Acts of Love

by Judith Michael

  ~ F O R ~

  ANN PATTY

  I dipt into the future, far as human

  eye could see, Saw the Vision of the world, and all

  the wonder that would be.

  Locl^sley Hall

  Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many people helped with the research for this story. Special gratitude is due:

  Harry M. Miller, Sue Greaves, Ann Churchill-Brown, Leon Fink, Pam Jennings, and the Sydney Theater Company—Sydney, Australia

  Maya Friedler—Chicago, Illinois

  Sam Fifer, attorney—Chicago, Illinois

  David Shapiro, M.D., and Judy Solomon, R.N.—Evanston, Illinois

  Also, for extraordinary insights into the lives of directors and actors:

  Uta Hagen for her book A Challenge for the Actor

  Alan Schneider, Robert Falls and Zelda Fichthandler in The Director's Voice: interviews by Arthur Bartow

  Peter Brook for The Open Door

  William Gibson for The Seesaw Log

  Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010

  http://www.archive.org/details/actsofloveOOmich

  NewY

  J essica and Luke had met only a few times before she disappeared. They had met casually and briefly, and they had not liked each other.

  "Why don't you like her?" his grandmother had demanded. "Good Lord, Luke, you're a director; she's an actress—one of the most brilliant in the world, which you know perfectly well—she'll take my place if I ever retire, and I'm sure you know that, too—and she's gloriously beautiful and a friend of mine even though she's young enough to be my granddaughter, awJyoM don't like her. You don't even know her. What did you two talk about last night?"

  "The play," he said. "How wonderfully the two of you work together on stage. The usual things at an opening night party."

  "The usual things. Luke, you have the whole world to talk about! You share the theater and she's warm and clever and interested in everything—"

  "She's interested in herself." He heard the impatience in his voice and tried to soften it. "Opening nights don't lend themselves to leisurely conversations; you know that. It was her night, and yours, and it was a triumph, and everyone wanted to talk to the two of you. She wasn't interested in me and I wasn't impressed with her. Except on stage, of course; do you know how many times I've called her agent because I wanted her for one of my plays? She's always been busy, or she's been in London; she spends a lot of time there."

  "She likes it there and London audiences love her. Oh, Luke, I had

  ~ Judith Michael

  hoped ..." She laid her hand along his face and after a moment said, very gently, "Do you think you might not have been at your best last night?"

  "You mean because of Claudia. That had nothing to do with it." His impatience was back and his words came out clipped and hard, in spite of himself. Masking his anger, he took her hand between his, and kissed her cheek. "We'd both be happier if you'd let me handle my social life in my own way."

  "Well, you might be," his grandmother said crisply, "but I see no reason why that would add to my happiness at all."

  They had laughed together, as, almost always, they did after having been at cross-purposes, and had gone on to other things. In the following years, Constance tried a few more times to bring Luke and Jessica together, but their crowded schedules intervened and they were not interested enough to give her any help. And then, many years later, Constance died, and Luke went to Italy to close up her villa and, in a strange and unexpected way, came face-to-face with Jessica.

  He sat in Constance's airy library, in the velvet wing-backed chair where she had died in her sleep, and ran his fingers over all the things she had touched in the last hours of her life: a round, damask-covered table; a decanter and glass that had been filled with wine; a silver-framed montage of pictures of himself as a boy of seven, when he had first come to live with her, as a student in high school and in college, as a director with the poster for his first play and at the awards ceremony where he had won his first Tony for direction oiAh, Wilderness!; and, closest to Constance's hand, an Italian box, elaborately carved, inlaid with gold and amber and polished to a soft black luster. Inside were letters, hundreds of them, crammed together, the oldest-looking at the front. Luke ran his finger along the top of them, making a sound like a stick dragged along a picket fence. It seemed that the same handwriting was on all of them. He took one out and opened it.

  Dear, dearest Constance, I want to tnank you again (and again and again and again ir I only knew dirrerent ways to do it!) ror your wonderful, warm, generous encouragement last nignt. When you said I did a fine jot playing Peggy, I knew I really was an actress and I'd ne one for tne rest of my life necause Constance Bernnardt said so. Tne play is all you, of course, and proDaoly no one else even noticed me, nut it means tne world to me just to te on stage witn you.

  A

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  CTS Of Love

  My motner said 16 was too young tor summer stock, iDut I nad to try ana on, I'm so glad I did! Tnank you, tnank you again! Witn my eternal love, Jessica.

  Jessica, Luke thought. A young Jessica Fontaine at the very beginning of her career, bubbling with excitement. He glanced at the date at the top of the letter. Twenty-four years ago. So she would be forty now. And she's been writing all these years, which means my grandmother was writing, too. A long friendship. But Constance told me that, more times than I could count.

  He pulled out another letter at random and unfolded it.

  Dearest Constance, you won't nelieve tnis but Peter Calder got tne male lead, wnicn means I've got to do two love scenes witn nim. Wasn't it just last year tnat you and I swore we'd never get witnin ten reet or nim? Well, nere I am and now I'll be rignting orr nis gelatinous bands ror tbe run or tbe play.

  Luke burst out laughing. Gelatinous. The perfect word for Peter Calder. It was the reason Luke and almost every other director had stopped giving him parts years ago. But Jessica had had two love scenes with him— when? He read the date: seventeen years ago. She'd gone from a bit part in a play with his grandmother to a role opposite Calder—who in those days was one of the top actors on Broadway and in films—in only seven years. He had forgotten how swiftly her success had come. That was the year, he remembered, that he had gotten his first job on Broadway. He had been twenty-eight, and for six years, since graduating from college, he'd been directing plays for small, struggling theater companies in lofts, church basements and old movie houses. They drew tiny audiences that often did not fill their forty or fifty seats, but occasionally critics came and soon people in the theater were talking about him. "Lucas Cameron's masterful direction ...," began one review in The New Yor1{ Times, and two months later he was offered a job as assistant director of a Broadway play. That was what he remembered about that year.

  Oh, and Claudia, Luke thought. That was the year we were married.

  Idly, he took a third letter from the box, about halfway in. A newspaper clipping fell from it and he unfolded it. It was from the International Herald Tribune, picked up from an Associated Press story in the Vancouver Tribune.

  Judith Michael

  Fatal Derailment in Canada

  More than fifty passengers were killed and three hundred injured Monday evening, about 10:30 p.m., when The Canada Flyer derailed in Fraser River Canyon, eighty miles northeast of Vancouver. Using searchlights and rescue dogs, teams from nearby towns searched through the night in the wreckage and along the rocky banks of the Fraser River in temperatures that fell well below freezing. Among those rescued near dawn on Tuesday morning was Jessica Fontaine, world-renowned stage and film star, who had been in Vancouver for the past four months starring in a production of The Heiress. She is listed
in critical condition. The train, bound for Toronto, had left Vancouver at 8 p.m. Cause of the accident, the worst in the history of Canadian rail travel, is not known.

  Luke remembered the story. There had been rumors that Jessica Fontaine was on her deathbed, that she would be unable to act for a year, two years, three years, that she had escaped serious injury, that she would be back in town in a week, two weeks, a month. No one could reach her to learn the truth. Her friends, her agent, her colleagues, television and newspaper reporters, all called the hospital in Toronto, where she had been taken, but all of them heard the same message: Miss Fontaine could not have visitors, and she would not accept telephone calls. Her friends kept calling; her agent went to the hospital; but, week after week, no one was allowed to talk to her or see her. And finally, one day six months after the accident, they were told that she was gone, without leaving a forwarding address or telephone number or any clues as to where she could be reached.

  Then there was silence. Jessica Fontaine had been the most sought after stage star in America and London; she had starred in at least two films that Luke knew of; and suddenly, after only eighteen years, she was gone. A meteor, Luke thought. Arcing luminously through the sky, then vanishing into darkness.

  He replaced the letters and the newspaper clipping and ran his fingers over the box that held them. Constance had chosen one of her most

  Acts of L

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  beautiful possessions to hold Jessica's letters, and had kept it beside her favorite chair in the library. How she must have loved her, Luke thought. How they must have loved each other. What must it be like, to have a friend like that? I have no idea.

  The telephone rang and he picked it up. "Signora Bernhardt's residence."

  "Luke," demanded Claudia, "why didn't you tell me you were going to Italy? I had to ask Martin where you were . . . you know I hate asking butlers where people are."

  He held the telephone away from his ear and gazed through the French doors at the softly sculptured hills and valleys of Umbria that surrounded his grandmother's villa. "Claudia, this trip has nothing to do with you."

  "It does and you know it. We had a date for dinner last night."

  "I'm sorry. I forgot. You're right; I should have called. Constance died, Claudia, and I left as soon as I heard. I wasn't thinking of anything else."

  "Oh. I'm sorry." There was a pause and he could almost hear her reorganizing her thoughts. "That's sad, Luke. You were so close to her. She never liked me, you know, she made that perfectly clear. . . . Oh, I shouldn't have said that. I'm sorry, Luke, but this hasn't been a great week and then when you didn't show up and I had to call Martin to find out where you were ... but I shouldn't have said that about Constance. I mean, what difference does it make now, whether she liked me or not? But I was so upset when you weren't here. I do rel)^ on you, Luke, a little understanding, a little support. I don't think that's too much to ask."

  Luke shifted in his chair, as if about to run. He was four thousand miles from Claudia and he sat in his grandmother's bright library warmed by the afternoon sun, but still he felt stifled. Which was exactly the way he had felt after two months of being married to Claudia, though it had taken him five years to ask her for a divorce. Now, eleven years after their divorce was final, he recognized almost every word of their dialogue: it was like a bad script, he thought, that no playwright could improve. But, still, he could not sweep her aside. "I'll be back in a week. We'll have dinner then."

  "What night? When will you be back?"

  "I haven't decided. Wednesday or Thursday. I'll call you."

  "I might be busy, you know."

  "We'll find a time when you're free."

  ^ ~ Judith Michael

  "Call me before you leave Italy."

  "I'll call when I get to New York. Claudia, I have to go; I have a lot of work to do."

  "What? What are you doing? You must have had the funeral by now."

  "I'm closing up her house. And mourning." He slammed down the phone, angry at Claudia, angry at himself for getting angry at her. He knew better; why did he let her get to him?

  It's this house, he thought. The lady of this house, the only lady I've ever loved, is dead, and so is her house. Everywhere I go, in every room, there she is ... and yet she's nowhere. I can't fathom her absence; she was mother and mentor and closest friend to me all my life. How can she be gone?

  He was shaken by the loss of her. His memories of her were so vivid that he could still hear her strong voice—deep, almost husky, and so compelling that audiences had sat motionless through every play so as not to miss a word—praising him when he was growing up and hungry for encouragement; calling to him to share the beauty of a sunset or a painting or to notice the oddities of someone's speech or gait; challenging him to defend his opinions, making him a better thinker and a far better stage director. Her opinions were more important to him than those of any teacher or basketball coach or friend. Remembering her, he could hear her laughter the last time he had visited her here, he could feel her hand on his arm as they walked through her gardens, and feel her breath on his cheek as she kissed him good-bye and said, "I am so very proud of you and I do love you, my dear Luke." That was the last time he had seen her; almost the last time they had talked. She died less than a week later.

  He was crying. No one in New York would believe it, he thought, not of Lucas Cameron, whose emotions, they said, were locked away, except in the theater, where he truly came to life. Through his tears, the olive and cypress trees that shaded his grandmother's flower gardens wavered as if fading away—the way she had—and he jerked himself upright, willing the tears away. Too much to do, he thought; tears are an indulgence.

  He walked back to the main'salon, but still the memories came, this time of his grandmother, eight years ago, when the doctors told her her heart was getting weaker and she would die if she continued to act. "Then I'll die on stage," she had declared to Luke. "I'm only seventy-seven; no one leaves the stage that early. I always expected to die on stage; it's where I belong. It's my home. Where else would I want to die? Only a fool would leave home to die in a strange place."

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  CTS of Love ~ 9

  "What about the other actors?" Luke asked. "If you die in the middle of their big scene, they'll never forgive you."

  After a long moment, she laughed, a short, bitter laugh, and a few months later she gave in. But she would not stay in New York. She bought a white marble villa nestled in solitary majesty at the top of a long hill, with the landscape of Umbria spread grandly below, furnished it with an exquisite collection gathered in a lifetime of travel, and re-created herself as if she were creating a character on stage. She held telephone conversations with American friends every afternoon; she allowed visitors only after they made appointments far in advance; only Luke was welcome at any time. She and her housekeeper held elaborate discussions every morning about the food for the day and how best to prepare it. She walked in sunlight or showers through the acres of her gardens, conferring with her gardeners in her barely adequate Italian, with many gestures and much laughter; she paused frequently for rests on the smooth rims of dozens of fountains she had brought in from all over Italy, each one fashioned with a column in the center of a still pool that reflected the mythological creatures poised in marble and granite above, and once rested, she threaded her way through the maze of tightly pruned hedges that were one of the reasons she had bought the villa—to confound her guests, she said.

  Unable to sleep more than two or three hours at a time, she read late into every night, devouring the books she had put aside in a lifetime of acting. Often, in the silence of her library, she read aloud the plays that playwrights and directors sent her from all over the world, the next day, or the next week, dictating her critiques for her secretary to type and mail.

  And she corresponded with Jessica Fontaine, Luke thought, and never told me about it. I wonder why.

  In the large
salon, he went back to taking inventory and organizing Constance's possessions. Some he was taking for himself; some would be sent to storage in New York; much would be given away according to Constance's will. My salon furniture to my houset{eeper, plus everything in the kitchen, which she has made hers through abundant and excellent use; my dressing table and mirror and all my clothes to my housel^eeper's daughter, who has eyed them longingly but never was so rude as to inquire if she might have them; my paintings and sculptures to you, Lul^e, and all my jewels, in the hope that someday you will find a woman to whom you wish to give them; my collection of plays to Jessica Fontaine —

  The plays were on a table near the piano. Luke had watched the col-

  10 ~ Judith Michael

  lection of rare first editions grow through the years as Constance found them in theater and opera libraries and in bookstores throughout the world. They were worth many thousands of dollars, Luke knew, but they were treasures mainly because most of them had notes in the handwriting of their first directors and of authors—George Bernard Shaw, Henrik Ibsen, Corneille, Racine, Chekhov—who often were the directors themselves. Priceless, Luke thought; Constance must have told Jessica she was leaving them to her. But there was no address in her will. How the devil does she expect me to find Jessica Fontaine?

  He packed the plays in a large carton that he set alongside the others he was shipping to his apartment in New York. He layered them with tissue paper, double- and triple-wrapping the most fragile ones, then sealed the box and marked it "JF" on the outside, so that he could ship it to Jessica later, when he had her address.

  At noon, he ate a cold frittata and an arugula salad left by the housekeeper, who insisted on coming once a day to take care of him. He sat on the broad terrace that ran the length of the villa, looking out over hills and vineyards, a sinuous silver river and distant villas barely visible in their groves of trees. His grandmother had sat here for hundreds of hours, reading, writing, contemplating. "Sitting here, my whole being gathers in the wonders of this lush, serene landscape," she had written to Luke in the last week of her life, "and I feel I am its caretaker. But of course we all are, aren't we?—all of us who have been given a world filled with such richness and beauty and abundance. We are its caretakers—and each other's caretakers, too—and there should be nothing but gratitude in our hearts. I'm grateful for you, dear Luke."