Эд Макбейн - Mothers and Daughters

“What were they?” the director asked.

“A comedy called Martha Walking , and a melodrama called Night Flame. ”

“Neither of those reached Broadway, did they?”

“No,” Gillian answered. She smiled. “But that wasn’t my fault,” she added quickly.

She thought she heard another chuckle out front.

“I’ve also done a few radio spots on WOV and WNYC.”

“Commercials?”

“No. Dramatic roles.”

“Sustaining or sponsored?”

“Sustaining.”

“You’re Equity?”

“Yes. And AFTRA.”

“Done any television?”

“No. Not yet. I think... well, my agent thinks there’s something for me on Kraft.” She paused. “I’ve got an interview this Friday.”

“Why do you want this part, Miss Burke?”

“Because I think I’m right for it.” She paused for a fraction of a second and quickly said, “No, that isn’t true. I haven’t the faintest notion if I’m right for it. I want the part because I’m a good actress.”

“How do you know that, Miss Burke?”

“I know it.”

“Has someone told you?”

“Would that make me a good actress if I weren’t one?”

“No, I guess not,” the director said. She detected a smile in his voice. “Would you like to read for us now? On 1–23, the speech starting with ‘I can tell things without really knowing them.’ Do you see that, Miss Burke?”

Gillian opened the script, moved closer to the work light, and found the speech. “Yes, I have it.”

“Would you begin, please?”

She read well, she thought, with force and control. When she finished the speech, she closed the script and stood looking out into the blackness. The theater was silent.

“Ahhh, Miss Burke,” the director said, “would you mind turning to 3–17, please? The speech starting with ‘Yes, but Phyllis was always so sweet, so solicitous.’”

“I have it,” Gillian said.

“Would you begin, please?”

Her hands had begun to tremble slightly. She hoped there was not a quaver in her voice. She tried to pretend she was not in a theater, reading to a director and a playwright and God knew how many other concerned people. She read as well as she knew how to read, and then she closed the script again, and again looked out at the blackness.

“Would you walk downstage left, please?” the director said.

Gillian swallowed, pulled her shoulders erect, and walked across the stage.

“Now back to the light, please.”

She walked back to the light.

“How old are you. Miss Burke?”

“Twenty-two.”

“How tall?”

“Five-five,” she answered.

“Would you take off your shoes, please, Miss Burke?”

“What?”

“Your shoes. Would you mind removing them?”

“Oh, yes,” she said. She stepped out of her pumps without stooping, using the toe of one foot to remove the shoe from the opposite foot.

“And now would you walk down left again?”

“Without my shoes?”

“Yes, please.”

She nodded and walked down to the proscenium.

“Thank you, Miss Burke. Who is your agent, please?” the director asked.

“Marian Lewis,” she answered.

“Thank you,” the director said. “Next, please.”

The words almost leaped into her throat. She could feel them bubbling inside her, almost forming on her lips. Did I get the part? Did I get the part? She felt parched all at once. She stood in the darkness on the side of the stage and stared out at the empty seats, motionless.

“Yes, Miss Burke, thank you,” the director said.

She nodded dumbly, picked up her shoes, and went into the wings, wondering the same things she wondered each time. Did they like me? They asked me to read two speeches. They must have liked me. Maybe they’ll call Marian as soon as I leave the theater. Why did he ask me to take off my shoes? I’m too tall, I’ll bet. Who’s been signed for the male lead? Is he short? Maybe there’s a scene where the girl is barefoot, I should have looked more closely. But he asked me how tall I was. Damn it, who is playing the male lead? They couldn’t have liked me. They’d have said something, they’d have asked me to read more. But they did ask me who my agent was, that’s a good sign, oh God, maybe, maybe!

Outside the theater, she reached into her bag and took out her small appointment book. She thumbed through the month of November, stopped at the page marked with a big 20, and studied her own hurried scrawl:

Reading, Booth, West 45, 3 P.M.

F.A.O. 4–6

Amanda, Michael’s Rest, 6:15

Class 7

She glanced at her watch. It was three-fifty. If she caught a cab, she could be at F.A.O.’s by four, maybe. The cab would cost her at least sixty-five cents, could she get away with a ten-cent tip? No, fifteen cents would be the absolute minimum, although cabbies did expect women to be cheap tippers, maybe she could get away with ten. No, she had better figure on at least eighty cents for the ride. Which meant her first hour at the store would net her exactly sixty cents, a penny a minute, a real fat profit that was. Or should she chance taking the bus and being late again? No, they’d fire her, sure as hell. She simply had to begin planning her days more carefully. But what was she to do when a reading came along? I wonder if I got the part, she thought. Will Amanda pay for dinner? There isn’t even time for dinner with her. I’ll have to take a sandwich to class. I wonder if I got the part.

She hailed a taxi.

She didn’t seem capable of concentrating on what Amanda was saying. She kept thinking of the telephone and wondering if they’d contacted Marian. She had called as soon as she’d left the store, but Marian was on another line and Dotty, the receptionist, had asked Gillian to call back at six-thirty. It was now six twenty-five, and she sat opposite Amanda at a circular table, listening to the polite chatter in the bar, and trying to concentrate on Amanda’s words, and thinking all the while of the reading that afternoon and the fact that they’d asked her to take off her shoes, asked her how tall she was, asked her to walk for them. Surely that meant something. They hadn’t asked the other girls to do that.

“... but, of course, Matthew’s new office is on Wall Street, and that would add at least another half hour to the commuting time. I don’t think he’s too keen on the idea, but I’m working on him.” Amanda smiled and lifted her drink.

It was amazing how elegant she looked, Gillian thought, amazing how marriage seemed to have changed not only the way she dressed but her face and body as well. She carried herself with a new certainty, as if she had found a secure niche and settled happily into it. She was wearing a stark black dress, sleeved to the wrist, hooded so that only a faint hint of her long blond hair showed. The dress, fitted through to the waist, flared to a circle of wool-jersey hem. She wore short leopardskin boots. A leopard jacket was draped carelessly over the back of her chair, together with her sling purse. A large circular gold coin showed on a chain at the throat of the dress. Gillian studied her and felt slightly displaced, as if she had stumbled into another time belt in which she remained exactly the same, unchanging, while everything around her progressed toward a vaguely understood middle age. Has Amanda really changed that much? she wondered. Or is it only because she’s married? She did not know the answer. But she felt as if she were sitting with a chic and elegant young woman who made her feel like an awkward adolescent.

Quickly, Gillian glanced at the clock behind the bar, and then toward the telephone booth. A grinning fat man was hugging the mouthpiece. Come on, she thought, hurry up. I have to make a call in two and a half minutes.