Born with Teeth: A Memoir (6 page)

“You may think you know her pain, B.J.,” I warned him, “but this is deeply personal, and what Jenny felt about Tessie is something that maybe even Jenny can’t quite grasp at the moment. It will take time, and Mother will need to help her.”

At the mention of Mother’s name, B.J. looked away.

“Have you seen Mother?” I demanded. “How is she?”

“She’s been out at the abbey with Mother Columba, but she’ll be back by the time Jenny is home.”

“Back by the time Jenny is home” connoted a good deal of time that Mother had been at Our Lady of the Mississippi Abbey under the care of her great friend and mentor, Mother Columba, and whereas a period of reflection and mourning could only benefit my mother, it did not necessarily bode well for Jenny.

Eventually, weary and resigned, her face streaked with tears, Jenny came down to the kitchen from her hiding place upstairs in my closet. Very slowly, I packed her things, and then we all had a late lunch, sitting on the porch.

B.J. glanced at his watch. “We should really get moving,” he said. “As it is, we’ll have to stop at a motel in Cleveland.” Jenny looked at me in horror, barely stifling a groan. B.J. quickly amended this. “On second thought, I think we’ll just drive straight through. I’ve got a pillow and blanket in the truck; Jen can get some shut-eye on the road.”

It was a torturous good-bye, and when at last she was in the truck and they were rolling out through the gate, Jenny suddenly threw the passenger door open and, the truck still moving, jumped out and ran back to me, crying, “I love you, Kate! I don’t want to go! Please don’t make me go!”

After considerable shushing and kissing and cajoling, my sister, looking for all the world like a little old woman, stooped and shuffled her way back to the truck and, climbing slowly into the cab, turned her face to look at me as they pulled away, her nose pressed against the window, her hand lifted in farewell. I watched until they were out of sight, and until they were out of sight, that little face had her eyes on mine.

I didn’t know what to do with myself after she’d gone. The house was empty; loneliness touched everything. While Jenny was hiding, I had pressed B.J. for details of Tessie’s funeral, and he had told me four things: that during the reading of the Song of Solomon, as the priest spoke the words “My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come
away,” a doe had come up from the timberland and stood at a little distance, watching. That my father’s knees had buckled under the weight of the coffin as he carried it to the hearse, and he had fallen on the casket, sobbing, “I never thought you’d go out like this, sugar.” That Father Kevin O’Rourke did not attend the funeral service but instead sent his regrets, explaining that he was needed at a fund-raiser in Colorado. That it was not my father at all, but a woman with black hair and sad eyes who helped my mother into her car and watched as she drove off to the Trappistine convent.

I poured myself a glass of Grayce’s Pinot Grigio, watched as the last of the day’s sun burned diamonds in the dappled orchard, and made my way upstairs for my last night in Putney Woods, at the end of a summer that had defined me as an actress.

I had fallen into a deep sleep and woke to the first notes of birdsong. Opening my eyes, I saw long fingers of light weaving a gentle pattern on the wooden floor. I saw him before I heard him; he’d been so careful and light-footed as he climbed the stairs. And then David was there, standing in the doorway, unsmiling, looking at me with those grave black eyes. It had all been weighed and gone over a thousand times, I could tell. And I could also tell that whatever battle he had waged with himself, he had lost, and that this disturbed him still.

He moved then, crossing the room swiftly, never taking his eyes from mine, and not a word had been exchanged—not one—when he leaned down and, against his better judgment, kissed me.

David resisted me, even when he found me irresistible, which I realize now must have been exhausting. Such is the diabolical nature of sexual chemistry, and ours was powerful. Besides which, he was exotic.

“You’re Jewish, okay, I get it, but there are a
lot
of Jews in this world. Where, exactly, do your people come from? Are you a peasant or a prince?” I demanded, propped up on an elbow, lying next to him in his narrow bed. Midafternoon delight in an early spring Manhattan, the sounds of traffic, children being let out of school, James Taylor playing on the stereo in the living room. David fixed his features into an inscrutable mask, something he often did when I brought up the subject of Judaism. I was undeterred. “What are you thinking, David? I want to know. What is it you’re afraid of? My Christianity, or your mother’s wrath?” This prickled him, as I knew it would, and, predictably, elicited no response.

We were playing a high-stakes game of chicken, and we both knew it.

Six months earlier, I’d met his parents under less-than-favorable circumstances, when David and I were forced to impose on their hospitality as the result of a riding accident. Freud might suggest that we had intended to visit his parents all along but that it was first necessary to drive into the countryside outside of Philadelphia, break into a strange barn, saddle two massive Tennessee Walkers, and take them out for a trot in a snow-covered orchard on an arctic day in December. The sudden sound of a motorcycle gunning down a parallel path spooked my horse, and before I knew it, I was tearing through the orchard on the back of a wild thing, barely able to hold on, the horse kicking and bucking so violently that within seconds I was thrown from my seat and landed with a thwack on the frozen ground. When David ran over to help me up, I discovered, first to my chagrin, and then to my horror, that I couldn’t move.

An ambulance was called, I was taken to the nearest hospital, and after I was examined by a syndicate of orthopedic surgeons and had suffered a harrowing few days of no feeling whatsoever below my waist, it was determined that I had severely bruised my lumbar vertebrae and would be unable to walk for a number of weeks. This put me in a bit of a pickle with my job, but seeing as there was no way around it, I called Claire and told her the whole story, only slightly downplaying the criminal aspect of our little adventure.

Claire, with her customary sangfroid, told me that it would be impossible to write me out for an extended period of time but that she would be willing to accommodate this mishap by redirecting the story line.

“Meaning what?” I asked, suspicious despite the delicious effects of morphine strumming my veins.

“Well,” she mused, “we could do any number of things. Mary is investigating a crime as it is. Let’s say you go undercover, and I mean
way
under, and catch something.”

“Catch something? Like the flu?” Not terribly dramatic, I thought.

“No, no, no, of
course
not the flu!” I could feel Claire’s excitement through the phone line. “I’m thinking something terrifying. I’m thinking rats. You know, urban legend has it that the rat population in Manhattan equals that of its human population. Let’s get down and dirty and give Mary a dose of rat poisoning. Put her on her back with a case of leptospirosis. You’ll be acting up a storm from a hospital bed—you can still
act,
can’t you?”

“Yes, I suppose so,” I responded weakly, a cloud of morphine-induced euphoria stealing over me. “Whatever you say—you’re the genius.”

My paralysis, however temporary, rendered me unable to travel back to New York, and after due consideration it was decided that I would spend the weekend with David’s parents in nearby Wilmington, Delaware.

“This should be interesting,” I said to him as the paramedics slid me into the ambulance. David attempted a smile, which, given his natural pallor, came off as a ghostly grimace.

David’s parents were glacially polite. His father, tall and balding, was dark featured and not unkind, but his mother was clearly the dominant personality, and it was obvious from the moment our eyes met that she could barely tolerate me. She, too, had stature, but carried herself with great pride, a quality that imposed on her a certain stiffness. When I had been made comfortable in the guest room and given a cup of tea, the Bernsteins left me alone to rest. Fighting anxiety, I took a painkiller and drifted off to sleep.

It couldn’t have been much later, maybe an hour or two,
when the sound of muffled voices raised in argument woke me up. The door had been left open a crack, so I could clearly hear the exchange that was taking place in the living room. I could even see the top of Mrs. Bernstein’s perfectly coiffed salt-and-pepper bob as she sat rigidly in a tall armchair. I held my breath so as not to miss a word.

“You bring us this girl, this
Irish
girl, and expect us to take care of her,” Mrs. Bernstein was saying, her voice spiking like a slap.

“I didn’t think you’d mind, given the circumstances,” David countered, high on the defensive. “For God’s sake, Mother, she’s had a serious accident.”

Mrs. Bernstein cut him off. “There wouldn’t have been an accident at all if you’d walked away from her in the first place. But no, you couldn’t resist the temptation. It’s bad enough she’s an actress, but, David, what on earth do you think you’re doing with this
shiksa?
It can’t last, you know, and it won’t.”

I strained to hear David’s response, but there was only silence. In that moment, something inside me shifted. This, I suddenly understood, was where his people came from.

Mary Ryan was soon out of her hospital bed and wanting more.

“More?”
Claire looked at me, incredulous. “We’ve got you working in almost every show—don’t you want a day off now and then?”

“Absolutely not,” I replied, standing in her office. “I don’t need time on my hands, I need to work. I need to grow. And since this job won’t allow me to do theater, I need to find other ways. So, yes. Please. More.”

Claire studied me for a moment, thoughtful, and then with a sly grin she said, “You asked for it.”

I was invited to Claire’s house in Brooklyn the following Saturday night, and as soon as I entered, she placed a glass of
white wine in my left hand, a script in my right, and instructed me to go downstairs and read.

“Dinner should be ready by the time you’re finished,” she said, and then, as she disappeared into the back of the house, “with any luck.”

She’d written a screenplay based on the legend of Tristan and Isolt, the classic Celtic tale of tragic love. In the twelfth century, King Mark of Cornwall decides to marry the Irish princess Isolt. He sends his most loyal and beloved knight, Tristan, to fetch Isolt and bring her to Cornwall. Along the way, the two of them ingest a love potion that causes them to fall madly in love, and though Isolt marries King Mark, she is bound to Tristan “through life, past death, and into the hands of God.”

I flew upstairs and found Claire in her cramped but surprisingly productive kitchen, putting the finishing touches to a Virginia ham.

“I’m offering you ten thousand dollars, the role of a Celtic princess, and a summer in Ireland.” She beamed at me, potholder aloft. “You
did
say you wanted more, didn’t you?”

For a certain kind of actress, nothing serves romance better than a new part. When separation is imminent, suitcases are just about to be packed, and the script, marked and highlighted, lies on the bed, love is at its most tender. I ran my hand through David’s silky black hair and pulled him into a long kiss, after which he rolled onto his back and put his arms behind his head, staring at the ceiling with characteristic intensity.

“Don’t pout,” I said, “it’s unattractive. Besides, if anyone knew what he was getting into,
you
did. I’m an actress; this is what actresses
do:
they
act.
And look on the bright side: two whole months to do whatever you want. You’re free! You should be delighted.”

He looked at me darkly. “Freedom isn’t everyone’s idea of happiness.”

On the plane, waiting for takeoff, Claire slid into the seat next to mine and whispered, “Order champagne—we’ve got Richard Burton!”

“You’re unbelievable,” I said, already beckoning the flight attendant. “How on earth did you manage that?”

She rested her head against the seat back, closed her eyes, and, smiling to herself, told me the story. She’d flown down to Puerta Vallarta, where Burton was living at the time with his wife Susan Hunt, and simply threw herself at his head.

“You didn’t.” I laughed out loud. “What cheek!”

“He probably needs the money, or maybe he’s just bored, or maybe he really likes the screenplay.”

At which I guffawed and said, “You think?”

“But at any rate,” she continued, “he agreed, and he’ll be in Ireland in a week.”

I could see that Claire was on the verge of sinking into a well-earned sleep, but I needed one final piece of information. “Tell me, Clairabel, does he look very old?”

She grinned. “Are you kidding? He’s divine.” And with that, she fell into a beautiful slumber.

Divine was everything Irish, as God had intended. I’d never seen such light, incandescent and mystical. Lambent sunsets, and suddenly the heavens would open and a soft rain would fall, seagulls soaring upward, the ocean spray meeting the clouds in a dazzling display of beauty. I sat for hours, mesmerized by the play of colors.

Mesmerized, too, by the people and the singular way they have of pulling you in.
Craic,
it is called in Gaelic. Irish chitchat. But the Irish never simply chat; they’re incapable of it. Instead, they lean against the bar in the pub, nursing a pint of
Guinness, and with eyes downcast, start a slow-burning fire with a single provocative, and often mumbled, observation, igniting a conversation that loops and lashes and dances from man to man, as each in turn orders a round, cigarette smoke filling the room, turf fire glowing in the corner. Not many women can be found at the bar, but the men are capable of leniency, if they are flush with beer, and the face beside theirs is young and pretty, and the voice distinctly American.

A Welshman in Ireland is a dangerous thing, being temperamentally stuck, as he is, between two fractious cultures. Richard Burton was kind, complex, and deeply shy. His talent was remarkable, and in our scenes together I often found myself captivated by his tenderness, his perfect control, and his ability to hit grace notes I didn’t know existed in the text. He took a liking to me, which was a very good thing, because he did not tolerate fools and often, when he was in his cups, did not tolerate anyone at all. One night, at a very lovely dinner Claire hosted in a farmhouse that had been beautifully converted into an intimate restaurant, I watched as Burton drank himself into a fury.

Wine did not mellow Burton; it enhanced his volatility, so that everyone felt the slow, inexorable descent into the vortex but was helpless to do anything about it. Suddenly, Burton slammed his fist on the table and shouted, amid glasses shattering and candles sputtering, “Everybody get the fuck out! Except Katerina”—here he put his hand over mine—“Katerina stays. The rest of you can fuck off!” Mercifully, his lovely wife had elected to stay at the hotel and work on her music. It occurred to me that Susan Hunt’s keyboard may have been her salvation.

When the room had cleared, Burton turned to me and, taking my hand in his, said, “Listen to me, Katerina, and listen closely. Get. Out.”

I stared at him, immobilized with fear and confusion—get out of where? Get out of what? Then, drawing the candelabra
closer, he whispered, “This business will kill you. Strip you of your soul, steal your humanity, leave you a shell of what you once were. It’s no place for a real man”—he pointed to himself, head bowed—“and it’s death to a good woman. Get the fuck out before it’s too late.” With that, he lifted my hand to his lips, kissed it, and said, “Now be a good girl, and bugger off.”

There were threads of the familiar already lacing themselves through my professional life. Geraldine Fitzgerald, who had so beautifully played my mother in
Our Town,
had been hired to play my nurse in Tristan and Isolt. Bronwyn was more than a nurse; she was also a witch, and it was she who, albeit reluctantly, composed the magic potion that would be Isolt’s undoing. Although I was comfortable with Geraldine and admired her intense concentration, I found her to be slightly detached from the real world, as if she were observing life rather than sharing it. It was unlike me, then, to approach her on a level of friendship, let alone intimacy. And yet one morning, as we were driving to location in a shared limousine, and the dawn was breaking in its inimitable and breathtaking way across the stony Burren, I turned to her, smiling, and asked, “Geraldine, what kind of life do you think I’ll have? Be honest.”

Whereupon she turned away from me and, for what seemed an inordinately long time, stared out the window in silence. Finally, she adjusted herself so that she was facing me directly and said, without inflection, “You’ll be all right, if you don’t throw yourself on the spears.” And then, without another word, she folded her hands in her lap and turned her face to the window.