Heart of Glass Read online

  “How was your day?” he asked while applying white paint to the window ledges.

  “Okay.” I tossed my book bag on a chair.

  Even though I disliked the unsettled nature of our arrangement, I also chafed at the forced “Honey, I’m home” domesticity. I couldn’t help but wish that he’d just throw his paintbrush out the window and shout, “Let’s go out clubbing all night long, baby!” It was as if I didn’t live there and also as if we’d already been married for ten years, not that I would know how that looked. My understanding of a happy home life came from Doris Day movies—not from my life. But I resented having to be accountable to him—being asked where I was, whom was I with, made me feel angry at him, as if he were my husband or my mom. I swallowed these feelings, feeling guilty and ungrateful, and went to the fridge to get a Diet Pepsi.

  “Hey, wanna go to Joe’s house in Connecticut this weekend?”

  Finally, some adventure. “Sure, I guess. I’ll have to bring some homework.” It would be fun to escape the city, and the confines of this playing-house routine, I thought.

  Joe was an old friend of Michael’s whose parents were well-known actors who’d been blacklisted in the 1950s for their support for liberal causes such as integration and labor unions. After the McCarthy era ended, they were able to return to show business and had a place in Connecticut that had been paid for by wildly successful TV commercials for Pepto-Bismol and Cracker Jack.

  “Jesus, I’m living with a girl who does homework. I’ll get the car on Friday, and we can drive up.” Michael had an old yellow Dodge Dart with a black top and black upholstery he kept parked in a huge, barbed-wire-enclosed lot near the West Side Highway. He was proud of it, a car being a status symbol in Manhattan. It meant you could afford to keep a car in the city, you had a country house, or you could just have a little getaway when you wished to.

  “Great.” I smiled affably, and he went back to painting the window.

  Michael picked me up after my last class on Friday around four, and we headed out of the city. As we turned off the Henry Hudson, onto the Saw Mill Parkway, we were instantly plunged onto a leafy, lugelike road that twisted through huge trees and by low stone walls and bridges. The Saw Mill was one of my favorite roads to drive down on the East Coast. I rolled down my window and took a deep breath as we drove past the sign for Chappaqua.

  Newly landed back in the States, I had spent a happy summer in Chappaqua at the Saw Mill Summer Theater, doing a play, when I was sixteen. “There’s the statue of Horace Greeley!” I pointed at the side of the parkway in front of the old barn where we had rehearsed the play four years ago. Now the red paint on the barn was peeling, the weeds had overtaken it, and a few boards had crumbled away. But it was still there. I smiled.

  “Uh, yeah.” Michael peeked quickly, probably wondering why I was so stoked about an old statue. “ ‘Go west, young man,’ right?”

  The summer I was sixteen and Robin was fifteen, our mother had moved us suddenly—after five years in exciting, busy London—to a small, quaint commuter town in Connecticut called Ridgefield, away from our friends and our school. Reeling from culture shock and craving sophistication, we were lucky enough to get summer-theater jobs in the nearby town of Chappaqua, New York, about a thirty-minute drive away, in a production of Noël Coward’s Hay Fever. I was in the play, cast as a bubble-brained flapper, and Robbie worked backstage on the props and sets. I had gotten my driver’s license upon landing in the States, so if we had to live in this godforsaken hick town in the boonies, at least we could make our getaway—for a while—in a used car Pop had bought for us. I hadn’t felt so free since London.

  In the play, I got to wear a gold-lamé evening gown and got paid $12 per performance. Everyone in the cast was older than me by at least ten years, so I was the baby and a bit insecure about my ability to hold my own. One day in rehearsal, the director said, “You’ll go far in this business, Wendy,” but I thought he was teasing me, so I burst into tears and ran out of the room. I had a huge crush on a guy in the cast who came out at the end and played a medley of Noël Coward songs on the piano while the rest of us sang along. He was handsome, like a young Brando, with shining blond hair that swept up from his forehead and huge green eyes that matched the silk dressing gown he wore onstage. I would stand there, singing “Mad About the Boy,” willing him to look my way, but he never did. I was so naïve, I didn’t realize that he was gay—one of the first of many ill-fated crushes I had on men who were snappy dressers, good dancers, and sparkling conversationalists.

  It had been a wonderful summer, driving back and forth to do the play, listening to the radio at night to stay awake. A few months later Robbie and I were immersed in the hell of being the resident freaks at our huge public high school by day and returning home to our dark house afterward, holding our breaths to see if there’d be dinner on the stove, or if our likely drunk mom was going to emerge from her room. But Hay Fever had been our refuge.

  Michael and I pulled into Joe’s folks’ place a half an hour later. The house was a modest Cape Cod with a gray-­shingled roof and black shutters. Some people were milling in the driveway, drinking beers and glasses of wine. Joe, with sandy-colored hair and an open but still interesting face, stood in front of a hibachi with a long fork, moving hot dogs and burgers around. Someone was cranking the Stones from inside the house—“Let It Bleed.” Joe was the only friend of Michael’s whom I didn’t feel intimidated around. He was friendly and accepting and seemed genuinely interested in me. I felt like less of a Lolita in his presence. The rest of Michael’s crowd either ignored me or gave me the once-over, as if to say, “Who’s the schoolgirl?” Of course, they all wanted to know how old I was. Funnily, I looked even younger than I was—sometimes I thought of telling them I was jailbait just to see how they’d react. But I was always on my guard with this crowd. To be fair to them, I chose to remain separate and rarely uttered a peep. It seemed easier to skirt the edges. Years of being the new kid at school had trained me well. Instead of showing how ill at ease I was, I played mystery girl, believing that my aloofness would come across as sophistication and smarts.

  “Hey, buddy!” Joe ran up to Michael and gave him a hug. “Someone get this guy a beer. Wendy, what can I get you?”

  “Oh, hi . . . maybe some wine?” I kissed his cheek, standing in the driveway, the gravel playing havoc with my kitten heels. I took them off, let them dangle from my fingers, then slung them over my shoulder, the way I’d seen a lovely gamine do in the movies. Almost instantly, a large plastic goblet was shoved into my hand. I looked up to see Joe smiling at me winningly, then he returned to his grill. Michael melted into the crowd. There were about fifteen people, some of them I knew, most of them actors. I followed around behind Michael and stood at his side, smiling and trying to look interested in what everyone was talking about.

  “Jesus, are you kidding me? I mean it’s a perfect technical performance, but I’d rather see someone not so skilled play the part and actually feel something. Someone who doesn’t have their head up their RADA ass,” said Michael’s friend Bill, who had studied to be a serious actor. Everyone laughed. Bill was blond and hunky and had recently played a doomed version of himself being impaled in a bunk bed while having sex in Friday the 13th. “That’s why Tom Hulce is so amazing!” Bill spread his arms wide for emphasis, a beer in one hand, a cigarette in the other. “C’mon people!”

  “Has anyone seen . . .”

  “I loved her in . . .”

  “Well, I’ve heard he’s that crazy in real life . . .”

  “She’s a heroin addict . . .”

  I walked around the patio, catching snippets of conversations in the growing dark. The food was set out on a long table next to the swimming pool; the underwater lights lit up swimmers, thanks to an Indian summer and Joe’s having cranked up the heat in October.

  Across the patio, Michael listened intently to his old friend Nic
k, a musician who worked in a record store during the day. At night, he was working with a rap artist in Bedford-Stuyvesant, sneaking up to meet him at his place in the projects in a zipped-up anorak so no one could see he was white. Michael nodded as Nick talked and shook his head, his long dark hair moving side to side as he stroked his beard. Between the hair and the beard, you could hardly see Nick. I only knew him a little bit—he had recently broken up with his girlfriend and was down over it. His dad was this eccentric painter who lived in the Westbeth, an artists’ building on Bank Street where Dianne Arbus had killed herself. Michael told me Nick’s dad hadn’t been outside, not even to go to the store, in something like twenty years. I watched Michael put his hand on his friend’s shoulder. Nick stared out across the lawn, looking miserable.

  Helping myself to some steak and corn and sitting at one of the tables by the pool, I smiled at everyone who passed by, feeling a little like the nerd in the school cafeteria no one wants to sit with.

  “Is this seat taken?” It was Bobby, an actor with a baby face and a twangy accent. Bobby was like someone from another time—a Southern gentleman with lovely manners and soft-spoken ways. I liked him and secretly wondered if he was gay.

  “No, please, be my guest.” I motioned to the three empty chairs at my table. My dance card was anything but full.

  “ ‘Be my guest’—what a quaint phrase that is! You sound like my mom. She’s very homespun.”

  I wasn’t sure if Bobby intended that as a compliment, so I just shrugged my shoulders and looked cheerful.

  “Omigolly, look at this.” He surveyed the crowd. “I just know what’s going to happen next, don’t you?” He picked up a drumstick gingerly and nibbled on it, then took a sophisticated sip of his three-olive martini.

  “Um . . . they serve dessert?”

  “No, my dear, I’ve been to a few of these, I can tell you—certainly more than you. In about ten minutes, everybody’s going to take off their clothes and jump in the pool.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh, heavens, yes—it’ll be like Sodom and Gomorrah, right here in Litchfield County. Just you wait and see.” He sighed deeply, clearly disappointed in all the other party­goers. Sure enough, Bobby’s prediction came true, and in the allotted time frame no less. The first person to strip was Bill, who of course had nothing to lose since he had the body of an Adonis. Then a few women took the plunge, screaming and still holding their drink glasses. Then Joe dove in, followed by Michael—and then everyone else, in a charge en masse. Bobby and I sat in our deck chairs, trying not to peek at the bobbing breasts and penises, looking mostly at each other or down at our dinner plates.

  “If you’re worried that I’m going to get buck naked and go in there, don’t.”

  “Oh, no . . . I won’t go, either, I mean, I don’t want to.” I couldn’t imagine anything more embarrassing, and apparently neither could Bobby. He was a prude, and I was just unwilling to expose my small breasts, big butt, and overall lack of muscle tone. The thought terrified me.

  “Wendy! Come on in!” Michael hoisted himself up on the side of the pool and came running over. He started to drip onto my steak.

  Bobby eyed him nervously, eyebrows raised.

  “No, thanks. I’m going to sit here and keep Bobby company.”

  “We’re having fun. I want you to come in.” Michael reached to take my hand in his wet one.

  Thankfully, Bobby came to my rescue, covering my hand in his. He looked up at Michael and said in a very courtly manner, “We are having a very intense, emotional discussion that we are in the middle of. I cannot possibly spare Wendy at this time.”

  “Okay,” Michael said slowly, clearly turning it over in his head. Shrugging, he ran back to the pool, executing a perfect cannonball into the deep end.

  “Thank you for saving me.” I laughed and knocked back the rest of my wine.

  “Think nothing of it—we girls need to stick together.”

  Maybe he is gay, I thought. In about twenty years time, after paying his dues big-time in the American theater, Bobby would come into his own and become a successful and in-demand character actor. But for now he was just my knight in shining armor.

  “You’re sweet.” I smiled at him, grateful for the company.

  At this precise moment, I recalled another charming man. Tonight had been the night I was supposed to meet Ben, the boy from the movie theater, at the Metropolitan Opera to see Don Giovanni. I had completely forgotten and now I would never see him again. With a buckling feeling in my stomach, I imagined him standing by the fountain at Lincoln Center, waiting for me, holding the tickets and checking his watch.

  I had even taken the opera out of the library on cassette and listened to the score, dreaming of our romantic evening. I saw us drinking champagne in his box, him in a tux, me in some diaphanous, long dress, listening to the music as it floated up into the air. But now I’d blown it. With all the chaos of the past few weeks—the NYPD manhunt for Harvey, the swift relocation to my boyfriend’s apartment, and the stress of school—I had simply forgotten the date. I would never get to walk home with Ben to his apartment in one of the most crime-ridden areas of the city. I wouldn’t get to see the rats dash across the floor as he unlocked the door of his first-floor apartment and turned on the lights. I would never walk home the next morning in a fancy dress through the blocks of decimated, boarded-up buildings, empty lots, and bombed-out cars, fearing for my life and holding a paper cup of crummy coffee, like a downtown Holly Golightly in Dresden.

  “Are you okay?” Bobby put his hand on my shoulder.

  “Yes, yes, I just remembered—there was some place I was supposed to be . . . um, tonight.”

  “Oops,” Bobby quipped. “You need a ride back to the city?”

  I shook my head, feeling like an asshole, even though no one knew this except Ben and me.

  I couldn’t have gone anyway, even if I were in New York, now that I was living with Michael. I would have had to make up a story or tell him I was spending the night at Jenny’s. Oh, well. Maybe he can scalp the ticket. I suddenly missed Ben keenly, pining for that connection I’d felt, that I knew he’d felt, too, the night we met. My face got flushed thinking about him, but luckily it was too dark for anyone to see. Watching the underwater lights cast fluttering shadows on the dark trees and listening to all the laughter and whooping, I was overwhelmed with the realization that I didn’t belong here. Maybe my place was with Ben, whose last name I didn’t even know.

  The pool crowd straggled out, drunk and naked. Some paired up and went upstairs; others got in cars and went back to the city or to the motor lodge in town. I said good night to Bobby and Joe and went up to the guest room with Michael. He fell asleep right away, all tuckered out from swimming and a few too many Michelobs. I tried to sleep but lay awake next to him most of the night, staring at the ceiling, wondering how Ben had liked Don Giovanni, and whether he missed me, too. I would never know.

  • • •

  Back at film school, I began to feel even more alienated from my classmates. Suddenly, they seemed to me to be pretentious hipsters, with their neon-colored dyed hair and their full-time sunglasses, as if they were extras in a Fellini movie. The quick and easy answers and opinions they’d flung out that had intimidated me now seemed glib, superficial, and borrowed.

  “Don’tcha see that Antonioni is just trying to shock us into a response, by, you know, painting the grass blue or making the trees red. Okay, I get it,” declared a boy with purple hair.

  But the problem wasn’t them, not really—it was me. I’d thought film school was a good idea, but now it just seemed like a daft getaway plan. I had already dropped out of BU and, fleeing Boston and my mother, had fully expected my new life in New York to be not only academically and intellectually engaging but freewheeling, filled with friends, parties, fascinating conversation, and late nights at rock-’n’-roll clubs. B
ut none of that had materialized. Everything was still the same. I was still just going along in my life, and I was suddenly filled with despair at the possibility that I wouldn’t find a purpose here, in the city, or at school. I also wasn’t having any fun. After each class, I limped to the subway to get the train uptown.

  Going back to the apartment had become a monumental drag. I found myself going to coffee shops after school, or catching a movie, so that I didn’t have to return to my current home. Michael hadn’t worked as an actor in six months, his unemployment had run out, and he had not gotten a plum role he’d desperately wanted in a play at Lincoln Center. The atmosphere was so oppressive, like tiptoeing into a cage with a grumpy, sleeping animal and hoping it wouldn’t wake up. I was afraid of his depression—of his anger and neediness. It was as if he was turning into another version of my mother, another person I’d had to watch carefully. He sometimes turned his negativity on me—which often manifested itself in criticisms. Suddenly, there didn’t seem to be anything he liked about me. My clothes were too downtown scruffy, and my skirts were too short.

  “Why can’t you just wear jeans and a normal shirt?” he’d ask.

  Because I’m not boring, like you, I was tempted to say. “Michael, I don’t own a pair of jeans, and black is cool. I like it.”

  “I like your hair best when you wear it up in a bun,” he said to me one day, making a sad puppy-dog face.

  The next day after class, I went to the Astor Place Barbershop and told the hairdresser to chop it all off.