Acts of Love (49 page)

“Is that so? When did you decide that?”

“Advice from a friend. I've been meaning to take it, but I've been too busy.”

They burst out laughing, but when they were seated on the couch and Jessica showed her the letter to the cast, Hermione's eyes were furious. “Son of a bitch. There was no reason to tell you. You have a job to do and you're doing it fantastically— everybody is totally sold on you—”

“Everybody?”

“Almost. You should hear them talk about you. Oh, Whit still has doubts now and then, between rehearsals, but as soon as he's working with you he's yours forever. Your gallant swain Edward is another story. What a squeamish little bastard he is. What's he so scared of?”

“The world. And right now the world seems to be telling him that his director is a failure.”

“And a director is like a mommy and he wants his mommy to tell him that everything is peachy and she'll take care of him forever.”

“Something like that”

“And you go out with this . . . person?”

“Not right now. I told him I'd be too busy with the play.”

“And he sulked.”

Jessica was silent.

“Well, okay, let's talk about those things you told him. You were bluffing, of course, but we can do just about all of it. Advertising and publicity actually began last week, but starting today we're doing a blitz. Ads in newspapers here and Melbourne and Canberra, posters everywhere, and a bunch of interviews set up for Edward. ‘Drama Teacher Turns Actor,' that sort of thing. Also, I've made a deal with a friend running an AIDS benefit, very social, in two weeks. There's a program of musical numbers right after dinner and, if you approve, Angela and Whit will do a short scene from
Journeys End
as part of it. It's a very high-class affair and you ought to be there.” She saw Jessica's face change. “Yep, you'll have to buy a formal dress. It's high time you did. It's important for successful directors and producers to mingle in society—you know that, Jessie— and that includes going to some of these very dull and very necessary affairs.”

“I'll think about it. Have any theater parties canceled?”

“A few. Well, actually about half. But this is not a devastation; I consider it a minor nuisance which someone of my forcefulness and incipient fury can resolve in a short time.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I have a considerable presence in this town. A lot of people who think they run things around here respect me, and they owe me for various favors over the years. I don't apply pressure indiscriminately; I wait for truly important occasions, and this is one. Well, I see you're still puzzled. Jessie, dear, you know all about theater parties: mogul types who own banks and run fat corporations buy out whole theaters for clients, friends, whatever. Some of them buy as many as thirty or forty thousand tickets a year for various plays and musicals, and every producer I know relies on them because they make a play look like a smash hit before it even opens. My friend Harry Miller says it makes plays critic-proof.”

“And those are the people you're putting pressure on?”

“The ones who owe me favors. I guarantee you they didn't make the decision to cancel parties for our play; somebody down the ladder did. Once you go to the top, things change in a hurry. I'll take care of this, Jessie; it may take a while, but we'll pull out of it. Do you really think I'd let a bunch of sniggering bastards ruin my play? You know me better than that.”

“Maybe we should open the rehearsals.”

“Nope. We're doing fine. You're doing better every day, and
I'm not putting out a welcome mat for pricks who've been bad-mouthing you.
It wouldn't help, you know; they'd have to find something to back up their
lies, and then they'd spread
that
around town. Trust me,
Jessie; we'll keep it the way it is. Now listen to me. I'll tell you what
you told Edward. This play is going to be dynamite. We'll have other theaters on
their knees—they would be if theaters had knees—begging us to bring
Journeys End
to them at the end of our two-month run. I'm
telling you: do not worry. Just be the best damn director this town has ever seen. I ask
nothing more.”

Jessica gave a shaky laugh. She was so tired she could barely move. “Last night everything seemed so awful. . . .”

“Too many emotions, poor baby, you're worn out. Let's feed you some dinner and send you home to bed.” She held out her hand and Jessica took it and felt herself being lifted to her feet. “You need food and sleep. What happens to our play if you collapse on me? There's nobody in town who could take your place. You and I and Donny Torville would be mighty distressed if you ended up in the hospital.”

Jessica thought there was something odd about that sentence, but she was too tired to pursue it. She ate the food Hermione put before her, drank her coffee, and got up to leave. “I love you,” she said at the door. “Thank you for being here.”

Hermione held her close and for a moment Jessica felt like a child in her mother's embrace. “Thank you for coming to us,” Hermione said. “I love you, too. Go home now. Sleep.”

Dear Luke, I'm sorry it's been a week since I wrote last, but we compressed our schedule to allow a few more days of previews in Melbourne and I haven't had a minute to think of anything else. We're in the Drama Theater now, for three days of dress rehearsals. It's fun to be here, with a rehearsal next door in the small Playhouse, an opera rehearsing upstairs, and the symphony orchestra rehearsing next to the opera; it's like a vast hive with all of us little bees churning out words and music at fever pitch. What a good feeling to be part of it.

In our own little corner, we have full sets and real furniture, at last. I did get the turntables I've been dreaming of, so we have two apartments visible at the same time, and each turntable has three rooms. I know you can picture this: as each turntable revolves, the action can take place in a different room—living room, bedroom, kitchen—of each apartment. It's very exciting to watch. On Wednesday we'll go to Melbourne for ten days, then come back here for a week of previews. I'm very nervous, so jumpy I'm feeling a little lightheaded. It's a different kind of nervousness from the kind I had for all those years on the stage, but in a way it is stage fright—how astonishing after all this time to discover that directors have it, too—and it keeps me awake, worrying not about one part, but about all the parts, about all the people who are depending on me. And I keep thinking I've missed something—or many somethings—done things I shouldn't have done, not done things I should have done . . . and then I wonder how I could have had the arrogance to assume I could just jump in and direct a play, as if it didn't take years of training and thinking and study. . . . But right now I don't feel arrogant, just scared.

I shouldn't tell him this, it's too intimate. But there's no one else I can talk to about it—everyone here, even Hermione, would think I'm afraid we're not ready, and I can't have that. Luke knows what it's like. He understands that I'm writing as one director to another. He understands everything.

The play isn't really where I'd like it, but I think an audience will help. The cast seems to have reached a plateau . . . they're not getting any better (or worse, thank God), and they can't seem to do anything in new ways. Maybe we're overrehearsed; I know that can happen.

My main worry is Angela. She should go through so many moods—anger, guilt, fear of exposure, the discovery that she can be compassionate, the greater discovery that she can love—and she can't seem to handle all of them at once. It's as if she's sorted them into cubbyholes and takes out one at a time when she needs it. There's no flow in her emotions; she seems more calculating than passionate. Her understudy is younger and seems to have more passion, but we'll probably never know for sure because I can't imagine Angela allowing herself to get sick; she'd tell a virus or bacterium just where to get off . . . and it wouldn't be anywhere near her.

Nora is trying hard and I'm hoping an audience will energize her. The two men are excellent, especially our “find,” Edward Smith. If you recall, he's the one we lifted straight out of his job at the university, and in the past few days he's gotten better and better. Sometimes he almost runs away with the play.

Ever since I told him I'd be too busy to see him. Since then, he hasn't spoken a word to me except when absolutely necessary, but what difference does that make, since he's so wonderful on stage? If Angela was that good . . .

If Angela was that good, I wouldn't feel this awful frustration and worry. I don't want just a good performance; I want a great one. And in my mind 1 know exactly what that would look like and sound like; I just haven't found a way to help Angela bring it to the light of day. You could. That may be the difference between a great natural director and one who's doing it as a substitute for something else.

I just read that last sentence over again. I hope it isn't true.

You haven't said anything about Kent's new play. Are you about to begin staging it? I did get the script, but I haven't had time to look at it. Maybe in Melbourne. How odd to be talking about a second strange city in such a short time. This must be called Australian immersion. Jessica.

Dearest Jessica, this won't make sense to you, but do it anyway. If mail comes to you from New York, ignore it. Burn it, throw it away, don't read it. Please trust me on this. Something has happened here, not dangerous, but difficult, and it might spill over to you, just at a time when you need to concentrate on your previews. I promise I'll tell you everything later, but please do as I ask now. Please. Trust me. I'll be thinking of you every minute in Melbourne. I love you. Luke.

She read the letter over and over that night, between packing and taking telephone calls from Nora and Whit, who had last-minute thoughts about everything from the set design to the timing of the final curtain.

Trust me.

For what? What could have happened that would spill over to her?

Now that she and Luke sent letters by fax, she received no mail. No one else knew where she was. So it would be someone he had told. Who? And why would he do that?

Trust me.

I do, she thought. In almost anything. But I should at least see if something is out there.

And so, sometime after midnight, she went to her front porch and opened her mailbox. The letter was there, gleaming white in the bottom of the black box. She took it out and looked at it in the light spilling from the foyer. Her name. Her address. Typewritten. No return address.

She carried it inside by one corner, as if it might be poison.
Luke wouldn't have told anyone but a friend. What could there be to worry about?

He's worried.

The letter lay on her bureau while she finished packing. At one-thirty she got ready for bed. At one forty-five she began to open the envelope.

Trust me.

I'll think about it, she decided. She laid it on her night table, and went to bed. At three o'clock she turned on her reading lamp and tore open the envelope before she could debate it anymore. Her play was nowhere in her thoughts. She could think of nothing but this. Whatever was going on, it was happening to Luke and, somehow, to her, and she had to know what it was.

Inside the envelope was a clipping from a newspaper, raggedly torn out.

Behind Closed Doors

by Tricia Delacorte

What oh-so-successful Broadway director has become a virtual recluse because he's smitten with an Australian wallaby? Or is it
wannabe,
as in aiming to make a comeback on the coattails of a Broadway hot shot who can smooth the way for anybody . . . even a washed-out has-been?

The Melbourne Centre Stage Theater was sold out for opening night. Edward paced, propelled by anxiety. “They should have left one seat unsold. No one should tempt the gods. The American Indians wove blankets with one mistake to keep them from being perfect. The gods think perfection means we're trying to rival them, and they knock us down.”

“Gods never come to out-of-town openings,” Hermione said. “They'll be waiting for us in Sydney.” She grinned at Edward's startled look, but a little later, when she found Jessica coming out of the makeup room, she said, “Of all the things I'm worrying about, the gods knocking us down is very low on the list.”

Jessica smiled faintly. “They'll barely notice us, we're so far from perfection.”

“Not
that
far. We're in good shape, and you know it. What's wrong, Jessie? Something's been bothering you since we left Sydney and I can't believe you're that worried about the play.”

She made an effort to smile and to make her voice confident. “There's just so much to think about; I never knew there were so many loose ends before an opening. But we'll do fine. A lot of problems disappear with an audience.”

“Jessica, the lighting in the third act . . . ,” said the lighting director, and they had a brief conference, deciding to lower the lights gradually through the final five minutes, leaving one turntable in darkness and the other with a single lamp holding Helen and Rex within the circle of its light.

“Why didn't we think of that in Sydney?” Hermione asked. “It's wonderful . . . and so obvious.”

“It's only obvious after you've thought of it,” Jessica said, and then Dan Clanagh came through, saying, “Places, please, everyone,” and, automatically, she started forward, to take her place on stage.

“Jessie.” Hermione's hand was on her arm and Jessica stopped, almost holding her breath, because this was the moment when it truly came to her that others would answer that call and move onto the set and share the play with each other and the audience, while she would only watch. “It doesn't get easier, does it?” Hermione asked.