“You know, like a bunch of children. Always in the fantasyland, always waiting for a break, playing make-believe. Your friend was wearing a fake mustache. You’d think if you was going to kill yourself you’d take off the costume.”
So the mustache wasn’t real.
“It’s a calling,” I said to DiBanco.
“Yeah, right. Like I was called to be a detective.”
“Weren’t you?”
“No, I wanted to play baseball. But I had to be realistic. That’s the difference.”
I took Guy’s bag back to my apartment, dropped it on my kitchen table, and made myself a cup of coffee, postponing this final encounter with all things Guy. It had seemed bulky when he had it on his lap, but in fact there wasn’t much in it. A shabby wallet with his license, a bookstore ID, one credit card, and thirty dollars in cash, one of those collapsible leather coin purses containing sixty-seven cents in change, a leather key ring with five keys. A travel toothbrush and a travel-size tube of Colgate toothpaste. A comb. A wool muffler. A pair of wool socks and an unopened box of white Jockey briefs. A blank notebook and a pen. A copy of the Playbill for Uncle Vanya. A paperback sci-fi novel, God Emperor of Dune. I flipped through the Playbill. My name on the cast list had been scratched out with a red marker; my listing in the Who’s Who box was entirely blotted out in red.
The sun streamed through my kitchen window as I drank my coffee, considering the last hours of Guy’s unhappy, unlucky life. According to Madeleine they had been fighting all night, even on the subway. At some point, either before or during that argument, he’d packed this backpack. What was he planning? The underwear and toothbrush suggested he intended to be away, at least overnight. The gun must have been in the bag already. Did Madeleine know he had it? Was that why, when she heard the shot, she knew what it was? The mustache, I thought, why the mustache? Did he plan to murder me and then take my place onstage after the intermission? What a bizarre idea, but not impracticable.
I put everything but the keys back in the bag and stowed it in my closet. Someone had to clear out the apartment and let the landlord know his tenants wouldn’t be returning. I dug the address Detective DiBanco had written for me from my coat pocket, took up the keys, and went out into the street. Maybe there would be some clue—a diary, perhaps—that would clear up the mystery of Guy’s intentions toward me.
The East Village is still a gritty territory where the opportunities to enjoy a tattoo session are limitless, but it was worse then. An evening stroll required making a choice between dodging the rats on the street or the dope peddlers on the sidewalk. These denizens weren’t much in evidence in daylight, but the occasional syringe or strung-out, babbling addict lolling curbside provided helpful reminders for those who might be duped by the run-down gentility of the buildings. One had to circumvent the black steel doors flung open like bat’s wings over steps descending vertiginously into the gloom of various basements, a vast underworld of violence and criminality.
The Margates’ apartment was in a brick-fronted building with a fire escape laced across the front. Steel steps rose over the used-clothing store at street level to a bright-red, triple-locked steel door that had been installed during a recent, hopeful makeover. I mounted the steps and plied the keys until I found the ones that fit, hauled the heavy door open, and stepped into the foyer. It wasn’t bad. Black-and-white tile floor, red walls, a line of steel mailboxes, and a dusty but solid concrete staircase leading to the upper regions. Apartment E was on the third floor, behind a wooden door with only two locks. I tried the keys again; the door glided open before me.
I’d been expecting penury and grubbiness, but this was bourgeois respectability. Guy and Madeleine had been playing house. Very small house, there were only two rooms and a bath, but house all the same. Dishes stacked in the kitchen cupboard, geraniums on the windowsill off the fire escape, a flowered cloth on the two-seater table tucked into the corner between the fridge and the sink. They’d only been in the place for a month, but it was seriously furnished. Well, I told myself, they’d been together for six years and they’d acquired stuff. A painted bookcase containing the books I would later pack up and move to Connecticut, a wicker couch with paisley cushions, a lady’s desk with a few envelopes on top, a swiveling desk chair on wheels. A curtain of the same paisley cloth as the cushions hung from brass rings, pulled partially aside to separate the space. Behind it was the bed, an iron bed frame painted shiny black. The patterned sheets and quilt were thrown halfway back over the mattress, as if the sleepers had leapt up and rushed away. Perhaps they had, I thought. Homely items, fuzzy slippers, hers, and leather slippers, his, a half-full glass of water on the night table, a dresser with one of her blouses folded neatly on top. Oddest of all was the double frame with two photos propped on a ledge that must once have been a fireplace mantel. The frame was hinged and had an antique look to it, black glass mat and pewter filigree edging. The photos were professional head shots, his and hers. They appeared to be looking at each other, his expression cool, masculine, serious; hers demure, but with a frank sexuality about the mouth. I laid the frame flat and stood looking down at them. His wasn’t recent; he had more hair. “This is too sad,” I said to the empty room. They slept in this bed every night as innocently as children, with these artificial selves framed and elevated like devotional images of saints gazing at each other in the upper atmosphere.
Or perhaps they didn’t sleep like children. Perhaps they had screaming fights all night, as Madeleine claimed, or perhaps they had, as Guy insisted, sex all the time.
I left the bedroom feeling oddly chastened, and approached the desk. The papers were just bills and lists. I opened the drawer: a box of paper clips, an open package of loose-leaf paper, a checkbook. It was a joint account, Guy Margate and Madeleine Delavergne. I found the name of the realty company to which they were paying the enormous sum of four hundred dollars a month. Guy had written a check for twelve hundred the month before, first month, last month, and damage deposit. The second payment was overdue by a few days; the balance in the account was three hundred and seventy-five dollars.
This was sad, too, so sad that I sat down on the desk chair, completely enervated by the turmoil of my emotions. Noise from the street assaulted the building, shouts, cars, sirens, trucks with the reverberating backup beeps, a revving roar that sounded like a leaf blower, though there were no dead leaves in the world just yet, a dog barking and barking, and beneath all this the persistent thrumming hum that was the city itself, the living, breathing, pulsing, all-consuming heart of it, the never-ending beat that elated some and pursued others to oblivion.
That was when I decided that once I got Madeleine out of the hospital I would take her out of the city.
I put the checkbook in my pocket—I would contact the Realtor and arrange to pack up the apartment—and let myself out the door. I had only an hour before I had to be at the theater. The understudy wasn’t bad, but I couldn’t warm up to her. When Madeleine’s Elena complained that she was bored it was a shameful confession. In the understudy’s interpretation it was an accusation. My Astrov was becoming something of a clown, frantically trying to amuse her.
The next morning Teddy called to consult with me about the urn for Guy’s ashes.
“I don’t care,” I said. “Just make sure the lid is tight.”
“Should it be metal or ceramic? Wayne thinks it should be bronze.”
“Do they have lead?”
There was a moment of silence. “Here’s one that’s copper lined in lead. Not bad-looking.”
“Get that one.”
We had a simple ceremony at a funeral home in Queens that Wayne recommended because two of his uncles were interred in the adjoining mausoleum. Teddy put an announcement in the papers, and to our surprise a few people showed up—two clerks from the store in Philadelphia, the manager of the Columbus Circle store, and a few actors Guy had worked with in the Italian play and the Broadway disaster. His agent, Bev Arbuckle, didn’t s
how, though I’d left her a message on her answering machine.
I got Guy’s birth date from his driver’s license and Teddy had his name and dates carved on a marble panel, behind which the urn was safely sealed away. Teddy had paid for something called “perpetual care,” which meant, once Guy was stowed in his slot, we didn’t have to come back.
Guy was thirty-nine years old. He shot himself in the heart a week before his fortieth birthday.
Now for a final leap across a canyon of twenty years to the present. Madeleine and I are married and live in a small Connecticut town near the regional playhouse where I spent that mystical summer with Marlene Webern and where I now serve on the board. As it turns out, I have a knack for fund-raising and am much valued both by the playhouse and by the local prep school where I chair the theater program. We do a lot of dining out with the well-heeled.
In that first year Madeleine was in and out of Benthaven having her mood swings adjusted and calibrated and gradually recovering most of her memory. There are still gaps, the night Guy died being most notable. She knows it happened because she’s been told, but she has no memory of it. She generally dislikes talking about the past and I sometimes suspect that considerable swatches are still largely blank. Every morning she takes an antidepressant pill; she never forgets that. It alters something fundamental in her; it narrows her range. For obvious reasons, but also, I think, because of this medication, she has no interest in acting. She doesn’t like going to plays; she says the theater makes her anxious. She prefers movies.
Yet she often quotes lines from plays. She still has a lot of Shakespeare, which crops up in her ordinary conversation. If I read her a bit from the newspaper about political skulduggery, she nods quietly and observes “Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall” or “Knavery’s plain face is never seen till used,” that sort of thing. These lines drop from her lips without intonation, like a bag of chips falling into the tray of a vending machine when the correct code has been punched.
She’s Madeleine but not Madeleine, though she doesn’t know it. She laughs more easily, seldom weeps, has no ambition, is affectionate and loving and warm, but she’s not passionate about anything, including me. She’s a serious gardener, but she’s still a miserable cook.
I don’t act much anymore myself, though occasionally I take a small role in a school production or fill in for a bit at the playhouse. I keep track of what’s on in the city and go in whenever Teddy has a role, which, these days, is more and more often.
In the ’80s, as everyone knows, AIDS wiped out a sizable percentage of the arts community in New York; Wayne Lee was a casualty. Teddy spent two desperate years trying to find some way to save his partner, but there was almost nothing available in the way of treatment, and Wayne’s last months were gruesome. To make matters worse, some secrets about Wayne’s financial dealings and, of course, sexual meanderings surfaced, and Teddy was forced to see his beloved in an unflattering light even as he was giving every ounce of his energy and patience and affection to the dying man. Was Wayne grateful? I went so far as to ask this once, and Teddy replied without hesitation, “I couldn’t care less. I’m losing him.”
By the time Wayne died, Teddy was mentally and physically worn out. He couldn’t bear being in the city, where everything reminded him of his lost happiness. Around that time I bought the small house I still live in, with a big yard which Madeleine straightway turned into an Eden complete with apple tree. There was a guest cottage at the back which I fitted out. Teddy became a regular visitor; especially welcome for his cooking skills. Often we stayed up late, after Madeleine had retired for the night, drinking and talking. At first all we talked about was Wayne, but gradually the subject turned to old times and to acting. I encouraged him to go upon the boards again and he admitted that he missed the theater, though he never wanted to attend an acting class again in his life. I pulled a string or two and he got a slot in the company at the playhouse. He spent the summer living in the boardinghouse, working hard and sleeping well, absorbed in an energetic group of actors, mostly younger than he was. He played Malvolio in a production of Twelfth Night to great acclaim—he was riotously funny, with such perfect comic timing that the audience began tittering the moment he stepped onto the stage. His fellow actors admired him, he made a few connections, and in the fall, when he returned to the city, he acquired an agent and threw himself, with a good will, into the grinding business of auditions. He began to get parts, mostly comic, and to live the life of a working actor. Young men were drawn to him because he was kindhearted and he fell in and out of love, but he has never lived with anyone again. He’s working too hard.
So happy ending all round, more or less. I know you’re relieved. But much as we might imagine we can leave the past behind, it has a nasty way of pressing its hoary old face against the window just as we are sitting down to the feast.
About a month ago I was taking the train down to the city to meet with a select group of theatrical high rollers who might throw some money Connecticut-ward, and to see a new play in which Teddy had a role. It was a chilly January day. Madeleine dislikes going to the city in the winter, so she opted to stay at home. I was staying over in a hotel because the rollers did business at breakfast, so I packed an overnight bag. I was closing the lid of my faithful but battered sidekick of many years when the zipper jammed. Pulling it back didn’t work; it locked up like a safe and wouldn’t budge in either direction. Bracing against the bed with knee, gripping of the tiny metal tab, furious yanking accompanied by imprecations followed by the sudden disheartening thweeeet as the placket parted company with the suitcase, ensued. Renewed curses brought my lovely wife to the bedroom door. “Is something wrong, darling?” she said mildly.
“My suitcase is completely fucked!” I exclaimed.
She joined me in examining the damage and agreed with my diagnosis. “Take mine,” she offered.
“I don’t like yours. It’s too big.”
“I used to have a smaller one,” she said. “Where is it? Is it in the attic? I think it’s in the attic.”
Together we ambled down the hall to the attic door. As I climbed the narrow steps ahead of her, it occurred to me that a trip to the attic is an excursion into history, and that all over the world the present unravels beneath the stored detritus of the past; that’s what attics are for. At the top I pulled the light cord and turned to watch Madeleine trudging up behind me. The harsh light from the bare bulb illuminated the fine creases around her eyes, the deeper lines around her mouth. She is still a beautiful woman; age only serves to accentuate her aura of refinement and sexuality. Her face was lifted to mine and she was smiling in a distant, distracted way. “Don’t look back,” she said.
“Why not?” I asked.
“You might lose me,” she said, arriving at my side. “I think it’s inside a bigger case. It’s part of a set.”
We proceeded to examine the area I call Mount Luggage, a museum of the improvements in the design of the wheeled suitcase over the years, including the steel-trap-on-wheels that pinched so many fingers around the world and the equally hazardous four-wheeled hard-side. “It’s here,” Madeleine said, pulling out a gray two-wheeler.
“Why did you say I might lose you?” I asked.
She bent over the case and unzipped the top, revealing the promised smaller bag within. “I was following you in the dark and then you turned on the light and I thought I might be coming up from the underworld.”
“Like Eurydice,” I said.
“And then you looked back.” She pulled the smaller case out and set it between us. “Will this do?”
I put my arms around her, resting my cheek against her hair. “It’s fine,” I said, but I was thinking, as I often do, What is in my wife’s head? My hand strayed to her breast.
“You’ll make yourself late,” she cautioned.
She was right. I snatched the bag, carried it back to the bedroom, transferred my travel togs, kissed my helpmeet, and headed for the door
.
“You have time,” Madeleine cautioned as I picked my way around the ice on the walk. “Don’t rush. Drive carefully.”
A few hours later in the hotel room I unpacked Madeleine’s bag, carefully hanging my cashmere turtleneck and Armani jacket in the closet, so as to appear fresh, stylish, and wrinkle-free for the millionaires on the morn. I removed my underwear and socks and slid my fingers inside the back pocket where, in my rush to change bags, I had stuffed my oral hygiene products. In this process a card, stuck against the side of the case, was dislodged. As I extracted my toothpaste, the card edge peeped mischievously out at me. I pulled it loose. It was a note card with a faded Japanese block print on the front: a waterfall, pedestrians with umbrellas crossing a bridge. The edges had been pressed together so long they were joined and I had to pry the top loose with a fingernail.
Inside I recognized Madeleine’s handwriting.
My Darling,
Your beautiful flowers were in the dressing room when I arrived. How heartening to read your sweet note with the fragrance of roses filling the air. I got right over my jitters and the performance went amazingly well. I died beautifully, everyone agreed.
I can hardly wait to see you and you to see the play and tell me all your thoughts. Dearest, I miss you awfully. “The heavens forbid but that our loves and comforts should increase, even as our days do grow!”
And grow. Come as soon as you can and rescue me from this villainous Moor. He’s killing me.
Love, kisses, M.
I sat on the bed and read this billet-doux a few times over. The quote I dimly recognized, Desdemona to Othello. It took about three minutes to commit the whole message to memory. Then I put it in my jacket pocket, changed my shoes, and went out to the street. Teddy’s play was a longish walk from the hotel, but I had only one thought, which my brain repeated every step of the way: So she loved him.
The play was at the Laura Pels, a fairly new theater, small and well-appointed. It was a comedy about a dysfunctional family, not great but not bad, not very funny, though Teddy was ripping in the role of the father who can’t say consonants, a little quote from an old Feydeau farce brought nicely up-to-date. All the acting was top-notch and the audience liked it well enough. One feels relieved these days when a play is not like television.
Valerie Martin Page 23
