean. She had called Barney and invited me to audition, so my hopes were perilously high.

  To appear at the Public Theater in a Chekhov play would qualify as an enormous coup, but it was also a dangerous gamble. One could still be flayed alive by the critics, but it would never be the fault of the play—one would have failed to come up to the standard of an acknowledged genius.

  I was reading, for the hundredth time, Astrov’s prophetic speech about the deforestation of the district, and his despair of saving the natural habitat that once flourished and provided food and shade and spiritual sustenance for the peasants who, deluded by the siren call of progress, relentlessly cut down trees and cleared land. In two of Chekhov’s plays, The Cherry Orchard and Uncle Vanya, the fate of trees is of nearly as much interest as the fate of the characters. The Cherry Orchard ends with the clanging of the ax, and the audience experiences this sound as dread.

  There came a light rapping at the dressing-room door; nothing like an ax, but startling nonetheless. At first I thought it was the wind, effecting some structural creaking—the theater was old and full of complaints—but then it came again, a light drumming as of fingernails against the wood. “Come in,” I said.

  At this point I hardly need tell you the name of the actor who entered the scene. But I will remind you that I hadn’t seen Guy Margate in six years, so, though you may be feeling very smug, I was taken completely by surprise. Guy, as was his habit, came on in medias res.

  “I’ve got to hand it to you,” he said, “when it comes to playing the brute with women, you’re totally credible.”

  I closed my script and laid it on the coffee table. Guy, I said. “I can hardly believe it. I thought you were in Philadelphia.”

  He stepped into the light, taking in the furnishings with his ever critical eye. “Isn’t this cozy,” he said. “You could practically live in here.”

  “It is,” I said. “Have a seat. I can offer you a cup of tea.”

  “That would be fine,” he said. I got up to tend the kettle while he stood there awkwardly, trying to decide whether to sit on the couch or pull up a stool from the counter.

  “What brings you to town?” I asked.

  “We’re transitioning back to the city. Philly’s just not what Maddie needs at this point. She has an important audition that could make the difference. She was too nervous to come alone, so I came with her.”

  “Black or herbal?” I asked.

  “Black,” he said.

  As I busied myself with the tea, I sneaked brief glimpses at my unexpected guest. He’d gone through a fairly marked physical transformation. There was less of everything, less hair, less weight, less color. He looked as though he’d been laundered once too often. His eyes were odd—they bulged in a way I didn’t remember—and his lips were dry and chapped. He was clean shaven, his hair was short, the hollows in his cheeks were deep, and there were two grooves, like quotation marks, between his brows. He looked older than me, and I wondered if he actually was. He wore a heavy green wool coat, too wide in the shoulders, too long at the sleeves. “Take your coat off,” I suggested.

  He shrugged off the garment, glancing about for a place to put it.

  “There’s a hook on that screen,” I said.

  “It’s bitter out there,” he said, hanging up the coat. He’d developed a slight stoop, as well as a corrective habit of lifting his shoulders and rolling them back and down.

  “How did you know I was here?” I asked.

  “Teddy told us. We saw him last night.”

  “But Madeleine didn’t come with you.”

  “She’s off with Mindy somewhere.”

  “Did she know you were coming to my show?” The water was bubbling and I handed him a stained mug with a tea bag in it, which he looked into ruefully. “It’s just tea stains,” I said.

  “No. She doesn’t know I’m here,” he said. He held out his cup. As I filled it with boiling water, the old familiar distrust and physical revulsion was aroused in me, sharp and pungent as a scent, and I drew away from him.

  “How is she?” I asked.

  Guy pulled out a stool and propped himself upon it, letting his long legs splay apart and cradling the warm mug between his hands. His pants legs hiked up over the top of his well-worn boots. Horrific argyle socks clung to his thin shanks. I looked away. “She’s good,” he said. “Well, you know Maddie, she’s good and she’s not good.”

  “You call her Maddie.”

  “She doesn’t mind. She likes it, actually. You were wrong about that.”

  “So what�
��s not good?”

  “Her nerves. She’s working a lot. Her career is really taking off. In fact, I’ve pretty much had to put my own on hold because even though she’s working, she’s not making much money, of course, she’s an actress, and we have to live somewhere and we have to eat and someone has to put food in front of her or she won’t eat.”

  “So you’ve got a day job.”

  “At a bookstore. I’ve been there a few years. I’m a manager now.”

  I didn’t entirely buy this tale of husbandly self-sacrifice. Rumor had it that after the Broadway disaster Guy had tried out for a lot of roles in New York and Philadelphia but no one had any use for him. There was a particularly cruel bit of gossip, put out by an actor who should have known better, that a playwright impressed by Guy’s audition was warned by the director, “Forget it. What you just saw is all you’re ever going to get.”

  This vicious tidbit came to mind as I watched Guy sipping his tea. “Well, that’s good,” I said.

  He swallowed, craning his neck and doing the thing with his shoulders. “Really,” he said. “What’s good about it?”

  “Well, that you’re a manager.”

  “I’m killing myself,” he said. “Managers don’t get overtime and work twice as many hours. It’s a trap.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “I have to do everything, the shopping, the cooking, pay all the bills, keep Maddie calmed down. I never sleep.”

  I recalled the arduous business of keeping Madeleine calmed down. “But her career is taking off.”

  “Regional stuff, but solid roles. Shakespeare, she did Desdemona last year. Rave reviews. She went up to Yale this fall and did a new play. There was a write-up in the Times; you probably saw it.”

  “No,” I admitted. “I missed it.”

  “He said the play was a bomb but Maddie was a star.”