Acts of Love (40 page)

Three nights in a row, she went to the theater, applauding with the audiences while making a critical balance sheet in her mind of what she had found excellent and what was weak. As she did it, a ripple of anticipation ran through her and a small spurt of excitement, the first she had felt since arriving.
I'm ready for this. I've been away too long. If I'm in the theater, the city isn't important. I can feel at home anywhere, if I'm in the theater.
And then, on her fourth day in the city, impatient with taxi drivers who drove too fast when she wanted to dawdle, she rented a car and found, to her amazement, that it took only a short time to master driving on the left side of the street That was a kind of triumph and once again she thought, Maybe I can do this after all. Maybe I really can feel as if I belong.

And so, on the sixth day, she rented a house, a pure white stucco cottage with an orange-tile roof that reminded her of Provence, fine furnishings much like those she might have chosen herself, and a deck cantilevered over the hill below. From there she looked down on the houses that seemed to be clambering up to her from the harbor's edge, and on the harbor itself, with its inlets and coves snaking in and out from distant headlands on her right to the great arch of the Harbor Bridge on her left. Beside the bridge, on a peninsula jutting into the harbor, was the opera house, its roof in the shape of huge white sails moving majestically out to sea. A theater and water, Jessica thought, and a quiet place of my own, above it all. She felt almost as she had on Lopez: alone and sheltered. Safe.

Hope sniffed, inspecting the rooms, always circling back to Jessica to be comforted amidst the strangeness. The rooms were overfurnished and no two pieces matched. After the clean, simple lines of her house on Lopez, Jessica thought she could not live amidst such a riot of color and patterns, but somehow the stripes and florals and solids and geometries came together and were oddly harmonious.

She set the box of Constance's letters on the mosaic coffee table in the living room and arranged her collection of plays on a shelf in the bedroom.
I wish I had something of Luke's. Just one small thing to put somewhere and look at now and then. But I don't. Not a single thing. He said the same thing. We both parted empty-handed.
She flung a Scottish cashmere throw, brought from Lopez, over the back of one of the couches, and arranged fresh flowers in a Majolica vase she found in the dining room. The hotel sent over her luggage and she found places for her clothes in closets and built-in cupboards. The delivery boy brought groceries and she stocked cabinets and the refrigerator and freezer. The landlord came to make sure the hot water was hot, the cold cold, and the air-conditioning working, since it was November; almost summer in Sydney. A woman called and said she had been the housekeeper in that house for five years and did Miss Fontaine want her to continue? Emphatically, Jessica said yes. When she hung up she looked around and sighed. It was almost home.

So, at last, she made the first of her telephone calls and that afternoon met with Alfonse Murre, a producer whom she had met long ago in Sydney. She wore a summer dress of fine silk with a long skirt and long, almost transparent sleeves, and when the secretary announced her Murre came forward, hand outstretched, smiling broadly. He was fatter and balder than Jessica remembered, with a flimsy mustache that quivered anticipatorily before he spoke. He stopped when he saw her. “Jessica? My goodness.” His face smoothed over and they shook hands. Jessica's was cold. “Come in; sit down.” He pulled an armchair forward and watched as Jessica sat on the edge, propping her cane against the arm. He bypassed the armchair beside hers and sat behind his desk. “What brings you all the way to Sydney? I was surprised to get your letter.”

He had not said he was surprised in his answering letter; he had said he could not wait to see her.

“I've been here before, as you know,” she said.

“Of course. In
A Moon for the Misbegotten.
You were quite wonderful. I was new here and you made Sydney seem civilized, when I'd been thinking it felt like the end of the world.”

Jessica smiled faintly. “I've been here three times and I like the theater here. So now that I've decided to direct plays, this is where I want to start.”

“Direct. You want to direct.”

“I've always been interested in it; I don't think that's unusual. You know how many musicians want to be conductors; it's the same thing with actors. They usually think they understand character better than—”
Don't explain so much; it sounds
like pleading.
“Well, it's what I want to do now. I saw your production of
American Buffalo
the last time I was here and I thought it was excellent. I'm hoping you have some scripts under consideration and we can work together on one of them.”

“Well. Interesting. I wouldn't have thought . . .” He drummed his fingers on the desk and frowned at the carpet. “Of course you stopped acting because—well, I mean, no one would . . . I mean you couldn't possibly  . . . Dear me, Jessica, it doesn't seem likely, does it? I mean, to direct one of my plays, to be in the public eye, giving interviews, being written up in the papers, there's so much
public,
you know, about directing. I mean, you may think it's all behind the scenes, but even there, you know, where you have to instill confidence in actors and the crew, you have to be someone they look up to and—Oh, now, just a minute—” Jessica had stood up and he leaped to his feet as she walked away, leaning on her cane. “Jessica, dear me, you mustn't think
I
don't have full confidence in you, in your ability, that's not the issue, the issue is—”

“—your narrow-minded, frightened, ignorant prejudice,” Jessica said icily. Standing in the doorway, knowing his secretary was listening, she turned back to him. “You think because I've changed physically, I've lost my brains, my competence, my ability to function as anything, much less a director. You—”

“Now wait a minute; you can't talk to—”

“You don't think, you react.” Her voice soared, filled the office, swept over him as once it had swept over audiences. “You scurry away when something surprises you. Look at me! What do you see? Someone who isn't beautiful anymore. What does that have to do with my ability to direct a play?”

“I didn't say—”

“That's just what you said. No one would look up to me, no one would have confidence in me, no one would admire me. How do you know? Your pitiful little mind imagines it, but those are excuses to hide the fact that you don't like looking at me, you don't—”

“Goddamn it, I won't listen to this crap. What the hell is wrong with you? You were never a bitch before. You've gotten sour and mean, and if you think I'll forget this, I won't. I won't forget it, Jessica; you can't insult—”

“You fool,” she said, her voice a despairing sigh. She turned and limped through the anteroom, trying to hurry, knowing she was even more awkward when she did, aware of the secretary watching her and seeing the image of Murre in her mind as he stood just inside his office, his lower lip thrust out, his eyes furious. She was trembling and her throat was choked with tears.

Damn, damn, damn. I knew it, it's why I stayed on Lopez. I was right, I knew this would happen.

She found a sidewalk cafe a block from Murre's office and sat at a table tucked in the shade of an awning. “Iced coffee,” she said to the waiter, and clasped her hands to still their trembling. He's only one man, she thought, and not a smart one. There's no reason to think the others will react that way, have that look on their face. . . .

But it might be too late. Damn it, she thought, how could I let him get to me? How could I be so stupid? In every city, the theater is a small world; he'll tell everyone.

And he did. When Jessica telephoned the other two producers, their secretaries reported that they were out of town, and would be unavailable even when they returned; so busy, so backed up, right in the middle of one of Sydney's most crowded theater seasons; they were deeply sorry  . . . perhaps when the season was over  . . . they knew Miss Fontaine would understand.

From the aerie of her living room, she gazed at the harbor and the far-off headlands. She was halfway around the world from New York, but the nightmares that had haunted her for six years had followed her here. She felt bruised and lifeless; she barely had the energy to pet Hope, who sniffed and licked her face and followed her in bewilderment as she walked indifferently through the house. She paced aimlessly, seeing over and over Murre's instinctive withdrawal, hearing the reproach in his voice, as if she ought to have known how
public
a director was and spared him the entire interview. “The hell with him,” she said aloud, but he clung to her thoughts like a burr.

Once again, her house became her refuge. She did not go out. With Hope at her feet, looking as melancholy as she felt, she sat by the windows, filling her notebooks with sketches of the harbor and scenes of Sydney from her memory. She listened to music and read books and the morning paper that was delivered daily; she ordered groceries by telephone and had them delivered. And at night she lay in bed, her thoughts roaming where she could not stop them.

I never pretended that you still have the beauty and perfect body you once had. But the more I got to know you the less important any of that seemed. To me, you are magnificent.

Luke, dearest Luke, she thought, it's not enough. The rest of the world doesn't agree.

I love you. What does the way you look have to do with that?

Nothing, when it's just the two of us. I do believe that now. But to the rest of the world, the way I look is all that counts.

Come with me. Come home with me; marry me.

Thank God I didn't. When this happened in New York, you would have felt responsible; you would have argued with the Murres of New York, defended me  . . . and for what? I could not work in the theater in that atmosphere and it would have poisoned our lovely fairy tale, and left us bereft.

But it seems I can't work in the theater in this atmosphere, either.

She moved through the days in a kind of trance, waiting  . . . for what? For a way out. For the moment when she would stand up decisively and pack her bags and leave. But she did not. She sketched and read and listened to music and ate and slept. It seemed that this went on for a very long time, but one morning she noticed the date on the newspaper and saw that it had been only four days since her meeting with Murre. And at that moment, the telephone rang.

She jumped—good heavens, what a strange sound, and how loud!—and then thought,
Luke.
No, how could it be? He had no idea where she was.
One of the producers, then.
Not likely.
Well, probably the landlord. Nothing important.
She answered on the third ring.

“Jessica Fontaine?” The voice was strident and powerful, a woman's voice that was like a cross between a train engine and a trombone. She could knock down the walls of Jericho, one way or another, Jessica thought, and a giggle escaped her, her first laugh in days. “I'm calling Jessica Fontaine; have I found her?”

“Yes,” she said. “What can I do for—”

“Hermione Montaldi here. You of course know who I am.”

Jessica sat straighter. “You're the producer of
The Secret Garden.
I saw it a few nights ago. It was very fine. The best I've seen here.”

“How many have you seen?”

“Three.”

Laughter reverberated through the telephone, threatening to shatter it. “A small sample, but if you saw them all you'd still say it's the best. I hear from Al Murre that you came to see him, looking to work with him, but when he told you he didn't have anything right away you tore into him with all ten claws.”

“No.”

“No what?”

“I did tear into him, but it was for other reasons.”

“Do you want to tell me what they were?”

“I'd rather you told me why you're calling.”

“Right; that's fair. I'm intrigued by all this, I remember you with the greatest pleasure from the times I saw you here and in New York, I'd like to talk to you, I've got a play that might interest you, I'd like to find out if we could work together. Are those enough reasons?”

“Even after you talked to Murre?”

“Your mistake was, you took that little fart seriously. Nobody else does. Well, a few people do, but the savvy folk know better than to pay him any mind. How about dinner tonight? We're neighbors, you know, you could walk here in five minutes. I make an
ossobuco
you can't beat anywhere, and my house is much better than a restaurant for talking; nobody'll tell us somebody wants our table.”

“How do you know where I live?”

“The telephone company is a fount of information. Come early, six o'clock, is that too provincial? It doesn't matter; I want to get started and so do you. Number forty-five, the pink stucco house two blocks down the hill from you. Palm trees in front; wrought-iron gates; high wall. I don't like gawking tourists. You'll be here?”

“Yes.”

“See you then. Very casual, by the way; no silks or satins.”

Jessica was smiling. She felt light, almost weightless; her heart lifted and excitement ran through her, buoying her up. The past four days were forgotten. It did not even give her pause when she reflected that nothing might come of this. She did not believe that. Hermione Montaldi—what a marvelous name!—would not have called if she thought nothing would come of it. From her voice, it was clear that this was a woman who made things happen.

She went shopping, escaping once again from a self-imposed prison. At David Jones, she mingled with the crowds as if she had not, only a few days ago, felt inundated by the city, and bought Armani slacks and shirts, Valentino cotton dresses, and Yanono long silk skirts, flowered and striped. She ate lunch in the restaurant on the curved balcony of Dymocks Bookstore and, on her way out, bought histories of Australia and novels by Australian authors.
After all, I may be here for quite a while.
Driving home, she parked on one of the boutique-lined streets in Double Bay and bought bath salts, soaps, and sybaritic lotions and creams for herself, and an arrangement of orchids in a curved wicker basket for her hostess.