Acts of Love (12 page)

Maybe his problem is his divorce. I shouldn't know about it, but the papers were so full of it—why do people allow their failures to be smeared all over the newspapers? I'd make sure only my triumphs were public—and it sounded so messy, if it was my divorce I'd probably glower at parties, too. I know the stories came from Claudia, but still, the two of them should have been able to work something out to keep it quiet. Of course, if they could have agreed on that, maybe they could have stayed married. I remember thinking that my parents had made their marriage last by kind of tiptoeing around places they knew would make them explode into one of those fights where people say unforgivable things. I guess Luke and Claudia aren't the tiptoeing kind.

Anyway, I'm sorry I didn't like him better because he's your grandson and you love him, but it was clear he didn't like me, either. Actually, what he reminded me of, even more than a hawk, was a lighthouse, all alone out there on his rock, straight and tall and looking out to sea, away from towns and people and society, showing everybody else the right way to go but never joining them. I'd like to work under his direction sometime, but he doesn't seem the least bit interested in working with me, so it all seems pretty doubtful.

Luke gazed unseeingly into the dark fireplace. He remembered that opening night party; he remembered coming home and sitting here, staring into the fireplace as he was now, cursing himself for his coldness, for being rude at his grandmother's triumphant celebration. Martin had set a fire for him that night; when was it? He thought back. Eleven years ago. October. A cold, misty October night a few months after his divorce from Claudia. He'd come home early, disgusted with himself, restless and at loose ends. I wasn't directing anything then, he remembered; I felt I had no connections, with the theater, with anyone, with anything.

He seemed angry or frustrated or maybe just wary.

Wary. Well, she'd hit it. It was not only that he had no play in production at the moment, it was that he'd been divorced in the most public way, with Claudia suing him for ten million dollars—which he didn't have—to make up, she said, for what he'd promised her, and all her hangers-on testifying that Luke had promised to take care of her and bring her great wealth, not to mention fame, adulation, the world at her feet.

That same year, he had directed
Vigilance
, a new play that told the story of a small town destroying itself through greed over the ownership of a new oil field, and a marriage that grew in strength as the town disintegrated. The play was the hit of the season, a powerful production that Luke drove relentlessly from the moment the oil well was discovered through the crescendo of greed and violence that tore apart generations of families to the tenderness of the final scene when hope rose from chaos.

By then Luke and Claudia's marriage was over and Luke knew why: it had none of the strength, none of the trust and hope, of the marriage in
Vigilance.
“Oh, my dearest Luke,” his grandmother had said, “you've fallen into the trap of confusing your own life with the life you're creating on stage.”

“I'm comparing ideas about marriage,” he had responded heatedly. “That's all I'm doing.”

“Don't scowl at me, dear boy. And relax; you're quite rigid and opinionated these days. If you're going to compare marriages, choose one that has something in common with your own. Do you know anyone who has a marriage like the one in
Vigilance
? Of course you don't, because there couldn't be one: it needed the destruction of the town to find itself, and you won't find many towns destroying themselves as part of everyday life. My dear, you've created a vision of reality, not reality itself, and I shouldn't have to tell you that, because that is the definition of theater. You know perfectly well that however hard you look for a marriage like that one, you won't find it.”

“I'm not looking for any marriage.”

“Of course you're not; it's too soon. But when you do—”

He shook his head. “Not after this one. I keep going over it and it makes no sense. How could I be so blind? And stupid. I'm a lot smarter buying a car than I was getting married. What the hell happened to me?”

“You wanted to be married. You thought I had a rather empty life and you could do better.”

“I never thought that. My marriage had nothing to do with you.”

“Of course it did. You wanted a life different from mine. There's nothing wrong with that; it doesn't mean you loved me any less. Somewhere inside you, I think, there's a spark of anger at me for not marrying and giving you a father. I did think about it; I surveyed the contenders and not one of them would have been the father I would have wished for you, much less a husband for me. But you didn't know that, so you were angry and when you grew up you decided to show me how someone could have great success in the theater and also a happy marriage and a full life. A truly fine goal, dear Luke; I applaud it. It's still a good goal. One failure is no reason to toss it away. My dear boy, you're thirty-four years old and you've just become the most exciting and talked-about director in America. Give yourself some time to figure out what you expect of yourself and what you want from other people. Live alone: that's good for you. But also, go out on the town, be a
bon vivant
for a change. You've always been too serious. And after a while, perhaps I'll introduce you to someone, a young woman with whom I've been having a most delightful correspondence. You've met her, but you don't know her, and I think the two of you might be very good together.”

“I'll find my own women,” Luke said harshly, uncomfortable with his grandmother's insights. He had, in fact, blamed her for not providing him with a father, but he had not thought she knew it. Now he felt himself squirm, like a schoolboy who'd been caught out, and that made him lash out more angrily. “I'll make my own way; I don't need advice or little shoves from the wings.”

“Oh, aren't we the tough one? You need advice
and
help; you need to learn a few things about finding someone who will be good for you instead of—”

“Spoken by an expert in marriage.”

“In relationships,” she said crisply. “I do know a good deal about relationships; more than you, I daresay. And why are you attacking me, Luke? It doesn't change the facts.”

“You don't know anything about the facts of my life. I'll handle them my own way. Just leave me alone.” And then, ashamed, he said, “Don't bother about me. I know you worry, but I'll be fine.”

“Well. Well, then, I'll just hope that you learn to get close to people, and that you learn to play. I'm afraid I didn't teach you how to do those things, not very well, anyway.”

Sitting in his library, holding Jessica's letter, Luke remembered every word of that speech and for the first time realized that Constance had been trying to tell him about Jessica.
But I wasn't ready, and after that she didn't try again.

He had not argued with her about marriage—what good would that have done?—but he did take her advice about going out on the town, and soon he was one of those single men sought by hostesses to fill out their dinner tables, providing symmetry and the titillation of availability.

He also was busier than ever, directing one play after another, taking out one woman after another, working six days a week, playing tennis at seven o'clock in the mornings—the only time he could fit it in—and spending Sundays with a group of theater people who stabled their horses in New Jersey and rode from breakfast to an early supper before going back to the city.

“I said ‘learn to play,' ” Constance scolded him. Six months earlier, she had been ordered by her doctor to retire from the stage and now she was having a farewell dinner with Luke before leaving for Italy. “Look at you: you're working all the time, even when you're riding. You and your friends make it a contest or a race, as if some stallion is nipping at your heels. Luke, when will you learn to relax? You've got years of work and life ahead of you, but you're not giving yourself time to stoke the furnace.”

He chuckled. “If I'm able to do so much, my furnace must be pretty well stoked already.”

“No,” she said gravely. “You're using up your reserves. I'll drink a toast, my dearest Luke. To many, many visits to Italy—I want you to come whenever you have the chance, even for a few days—to successful plays, and to a life that has room for love and laughter.”

He touched his glass to hers. “I love you,” he said, and both of them knew she was the only person to whom he said those words.

Luke opened his eyes and realized he had fallen asleep in his chair and had dreamt about Constance. He remembered almost everything she had ever said to him—he knew that could not be true, but his memories were so vivid that it seemed true—and he missed her the most when he thought of all the advice she had given him, often rejected but never forgotten. He stood up to go to bed, found himself still holding Jessica's letter, and realized he had not finished it. Standing beside his chair, he read the last page.

I don't think I've properly thanked you for your advice about Harold. You were very wise; you saw him much more clearly than I did. (I seem to have a blind spot about men; it takes me a long time to figure them out. I have to work on that.) Harold is probably the most charming man I've ever known, but you were right: he has a way of sucking people into his orbit that's quite destructive. I was beginning to feel as if I'd been caught in a web, but it was so charming and intricately beautiful that I didn't realize I was saying the things he wanted me to say and maybe I was even becoming what he wanted me to be. You made me understand that, and I'm very grateful.

I'll see you soon, when I welcome you to my new apartment. It's so wonderful that I can't wait to share it with you. As soon as I move in and get settled, I'm going to give lots of dinner parties, and you're invited to every one: my door is always open—wide, wide open—to you. All my love, Jessica.

It was almost daylight when Luke closed the box and went to bed. I would have liked to know her the way Constance did, he mused drowsily, and then he was asleep.

Four hours later, as he sat at breakfast on his terrace, the telephone rang. “Luke,” Kent said, “why hasn't anybody told me when we open, and where?”

“It wasn't deliberate. We open the third week in September at the Vivian Beaumont. You could have asked me that when we're in Tommy's office.”

“I couldn't wait. I'm not good at waiting. Where are the rehearsals?”

“At a studio we've rented on Forty-fifth Street. We'll rehearse there until dress rehearsal out of town.”

“Where?”

“Philadelphia A good town for theater. Any other questions?”

“I should have known all this!”

“Yes, you should. Maybe you heard it and forgot it in the excitement of casting.”

“I never forget anything. Like, I had another idea about the set this morning when I was jogging—”

A jet pulled a long contrail, pale against the washed-out sky, across Luke's field of vision. He concentrated on it. “Why don't you wait until we meet with Marilyn?” he asked at last, and eventually was able to put down the telephone.

The day was going to be as hot as the day before. Luke wondered briefly and futilely why one of the world's greatest centers of commerce and the arts couldn't have been built in a benign climate, then turned back to his newspaper and his breakfast, in a silence that he found comforting and restful. A visitor from the country would have wondered at his idea of silence, filled as it was with the cacophony of car horns, screeching tires, air brakes and pneumatic hammers that rose from the street. But Luke heard none of them, or heard them only as components of city silence. Had they all stopped, he would have been alarmed at the strange vacuum, convinced that some disaster had occurred.

The sounds of the city wove through his day in a rhythm that rose and fell as he went in and out of office buildings. By late afternoon, when he and Kent returned to his office from the sixth meeting of the day, all the sounds had run together: traffic, conversation, elevator music, the click of office computer keys, the greetings of secretaries and doormen. “God, what a schedule!” Kent groaned, flopping into a chair in Luke's office. “How do you put on a play if you're in meetings all the time?”

“Productions begin with meetings.” Luke filled two glasses with ice water and handed one to Kent as he walked around him to reach his desk chair. “We have one more: Marilyn Marks is bringing a model of her set design. Fritz doesn't like her ideas, but he hasn't seen the model, so I asked him to come at five-thirty. That gives Marilyn half an hour without interruptions.”

“What doesn't Fritz like?”

“We'll see when he gets here.”

“Close to the vest, Luke.”

“Everybody gets an equal chance,” Luke said evenly as Marilyn Marks came in, carrying her model. She was small and fragile-looking, with a thin face framed by a cap of brown hair, brown eyes close together above a thin blade of a nose, and a thin mouth that tightened even more when she concentrated on her work. “Hi, Luke, here it is,” she said, setting the model on the round conference table. Luke introduced her to Kent and the three of them stood at the table.

Marilyn bent over the model, using a pencil to point out different parts of the Styrofoam-and-cardboard stage set. “Lena's living room: everything is a little off center. I see her as a woman at the end of her life who can't figure out why this grandson she's absolutely nuts about doesn't seem to love her. Of course he does in the end, but until then she's got a lot of
tsuros
about it. It's like a dream that she's trapped in. I know that Fritz hates it, but Fritz doesn't like anything that's offbeat.”