The Confessions of Edward Day (23 page)

I read with the stage manager, a compact middle-aged matron who fed me my lines crisply, like sugared wafers. The director asked me a few personal questions. I was lucid and friendly, like Astrov, ironic and curious about the world around me. I got the callback the next morning. This time I read with Rory Behenny, a fine actor who had just finished a successful run at the fledgling Brooklyn Academy of Music. Rory was the reason our director had decided to take on the play. We did the scene in which Astrov and Vanya argue about a missing bottle of morphine. Vanya is suicidal; Astrov scoffs at him. Rory was like a quick fox, daring me to catch him. We had a lively skirmish and at the end our little audience of professionals gave us a lusty round of applause.

Barney called me the next morning, sounding glum. “Well,” he said, “they’ve cast the Chekhov.”

“And?” I said.

There was a pause, but I didn’t hang on it; I was that confident.

“Rehearsals start Monday,” he said.

Y
esterday, as I was cleaning out the attic of our house, I came across a box of Madeleine’s books. It had been hastily packed for the move from Philadelphia to New York, unpacked in the East Village apartment where Guy and Madeleine briefly lived, then packed again, by me this time, and shipped to Connecticut. At first I imagined that Madeleine might ask for her books, but it soon became clear that she was unlikely to do that, so the box became a disheartening reminder of all that I had
lost, and I stowed it away. It wasn’t a large box. It occurred to me that there might be something in it of use in composing this memoir; at least it would refresh my memory of what Madeleine was like then, what she chose to take with her on what was to be a harrowing trip to oblivion. I brought the box to my crowded study under the eaves and cut the tape with a utility knife. One by one I unpacked the books. A dictionary, a Bartlett’s quotations, a complete Shakespeare, a complete Chekhov, three plays by Ibsen, a stack of the bright-yellow scripts Madeleine had collected for auditions, or just because she was curious about something new and a script was cheaper than a ticket. Stanislavski’s
An Actor Prepares
, several nineteenth-century novels, Hardy, Eliot,
Middlemarch—
she loved
Middlemarch
. Shurtleff’s
Audition—
every actor had that one then and I’ve noticed it’s still in print. The collected poems of Yeats and Blake, and, of course, the
Dreamer’s Dictionary
. Serendipity! I’d just been writing about it. I took it up and flipped through it gingerly, with the creepy sensation that someone was watching me. A musty odor arose from the pages, long cooped up and eager to interpret those vagrant dreams. All right, all right, I thought. What have you got for turkey?

Honestly, I didn’t expect to find anything; turkey is a New World bird, after all, but there it was, a longish entry between “tunnel” (an obstacle dream) and “turnip: see vegetable(s).” For all you dreamers of poultry, here’s the entire scoop on the gobbler that was beat out by the eagle for the role of our national bird. If you see a strutting turkey in your dream it portends a period of confusion; a flock of turkeys predicts public honors; if you kill a turkey, expect a stroke of good luck; if you cook,
dress, and serve the bird, you’ll enjoy a period of prosperity. However, if you do what I all unknowing did, if you eat the turkey, “you are likely to make a serious error of judgment, so be very careful regarding any important matters which may be pending.”

I snapped the book closed and dropped it back into the box.

I admit, as prophecy, the turkey dream isn’t exactly Birnam wood, but as I piled the other books back on top of the malevolent dictionary, I had a sense of my fate having ambushed me with a spitefulness I could never have anticipated.

N
ot much happens at a first rehearsal, but the atmosphere is fraught with tension. The action largely consists of what un-clever people call a meet and greet, followed by a reading of the play Our
Vanya
cast assembled at a rehearsal stage at the Public Theater, a large room with low ceilings, bare white walls, and a polished wooden floor. A few straight-backed chairs were scattered around, an upright piano loomed in one corner. There was a side table set up with coffee urn and pastry tray, and, at the center, a long rectangular table on metal trestles with ten green plastic chairs drawn up to it, the setting for our first run at Anton Pavlovich Chekhov.

Repertory actors have an easy time; they’re like a team of draft horses accustomed to pulling heavy loads in tandem. They just want someone to point out the road and off they go. They may even genuinely like one another. But a cast of actors chosen through auditions are more like chickens in a coop, each
actor strutting the length and breadth of the limited territory, secretly terrified yet determined to appear nonchalant. We have our parts; that’s not the problem. It’s the pecking order that needs establishing and that’s going to be up to that big, mysterious rooster, the director, who grins and grins as we come in one by one, his eyes like black beads in which we see ourselves reflected in ludicrous miniature. A consistent first-rehearsal behavior I’ve observed over the years is this: if there is a window in the room, within fifteen minutes of arrival every actor will meander to it and stand looking wistfully out.

I arrived in turmoil. I knew it was going to be impossible for me to concentrate on anything but Madeleine, and I was vexed that this public setting was to be the scene of our first meeting in so many years. I had hoped that she would call me, that we might even manage a brief meeting, but no such luck. Now I would be forced to make lighthearted, self-aggrandizing chatter with my fellow actors and pretend I was, like them, absorbed in the business of the first read, when all I really wanted was to get Madeleine alone and talk to her. Seriously. I just wanted to talk to her.

When I joined the company she hadn’t yet arrived, so I had a few minutes to take part in the jovial introductions. Here was Gwen Post, a mad, wild-eyed bag lady who would play Marina, our dear old Nanny; here was a gloomy, intense collection of outraged nerve ends named Sally Divers, who was our Sonya, the girl who cherishes an unrequited passion for Astrov. Rory Behenny, the eponymous Uncle Vanya, who had read with me at the audition, ambled among us, dressed in a bizarre outfit, part tuxedo and part tracksuit. He pumped my
hand and announced to all that he hoped I’d remember to bring the morphine. My enthusiastic response was without pretense; Rory was a truly gifted actor. He died a few years later of pancreatic cancer, which meant the stealth attack of lethally reproducing cells was probably under way as we stood in the rehearsal room joking about the pressing need for morphine.

Peter Smythe, our director, a combination of sprite and gremlin, with milky-blue eyes and bright-red hair cut in a bowl like the early Beatles, moved among us making introductions and encouraging us to help ourselves to the refreshments. Anton Schoitek, a hulk of a Russian with a head like a wild boar, perfect for the part of the faithful retainer Telyegin, came in with a roar and lifted Peter off the floor, hugging him to his massive chest and growling “Peter, Peter, Peter.” As we were laughing at this spectacle, the door opened again and Madeleine slipped into the room.

One by one the company focused on her. Peter slid down the front of the Russian, announcing her name. I was leaning on the piano, not directly in her line of sight, and I watched as her eyes passed among the others and lit at last upon me. Lit is the correct word; I felt as if I was standing in a single spot, with the rest of the stage and all the people on it cast into darkness. Peter, running through the names, arrived at mine. “Ed Day,” he said. “Our good doctor Astrov.”

“We’ve met,” Madeleine said, smiling modestly.

Rory, who was next to me, sent a sharp look from Madeleine to me and back again, making a show of being caught in an electric charge. “I’ll say,” he said, and everyone laughed.

I’m an actor; I don’t get caught out by my emotions, but it took a conscious effort to hold myself in check. My impulse was to cross the room and fold Madeleine in my arms, and I could have done it, in actor-display mode. No one would have thought a thing about it. But I didn’t move. Nor did she. Our eyes met and I drank in her presence, detecting the subtle changes in her that only I could see. She was a little thinner, which made her seem taller. Her abundant hair was tied back; the front cut short, curling over her brow cherub-style, which contrasted interestingly with her high un-cherubic cheekbones. She was wearing a lavender sweater that shifted her changeable eyes toward gray. Her eyes were different. That was what kept me from moving. The brows were drawn slightly down and together. She regarded me from farther away than the actual distance between us. Indeed so defensive was her expression that her head was drawn back on the pale column of her neck. Her upper lip lifted slightly, revealing the line of her teeth. In the next moment she blinked and turned her attention to our director who directed her to consider the delights on the refreshment table. But I knew what I’d seen in her eyes, and it unnerved me: it was fear. Why should Madeleine ever be afraid of me?

Another actor arrived, I don’t remember who, and then another, and then our company was complete. We were invited to carry our coffee and rolls to the table where the business of the play would begin. Peter assigned our seats and asked us to take out our wallets, a request I thought very odd, but it turned out to be an introductory exercise in which each of us chose something we carried with us, a photo or card or memento,
and told a little story about why we kept it with us. I remember little about this process except that I had nothing more personal than my Equity card, a fact I described as “sad” to the amusement of the group. Only the Russian came up with less. He had nothing in his wallet but a twenty-dollar bill. “This is America,” he said. “Who cares who you are, only money counts.”

What was it that Madeleine always carried with her? I don’t remember. The afternoon passed in a blur of distraction. My brain came up with various clever ways to disguise the fact that I wasn’t entirely there. Peter wanted a cold reading, which was a relief. I couldn’t have interpreted a nursery rhyme. Madeleine was sitting two chairs down from me so that I couldn’t see her. Her voice, so rich and so familiar, vibrated in my ear. It was music, and I closed my eyes to take it in.

At last it was over and we were free to pull on our boots, coats, hats, scarves, and gloves and go out into the cold. I sidled next to Madeleine and waited for her to finish an exchange with Rory, who had worked with the director of a play she’d done at Yale. He asked if she shared his opinion that the guy was impossible.

“My audition lasted three hours,” Madeleine said. “He kept asking for more and more personal stuff. He wanted to break me down. I was so angry that I started to cry and I figured I’d lost the role. But that turned out to be just what he wanted.”

“He’s a sadist,” Rory said.

“He is,” Madeleine agreed.

While Rory occupied himself with wrapping a long multicolored scarf around and around his throat, Madeleine turned
to me and, with commendable calm, said, “How are you, Edward?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “Where are you staying?”

“At a hotel,” she said. “They put me up. It’s just a few blocks.”

“Can I walk you over?”

“Sure,” she said.

We didn’t speak again until we were on the street and out of earshot of our dispersing colleagues. “Is Guy with you?” I asked.

“Not yet,” she said. “He’s coming in on the train late tonight.”

I took her hand and we walked another block in silence. At the light I put my arm around her shoulder. She was trembling so violently her teeth chattered. “Are you cold?” I asked.

“No,” she said.

The hotel lobby was a dreary hall with a dim chandelier, a faded carpet, and a single bored attendant at the desk. We passed without greeting and stood in front of the elevator for an eternity.

“This elevator is really slow,” Madeleine observed.

“I read an article,” I said. “Some guy did a study. The average time it takes until a person waiting for an elevator shows visible signs of agitation is fourteen seconds.”

“Fourteen seconds?” she said.

“Right.”

“I’ll remember that.” The elevator dinged and the doors shuddered open upon a blood-red interior. We stepped inside. Madeleine pushed the button for the seventh floor. “At last,” I
said when the doors had closed. She turned to me, raising her arms around my neck, and the kiss of seven floors began. When the doors opened I kept my hand on her waist and we hurried down the empty hall to the room door. On the way Madeleine loosened her scarf and unbuttoned her coat. She had trouble with the key, turning it left and right and then left again, but nothing happened. I nuzzled her neck, peeling the collar of her coat away with my teeth. “Too slow,” I whispered. She laughed. “I know,” she said. The mechanism clicked and the door drifted open. I pulled her in for another kiss, which we held on to as I backed her inside and kicked the door closed behind me. It was a tiny, hot, dark room filled by a double bed, which was fine with us. Madeleine unbuttoned my coat; I pushed hers off her shoulders and worked on the sweater. In no time we were free of our clothes and tangled in each other on the lumpy mattress. Sex can be estranging; it can drive two otherwise compatible people apart. I’d had that experience a few times over the intervening years, but with Madeleine I had the sense that sex could actually hold us together. I couldn’t go wrong, she was always with me. We kept at it quite a while, rolling off the bed to the floor at one point. At another the bed frame gave a shriek and a loud crack. “Oh no,” Madeleine cried and we clutched each other, expecting the mattress to collapse beneath us, but it didn’t. I made a lot of noise right at the end. She was nicely twisted with her hips turned one way and her shoulders the other, laughing and gasping for breath. My heart announced its ecstatic condition with a roar and I collapsed on top of her. After a few moments
she eased her head out from beneath my shoulder and we had one more distressingly tender kiss. When that was over I rolled off of her and we lay side by side, washed up. The expression “flotsam and jetsam” came to mind, and then, like flotsam and jetsam, drifted away. “I thought that rehearsal would never end,” I said.