Heart of Glass (18 page)

“No, I hadn't,” I fibbed to draw him out. “That's too bad.”

“The problem is that I don't really know how to do anything else.” He pouted.

“I'm sure . . . something will come along,” I said encouragingly, although just how vast the market for unemployed valets was, I wasn't sure.

Who was I to advise the former manservant of Prince Charles on job strategies anyway? With my acting career on pause, I was just a salesgirl in a department store. He had my
sympathy, though; I could hear him and his boyfriend fighting in their room at night.

“I suppose.” He sighed, and squinted, looking out over the sea.

That evening we all piled into cars and went to dinner at a restaurant that served grouper and conch myriad ways. Shellacked blowfish hung from the ceiling, and—for some strange reason—German oompah-pah music churned through the air. From there we went on to the Playboy Casino, where I won $25 at a slot machine. Finishing the evening at a nightclub called Peanuts Taylor's, where all and sundry downed copious rum cocktails, we danced the limbo to loud steel-drum music till 1:00 a.m., and the British antiques lady put her hand up my dress. When I emitted a loud whoop, she winked at me and told me I was dishy.

A hedonistic crowd, they seemed to be always one step away from an orgy. At Sunday lunch at James Bond movie producer Cubby Broccoli's house, his handsome blond son, Tony, who wasn't that much older than me, preened around and introduced himself to me as “the son and heir.” I walked around the enormous backyard, where the palm trees were equipped with speakers so that piped-in music could be heard wherever you were. The Police sang “Don't Stand So Close to Me”
in stereo.

It reminded me of the sort of weekend my mother would have raced to when I lived in London as a teenager. She was constantly dashing off in a backless dress with a crowd of pagan types to a fancy, raucous party or some country inn to go hot-air
ballooning. I couldn't help but think what a great time she'd have barreling around Nassau with this bunch of reprobates. It was like her wet dream. I was half tempted to send her a postcard.

I caught a little cold from going in and out of the air-conditioning, and a woman in the kitchen made me a cough syrup from limes and ginger that I remembered my nanny Catherine making me when I was a child. My mother had fired her when I was ten, and I knew I would never see her again. I didn't even know her last name. The elixir the woman brought me had the same sharp, peppery taste, meant to blast out whatever gunk you had in you. I lay in my little single bed drinking my syrup, thinking fondly of my old friend, the times she held me against her ample bosom, shushing and rocking me when I'd had a nightmare, or the times my sister and I sat on her lap watching cartoons on Saturday mornings in her little room at the back of our apartment. In contrast to my mother's frosty, rigid inconsistency, I had felt utterly loved and protected in Catherine's presence, and I carried her devotion with me long after she'd been banished from our lives. So I raised my glass of cough syrup and drank a little toast to Catherine, wherever she was.

Before going home to the dirty ice cube of Minneapolis, I placed giant hibiscus flowers in baggies to carry them back with me for their warmth and sunshine. And a bottle of Mount Gay, of course.

Between icy beers, dinner-plate pillows, and rent boys, Stephen Barry figured out something to do. He wrote two tell-all books about the royal family, for which he was paid
$1 million in advance. Because he had signed an official paper before his employment forever barring him from talking or writing about the royals, the books were only released in America. A year after the second was published, he died of AIDS at thirty-seven.

•   •   •

Plunged back from my Bahamian fantasy island vacation into the gloomy, sunless land of the Swedes, I hunted around for another paying gig. My stint at Dayton's had just been for the holidays, and I needed an influx of cash.

I had been living in the Twin Cities for a year; my experiment of being in the same place as my dad had been a success, from my standpoint. We had spent time together and had bonded by doing the play. It was like a honeymoon period for me—basking in the love of my father and the admiration so many other people had for him. But I wasn't a little kid anymore, waiting for him to come home from work to ask me about my day. Our relationship cut short, we had sort of picked up where we didn't leave off and there was a lot he didn't know. Having always been a daddy's girl, and someone who never rocked the boat, I didn't see the point of sitting him down and giving him the blow by blow of Robbie's and my hellish childhood with our mother. I didn't want to ruin things or make him feel guiltier than he may already have. I already knew he felt regret over not coming to our rescue; he had told me as much. I wanted to protect him from those painful feelings, but at the same time, I wondered
if we would even be spending time together now had I not picked up the phone myself.

I had made a few friends since moving to Minneapolis but still yearned for my life back East and missed Pete and Jenny and my sister, who was waiting tables in Boston and going to school part-time. Robin had opted not to come to Minneapolis for the last Christmas holiday—it was just too upsetting for her, she told me. I understood; my sister had more of a “don't look back” take, which was quite different from mine. She didn't seem to feel the bond with my father and his family, and she was moving on. I preferred to hang in, inserting myself in that sometimes uncomfortable limbo, trying to find a connection, real or imagined. I would will it into being if need be.

By April, there was still snow on the frozen, gray ground. I got a call from Mark Cuddy, who had directed
The Importance of Being Earnest
, the show I'd done in Steamboat Springs. He offered me a summer job acting at a Shakespeare festival in Boise, Idaho. I wasn't sure I was interested in traveling to another wild frontier; Idaho sounded like a place filled with lumberjacks and man-eating animals. I was unsure of what to do when, on a visit to Mary Sue, I saw a four-inch object on the low stone steps that ran up from the sidewalk to her house. At first I thought it was a Christmas ornament, but when I got closer, I discovered that it was a wooden piece from a jigsaw-puzzle map of the United States. It was Idaho. Perhaps it was a random way to make the decision to go, but maybe it was a sign? It seemed to make more sense than, say,
flipping a coin. I picked up the piece and put it in my pocket.

Before leaving for Idaho, though, I received a phone call from Peter Hackett, the artistic director at the Denver Center, the theater in Colorado where my dad had been working. He wanted me to come and audition for the next season there, which would start in the fall. Amazingly, I wasn't being asked to do just a general audition, but to read for actual roles—a first for me. One of the roles was Juliet in
Romeo and Juliet
, which I'd dreamed of playing. Another was Cecily in
The Importance of Being Earnest
. Mark Cuddy had recommended me to Peter. I figured I could swing through Denver on my way up to Boise. I said good-bye to my father and stepmom, packed up my car, and hit the road again.

I stayed with my pal from my summer of flowing Moët and theater in a tent, Barbie in Boulder. She was engaged to be married to a new guy, not the one from the naked photo, and was singing in nightclubs with a vocal quartet that reminded me of the Manhattan Transfer
—
sort of white, groovy harmonizing stuff. I met her fiancé, Kip, who was laid-back and nice. They seemed so happy and relaxed as a couple. I just marveled at people in relationships—­especially since I couldn't get arrested by the love police. I seemed doomed to be the third wheel, hanging out with my girlfriends and their menfolk.

Onstage, it was a different story. It was always a great feeling, despite whatever nerves I was experiencing, to walk out on the stage of a big theater. Hearing the echo of my footsteps as I crossed the stage, looking out on the sea of
seats, was thrilling. Especially delicious was the moment before I launched into my audition; that hush made me feel as if I were about to invite the audience to join me and hopefully hold them in my hand.

Peter sat in the middle of the house with another man, perhaps an assistant. Peter smiled and nodded at me, saying hello. I started with Juliet's balcony speech, then read for a smaller but juicy role in Tennessee Williams's
The Night of the Iguana
—a sexpot teenager chasing after the defrocked priest, Shannon. And then, finally, for Cecily in
Earnest
. I finished and looked expectantly out from the stage.

“We'll be in touch.” Peter smiled and shook my hand. “Thanks for coming in.”

After thanking him, I walked off through the backstage, breathing in that marvelous theater perfume, past the heavy black drapes hanging in the wings. I reached out and brushed the velvet with my fingertips, hoping they would bring me good luck.

The drive to Idaho was wildy scenic—I had to go through Wyoming, with its buttes and buffalo, and through Utah, with its mountains and dry towns. Idaho itself was ever changing. One moment, I'd be going along a flat road surrounded by shimmering, cerulean lakes; suddenly sand dunes would appear; and then I'd be climbing up a twisty mountain road redolent with the smell of pine, snow glinting above the treetops. It was like God's country.

I arrived at the actors' housing and met my roommates. Ursula was the company vocal coach and also acting in the
summer Shakespeare festival. She was five years older than me, engaged to be married to an actor in New York, and had this sweet, pretty cartoonlike face that was so expressive that she reminded me of Bugs Bunny when he's dressed like a girl. She would drink half a lite beer and have to immediately lie down, even if it meant on the kitchen floor, and I'd bring her a pillow; she was a cute drunk. Our other housemate was Wayne—a towering, slender gay guy from Florida with a goatee. He used to give us a funny look and say, “I'm going to the post office.”

“But it's ten o'clock at night, Wayne,” I would say.

“Uh-huh,” he'd drawl as he grabbed his car keys and headed out into the night. It took me a while to realize that the
post office
was a euphemism for “gay bar.” One night, I dressed up like a guy and Wayne took me with him to one of his haunts. Here we were in Boise, Idaho, God's Country, USA, and the bar was stuffed with more trannies, leather boys, and screaming queens than I'd ever seen in the Village. It blew my mind. He also introduced me to an after-hours disco that didn't serve alcohol, but you could dance your ass off till three in the morning on a strobe-lit floor. It was the only place I saw African Americans in town; it was as if they were Idaho's vampires, who only came out at night to party down.

We started rehearsals for
Henry IV, Part 1
on the bottom floor of an old department store that was now defunct but owned by this mellow hippie couple who lived in a loftlike space on the second floor with their baby. The woman's name was Star, and she worked in the costume department.
They threw all the opening-night parties and, to my dismay, didn't have a door on their bathroom.

The theater itself was outside, next to a golf course. We were lucky to have a huge hardware megastore across from the stage on the other side of the golf course, which improved the acoustics, as you were competing with people talking and eating their dinners on the grass, traffic noise, and the occasional airplane, helicopter, or ambulance. One night, a duck waddled up onstage during a battle scene and caused quite an uproar, bringing everything to a screeching halt. An actor in chain mail gently herded the duck offstage with his broadsword.

I enjoyed performing in two of the three plays. I had a tiny part in
Henry IV, Part 1
, as Lady Mortimer. Just one scene, but I had to speak and sing in Welsh and play being madly in love with my husband, who can't understand a thing I'm saying but thinks I'm adorable. This was the only play we performed in period, and wearing a long wig and a wool dress with fur trim under the blazing-hot lights was definitely a challenge. The sweat would start trickling down my back as soon as I got out under those hot lights, forming a little puddle in my underpants, even as we pretended we were in a drafty English castle.

My favorite role of the summer was in
The Merry Wives of Windsor
, in which I played Mistress Ford. It was done in present day, we had a terrific female director, and Ursula—who played the other merry wife—referred to it as
I Love Falstaff
, because of its sitcomlike plot: the local lounge lizard, Falstaff, fancies himself a ladies' man and causes all kinds
of trouble. Of course, the wives turn the tables on him, and he gets his comeuppance. It was loads of fun, a comic romp jacked up by screwball antics.

In the last play of the summer,
Love's Labour's Lost
, I played Rosaline—I was awful and I knew it. The director was a swaggering cowboy type who paraded around with his two witchy girlfriends, whom he referred to smarmily as his “bookends.” Idiotically, he set the play in the future, so we wore these ridiculous yellow jumpsuits and makeup that made us look like overgrown parrots. It was agony for me to be up there, saying these lines that were way over my head in terms of understanding and delivery—Rosalind was just so much smarter than I was. To make it even worse, the actor who played my love interest, Berowne, took an instant dislike to me. His name, Bill Fears, gave me my catchphrase of the summer: “There is nothing to fear but Fears himself.” Since he was here in Idaho, from New York, and slightly older than the rest of the cast, he felt the whole experience was beneath him. He was slumming, and having to do scenes with me was a waste of his valuable time—so much so that he would often cut to the end of our scenes and walk off the stage. In a way I felt he was justified in doing this, as I was so obviously out of my league in terms of the language. The other part of me thought he was a dick.