Emma Who Saved My Life

by Wilton Barnhardt

  At first I thought I shouldn’t be a First Reader because I didn’t finish college and had a limited background in theater literature, but Joyce gave me this look that said: You don’t think reading this crap takes any talent or smarts, do you? And I recall, god, with a blush now, that I told Joyce that I was looking forward to reading plays. Joyce smoked her cigarette impassively, with the merest shake of her head: “Gil, darling, they’ve been waiting for you to come along. For a long time.”

  Joyce would collect a week’s worth and drop them in a pile in front of me and Monica, the second-to-last person to join the Venice, and Joyce would give a little spiel: “All right, here they are, one performance only before the Trashcan. Three piles. No Way in Hell. Not Half Bad. Might Work. Let me warn you I’ve seen only two “Might Work”s in twenty-five years here come over the transom. If the writer has an agent, we send it to Schmeen in case it’s for real. If it’s a real prize turkey, we keep it for our Classics file for the Christmas party.”

  At the Christmas party three things invariably happened, and having missed last year’s, I got to hear all about them: 1) the Classics folder was read, some of the actors taking part in the dialogue (Him: You lied to me, Sylvia. I thought we had love! Her: Oh we did, we did, Jerome, but it went away, far far away…”); 2) Joyce was coerced into performing her tap-dance routine from The Follies of 1939 and everyone loved it and everyone said her legs hadn’t changed and they were still those of a nineteen-year-old and Joyce sat there and ate up her annual night of adulation; and 3) Arnie Schmeen, Sr., would get up to give a speech, drunk, and get sentimental (“But what is the Theater? I’ll tell you what it is—it’s Dreams, it’s Hopes, it’s Magic … and if anyone tells you, hey, it’s just a business, well you tell ’em they’re wrong, baby, wrong as can be…”) and rousing and teary-eyed until the emotion overwhelmed him and he was led away, back to the table with the spiked punch and everyone was supposed to, at some point after it, go up and tell him how much what he said meant to them, and the actors cynically competed amongst themselves for who could lay the biggest pile of bullshit on Arnie (“Oh Mr. Schmeen, I … I don’t think I ever understood why I was here, in the Theater, until you got up there and said what you just said…”), and woe unto the person who broke up laughing in midspeech. But anyway, in my days at the Venice, particularly in the summer as the Hot New Ideas for the Fall Season drifted in, and Monica and I sat there in the boiling hot practice room dragging ourselves through these things, I personally put quite a few Classics in the Classics folder.

  Monica would read the one-paragraph description required on all submissions. At first we were conscientious and read some of each play, but finally we learned it wasn’t necessary …

  Monica would read: “Steve is married, but his ex-roommate John is gay; Mary is married to Steve but he doesn’t know about her lesbian past! What happens when all three plus Mary’s strident lover share a mountain cabin in New England for the weekend? A delightful romp, a comedy of manners—”

  Not Half Bad pile, I’d say. At least there was a plot.

  Next. Monica read on: “A musical based on the Diary of Anne Frank. It moves from light romantic comedy—”

  You’ve gotta be kidding, I said. Classic folder.

  “—to the tragedy that was Nazi Germany for the Jews. Anna! (yes, Gil, with an exclamation mark) will make you laugh, make you cry, fun for the whole family, heartwarming and educational…”

  Is there a rundown of musical numbers, I asked.

  Monica couldn’t read she was giggling so hard, “Oh god yes, of course—he’s even got a cassette tape for us. Oh Gil we’ve got to put it on and hear ‘I Call My Closet Home.’”

  I wanted to hear something called “Jawohl,” and “Mama’s Song.” Monica and I put first dibs on performing “Maybe the Nazis Are People Too” at the Christmas party.

  Slowly the pile would lessen. Monica and I were becoming friends through all this, and we gossiped about people, trusted each other sort of, discussed our eventual goals—a true TOP SECRET as, bizarrely, no one ever admitted to any ambition in the theater. It would be six o’clock and time to go home, or for a drink with Monica, and on some days we were clever enough to be so quiet, so unnoticed that we stayed up in the rehearsal room all afternoon unmissed, goofing off, avoiding other assignments.

  Real life seldom intruded once I moved to daytime at the theater. There was a president named Ford who told New York City to drop dead, Nixon to go free, had a cool wife who said she knew her kids had sex and smoked dope, got shot at by someone in the Manson Family.

  “Well well well,” said Lisa, one night when I came in late, “look who’s here. Our roommate. Our roommate, that is, when last we checked.”

  “I don’t know this man,” said Emma blankly. “Wait … a distant, ancestral memory returns … You are Gil … he walks among us.”

  Oh come on guys, I’m not gone that much.

  “Why don’t you bring your theater friends over?” asked Lisa.

  Then Emma kicked in: “Why don’t you invite us to hang out with your artsy fartsy THEATUH friends, huh? Ashamed of us?”

  I haven’t been keeping you from them or them from you, don’t be ridiculous.

  (But I had been, they were right. Unconsciously, I had kept my apartment life from my theater life, one as a retreat from the other. Besides, I didn’t mind the idea that Emma might be thinking I was up to something behind her back. Nor did I mind having the theater think I was living with someone and being modern and with-it—I hid behind Emma and Lisa. If the loud unappealing actress or middle-aged gay director made a play for me I could say, gee, let me call my housemate and see if she has dinner ready. If all my acquaintances got together and compared notes nothing major would be exposed but I couldn’t keep inventing my life with such confidence if that happened, so I made sure it didn’t happen.)

  And then one night, Emma walks into my bedroom and slams the door. She stands there with her arms crossed. I can’t tell if she’s really upset or not:

  “WHO is Francine?”

  Francine? Francine Jarvis, I repeat instinctively.

  “You tell me.”

  Francine’s an actress. Did you find a Kleenex with her phone number on it?

  “Yes I did. I want to know if I’ve been paying a third of a phone bill rife with calls to Francine Jarvis. If so, I’m getting a separate line.”

  Well … I sit up in bed and I do what any man would do in the circumstances: I lie. I say: Francine and I met at an audition and we went out and I’ve seen her a few times, just friendly-like, for drinks, for coffee—

  “Coffee?” Emma blanched. “You had coffee with a woman—an actress—and you didn’t clear it with me?”

  It was spontaneous.

  “Don’t let it happen again. No actresses—is that clear?”

  Emma, what’s the big deal?

  “This apartment will not disintegrate into disgusting couples with Emma watching from the sidelines. I will not condone BIMBOS on your arm.”

  Francine’s no bimbo, Emma, she … she uh has a degree from New York University and she’s a good actress and—

  Emma sternly wagged a finger at me: “Actress equals bimbo. There are no exceptions.”

  Can I have the Kleenex?

  “I incinerated it in the ashtray. And another thing: Why don’t you take me to any of the theater parties at the Venice?”

  Because you say theater people are phoney and pretentious, all actors are jerks, all actresses are bimbos, all people associated with it are stupid, there hasn’t been a good playwright since Aeschylus—

  “I’ll soften the rhetoric. Someone’s got to keep an eye on you. It’s my duty to work the Bimbo-Watch.”

  Remarks like that keep you at a distance from my social life—

  “Pleeeeease take me to a theater party…” she begged. “I don’t get to meet any artistes and bohemians in my boring life and my boring jobs. I never go out. Pleeeeeease.”

  All r
ight, all right. You can come to the next one if you really want to. But you’ll hate it.

  The Time Emma Went to a Venice Theater Party:

  Emma wore a slinky black dress, trying to be bohemian for the occasion. She spent all day frizzing out her long brown hair which made her look Bride of Frankensteinish but I didn’t say anything. She was trying to look stylish for me. I think.

  There she was, cornered by the cocktail bar, with Robbie the Mime. Robbie was immensely handsome with a perfect body flexing underneath his leotard, but nobody liked him because he wasn’t funny and had no sense of humor and was vain about his work and the one thing you can’t be as a mime is unlikable. I went to get a little cocktail sandwich when I heard Emma’s voice ringing out:

  “Is there anything worse than mime? I mean, that’s NOT entertainment, if you ask me. Marceau has done it all anyway, and a little of it goes a long way, a long long way. There’s this mime at Rockefeller Center where I’m temping that waits for people to walk by and then he follows them, imitates their walk behind them, so close that when they turn around, he darts around so they don’t know he’s back there. And the lunchtime crowds laugh and laugh at these poor victims. And one day…”

  I was swimming through the crowd: Emma don’t tell this story, God please, don’t let her do it …

  “And one day,” she said laughing, “this guy who must have been on a break from a construction crew turns around and belts this mime who is making fun of his lumbering walk. The mime goes down, lemme tellya, and the guy says ‘You little faggot. Why don’t you get a job like normal people, huh?’ I thought I was going to die laughing…”

  I arrived too late. Robbie turned away without a comment; I told Emma he was a mime.

  “Oh,” she said, downing her drink in one, “sorry about that. I’m batting a thousand tonight. I told what’s-his-name there that Tennessee Williams is unbearably swank sometimes—”

  He’s directing Streetcar in the fall, I mentioned.

  “And I told what’s-her-name that Americans massacre Ibsen, Shaw, and Chekhov by trying to play it for laughs.”

  Yes, well, that’s what the reviewer said about her in The Three Sisters, and she must have thought you were rubbing it in, maybe.

  “I told that guy there my theory on how homosexuals have made too much of the theater effete and precious, and how A Chorus Line is a bunch of gay neurotics performing for another bunch of gay neurotics …

  You haven’t even seen it yet, Emma.

  “Don’t worry, I never mention your name—your career is safe,” she said. “And that’s Monica, huh?” We both turned to look at Monica, who was dressed shabbily that night. “I don’t suppose I have to worry about anybody falling in love with her.”

  I’ve toyed with the idea, I said.

  “Oh c’mon Gil,” she said, folding her arms. “I at least have to approve. No actresses.” She studied her a moment. “Nice behind, that must be it. That’s all it comes down to for men, right? The woman has a great behind, no wonder you love her.”

  I don’t love her, she’s just—

  “Can we go?” Emma asked, distressed about something. “You’re right, you’re right, I don’t fit in here; you said I wouldn’t like it and you’re right.” She punched me playfully in the arm. “How about Sal’s, huh? Don’t you want some grease? The Grease Plate Special? Grease cut in strips and deep-fried in more grease?”

  And so we slipped away, unnoticed, a little drunk, a little nauseated from cheap off-Broadway cocktail-party snacks, and we made for the 42nd Street subway station. Soon we were bound for Brooklyn where our Manhattan lives seemed a little larger and the world outside of it very much quieter and slower, and soon there was Sal’s, open all night, a blue fluorescent glow, Edward Hopperish, on a now dark commercial street of warehouses. On the subway Emma pulled out her spiral notebook and began scribbling. I said let me see, she said no. We moved automatically to our booth at Sal’s; on that hot night the cold Formica tabletop felt good on our arms, and the waitress brought us a small pitcher of lukewarm water.

  Emma after a moment, a scribble or two, tore off a sheet of paper and handed it to me. “That theater party clinched it for me,” she said. “Ten words, listed there, are now officially banned from usage. All people caught using them will be taken summarily into custody, suspension of habeas corpus if necessary. This is Emma’s Great Reformation—no … Emma’s New Order, I like that better.”

  EMMA’S BANNED WORDS

  1. vision

  2. craft

  3. work

  Work, I asked?

  “Yes, as in ‘I have my work,’ or ‘I enjoyed watching his work in that production.’ Actors are just jerking around up there, it’s not work, you know that.”

  4. medium

  5. art

  “Art” is a pretty useful word though, I pointed out.

  “It’s just banned from possessive uses: as in ‘my art’ or ‘the key to the actor’s art, his craft…’ Like that.”

  6. stagecraft

  Yeah, I admitted, that did have to go.

  7. demand

  8. piece

  Emma demonstrated in a high, hollow actress’s voice: “Well I felt acutely burdened by the demands of that role, it was a difficult piece, a hard piece of work, it took all that I had to give, all my art, my craft…”

  9. joy

  “Actors should never discuss their joy in the role, the joy of their craft—I tell you Gil, there was much JOY at the party tonight.”

  10. love

  “As in ‘I felt this support, this approval coming from the audience that could only be described … yes, as Love…’ As in ‘What I Did for Love.’ As in ‘The only way to describe what goes on between the actor and his audience is … love…’”

  I laughed. I’ve heard people talk that way all my life.

  “Of course I will expand the list for all the professions. Like in writing, there’s nothing worse to my ears than the word text—god, I hate that. And in the music industry when they talk about product, as in someone’s shitty disco record was ‘good product.’ Hate that too.” Coffee was brought to the table. “Emma’s New Order,” she repeated, pointing a prophetic finger. “I promise you, the world is in for a rough time if I come to power. Heads will roll.”

  I ordered the breakfast special which I could (and can) eat at any hour of the day; Emma went for a chocolate shake and a plate of french fries which she doused in steak sauce.

  “I’m not writing, Gil,” she said, munching. “I make fun of your theater life because I’m jealous: you have an artistic life. Lisa’s got her painting. If I’m not going to have sex, I damn sure have to be writing, don’t you see? Something has to justify my existence.”

  I could take care of the sex end of the problem, I said.

  “No you couldn’t,” she said smiling, “it would take ten analysts ten years to make headway. Want some fries?”

  Not all gooped up, no.

  “This is even better when you stir mayonnaise up in the steak sauce. I do that in the apartment when no one is around to comment on it. Sometimes I have fries with Thousand Island dressing. Do you still love me?”

  After those admissions, how could I?

  “I mean, so many neurotic women are writing novels now,” she went on, “I could name you half a dozen. All they do is write about how frigid and screwed-up they are and the critics are even tolerating this junk, awarding this self-indulgent trash all the great prizes. I mean I should be writing—this is my era. Self-involved, neuro. I’m hopeless. Writer’s block.”

  Maybe if you had sex again it would help, I said.

  “Nah, forget the sex. It’s a distraction. Besides, I’ve passed my one-year mark now. I’m going for the record.”

  I sloshed around my buttered toast in the runny egg and Emma pointed out that some sensibilities would rate that an equal atrocity with the Thousand Island fries.

  “So I was thinking and I thought of something,” she said.
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  Yes?

  “I’m going to write a pulp novel, one of those soft-core romance deals. I was thumbing through Publishers Weekly—you should see the advances those women are getting on those things. And anyone could write one.” She corrected that: “No, anyone who had read a lot in the genre could write one. Their roots are in good novels, the Bronẗes, Jane Austen, magazine serials of the past. It’s the new boom in publishing. See? There are two whole bandwagons I could be on. They’ll ask one day why, why Emma, couldn’t you turn a buck in the ’70s which were designed specifically around your literary talents?” At the bottom of all this, she seemed truly distraught.

  “Love Once Was Here,” she said in a minute.

  Beg your pardon …

  “Love Once Was Here. No, not quite. I’m working on my title. Here it is, here it is: What We Had Was Love. Oh god, that’s swank. That’s the one. I see the TV rights being negotiated already for this baby.” She nudged me and I looked up from my egg. “Help me write it. I mean by asking about it, checking up on me, giving me lectures, telling me how I’ll be nothing, forgotten, be as an unmarked grave, men shall walk over me and not realize … where is that quote from?”

  I said sure, I’d help lend moral support.

  “I’m coming up on twenty-three, and do you know what that means?”

  What.

  “Two years left.”

  Emma never told any of us her birthday—to this day I do not know, though I gathered it was in the fall sometime. She refused to acknowledge it, celebrate it, deal with it, for contemplation of aging gave her Death Obsession or a Mortality Crisis (concepts utilized enough that they became abbreviated DO and MC around the apartment). At twenty-three she had two years left until twenty-five, and twenty-five was the age Keats was when he died. There was a fragment of a poem in her journal, now that I think about it …