Angels All Over Town (14 page)

“In fact, I’ve seen the play.”

“I’m wondering whether I should be doing more…
serious
acting.”

Billy frowned and looked truly perplexed. “I’m not sure I know what you mean by ‘serious.’”

“Plays. Movies.”

“Oh, you mean
chic
. It’s not fashionable to do soaps.”

I watched a large white sloop tack around Shelter Island’s southern end toward Gardiners Bay. It made me think of
Manaloa
sailing away from Newport. I tried to decide whether Billy made any sense or not. “I see what you mean,” I said, “but that’s not all. Wouldn’t it be more artful to create new characters?”

Billy shrugged. “If you want to create new characters, then by all means do so. But you are superb at what you do on the show. You should take great pride in that. Certain assholes I meet now and then at cocktail parties ask me why I don’t sculpt instead of build pots. They think sculpting is something to aspire to, that pottery is simply a stage I must pass before I qualify. I tell them I haven’t
settled
for anything—I don’t build pots because I can’t sculpt. They’re two different art forms, and building pots is the less fashionable.”

I truly admired Billy; she could deliver an answer like that with perfect credibility and conviction. Perhaps Billy was as fine a potter as Marisol was a sculptor, but I remained unconvinced of her analogy. I must have shrugged or something, because she continued. “In fact, you have turned Delilah Grant into a living, breathing woman.”

“Albeit suffering.”

“That’s part of Delilah. People believe in her. If you only knew how much mail Chance gets, praising Delilah and your portrayal of her. Not all women are strong, my dear. They respond to your Delilah. And people
certainly
do not respond with that sort of vitality to cardboard cutouts.”

I half rose from my rocking chair to kiss Billy on the top of her head. Fine auburn wisps had blown free of her French twist; they glinted red in the sun. “You’re right about that,” I said. She was. Whenever I felt inferior for acting in a soap opera, I would think of the intelligent women who watched me every day and think, “They can’t all be wrong.”

For the rest of the day I felt contented and dreamy. I swam the length of the beach and back seven times, then reapplied sunscreen and fell asleep on Jason’s blanket. When I wakened I was alone on the beach and the orange sun had started to set; the land across the Sound gleamed in the declining light. A chilly breeze blew across my legs, and I wrapped myself in the blanket. Ghostly sanderlings raced across the high-tide line. Translucent brine shrimp leapt from drying clumps of kelp. From the house a hundred yards away came the first strains of dance music; the orchestra was warming up. The party went on.

Chance promised me three weeks off in September. September: my favorite month. I spent the rest of the summer looking forward to leaving. Chance never mentioned my dissatisfaction with soap opera acting, so I guessed that Billy hadn’t told him about our conversation. Delilah was in jail. Nancy had charged her with a hunting knife; they had struggled, and Delilah had turned the weapon on her patient/attacker. Now she was imprisoned for first-degree murder. The sentence would likely be death by electrocution. Beck, horrified by the thought of Delilah behind bars and eventually dead, was plotting a breakout. They would go underground and gather evidence to clear her good name, proving that Nancy had been a serial murderer out to get Delilah. Meanwhile, in prison, Delilah was adapting to the life by volunteering to counsel her fellow inmates. The corrupt guards and warden, who passed out drugs and any other contraband for a price, were unnerved by Delilah’s probative counseling technique and by Beck’s position as editor of the Mooreland
Tribune
. A group of the most violent inmates had paid the guards a gigantic fee, insuring that they could break out without interference, and the warden wanted them to take Delilah as a hostage. Breakouts galore! Delilah, lonely and frightened, was resisting lesbian advances by her cellmate, a lovely radical imprisoned for her part in a robbery gone wrong.

I felt pleased that Chance had allowed the screenwriters to incorporate my suggestions into the story line, but the rest of it offended my sensibilities. How could Beck, a smart editor, encourage Delilah to escape and hide out until they could “clear her good name”? That sort of warped logic pervaded the show. In real life, would the Law forgive a prison escape (a felony in its own right) just because the escapee was able to prove herself innocent of the original crime? Have they not heard of the appellate court? As parents through the ages have been telling their children, two wrongs do not make a right. But in Mooreland, the kindly district attorney would take one look at Beck’s indisputable proof and offer Delilah a full pardon. Quite possibly along with a new job as head of the newly created Mooreland Psychological Commission.

The show was loaded with those sorts of inconsistencies. For the sake of drama, Beck would keep secrets from Delilah, Delilah would keep secrets from Beck, and, finally learning the truth, they would call each other liars and break up amid tears, accusations, and hurt feelings. Our intelligent viewers would bristle at this, firing off letters that said, “Why can’t they learn from their mistakes? I’m so sick of the same thing happening over and over.” So was I.

Greenwich Village had been vacated along with the rest of New York for the summer. At night I would come home from work, change my clothes, and go out for a walk. The antique shops along Hudson Street were closed now. All spring the owners had filled the wide sidewalks with oak tables, maple desk chairs, walnut cabinets, mirror-front wardrobes, brass coatracks; now the shopkeepers had taken leave of the city to search the Adirondacks, Bucks County, Vermont, New Hampshire, and the Maine coast for new treasures. Walking south at sunset, I would see the Twin Towers standing in pink haze, their lights twinkling like a mirage through the heat and vapors of lower Manhattan. My route took me east along West Tenth Street, past the police garage and the narrow row houses. Often I would stop in the bookstore, where other roamers would line the display tables, reading a few pages or flipping slowly through picture books, taking advantage of the shop’s air conditioning. On winter evenings the shop and sidewalks had been more crowded; now people were vacationing or too hot to leave their apartments.

For me, going home was to be avoided. I would browse, then buy something and take it to the Gran Caff'e Degli Artisti, where I would sit on the upper level by the wide window, holding the cool glass of iced espresso in my hands and gazing onto Greenwich Avenue with my book open on the scarred wood table. When the ice melted, I would order another glass, no matter how much coffee I had left. Gold lantern light blazed overhead and from the streetlamps outside. People sitting at other tables talked quietly. About: Their weekends in Quogue, East Hampton, Wellfleet. This awful heat. The murder on Bank Street. Falling in love with someone married. The terrible movies around. Have you noticed: the new vegetable stand; the way it seems to thunder every day at three; how fast the ice in this drink melts. I would eavesdrop without seeming to. They were my compatriots, stranded in this hot city while everyone else breathed fresh salt air.

Having drunk much iced coffee, I would feel too caffeinated to go home to bed. So I would sit in the window and watch people pass below. One night I saw Joe with a woman. She had a shag haircut, the likes of which I hadn’t seen for ten years, and she wore a sleeveless pastel jersey that accentuated her bountiful curves. They walked slowly along Greenwich Avenue, their arms around each other in an easy embrace. Joe’s red curls glinted in the yellow streetlight. The couple paused, as if they might climb the stairs to the café, but instead they walked on. I turned in my seat to watch them disappear down Perry Street.

Hardly anyone recognized me on those walks; since Susan’s success in
Hester’s Sister
, I had noticed fewer people recognizing me at all. I enjoyed that—I was able to move without scrutiny. Yet I also wondered, wasn’t recognition supposed to be one of the rewards for acting on soap operas? Other times, usually after signing an autograph, I would feel as popular as ever and see my delusion of obscurity as the paranoia it truly was.

Toward the end of August the hot air lifted. Certain nights were chilly enough to require a sweater. Canadian air masses shifted south; I took that as a sign to mean that I could soon leave for Watch Hill. As an inducement, I bought my train tickets through a travel agent around the corner from Soundstage 3. My predictions had come true: Beck had aided Delilah in her escape just as the corrupt prison officials and inmates were setting their hostage plan in gear. Delilah’s cellmate had cooperated with Beck in diverting attention; she had faked a choking spell by inhaling a generous amount of talc supplied by Beck. Now she was in the hospital, and Beck and Delilah were on the run, pursued by vengeful prison officials and the real lawmen. Would they survive? First they had to hide out for three weeks, casting doubts in the viewers’ minds, providing Jason Mordant and Una Cavan with the perfect covers to take vacations.

The morning I was to leave New York for Watch Hill, my telephone rang at seven. It was Chance’s secretary, asking what time my train left, saying that Mr. Schutz would send his car to drive me to the station. I glowed with pleasure. I felt like a celebrity! At nine-fifteen I waited in the lobby of my building with two canvas duffel bags, a suitcase, a tennis racket, and a satchel of new books to read on the beach. The cool black limo glided to the curb, on schedule, with Chance in the back seat. I had not expected him to come along with the car.

My first thought: I am about to be fired.

My second: one of my sisters is dead, and they have sent Chance to break the news.

“You don’t look well,” he said when I climbed in.

“Is everything all right?”

He covered my hand with his and smiled. “Yes, everything is fine. Don’t worry.” He directed the driver to Pennsylvania Station, then pushed a button that raised the smoky glass partition between the front and back seats. “I have been meaning to talk to you, but the summer has been hectic.”

“I know.” Chatter about beaches, parties, summer’s quick passing. Soon we were under the canopy between Penn Station and Madison Square Garden.

“Are you happy on the show, Una?” he asked.

“Oh, yes. Very happy.” At that instant, about to leave for three weeks, I was.

“Still, perhaps it is time to move on, to follow your natural cycle. Perhaps you would like a new challenge?”

I shrugged. I couldn’t get over the idea that I was getting sacked.

“Would you like to audition for a movie?” he asked.

This was Billy’s work, I knew. Chance and Billy Schutz, my fairy godparents, were offering me a movie audition. Chance sat beside me, his wolf eyes devouring my wordless ecstasy. I nodded. Then I hugged him.

“I shall call your agent about this. My friend is casting an important new movie in France, and I mentioned your name. He was very interested.”

“This is wonderful, Chance. I’ve been thinking about a movie or a play, you know. I love the
show
of course, and I would always want to come back to it, but I would like to try something new. Just to try—just to see if I could do it. But then return to the show.”

Chance laughed at the way I was chattering. He checked his watch, slim as shirt cardboard. “We don’t want you to miss your train. I’ll arrange an audition for you, through Miss Atwood.”

“Thank you, Chance. Thank you for the ride and the…movie thing.” We both laughed at my awkwardness. “Who is your friend, by the way? Just out of curiosity?”

“Emile Balfour.”

Emile Balfour. So simple—I had an audition with Emile Balfour, indisputably the wildest director working in movies today. He was French and owed as much to Rimbaud and Jung as he did to Truffaut and Fellini. He used vivid imagery, dream sequences, the sea, brilliant color, and unknown actors who became known very quickly. Of the dozen or so directors Chance could have mentioned, Balfour was by far the most exciting.

Finally I was on a train bound for Westerly, Rhode Island, a town just a few miles from Watch Hill. I rode alone until Stamford, when a woman my age sat in the seat beside me. I fought the urge to tell her what had just happened to me: I have an audition with Emile Balfour!

I had seen all his movies. Many were love stories set on the shores of various oceans. In Tripoli, Corfu, Christmas Cove, Labrador, Portillo. An interview I had once read said that he was born in Montreal to French parents, then moved before he turned one to Arcachon, a small town on France’s southwest coast. He loved sailing, and he needed the sea for renewal. It inspired his best pictures. I recalled the wind sequence in
The Listener
, which had been shot in Canada. A woman walked alone along a snowy path bordering cliffs over the Bay of Fundy. Her husband had not returned home from a solitary hunting trip. Was he dead? Had he deserted her? At first her expression was calm, but then she began to howl; the camera recorded the desolation on her face, but the screams were drowned out by the February wind. No sound emerged. It was one of the most chilling scenes I had ever seen.

The train chuffed eastward through Connecticut, passing the factory cities west of New Haven, then the seaside colonies beyond the Connecticut River. I tried to think of Margo, of our vacation, but Emile Balfour stayed in my mind. I flipped to the arts section in my paper to see whether any of his movies were advertised. I leaned forward in my seat, straining for glimpses of Long Island Sound, as if they could renew me, inspire me to do a good audition for Emile Balfour. I was so absorbed, I nearly missed the peninsula where my mother lived alone, painting watercolors to her heart’s content. I thought of her rarely; all through my childhood she had seemed to wish she were elsewhere. At an easel, on a moor, in the library. We shared something secret and important that we never spoke about: our trips to fetch my father from his haunts. She would have preferred to smooth all wrinkles out of the past’s fabric. If my father had been an imperfect man in life, he had become the perfect husband in death. At holidays and over the phone my mother would grow weepy at the mention of his name. “He was a good man,” she might say. Or, “Oh, what a fine husband he was.” My sisters and I would snicker, and our mother would leave the room in a huff. It was much easier for her to maintain illusions when she was alone, so we obliged and rarely visited.