by Daniel Stern
“In the box. Boy, Jeannie really did a job on you!” Alec smiled.
“I wouldn’t blame her.”
“I would. How about another drink?”
“Sure. I’m not playing tonight. Did you know Jeannie used to sing?”
“No, I didn’t,” Alec replied.
“Oh, you should have heard her sing ‘Long Ago and Far Away.’ She was all right. The funny thing is I’ve heard she’s singing professionally in England now. Isn’t that a bitch? That’s a real hot one. She’s still using my name, so—”
“So at last your name is on a poster somewhere in one of the capitals of the world. I can read you like a book, Jay. You’re tired.”
“Maybe,” Jay replied with a shrug. “It’s been a long tour.” He leaned back and for the fourth time surveyed the room. “It’s nice to be in a house after all the hotel rooms. Whose painting?”
Jay pointed to a picture hung over the piano. An original oil, it was a forest scene with a small lake in the background and in the foreground was a small girl of indeterminate age who seemed to be pausing, a hand at her forehead, still caught in the web of trees.
“Oh, that,” Alec said. “Kesslinger did that. An artist friend of Annette’s. A little out of our usual style—you know we like Klee, Kandinsky—but I think the painting has something.”
“I never have been completely seduced by abstract art. I like this.”
Alec leaned back and gazed speculatively at the picture, his pock-marked right cheek contorted in concentration while he tensely twirled the glass in his hand.
“You know,” he said, pushing away the nagging remembrance of Max and Elly, probably arriving in Colchester then, “you see how she stands poised there, looking as if in a minute she might break through the few remaining trees and make it into the clearing. Well, it’s kind of a barometer for me. Ann jokes about it. Some days I feel sure the girl’s going to make it. Others, I just know she’s stuck there and she’ll never get out.”
Jay smiled. “Well, I don’t look at paintings quite that kinetically myself, but I can see what you mean. Annette hasn’t taken to painting, has she?”
“No. Just has a lot of friends who do. I wouldn’t let her take the time away from her dancing for anything else. Except cooking, cleaning and sewing.” He laughed. “I, of course, have all the time in the world.”
Jay looked steadily at Alec, as if he were making contact with his friend for the first time. “Oh?” he said, with a questioning expression.
“Eight parts in three years. And there are actors I know who envy me. An actor who isn’t acting has lots of time. Oh, he fills it up so that he seems busy. The agent’s offices, the studios, studying parts. Take a dancer like Annette. If she’s not working she’s practicing at her studio or making leotards or having dance classes. Those classes have helped a lot.”
“But doesn’t your brother—?”
“Yes, Max is still coming across. He’s quite well-to-do now. Made a big killing in the last two years. But Annette likes to contribute something to the household.”
“How is it with you two. I mean—” Jay’s hand covered the room in a wide sweep indicating, possibly, domesticity.
“We’ve been living together for two years. No one knows it but tonight is technically our anniversary. Hence the party. Annette doesn’t like me to say that to people though. It embarrasses her. I don’t blame her. The poor kid wants to get married. I’d like to make an honest woman of her, but, Christ, I’m not ready. Financially, careerwise. I’m a long ways from anywhere.”
“How about familywise, Al? Annette’s not Jewish, is she?”
Alec shook his head in mock despair and sighed. “Everybody can see right through me, can’t they? Yeah, it’s true that’s a big part, too. After all, I’ve been living on Max’s money—I owe him the whole goddamned world—and he’s dead set against my marrying Annette—well, not Annette, but any gen—non-Jewish girl.”
With this, they both felt the air clear. Each had made a personal statement. This restored the intimacy of two years ago. Jay touched Alec’s arm.
“Do you want to marry her?”
“That’s not the question, really. We’re as close as people can be. But she wants kids, et cetera, et cetera. So do I, I guess, but not until I’ve been somewhere and returned. You know what I mean, Jay.”
Jay grinned. “Know it? I wrote the book.”
They smiled simultaneously, everything forgotten except that they were reunited friends. Jay, happy to have found a temporary point of rest; Alec aware of it as a stylized dramatic situation. It was into this benign atmosphere that Annette walked, her arms full of packages, a key dangling from her long-fingered hand.
“Hey,” she said. “Why don’t you boys open a window? What foul-air fiends you are! Here, take these, Jay. I’ll open them.” She dumped the packages onto Jay’s lap, strode to the great casement windows in the heavy but brisk manner she had and flung them outward. The murmurous night air filled the room, and from far off, carrying with it a green, moist odor, the ocean’s half music came with its insistent question masked as a rhythmical muffled roar. The breeze blew back Annette’s sacklike dress, caught only around her waist by a single slender belt, until her muscular body was clearly outlined against the thin green stuff. Her legs had heavy calves and she seemed well rooted to the ground. She turned back to Jay and Alec. Her face was broad and open, with not the hint of a secret thought, the lines of the cheeks plump but not fat, the nose short and slightly turned up. Her eyes were a clear blue and set wide apart in her face.
“Been reminiscing?” she asked. “Give me a hand with these, will you?”
The three of them moved to the kitchen. Alec began putting cans away.
“I’ve just barely succeeded in getting things straight again, Jay. I’m glad you didn’t show up a week ago. Did Alec tell you what happened?”
“No. What do you mean?”
Annette tied an apron around her waist. “We took this house for three months, just two weeks ago. Furnished. Sublet. A terrific deal. I mean, so close to the beach and such a lovely community—if you can call it that, the houses are all spread so far apart. Anyway, a week after we moved in, we came home (we’d been to a rehearsal of this little-theater group we work with) and the lock had been forced open. The place was in a turmoil. Everything topsy-turvy.”
“I’ve never seen Ann turn so green,” Alec interpolated.
“Well, nothing like that had ever happened to me. Hand me the crackers and the cheese spread. I’ll make some hors d’oeuvres for the vultures. Anyway, Jay, the thing that was so scary was that nothing—not a damned thing—was stolen. And no vandalism. My gold watch was lying on the piano in plain sight. It’s worth at least two hundred dollars. They didn’t so much as move it. But everything was taken from the drawers and the closets and dumped all around. We didn’t sleep a wink that night.”
“God,” Jay breathed, “I don’t blame you.”
“It was the eeriness of nothing being gone. What would anyone want to do a thing like that for?”
“Sounds as if they were looking for something,” Jay offered.
Annette and Alec shook their heads at once. “We thought of that,” Alec said, “but it doesn’t hold up. Looking for what from us? Annette has her theory. Ridiculous.”
“I don’t know how ridiculous it is. This is a pretty straight-laced community. Jack Lacey used to live here. He gave me a pretty good idea about it. It’s an American Legion-type place.”
“What’s politics got to do with it?” Jay asked.
“Not politics,” Annette continued. “It’s just that Alec and I aren’t married and it’s pretty widely known. These folks may be protecting the fair name of Longwood, California.”
“Isn’t that a peach, Jay? Did you ever hear such crap?”
Jay laughed. “I can’t see it myself,” he said. “It’s just possible but very doubtful.”
“All right, King Solomon,” Annette said, “wai
t till you hear Mr. Ridiculous’ theory.”
Jay turned to Alec. “The court will hear the attorney for the defense.”
“Well, in a way, my idea is a little like Army’s, but there’s more precedent for my point of view, if it so please the court. I’m Jewish, she’s white, protestant American, like those around us in lovely Longwood. This would not be the first time that mixed mar—mixed alliances were scared out of a community.”
Annette waved a butter-covered fork at Alec and Jay. “Isn’t that something?” she said and laughed.
“The jury will recess for an hors d’oeuvre.” Jay chewed one noisily. “It seems to me,” he said, “the editorial me, that is, that you’re both cracked. Has it ever occurred to you that a lot of people think of actors and dancers and people like that as all being dope fiends? They might have been hunting for dope. That would explain why nothing was taken and nothing destroyed, just turned inside out.”
Alec looked dubious and Annette shook her head.
“Not in Longwood,” Annette said.
“Have you thought that they might not have been Longwood residents—?” Seeing he was making no impression, Jay stopped, thinking, They’re just taking it out on each other—Annette angry because Alec won’t marry her and Alec angry because she’s not Jewish. And behind it all is brother Max [whom Jay had never met] and his checks.
“He might have something there,” Annette announced. “Let me check the roast. You’ll have supper with us, Jay.”
It was not a question, so Jay was silent. They set the table with the evening breeze growing stronger and ate dinner listening to the scrush of tires on the distant highway. Over Annette’s objections, Jay lighted candles in the center of the table and put out the lights while Annette served the coffee. “Always the stage manager,” she said, laughingly, and then enjoyed the intimacy and the warming brandy. Alec leaned back and placed his hand over Annette’s. He was looking at the painting. It seemed to him, in the wine-dinner-brandy glow, that the girl would make it past the trees into the clearing, anytime she really wanted to. She was just pausing now, to remember where she had been before moving onward.
Jay said: “I’m awfully glad I came. I feel fresher for the rest of the tour. We’re playing three nights here and then back to New York.”
“Play something, Jay, will you? A Brahms intermezzo. You know, the one in C Major.” Annette hummed the one she meant.
Jay frowned. “I’ll tell you, Ann. I’ll play for you kids. But I really don’t play solo any more. And I wouldn’t play if there was one more person in the room. So if I don’t play at the party like in the old days, don’t be annoyed with me.”
He squeezed both their hands linked as they were, and walked to the piano. “Hey, do you have those records I made a couple of years ago for that little company in New York?”
“Yes. The Debussy things. We can play them later if you’d rather not play.”
“Sure,” he said, and played the first chords of the intermezzo.
The doorbell buzzed loud on the texture of the quiet piano sounds. Jay left the piano instantly and disappeared into the bathroom as Annette looked at Alec questioningly. Alec shrugged and answered the doorbell. It was Kesslinger, the painter, with two friends. They made a noisy entrance. Alec dispensed drinks while Annette hastily cleared away the remains of dinner. The glow was gone and suddenly he felt a fool to be here squirting soda into a drink when Max had practically begged him to help with Elly. Who had the guy been that had knocked her up? For Christ’s sake, she was only seventeen. He tried to remember what he had been like when he was seventeen and what the girls had been like at college but it was vague and hazy in his mind. Like most of his memories it was stylized. Rather than college, it was the college experience, the college scene. He recalled the diary she had stuck into his suitcase that time he’d had the fight with Rose and had left suddenly. What was that phrase? Hello—how are you?—I love you. And the other things in that crazy diary. Well, not crazy for a fifteen-and-a-half-year-old girl. But she must have loved him to shove the book spontaneously between his shirts that day. How responsible was he for her going off and getting knocked up and an abortion and all that? We were pretty close in the old days, whenever I got to see her. Then, I told her, find your own kind. Was this the way she was obeying his injunction? The kid’s always hated her parents. Well, he couldn’t help that. Only he should have gone. Probably Max would have been so upset about Elly that he wouldn’t have mentioned Annette or asked for any kind of accounting from him. Christ, wasn’t anybody free?
The doorbell had buzzed at least three times since Alec had thought about it and the room was filling rapidly with people and sound. There was an abundance of lovely young girls, many of them dancers, friends of Annette. And from all this exquisite (if a little artificial) loveliness, he had chosen heavy-legged, wide-faced Annette. Every now and then he doubted his choice, but not this evening, watching her move through the room, smiling and chatting with friends, refilling drinks, turning suddenly to glance at him, as if to say, Are you all right? And: In the midst of all this it’s just you and me, don’t forget. To hell with Max and Harry, he thought. Over in the corner of the room he saw Larry Jax, the infrequently employed screen writer, showing his play (Alec could tell it was his by the yellow cover) to his agent. The agent, a short heavy man, was nodding at something Larry was saying. Jay was shaking his head negatively at something a girl, whom Alec didn’t know, was saying. Possibly she knew who he was and was asking him to play something. Alec opened the phonograph and placed on the turntable Jay’s recording of “Arabesque,” by Debussy. It had its effect immediately. Heads turned as if to say, Why so loud? Anybody we know? Annette pointed to Jay and most seemed to understand and were at least a little quieter. Jay stood aloof, smoothing his hair nervously and smiling at the young woman who had latched onto him, listening to a ghost play and smiling a ghostlike smile.
Hearing the fugitive arpeggios of the Debussy, Alec was reminded of the school days in New York when the hours were filled with Jay’s playing at gatherings almost every night. The recorded reflection of Jay’s music held him so now, because he could remember, through it, the enormous hope—no not hope, absolute security of vision, certainty of the future, assurance of fulfillment. Come to think of it, those days there had been music all the time in a sense. And certainly Jay’s playing had formed the main background. That was why he could not forgive Jay for giving up his concert career. It was as if, by doing so, Jay was closing the door on a certain kind of hope that they had all felt in the old days. Were they weak, this generation of artists? Where were they now, the ones who had been so certain of their future? Ralph, the violinist, working in a publicity agency; Harold, working for his father and painting on Sundays; Gerard, the writer, writing advertising copy and Jay, probably the finest talent of them all, pounding out accompaniments for the skinny ballerinas.
He, Alec, was one of the few who had stuck. And why? Because of Max’s money and Annette’s help. He wasn’t any stronger than the rest of them. Take away Max’s support and in five years some job would have claimed him and all his dreams: Trock Estrella, Reverend Davidson and Henry the Fourth all seated at a desk making out invoices. He finished his drink and looked at Kesslinger’s painting. The girl looked completely trapped and indecisive in the shadows of the trees. Through the window the wind brought the steady far-off beat of the sea. That’s the only music all the time, Alec thought. Live within earshot of the sea and you would have music all the time. He was aware that he was being extraordinarily aloof this evening and he knew why. He was only a guest tonight. He belonged on a train heading for Colchester. If he had any roots at all, certainly they must be there—he was beginning to feel the drinks—certainly more there than with these people all waiting, like himself, for one good break.
Annette was at his side. “Hi,” she said. “Good party, even if you’re not with us.”
“I’m sorry. No, I’m not. It’s just one of those thing
s.”
She pressed her shoulder against his. “Gee, he really plays, doesn’t he? It’s such a crime.”
He nodded. “A lot of things are crimes.”
“They sure are, and that’s something I wanted to talk about.”
“To me?”
“Yes. I want you to stop accepting those checks from Max every month.”
He looked at her. Then he took her face in his hands and said, “What do you mean, baby? What do you mean?”
“Just that. Look. Tonight you’re feeling pretty lousy because you didn’t help your brother and Elly out when you felt they needed you. Right? Just think a minute and question whether you would have gone if you weren’t taking money from Max and didn’t have to be afraid of his eternal questions about jobs and about that shicksa you live with.”
“Sweetheart, if you knew how funny you sound when you use Jewish words like that. What are you trying to prove, Anny?”
“That taking money from Max is lousing you up. That it’s building up a tension between the way he wants you to live and the way you want to live,”
Alec put his arm around her shoulder and pushed his long, skinny fingers into the hair at the back of her neck.
“You make Max seem like an ogre. Jeez, he’s so meek and mild! He never makes any demands.”
She held his hand tightly in the thick bush of her hair and said, “But you know just the same that if you marry me the money will suddenly and mysteriously dry up.”
Faced with an unanswerable truth, like the truth of his failure to join Max in Elly’s trouble, a truth at once unambiguous and many faceted, Alec felt the structure of months of self-deception crumble and was now flung headlong into the jungle of decision. She would have to be either answered or distracted and he knew Annette would never have put it to him so bluntly if she were not beyond the point where she could be distracted. He tried.
“Do you really believe that crazy idea of yours about why the house was broken into the other night? This is the twentieth century. I didn’t know the way we live was so upsetting to you. Of course I want to get married, but look where I am. Do you want us to live on your dance-class fees? Do you want me to give up like Jay? Get a job in an office? Go to college at thirty?”
