Heart of Glass (26 page)

“Jesus, I tossed that fucking bum out on his ass! I didn't give a shit who he was—he was bothering my guests!” Mo crinkled his nose and made a bad-smell face. His voice was deep, with the raspy gravel of a lifetime smoker and the jaded inflection of a hepcat.

Mo was originally from San Diego and had grown up
in a succession of bars that his crazy, drunk mom ran. His dad had taken off when he was a kid; his mother, like mine, had a string of boyfriends, whom Mo called his “uncles.” He was rakishly handsome, tall and slender, with light brown curly hair and a mustache. Off work, he'd don a sheepskin coat and black cowboy boots and tie a red bandanna around his neck, lighting a cigarette on his way out of the building, looking as if he'd just walked out of
Midnight Cowboy
. He liked to swear, smoke, and drink. We got along great and soon became partners in crime at work. He was incredibly sweet to the crusty, old-broad waitresses, often going to their houses or churches on the weekend to help them with some chore that their husbands could no longer do—stringing up Christmas lights or moving the china cabinet. Their husbands were geezers who seemed to be permanently attached to Barcaloungers, watching old reruns on TV. Among his many other good deeds, he also protected me from Jean, the Bahamian cook who was always putting curses on me. I was terrified of her.

“You little white devil,” Jean'd hiss if I so much as looked in her direction, waving her huge spatula in the air, her big, crazy eyes zeroing in on me and making goose bumps pop up on the tops of my arms.

“C'mon, Jean, cut the crap! She's just a kid, for Christ sakes, stop with the voodoo bullshit,” he'd holler over the din of clacking dishes and silverware. Then he'd wink at me.

Mo lived in a one-room, rent-controlled apartment across from the Barrymore Theatre on Forty-seventh Street.
The room was filled with puppets and a folded-up, brightly painted wooden theater he'd taken to South America when he'd saved up enough for a ticket, to do shows for little kids there. It was like entering a magical kingdom, although there was barely room to sit down because every available space was dedicated to pieces of scenery and marionettes. We'd sit in his apartment, and he'd tell me incredible stories, such as how he once sneaked a bottle of vodka into the hospital for his friend Nicholas Ray, the famous film director—“He was dying, the poor bastard, so I took him a drink!”—or about running away from home at sixteen and hitchhiking to Northern California with his girlfriend to try to find Jack Kerouac. “We never found him.” Mo exhaled a funnel of cigarette smoke and sipped his glass of Chablis.

I adored Mo because he was like someone from another time: a modern-day beatnik. He'd moved to New York, like me, with a couple of dollars in his pocket to pursue his dreams. It seemed to me that he had truly lived the life of an artist and still was. He was an inspiration to me, and a kindred spirit. We worked our day jobs, paid cheap rent, and weren't trapped in the economy of the city. This made it possible for us to do our thing.

One of my first auditions after landing back in New York was for Miranda in
The Tempest
at a theater in Tucson, Arizona. I put on one of the dresses Didi had helped me pick out, and I loaded up the voluminous faux-leather tote bag I'd bought on the street that I carted all my actor shit around in—a bottle of water, a book to read on the subway, my
Walkman, any play or sides I was auditioning for. Taking my cue from the young women in suits I saw dashing around the city, soon to be immortalized by Melanie Griffith's character in the movie
Working Girl
, I wore sneakers to walk around, then I'd change into my dress shoes when I got there. The sidewalks of New York could trash your best pair of heels in a day. The audition was in one of those ratty rehearsal-hall buildings in the Fifties near Eleventh Avenue. I strode purposefully down the trash-strewn street, politely avoiding eye contact with the chicks-with-dicks prostitutes working the early shift in their fake-fur jackets and hot pants.

I read the opening scene with Prospero, when Miranda witnesses the shipwreck, and then a later scene when she meets and falls in love at first sight with the young prince Ferdinand—the only man she's ever seen besides her father. Tapping into my own experience, I connected with Miranda's childlike honesty, her intense love for her father, and her open heart. I felt I had been that girl many times, running with my arms wide-open toward love.

The audition seemed to go well, and they called Didi later to offer me the job without even having to do a callback. I was thrilled—I'd booked my first gig out of acting school, and it was Shakespeare. Three years before,
Love's Labour's Lost
had tripped me up and cost me a job. Now I was back with the Bard and feeling in my element, soon to be a working actress.

It was about four months away, so I kept working at the dining room during the day. Then, about a month before I was due to leave, I got a job playing an incompetent secretary
on the soap opera
All My Children
. I didn't have many lines, but worked for a few weeks—on TV, no less—and made some money.

One evening, after a taping of the show that had run late, I saw an actor, Charles Keating, in the lounge on my way out of the building. This dashing Englishman actor had been at the Guthrie Theater with my dad. When I was nine, I'd seen him play Mark Antony in a production of
Julius Caesar
in which he wore a macramé bikini bottom and leaped off a giant head of Caesar at the top of the show. He was simply spectacular and had taken my little-girl breath away. Looking at him maraud around the stage, feverishly spouting his lines, my nine-year-old self felt a warmth in her underwear that she'd only previously experienced when climbing the rope in gym class. I decided to go over to my first crush and say hello.

“Excuse me, Mr. Keating, I'm sure you don't remember me, but you were at the Guthrie with my father, James Lawless. I saw you in
Julius Caesar
.”

He was twenty years older but still gorgeous, with thick, long white hair tied back in a ponytail, a distinguished mustache, and the darkest, deepest eyes.

“My dear, how wonderful to see you again! I remember your father very fondly. May I ask your name?”

“Wendy Lawless. I'm working on
All My Children
for a while before going off to do
The Tempest
.” I wanted him to know that I was a serious actress, hoping to follow in my father's footsteps.

“Ah, Miranda.” He enveloped my hand in his, kissed it, and looked down into my eyes. “What a perfect part for you. She is so young, so innocent.”

“Um, yes,” I managed to peep. “Do you have any advice for me? It's my first real job since getting out of acting school.”

Still holding my hand, he smiled radiantly. “You must remember that when Miranda sees Ferdinand for the first time, it's as if she's grown breasts.”

“Oh, I'll remember that. Thank you.” I was feeling faint, along with the familiar damp-underpants sensation from when I was nine.

“Have a marvelous time, I must dash!” Charles squeezed my hand and was gone, out the door to Columbus Avenue. I just stood there for a moment, unable to move. All the way home on the subway, I felt a buzzy delight from being the recipient of his charms. It made me feel as if I was beginning to reach that world in which my father lived—as if I was making connections in that long lineage of roles and actors and stages. If a dark theater, any dark theater, made me feel at home, then working with and meeting other actors, especially of this grand, older generation, was like being part of “the family.”

•   •   •

Taking a taxi from the airport to my actor's housing in Tucson, I was struck by the eerie beauty of the terrain. The mountains were blue and purple and topped in snow; the soil was pink and dotted with sage-green towering saguaros
standing at attention across the desert. Palm trees swayed to and fro against the azure sky. The light was different, too—it was golden and lit up everything as if you were seeing it for the first time. Hummingbirds zipped through the air between flowers as big as your hand amid lush green grass. Everything seemed magnified and more alive. I didn't expect the desert to be so vibrant, so full of life.

The actors in
The Tempest
were being put up in a condominium complex near the theater, so I could walk to work. The man who was playing my father, a Korean American actor named Randall Duk Kim, was so mindful and sweet that it was easy to work with him; he was so generous and giving in our scenes together. I had been nervous, as he was well-known in regional theater, but he instantly put me at ease, and I felt close to him almost at once. A lifelong and profoundly dedicated actor, he had founded his own Shakespeare company in Spring Green, Wisconsin—American Players—but was taking a break from his responsibilities there, telling me he just wanted to act and not be burdened with the day-to-day running of the place. He told me that eventually he wanted to return to Hawaii, where he'd been born, and open an orchid farm.

We did the play in Tucson for three weeks, then performed it in Phoenix for three more. Doing the play in Phoenix was very different—it was an older audience, and I could hear them riffling for their car keys toward the end of the show and see them starting to make for the exit doors during the curtain call to make it home to see
The
Tonight
Show
or the eleven o'clock news. Still, the company had fun going to a Japanese shabu place Randall had found, and we also had a private tour of Taliesin West because he knew the widow of Frank Lloyd Wright, who was a patron of his theater in Spring Green. My pal Patricia came to visit, and Daddy popped down to see the show, too.

My first acting experience out of school had been mostly positive, and I had avoided any romantic entanglements, for a change. Perhaps I was turning a corner, taking my first steps toward being a grown-up.

I got on the plane and returned to New York. Didi picked me up at the airport and eyed me up and down. She didn't have to say anything; all that fabulous Mexican food had fattened me up a bit—I was going to have to lose a few pounds.

My old friend Nina Franco, who had directed me in
Spring Awakening
, was back in town, having gotten her graduate degree from NYU. She called me, and we went to dinner to catch up. She filled me in on her three years at NYU; I told her I was just back in town after doing
The Tempest
in Arizona and was now on the dole looking for more acting work. Surprisingly, there was no weirdness between us—even though the last time I'd seen her she was wearing bandages over sixty stitches from the notorious arm-through-the-glass-door incident. Perhaps because we'd known each other on and off for ten years at various stages of our lives, our friendship just plugged itself back in when we saw each other.

“Come back to my place, I'll make popcorn.”

I didn't have anywhere to be, so I shrugged. “Okay.”

We walked over to her flat on Ninety-eighth Street just off Broadway. The large, dark place had been broken up into bedrooms that her roommate, who owned the apartment, rented out. Nina clanged around in the kitchen, and I heard the popping corn kernels pinging around in a pot on the stove.

I was standing in the small, sparsely furnished living room just outside the kitchen when I heard the front door slam. A handsome man, about my age, with dark hair and a mole on his cheek entered the room. He looked like a young Robert De Niro, the good-looking one from
The Godfather: Part II
.

Nina came in with a bowl of popcorn and introduced me. “Wendy, this is Stewart. This is his apartment.”

We nodded at each other. He had a shy smile and tended to look off to the side, as if he were embarrassed about something. It was cute and made him seem sweet and self-effacing.

“Wendy lives a few blocks away on Ninety-seventh.” Nina eyed me, clearly seeing an inkling of chemistry between us. My face felt red and warm.

“Oh, my cousin Dave Ott lives over there. At 210 between West End and Riverside.” He put his massive messenger bag down on a chair.

“You're kidding me, right?” It was just another crazy example of how small a place such as New York could be. “Jenny's my best friend! We met at BU.”

“Wow. Will you say hello to her and Dave? I haven't seen them in a while.”

“Sure.”

He got my number from Nina and called me the next day, so we met for coffee and exchanged stories. He wanted to be a screenwriter, but his day job was delivering oversized Italian sandwiches from a white van he drove around the city. Like me, he'd had an unhappy childhood—his parents split up when he was young. His mom was eccentric and now lived in a trailer park in Florida. His dad was a charismatic ne'er-do-well who never seemed to have had a real job.

Stewart listened with great interest to the saga of my insane childhood: the batty, narcissistic mother; the ghost father who'd chosen not to come to my rescue; the patched-up relationship with my sister, which at times resembled a broken vase stuck back together with sticky tape. His eyes narrowed with intensity as I cataloged all my strife and my various stabs to sort it all out. He held my hand and said he understood, which made me feel safe and cared for. We were alike in many ways—we'd lacked traditional parenting to say the least, we were both in the arts, and we had experienced the same proximity to money without having any ourselves.

Stewart and I drifted into a relationship, seeing each other a few times a week and on the weekends. In the beginning he seemed to have a gentleness that shone out of his brown eyes; he looked at me as if he loved me. I believed that I had finally found someone who would help me make the leap to the world of grown-ups; that we'd be a real, committed couple and cherish each other. Plus, I'd be joining Jenny's family by being with him.