The Trouble with Eden Read online

  “Why should he?”

  “Okay. I’ll pick her up whatever time it is. Eleven, eleven thirty.”

  She nodded and looked about to say something. He could guess what it probably was and didn’t have time to listen to it. He turned, darted outside, jogged off toward the playhouse.

  Anthony Bartholomew wore his standard uniform of white duck trousers, a black shirt open at the throat, and a white linen ascot. He looked at his watch and whistled soundlessly.

  Peter said, “I know. There were problems.”

  “I imagine there were. Everybody has them. Well, you know the play and the board. I’ll have a fast run-through on the script with you and then we’ll see what happens. It’s going to be the usual Wednesday night crowd plus a busful of blue-haired ladies from Trenton, so if you eff up nobody’ll likely notice. Just give Warren the spot when he’s supposed to get it or the cocksucker’s likely to stop in the middle of the scene and correct you from the stage.”

  “They’d just think Miller wrote it that way.”

  “They might, but Tanya won’t. She’s been shitting up the stage anyway and she has trouble handling the unexpected. Well, let’s plunge into it.”

  The play was The Crucible, and Peter was familiar enough with it to pick up the overall rhythm early in the first act. He found it an easy show to work. There was a predictable ebb and flow to Miller’s treatment of the Salem witch trials, and before long he was handling the board automatically, keeping on top of it with most of his mind free for other concerns.

  He would have preferred it if the evening’s work had been more demanding. The thoughts that came to mind were not ones he welcomed.

  “Why don’t you leave me, Petey?”

  Did she know, did she have the slightest idea, how he itched to get out of there? He doubted it. She raised the question often enough, had brought it up even during the good times. “I’m too old for you, Petey. Jesus, you don’t need a mother that much. The Oedipus bit is fun but it has to drag you down sooner or later. You ought to be out there in the world with some sweet young thing with firm little tits and a nice tight cunt. What do you want with an old bag? I mean, for God’s fucking sake, Petey—”

  It would be so much easier if Robin were his own daughter. If that were the case he knew precisely what he would do. He would pick up the kid and get the hell out. You could do that, if you were the kid’s real father and the mother was as completely incapable as Gretchen was.

  And he could even have done it with a treasonably clear conscience. Gretchen could not be worse off without the child to care for. Robin was a responsibility at a time when the woman could barely handle the responsibility of putting on her own shoes when she got out of bed in the morning. Gretchen was falling apart, and there seemed to be nothing he could do to put her back together again. Sometimes he thought no once could, that she was doomed to burn herself out no matter what anyone tried to do to help her. Other times he was fairly sure he did her some good, gave her something however frail to lean on, did her some service by walking along behind her and picking up what she dropped.

  And still other times he wondered if he might not be bad for her, as she was bad for him, wondered if his presence was not partially responsible for what was happening to her.

  “Why don’t you leave me, Petey?”

  Because of the kid, you silly bitch. Did she realize that? It seemed that she must, but when she was in a bad way she was scarcely aware of Robin’s existence. Gretchen had failed to feed Robin—and often failed to feed her—not out of any malice but simply because she hardly knew Robin was there. She was locked too tightly into her own self to waste any thought on Robin.

  Such a sweet child. Such a sweet perfect beautiful child, and how exciting it was to have a child who thought you were the most important person in the world, and if she were only his kid, God, if she were only his kid—

  But she wasn’t, any more than she was Harold Vann’s. Vann had still been married to Gretchen when Robin was born, but had moved out long before the conception. Robin’s father could have been any of a few dozen men. According to Gretchen’s calculations, the girl had most likely been conceived during a two-week stay in Miami Beach, during which time she had sexual relations with a great number of total strangers, men whose names she never knew and whose faces she could not have identified.

  “It’s funny I got pregnant that trip,” she told Peter once. “I seem to remember blowing most of them. Obviously there must have been some that I fucked. Either that or the kid’s the world’s first oral conception.”

  She was very nearly born by the world’s first oral delivery. Gretchen was nauseated throughout nine months of pregnancy. She had had several abortions before, and wondered aloud during the late stages of pregnancy why she had not had another one this time. “I’m already sick to my stomach with this kid,” she said, “and the little bastard’s not even born yet.”

  That Robin was not literally a little bastard was the result of Harold Vann’s benevolence. He had instituted divorce proceedings but withdrew them when he learned that Gretchen was pregnant and intended to have the baby. He waited until the child was born, then permitted Gretchen to divorce him. The terms of the divorce settlement called on him to pay four hundred and sixty dollars a month in child support until Robin reached the age of twenty-one. He also carried life insurance with the child as beneficiary.

  A check arrived within the first five days of every month. Vann’s attorney drew it, signed it, and mailed it. The monthly check was the extent of Harold Vann’s contact with either Robin or her mother. “He never wants to see either of us,” Gretchen had said. “Never wants to know anything about Robin, how she’s doing, anything. He told me once that he felt a certain responsibility to Robin because he should have had the sense to have me sterilized. I can still hear him saying it. I suppose he was right.”

  But he wasn’t, Peter thought. Gretchen and her unknown lover had accomplished a minor miracle, producing through their loveless coupling a precious and perfect child. Such a child justified a great deal. Among other things, it justified his staying with a woman with whom it was literally impossible to live.

  Well, suppose he just picked up the kid and went? He doubted that Gretchen would go to the police. It was not even inconceivable that she would fail to notice Robin was gone. And he could see the two of them off somewhere, some little farm somewhere in New England or Nova Scotia, and he would raise enough food for the two of them, earn a little money with handcrafts, bring the kid up in the open air with animals to play with, teach her everything he knew, just the two of them off by themselves and—

  No way.

  He sighed, focused a baby spot, softened the footlights. No way, he thought. It was a beautiful fantasy trip but would not, could not happen that way. The little cabin in the woods, with or without Robin, would involve running away from more than Gretchen, more than New Hope. It would mean running away from aspects of himself which he could not ultimately outrace.

  Nor, he admitted, would Gretchen be all that easy to leave, Robin or no Robin. There was something there that he still needed. And he wondered, not for the first time, if his love for Robin was not at least in part an excuse that enabled him to stay with a woman he did not love and often could not bear.

  He made himself concentrate on the stage.

  Warren Ormont scrubbed at the last of his makeup and peered solemnly into his mirror. He was altogether quite satisfied with what he saw there. Several years ago his hairline had begun a rapid climb and now had crept just slightly past the midpoint of his head. What hair remained was silver-blond and hung almost to his shoulders. The recession of his hairline had appalled him at first, but as his hair fell out in front and grew longer in back, he recognized that it was just the sort of thing his particular face required. His features—a strong beak of a nose, bright and intense blue eyes, a small precise mouth—were somehow drawn together and reinforced by his partial baldness.

  Now, when
he popped out the contacts he had worn on stage and replaced them with a pair of rimless spectacles, he bore an unmistakable resemblance to Benjamin Franklin. His awareness of this resemblance had prompted the original purchase of the rimless glasses two years earlier. If one were going to look like anyone at all, he had considered, one could do worse than look like Benjamin Franklin.

  “You were marvelous tonight, Warren,” someone said.

  “Yes, wasn’t I?”

  He combed his long hair carefully back. No complaints about the face, he decided. One could have done worse. It was a face that seemed to be improving with age, a face which would wear well for the foreseeable future. Altogether a better face than he would have predicted for himself twenty years ago.

  An arm draped over his shoulder and a small cheek pressed against his. Tanya Leopold’s gamin face looked out of his mirror at him. “Can I get in on this picture, man?”

  “You enhance it, Tanya mine.”

  “Mmmm, love you,” she said. She kissed him on his bald spot, dropped onto the stool beside him. “You were beautiful out there, Warren. You scared the shit out of me, I swear to God.”

  “I was properly vicious, wasn’t I?”

  “Improperly vicious. You made me want to confess long before I was supposed to.”

  “Pure method, love.”

  “Oh?”

  “Oh indeed. I summoned up all my loathing for the play’s author and directed it at you poor witches.”

  “But Arthur Miller—”

  “Sucks,” he supplied.

  “Isn’t he supposed to be one of our major playwrights?”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “And Crucible’s an allegory. It was very important. The McCarthy era and everything.”

  He looked at her fondly. “Didn’t you campaign for him in New Hampshire?”

  Her face turned uncertain. “Was it the same person? I can never quite—”

  He snapped his fingers. “By Jove, I believe you’re right. I can never keep those things straight myself. Politics is such a damned bore, isn’t it?”

  She nodded. “But I guess it’s important.”

  “Ah, boring things always are. Which confirms your report that The Crucible and its author are indeed important. But important to whom? Not, I fear, to me. For I am merely an actor, and the stage all I know of life. I play my part, little one. One can do no more.”

  “Well, you were good.”

  “How can one fail with such lines to speak. ‘I saw Goody Two-Shoes with the Devil!’ ‘Did you? What were they doing?’ ‘They were fucking!’ ‘Well, good for the Devil! And the devil with Goody!’ Shakespeare, put aside your pen. Shaw, eat your heart out. Sophocle—”

  She giggled and he beamed paternally at her. A charming child, he thought. Not a brain in her head, not a wisp of talent in her body, but nonetheless charming for it.

  “You were very good,” she was saying. “I keep saying I that, but what I’m trying to say is that you were so good I that you made me be a little less rotten than I usually I am, you made me feel almost good, and, I don’t know, I oh, I wanted to thank you for it.”

  “Why, Tanya,” he said. She lowered her eyes and I blushed furiously. He was enormously touched and on the point of tears. His voice soft, he said, “That is as genuinely sweet a compliment as anyone has ever paid me. God bless you. I will always love you for having said I that.” He coughed to clear his throat, heaved himself to I his feet. “I must away,” he said, his voice normal again. “My turn to pay a compliment to the young lad but for whom you and I would have been utterly in the dark. I speak of young Peter of Nicholas.”

  “He worked the lights, didn’t he?”

  “He did. Friend Marc dropped the old show-must-go-on philosophy in the dirt, and young Peter dusted it off. I ought to tell him he was good before Tony tells him he was bad.”

  “Why would Tony tell him that?”

  “So that Tony can pay him as little as possible, as he will no doubt do anyhow. Tanya, you were good tonight yourself, incidentally. I hate to offer compliments as a quid pro quo, but there it is. You’ve never been better.” Which was true enough, he thought, but which was unfortunately saying lamentably little.

  “I’ll be joining some people at Sully’s later,” he added. “Will you be going?”

  “I don’t think so. There’s a late movie Billy was talking about seeing.”

  “You insist on squandering yourself on that paint smear?”

  “Well, he loves me.”

  “Who could fail to?”

  Her face went impish. “Now if you’d straighten out for me, Warren, I might be interested.”

  His eyes inventoried her body—dainty feet, willowy legs, tight little ass, tiny waist, opulent breasts. He sighed wistfully. “I’m afraid,” he said slowly, “that you’re just the slightest shade too butch for me.”

  Her laughter followed him out of the dressing room. A dramatic talent equaled only by the depth and breadth of her intellect, he thought. She would never be an actress, and he supposed she knew as much. But for the next half dozen years her looks would carry her, and by that time she would probably find the stage something of a bore.

  But what a sweet thing she’d said; it had taken all his talent to keep from crying.

  He found Peter and Tony Bartholomew at the rear of the house. Tony was talking, and Peter was nodding at the pauses. Excellent, Warren thought. He had timed his entrance well.

  “Ah, there you are,” he called out, approaching the two. Bartholomew raised his eyes in irritation at the interruption but Warren’s gaze swept quickly over him and centered on Peter. “Peter, that was superb. I was nervous tonight when I heard you would be on the lights. I loathe being nervous. But you were so much better than I dared to hope that I was astounded.”

  “That’s kind of you, Warren.”

  “Kind? Kindness has nothing to do with it. It’s pure and simple self-interest. I prefer to play with the lights well handled. One does not want to become blessedly invisible at the wrong moment. Thus, as there is always the chance that you might not realize quite how good you are, I’m taking the small trouble of informing you in order to encourage you to do this regularly.” His eyes turned briefly to Bartholomew. “As I’m sure Tony has been trying to say himself.”

  “I was just telling Peter I think he has real possibilities. Of course the work is a discipline, a craft—”

  “Yes, of course it is, of course it is. Peter, as I’m sure Tony has already told you, you were far better tonight than Marc Hillary ever was in his life. And Marc was not bad. One got one’s money’s worth with Marc. But you are better intuitively than Marc was with rehearsal and practice and training. Tony, you’ve turned up an honest talent. Permit me to congratulate you.”

  “Thanks so much, Warren. I was telling the boy—”

  “I know precisely what you were telling him, and I’m sure I’ve done no more than echo your own praise Tony, it was a good show. If one must perform Arthur Miller one might as well do him properly. You’ll excuse us, won’t you? We’re supposed to be meeting some people at Sully’s and I’m afraid we’re late already. I’ll see you tomorrow, Tony?”

  “It does seem likely.”

  “And perhaps you can join us at Sully’s if you can get I away.”

  “I think I’ll be tied up tonight.”

  “A pity,” Warren said. He grabbed Peter’s arm and led him out of the theater and through the parking lot.

  Halfway to the street Peter said, “What’s this about meeting people at Sully’s?”

  “Well, you don’t have to if you don’t want to, sweet, but I thought I’d buy you a drink. I did think we ought to get away from Antonio and it seemed an easier way than handing him a bottle of mouthwash. Subtler, I thought.”

  “Uh-huh. How did I do with the lights, incidentally?”

  “Hmmm. Let us say that you were not awful. You were a little unsteady in the first act, you were quite good in the second act,
and you may have been thinking of something else toward the very end. I can understand that. I have the same problem myself. Arthur Miller has that effect on any sensitive intelligence. Oh, you weren’t bad. On a scale of one to ten I’d give you about a seven overall, and I don’t think Marc ever got much more than an eight-point-six on his best night, so I’d call it an impressive debut.”

  “Thanks, incidentally.”

  “For that back there or for what I just said?”

  “Both. I don’t think it will work, though.”

  “Let me guess. He was giving you the usual ostrich shit about how much you had to learn.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And how it was essentially a favor to train you, but he was hard up and didn’t want to go to the bother of getting somebody decent all the way from New York.”

  “That’s fantastic.”

  “It is like hell. I could write his dialogue for the rest of the season. It’s a case of contempt breeding familiarity. What did he offer you?”

  “You came in before we got around to numbers.”

  “Well, thank God for that. What was he about to offer you?”

  “Probably fifty.”

  “And what would you have said?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Tell him he can pay you eighty or he can fuck himself.”

  “He won’t pay me eighty.”

  “No, but he’ll pay you sixty-five.”

  “Why don’t I ask for sixty-five?”

  “You could. That’s what I would do in your position, but I’m not sure you have the balls for it. If you ask sixty-five, do you think you could stick to it? Suppose you shot it out as an ultimatum and he said it was out of the question and turned his back on you. What you would have to do is walk out of the room and keep on walking until he raised his price to sixty-five. And I’m not at all certain you could do it.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  “I would think so. It’s very important to know your capabilities. You can get sixty-five, which still amounts to gross exploitation, incidentally, but you’ll only get it if you ask for eighty. And if you make it damned evident that you want eighty, and think you’re entitled to it.”