Certain Women Read online

‘I like my job at the Museum of Modern Art.’

  ‘As a secretary.’

  ‘Jarvis, dear, like Adair, I enjoy my life.’

  Suddenly Jarvis was defensive. ‘I enjoy mine, too. Listen, are all you guys coming to my ma’s farewell performance?’

  ‘Of course.’ Adair played a series of major chords. ‘Wild horses couldn’t keep us away.’

  ‘I’ve asked Billy.’ Jarvis stubbed out his cigarette. ‘He says he’ll come.’

  They had a box for Harriet’s last performance as a prima ballerina. The whole family was there except for David, Sophie, and Louis, who were in Chicago, where David was playing in a revival of Trelawny of the Wells.

  Harriet was cool and gracious with her stepchildren, unlike Edith, who was cool and ungracious, and would have separated herself and Inez from the family entirely had not Inez been so stubbornly determined to be part of the close-knit group of siblings.

  —Everybody except Papa, Sophie, and Louis? Emma asked herself. The absence of Edith and Myrlo was simply taken for granted.

  It was an emotional evening, with Harriet performing her most popular roles. At the final curtain the audience erupted into applause. Bouquet after bouquet was brought onto the stage and put in Harriet’s arms as she bowed, curtsied, blew kisses to the top balcony. Then, suddenly, the stage was pelted with roses, thrown from all over the theater, from all the boxes and balconies. Inez leaned dangerously out of the box as she threw the flowers Jarvis had provided for her, with Adair holding her back. Tears were streaming down Emma’s cheeks as she hugged Jarvis. Chantal kissed him. Adair shouted, ‘Brava! Brava!’ Etienne and Everard pounded their hands together. Billy thumped Jarvis on the shoulder.

  ‘Well!’ There were tears in Jarvis’s eyes as the theater slowly quieted, the curtain closed for the final time, and the audience started moving up the aisles to the exits. ‘My ma did us proud, didn’t she?’

  ‘More than proud,’ Adair affirmed.

  ‘We won’t go backstage.’ Jarvis’s voice was rich with pride. ‘No point trying to get through the mob.’

  ‘We’ll need two Checker cabs,’ Chantal said. ‘I have champagne in the fridge and I’ve made sandwiches.’

  Billy said, ‘Myrlo and Will are waiting for me, and I promised Edith I’d bring Inez home right after the performance.’

  Inez pouted. ‘It’s not fair.’

  ‘Inez, honey.’ Billy had his arm about the little girl. ‘Come along with big brother Billy. We’ll stop in the drugstore and I’ll buy you a soda.’

  They were being swept along with the crowd. Inez finally let Billy take her off.

  After most of the mob had poured out of the theater, they started to walk downtown to get away from the crowd. They had gone nearly ten blocks before Jarvis was able to hail a Checker cab.

  As they piled in, Adair said, ‘Your ma was splendid, Jarv. What a great evening!’

  ‘What’ll she do now?’ Etienne asked. ‘Won’t it be a horrible letdown?’

  ‘Yeah, she’ll hit bottom with a bang. But she’s going to teach, and she’ll dance occasionally for a benefit, or for one of the regional companies. She’d have liked me to be a dancer. It might have been good for my asthma, but I didn’t want a career with such an early-age cutoff. If Papa’d been a dancer instead of an actor, he’d have had to retire years ago. And instead he’s at the height of his powers.’

  Everard and Emma were on the jump seats. Etienne was in front with the driver. Everard said, ‘Too bad Billy wouldn’t come with us.’

  Emma said flatly, ‘He said Myrlo and his stepfather were waiting for him.’

  ‘On Park Avenue, in their duplex.’ Adair, sitting between Jarvis and Chantal, grinned at Emma.

  Everard said, ‘I suppose he’s a good enough actor, a bit self-indulgent. A lion hunter and ladder climber.’

  ‘Why do you guys always dump on Billy?’ Jarvis accused. ‘He’s been very helpful to me, giving me contacts, letting me represent him.’

  Etienne said, ‘Here we are. I’ll pay, and then we can figure what you all owe me.’

  As she put her key in the lock and opened her door, Chantal said, ‘Billy’s older than the rest of us, and Myrlo and her tycoon think we’re pagans and keep him away from us. We’re half Mooréan, remember? We’re sort of nothings in their eyes.’

  Were they? Emma wondered. Or did Billy feel inadequate set against the quicksilver of Marical’s children?

  ‘And whose fault is that?’ Jarvis pulled out his silver lighter and lit the cigarette he had carefully placed in a new and even longer silver-and-ivory holder. Emma and Chantal looked at each other and repressed grins.

  Everard queried, ‘Hey, Jarv, is that good for your asthma?’

  Ignoring the question, Jarvis said, ‘Just because Billy’s ambitious, like me—’

  Everard spoke quietly. ‘Sorry, Jarv. We did sound snide. But you know Billy doesn’t bother with us. He prefers being with the rich and famous.’

  ‘Father’s not famous enough for him?’ Chantal demanded.

  ‘You know what I mean. He just isn’t one of us.’

  ‘Because he doesn’t want to be,’ Etienne said. ‘Hey, gang, I have news. I’ve been accepted by the navy. I start training next week.’

  Chantal put her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh, God—’

  ‘Etienne—’ Emma looked at her brother in shock.

  Adair was sitting at the piano; he ran his finger up the keyboard in a long glissando. ‘We came here to celebrate with Jarv.’ He began to play and sing a Marlene Dietrich song, and Emma joined him.

  ‘See?’ Jarvis was triumphant. ‘Now Emma is Dietrich. Amazing!’

  Adair shifted to ‘Stormy Weather,’ and Emma leaned against the piano in a sexy position, holding an imaginary cigarette, and singing. In the corner of her mind was fear for Etienne. She had forgotten Billy.

  ‘Don’t reject Billy,’ David Wheaton warned Emma one night when she’d been to see his show and gone backstage afterwards. He was taking off his makeup, and wearing the Chinese robe which Meredith had given him, and which was still beautiful.

  ‘Didn’t he reject us when he called himself Wilburton?’

  ‘He was sniping at me,’ David said, ‘and it wasn’t very bright of him. The name Wheaton could open doors.’

  ‘You still help him.’

  ‘When I can. Try to be patient with him.’

  ‘We try.’

  ‘Not very hard. You discount him, you and Marical’s kids.’

  ‘Papa, we don’t mean to be snobbish about him.’

  ‘Billy’s good-looking, but looks aren’t everything. He’ll do well enough in the theater, but only well enough.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘He feels inferior to the rest of you.’

  ‘Billy!’

  ‘Yes, Emma, Billy. You outshine him, and he knows it. Inez is the only one of you who doesn’t threaten him. Louis is one of the child singers at the Met, and he’s done well in the couple of movies Sophie’s let him do.’

  ‘I never thought of it that way.’

  ‘Do.’ David tightened the cap on his bottle of witch hazel.

  ‘I’m sorry, Papa. We all thought—well, Billy’s never tried to be one of us.’

  ‘Because he can’t be.’

  But Nik was. Emma was grateful at how quickly her family had accepted him, how much they seemed to like him. She had been with him at Chantal’s one evening after the theater, eating large quantities of spaghetti, and they were walking uptown, needing exercise before they took the subway.

  ‘I’ll want to use music as a bridge between scenes. Michal can be a singer, I think. That will help give her role plausibility and depth.’ Nik was, as usual, concentrated on his King David play. ‘What I’d like, of course, is original music if it could possibly be arranged. Of course, I’m thinking Very Big.’

  ‘Why not?’ Emma asked. ‘Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Etc.’

  They crossed the street. Fifth Avenue was nearl
y deserted and a cold wind was blowing. They walked west, over to Sixth. ‘I don’t want your father to think I’m getting too big for my shoes.’

  ‘Write the play you want, Nik, and then you can decide what needs to be cut back.’

  ‘Okay. You’re right. Now. We’ve established Saul as big and strong and handsome and a good warrior.’

  Emma grinned. ‘Hewing oxen. And Samuel hewed Agag. There was a lot of hewing.’ Nik put his arm around her and they laughed. They turned up Sixth Avenue and a half-empty bus wheezed by.

  ‘There needs to be a strong scene where David and Jonathan make vows of friendship. Jonathan gave David his armor, a particular sign of friendship, and that means David has attained full growth. Jonathan, being Saul’s son, would not be small.’

  ‘Father’s six feet tall. Given good makeup, he can look amazingly young.’

  ‘I’m not worried about that,’ Nik said. ‘He can carry the early scenes with no trouble.’ He stopped and looked around. ‘Hey, we’re at Twenty-third. Want to take the subway here?’

  She held her face up to the night air, faintly stinging, but refreshing. ‘I’d just as soon go on walking.’

  ‘Saul’s jealousy explains his offering his daughter to David in marriage, and then sending David into the thick of battle, thinking the Philistines will kill him. A nice foreshadowing of what David succeeds in doing later with Uriah the Hittite.’

  ‘Saul does ugly things.’ Emma shivered a little, and Nik tightened his arm about her. A taxi slowed down, suggestively, but Nik waved it on. ‘But horrible as jealousy is, I do understand it in Saul.’

  ‘Emma?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What about jealousy in your own family? I’m an only child, but what about you and all your brothers and sisters?’

  Emma stopped walking for a moment, then said, ‘Oh, Nik, I don’t know. Not now. Certainly never with—with Adair and Etienne. Or Everard or Chantal. You know Ev and Chantal. They like what they’re doing, they like their own lives, and they’ve been marvelous about supporting me.’

  ‘Jarvis?’

  ‘Jarvis likes to run things, to run us, but I don’t think jealousy comes into it. And darling Louis is still a kid, and whether or not his boy soprano voice will turn into a decent tenor or baritone later is anybody’s guess.’

  ‘That’s good,’ Nik said. ‘It makes me wish I’d had the fun of growing up with brothers and sisters.’

  ‘We didn’t exactly grow up together,’ Emma said, ‘but somehow or other, we were together.’

  ‘Hey, it’s late, and you’re tired,’ Nik said. ‘Let’s take the subway here at Twenty-eighth.’

  ‘Okay.’

  They stood on the platform, hearing a train in the distance. Two sailors sat on one of the benches, half asleep. A very tall man in a soldier’s uniform walked impatiently up and down. The train pulled into the station. The soldier prodded the two sailors to wake them and hurried into the car as the doors opened. ‘We’re lucky,’ Nik said. ‘I think they’ve been waiting for a long time.’ They went into the train and sat down.

  ‘Em,’ he continued, ‘I’m having a hard time making Michal real. Did she love David?’ The train swayed, throwing Emma against Nik, and his arm tightened about her to steady her. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think David was the one bright thing in her life. He was a musician and a poet. All the things Saul was not.’

  ‘And Saul saw and knew that the Lord was with David. And not with him. And I’m sure he was jealous of the way women adored David.’ Nik stood up, helping Emma to her feet. The train pulled into the station and the doors opened. They stepped out onto the dimly lit platform smelling of damp and cold.

  As they walked up the steps, Emma said, ‘David kept on doing everything right because the Lord was with him.’ She frowned. ‘It bothers me.’ The fresh air of the street felt welcome as she breathed it in.

  ‘What, hon?’

  ‘Do you think the Lord chooses one side in a battle and helps that side to win?’

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’

  Despite the tinge of impatience in his voice, Emma continued. ‘But that’s what’s implied, isn’t it? That when David fought, the Lord was with him, and so his enemies were defeated. And I know that there are people now who believe that God is on our side in this horrible war, and God doesn’t care how many Germans or Italians or Japanese people are killed. And I hope God is on our side—I mean, this is not an equivocal war, I do believe that it has to be fought, and I don’t want Adair or Etienne risking their lives in vain, but—’

  ‘But?’

  She looked down at her feet. The toes of her kid pumps were slightly scuffed. ‘But, Nik—there have to be people in Germany praying that God is on their side. And believing it.’

  ‘Probably. And presumably God, if there is a God, loves the Germans as much as he loves us. War between his children must be painful for God. It’s not easy.’

  —It doesn’t get any easier, Emma thought, looking out the Portia’s windows at the rain that continued steadily. It was getting on toward evening and they were still waiting for Abby to arrive.

  —Back when Nik was working on the David play, Russia was our ally, and now we’re terrified of Russia and we’re all palsy-walsy with Germany and Japan.

  She looked at Alice to ask, “Was war as crazy in King David’s day as in ours? Or was it just easier then to think that God was on your side?”

  But Alice was sitting with her eyes closed, her hands clasped loosely about her knees.

  Emma picked up some of Nik’s pages she had brought from the pilothouse to the main cabin and held them loosely. Remembering.

  Nik said, It’s not an easy question you’re raising, Em. It involves trying to understand right and wrong. Where we sit now, war is always wrong, even when it’s inevitable, like this one. The First World War broke the backbone of the century and nothing has been the same since.’

  ‘Grandpa told me, years ago, when I was studying Joan of Arc, that there was a time in the First World War when there was a battle between a small French force and a much bigger German one and there was no way the French soldiers could have won. But they did, and some of the men said that they had seen Joan of Arc and her warriors fighting with them. Do you think something like that is possible?’

  ‘Good heavens, Em, you’re in the realm of fantasy. My mother loved stories like that, and my father said they were hogwash. As for me, I don’t know.’

  ‘I hate this war. I’m terrified Adair and Etienne will get killed.’

  ‘Of course you hate it, sweetie. I do, too. Here we are. Give me a good-night kiss.’

  It was a long kiss.

  Then Nik broke away. ‘You’re so patient with me about my play.’

  ‘Hey, I love it!’—I love you.

  ‘We’ll get to Abigail soon, I promise you. She’s by far the most complete and complex of David’s wives. She’ll be a good role for you. A tough one. Michal or Bathsheba would be much easier. But Abigail’s got the meat.’

  Abigail

  And it came to pass … that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.

  Then Jonathan and David made a covenant … And Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was upon him, and gave it to David, and his garments, even to his sword, and to his bow, and to his girdle.

  I SAMUEL 18:1, 3–4

  Ben looked in the cabin. “Abigail is here.”

  Emma and Alice, roused from their respective reveries, hurried out on deck. An old school bus, which had met Abby’s small plane, was pulling up to the dock. Two rough-looking fishermen pushed out, then turned with great deference and helped Abigail Wheaton down the steep step to the ground.

  Emma ran toward her. Abby graciously thanked the fishermen, then held out her arms to Emma.

  Emma held her godmother closely, smelling the faint, familiar scent of Chypre. “Oh, Abby, Abby, I’m so glad you’re here!’
>
  “So am I.” Abby pressed her soft cheek against Emma’s. “The plane started to land a couple of hours ago and couldn’t, and we went all the way back to Vancouver. I didn’t think we’d make it this time, either, but there was a sudden opening in the clouds and in we came.”

  “Come and meet Alice and Ben.”

  If Alice and Ben found the introductions to David Wheaton’s second wife difficult, Abby’s graciousness quickly put them at ease. Ben held a large umbrella over her, though the rain had slackened to a drizzle, and helped her up onto the deck and into the main cabin. She turned to Alice, questioning. “David—”

  “He’s waiting for you, Mrs.—Countess—”

  “Abby.”

  “We’ve made up the bunk in the pilothouse for him. He’s weak and thin, but—”

  “Still David.”

  “Very much so.”

  “I will go to him.” Abby turned and went up the three steps to the pilothouse.

  Alice said, “She’s brave.”

  Emma looked after Abby’s erect back. “She’s had practice.”

  Ben said, “We won’t stay here tonight, even though it’s later than we planned. Dave never likes the nights we spend tied up at the dock.”

  Alice agreed. “He likes the motion of the boat.”

  “Need any help?” Emma asked Ben.

  “Sure. In a bit. I’ll need Alice at the wheel, and I don’t want to disturb Dave and Abby more than necessary.”

  Emma checked the oven, where a casserole was keeping warm. She had made salad and had prepared a mixture of leeks and carrots. Everything was ready; there was nothing left to do. She felt an irrational surge of hope that Abby would somehow make everything all right.

  Make what all right? David Wheaton was dying.

  Emma and Alice were in the main cabin, waiting for Abby, who was in the pilothouse with David. Emma put down the scene from Nik’s play she had been reading, her eyes bleak. She looked at Alice. “I don’t know why I’m reading this stuff after all these years. Papa’s dying. It’s too late.”

  “Not for you,” Alice said. “You could still play Abigail.”

  “Nik’s not likely to finish it for me. Not now. But you know, Alice, I couldn’t play it with Papa. I’ve played his daughter several times, and I’ve loved that, even Goneril. But it just wouldn’t work for me to play Papa’s wife. It would be—oh, sort of Oedipal.”