Jacob's Folly (29 page)

Masha played a girl named Geneviève. It was a small part, but she got to do a lot of weeping and thrashing. The character had lost the power of speech through trauma and could only speak (or, in this case, sing) when under hypnosis. I worried that Masha's own mystery symptom, her ghost pains, would return to her and make it impossible to work, but they didn't. I came along on all the rehearsals. The theater was desperately impoverished, with bony benches rising up around a tiny stage more suitable for a flea circus than human drama. Rehearsals were like a visit to the madhouse, with twelve women of varying ages screaming and writhing, singing and shaking as the walleyed director wheeled himself around them all, muttering, and the composer sat in her seat, wrapped to the neck in shawls, drinking sloppy tea from a thermos and frantically scribbling notes onto a pad. I wished I could summon Antonia from whatever state
her
spirit was in, just so she could witness this chaos.

The musical opened to one brief, ironic review. Masha was singled out, however, and praised.

“Dunster is big news,” Nevsky whispered to Masha in the deserted elevator as they enjoyed the silken ride up to the thirtieth floor. “A British director, just came off a hit called
My Way
. Dj'you see that?”

“No,” said Masha.

“Course not. You never see anything,” said Nevsky. “
Marauder
is a franchise. Three-film contract. And they want exotic—but not too exotic. I.e.—my interpretation—white. That's where I think we have the trump card. You're exotic. But you have to be hot when you go in
there. You need to sear the seat. Dunster is known for his love scenes. You look amazing.”

Masha was in a pair of Shelley's leatherette pants that fit her like skin, a red halter top, and four-inch heels bought at the mall in Patchogue. She looked like a hooker in a movie. When the elevator doors opened, Masha saw there were five or six girls dressed almost exactly like her, a jungle of lip gloss and hoop earrings and lashes, each one checking her out with fatalistic curiosity. When the assistant finally called her name, all the girls followed her with their eyes. Nevsky looked nervous and a little sad to be left behind. Doglike, Masha thought, looking back at him.

She wasn't as scared as she usually was. She had the whole scene mapped out; she had made a decision how to play every line. When she had done the scene three times with the casting director, who read with her, Johnny Dunster sat back in his chair looking at her, brow furrowed. He was a disheveled man with an English accent, prone to long silences followed by sudden movements and emphatic, stuttered requests. She looked back at him, motionless, waiting. After a long time, he said, “Thanks.”

Five days later, she was called back.

“This is Carl,” said Dunster when she walked in. “You're going to be reading together.” Carl was blond and stocky, with smooth Germanic features, a pleasant, wide-open face. “So what I want you to do is,” said Dunster, “sort of make out while you're doing the scene.”

“What?” said Masha.

“Like, you're making out and talking. You know how that happens.”

Masha looked at the young man, who put his hands in his pockets in a show of harmlessness.

“Just snog, make out, I need to see what that feels like.”

Masha didn't move. She was trying to understand.

“It's a hot scene, I can't tell what it's like if I don't see a bit of the physical side,” explained Dunster.

Carl, who had clearly been doing this all morning, and in fact still
had a tiny smear of lipstick on his chin, sat down on the floor and looked up at her expectantly. She peered down at him from her chair as though he were a pool of freezing water she was expected to dive into. So this was going to be her first kiss, with this stand-in? She felt trapped. She couldn't leave; she couldn't blow this. She scoured her mind for details of love scenes from the movie she'd watched with Hugh. Taking a deep breath, she lowered herself onto the floor, crawled over to the fair young man, and kissed him. His mouth tasted like mint gum. Dunster shot up and pranced around them like a goat on its hind legs, calling out encouragement.

“Go on, hold the man! Grab his hair! Good. And again!”

Masha said her lines mid-ravish, her lips wet with the stranger's saliva. Jealous, unexpectedly horrified by Masha's defilement, I buzzed around them helplessly, floating in the air, a voiceless, futile housefly.

When she came to the end, Masha climbed back on her chair and wiped her mouth.

“Good,” said Dunster. “Thanks, Masha.” Masha stood up, trembling. She barely remembered any of the last three minutes. Confused, she mumbled something and left.

And after all that, she still didn't get the part.

One night, on his way home from work, Leslie veered suddenly off the LIE and drove into Manhattan. He knew Masha was in a play there. He looked the theater up on his phone. After the failed kiss on the beach, he had been too embarrassed to speak. He had just driven the three kids back to the Victorian, slinked off in his truck. The next few days he and Masha avoided one another at the Coe manse. But he needed to find a way back to her. He wasn't capable of forgetting about her, going back to his normal life. He was too far gone for that.

Standing in line to buy tickets to see the play, along with three other people, Leslie worried what Masha would think. He didn't want to seem like a stalker. Maybe he would just leave afterward. Wait a few days, tell her he had seen it with his wife. He bought his ticket and sat toward the back of the bleachers. Eventually the place filled up halfway, the lights went down, and the show began.

Dr. Charcot, a short man in a morning coat and bow tie, his dark hair slicked back neatly, walked onstage and sang a number explaining what was wrong with the first madwoman. A portly lady in a Victorian slip, her hair in disarray, wandered in, twitching. Charcot imitated her tics in a most entertaining manner as he explained her various syndromes. Then he hypnotized her. Deep in a trance, the woman proceeded to sing out a horrible experience of being run over by a cart, then had some kind of seizure. Once he woke her up, in came another one. This freak show went on for forty-five minutes, interspersed with snippets of Dr. Charcot's home life, where his wife kept singing to him that the women were all making it up to get attention. Leslie thought she had a point.

When Masha walked onstage, led by the nurse, Leslie was frightened for her. His palms were slick, his throat tightened. She didn't speak, but the way she looked around the room, played with the cross at her throat, hunched her shoulders, seemed sharp and real to him. The doctor explained that Geneviève had not spoken out of hypnosis for two years.

When she was hypnotized, Masha's eyes rolled back in her head and the harsh, unfamiliar sound of her singing voice sent shivers down Leslie's spine. It was dark, pure. The strange tension in her face, the way her hands curled up, her head falling back as she responded to the commands of the doctor—it all belonged to another woman. At one point, in order to demonstrate her hypnosis-induced catatonia, Charcot had the nurses balance her rigid body between two chairs. She was stiff as an ironing board. It was like she was channeling.
When the lights went down, he heard someone whisper, “That black-haired girl, the mute—she was incredible.”

Leslie felt his face burn when he heard that.

Masha ambled across the stage. She felt emptied out, a staring husk. She was trying to piece together the evening's performance, but all she had to go by were a few scattered shards of the experience. This kind of amnesia was usual for her after a show. She was aware of her body onstage, but she felt it like an animal feels—the hairs rising on the back of her neck, chills up her spine, a rush of anger or shame. When she sang, she felt she was nothing but an open throat, a conduit for something that began beneath her feet and spouted into the atmosphere. Her everyday self disappeared. Masha had a bottomless appetite for this heady feeling of forgetfulness, of freedom. Night after night, she stalked oblivion. I knew what she meant. But I'll get to that later.

Masha was starving. She would get Surinder to stop for a slice of pizza on the way home. And a Coke. She heard someone call her name. She looked up. It was Leslie. She suddenly realized how lonely she'd been a minute earlier.

“Leslie!” she said.

“I had to come see you, didn't I?”

She smiled up at him from the stage. He walked down the bleachers.

“You were terrific,” he said.

“Really?”

“You had me believing you were completely nuts. You want to grab a bite, or a drink?”

“Um, Surinder is waiting for me …”

“Give him the night off. I'll drive you home after,” he said.

They stopped at a steakhouse on their way uptown.

“I'm always starving after the show,” Masha said, filling her mouth with baked potato. “I'm gonna get fat.”

“You're okay,” said Leslie. “Oh, hey, I owe you something,” he added, handing her the check he'd been carrying in his wallet. “It isn't much, but you earned it.”

“Great,” she said, taking it.

“You have a bank account, right?”

“Yeah.”

“But you're employed now. You're on your way.”

“Not necessarily. This kind of theater doesn't pay much and we close next week anyway. I don't know when I'll get another job.”

“If you need to, you can always work for me in the office.”

“Yeah?”

“If you need to. You can file. Vera always says she could use a little help.”

“I'm trained for secretarial.”

“There you go, then. Shall we head home? You must be tired after all that lunacy.” Masha smiled. Leslie hated every avuncular quip that came out of his mouth. But he couldn't tell her what he felt. It would scare her away. And anyway, he had no business wanting what he wanted.

Driving along the LIE, they listened to the radio. A plaintive song. He parked in front of the Victorian house. She opened the door, hesitated.

“What?” he asked.

“Would you mind … just coming up with me and sort of walking around to make sure everything's okay? Shelley's in Manhattan with her boyfriend for the night. Once all the lights are on I'm fine. I just get nervous walking in alone.”

“I don't blame you,” he said.

The bare windows made the apartment seem a little sinister: streetlights blaring in, the place vulnerable to any Peeping Tom. She asked him to check her room, Shelley's room, inside every closet, behind the
couch, in the bathroom, for attackers. It was touching. She was really scared.

“Anyone else moved into the building yet?” he asked as he pulled aside the shower curtain.

“Not till they finish the renovation,” she said.

They returned to the kitchen.

“You want a glass of juice?” she asked, opening the refrigerator. “That's all we have.”

“Sure,” he said gently. He felt relaxed. Deirdre thought he was at the firehouse for the night. If anything went wrong at home, she would call his cell first.

He lifted his eyes from his juice and saw Masha looking at him.

“Is Shelley moving back to the city?” he asked.

“I'm not sure. She's back and forth. They were broken up and now they're sort of getting back together.”

“But it freaks you out staying alone.”

“I never even slept away from home until I moved in here,” Masha said.

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah.”

“Not even for sleepovers with your girlfriends?”

She shook her head.

“No wonder you're uneasy.”

“I'm getting used to it, though,” she said, pulling out her hair elastic, letting the heavy hair fall free around her face. “It hurts my scalp,” she said, scrubbing at her head with her fingers.

“You're beautiful,” he said.

“No.”

“You know you are.”

“There's all sorts of things wrong with me.”

“There's nothing wrong with you.”

“Yes, there is!” she insisted, smiling at him. “I'm bowlegged, and
my ribs stick out. Look.” She pulled off her dress and took three steps to the middle of the room. Leslie dashed to the wall and turned off the light immediately, lest anyone see her from outside. She wasn't wearing a bra. Folding in two, she slid off her underwear, standing up in the darkness. As his eyes adjusted, Leslie saw exactly the body I had imprinted in his brain all these weeks, glowing in a mix of light from the street and moon.

“Can you see me?” she asked.

“I can see you,” he said quietly.

“See what I mean about the bowlegs?”

“You're perfect.”

“You really think so?”

“Yes.”

She walked back toward him, reached down and pulled on her dress again, the underwear.

“Masha,” he said urgently, as if to catch hold of the moment.

She walked over to the wall and switched on the light, turned it up high. “I'm not scared anymore,” she said, biting her lip. There was a pause as they looked at each other.

“Not scared of what anymore?”

“Being in the apartment alone.” A moment slid by.

“You want me to go?” he asked.

“I should go to sleep. I'm sorry if. I just … can't, um …”

“It's okay,” he said. He walked over to her, bent low, and kissed her on the cheek, weighing her heavy hair with his hands. Her skin was so soft, as soft as a child's, but her gaze was frankly impenetrable. What was she doing?

When Leslie left, Masha bolted the door and went straight to bed. I accompanied her, settling on the duvet.

She had loved Leslie's eyes on her skin. His gaze felt like sunshine. His hands, though, were too much. She could not transgress that far. Didn't want to. Shooing the thought away, my chaste girl stared out the window, her mind void, till her eyelids fluttered and sleep enveloped her.