The Slipper (11 page)

“Nora picked it out. She bought it at the shop across the street from the campus. The Sandra Dee Shoppe, she calls it. You look wonderful in it, Julie. It's very warm, too.”

Julie brushed the tears from her cheeks and turned the collar up so that the soft gray fur framed her face. She turned to her husband for his approval and Doug nodded and said, “You look great, hon,” and Julie smiled, those clear violet-blue eyes full of love almost painful to behold. She loves him, Carol thought. She loves him with a love that sees no flaws, finds no fault, knows no bounds. She doesn't mind living in this horrible flat or doing without or working like a slave to put him through law school because she loves him without reservation and she is doing it for him. Oh, God, please don't let her be hurt too badly and, please, never, never let me love like that.

“I must go,” she said, standing up.

“Won't you stay a while?” Julie begged. “I have some fudge I made this morning, and I'll put some coffee on or—”

Carol shook her head. “I do have to get back. Pattie is giving a party for the girls still at the dorm, and I—I need to bathe and wash my hair and get ready.”

Doug stepped to the closet to fetch her coat, helping her on with it and giving her another of those smoky looks. She ignored it and smiled at Julie. Doug padded to the door, opening it. Julie rushed over to give Carol another hug.

“This is the best Christmas I've ever had,” she whispered. “Thank you so much. Please thank Nora for me, too.”

“Merry Christmas, Julie. Thanks again for the book. I'll see you over at the Silver Bell tomorrow night. We all have kitchen privileges while the other girls are gone, but it's much easier to eat out.”

“Come again,” Doug said as he showed her out. “Next time I'll put some clothes on.”

“Don't bother on my account,” Carol said sweetly.

Slipping the O'Neill first edition into the large pocket in the skirt of her coat, she headed back toward campus. It was cooler than it had been earlier and the sky was that curiously opaque gray that promised more snow. The visit with Julie and her husband had depressed her. Julie was so in love with him and that love made her so blind and yet … and yet she's probably happier than Nora or I will ever be, Carol reflected. We're both consumed with a driving ambition, while Julie is content to live in the shadow of her husband, abandoning her own ambition in order to see his fulfilled. And she is probably more talented than either of us. Julie would have been the perfect choice for Laura in
The Glass Menagerie
. Carol knew that Compton had wanted her for the part, but Julie hadn't shown up at tryouts. Unfortunately I did, she reminded herself, and her cheeks burned anew as she remembered the humiliation she had felt when Compton waved her offstage without a single comment.

Carol crossed the street. The campus looked bleak beneath the darkening gray sky. She had been so full of hope that night last month when she arrived at the small tan brick theater near the administration building. She had been the fifth girl to read for Laura, and she had given her all, really getting into the part, she felt, and when she had finished Compton had waved his hand and called, “Next!” and that was it and Dee Patrick had been selected to play Laura. Dee was good, Carol had to admit that. A petite, soft-spoken brunette, she was physically right for the part as well, but Carol had wanted it so badly. Later on she had read for Amanda, a better part, really, the one Laurette Taylor had done on Broadway. She became the aged southern belle, using a fluttery southern accent, giving her all again, and again Compton had waved her off without a word and Sharon Dimmock would be playing Amanda.

I don't have it, she thought. Compton knows it. That's why he ignores me all the time. He's tough, a professional, he knows his business, and he knows I'm just a starry-eyed girl from Kansas without a drop of genuine talent. Mrs. Epperson thought I was marvelous, yes, but she's never been out of Kansas. I'm wasting my time. I'm wasting Julian Compton's time, too. Both of us knew that after the first few classes, but … but I've tried so hard to deny it, stubbornly refusing to face the truth. I try. God knows I try. I give my all every time, but my all isn't enough. Not for someone like Julian Compton who has worked with
real
actors.

“Carol!” he called.

Carol looked up, scarcely able to believe her eyes. She had been thinking of him that very moment, and there he was, striding toward her, wearing a heavy gray tweed overcoat, a rakish red-and-green checked muffler wrapped carelessly around his neck, ends flapping. His luxuriant gray hair was windblown, and his craggy, attractive face wore an expression of pleasant surprise. Carol stopped, waiting for him to join her, and Julian Compton smiled, almost as though he was pleased to see her. The bulky tweed overcoat made him seem even larger, and his presence was almost overwhelming. How she admired him. How uneasy he made her. Those moody blue eyes of his seemed to look right into a person, seeing all the flaws, all the insecurities. At the moment they were full of friendly warmth, and that made her more uneasy than ever.

“What on earth are you doing here?” he inquired. “I thought everyone had gone home for the holidays.”

I don't have a home to go to, Mr. Compton. “I decided to stay on campus,” she said. “I—I had a lot of work to catch up on and thought this would be a perfect time for it.”

“I see,” he said. He didn't believe her. “I was just starting to unlock the side door of the theater when I happened to glance up and see you crossing the street.”

“I've been delivering presents to Julie.”

“Ah, yes—Julie,” he said thoughtfully. “You two girls are good friends, aren't you?”

“I'm very fond of her. I—I think she's very gifted.”

“That she is. The best student I've got.”

As opposed to me, the worst. Compton seemed to read her mind, seemed about to make some comment, then apparently changed his mind. He shook his head and looked at her with amiable blue eyes and smiled. He seemed entirely different from the remote, authoritative figure she knew from class, but then she had never encountered him casually like this before. Carol kept her guard up nevertheless, remembering the snubs, remembering her humiliation at the tryouts. Compton sighed, thrusting his hands into the pockets of the bulky overcoat. He was an extremely magnetic man, she observed, not for the first time. His wife was a very lucky woman.

“Did you want something, Mr. Compton?” she inquired.

“Just thought I'd wish you a Merry Christmas. Thought you might give me a hand—not that I really need any help. I was on my way to my office. I've got a couple of dozen Christmas presents stashed away there—need to transfer them to the back end of my station wagon.”

“I—I'd be glad to help,” Carol said.

“You would? Come along then.” He led the way back toward the small brick theater, the scene of her humiliation. “It's my monsters, you see. They snoop dreadfully, always find their Christmas presents no matter how well we hide them. Year before last Andy hid them in the attic—Brett and Bobbie found them, shook them, figured out what they were. Last year I stored them all away in the trunk of my Lincoln. Brett jimmied the lock. So this year everything's at my office, far from prying hands.”

Compton led her down the short flight of steps and unlocked the side door of the theater. It led into the basement area where storage rooms, dressing rooms and such were located. He flipped a switch and a single light bulb dimly illuminated a long hallway. His office was located midway, directly beneath the stage. It was large, awash with books and theater journals, pleasantly littered, and the wall behind his desk was hung with posters of plays he had directed in New York and a collection of signed photographs—Shirley Booth, Fredric March and Florence Eldridge, Lee J. Cobb, Tallulah Bankhead. Compton noticed her examining the latter and grinned.

“One of the reasons I left the theater—the incomparable, exhausting Tallulah. Before I worked with her this hair you see was a rich, dark chestnut. Turned silver almost overnight after I signed to direct her. She was brilliant, of course, wowed the critics and paying customers alike. I had a nervous breakdown.”

“You've worked with so many wonderful people,” Carol said.

“Indeed I have. Working with students is much less taxing. They've yet to develop what we call ‘artistic temperament,' and you have the joy of discovering exciting new talents—like Jim Burke, for example. He's rough and raw and undisciplined at the moment, he's seen too many Brando movies, but once he discards his motorcycle boots and leather jacket and learns to enunciate he's going to go places in a hurry.”

“You—you're very patient with him.”

“That's what they pay me for,” he told her.

Carol helped him carry the presents out to the station wagon parked behind the theater. It took three trips, and he regaled her with fascinating stories about his years on Broadway—the time Bea Lillie and Noel Coward came backstage after an opening, Bea in widow's weeds, Noel humming a dirge, the time Tallulah brought her pet lion cub to a rehearsal—and Carol was utterly enthralled. She so desperately wanted to be a part of that glamorous world. It meant everything to her. When they returned to his office to lock up, she summoned all her courage and brought up the subject that had been preying on her mind.

“Mr. Compton, you—you don't think I'm a very good student, do you?”

Compton was straightening some papers at his desk, and he hesitated. The question had taken him by surprise.

“On the contrary, Carol, you're an excellent student. You do all your work with enthusiasm. You're eager to learn. You're serious about it. Drama class isn't merely a lark for you as it is for some.”

“Perhaps I didn't phrase that properly. I—I'm not very
good
, am I? You think I'm wasting your time.”

Compton looked at this breathtakingly beautiful girl, and he felt a wrench inside. He had seen so many like her in the theater, and—yes, he had been rough on her. Perhaps he had even resented her, subconsciously at least. She was absolutely dedicated, absolutely determined, a model student. A wretched actress. She tried. She took direction brilliantly. She had everything a person needed to make it in the theater except that one special ingredient—the magic. Carol Martin would never have that. Yet, because of her beauty, because of her striking presence, she was likely to go much further than those ten times more gifted than she. He had seen it happen over and over again during his years in the theater.

Talented, gifted, hardworking hopefuls living in cold-water flats and working in greasy spoons and attending all the auditions and turned down repeatedly, their talent going to waste, their dreams turning to dust, when all they needed was that one big break to become stars and make a valid contribution to the theater—Compton had seen them by the score, had been able to give a few of them a break. Most of them never had the chance to prove their merit. Most of them ended up as abject failures, scratching for a living on the fringes of the business, burned out by rejection. And the others—those bright, sleek, glittery ones blessed with magnetism and looks who, talented or not, were snapped up immediately, movie contracts waving, flashbulbs popping, success, riches and fame tumbling into their laps without the least effort on their parts. It was that aspect of the business he hated the most, and from the very first day in class he had put Carol into that category and, yes, resented her.

“I think that—uh—I think that with the proper training you might eventually develop into a competent actress,” he told her.

“Competent,” she said.

Julian Compton nodded. She was an extremely bright girl. She knew exactly what he meant. Compton could be brutally frank with his students, and he usually was, but he didn't want to hurt this girl. She was neither affected nor arrogant, like so many students, and she wasn't playing around with acting classes until she met the right boy. She was passionate about it, as was he. He wished he hadn't been quite so cool to her during the past months. When he had seen her crossing the street half an hour ago, all alone on Christmas Eve, looking so low, something had compelled him to go over and speak to her. He realized now it was because, subconscious resentment aside, he really liked the girl and admired her impeccable good manners, her intrinsic class. She couldn't help it if she happened to be ravishingly beautiful, if she happened to have a remarkable physical presence and precious little talent. She wanted to learn, and, by God, his job was to teach.

“You mean I have no future as an actress,” she said.

“I didn't say that, Carol.”

“You implied it.”

“You might not have—quite what it takes to make it in the legitimate theater,” he said carefully, and he saw the pain in her eyes, “but you're an extremely lovely girl and you have a great deal of presence. That should go quite a way toward compensating for your lack of—for any drawbacks you might have as an actress.”

“But not in the theater.”

“The theater isn't a visual medium—not essentially. I think you might be quite successful in television or in films. I could name scores of people without a smidgen of acting ability who've been phenomenally successful in those mediums. And—and you're not without potential,” he added, hoping to soften the blow.

“Do you think I should drop out of class?”

“Of course not,” he said.

“I don't want to waste my time—or yours.”

“Carol, you—you're still quite young, and, as I said, you're not without potential. You're eager to learn, and I think there's a great deal I can teach you.”

But you can't give me what Julie has. No one can. If I work, if I study, if I continue to give my all, I may one day be a competent actress. Competent. I'll never have Julie's magic. I'll never be great. I'll never be good. I'll be competent.