Heart of Glass (15 page)

The play was a bit flimsy and saccharine, I thought, though the supporting cast gave some good performances. Miss Dunaway, sometimes calling for her lines, struggled valiantly to embody a woman much younger than herself, as she traveled through the story of her character, Frances Duffy, and her life of heartbreak and disappointment in a lower-class Irish Catholic family.
Mommie Dearest
had just come out in movie theaters six months before, so perhaps she was trying to erase “worst Hollywood mom ever” from all our memories by portraying this sweet, sad, and unlucky woman onstage. Apparently, Dunaway was difficult to work with, had quit once, and had driven everyone crazy with her tantrums and demands.

The stress had been too much for Nina's boss, Gerry Gutierrez, a dumpling-shaped gay guy with a big, bushy mustache, so part of Nina's job description began to include acquiring marijuana and cocaine for him—to calm him down or to keep him going. She'd be dispatched in a cab to an address, pick up the drugs, and bring them either to his place or to the theater. I went on one of the runs with her, waiting in the taxi while she ran up the steps next to a crepe restaurant to make the score. It had added an air of paranoia to her lately. She was always closing curtains and making sure doors were locked, as if she expected the narcs to burst into the room any minute.

One night, I hung out at Nina's mom's apartment after the show. In the Eighties between Park and Lexington, it was not far from one of my childhood homes on Park Avenue
and Ninety-fourth Street. Her mom was out of town; Nina shuttled back and forth between this place and Paul's. The apartment was very seventies with floor-to-ceiling mirrored walls and white shag carpeting in the living room. A leather sofa and a brown-tinted glass coffee table sat in the center of the room, where you could almost imagine Jack and Anjelica lounging before they headed out to the bar at the Pierre. French doors led to a small galley kitchen on one end of the flat, and the bedrooms and bathrooms were on the other. A few actors from the cast joined in, and then Paul arrived with a woman I didn't recognize, a willowy, generically pretty blonde.

“Hey, everybody,” Paul addressed the room, “this is Sandy. I met her at the gym.”

“Hello, Sandy,” the crowd said in unison. Then, everyone went back to their drinks and conversations except for Nina, who walked swiftly to the windows and pulled the curtains shut. Then she turned off a few of the lights so that it was even darker.

“Hey, guys, Gerry gave me some of his coke—like a work bonus.” Nina giggled. She went over to the Danish teak credenza, slid open one side panel, and pulled out something wrapped in silk scarf. She unraveled it while walking to the coffee table, revealing a small plastic bag filled with white stuff, rolled up in a tube. Paul opened the bag and, in perfect
American Gigolo
mode, began cutting the coke into thin lines on the surface of the coffee table.
Oh my God,
I thought,
every­one's about to do drugs!

My exposure to narcotics had been limited, to say the least. I had smoked pot once with two girlfriends from high school when I was eighteen. I remembered laughing quite a bit and then eating an entire carton of chocolate ice cream. It was fun, but I hadn't done it since.

With a flourish, Paul produced a bill from his jacket pocket and rolled it up. People began circling the table and taking turns snorting up a line or two. Someone put on music, Fleetwood Mac's
Tusk
, and I heard a wine-bottle cork pop free.

“Wendy, want some?” Nina ran her index finger under her nose, sniffing in deeply.

“Sure, I mean, I've never tried it.”

Nina looked at me, clearly shocked. I think because I'd lived abroad, had traveled, and dressed kind of downtown, people assumed I was more sophisticated than I was. Despite, or because of, having been raised by a woman who over­indulged in all things—sex, alcohol, money, and drugs—I was kind of an avowed dork. “Very cool, I wish I was you,” a guy said to me as he nodded in approval.

I got down on my knees, closed one nostril, as instructed by Paul, and snorted it up. Then, I switched sides. It burned, and I tasted something bitter and slightly metallic on the back of my tongue.

“Amazing, huh?” the nodding guy said.

I didn't feel anything; maybe it took a while to kick in. “Um, yeah.” I poured myself a glass of red wine and walked over to an armchair in the corner near the window.

The evening went on—people got their coats and left. The stragglers, of which I was one, sat on the floor or plopped on the couch, smoking cigarettes and drinking more wine. The records kept changing. Nina was telling crazy-train stories about weird Faye Dunaway, such as how she had showed up at rehearsal with a newborn baby she claimed to have just given birth to.

“Like she expected us all of a sudden to believe that she'd been pregnant with this baby during rehearsals—which is impossible—and then just had it on her day off and brought it to work. It was so bizarre!”

“Instant baby.” Paul nodded.

Things seemed to be winding down; I looked at my watch and it read 2:15 a.m. Deciding to head out, I got my coat and walked over to Nina to say good night and thanks. She grabbed my hand and dragged me to the bathroom, pulling me inside and closing the door. A moment later, Paul came in. We stood there lit up in the bright lights that ringed the wall mirror.

“What is it?” They were both looking at me intently. I wondered if they wanted to borrow money from me or something.

“Well”—Nina looked at Paul, and he sort of smirked—“we have a question for you.”

I looked back and forth between them. Nina told me that she and Paul wanted to sleep with me—and include the girl from the gym, Beth. I wasn't sure if Nina thought I was bi or gay or just a decadent European; maybe the suits
and ties made me look that way? I wasn't shocked by the
ménage à quatre
idea—and didn't want to seem prudish and dis­approving. Nina had been generous to me, but I wasn't willing to go that far to repay her.

“Um, no, thanks,” I said to Nina. “Just not my thing, but you guys go ahead. I'm going home. Great party.” I opened the door and turned to say good-bye over my shoulder before heading out the front door, smiling to show them it was no big deal.

The next day my phone rang. When I answered, I was surprised to hear Nina's brother Lincoln. He asked me if I'd meet him for drink and said he had something to tell me, something about Nina. He sounded weirdly terse, but I agreed.

We met at the Grassroots Tavern on St. Mark's Place. It was a seedy dive in the bottom of a tenement house, with a low tin ceiling and, for some reason, a grimy glass case full of dusty trophies, sports memorabilia, and tchotchkes. When I arrived, Lincoln was sitting in a booth at the back, and I slid onto the bench across from him. An open pack of Winstons lay on the table, and he was drinking a Bud out of a bottle.

As I sat down, he lit a cigarette. “So, Wendy, I wanted to tell you this in person, not on the phone. Nina went to the ER last night.”

“What? What happened?”

“Well, I was hoping you could tell me.” He raised his eyebrows.

“I have no idea what you are talking about, I swear.” The
waitress came by and I ordered a bourbon. “We were at a party together last night, there were a bunch of people there, I left around two thirty or so.”

“Yeah, well, she told me you left with some guy and she was worried about you—and followed you downstairs and that's when it happened. She was tapping on the glass to get your attention.”

Stunned into silence, I gaped at him.

It turned out that right after I left, Nina had had some kind of freak-out, run downstairs to the lobby, and put her arm through the glass panel in the front door, shattering it, and slicing a twelve-inch gash along the underside of her arm. She was rushed to the hospital by Paul, where she received over sixty stitches and a blood transfusion.

I sipped my bourbon, trying to process this. I guessed that Nina had got upset about the whole foursome thing and maybe became afraid that I'd tell someone. Drugged-up and paranoid, she'd freaked out. I never would have said anything; I certainly wouldn't tell her brother.

He squashed his cigarette in the ashtray and lit another.

“Can I bum one?” I took a Winston out of the pack and lit it with his book of matches. The smoke felt strong and harsh, and I had an immediate head rush from the nicotine. I was purely a social smoker—occasionally at a bar or a party. Or in this case, to stall for time when I didn't know what to say to my former lover and the brother of the woman who'd propositioned me for a foursome the previous night. “I guess I didn't hear her, I didn't hear any sounds after I left
the building.” I shrugged, hoping I would look more clueless than I was.

“You should go to see her. I mean, in a way, it's kind of your fault, don't you think?”

“Um . . .”

“I sort of blame you,” he said. “I mean, she was just looking out for you.”

“I'll go see her.”

“And don't go home with strange guys. This city is full of fucking maniacs.” He shook his head in distaste, smoke pluming from his nostrils.

“Right. Good advice.” I tossed a few dollar bills on the table, got up, and left. The temptation to say anything more was too great to stay any longer.

When I took Nina flowers at her mom's place one morning later that week, the housekeeper let me in and ushered me into the bedroom where Nina was tucked into a single bed and propped up on pillows. The shades were drawn, shutting out the sunlight, which gave the room a sort of hushed Blanche DuBois, Chinese-lantern feel. I sat by her bedside on a little brocade chair. Her arm was along her side on top of the coverlet in a sling, bandaged from her wrist up to her shoulder, and she was on pain meds.

“The show's closing,” she told me somewhat woozily.

“That's too bad.”

“Yeah, Gerry's bummed because it was his first Broadway show.”

I nodded sympathetically; she was out of a job, too. But I knew it wouldn't be for long. She was mercurial and always went after what she wanted and usually got it—the fancy education, the handsome boyfriend, the impressive job that would lead to something bigger. A part of me had always wanted to crawl up her butt and be her, to be Nina Franco, to feel so certain about it all—what she wanted, where she was going, and what her next project would be. But I was the sort of girl who didn't ask the person in the aisle seat on the airplane to stand up when I had to go to the bathroom. I was way behind Nina in lots of ways; I didn't know if I'd ever catch up. But if lying in a dark bedroom with sixty stitches and a drug hangover was the price of catching up, I wasn't positive I wanted to get there anymore. My mother had always shot first and asked questions later—going after the brass ring, or at least the guy who was holding it, and the endings had never been happy. After my time with the high-flying crowd of New York theater, I saw that maybe it was okay that I was making my own way, even if it was in baby steps.

chapter seven

GET OUT OF TOWN, GIRL

I decided to escape from New York after another round of auditions, during which I was criticized by, well, everyone I tried out for. My boobs were too small—I should consider having implants. I wasn't pretty enough—I should have a nose job. I should dye my hair blond. I could afford to lose ten pounds. I was too funny. I wasn't sexy. And what the hell was I wearing a suit and tie for? Just a month before, I'd read for a part in a John Sayles movie and had been told by the doyenne of New York casting, Bonnie Timmermann—who got Mickey Rourke and Scarlett Johansson their first acting gigs—that I was going to be a star. The role went to Rosanna Arquette, and it seemed now that I was the dog girl that no one wanted to hire.

Everyone, except for me, seemed to have something going on that enhanced his or her life in a major way. Pete and Jenny had each other. Nina had applied and gotten into
the graduate program at NYU. My old BU roommate Julie had bought a loft in an industrial building in Dumbo, underneath the Brooklyn Bridge, and begun fixing it up with her boyfriend. I was an out-of-work actress who answered the phone in a deli. Having inherited a strong cut-and-run gene from my mother, the urge to skip town was fierce. I felt like Toby Tyler—the little orphan boy in the Disney movie who runs away to join the circus—except I always seemed to be one town away from where the circus was playing, trying to find where there might be a place for me.

Antsy and trying to come up with a plan to find my own circus, I decided to go to Minneapolis for a while. I had only spent a few days with my father since our reunion. Maybe if I lived nearby, I could have quality time and get to know him better. And perhaps I would have more luck finding acting work there, since nothing had panned out in the city. I was also anxious to escape a furtive love affair I was having with a handsome, cerebral Italian American actor, who had the most gorgeous black hair that sprang in lush curls from his head. His name was Mark, and as in my last relationship, he had a girlfriend. I was worried that this was becoming a pattern—or maybe New York was just filled with guys who were taken and wanted to cheat on their women. I had met him at a party, and we ended up standing fully clothed in the bathtub, singing “The Girl from Ipanema” and drinking bourbon on the rocks out of highball glasses. Oddly, it turned out he had worked with my dad at the Denver Center in Colorado.

“I can't believe you are Jimmy's daughter,” he'd told me that night. “What a great guy! I spent many an evening after the show in the bar with him.”

Mark drove me to his apartment in Inwood in his snazzy vintage Lincoln Continental—it was black and had suicide doors, which I had never seen before. The sex was fraught with angst: he seemed to be enjoying himself but in the most tortured way. Maybe it was some kind of Catholic thing. I just hung in there and waited for it to be over. Men who seemed to need a road map of the female form still amazed me.

Afterward, he kindly drove me home. I had seen him one more time, and we had the same Kafkaesque sex, but now he wanted me to meet his girlfriend. He seemed to think we could all go to a movie together or something—which I thought was just plain weird. After I'd decided to bolt, I left a message on his service, saying good-bye and that I was moving to Minneapolis to hang with my dad. Neither of us would be brokenhearted.

A few days before, I'd gone down to Didi's office to let her know I was splitting.

“Minneapolis in February? Are you fucking insane?”

“I'm gonna live with my dad—get to know him better.”

“Okay, keep in touch, though. Don't disappear—write, call, whatever.”

I promised that I would. She wrapped her arms around me and squeezed me tightly.

So I packed up my possessions, leaving some books and
the futon behind. I kissed Jenny and Pete good-bye and promised to write and call them, too.

Minneapolis in late February was gray and freezing cold, but I didn't care because I'd made my escape. It felt like a new adventure—and I'd be with my father.

Dad drove me to his house from the airport on wet roads banked with dirty snow and ice. It occurred to me that, aside from Christmas, I had never been here in the depth of winter; Robbie and I had spent only summers with our dad. They were days of carefree fun, playing outside, swimming in the lake, or riding our bikes along the sidewalk. Dad drove us past Seven Pools, where our babysitter had sometimes taken us on a hot day. Now it was frozen over and buried in white.

“I have a job prospect for you, sweetheart,” Daddy said as he confidently maneuvered his Buick LeSabre on the slushy streets. “I didn't want to say anything until I was sure you were coming.”

“What is it?”

“A wonderful man, a good friend of mine, Lou Salerni, runs a small theater downtown, and he's found a play he thinks we could do together.”

“Wow! That would be great.”
Work as an actor again and with my father?
My imagination raced.

“Now, you'd have to read for the part—but I saw you in action, so I know you can do it.”

“Thanks, Dad.” I beamed.

“I'm very glad you're here.” His blue eyes got a little moisty.

“Me, too.” I reached over and squeezed his hand where it rested on the gearshift.

I was staying in the guest room, on the second floor across the landing from my father and Sarah's bedroom. A big, comfy bed was covered with a puffy white duvet, and a built-in window seat with floral-patterned cushions looked out over the side garden. The wallpaper was a navy-blue-and-white geometric pattern, and a bookcase filled with novels, plays, mysteries, and assorted knickknacks, along with a large white wicker chair in one corner, and a dresser with a mirror on top, rounded out the furnishings.

I unpacked my things, hung up my James Dean calendar, and placed a framed picture of my sister and my little red paisley makeup bag on the dresser. A little at sea in my unfamiliar surroundings, I was also giddy to be here. I had slept in this room once before, but now I felt more that I belonged. Determined to leave all those sad feelings behind, I was going to spend quality time with my new family. If I could make a home with Jenny and Pete, perhaps I could find one here with my dad and stepmother. I practically skipped to the bathroom to put my toothbrush in the little silver rack above the sink.

The next morning, I awoke to find everyone had gone off to work—Sarah to her job as business manager of the Children's Theatre, and Daddy to do some voice-over work
at a sound studio downtown. I wandered around the house in my pajamas like Goldilocks, sitting in all the chairs, running my hand across the leather sofa in the den, looking at old photos and books, leafing through records, mostly classical and jazz, near the stereo. I opened the cupboards in the kitchen, studying the silver-rimmed, snowflake-patterned dishes and blue-bottomed glassware. I riffled through the packets of pasta and rice and cans of tomato soup and deviled ham. In the medicine cabinets, I found boxes of Alka-Seltzer, cans of L'Oréal hair spray, Dexatrim diet pills, and rolls of Tums. I opened my dad's bottle of Dunhill cologne and sniffed its woodsy leather scent, remembering the way I had smelled it on his neck whenever I'd kissed him on the cheek as a little girl.

In the closets hung my father's dark suits and ties, shirts and sweaters, his wing-tip shoes lying along the floor. My stepmother's clothes smelled of her Cinnabar perfume, and her assortment of chunky necklaces, made from silver, pottery, and beads, hung on a rack on the wall. I tried on a pair of her shoes, which were huge on me. Next, I went down into the basement, where my dad kept an office. It had dusty blue carpeting on the floor and rectangular windows along the tops of the walls that let some light in from the garden. I imagined he sometimes took a nap on the small beige sofa. A massive wooden table with thick, ornately carved legs served as a desk; I browsed the items on top: a paperweight with a swirly-colored-glass center, a heavy brass letter opener with his name on it, gas bills, rolls of stamps, and restau
rant receipts. Guthrie Theater posters and costume sketches of characters he'd played there—some from productions I'd seen when I was little, the dandy Lelio in
The Venetian Twins
and Trinculo the jester in
The Tempest—
lined the walls.

I was like a spy, trying to cram every object and smell into my mind, to familiarize myself with this place, so that I wouldn't feel like a guest in my father's house. I would learn it and know it—and it would become my own.

Later that week, Daddy and I went downtown to the Cricket Theatre to meet his friend Lou Salerni, the artistic director, and talk about the play—a 1940s comedic chestnut by Norman Krasna called
Dear Ruth
. My dad read a scene from the play with me; Lou laughed out loud and eased my anxiety, and then we went to lunch. The part was clearly mine, and Lou was excited about the actual-father-and-daughter casting angle. Lou was convinced that, combined with Dad's local celebrity, would bring tons of people in. A director was coming in from New York, but all the actors would be from the Twin Cities. Rehearsals would start at the end of the month. I listened attentively to Lou's plans, unable to get enough.

In
Dear Ruth
, Dad played the long-suffering Judge Wilkins, who lives with his wife and two daughters in Kew Gardens on Long Island during World War II. I was playing the younger daughter, Miriam, who has been writing letters to a soldier overseas but signing her pretty, older sister Ruth's name. When the handsome young soldier shows up one day with a bouquet of flowers to meet Ruth in ­person—
hilarity ensues. After doing
Spring Awakening
, I found it fun to do a play that was just fluff; it wasn't anything but a kooky story. As the precocious sixteen-year-old Miriam, I got to play a deranged teenager of a different kind—I had a delicious drunk scene, getting shnockered while I clutched a giant stuffed panda bear, and got to wear forties clothes such as rompers and dirndl dresses and saddle shoes. I had permed my chin-length hair and wore a hairpiece that I thought made me look like a young Lucille Ball, whom I was trying to channel in my performance. The director was a charming, elfin man named Bob Moss, who had founded Playwrights Horizons in New York and who genuinely adored the material. Our stage manager, Brian, roly-poly in his tight, wrinkled clothes, reminded me of a wacky character from a Gilbert and Sullivan opera with his booming voice and ribald sense of humor. The cast got along like a dream, and I bonded with the other actresses, Louise, who played my sister, and Mary Sue, who had a small part as a young newlywed.

For press to promote the play, Daddy and I were interviewed by the
Minneapolis Tribune
, and the story ran with a photograph of us sitting together backstage, smiling. Daddy told of the time when I was three or four and Dr. Guthrie scooped me up in the greenroom of the Guthrie Theater and said, “My goodness, aren't you a tiny little thing! I should like to take you home and put you on my mantel.” I felt like a debutante being introduced all over town.

During rehearsals, I'd go to lunch with Louise and Mary
Sue. We didn't have that much in common, besides being actresses. Mary Sue was married and had two little boys at home. She was a pretty brunette with a caustic wit that went against her sweetheart looks. Louise was a round-faced, cheerful blonde engaged to a guy I didn't think was good enough for her. But what did I know about relationships? Since breaking up with angry, negative Michael, I'd only given a Mormon an erection and had a few uncommitted love affairs with men who were technically taken. I kept my mouth shut.

Dad and I came home from rehearsal one evening to find my stepmother looking peeved. “Your mother called here—
I just got off the phone with her.”

“Oh no.” I wondered how she'd found me.

“I didn't know it was her at first.” Sarah lit a cigarette while my dad poured them both bourbons. “She was pretending to be a school friend of yours from London.” It had a theatrical flair to it that I recognized as Mother's, and accosting people by telephone was a favorite hobby of hers. “She had this ridiculous English accent, and then I figured out who it was—and I'm afraid I told her off.”

“Perfectly understandable, sweetheart.” My dad handed her a tinkling rocks glass.

Over dinner, Sarah told the story of the only time she'd ever seen my father lose his temper. When they were first dating, after a particularly harsh call from Mother, he'd slammed the phone down, ripped the cord out of its socket, and punched his fist through the wall.

“I'd never seen him act like that—before or since.”

My father smiled, cutting into his steak, and said quietly, “God, I hate that woman.”

“Well, of course you do, Jimmy,” Sarah said.

Then she told me how devastated Daddy was when my mother first took me and my sister and disappeared. He just sat in a chair and stared out the window for two weeks.

“Well, she may know where you are, Wendy,” Sarah said, “but she can't get to you. You're safe here, and if she shows up, well, I'm sure as hell not going to let her in.”

“Christ, no.” Dad shook his head.

I was moved by their protectiveness toward me; they weren't going to allow her to swoop in with her bansheelike cruelties and melodramatic high jinks. I was safe here, tucked away in the shelter of their home.

But I lay in bed that night in the dark trying to imagine my father in a fury, shoving his fist through a wall—and I couldn't picture it. Rationally, I knew Mother would never show her face here, although the fear of her sudden appearance was often in the back of my mind, like a bad dream you can't forget. I took some solace in knowing that she was being driven crazy knowing that I was safely ensconced with my father and stepmother. She couldn't control that, and I knew it made her batshit crazy.