The Joys of Love, page 10
It was. Ben poked her in the ribs and Elizabeth called out to him, “Oh, Mr. Price …” She jumped down from her pile and stood with her hands on the edge of the boardwalk, looking up at him.
“Yes, Liz, what is it? I’m in a hurry.”
“Mr. Price—” she hesitated, then plunged. “I didn’t want to bother you before the show was over tonight, but Sophie wanted me to tell you that since she’d paid her room and board through next week and wasn’t going to be here she wanted me to have it—if—if that was all right.”
J. P. Price had not yet recovered from a disagreeable scene with Dottie and his face didn’t soften. “I’m afraid that’s a little irregular.”
“Please, Mr. Price. You know this summer’s terribly important to me, and I’ve been so happy here. Even a week longer makes a lot of difference. It’s—it’s not that I want to leave, you know.”
“You shouldn’t have come if you couldn’t stay the whole season. You’re depriving someone else of a scholarship and I shall have to find someone to replace you in your work.”
“But I didn’t know I couldn’t stay! I didn’t have any idea I couldn’t until this morning. My aunt promised me I could. But she doesn’t approve of the theatre. Not this theatre—the theatre—and—”
Mr. Price relented. “Okay, Liz. We’ll let it go this time since Sophie had paid ahead.”
“Oh, thank you, Mr. Price! Good night.”
“Good night.”
“Going to the party at Irving’s?” Ben asked.
“That’s right,” Mr. Price said. “You kids had better go to bed. There’ll probably be a lot of work for you tomorrow.”
“All right, we will,” Elizabeth said. She climbed back onto her pile next to Ben as Mr. Price strode off.
“There’s one man who’s in the theatre to make money and nothing else,” Ben said. “My God, what a fuss for an extra twenty bucks. I should think he’d realize you’re valuable to him. He always makes more money when you’re in the box office than anyone else.”
“You’re cracked.”
“People see you and they buy ten tickets instead of two.”
In the darkness Elizabeth grinned, touched by Ben’s dogged loyalty. “My charm may be fatal but I’m afraid you overestimate it. Look, what train is Courtmont going to take? I didn’t know trains ran here in the middle of the night.”
“Train, my foot,” Ben said. “She’s going to drive that emerald green convertible of hers. I think I’ll go get a hamburger somewhere. Hungry?”
“Yes. Ravenous.”
“Come along with me. I’ll treat you.”
“You don’t need to. A beautiful fat gentleman gave me a dollar tip this evening. That’s more than I usually make in a whole week of tips. I’m filthy with money. I’ll treat you.”
“We’ll go dutch,” Ben said.
“Listen, after all the hamburgers you’ve given me you’ve got to let me treat you this once. For auld lang syne and all that. Now don’t be difficult and argue with me, Ben.”
“Okay,” Ben said. “My mother told me always to give in gracefully.”
They climbed down from their piles and wandered along the beach. The stars were thick and low above them; the canopy of sky seemed to be sagging with the weight of the heat.
“Tide’s coming in,” Ben said, slapping at a mosquito.
They passed John Peter and Jane, who had stopped playing their recorders. John Peter was lying sprawled on the sand, his head on Jane’s lap. Jane bent over him, tracing his features with a delicate finger.
“Leaving?” John Peter asked, reaching up a lazy hand to Jane’s fair hair.
“Going to get a hamburger. Want to come?”
“Nope. We’re too comfortable here,” Jane said.
“Mind the tide doesn’t come in and drown you. Come on, Liz. Here’re some steps. Let’s go up on the boardwalk. I’m getting sand in my shoes.”
They walked along the rough planks of the boardwalk. Soon the houses became smaller and less well cared for, and then began to give way to shops and booths. There was an amusement hall with a penny arcade, and brightly painted turtles for sale; and a jewelry store full of wedding and engagement rings; and a booth with big straw hats and kewpie dolls and costume jewelry; and a rifle range. The lights were bright and garish and Elizabeth forgot Kurt for the moment and remembered that she could stay another week and that she was in Macbeth; and she felt supremely happy as she walked along beside Ben. They came to a milk bar that was still open and Ben said, “They make good hamburgers here and I feel like a quadruple-dip milk shake. Okay with you?”
“Fine,” Elizabeth said, and followed him in.
Inside the milk bar everything looked very clean and white. There was white tiling on the floor and the walls, and a man with a mop and a bucket was washing the floor at the back. A white counter ran the length of the place, with high white stools in front of it, onto which Elizabeth and Ben climbed. At one end a man in a chef’s hat stood over a big grill, and the smell of ice cream and frying onions pervaded the place.
“Want onions with your hamburger?” Ben asked.
Elizabeth loved onions with her hamburger, but there was a remote possibility that Kurt might come back from Irving’s and look for her. “Just pickle.”
“One with pickle and one with pickle and onions,” Ben ordered. “You want a milk shake, Liz?”
“Chocolate with coffee ice cream. One dip.”
“Okay,” Ben said. “And make mine chocolate with chocolate ice cream. Four dips.”
“Four!” the white-uniformed girl behind the counter exclaimed.
“You heard me.”
“You’ll have to eat it with a fork.”
“That’s the way I like it.”
“Everybody to his own taste, as the old lady said when she kissed the cow.” The girl called over to the chef, “Two, one without,” then leaned over the counter toward them. “Say, don’t you kids work up at the thee-atre?”
“Yeah,” Ben said. “Do we show it that bad?”
The girl grinned. “Well, you’re not like the run-of-the-mill customers we get. But I recognized the young lady. You’re one of the ushers, aren’t you?”
“That’s right,” Elizabeth said.
“My fiancé and I go most every week,” the girl told them. “We like it better than the picture show.”
“Hurrah for you,” Ben cheered. “It’s the difference between canned vegetables and fresh vegetables, isn’t it?”
“Say, that’s good! Did you think that one up?” the girl asked.
“I wish I could claim it, but it isn’t very original. Elizabeth here”—he waved a thumb at Elizabeth—“is going to be in the show next week.”
“Gee, honest? I’ll have to get my fiancé to get tickets, then. We weren’t so sure we’d take it in, being it was Shakespeare and everything, but being as I know one of the actresses I just guess we’ll have to go.”
The chef called, “Two hamburgers coming up,” and she went off to get them and make the milk shakes.
“Want me to hear your lines?” Ben asked.
“Oh, Ben, would you?”
“Got your sides?”
Elizabeth reached into one of the back pockets of her blue jeans and pulled out her sides, her speeches with their cues, typed on half-size sheets of typewriter paper between red paper covers, with MACBETH, GENTLEWOMAN on the outside. The penciled “Miss Hatfield” had been crossed out and Joe McGill had written “Miss Jerrold” underneath.
Ben read the cue in a level, rather expressionless voice. He and Elizabeth had both learned, early in the summer when they cued members of the professional company, that it is disconcerting to an actor who is working on lines to have the person who is cuing him try to act. “‘ … she last walked?’”
“‘Since his majesty went into the field,’” Elizabeth said, “‘I have seen her rise from her bed, throw her night-gown upon her, unlock her closet, take forth paper, fold it, write upon’t, read it, afterwards seal it, and again return to bed, yet all this while in a most fast sleep.’”
The girl put the hamburgers and milk shakes down on the counter in front of them. “Which one with onions?”
“Me,” Ben said.
“That your part you’re saying?”
Elizabeth nodded.
“Go on. Let me hear.”
Ben gave her the next cue. “‘ … heard her say?’”
“‘That, sir, which I will not report after her,’” Elizabeth said.
“‘ … meet you should.’”
“‘Neither to you, nor anyone, having no witness to confirm my speech. Lo you, here she comes. This is her very guise and, upon my life, fast asleep. Observe her, stand close.’”
Ben: “‘ … by that light?’”
Elizabeth: “‘Why, it stood by her. She has light by her continually, ’tis her command.’”
The girl made a face. “Say, that doesn’t make any sense!”
Elizabeth laughed. “That’s because all I have is my sides.”
“Beg pardon?”
“My sides. That’s just the speeches I have, with the last three words of the speech that comes before mine as my cue.”
The girl shook her head. “It’s beyond me. I used to think I’d like to go on the stage or be in the movies or something, but I decided to marry my Jimmy and settle down instead. He’s a plumber and makes real good money.”
“A lot better than most actors do, I can tell you that,” Ben said. “Want me to go on cuing you, Liz?”
“Never mind,” Elizabeth said. “I know it.”
Ben handed her back the sides. “Gee, eleven sides. I never realized the Gentlewoman was such a good part, even hearing it at rehearsals.”
“Miss Andersen’s wonderful in that scene,” Elizabeth said. “Oh, Ben, isn’t she just superb? It’s so hard not to sound hammy, but she sends cold shivers down your spine.”
“From now on,” Ben said, “you’ll be the one I’ll watch in that scene. Want another hamburger?”
“No, thanks. And I’m paying for this, remember?”
“You can pay for my hamburger but you can’t pay for my quadruple-dip milk shake. They cost a fortune.”
“Was it good?” the girl asked.
“Out of this world. Can we have the check, please? Do we pay you or the cashier?”
“You can pay me.”
“Well, take the hamburgers and her milk shake out of her dollar and my milk shake out of my fifty cents.”
“Okay. Hamburgers twenty-five and milk shake twenty-five. Here’s your quarter, miss. And the quadruple-dip milk shake. Well, we’ll call it fifty cents.”
“Thanks, and don’t forget to come to the show next week.”
“I won’t. I’m looking forward to it. Night, now.”
“Good night.”
When they were out on the boardwalk again Ben said, “Let’s go on down to Irving’s for a few minutes.”
“Uh-uh.” Elizabeth shook her head with determination. “I want to work on my part.”
“Okay,” Ben said. “I’ll walk you home. Pardon my curiosity, Liz, but is Kurt with anybody?”
“Dottie and Huntley.”
Ben looked through the darkness at Elizabeth, and said suddenly, “Listen, Liz, this next week don’t do anything silly, will you?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. No guy’s worth being unhappy about.”
“Or worth making a fool of yourself for, don’t you mean?” Elizabeth asked, walking on again, angry at herself because she always stopped and looked wistfully at the windows with the engagement rings, angry at Ben for suggesting that Kurt would make her unhappy.
They turned away from the boardwalk and walked down the street toward the Cottage. As they passed one of the larger houses they could hear a phonograph playing loudly, one of Carmen’s arias. Elizabeth put her hand on Ben’s arm. “Let’s listen for a minute, Ben.”
They stood there on the sidewalk, letting the music and the light from the windows spill over them. Then the door opened and some people came out, laughing, calling good-nights, and Elizabeth and Ben moved on.
“They’re almost always playing records there when we go back to the Cottage at night,” Elizabeth said. “Have you noticed?”
“Yes.” Ben nodded. “Golly Moses, but I love music. One of the nicest times I can remember was a winter we spent in Chicago—my father was sent out there on business for a year—and I played all the kid parts in the opera. Not singing, just walking on, sometimes in the mob, and sometimes with a couple of lines. That was wonderful fun. They had a darned good company that winter, too. I suppose I was too young to know it, but my mother did. I’ve loved music ever since then.”
“We like so many of the same things, don’t we, Ben?” Elizabeth asked.
“With a few marked exceptions.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, forget it. I like that opera, Carmen. That year at the Chicago Opera Company there was a mezzo who sang Carmen like I’ve never heard it since. Her name was Anna Larsen. I used to be crazy about her. I was six years old and she was my first love. That’s one reason I first noticed you. You look kind of like her.”
“Yes, Ben,” Elizabeth said in a strained, tight voice. “You see, she was my mother.”
“Well, that’s no small coincidence,” Ben said. “And that explains a lot. About Aunt Harriet, I mean.”
“Yes. I guess it does.” Elizabeth walked slowly up the path to the Cottage and the uncomplicated elation she had felt at hearing the music flowing out to her from the house fled, and instead her heart began to beat rapidly, as though she were afraid. She sat down on the bottom step and her legs were shaking and she put her head down on her knees. “What do you remember about my mother, Ben?”
Ben sat down beside her and put his arm around her. “Liz,” he said, and the strange gentleness was in his voice again, the gentleness that made him seem years older than Elizabeth, a member of a sadder and wiser generation, “your mother was a real artist. That’s not just my opinion. Anybody who knows anything about singing knows that. My parents still keep up with some of the singers we met at the Chicago Opera Company that season, and whenever they come to our house they talk about Anna Larsen. She—well, let’s face it, she did some cockeyed things, and people are always waiting to jump on anything an artist does, but she was a wonderful person. Didn’t you ever know her, Liz? Didn’t you ever see her at all?”
Elizabeth shook her head and began plucking bits of grass from a clump that grew up through a crack in the walk. “I went to her funeral. That was the only time I ever saw her to remember. I guess one of the cockeyed things she did was, she left Father—and me—when I was six months old. It seems funny, Ben, she was my mother, and I never knew her, and you did, and I have to ask you questions about her.”
“I’ll tell you everything I remember,” Ben said. “Most of it maybe I don’t really remember. What happened then and what’s been talked about since is all mixed up in my mind. She was crazy about kids. I used to adore her. Well, I told you that. She’d call me into her dressing room and we’d play games. She had a bearskin rug on the floor, and when she was onstage and I wasn’t needed she’d let me lie on it and read. And then we’d play all kinds of games with it, going to the north pole and African explorers and all kinds of things. It got so I spent most of my time in her dressing room, and then her dresser left, so Mother took over as a kind of combination dresser-secretary for her until she could find someone new. That’s why we saw so much more of her than any of the other singers. I remember when she died. I came down to breakfast one morning and Mother was sitting with the paper spread out on the kitchen table in front of her and her cup of coffee spilled all over it and weeping her head off.”
“Have you—have you got any of her records, Ben?”
“Dozens at home.” Ben gave a fierce swat at a mosquito.
“I tried to buy some while I was at college but they were all out of press or whatever it is. Of course Aunt Harriet wouldn’t even have a Victrola, she was so afraid I’d get hold of some of Mother’s records. She was always terribly angry if she was reminded of Mother in any way—and I guess I was a constant reminder. Tell me more about her, Ben. What was she like as a person?”
Ben, with his arm still protectively around Elizabeth, said, “Well, the thing I remember most, and maybe just because it was the thing Mother talked about most, was the way your mother loved people, and the way she wanted love. She was affectionate to anybody and everybody, kind of like a baby or a kitten. When she’d sung particularly well she’d come offstage and fling her arms around Mother and kiss her. If Father was around she’d kiss him, too. She always had to have someone to love. And she always had to have someone hugging and kissing her. She couldn’t seem to believe that anyone could really love her. She always thought it was because she was a star, not just because of her herself, and she always had to be reassured. She kept asking Mother, ‘You really do like me? You really are my friend?’ And I think she was scared I loved her just because she played with me and brought me presents.”
Elizabeth said softly, “You say it makes you understand Aunt Harriet better. It makes me understand things better, too.” All kinds of little pieces in the puzzling background of her parentage began to fall into place. Now she could imagine with clarity her father as he must have been when he left Aunt Harriet and the house in Jordan and went to live with his bride in the small town where he taught. Probably he was, in manner, something like Aunt Harriet then, reserved, undemonstrative. Elizabeth remembered his saying to her once, speaking the words with difficulty, “My darling, it is very hard for me to show people that I love them. But you know that I love you, don’t you? Even though I can’t put my arms around you so sweetly and kiss you the way you do me.”
So there was Robert Jerrold, probably even less able to show in the little affectionate ways his love for his wife than he was for his daughter, and there was Anna Larsen, young, volatile, filled with dreams of romantic, ideal love, and yet tragically, utterly unsure of her own desirability …
“My mother left my father to go to New York with another man,” Elizabeth said. “That was all I ever really knew. Father never talked about Mother. I always wanted to ask him about her, but I was afraid I’d hurt him if I did. Aunt Harriet only talked about her once when I first came to live with her. She told me my mother was a wicked woman and she was going to do her best to see that I didn’t follow in her footsteps. And once at school, one of the kids showed me a clipping in a magazine about Mother singing in a nightclub in New York. And then I didn’t know anything again until she died when I was in college.”
