Эд Макбейн - Mothers and Daughters

“Yes.”

She sighed. “Well, you’re home.”

“Mom... “he said.

“Yes, dear?”

“Mom, why...” He put down his teacup. “Mom, I thought you’d come to see me again. I mean, after that first time.”

“What, dear?”

“When I was at Camp Elliott. You came once, and then... well, the other guys... I just thought you might come again. I mean, I know it was a long trip and all, but...” He shrugged.

Her eyes opened wide. She looked at him blankly and said, “But David, you know how ill your Aunt Millie has been.”

“Yes,” he said. He shrugged.

“I think I wrote you about it.”

“Yes. Yes, I remember.”

“California’s a long way off, darling. And Aunt Millie’s all alone in the world, except for me. You understand, don’t you? I hoped you’d understand, David.”

“Oh, sure,” he said. “I just wondered, that’s all.” He wet his lips and nodded. Well, he thought, this is the second time Aunt Millie’s picked up the marbles. He lifted his teacup.

“Was it very terrible, David dear? Do you want to talk about it?”

“There’s nothing to talk about. It’s over.”

“Yes. And things will be different now that you’re home.”

“I suppose so.”

Julia smiled maternally. “Tad Parker stopped by the other day. He asked about you.”

“Oh? How is he?”

“Fine. He’s enrolled at a New York acting school. He still wants to be an actor, can you imagine that?”

“Well, nothing wrong with that,” David said, and he shrugged.

“Will you be going to school, David? To college?”

“I guess so.”

“To Talmadge?”

“Well, I... I was thinking about New York. A school in New York someplace.”

“I see,” Julia said. She nodded thoughtfully. “What will you study, do you know?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

Julia smiled warmly over her teacup. “I always had the feeling you could be... well, David, you always wrote such beautiful letters. Perhaps you could—”

“No!” he said, and then realized his vehemence had startled her. “No,” he said softly.

The theater was dark except for the single work light burning in the center of the stage. Gillian stood in the wings and looked again at the script, which had been handed to her not ten minutes ago. A young buxom blonde was on stage, asking the director if she could sit on the floor while reading for the part, would that be all right? She could get the feel of it better that way, she said. The director told her she could sit or stand, whichever put her more at ease, and the blonde promptly collapsed into a buttery heap at the base of the work light, and began reading. Gillian tried not to hear the lines. She concentrated on the script in her hands, thumbing through it, searching out the character’s biggest speeches in an attempt to second-guess what they would ask her to read. She suddenly remembered a time when she was eight years old and had rushed home excitedly to tell her mother she’d been cast in the role of a frog in the school play. “I got a pock in the play!” she shouted. “I got a pock in the play!” She wished it were as simple now. She wished...

“Thank you very much,” she heard a voice say. “Next, please.”

She looked up from the script, and then closed it. Well, she thought, here we go again. Good luck, Gillian. And she walked onto the stage. At twenty-two, she seemed to have acquired that elusively knowledgeable look which all New York career girls were wearing that fall, a look that was rescued from its usual shellacked hardness by the inherent softness of her body, the freshness of her features. Her face had lengthened somewhat, matured perhaps; it was economically beautiful, with startling green eyes, a generous mobile mouth, a finely turned nose. She wore her hair the way she’d always worn it, the russet bangs clinging to her forehead, the mane brushed sleekly to the back of her neck. She moved on stage with an energetic purposefulness that was nonetheless feminine, almost feline, utilizing a graceful long-legged lope that was hers alone and that she realized was out of character. I am Gillian Burke, she thought, take me or leave me. I want a pock in the play.

“Hello,” a voice from the theater said. “How are you?”

“Fine, thank you,” Gillian said. She could not see anyone in the theater, but she did not shield her eyes, nor did she squint. She looked out at what she imagined to be the sixth row center, and she spoke in a natural unforced manner, as if her conversational partners were sitting across a table from her.

“What’s your name, Miss?” a second voice asked. The voice was tentative, exploratory. She assumed it belonged to the author of the play.

“Gillian Burke,” she answered.

The other voice asked authoritatively, “Why did you choose that name?”

That’s the director, she thought. “I was born with it,” she answered.

“It’s an unusual name,” the director said.

“Yes, I know.” She smiled. “But I guess I’m stuck with it.”

She heard something that could have been a slight chuckle. She could not tell whether the sound had come from the playwright or the director. She was suddenly conscious of the work light. She moved a little closer to it, tilting her head upward so that the light caught her cheekbones and her nose.

“What have you been doing, Miss Burke?” the director asked.

She tried a tentative smile. This was the part she always hated. She knew they weren’t truly interested in knowing what she’d been doing. If she’d been doing anything really important, they’d have known about it already. The question was designed to start her talking about qualifications that were insignificant, the carbon-copy professional life of a thousand other acting aspirants in the city. The plot of the story was unimportant, only the lead character was. And the lead character was Gillian Burke, and they would be watching her all the while she spoke. She had experimented with this phase of casting a long time ago. She had decided that the details of her professional past were boring, and she had coupled this with the intuitive knowledge that people would much rather converse than listen. And so, whenever the question was asked — and it was always asked — she had tried to frame her answers in the form of a dialogue rather than a monologue, bringing her inquisitor into the action, creating a fake give-and-take, which was livelier than a simple recitation would have been. She had abandoned this technique when one director said, “We’re a little busy here, Miss Burke, and we haven’t time to pull teeth. Do you want to tell us about yourself, or shall we forget it?” From then on, she gave the facts straight. They were supposed to be facts, and they were supposed to allow those people in the darkened theater an opportunity to study her before she began reading, an opportunity to form an opinion about her voice, her face, her experience, the way she moved, an opportunity perhaps to decide whether she was right for the part even before she opened the script. She began her recitation.

“I’ve been studying with Igor Vodorin for the past four years. I also belong to a group that has been doing repertory at the Ninety-second Street Y, Shakespeare mostly, though we have done some Marlowe and some Jonson. My best roles at the Y were Ophelia in Hamlet , and Goneril in Lear . I’ve done summer stock at—”

“Could you speak a little louder, please, Miss Burke?” a voice from the rear of the theater asked, a new voice, producer?

“Yes, certainly,” she said. “I’ve done summer stock at Westport and Stockbridge, the usual straw-hat plays, but I had supporting roles in two originals that were being tried.”