Dry Your Smile (21 page)

But what I was starting to write about was why I can't concentrate on praying. I'd like to because I think if you can somehow go through the motions convincingly enough, long enough, then the real thing—faith or whatever—will come. I think that's the concept they call “earned grace.” (For an atheist, even I find my preoccupation with reading around in comparative religions and theology pretty suspicious.) But my atheism sure does get in the way of my faith. Still, the main reason I can't concentrate on praying is even worse, the same problem that's haunted me since I can remember: what I can't
help
but concentrate on is Portrait of Young Girl Piously Kneeling. It's as if anything that
would
be the real me is transparent, one of those clear plastic pages you write on but when you pull it up from the treated slate beneath, the words vanish. An unpainted canvas, a rolled-up scrim, a blank movie screen. As if, were I to pass in front of a mirror, like some lovely doomed vampire I would show myself no reflection.

No soul, they once thought that meant.

I need somebody to want me to be something before I can become it. But then I
can
become it—and believe it. And once
I
believe it, it becomes real for anyone seeing me, and
then
I
really
believe it. So I'd need God to
want
me to believe in God before I could believe. But I guess I'd have to believe in God in the first place in order to get a hold of the script or hear the Director. Maybe I
don't
have a soul, after all.

Even now, watching myself watching myself writing, it's as if, should I turn my attention away from that watching for one second, I'd cease to exist, go up
puff
in a spiral of smoke. I wonder sometimes if I'm a nut. Once I asked Hope if I could see a therapist, but sure enough if it involves insight she won't hear of it. The only use she has for psychiatry is that I should date Jack Erdman, because although he's still only in his residency he
is
a doctor and
will
be a (rich) headshrinker. Ugh. I've given up trying to talk with her about my own maybe craziness. Her basic reply is, “Oh honey, all the world's a stage, what's the fuss about?”

The irony is she's right. Right again, maddeningly. The Wise One, the Queen Mother. I know that in one way or another everybody's always acting: not only actors but politicians and businessmen. Theatrical agents, those nausea-provoking people with their putrid Dahlings and Deahests. And spies, secret agents, double agents. And the priests and soldiers in their different costumes, like Virginia Woolf says. But they all seem able to do it at
will
. It doesn't run away with them like it does with me. Noticing the noticing the noticing, like facing mirrors reflecting each other's reflection into infinity, until I'd do anything to stop the wheels within wheels in my brain. Yesterday, I told her again I want to get out of the business. Big Fight number seven thousand six hundred and forty-three.

What she doesn't know is that I've decided I want to be a real writer.

I did try to tell her that, too, more than once. But whenever I say I want to write, she says, “Write what?” Which makes no sense and isn't the point and I can't answer. What do I say? “Anything. Everything. I don't know.”? That won't get you very far with
her
.

Certainly she knows I've scribbled stories and poems since I learned to hold a pencil, but she merely takes that as another sign of The Baby's multi-talented little sickening self. Like her arranging for one of the poems I wrote when I was ten to be sealed in a time capsule along with city documents and newspapers during the Yonkers Centennial Festivities. Cutesy gum-drop poem plus a publicity shot of The Baby. To be opened a hundred years in the future.
Mortifying
. I don't want to be remembered like that.
I
intend something quite different. I've decided. As usual, I watched myself making the decision. So I even have a witness.

I think maybe the way to get out of feeling as if you're living a story all the time (though that
is
better than living a story someone else has written
for
you) but the way to escape from living even your own story would be to deliberately create other stories. If I have to go through my life like some doomed soulless creature, then I can be constructive about it at least, by learning to make it up “for real.”

I've had some moments of satisfaction doing that in the business itself (damned few, thank-you-Hope). Those were when I could play a meaty part, something that demanded dramatic skill. But most parts for children aren't like that, because no adult thinks about kids as human beings with as many tragic emotions as big people. Most kids' parts are “sweet,” or “cute.” You also spend a
disgusting
amount of time doing personal appearances and publicity puke. Which takes
no
skill except smiling and curtsying and autographing till your hand cramps. Or getting pinched on the cheek till you're sure you'll get cheek cancer. Or having your one comfortable pair of barrettes auctioned right off your head during some TV telethon for underprivileged children. It's a rare treat to play a nice psychotic kid, or do a scene where you get to have hysterics.
Then
I felt as if I actually deserved some of the applause. It was for a moment an answer to the question I'd whisper to myself at age twelve in front of the mirror: Why are you
doing
this?

Well, you do it partly out of pride. Pride in doing the best you can, no matter how sugary the part is and no matter what anybody thinks. Also, and in complete contradiction (can such a contradiction actually exist? I wish I still had Barbara to talk philosophy with!) you also do it
because
you care what they think. A lot. They (seem to) love you for it. I guess I realized pretty early that what they loved about it was that you were fulfilling their own expectations of surprise. You were a magical toy, a wind-up doll. I used to wonder why, after I'd learned some revolting recitation for an audition (I think the “quality of mercy” speech of Portia, and Shaw's St. Joan bleating about the little lambs in the green grass will stick in my memory until I die); after I'd learned the lines to recite, I'd wonder what was the point in reciting aloud to people what they already knew in advance I was going to say? Yes, of
course
I knew what was being tested was the “delivery.” But on a kid's level of logic it seemed senseless.

You also do it because you don't know what else to do. All you're sure of is that you're something other than you are. (I always think I'm really someplace else.) I can play older or younger than my age, and on radio I can pinch my voice up to sound like a breathy kindergarten kid, or wrinkle it down—I mean not in treble but in years—to sound like an eighty-year-old woman. So you're sure you can be everything, but you feel you can't be
one single thing thoroughly
.

I know, for instance, that everybody—including this atrocious new tutor—thinks my writing is proof that I'm “a dilettante.” I shouldn't care what in hell they, and especially Hope, think(s). I care so much it hurts. I don't
want
to want to be what others want me to be! Is acting an addiction? Eventually terminal? I don't want to leave the business just to play-act living on a bigger set—my life.

Some days I feel full of hate—which is a feeling, in turn, that I hate. I am
worn out
with all this
feeling
.

A few nights ago I dreamt I had absolute power, like an empress or a goddess. I had them all lined up—the agents and personal managers, the old “Family” company, every tutor except Barbara, the photographers and cameramen, the wardrobe fitters sticking you with pins, the school kids who loathed my guts and tripped me and gave me Indian burns and were afraid of me and liked each
other
, all the old piano and singing and tap and ballet and swimming and accents coaches, the evil producers and the snappish directors—and there, at the very end of the line, standing apart by herself, Hope. They were all taller than me, as if I were still a child. But small as I was in the dream, I went down that line carrying an armful of sharp stakes. I drove a stake deep into each of their hearts, and as I did it I curtsyed and smiled “Thank you very much.” But when I came to her, she was crying. Then I saw why. She already was riddled with stakes, a pincushion, a Saint Sebastian. There wasn't one inch of room for me to hurt her more. So I gave up and tried to embrace her instead. But as I pressed myself against her, my embrace drove the stakes deeper into her—and she and I both screamed at the same time. I woke up with my heart pounding.

I have to stop now. I just heard her come back from lunch with the broker.

I had a HUGE fight with her yesterday. About Erdman. He wants to take me for a drive on Sunday in his sports car and I don't want to go. I have to admit that he's handsome and much older than me (seven years). That's exciting when you come down to it. And he
is
already a doctor and he's done his internship and just started his residency in psychiatry. He flatters me about how “exquisite” I am but since I don't
feel
exquisite I think he's a liar. The truth is that any excuse to go out, even on a daytime “date,” is like heaven to me. But the last time I had lunch with him I decided I never wanted to see him again. It went like this:

Him: So … hmmm … (he already acts like a psychiatrist) … you think you want to give up acting.

Me: I
know
I want to give it up.

Him: Hmmmm … What do you have in mind to do with yourself, then, Julian? You're a talented girl, you know.

Me: (Silently: Vomit vomit.) (Out loud:) I want to do something else.

Him: Have you thought about … hmmm … getting married?

Me: Yes, I have. I don't want to get married for a long time yet.

Him: Hmmm … then you must have some other plans in mind.

Me: Yes. (Silently: And I don't intend to tell
you.)

Him: Hmmmm … Am I to take that mysterious answer the way I think you
really
mean it?

Me: How do you think I really mean it?

Him: I think you
don't
have any special plans for yourself, except to get away from your mother—

Me: That's not true. (Silently: You betcha.)

Him:—and I think you're scared of men and that's why you're scared of me—

Me: I'm certainly
not
scared of you, Jack. (Silently: Vomit vomit.)

Him:—and you're covering up that insecurity by saying you have all these mysterious alternate plans, when what you really want is to be married and have kids of your own. (Then he flashed me a smileful of teeth.)

Me: Then I'll tell you how wrong you are. I
do
have plans for myself. I want to be a writer.

Him: A writer … hmmmm … well, that's okay. (Another blinding toothy smile.) I can live with that. Every young wife should have a hobby. Some women do ceramics.

Honest to god, that was the conversation
. So yesterday I informed her that I never wanted to see her revolting disgusting doctor-candidate for me again.

That
conversation went like
this:

Her: You're crazy.

Me: So? Then let me see a real psychiatrist of my own, Momma, not a slimy boyfriend type.

Her: He went to Harvard Medical School. His father is a doctor. He's going to be a rich man. He'll never get called out in the middle of the night on an emergency like physical doctors.

Me: He has shifty eyes. He can go to hell. And do ceramics there.

Her: Watch your mouth. You don't have to marry him tomorrow. Or ever. You could just cultivate him a little. It wouldn't kill you.

Me: Why should I cultivate him? He's not a garden.

Her: Don't get smart with me, Julian. Even the biggest stars don't always work steady. You're in an age transition. An actress could use a financial cushion like a rich doctor.

Me: Momma, you contradict yourself all the time! I'm not going to
be
an actress, I've
told
you that. Besides, according to you, there's enough money from what I've already earned so that I don't have to work a day more in my life.

Her: That's beside the point. Then what
are
you going to do with your life? The only thing you know how to do is act. You already have a career, a reputation.

Me: I didn't choose them.

Her: What does that matter? You would have chosen the same thing if you'd been old enough to and had any sense. The point is the career exists now. You can't just give it up. What are you giving it up
for?

Me: I'm only seventeen, Momma. I'm still thinking.

Her: So while you're thinking it'll kill you to be nice to Jack Erdman?

And round and round and round again. Complete with yelling and crying and her “nerves.” Until I finally hit on my exit line: “Momma, he keeps putting his hands all over me.”

The truth is he never does, though his smug toothy leer always makes me want to run home and take a shower. But telling the truth doesn't pay around here. Whereas the line worked with her. Instant. Perfect. Right on cue.

The end of Jack Erdman, may he rest in peace in some future wife's ceramic urn.

Hope better never find this journal.

P.S.: Maybe someday I'll write plays.

I want to truly write about her. Starting now, with this entry and with Haydn's “Messiah” on the phonograph. She's gone out for dinner with that ghastly textile manufacturer. I wish to god she'd marry him. If she were concerned with somebody else it might take some of the pressure off me.

Truth is: I hate Hope more than anyone in the world.

Truth also is: I love Hope more than anyone in the world.

To her it's so simple. She's given me her entire life, she expects only love in return. Who could be so warped as to deny her that?