If Adam’s gone mad, it’s Giselle’s fault, though Roger knows that it’s no longer socially permissible to blame the overburdened single mom. Why is Roger so intimidated by tragic, powerless Giselle? His fear of her has intensified along with Adam’s testing behavior. Maybe it isn’t fear at all, but a frightening sort of pity, as if he and Giselle are complicitous in a crime. Roger is guilty of not persuading her and Adam to turn themselves in. Roger can’t bear to be in the same room with her, and yet they are often together, in his office, so Giselle can administer an extra dose of pain after each performance. Does he have a minute? Could she get a few notes about Adam? How can Roger refuse that suffering human being? The Fat Lady made flesh.
ON THE DAY that Adam grabs Margot’s foot and makes them all aware of how recklessly they are flirting with disaster, Giselle again asks Roger if he has a minute. Good. She is finally going to ask for help with her son. Roger wishes she wouldn’t bring him into this, and yet he can’t say no.
Giselle takes the only chair. She’s got something folded under her arm that she drapes carefully across her lap. Adam’s monkey costume. Roger thinks of the knife-pleated Stars and Stripes they give the families of dead soldiers. Who would believe that a monkey suit could be folded with such precision?
Seeing the costume causes Roger a pang of grief over Lakshmi. How inspired to have fashioned the costume out of a brown chenille bedspread! Roger should have offered to pay her out of his own puny wages.
Giselle looks at Roger expectantly. If there was ever a moment to suggest counseling, this is it. Someone to talk to, an outsider, a professional specializing in early adolescence. Roger has heard Giselle disparage the therapist in whom Margot places such faith. Roger should tell Giselle that in the past he himself has been greatly helped by therapeutic intervention.
That’s what a responsible person would say. But Roger is not a responsible person. He is a man who is getting old and tired and wants to get through the next two weeks with minimal offstage drama. Let Giselle deal with Adam. Let Mister Monkey die a merciful death.
Whenever Giselle is in his office, he shrinks as far from her as he can, until he’s backed into a corner. Of course, she notices, and Roger feels badly about it. But his retreat is a reflex. Self-protective. He and Giselle are repelled by reverse animal magnetism.
The door flies open, and lovely energetic Eleanor bursts in, wearing her hospital scrubs. She’s come to cart Giselle and Adam away to a mental ward!
Eleanor asks Giselle if she can please borrow Adam and go get a cup of coffee.
That lucky bastard Adam! What did he do to deserve this, except almost hurt another actor onstage? Why couldn’t Roger be going out with Eleanor to drink coffee and talk about the play and Roger’s career and Eleanor’s life in the ER? That would be so much more fun than remaining prisoner to Giselle’s delusional plans for Adam. Now he’ll be stuck here with Giselle until Adam returns.
Giselle looks as if Eleanor is pointing a gun at her son. She’s too shocked to think of one good reason why Eleanor can’t take Adam out for coffee.
No coffee! Okay, juice. Organic juice, Eleanor promises, with a parting look at Roger, a blank beat of holding his gaze that functions like an eye roll.
The door slams shut. His rescuer has departed and left him to his captor’s mercy.
What is Giselle saying? Roger finds it hard to think when there so many things that he is trying not to think about. For example, his life. His teachers, the lectures he went to, the plays he saw performed by talented actors in people’s living rooms. Stella Adler, Sanford Meisner, Uta Hagen. He took classes with them or at least heard them speak. There’s no one like them now. The technique. The exercises. The inspiring talks about art and the body, about breath, about every word having meaning. About letting the words do the work. What exactly are the hard-working words? Mister Monkey is innocent. Mister Monkey is the smartest, cutest, nicest, strongest, most powerful chimp of all!
Everything used to be about the work, on which Roger still places great value. He believes that every production has a spark that can be fanned into life. But he has grown too shortsighted or exhausted or lazy to see the flicker in this one, except for the hellish runway lights along the catwalk Adam is strutting. Roger is the only one thinking about the play—the only one who has ever thought about the play. The others are already planning their getaway, the next step. Where in God’s vast universe can they go after Mister Monkey?
There’s been work to do, and Roger has done it. Musical numbers had to be staged, on a very minimal budget. Spark or no spark, it’s proceeded more or less smoothly. No one has fallen or gotten hurt, the cast has delivered their lines, and mostly the spotlight has found them, though sometimes it’s taken a couple of tries. Adam’s become a loose cannon, but the run is almost over. Maybe Eleanor will figure out some temporary fix that will allow them to make it through until the end.
Giselle is mumbling about how New York audiences would be fascinated, theatergoers all over the world would flock to see the amazing results when two young gymnasts, one American, one Chinese, threw themselves into a music, dance, and acrobatic spectacle based on Monkey, the Chinese folk classic that she has been studying with Adam. What Giselle has in mind is a much bigger production, more like a Lincoln Center kind of thing. They could partner with a Chinese cultural foundation. Adam and his Chinese counterpart could alternate scenes in an “unforgettable” spectacle about the monkey god.
Roger says, “Great idea, Giselle. But don’t the Chinese already do this? Don’t they have companies that come over here every so often and play Lincoln Center? They have ads all over the subway and even on TV.”
“This would be different,” says Giselle. “That’s my point. This would be a partnership: an American-Chinese project. Monkey: Bridging the Gap.
“And here’s the beauty part, Roger. We gather up all those brilliant Chinese musicians you see playing in the subway. And we put them in an orchestra along with musicians we’ve brought over from China. Bridging the gap. Am I right?”
Giselle is watching columns of acrobats spinning and twirling ribbons, rope dancers twisting in midair, choruses crooning Chinese lullabies as Adam cartwheels onto the stage in a magnificent embroidered monkey costume and a mask fit for an emperor’s New Year’s party. He does more handsprings and midair somersaults on his way to meet his Chinese counterpart . . .
After an eternity there’s a knock.
“Come in,” Roger says belatedly. No one ever knocks.
The door opens, and Adam walks in.
“Hi, Mom. Hi, Roger,” he says.
Giselle and Roger stare at him as if he’s made some shocking announcement. Something’s changed in his face, something’s shifted, a slight alteration most people wouldn’t register unless they’d been monitoring the scowl that’s been darkening daily. He looks less enraged, more boyish—more normally aggrieved—than he has since the first rehearsals when he sighed and rolled his eyes when Giselle complained about the imaginary dust mite infestation.
Bless you, Eleanor, thinks Roger.
“Where’s Eleanor?” Giselle demands. The flake who’s abandoned her son.
The saint who healed him, thinks Roger. For now.
“She had to go to work,” Adam says.
“She works in the ER,” Roger says.
“Everyone knows that, Roger,” says Giselle. “Anyway, think about it, Roger. Will you think about what I said?”
“Yes,” say Roger. “Of course.”
Giselle gives her son’s monkey costume one more loving fold and slides it into her fringed bag.
“See you tomorrow,” says Giselle.
As he allows his mother to steer him out of Roger’s office, Adam looks back and says, “See you tomorrow, Roger.”
By the time Roger leaves, a short while later, he assumes the coast will be clear, that the cast will be long gone. So he’s surprised to see Margot talking animatedly to a man, standing on the sidewalk not far from
the theater.
Roger stifles the impulse to rush off in the other direction. Instead he stops and watches Margot and the man, at whom she is smiling. She is gesturing with both hands, making half twists in the air.
Margot’s wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. Her red hair stands up in tufts that make her look like a child just awoken from sleep. Like a girl, Roger thinks. Though maybe he just thinks that because the man is so much taller, with the long sorrowful face of a saint in an El Greco painting.
Margot sees Roger and smiles and waves him over. There is no way out.
She says, “This is Mario. We’ve just met. He’s a fan. He’s seen the show three times. Mario’s the guy who sent me that letter you gave me backstage. That letter in the envelope. Remember?”
The tall man—Mario—looks at Roger, pleadingly. Mario has no idea what letter Margot is talking about. But if Roger knows, and if he knows that Mario is not the person who sent it, Mario’s begging Roger: please don’t tell.
Obviously this letter means a lot to Margot. She wants to think that this guy wrote it. And he’s interested in Margot. That much Roger can see. Later the two of them can sort out the truth and correct the misunderstanding.
Roger remembers the letter. Of course he does.
ROGER WROTE IT.
All that week, he’d been lying awake at night, thinking of how to tell Lakshmi, when it came time, that he’d have to let her go. Finally he remembered how, near the start of his career, he’d been fired from a summer stock production of The Seagull. He’d been doing fine as assistant stage manager. He still doesn’t know why he lost the job. Someone didn’t like him.
The producers were sorry. One of them, a grand old lady of the theater by the name of Ruth Peabody—Roger will never forget her—gave him a note on which she’d typed the quote from Chekhov. “Failures and disappointments make time go by so fast that you fail to notice your real life, and the past when I was so free seems to belong to someone else, not myself.”
Roger has never forgotten how that quotation had taken away the sting. Like those sticks one rubs on insect bites. And it had occurred to him that he could do Lakshmi the same favor.
He typed out the quotation from Chekhov and folded the paper and put it in an envelope. He’d carried it in his pocket until the time came when he’d have to give it to Lakshmi.
Then one afternoon he passed Margot in the corridor backstage. The sight of Margot, in her fright wig, stumbling on her high heels, in that cruelly short purple skirt, her ravaged white face and the helpless rage with which she pointed to the ragged hem of her skirt, it had affected Roger like a punch, not that he’s ever been punched. How could he, Roger, a good person, a decent human being, how could he have done this to a fellow creature who had begun her career, just as he had, with dreams that didn’t involve doing Mister Monkey in a soon-to-be-replaced-by-condos theater beneath the High Line?
Dear God, how sorry he was. Forgive this miserable penitent sinner, now and forever.
He’d wanted to beg Margot’s forgiveness. To touch her cheek, to run his fingertips down the side of her face, to ruffle her curly wig, to kiss her on the forehead, to do any one of many things that would have mortified them both.
He’d looked at the envelope that contained the letter to Lakshmi, and he knew that it was never meant for Lakshmi. Lakshmi would be fine.
Without knowing it, he had typed out the quote for Margot. She was the one who needed the kindness, the sympathy, the consolation.
A sudden inspiration had guided Roger to pretend that the note had been left for Margot by an anonymous male fan.
It’s fine with him, it’s better, for Margot to think that Mario wrote it. It’s a way of Roger making amends for what a prick he’s been.
“Good to meet you,” Roger tells Mario. “It’s always nice to meet a theater lover.”
“It’s quite a show,” says Mario. “Mister Monkey. I know Raymond Ortiz—”
“You know him?” Roger says.
“I’ve known him for years,” Mario says. “He gives me tickets to the plays. I’ve seen the play many times. And your production was the best I’ve ever seen. Portia was . . . amazing.”
“Thank you,” Roger says.
Margot kisses Roger on both cheeks. Mario shakes Roger’s hand. His warm neutral handshake is neither too tight nor too sweaty.
“We’re having an early dinner,” Margot says. “Right down the block. Want to join us?”
Roger knows where they are headed. The Isle of Pearls. Roger has seen Margot eating there and walked by very fast. Roger imagines Margot and Mario in the restaurant. He sees their faces shine with the light of how much they have in common. Mario is a theater lover! Margot is an actress! Roger pictures the start of their romance, like some sparkly Noël Coward play, some 1930s screwball comedy, or, going back, like Cyrano. Like Frankie and Johnny, but without the whining.
Their whole understanding will be based on a misunderstanding. And when at last the truth emerges, and Mario tells Margot that really and truly he didn’t send that letter, she will still think he is teasing. By then it won’t matter. It’s how they met. The first sentence of their love story. It might as well be true.
Roger wishes them well. If Margot and Mario fall in love, Mister Monkey will have been worth it.
He sees, as if from a great height, the three of them standing awkwardly, shuffling from foot to foot, on the sidewalk. Waiting for something. What are they waiting for?
Are they waiting for him to do something? To offer up some sort of prayer or give them some sort of blessing? Why him?
Roger looks up. A charcoal smudge has darkened the white cotton of the clouds. A storm is coming. Then autumn. Then something worse. A gleaming white bird plummets straight down through the cloud cover, leaving a hole through which a shaft of light pours all the way down to the pavement. The bird hovers, suspended in the thickening pillar of light. Of course the light intensifies. Of course it grows closer and larger.
Roger takes Margot’s and Mario’s hands in his, in that overly effusive manner that theater people affect, until it becomes who they are. Mario flinches, then surrenders. Margot winds her fingers around Roger’s. They could be the candy bride and groom on a cake, except for the difference in height, except for Margot’s red hair, except for their shining faces.
Now Roger remembers the prayer, and in just a moment he will remember the names of the bride and groom standing before him. For now he only needs the prayer. He hears the distant chanting, the drone of monks praying for their salvation. There’s an explosion of fireworks. Each word is a pinpoint of light, a shooting star growing brighter. It’s night. The water and wind are rising. A comet has entered our orbit. There is rain and heat, fire and ice.
Roger sees the prayer in marquee lights.
Three are we. Three are thee. Have mercy.
About the Author
FRANCINE PROSE is the author of twenty-one works of fiction, including the New York Times bestselling novel Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932; A Changed Man, which won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize; and Blue Angel, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her most recent works of nonfiction include the highly acclaimed Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife, and the New York Times bestseller Reading Like a Writer. She is a former president of PEN American Center, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She lives in New York City and is a Distinguished Visiting Writer at Bard College.
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Also by Francine Prose
FICTION
Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932
My New American Life
Goldengrove
A Changed Man
Blue Angel
Guided Tours of Hell
Hunters and Gatherers
The Peaceable Kingdom
Primitive People
Women and Children First
Bigfoot Dreams
Hungry Hearts
Household Saints
Animal Magnetism
Marie Laveau
The Glorious Ones
Judah the Pious
NONFICTION
Peggy Guggenheim: The Shock of the Modern
Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife
Reading Like a Writer
Caravaggio: Painter of Miracles
Gluttony
Sicilian Odyssey
The Lives of the Muses: Nine Women and the Artists They Inspired
NOVELS FOR YOUNG ADULTS
The Turning
Touch
Bullyville
After
Credits
Cover design by Milan Bozic
Cover illustrations: © CSA Images (monkey); © Ayat Asad /Getty Images (banana)
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
MISTER MONKEY. Copyright © 2016 by Francine Prose. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
EPub Edition October 2016 ISBN 9780062397850
* * *
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Prose, Francine, 1947– author.
Title: Mister monkey : a novel / Francine Prose.
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