Guilty Parties

by Thomas Gifford

  “A necessary evil is man,” she announced, returning. “Now, take Harry, he just can’t help taking advantage of people. You, on the other hand, can’t take advantage of anyone—you just trust people. You’re laboring under the common misapprehension that men are people. Not so! They are creatures. As in ‘from the Black Lagoon.’ You’d trust him, the Black Lagoonite, you’d trust anyone. … You just can’t believe the worst of people. And that will be your downfall.”

  She came back across the loft and stared at the wheel-of-fortune as if it were an old and trusted friend. I wondered: she hadn’t mentioned her houseguest, Peter Venables—should I tell her the Venables story? But, no, that wouldn’t have been right. Besides there was no point in fueling this new man phobia.

  “You trust Jack, for instance,” she said. “Love is something a woman can’t always help, but trusting is just stupid. You’re always ready to defend old Jack—”

  “Hardly,” I interrupted. “It seems that I’m always the one picking on him—”

  “—and Jack is as indefensible as any of them. Did I tell you I called trustworthy old Jack today? I didn’t want him to think he’d been sent to Coventry just because of your split, so I called him to make sure he was coming to the show and the party tonight. Big mistake! He asked me if you were coming, then he wanted to know if Mike was coming—I said for heaven’s sake, of course Mike’s coming. He’s one of us! Well, you wouldn’t believe the fit that Jack threw. He got going on you and Mike, how he couldn’t believe I’d be a party to such a thing, how you and he are still married and you’re running around with Mike … He said he couldn’t trust himself in the same room with the two of you! Can you believe it? Whatever happened to wit and style and sophistication?”

  “He won’t be coming tonight, then?”

  “I rather doubt it.”

  “God, that’s a relief.” I sighed. “But Mike is hardly worth all this fuss. Talk about an innocent bystander, it’s poor Mike.”

  “I must say,” Sally mused, “Jack does worry me every so often. He’s just going to have to pull up his socks and act like a man. You really have bewitched the poor devil. And after almost twenty years, it’s something of a miracle, if you ask me.”

  The afternoon wore on. The loft darkened. Lightning continued to crackle over the city like electrical stems, jagged, plunging down into the heart of Manhattan. The rain came down like dishwater emptying out of a sink. Sally had another drink and sucked on the bright green wedge of lime. The yellow roses glowed as if they were lit from within. I listened to Sally talk about men, the show, Harry and Jack, a background drone I wasn’t paying all that much attention to.

  “Male bonding! What a drag, when are we going to stop hearing about male bonding? The Ruffians. The problem with men is, they make their macho little pacts and they never grow up. They just hang together, pals forever, and the world becomes a huge locker room where they can snap towels at each other and giggle over some bimbo with big ones for all eternity—” She stopped and smiled crookedly at me. “Okay, I’m terrible. But, oh how I’ve suffered!” She jumped up and swaggered to the wheel-of-fortune, where she stood studying the paintwork. “I mean, look at Harry’s goddamn show!” She whirled back to face me. Her exclamations and nerves were beginning to give me a headache. “Nothing but Ruffian bullshit, old Harvard days, chums! I mean, there’s a million bucks riding on a bunch of men who won’t grow up, trying to relive their youth on a Broadway stage!” She sank her fingers into the straight black hair, raked it back from the sides of her face. “No wonder I’m going crazy! Male bonding is creeping across my tiny self like a fungus!”

  One moment she was laughing and then the thunder hammered at the skylight again and her face began to come apart and redefine itself as if she were about to burst into tears.

  “Are you all right, Sal?” I went to her, wanting to help.

  She turned quickly away, back to the wheel-of-fortune. “Let’s see what the gods hold for tonight, a hit or a miss.” She sniffled, spun the wheel, planted her feet apart as if challenging the future. It finally clicked to a halt.

  Sal read it slowly. “‘You will have everything you have hoped for.”

  She looked at me, trying to smile.

  “Oh, hell,” she said, “everything is such a fucking mess, honey.” She began to cry with her head on my shoulder. I put my arm around her, felt the shuddering as Sally clung to me. I cooed to her. Everything would be all right. But as I stroked her shiny black hair, the paintings in the shadows caught my eye and I wasn’t sure.

  Chapter Ten

  MIKE PIERCE WAS A PERFECT gentleman. Always had been, always would be. It was his fate. He was tall and thin with long, straight blond hair, eyes round as cueballs and bluer than an Eskimo’s thumb in hitchhiking time. His wire-rimmed glasses were round too. He wore his innocence like a snappy bow tie, which he also favored. A perfect gentleman, maybe that was his trouble. He was a Ruffian, too, of course. Now that he was chairman and chief executive officer of Pierce and Jacoby, Publishers, I still thought of him as a silly, charming, endearing brother substitute. Which made Jack’s jealousy all the crazier.

  Jack and Mike. How in the world had it worked out that I was coming between them? That was the way my mind was working as the limo crept slowly along Forty-fifth, struggling westward from Times Square in the thick rain, wipers beating, air conditioning blowing a gale, umbrellas glistening wetly like black pieces on a soggy checkerboard. The heat beyond the thick dark windows was relentless. There was just enough breeze to swish the rain beneath umbrellas. The lights of Broadway gleamed back from the puddles. Earthmovers seemed to sink in pools of dirty water like beasts not holding their own in the evolutionary struggle.

  Mike turned to me and patted my arm. “I said, you’re very silent tonight. Anything wrong?”

  “Nerves,” I said. “Sorry if I’m somewhere else—”

  “Nerves. Opening night? Jack?”

  “Both of the above.”

  “Look, Belinda, don’t give this Jack thing a second thought. His state of mind is like tennis elbow. A good long rest and it’s gone.”

  “Tennis elbow? Losing me, our marriage, is like tennis elbow?”

  “In principle. Not in degree, of course.” He grinned. “Besides, maybe it’ll get patched up.”

  “Pierce,” I said. “Sally says he’s upset. Really upset—”

  “Sal’s been known to exaggerate. Harry says she’s going through one of her difficult spells—”

  “Well, maybe she’s got her reasons. I’m not so sure Harry’s the one to analyze Sal’s behavior. He just may need an analyst of his own.”

  “No kidding?” He turned his big round blue eyes on me and looked as if he might ring for Jeeves at any moment. “You don’t say … well, well. I do believe I’ve touched a nerve.”

  “Just pay attention to what Sal said. If you see Jack, you’d better duck. A word to the wise.”

  “While not actually foolhardy, I am tremendously brave. However, I will also keep an eye peeled. All will be well, my girl.” He blinked and I shook my head and pecked his cheek.

  At six o’clock the crowd clogged the street in front of the theater, the lucky ones squeezed beneath the marquee with its Scoundrels All! logo in Harvard crimson. Everyone was dressed up and soaked through with perspiration and sprays of rain. Everyone seemed to be shouting to be heard, faces were red, laughter too loud. Bright, artificial smiles looked like the direct result of root-canal work. Hope was everywhere. The sight made me wonder if my own opening would be so frantic, so harried, so riddled with fear and tension.

  I held on to Mike’s arm, smiled faintly at familiar faces, and nodded at snatches of conversation I couldn’t quite make out. The whole scene was a kind of orgy of self-consciousness, people with a good deal to lose but trying not to show it, pretending that nothing hung in the balance. Another opening, another show.

  Harry’s head was visible above the crowd, inclined to the comments of two men I r
ecognized by sight, one a legendary womanizer and show-business angel, the other a famous agent who knew everyone and never missed anything. At a party once years before I’d seen him take a package of chewing gum from the beringed hand of a very young woman with turquoise and purple hair and Jack had whispered to me: “See that? That’s how they do it. Cocaine wrapped in five little sticks, like gum.” He’d been terribly amused when at first I couldn’t believe it.

  A large, bulky man in a very crumpled linen jacket with a floppy silk handkerchief dribbling from the pocket looked benignly out across the crowd from Harry’s side. He alone seemed serene and somewhat amused by the proceedings, as if his cumbersome size kept him from becoming too frantic. I’d seen him before, I was sure of it, but where? I was watching him without really being aware of it when he caught my eye, seemed to be staring at me, expressionless. Then, as if he’d made a connection that was just eluding me, he slowly grinned and I looked away. Should I have known him? He wasn’t the type you’d forget.

  Mike was waving at people, chattering away. The show’s director stood more or less alone, a tiny bearded man, looking like a child’s toy wound right to the breaking point. He glanced at his watch, then disappeared through the stage door. Slowly the crowd began to push through the doors, through the lobby, down the red-carpeted aisles toward their seats. The black uniformed ushers whisked up and down, checking tickets, handing out programs.

  My stomach was knotted, my throat dry, and I wondered how Sally was holding up. I couldn’t see her in the crowd. Mike Nichols was a few rows ahead of us, standing, still wearing a rain-spotted, belted trench coat, his face amazingly boyish beneath the blondish hair. There was Tony LoBianco, dark and handsome, radiating energy and intensity, as if he were about to spring at someone or something. Doc Simon, shy and tall and scholarly, was talking to a man who looked like a banker, which figured, since the playwright had finally, officially, made all the money in the known universe.

  Scanning the faces, I knew I was actually looking for the two I hoped most weren’t there. Jack. And Peter Venables. The thought of both men was pushing my stomach off center. Praying I wouldn’t turn and come face to face with them, praying for the easy way out. I kept thinking of Jack slamming the phone down and cutting Sally off … and Peter’s beautiful yellow roses and the note that filled me with dread. Apologies are in order. I’ll make them in person.

  Finally, thank God, the houselights dimmed and I hadn’t seen either of them.

  Within seconds I felt as if the curtain had gone up on a kind of personal psychodrama, as if I’d stumbled straight off the edge of the real world and was free-falling through time.

  Chapter Eleven

  FOR SOME REASON THAT SUMMER nobody had quite bothered to prepare me for the show I saw. Maybe it was because I had been so wrapped up in my own work, maybe because I hadn’t been listening when they tried. Whatever the reason, I wasn’t in the least prepared once the actors and actresses had taken the stage, and it was hard to shake free of the disorientation.

  With music and dancing and a witty book, Scoundrels All! was our story, the story of the Ruffians and Sally and me, and it came at me in a series of waves, reviving memories I’d never known were buried in my subconscious, memories of people and events I hadn’t been aware of at the time. It was like seeing one of Alex Katz’s paintings in a Fifty-seventh Street gallery, a scene of his sharp-featured people at a cocktail party, pretty women with flat, predatory looks, well-dressed men with cuffs showing just the right amount as they climbed one social or business ladder after another … like seeing the paintings and slowly realizing that you were there, you’d been one of the people at the party. It was both unnerving and seductive and I felt myself almost guiltily being excited by what I saw, as if it were my own private secret.

  I’d been so wrapped up in my own concerns in those days that I’d hardly noticed the world around me. Classes, clothes, time spent with Sally, driving her little red convertible along narrow leaf-blown roads, working in the studio at all hours, painting and losing track of time, then meeting Harry Granger … and later Jack Stuart.

  Now, astonished, I watched all our lives cavorting across the stage, laughter rippling and applause exploding from the audience. Reality had been softened and given pastel hues as it was filtered through the lens of nostalgia. Like a faint recollection that had almost slipped through the cracks of memory, my past was coming back to life, and we were all up there on the stage. Whatever names they were called, they were us. Jack, the athlete with the handsome face, tossing a football in the air, singing a song about the big game Saturday with Yale … Mike wearing white duck slacks and a straw boater at a jaunty angle, dancing an engaging soft-shoe … Harry politicking his friends about his idea for a club, an oath of loyalty, and a commitment for a lifetime, all so innocent and idealistic … and there were the girls, a blond and a brunette arriving on the stage in a snazzy red convertible.

  I was having some difficulty keeping the lines between fact and fiction from blurring. Which was the real Belinda? The one on stage or the nearly middle-aged one watching? Did I really say that? Is that the way I behaved, the way I appeared to others—the self-centered ultra-Wasp who seemed to pluck for herself first one man and then the other?

  The love stories wound sinuously, sometimes comically, through the saga of the founding of the club and the conflicts among the members and the crisis of the football game … Harry Falling in love with the blond, then losing her to Jack, then Harry taking sudden notice of the brunette.

  But it was all in a kind of fairyland where the hurts never lasted and everybody finally loved everyone else and everything was all right. … Jack was singing alone in a spotlight, wearing a corny letter sweater with the flickering illusion of a pep-rally bonfire through a scrim behind him. Not much like Harvard, really, it might have been an artifact like the Thurber and Nugent play, The Male Animal, it all seemed so quaint and long ago. Jack was singing about the blond girl he’d fallen for and how he was going to have to take her away from his best pal Harry and would it wreck their friendship and how could one Scoundrel do such a thing to another?

  And, like a sentimental fool, I thanked God for the darkness of the theater. My cheeks were wet with tears.

  The show was ending.

  They were all onstage for the finale, singing “The Scoundrels’ Song,” the show’s rousing, uplifting theme, now reprised wistfully as the actors seemed to age in a trick of the light, as if in a living preview of things to come, their voices raised in a kind of hope mingled with the beginnings of trepidation. They were setting off into the mysteries of real life thinking they knew it all and were prepared for what lay waiting for them up ahead. They were dancing gently, another old soft-shoe, arms linked, stars in their eyes, their voices growing ever more distant as the lights went down. And then, like phantoms, they were gone.

  For maybe ten seconds the theater was utterly still.

  And then the applause began, the audience began to stand.

  I sat there, my vision blurred. The time warp was affecting me. I felt even more vulnerable than I had in the past few weeks. So much had happened to destroy all the memories and faith and assumed certainties during the last skein of days. The show had plunged me so deeply into the past and that receding dream life and the bittersweet sorrow at the loss of promise and the wrecking of the illusions that had once fueled us all …

  And yet somewhere I still felt the hope, and that was what was making me cry.

  Mike reached down, touched my arm, and I stood up, smiling, applauding.

  I felt a tapping on my shoulder, looked around.

  Jack was grinning at me. He winked conspiratorially, the old Jack, at the curious and magical use to which our lives had been put. I winked back.

  When I turned around again, as the applause was finally dying and the curtain calls had all been taken, he was gone.

  Chapter Twelve

  I’VE NEVER BEEN MUCH GOOD at parties. That night was no
different. And aside from dreading the noise and the crowd spirit such gatherings generate, I was still fixated on the idea that I simply had to avoid Jack and Peter Venables. I should have gone home, but retreat of that kind, cowardly and precious, was out of the question, given the occasion. And I had to admit I wanted to see Sally and give Harry a hug for old times’ sake. If only the show had not—so unexpectedly—torn me up so completely, so emotionally …

  So I smiled and nodded and managed to drift unobtrusively away from a knot of guests surrounding one of the performers, wedging myself between an antique armoire with carvings of the North Wind blowing a gale and a tall date palm shimmering in the gentle breeze from the terrace. The French windows overlooking the common garden of the town houses were thrown wide and I felt little hints of cooling drafts, an occasional fine mist. I nursed the glass of champagne and hoped no one would strike up a conversation. I couldn’t shake the spell of the show. I felt as if I still stood with my nose pressed to the glass, peering through a window into the past. The party pulsed onward without my participation, like something from All About Eve, I felt like a stranger, existing more in the long-ago world of the play than a grown-up woman who belonged at the revels.

  Harry and Sally Granger lived in a remarkably lavish brownstone on the north side of Forty-seventh between Second and Third, that tiny enclave known to true New Yorkers as Turtle Bay. Katharine Hepburn had bought her house as a young actress; Ruth Gordon, Garson Kanin, Stephen Sondheim … all had been neighbors of the Grangers. The house had belonged to Sally’s parents for many years, she had grown up there, and it was subsequently bestowed on Harry and her when Mom and Dad retired to their home at Sag Harbor and a villa in the hills overlooking the Mediterranean. Watching the rain fall on the lush, dark garden, I remembered how Sal always contended that her father insisted on dwellings overlooking something “because he’s so appallingly abbreviated himself.” The old gentleman had never exceeded five-feet-three, but all the money had somehow made him seem taller.