Page 63 of Playworld
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Did I really miss Naomi? I wondered. Later that evening, I kept thinking about how I’d describe to her other random things I’d noticed during the shoot. That afternoon, in between takes, one of the executives had said to Diane, so that the entire cast and crew could hear, “I think we made a mistake casting a woman as beautiful as you.” To which Diane—her back was to him and she was facing me—said, “Is that right, Gerald?” To which Gerald replied, “I think you’re hotter than the soup.” Diane raised an eyebrow at me and said, “Better not take a sip then, you might burn your lips.” To which Gerald replied, “Not if I blow on it first.” And while the crew and the other execs chuckled, Diane looked at me with an expression of such slit-eyed exhaustion and embarrassment, I swore I’d never speak to a woman like that in my life. And now, when I recall her tiny privacy with me, her bid for corroboration, an effort at a sort of education—woman to young man—I am reminded that someone is always eyeing someone eyeing someone who isn’t eyeing them.
And what about love? One night, when I emerged from my room, I spied Dad just back from rehearsal—they’d just started doing read-throughs of the musical’s book—his coat still on but unbuttoned at thethroat. He seemed electrically happy, enlarged somehow, and he greeted my mother at the dining table with an expression that was decidedly hungry. She sat facing the mirrored wall, and he reached around her chairback to cup one of her breasts, which froze me, and then bent to kiss her full on the mouth—another thing I’d never seen in my life. She raised both her arms and looped them around his neck. When their lips parted, she grabbed his scruff in her fist and pulled his cheek to hers and held it there. She looked at him in the mirror’s reflection, and he looked at her, and then Mom spotted me, reflected too, and her expression did not change. I felt that she’d rent some sort of veil to reveal her true face. It was suddenly clear to me that I knew her as my mother but not as a woman, a distinction I’d never previously thought to make; and that in our family’s food chain, Dad was her apex and Oren and I were at the bottom.
My inability to tell Elliott about this, or any of these things—he was dozing now as I sat across from him in his office—was, I suddenly felt acutely, the very failure of mine that put him to sleep.
“It’s like I’m a mute!” I said, which startled him awake.
“Whoosis?” Elliott said, and grabbed his chair’s arms.
“Like I see but I can’t say.”
He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. He shook his head so hard his lips flapped. “Let’s take a walk,” he said, and, donning our heavy coats, we left his office.
As we crossed the street toward Gramercy Park, he swung his arms in front of him and clapped his gloved hands several times. We walked up to the park’s gate, and Elliott rummaged in his overcoat’s pocket. “The most coveted key in New York,” he said, holding it up for me to behold, and then opened the lock. He pulled the gate shut behind him, and we entered the tiny one-block-by-one-block rectangular space. Snow crunched under our feet as we cut through its path. Pigeons snapped their wings and rose like ash. On the fence’s perimeter, the bundled pedestrians were smokestacks, were steam engines.
“You know who that is?” Elliott said, and thumbed at the statue to his right. I didn’t answer. “Edwin Booth.” When I shrugged, he explained: “The actor. He founded the Players club. Right there”—Elliott pointed at the mansion across the street: wrought-iron guarding the balconies,gas lanterns flickering, a purple flag limp in the cold. “Older brother of John Wilkes Booth, who…” he said, and waited.
“Assassinated Abraham Lincoln?”
“Correct. Now, Edwin Booth, like his father before him and both his brothers, was an actor. I read an article about the family a few days ago. Theyhatedeach other, by the way.”
“Who?”
“The brothers did. Well, John Wilkes hated Edwin. Their father died when John was thirteen but he was clearly haunted by him. Wanted their dead dad’s love so bad he tore himself up fighting for it—Junius Brutus Booth was the father’s name. They don’t make names like that anymore! If your father had a name like that, it would give you an inferiority complex too. Anyway, he desperately wants Pop’s approval, so what does he do?”
“Assassinates Abraham Lincoln?”
Elliott shook his head. “He goes into the family business. Brother Edwin’s already made a reputation for himself as Hamlet, by the way. Becomes the ne plus ultra of the Prince of Denmark. You know what that means?”
“The best?”
“Better than that. The ultimate.”
“Like Brando inStreetcar.”
“Exactly.Now, John, he’s considered the handsomest man in America. But he isn’t getting anywherenearthe cachet as his big brother. You know whatcachetis?”
“Is it French for money?”
“It’sprestige.As in admiration. So what’s his solution to this dilemma, you think?”
“He assassinates Abraham Lincoln?”
“He defines himselfover againsthis brother. Edwin’s a great Shakespearean actor, John Wilkes becomes a naturalist. Brother won’t take sides in the war, John Wilkes allies himself with the Confederates. Brother wants to abolish slavery, John Wilkes goes all in for antimiscegenation.”
“What’s antimiscegenation?”
Elliott stopped and smiled. He placed one hand on my shoulder and,with the other, patted my chest in approval. Then he took my elbow and we continued to walk. “It means he was against interracial marriage.”
“Do you agree with that?”
Elliott shrugged. “If my daughter were to bring home a Black guy, I’d prefer it were Sidney Poitier, but to each his own. My point: John Wilkes is entangled, understand? He sees one path to love blocked and does the opposite. But there’s no freedom in doing the opposite, okay, because always doing the opposite is automatic. Itbindsyou to the person you’re trying to break away from. Itintertwinesyou with the very thing you profess you don’t want to be. And John Wilkes knows this. On some precognitive level, he realizes he’ll never out-fame his brother and win his father’s approval, that his path to eros is obstructed.”
“What’s eros?”
“Love,” Elliott said. “The life force. The engine of our best actions.” He smiled because I was smiling as he waxed poetic, and this encouraged him to be hammy. “The flower opening its petals to the sun.”