The Joys of Love (23 page)

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Authors: Madeleine L'engle

BOOK: The Joys of Love
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After a moment Elizabeth laughed, too. “Sorry. I didn't mean to lecture.”
“But I enjoyed it!” Kurt told her. “You get so intense and furious. Have a sandwich now? Hungry yet?”
“I could eat.”
“Good. How about a club sandwich?”
“That's too much for me, Kurt. Lettuce and tomato'd be fine.”
“Okay. I guess I'll have liverwurst on rye. And they have wonderful dill pickles here. You're looking very lovely tonight, Liebchen. And your hair is beautiful. You ought to wear skirts more often. You look attractive in those jeans of yours but you begin to fulfill your beauty in skirts.”
“I only have three dressy summer outfits that are fit to wear. And I have to be careful of them.”
“What did you wear at college?”
“I accumulated an adequate number of skirts and sweaters. And we wore jeans a lot, too. If ever I make a lot of money, I'll probably go hog-wild buying dresses and hats and things.”
“Don't you ever use nail polish?”
“Nope.”
“Why not?”
“Oh, just one of my prejudices.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, if you already have pretty hands it detracts from them; and if you have ugly hands it draws attention to them.”
Kurt laughed. He always laughed a good deal, but this evening his laugh seemed to rise out of him like a hidden spring, clear and full of friendliness. “You're an awful little puritan in some ways. But you have very pretty hands. Very strong hands, Liz. I can't imagine your doing anything with them badly. And yet they're not a bit masculine.”
The wailing singer gave several deep curtseys and departed, and the two pianists returned to the floor. Elizabeth heaved a sigh of relief. The waiter brought fresh drinks and Kurt ordered their sandwiches.
“What shall we talk about now?” he asked, and smiled at her.
“Let's just listen to the music.”
The pianists played for about fifteen minutes. Then their platform was rolled off the dance floor and the dim blue lights came back up. The orchestra returned to its place and dancers began to straggle out onto the floor. The noise of the orchestra and the noise of the patrons once more rolled over the nightclub like a huge wave.
“Would you like to dance again?” Kurt asked.
“I'd rather just sit if you don't mind. Do the pianists play again?”
“They come on again about one-thirty or two. They're new this week.”
“They're wonderful.”
“Having a good time?”
“Yes, Kurt. Thank you.”
“Not angry with me anymore?”
“Of course not. Don't be silly.”
“We'll have to see a lot of each other when you come to New York. If I direct a play, I will certainly try to find something in it for you. Will you write me the rest of the summer, so that we can keep in touch?”
“Of course. If you want me to.”
“Sure you don't want to dance?” he said to Elizabeth. “That's a good rhumba they're playing.”
“No, Kurt. Really. I'm not good at rhumbas and sambas and things. I'm okay with something easy like a fox-trot, but the only thing I've ever
really
had fun with is waltzing. One of the professors at college who used to act a lot for us was Viennese, and sometimes he'd bring a stack of waltzes to the theatre and after we'd finished rehearsal we'd put them on the Victrola and waltz and waltz until when we stopped we just fell down on the stage and everything whirled around for about five minutes.”
“Were you in love with him?” Kurt asked.
“Who? Mr. Bergen? He was married.”
“Elizabeth, Elizabeth,” Kurt said gently. “Everything is so simple with you. ‘He was married. 'You say that as though that was all there is to it.”
Elizabeth looked at him in surprise. Then she said, looking down at the marbleized tabletop, “Oh, I wouldn't put it past me to fall in love with a married man. I'm just that kind of a dope. Only I certainly think it's inadvisable if you can possibly avoid it. After all, there isn't much point to it.”
“Why not?”
“Well, it just seems to me it's a little more sensible to fall in love with someone who's—available.”
“Some people don't know the meaning of the word ‘unavailable,'” Kurt told her. “Sometimes I wonder if there actually is any such word.”
Elizabeth picked up her knife and ran the back of it across the table as though she were drawing. “It's just one thing I happen to feel particularly strongly about,” she said. “And—well, it's just always seemed to me that the easiest way to decide whether something's right or wrong is to ask yourself whether or not it would hurt somebody else. One of the girls in my house at college tried to get one of the art instructors to fall in love with her. She said she was in love with him and nothing else mattered. But he had a wife who loved him terribly and this girl knew it. That to me was—was really wrong.”
“That's all very fine,” Kurt said. “I suppose it's just another way of saying the golden rule. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
“Well, not quite. I'd like to be done unto, for instance, in ways that Aunt Harriet would loathe. But it's not far off.”
“Then if you believe it so strongly, why don't you follow it?”
“I try to,” Elizabeth said. “What do you mean?”
“You've as much as said that you're hurting your Aunt Harriet by wanting to work in the theatre.”
Elizabeth was silent for a moment. Then, “Yes. You're right, Kurt. I am hurting her. But I can't help it. It—I can't
explain—I'd be betraying myself much worse than I'll be hurting Aunt Harriet. I haven't any choice. I
have
to work in the theatre.”
“Some people feel the same way when they're in love, even when the person they're in love with is what you call unavailable.”
“Maybe you're right,” Elizabeth said unhappily. “I don't know …”
“And Ben. I may feel about it very differently than Dottie, but I do think you're taking more from him than you're giving.”
“I thought we weren't going to talk about Ben tonight.”
“Sometimes you can be very intolerant,” Kurt said gently. “You can be so sure that you are right.”
Elizabeth stared down at her plate, at the crumbs of toast, a shred or two of lettuce, a bit of tomato. “You make me feel—I don't like the way you make me feel, Kurt. I never thought of myself as being a holier-than-thou kind of person, and that's the way you make me feel.”
“Liebchen,” Kurt said, “don't look like that. I didn't have the intention to start this. You're not holier-than-thou. Come on. Let's have another drink and another dance and then I'll take you back. It's late and you're tired. Another Coke?”
“All right.”
She danced again with Kurt and suddenly she felt completely exhausted, mentally and physically. She did not like the picture Kurt had drawn for her of a person bigoted, quick to condemn, yet sure of her own sanctity. Am I really like that? she thought.
“Elizabeth, dear,” Kurt said, “all I've done today is upset
you, and that's the last thing I wanted to do. I didn't mean to make you feel badly. I think it's just because I admire you so much as a person that I felt free to say the things I did. You're so sure of yourself—”
“But I'm not!”
“And I'm so terribly unsure.”
“
You
, Kurt?”
“Yes, the great Kurt Canitz. I talk as though I were Reinhardt, but I am intelligent enough to know that not everything I want can be bought. If you could know the black moods of horrible uncertainty I go through, you'd laugh.”
“I wouldn't laugh.”
“No, I don't think you would, Elizabeth. That's very comforting to me, do you know that?” He touched his fingers lightly to hers. Then he paid the waiter, and they left Irving's and the blue light and the chill stale air and went out onto the boardwalk. The night outside was still stifling and heavy with heat and humidity.
“It's like trying to breathe potato soup,” Elizabeth said, looking up at the sky where there were no stars visible, only a drooping blanket of foggy clouds. In the distance the thunder rumbled faintly, and out at sea the sky was lit by a feeble sheet of glimmering heat. Then, at the horizon, the sky was silently split by a bifurcated tongue of lightning. Somewhere in the distance a seagull screeched, its voice sharp with the sound of fury and pain.
“I think we will have quite a storm,” Kurt said. He put his arm around her waist and they started to walk along the boardwalk.
Elizabeth had seen Kurt walk arm in arm with Dottie; she had seen Dottie walk arm in arm with Huntley, with any other man who happened to be handy; but when she was the one who was walking arm in arm with Kurt, it seemed a very different thing. She felt his back muscles moving under her arm as they walked, and it was an exciting feeling.
The theatre was dark as they neared it, and Kurt said, “Liebchen, all of a sudden I'm terribly depressed. Before I take you back to the Cottage, come and talk to me for a few minutes and cheer me up. We can go into my dressing room.”
“Did I depress you, Kurt?”
“No, of course not. It's just me. Do come talk to me. Please, my little darling one.”
“I ought to go right back to the Cottage and go to bed. It's terribly late. And I have to get up early to set tables tomorrow.”
“Just a few minutes. Come on. Don't disappoint me.”
“All right.” She was touched and pleased because it seemed so important to Kurt that she come with him, because she was the one he wanted to get him out of his black mood.
She sat on the studio couch and Kurt sat beside her and put his arms around her and kissed her, and suddenly she began to be frightened.
“I thought you wanted to talk,” she said, trying to keep her voice light.
“No. Kiss me again, Liebchen. Love me.”
She pulled away from him. “I have to go to bed, Kurt. It was a lovely evening and I do thank you for it, but now I'm awfully tired and you're rather drunk. So good night and I'll see you in the morning.”
He took her hand and looked down at it. “My sweet puritan.”
“I'm not.”
“Then why won't you kiss me again?”
“It's too late and I'm too tired and I don't like the smell of somebody else's whiskey.”
He leaned over her and spoke gently. “You're old enough to learn a little about life, Elizabeth. How are you going to be able to act if you keep yourself so aloof? I won't frighten you.”
She stood up, her heart pounding. “No, Kurt.”
“Yes, Elizabeth.”
“No,” she said again. “I'm going back to the Cottage now.”
He moved so that he was between her and the door. “Why are you afraid? I'd never hurt you. You ought to know that.”
“I'm not afraid. But please let me go, Kurt.”
“You're a coward.” His voice was taunting.
All of a sudden her confusion left her and she was angry. She gave him a violent push that took him off guard and she ran by him, out of the dressing room and out of the theatre. As she got out onto the boardwalk the thunder crashed, the heavens opened as the rain came in a great downpour, and a huge cool wave of air washed over her. She walked rapidly, paying no attention to where she was going, her face held up to the rain. Her white blouse was plastered against her flesh, her drenched red skirt blew soppingly about her legs, and her feet sloshed in Jane's sandals, but she kept on walking. If only the rain continued for long enough, perhaps she might feel clean again.
ELIZABETH WOKE UP EARLY, as exhausted as though she had not been to bed at all. Around her the house lay sleeping. She rose and dressed quietly, putting on a clean white shirt, her blue jeans and her sneakers, and went downstairs. Her heart lay within her like a weight of misery; her whole body ached with the pain of it.
She left the Cottage and walked slowly toward the ocean. As she neared the theatre she thought suddenly, I must talk to Kurt. It was only because he was drunk, and I handled it so stupidly. I must make everything all right between us again.
She had the key to Mr. Price's office in the pocket of her jeans and she let herself in quietly and walked across the auditorium toward Kurt's dressing room. But he will be asleep, she thought. I can't wake him.
Then she heard the sound of voices from Kurt's dressing room and she pressed back quickly into the shadows. The door opened and Dottie emerged, with Kurt behind her, leaning
lazily in the doorway. Dottie blew him a kiss and hurried across the auditorium. Kurt shut the door. Neither of them had seen Elizabeth.
It was as though a needle filled with Novocaine had been plunged into her heart. There was no more pain, only a cold light feeling. She stayed motionless until she was certain that Dottie would have had time to get out of sight. Then she left the theatre and walked briskly back to the Cottage. It was almost time to set the tables.
Ben was not yet down, but Mrs. Browden was in the kitchen and eager to talk. Elizabeth set the tables quickly and gulped down a cup of coffee, but the hot liquid had no warming effect on the coldness within.
“Anything the matter, my pet?” Mrs. Browden asked.
She shook her head.
“Aren't you going to eat any breakfast?”
“I'm not very hungry.”
“Then there
is
something wrong,” Mrs. Browden declared. “You and that Ben usually eat so it does my heart good.”
“I guess I ate something last night that didn't sit too well,” Elizabeth said lamely.
“Something I cooked?” Mrs. Browden threw up her hands in horror.
“Heavens, no!” Elizabeth reassured her. “It must have been a frankfurter or something from the boardwalk. You're the most magnificent cook I've ever encountered.”
“I could be if I had something to cook with,” Mrs. Browden said complacently. “Mr. Price doesn't give me enough money more than to barely manage and I can't get the cuts of meat I'd
like and there's
never
anything left over for sauces or desserts. I don't know why I go on doing it summer after summer when I could get a good job in a hotel or restaurant and have plenty of butter and eggs to cook with, except I've got myself kind of fond of theatrical people, crazy though they be. And I'm afraid if I left, Mr. Price would never find anybody else to feed you as good as I do on so little. Elizabeth, my lambie, are you feeling sick? You look pale.”
“I've just got a kind of pain in my stomach,” Elizabeth said, pressing her hand against her diaphragm. “I think I'll go out for a little walk before time for classes. Tell Ben I've done everything but put on the toast, would you please?”
“A walk would be just the thing, my pet,” Mrs. Browden said. “And the air's all clean and cool after the storm last night. My, that was some storm! I hid in my broom closet till it was over. I knew a woman once who was struck by lightning in her own bed, and another who saw a ball of lightning run across the kitchen floor. That is something I hope never to see. To my mind lightning is an invention of the devil and I intend to do all in my power to keep away from it. Now have a good walk, and if you get hungry before lunch, come out to me and I'll make you a roast beef sandwich.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Browden,” Elizabeth said.
Outdoors the air was cool and light and a breeze blew in from the ocean. The sky was blue and pure and small white clouds scudded across it. Everything in the world around Elizabeth sparkled, and she walked along aware in her mind of the beauty but participating in none of it. She moved with her usual long-legged grace, but it seemed that she herself was totally
anesthetized to feeling. Yes, yes, this day is beautiful, she told herself with sternness, but she felt nothing.
She headed almost unconsciously toward the theatre, not toward the theatre of Kurt and of Dottie but the theatre of Joe and Ben, the theatre of the people who worked hardest and received least credit. She did not go near the front, to the auditorium or to Kurt's or Mr. Price's offices, but to the stage door entrance. She climbed the wooden steps and found the stage door unlocked. Joe was sweeping the stage with a battered broom. He looked up when he heard footsteps and smiled when he saw it was Elizabeth.
“Hi, kid,” he greeted her, waving the broom.
“Hi, Joe. How'd dress rehearsal go last night?”
“Okay, I guess. We broke a little after midnight, see. Ben looked for you, but Jane and John Peter said they thought you were out with Canitz.”
“Yes. We went to Irving's.”
“Had your breakfast?” Joe asked her.
“Yes.”
“I'm off for a cup of coffee. If you want to stick around to play a record or something, it's okay with me.”
“Okay, Joe. I think I will. Thanks.”
When Joe had left, she went to the record box and fingered through the records but did not take one out. Then she sat down on the three-legged stool by the stage manager's desk and picked up and put down Joe's flashlight, then looked with exaggerated intentness at his row of pencils and the master copy of the week's script. Usually Elizabeth loved looking at the master; it contained not only the words of the play but the
blocked-out movements of the players, the property lists, and the lighting plots as well.
She was sitting there when Ben came hurrying by the dressing rooms and onto the stage. “Liz,” he said shortly.
“Hi, Ben.”
“What's up?”
“Up? What do you mean? Nothing.”
“Mrs. Browden said you didn't eat any breakfast.”
“My stomach was kicking up. It's okay now, though.”
“Sure?”
“Sure.”
“Then come along back with me and have breakfast.”
Elizabeth sighed helplessly. “Okay.”
“Listen,” Ben said, plunking himself down on the floor at her feet. “Dottie kind of cut up at rehearsal last night and I heard Miss Andersen whispering to Miss Hedeman that she wished you were in the show and Dottie was out. And she said she was tremendously impressed with your Nina.”
“Nina's always been my part, somehow,” Elizabeth said slowly, “even if I'm not right for her. Maybe because she says the things I believe. Remember, Ben, ‘For us, whether we write or act, it is not the honor and glory of which I have dreamt that is important, it is the strength to endure' … Chekhov says that over and over again.”
I know more about Nina now than I did, Elizabeth thought. Then I felt it, but now I know it. Now I know about Nina and Boris Trigorin. I know it's possible to love someone and have it not turn out all right. Somehow in spite of everything, in spite of Mother and Father, in spite of Nina, I thought that if you really
loved anybody, somehow it was bound to turn out all right …
“Liz,” Ben said, “you're upset about something.”
She bent over the
Macbeth
script. “I was just thinking about Nina and Trigorin. She thought he loved her and he didn't, and she should have had sense enough to have known all along that he didn't. But I guess people never have sense about things like that till too late … It's nice and cool today, isn't it, Ben? Now the
Macbeth
people won't be so hot in their costumes.”
Ben stood up. “Come on, Liz. Breakfast.”
“Okay,” Elizabeth said, and followed him out of the theatre.
As they went up the steps to the Cottage they saw Kurt and Dottie standing together on the porch. Dottie, noticing them, looked significantly at Kurt, but Kurt simply waved and called, “Top o' the morning to you!” in an atrocious Irish accent, and, ignoring Dottie, vaulted over the porch rail onto the grass and hurried off in the direction of the theatre.
Ben and Elizabeth, followed a moment later by Dottie, went in to breakfast. Dottie wore a ruffled red-and-white polka-dotted sunsuit and had her hair pulled up into a psyche knot with matching ribbon. She looked at Elizabeth and said in a voice like caramel, “Poor thing, you look
so
tired. Out late?”
Ben, who had gone into the kitchen, came back out with a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon in time to hear this and plunked it down in front of Dottie. “All you need to complete your outfit, Dottie, is a pair of diapers showing under your drawers. My sister's brat has a sunsuit just like yours. It looks real cute except where she's faded it from wetting her pants.” He turned to Elizabeth. “Scrambled eggs and bacon?”
“No, thanks. Just coffee, please.”
Bibi sat down at the other end of the table and said, “Good grief, you got home late last night, Liz. What were you doing?”
“Oh, I was out.” Elizabeth poured milk into the cup of coffee Ben put in front of her.
“Yes, I know you were out. The point is, where were you? I came in just before it began to storm and you didn't come up to bed till way after it stopped. And this morning I noticed that your red skirt was simply soaking wet. You weren't
out
in the storm, Elizabeth Jerrold, were you?”
“Quite the little detective, aren't we?” Elizabeth was painfully conscious of Dottie's gaze on her. “As it happens, I like storms. I must have witch blood in my veins. Guess it's the influence of
Macbeth
. ‘When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning, or in rain?'”
Unwittingly Dottie rescued her by turning to Huntley Haskell and saying, “I was certainly surprised by Andersen letting us off when she did last night. I thought she'd probably keep us till daybreak. Be just like her. And the way she picked on me during my scene was laughable, it was so obvious.”
Ditta, who had pushed back her chair and was about to leave, asked, “What was obvious?”
“Oh, that she has it in for me. I'm sure I don't know why, except jealousy.”
“We're all just dying of jealousy over you, Dottie.” Elizabeth finished her coffee and rose. “Ditta, be an angel and hear me do my voice exercises.”
She and Ditta went out to the small patch of lawn behind the garage. Elizabeth did her voice exercises, but Ditta was lying
on her back on the grass, her knees raised, staring up at the sky.
“Hey, you weren't listening,” Elizabeth protested.
“Yes, I was.” Ditta sat up hastily. “You were superb. Liz, can we just talk for a few minutes?”
“Okay, what about?” Elizabeth asked.
“Oh—” Ditta paused, then finished rather lamely, “the theatre.”
“Well, do you mind if I ask you a question then?” Elizabeth counterattacked.
“You can ask.”
“What do you want to get out of the theatre, Ditta?”
A light shone briefly behind Ditta's eyes. “I just love it. I just want to have something, anything, to do with it, even if it's just teaching schoolkids. If I can teach them to love it, too, it'll be worth it.”
“I think that's wonderful,” Elizabeth said.
Ditta lay back down on the grass again and rolled over onto her stomach. “Oh, no, it isn't. What I really wanted was to be an actress. This is just a substitute because I have enough sense to know I haven't enough talent to be a really good actress, and I couldn't bear to be a second-rate one. Anyhow, I know I'm ugly as a mud fence and I don't improve on the stage the way some people do. Miss Andersen, for instance. She looks just like anybody else offstage, but onstage she's a raving tearing beauty. Onstage I'm still ugly as a mud fence.”
“Ditta, you're nuts,” Elizabeth said.
“Oh, no, I'm not. I know what I look like. And once or twice I've heard snatches of conversations that weren't meant
for my ears. Don't get me wrong, Liz. I'm not sorry for myself. I'm really very contented with my lot. And nobody can ever take away from you what you've had, and even if I never have anything else—I mean something like that—it was so wonderful it's really enough.”
“What was it, Ditta?” Elizabeth asked softly. “Do you mind talking about it?”
“Most of the time I do.” Ditta pressed her face into the grass and her voice came out muffled. “But I'd rather like to tell you about it. I was—I was terribly in love once and the amazing thing was he was in love with me. It was rather like beauty and the beast in reverse, and when I was with him I was different—I really
looked
different. He made me feel that beauty was a quality that comes only from the inside, and when I was with him I was beautiful inside so I expect some of it actually was reflected on the outside, too.”

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