B00C4I7LJE EBOK (24 page)

The first night back at Pheasant Run, I accompanied Phyllis to the theater to watch Warde and Stephanie in
Forty Carats.
It was Stephanie’s first play, and she wasn’t sure if she wanted to make the stage a career. She had the looks—glorious red hair and a winning smile. Roy described her as a young Lauren Bacall. It would be silly of her to pass up such a golden opportunity, I thought, if she was at all interested. I’d grown up in Hollywood, and no matter how much the children of celebrities protest, the fact that their mommy or daddy is on a first-name basis with the producer, casting director, and agent opens doors. I’d seen firsthand the difficulty of even getting an introduction, let alone an audition, for someone who wasn’t connected. For Stephanie, it was a heaven-sent chance.

After the show that night, the owner of the theater had a “closing-night party” at his house. For the first time in weeks I really enjoyed myself, knowing that when I wanted to leave, the car would take me back to the Inn, and I didn’t have to worry about seeing Phyllis home.

The next morning, I awoke to falling snow, and I stayed snugly tucked up in my cozy bed in the loft, watching the large, silent flakes float down outside the tall windows. I luxuriated in the fact that I didn’t have to anticipate what Phyllis would want to do that day. In fact, I figured that I wouldn’t be hearing from Phyllis very much for the next week, and I was right. That first morning I used the in-room coffee pot and settled down with a book, perfectly content to let the day slip away. Phyllis would start rehearsal the next afternoon, and I wanted to enjoy my solitude while I had the chance.        

I pottered around my little nest, munching on crackers and cheese I’d bought at the little “country store.” The place reminded me of the Playboy Club-Hotel in Lake Geneva except that there were no luxurious grounds to prowl. We were right on the main highway. I had nothing to do at rehearsal, and after the first day I didn’t bother to show up at the theater. However much I had looked forward to not having demands made on me every moment, I soon found the hours began to drag. I had nowhere to go outside of the little complex. We were miles from anywhere. Even going for a walk was out of the question, because there were no sidewalks beside the highway. Really, nowhere to walk at all. In addition to that, the snow fell almost daily. Pretty to look at from inside a warm room, but not at all nice to be trudging through.

Thank goodness for Jules Tasca. The playwright turned up the day before dress rehearsal for
Composition in Black and Blue
. Phyllis had invited him for opening night. At last I would have someone to talk to and eat with for a couple of days. (I had finally overcome my aversion to eating alone in restaurants. I still didn’t enjoy it, but one can live on crackers and cheese for only so long.) I accompanied Jules to the dress rehearsal—the first rehearsal I’d seen since the initial one. Wow! The show was no further along than it had been a week earlier. Phyllis could not resist improvising, which threw the rest of the cast into confusion and uncertainty. The production became a hodgepodge, and even the director, a mild-mannered man, was losing patience.

That surprised me, because as long as I’d worked for Phyllis, she had exhibited the utmost professionalism. She was always prompt and always knew her lines, and she always did exactly as the director said.

After the dress rehearsal, Jules and I stopped in the coffee shop for dinner. He confided that he was disappointed in the way his play had turned out.

“Why don’t you tell her?” I said. Even though I’d only met him the day before, I could tell he was not a forceful man. He wrote funny dialogue, but in person he was shy.

“What good would it do now?” he asked. “It’s too late to do anything except go with it.”

“Your first play, too,” I lamented. I supposed that Phyllis thought she was improving the play by adding her personal touch, but it was a far cry from the original script Jules had sent her. She had even changed the title to
Subject to Change
. She thought that was appropriate because she had made so many changes.

“I’m glad my wife couldn’t come after all,” he said. “I don’t think she would have enjoyed this.”

“Are you going to call her?”

“No, I think I’ll wait. Maybe it’ll come together by tomorrow night.”

Are we being just a tad optimistic?

Opening night went less badly than I anticipated, but there were obvious rough spots. Jules and I shared a booth with Warde and Stephanie, and I relaxed only when the ordeal ended. Afterward, there was a little party onstage for the cast and crew, but no one really felt much like celebrating.

“I think we’d better have a rehearsal in the morning,” the director announced. No one disagreed.

Jules went to the rehearsal, but I saw no need for me to be there. I sat by the indoor swimming pool, reading and contemplating another three weeks of sitting around watching snow fall. It was late afternoon by the time I saw Jules.

“How’d it go?” I asked.

“Think I’ll go swimming,” he replied. As I watched Jules swim laps, I came to realize I’d fallen into the grip of the worst kind of ennui. The thought he’d be going back to his family the next day and I would be alone again made the next three weeks loom like an abyss.

It wasn’t that I would miss Jules particularly. I was simply starved for company. I missed my friends. I thought with fondness about Bruce, the man I had met over the holidays at a party. As a photographer with his own studio, he enjoyed going to the beach and taking pictures of driftwood and seagulls. I enjoyed the beach, too—especially in California, where it wasn’t windy and they didn’t have rats. I would have liked it even better in summer, and the more I thought about sunshine and friends, the more melancholy I became.

There had been little to keep me busy during rehearsals except occasionally to take some fan mail to Phyllis in the theater. Once the show got under way, there would be absolutely nothing for me to do, because she would be coming into the theater only in the evening for the performance. In Puerto Rico and Hot Springs, I hadn’t had more than a few minutes to myself on any given day. At Pheasant Run, I had entire days when the only person who spoke to me was the maid who cleaned the room and the waitress at the Kountry Kitchen, where I ate alone each night. The little shops were closed except for a couple of hours in the evening prior to show time. I seemed to be the only inhabitant of the whole place. I didn’t even need to field phone calls because they went directly to Phyllis’s house. By the time the play was in the middle of the first week, I decided to try to speak to Phyllis alone. This was going to be difficult since Warde came to the theater every night. He never left her side except when she was onstage. Unwittingly, Phyllis provided the way.

The director called a brief rehearsal for early afternoon several days after the play opened. Having nothing else to do, I went down to the theater.

As they wrapped up, Phyllis motioned to me. “I want you to come out to the house this afternoon. There are some things I need taken care of.”

On the ride out to the house, she seemed withdrawn, gazing out the window at the snow-covered woods. I decided to wait until we had finished whatever work she had in mind to bring up the possibility of my going back to L.A. early.

As soon as we got into the house, Warde began bombarding Phyllis with messages. I went into the dining room, whose table was covered with what I’d long ago accepted as Phyllis’s organized disarray, and began going through some of the papers. After a few minutes, Phyllis came in. She dictated some letters and handed me another stack to answer on my own, as I often did. She also had some phone calls she wanted me to make the next day, and I duly made notes of them.

“Ada,” Warde said as he poked his head in the door. “Honey, do you want me to go get Chinese for dinner, or are you going to cook?”

Warde seemed to be on exceptionally good behavior. Perhaps he’d actually missed her while she was gone.

“I’ll make something, Warde,” Phyllis responded with less than her usual enthusiasm. The house was beautiful, but isolated. I wondered if she was beginning to get cabin fever, too, especially since Stephanie had left and it was just the two of them.

It became clear that I would stay for dinner. It should have been a pleasant break, but I cringed at the idea of eating dinner in that strained atmosphere. However, I told myself it wouldn’t be a long meal because there wasn’t much time before we had to leave for the theater. So I sat at the kitchen table and watched Phyllis cook. I knew it would be a bad time to bring up my request, but it might be the only chance I’d get to talk to Phyllis privately. There didn’t seem to be an easy way to start, so I waited until she had the vegetables cooking and plunged in.

“Phyllis, you know we’ve been on the road since the middle of February,” I started, waiting for a reaction.

“Warde, are we out of butter?” she called into the living room.

I heard a muffled reply and fiddled with the salt shaker, trying not to feel like an intruder.

“February twentieth,” Phyllis said as she stirred leftovers on the stove.

“Yes, the twentieth,” I said. “This play is going to last three more weeks, and there really isn’t anything for me to do.”

I hoped Phyllis would make it easy for me, but all she said was “the dishes are in that cupboard to your left.” I began setting the table. Phyllis continued to stir and acted as though she hadn’t heard me.

“You know, it’s pointless for me to stay here,” I went on. “All the work is piling up in L.A. You don’t need me; Warde’s with you; there aren’t any interviews; I’m just sitting around waiting in case you want to dictate a couple of letters.”

Warde chose that moment to put in an appearance. The timing could not have been worse.

“Warde, put butter on the shopping list, would you?” Phyllis said, then began serving dinner as Warde scrawled “butter” on a piece of paper on the counter.

She set the food on the table. Peas. I hated peas. They made me gag. Surely, I’d hit bottom.

We ate quickly and in silence, then it was almost time to leave. I tried to be helpful by washing the dishes while Phyllis put on her stage makeup and Warde hunted for the car keys.

Just as I put the last of the dishes in the drainer, Warde called out, “I’ll start the car, honey.” Phyllis came down the stairs almost simultaneously with the closing of the front door. Once again she was swathed in her white mink coat. I was still wearing the jacket I’d had on that afternoon when I’d gone down to rehearsal.
If I’d known I’d be out late, I would have brought my cape.

I’d turned out some of the lights as directed, leaving the living room and entrance hall lit, and was gearing up for the dash across the few feet of snow to the car when Phyllis spoke up.

“All right,” she said as I reached for the door. “Call the airline tomorrow and make your reservations.”

She sounded annoyed and defeated. I knew she was unhappy, but I was going berserk sitting in my room day after day with no one to talk to, eating all my meals alone, wearing the same clothes over and over, doing my laundry in the washbasin.

I didn’t even wait until Phyllis went onstage. As soon as we got back to Pheasant Run, I bolted for my room. I called the airline and reserved a seat on the first nonstop flight to L.A. I arranged to have the theater car pick me up in the morning, and I called my parents to let them know I was coming home. It didn’t take long to get everything packed, and I was back at the theater by the time the show ended to let Phyllis know what time I would be leaving. I couldn’t believe how excited I was to be going home.

The next morning I got up early. I made the phone calls as Phyllis had instructed the night before, and got the correspondence in order. I left everything at the desk at the Inn, and the staff promised to take it to the theater later on. The car picked me up at the appointed time, and I arrived at the airport an hour early. Better to wait there than in my room at the Inn. The little room, which had seemed so cozy two weeks earlier, seemed like a prison cell—I knew every nook and cranny, every vagary of the heating system, every shade of pattern on the bedspread, the exact time the maid came to clean the room, where the carpet was patched, and exactly how far back I could tip the reclining chair without hitting the wall.

The airport seemed like a dear and welcoming world. There were people—lots of them—and noise and life. I checked my bags and, even though I still had to carry my typewriter and briefcase, I felt marvelously unencumbered. The gate agent recognized me from previous trips with Phyllis and upgraded my ticket to first class. I’d never flown first class by myself. And I wouldn’t have to be “
en garde.
” I could get rip-roaring drunk and flirt with the good-looking man across the aisle, or put my mind in neutral and stare out the window for 1,500 miles, or simply curl up and take a nap. Getting drunk held no appeal, and there was no good-looking man across the aisle, so I turned the earphones on to the classical station and listened to Mozart while I watched the incredibly beautiful country slide slowly beneath our wings. I felt the tension of all those weeks slipping behind me, too.

30

A
friend of Ingrid’s had a party Saturday night. I plunged into the room full of people and reveled at being on my own again. I didn’t have to keep track of Phyllis or consider where we had to be next or who was coming for an interview, or what time we’d have to get up in the morning, or any of the myriad details of “star sitting.”

I gave myself a couple of days off and spent them with my parents, filling them in on the entire trip and basking in my own home, my own yard, my own family, and eating my mother’s truly delicious cooking.
Why had I not appreciated that all these years?
With a few days of normal living, I was refreshed and ready to tackle the world.

When I went back to work, it felt as if I’d been gone forever. Maria, as always, was an eager audience, and at break time I regaled the staff with tales of our Puerto Rican adventures and Phyllis’s play at Pheasant Run. I tackled the routine work with alacrity. The ordinariness of a routine had become enormously appealing.