Acts of Love (17 page)

One of these days I promise I'll pick up the telephone and call you; until then, please don't call anymore. So much is jumbled in my head, anger and fear and confusion and
rage,
that I'm afraid a scream will come out if I open my mouth to talk. But I will try to write more often than I have in the past weeks. I hope you're well. When I was in the hospital, I thought of hiding in your maze, where no one could find me and I'd never leave it. Did you ever feel that way? I think of you, all the time, and I love you. Jessica.

Luke read the letter twice, then a third time, Jessica's despair flooding him with its bitterness.
What's gone is . . . everything.
Why? Because she'd been told it would be two years before she could get back to the stage? There had to be something more. He picked up the next letter. It was different from all those that had gone before, the paper a soft ivory, subtly textured, with an embossed fountain in the upper left-hand corner and, beneath it, three embossed lines: “The Fountain, Lopez Island, Washington State.”

Lopez Island. Luke had never heard of it. But if it was Washington State, it was probably in Puget Sound. He took an atlas from the shelf and looked it up. Puget Sound. A broad waterway bounded by Washington State, Vancouver Island and British Columbia, with dozens of islands scattered across it like confetti. One cluster of islands north of Seattle was named the San Juans. And within that cluster was Lopez Island. A dot on a map, a tiny island three thousand miles from New York. It was as if she had gone as far west as she could—and then dropped off the edge of the continent.

Dearest Constance, I've saved all your letters and taken them out to read and reread in the darkest nights. Thank you for writing without demanding replies; thank you for not scolding me again, thank you for your patience in all these twenty months. Twenty endless months, but then they didn't stretch to two years, as originally predicted, so I should be grateful. And of course I am. I have my health back, my energy, I have no more pain, which seems a miracle after living with it for so long, the scars and bruises and swelling on my face from all the plastic surgery are gone, and I have a new life here, on this most peaceful and beautiful island. You'll say it's a long way from New York, and so it is, but that's part of its charm. I've lost all interest in the theater, you see, so what better place to be than a tiny spot where theater as we know it does not exist?

Luke scowled at the words. They made no sense. Recovered, free of pain, whole again . . . why wasn't she singing with joy, filled with exultation and excitement and hope? She wrote of life, but sounded as depressed as she had in her letters from the hospital. And what was she talking about when she said she was not interested in the theater? There was no way in the world Jessica Fontaine would lose interest in the theater. It was her life.

I met a woman soon after I got to Arizona, a publisher of children's books, who asked me to illustrate a manuscript she was planning to publish. It was a sweet story and I could paint children—my new specialty—so I said yes and I had such a good time with it that I was sorry I finished so quickly. I'm sending you a copy; you should have it soon.

That was my first job and suddenly I was getting offers from all over, including France, England, Italy and Holland. By now I've illustrated books in just about every style from 19th-century Russian to folk-art American, and that was what kept me sane through twenty months of recuperation, four more surgeries, and mind-numbing therapy on alien-looking machines that fight back when one pulls, pushes, raises, lowers, rotates, straightens, stretches or curls them. You would not believe the number of ways there are to stress one's muscles and make them ache the next day. I was sure I'd end up as contorted as an octopus trying to scratch an elusive itch, but to my astonishment my strength came back and I felt whole again.

So now here I am on Lopez Island. I'm staying in a charming place called the Inn at Swifts Bay while I build a house on a lovely plot I bought: thirty acres with a private beach in a tiny cove bounded on one side by forests, and a cliff of reddish-gold rocks on the other. I worked with the architect in designing the house, including the fountain in the courtyard that reminds me of your fountains in Italy, and I used that for my stationery, as, of course, you've seen. Best of all, I'm beginning to be kind to people again. I think it's only when we're deeply unhappy about something that we're unrelentingly unkind. I have enough books to illustrate to keep me busy for at least a year, a woman to do cleaning and cooking when I move in (she irons, too, what a blessing!), and I've taken up horseback riding. I like it even better than walking, especially on this island, with forests, cliffs and beaches on the perimeter and farms and fields in the center. I hear roosters crowing in the morning (actually they keep it up all day; are they supposed to do that?) and the lowing of cows, and not another sound: no people, almost no cars . . . oh, an occasional seaplane coming from Seattle and circling before landing. I flew on it myself, to get here, and wondered, for just a moment, whether I was flying from, or flying to.

I'm so glad you feel better than you did last month. I think of you all the time, whatever I'm doing, and I think how interesting it is that both of us have settled into such good places.

Oh, yes, one more thing. I've met a man.

Take care of yourself. I love you. Jessica.

Luke felt a surge of dismay.
I've met a man.
And? Was she in love with him? Were they just good friends? Had they just started dating and she was thinking she might fall in love with him? Were they engaged?

Angrily he pulled the box to him to take out the next letter. But his hand stopped in midair.
What's wrong with me? I'm acting as if I'm jealous.

As of course he was, he realized in the next moment. Because, somehow, against all reason, he had fallen in love with her.

“I think it's pretty conservative,” Tracy Banks said, the point of her pencil resting on the number at the bottom of the budget for
The Magician.
“Salaries, renting the theater, Kent's advance and yours, and insurance, telephone, your production secretary  . . . you know all that.”

Luke nodded. He was having trouble concentrating, his thoughts skipping with every pause to Jessica's letters. He frowned to show that he was focusing on the numbers as Tracy went through each of them. Then he sat back. “Well, we'll try to shave it a little, but you're right: it's probably pretty conservative. Thanks, Tracy; just let me know when the numbers start to go through the roof.”

“I'll let you know a long time before that. And Monte calls me every day, you know, checking up. Too bad he's not my lover; then I'd be thrilled with all the attention.”

Luke was smiling as she left. He clipped the pages of the budget together and slipped them back into their folder. A million dollars to get to opening night. And that number would shoot up if they didn't have solid ticket sales in Philadelphia and in their week of previews in New York. After that, performance expenses would have to be met by performance revenues. He put the folder into his file drawer. A great play, he thought, with fine actors and talented people behind the scenes. And it all rests on money. One of those facts of theater life that don't occur to us when we direct our first play in college and revel in the romanticism of it. Then we start our apprenticeship in some little hole-in-the-wall company in Chicago or New York and we're plunged into the constant grinding battle to raise money and we think, Oh, but when I get to Broadway things will be different And sometimes they are. But most of the time they aren't.

He stood at the window behind his desk, watching a building superintendent water the trees in a rooftop garden across the street. The water ran out of the bottom of each pot, glistening silver in the sun. Nearby, a mother settled her infant in a stroller, then lay back in her recliner and picked up a book. With one hand she pushed back her hair and it caught a slice of sunlight, glinting tawny gold. Jessica's hair, he remembered, had been tawny gold.

He looked at his watch. An hour before rehearsal. Just enough time. He left the office, merging with the languid crowds on 54th Street, making his way through them with gathering urgency to Fifth Avenue and then to the public library. Cool air curled around him as he crossed the marble lobby and turned into the periodicals room. At a long table he opened the volume of the
Reader's Guide
dated eight years earlier, the year his grandmother had moved to Italy, and found “Fontaine, Jessica,” followed by a list of publications that had run stories about her that year. It was long, and he looked at his watch again. Time for a few. He paced impatiently until the librarian brought him the issues he had requested:
The New Yorker, Town & Country, Vogue, Redbook.

Town & Country
had run a five-page story, and when Luke turned to the first page he found himself looking at Jessica, a full-length portrait, standing alone on the empty stage of the Martin Beck Theatre, looking pensively into the camera. She wore a deep blue satin evening gown that left her shoulders bare; her hair hung in long smooth waves halfway down her back, and her hands were clasped loosely before her. She seemed relaxed and confident, perfectly at home. Beneath the photo was a caption.

Jessica Fontaine, winner of this year's Tony award for Best Actress in Clifford Odets'
The Country Girl.
“Not since the retirement of Constance Bernhardt have I seen anyone with this formidable talent,” says producer Ed Courier. “Perhaps justifiably, since Ms. Fontaine was a protégée and close friend of Ms. Bernhardt's and credits her with much of her success.”

Luke read the whole story, lingering over the photographs, taken in Jessica's apartment in New York, in her country home in Connecticut with an attached studio for painting and wooded trails along the river, where she walked in the early mornings, and at the Martin Beck, in her dressing room, on stage, and outside the stage door, where crowds gathered every night for her autograph. He had forgotten the haunting quality of her beauty. It was not conventional and therefore was somehow elusive, as if in trying to picture exactly what Jessica Fontaine looked like, one had to pursue her. Her eyes were magnificent, large, heavy-lashed, a clear blue-green, but a little too close together for perfection; she had a brilliant smile but in stillness her mouth was a trifle too full, almost pouting; her chin was a smidgen too pointed, her forehead a bit too high, her eyebrows a fraction too heavy. Her skin was luminous and her hair the dark gold of a lioness, but on every other count she just missed the classic look of perfect harmony.

But none of that mattered because there had been vibrancy and radiance in Jessica's glance and smile, and in the moods that swept across her face that made her beauty unforgettable. And of course, Luke thought, there was her acting, which no one who had seen her ever forgot: her emotional intensity, her low musical voice that effortlessly reached the last row in the upper reaches of the top balcony, the gestures with her hands and long fingers that could rivet an audience's attention as they made a moment fraught with importance, the impact of her presence as she strode across the stage or hobbled or drifted or dashed, all eyes following her to see what she would do next. My grandmother was like that, Luke thought. And only a few others.

He turned the pages back and forth, skimming the text and pausing at photographs, and whenever she was quoted he recalled her voice and heard her say the words. He stopped at one line.

“I've thought about other ways of living, and I do have hobbies that give me great pleasure, especially painting, but nothing makes me feel fully alive and in touch with myself as the theater does. Without it, I could never feel whole.”

So why had she told Constance she'd lost interest in the theater? It was as if she'd said she'd lost interest in breathing. Which is exactly how I feel, Luke thought, and Constance, too, who never got over it. Because it never goes away.

“Mr. Cameron,” the librarian said at his shoulder, “you asked me to tell you when it's almost ten.”

Luke looked at his watch. “Damn. I forgot. Thanks.” Reluctantly he closed the magazine and left the library. He walked the few blocks to the rehearsal studio but, on the way, ignoring how late he was, he went into a bookstore and found the children's section. A clerk saw his frown and came to help. “These are by author,” Luke said.

“Of course. How else would you find what you want?”

“I'm looking for an illustrator.”

“Oh. Well, we have an index of illustrators; I can look it up. His name?”

“Her name. Jessica Fontaine.”

“Oh, I know her books. She's very good, very unusual.” The clerk squatted to take a book from the lowest shelf. “Children love her illustrations. Probably because they have so many secrets.”

“Secrets?”

“Well, at least one in every painting.” The clerk walked down the aisle, pulling books from different shelves. “And she does real paintings, not run-of-the-mill illustrations. Did you know she's won two Caldecott Medals?”

“No.”

“She never went to the ceremonies to receive them in person; I understand she's quite reclusive.”

“And the secrets?”

“All the paintings have something hidden in them: a face, a figure, an animal, a word, sometimes a sentence. As if she's saying that life is full of surprises and you never know what you're going to find. Of course children know that better than anyone, don't they?” She handed Luke twelve slim books. “I don't know which ones you want; as far as I know, these are all she's done.”

“I'll take them all.” He swung the plastic bag from one finger as he walked the long, hot blocks crosstown from Fifth to Eighth Avenue. I'll look at them tonight, he thought, and read some more of the letters. But even as he thought it, he knew that that was no longer enough. He had to see her. And so he would travel to the San Juan Islands, as soon as he could get away.