Эд Макбейн - Mothers and Daughters

David burst out laughing.

“Keep your mind on your work,” she said. “Make me warm.”

“You sing beautifully.”

“I have the feeling you’ll be at this all night,” she said, and giggled into his shoulder. “I’m not at all excited, are you?”

“No.”

“But don’t let’s stop.”

“No.”

“Shall I sing again?”

“Yes. What we’re lacking is mood music.”

“Mood music, that’s right. That’s what we need,” she said, and they both laughed. “Come on, be serious,” she said.

“All right, I’m serious,” he said, and they began laughing again.

“Now stop laughing,” she said. “You’ll make me feel unattractive.”

“I’m sorry, you’re very attractive.” He paused. “What did you say your name was again?”

Gillian giggled uncontrollably and bit him on the shoulder. “I’m going to sing,” she said.

“All right, sing.”

“What shall I sing?”

“Anything you like. You sing, and I’ll bang the radiator.”

“Never mind banging the radiator,” she said, and they burst into explosive laughter.

Giggling, they loved away the night, surprised when dawn timidly touched the frost-rimmed window.

She was wearing a bright-red bulky sweater, and she set his apartment on fire, curled up in the single comfortable chair in the room, talking while he stood at the sink mixing drinks.

“But how are you supposed to get to the heart of a character, David? Don’t you see? It’s not enough to give a simple surface portrait.”

“I don’t know how. I’d personally like to see a play sometime where a character walks on stage and says, ‘My name is John Doe, I’m twenty-eight years old, I go to S.M.U., and that’s all you have to know about me. The rest will happen during the course of the play, so please pay attention.’”

“That’s not enough. People don’t live only in the present. They’ve got pasts, David, and everything that’s ever happened to them is a part of what’s happening to them now. I can’t read a line in a script and take it as a self-contained statement. I have to know why the character is getting angry at this particular time, what it is that was said or done to him to trigger the anger. And when I know that, I have to look deeper because nothing, David, nothing is born today.”

“I think you’re making a big hullabaloo about what is essentially a second-rate art.”

“Oh, now, just wait a minute,” Gillian said, swinging her legs to the floor.

“I read something about a famous actress,” David said. “I forget who, Helen Hayes or Katharine Cornell, one of the really big ones, who had this final scene where only her hand was showing on stage, and the motion of that hand alone was enough to put the audience in tears. And when someone asked her what the rest of her body was doing off stage while the hand was provoking such misery, she said she chatted with the stagehands all through the scene.”

“That doesn’t prove—”

“It proves there was no emotion involved in the illusion of emotion. She could have been playing checkers off stage while her hand pulled tears from the audience.”

“Well, I can’t work that way. I’ve got to know . I’ve got to understand the character, know everything about her.”

“That’s impossible. Nobody knows everything about anybody.”

“We’re not dealing with real people, David. We’re dealing with characters.”

“That’s right! And they’re only representations of people. You’re creating an illusion. The illusion can never be really complete. If it were, well... well, Gillian, why not really shoot a person on stage when the script calls for someone to be shot?”

“David, that’s silly. If you’re—”

“It isn’t. Have you ever been shot?”

“Never. What’s that—?”

“Then how can you know what it feels like to be shot?”

“I don’t. But I know what pain is, and if I know my character well, I can tell you how she would react to pain. I can really be in pain when that bullet supposedly hits me.”

“And why do you consider that acting? If you really are in pain, then you’re not portraying pain. And if your play runs for two years, you’re going to be a wreck by the time it’s over.”

“Amen,” Gillian said.

“What?”

“That a play I’m in should run for two years.”

“Do you want an olive in this, or an onion?” he asked.

“Onions. Lots of them. Six.”

“Not five?”

“Oh, all right, five,” she said. She grinned. “You sure are hard to get along with.”

He dropped the onions into her glass, put an olive into his own, and carried the drinks to where she was sitting.

“What shall we drink to, Gilly?” he asked.

“To you and me,” she said. “To us.”

“Is that all?”

“And to forever,” she said softly.

He loved the way she walked into a restaurant. She became a curious combination of gourmet and hungry waif the instant she stepped through the door. Her eyes took on a new sparkle, an instant smile appeared on her mouth, she seemed to sniff savory delights in every breath she took. At the same time, her shoulders pulled back, her head came erect, she walked with the stately dignity of a princess, glancing around the room with imperial disdain while her appetite showed contradictorily all over her face. Even now, wearing slacks and an old trench coat, her face wet with April rain, here in a sleazy Chinese restaurant on Eighth Avenue, she brought an air of excitement into the place, the promise of a fantastic feast in glittering company.

“It smells good,” she said to David.

“I’m hungry, are you?”

“I’m only about to perish,” she said.

The waiter came over to them and led them to a table. He handed them menus and asked, “You want drink!”

“Gilly?”

“No.”

“No, thank you,” David said, and the waiter stared at them and then walked off.

“Did you ever notice that all Chinese waiters seem abrupt and surly?” Gillian said. “They really aren’t, you know. It’s just the way they speak, clipping off the words, delivering them sort of deadpan, so that everything they say sounds like an order for an execution.”

“I never noticed,” David said.

“Yes. You listen when he comes back. If he comes back. He doesn’t like the idea of our not drinking. And he thinks we’re crazy to be out in this weather.”

“He’s out in it, too, isn’t he?”

“No, he’s in the restaurant.”

“So are we.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Besides, the weather is fine compared to what we had in December.”

“I loved December,” she said.

“I read in the Times that it’ll be listed in the official records as the blizzard of ’47. How about that?”

“How about that?” Gillian said. “We can tell our children. It makes me feel like a pioneer. Now where did he disappear to? If I don’t get something to eat soon, I’ll begin throwing dishes.”

“Didn’t you have lunch?”

“No.”

“Why not? Damn you, Gilly—”

“Don’t damn me, David Regan! I had a reading.”

“What’s that got to do with having lunch?”

“I got up at ten, and I went down for the mail and found my copy of Theatre Arts and before I knew it, it was twelve o’clock. So I had some juice and coffee, dressed, and went uptown. And the reading wasn’t over until three, and then I had to rush right over to the store. So that’s why I didn’t have lunch.”