The Troubled Air (35 page)

Listening to the amusing lines that came across the footlights, laughing with the rest of the audience, Archer felt a nostalgia come over him for the lost, rueful academic world of the play, in which loud-mouthed trustee hundred-percent Americans and callow radical intellectuals could all be treated with the same gentle humor, with forgiveness and delight. When had the play been written? 1938? 1939? Where had that world gone? What would happen if the play had been written this year? Would it be stormed, denounced, investigated, picketed? And who would be right this year … the gentle and witty playwrights or the bitter picketers and investigators? Archer knew that as recently as two weeks ago he would have answered that question automatically.

Now … seated among five hundred smiling, agreeable-faced people, charmed by the reflection of their own humanity and modest idealism which came from the stage, comfortable and seemingly oblivious to the threats that were hanging over them—now, Archer didn’t know. This is a play, he thought, to be regarded as a historical costume piece, in which the characters are dressed in quaint and admirable moral clothing which no longer is in fashion today. The hand-made moral garment, fashioned to fit the individual man and sewn with a patient, fine seam, Archer thought, remembering Teague, is being pushed off the market by massacre and improved machinery, to be replaced by the standard garment, stiff and padded to cover with an anonymous, uniform, mass-produced garment all personal flaws and beauties. He wondered what the people around him would say if they knew that the father of the pretty young girl assiduously attempting to appear thirty years old on the stage was suspected of treason by the Government and that if any member of the audience called him on the telephone to invite him to dinner the invitation would be overheard, checked and filed against the possibility of future disorders by the police power of the State.

Archer shook his head, unwilling to wander off once more into these reflections, which had made him suspiciously silent on the ride up to the college and at the dinner table. He made himself pay attention to the stage and regard his daughter critically, so that he could speak intelligently about her performance later on.

Jane was surprisingly good. Listening to her go over her lines in the living room on Sunday he had felt indulgently that she was gauche and coltishly amateurish. But here, prettily made up, enjoying herself under the lights, warmed by the laughter which greeted her, and surrounded by people of her own age who, if anything, had considerably less talent than she, Jane was attractive and convincing. Even if I weren’t her father, he thought defensively, I’d be impressed. And there’s no doubt about it, by the most stringent objective standards, she’s awfully pretty. She had put her hair up to give her age, and the high heels she wore made her legs seem more slender and someone had had the good sense to pick out a dress for her that lent her robust young figure a graceful maturity for the evening.

Archer glanced at Nancy, seated beside him. She was sitting back in her chair, her face, in the light reflected from the stage, curiously hungry and intent. She was not smiling as were the other members of the audience and her attention was so directed to the stage that she didn’t notice Archer’s long stare of inspection. What is it in her face? Archer wondered. Disappointment, regret, sorrow for opportunities that have long ago vanished? Does she see herself in Jane, very young, very serious, acclaimed, full of limitless hopes for the future? Does she remember the excitement of the nights when she, too, performed to applause and laughter, and told a young man that she wouldn’t marry him, wouldn’t even become engaged to him because she had a career to make in the theatre in New York? Is she going over in her head, Archer wondered, the claims of love, the blunting of ambition, the arrival of children, the slow submersion of herself in the career of the handsome man two seats away from her, the man who, fifteen years before, had picked his life work with confident haste, merely to be close to her? Was that hungry, drawn face hiding uneasy speculations on the tricks of life, on the subtle work of accident, on the sickening passage of time, on the penalties of love which come disguised as gifts and pleasures? As Nancy watched her friends’ daughter delightedly sweep through the amber lights, was she saying torturedly to herself, “What did I do? What happened to me?”

Finally, Nancy realized that Archer was staring at her and had been for some time. She turned her head slowly from the stage, as though she hated to miss a single movement there. There were tears in her eyes, trembling and unshed. She put out her hand and Archer held it on the arm of the chair between them. She gripped his hand hard before she turned her eyes back to the stage.

Archer felt that he had known her forever, that he understood her completely. He would have liked to kiss her to show her that he pitied her and loved her.

When the play was over they all went back to Jane’s dressing room to congratulate her. There were flowers and several telegrams, stuck professionally on the side of the mirror, and Jane was dabbing happily at her makeup with cold-cream, trying not to smile too widely when her parents and Vic and Nancy came into the room.

“Don’t kiss me,” she said, as Kitty embraced her, “you’ll get all smeary.”

“This evening,” Vic said solemnly, “it is the pleasure of your reporter to tell you that he was present at that rarest of theatrical experiences—the revelation of a new tragic genius …”

“Oh, Vic,” Jane said, giggling, “don’t be insufferable.”

“With all the mature passion of a great artist of thirty,” Vic recited, “Miss Archer dominated the stage at every turn. Beautiful, with a wide, serene brow which reflects an ageless and noble melancholy of spirit, Miss Archer held a fashionable and critical audience in the palm of her long, white hands. To our utter amazement, we learned in the dressing room, where we went to pay homage after the performance, that the dazzling woman who had won every heart that night was only eleven years old.”

“Daddy,” Jane said, giggling again, “you must make him stop.”

“You were wonderful, baby,” Archer said. “Really.”

“I was foul,” Jane said complacently. “I was falling all over myself.”

“It was so queer, seeing you up there,” Kitty said. “You made me feel so
old.”

Nancy didn’t say anything. Her eyes were still shining in the same strange, hungry way that Archer had noticed in the theatre. She went up to Jane and put her arms around her and held her, hard. For a moment everyone in the room was silent. Then three girls came bursting into the room, full of high, excited compliments, and Jane sat down in front of the mirror and made a pleasant little show of scrubbing her makeup off, while everyone grouped around her, consciously collaborating with Jane and one another to make this moment as high and memorable as possible. Archer looked at the flowers in their boxes. There was his corsage, a pleasant spray of tea roses, and a big bunch of gladioli from the Herreses and an impressive cellophane box with two perfect green orchids in it that was ostentatiously displayed in front of the others. Archer picked up the card. “Be delightful,” the card read. It was signed Dom. Archer put the card down, conscious of a twinge of annoyance, feeling resentfully that Barbante had probably sent the same flowers and the identical message to a dozen other dressing rooms over the course of the years. The orchids looked cold, extravagant, too showy for an eighteen-year-old schoolgirl unpinning her hair in front of her parents after an amateur production. A moment later Barbante came in, followed by Bruce. Archer hadn’t seen the writer while the play was on and no one had told him Barbante would be present. Bruce looked shy and unhappy.

“Jane …” Barbante went over and kissed the top of her head, after smiling his greeting at Archer and the others. “Jane, you were charming.”

“Dom …” Jane switched around in her chair and looked up at him. “Don’t lie. I was unutterable. And the orchids …” Jane waved at the cellophane box. “Everybody look at the orchids. Aren’t they
slinky?”

“Jane,” Bruce said, moving truculently in her direction but not daring to touch her, “you were great. I didn’t think you had it in you.”

Archer saw Vic grin slightly.

“Thanks, Bruce,” Jane said, turning back to her mirror. “It was nice of you to come.”

“I managed to get away,” Bruce said heavily, suffering. He was a large boy with an infant’s pink complexion. Carefully dressed and shaven, he looked as though he had been boiled briskly and set out to cool before going out for the evening. He looked around him at the flowers. “I didn’t know people were supposed to send flowers,” he said miserably.

“Don’t make it sound like a funeral, Bruce, darling,” Jane said, winding a towel around her head. Vic grinned more widely and Archer wished there was some way he could, in one moment, put compassion for her contemporaries into his daughter’s heart. Bruce took a step backward and leaned against the wall, anguished and stoical.

“Now, really, everybody,” Jane said, firmly in the center of the stage, “I do have to change. Why don’t you wait outside and think up some more compliments for me and I’ll be out in a shake.”

“Isn’t there a bar somewhere near here?” Vic asked. “We can go and toast the prima donna in lemonade.”

“I have an even better idea,” Barbante said. Archer watched him suspiciously. “Why don’t we all go downtown and celebrate at Sardi’s? That’s what everybody does after an opening night. We’ll sit in the center of the room and let the people admire Jane.”

Jane swung around, smiling delightedly at Barbante. “Oh, delicious,” she said. “I’ll pretend I’m waiting up for the reviews.”

“Don’t you have classes tomorrow, young lady?” Archer asked, feeling solemn.

“I’ll cut them,” Jane said swiftly. “The Dean’ll understand. She has a lovely reputation for being flexible.”

“I think it’s a fine idea,” Kitty said, as anxious as her daughter to prolong the excitement of the evening. “It’s early yet, anyway, and any place we’d go around here’d be so dreary.”

“Kitty, are you sure you feel strong enough to stay up so late?” Archer asked, in a forlorn last effort. “Don’t you think you ought to be getting to bed?”

“I feel fine,” Kitty said. She touched Archer’s hand. “Don’t be stuffy.”

“The Sardis have it,” Vic said, “Papa dissenting.”

“I’m not dissenting,” Archer said, displeased at seeming to be opposed to his daughter’s pleasure on this night of triumph for her. “I just wanted to make sure everybody was willing.”

“I have my car here,” said Barbante. “I’ll wait for Miss Duse and bring her and Bruce down and meet the rest of you there.”

“Will you put the top down?” Jane asked, bending down and kicking off the high-heeled shoes and beginning to peel off a stocking.

“Jane,” Archer said, “it’s winter.”

“It’s a beautiful night,” Jane said. “I want to see the stars tonight.”

“The top is down,” Barbante said, “because until midnight no request can be denied you.”

God, Archer thought, I don’t have to stand here and listen to this. “All right,” he said curtly, “see you in Sardi’s. Come on, folks.”

“Bundle up, dear,” Kitty said, as she prepared to leave.

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Archer,” Barbante said. “I have a fur robe.”

The sonofabitch, Archer thought, prepared for everything. Following Nancy and Kitty out of the door, he passed Bruce. Bruce stood rigidly against the wall, his face frozen and hurt. The fool, Archer thought, annoyed with Bruce, too. He might have had the sense to invest a couple of dollars at a florist’s.

“Come on, Bruce,” Barbante took the boy’s arm. “Let’s go out and have a smoke while the lady rearranges herself for civilian life.”

“I don’t smoke,” Bruce said, allowing himself to be guided out of the room.

“Lucky man,” Barbante said. “It’s a dirty habit.”

Vic chuckled as they went down the corridor.

Vic ordered two bottles of champagne and they were standing in their frosted buckets when Jane came in. Everyone, thought Archer, your wife, your friend, conspires to rush your daughter away from you into maturity. He tried to be sensible and not jealous at the inevitable process, but he knew that he was hurt and disappointed as he thought of Jane wrapped in the fur robe, speeding down the highway, in the open car under the stars, having chosen to make the trip down from the college not with her father, but with another man. He noted, coldly, that Jane was wearing Barbante’s green orchids as she came in. His own plain little tea roses were nowhere to be seen. Probably carelessly discarded on the dressing-room table, he thought painfully, with the cold-cream pots and the box of cleansing tissue.

Jane made a showy entrance, very pretty and young and on top of the world, coming into the famous restaurant flanked by two men, warmly conscious that many eyes were on her as she made her way among the tables. Her cheeks were flushed from the cold and her hair was in the windy, fluffed disarray that no woman over twenty-five would dare to exhibit in a public place.

Vic stood up ceremoniously to greet her and Archer found himself on his feet, too. The first time, he realized, that I have stood up in deference to my daughter. Staring at her, approaching the table, her face flavored by youth and the touch of winter, he thought, Please, not so fast. Don’t rush. Please don’t rush.

“Oh,” Jane said, sitting down in the middle of the three chairs that had been left vacant for her and the two men, “it was lovely. The stars were just cold little bubbles sitting on top of Radio City …”

Literary, Archer thought glumly. For Barbante’s benefit.

Jane touched one of the champagne bottles. “And here’s some more bubbles. I don’t think I can bear going to sleep until the Fourth of July.”

“We ordered milk for you,” Vic said gravely. “The champagne is for grownups.”

“Vic,” Jane said, laughing, “don’t be a traitorous old poof.”

“Come to think of it,” Vic said, “I am a little poof-like.”

Jane leaned over and touched his hand in a forgiving, womanly, coquettish gesture. “Not really,” she said. “You should have heard what the girls were saying about you when you left.”