She opened the purse and closed it again, emanating mystification from every pore.
“Forget about it,” I said, stubbing out my cigarette next to my shoe.
So I was never to know anything about the photograph and Marlene was such a good actress that I suddenly doubted whether I had actually seen it.
“I must be off,” she said, glancing at her watch. “I’m lunching with the board.”
I slipped the card into my shirt pocket. “Thanks for this,” I said. “It means a lot.”
“Let me know what happens. My address is on the front.”
“I will,” I promised, and I did. When I got back to the city the third call I made was to Barney Marker. “Mr. Day,” his assistant said. “Yes, Ms. Webern spoke with Mr. Marker about you. Can you come in on Wednesday in the afternoon?”
The second call I made was to Teddy.
“You’re back at last,” Teddy said. “Come over at seven and we’ll go get dinner somewhere. I’ve got a lot to tell you.”
The first call was to Madeleine. I left a message with the service. “Tell her I’m back,” I said. “She knows the number.”
“O
h my God, you’re a blond,” Teddy cried when he opened the door. “It’s a totally new you.”
“Not for long,” I said as we exchanged an awkward hug. “Getting it done is torture and it fries your hair.” I followed him into his kitchen where he immediately began pouring out glasses of Scotch.
“Let’s have a drink before we go out,” he said.
Teddy looked different too, though just how I couldn’t say. He seemed lighter, more buoyant. He was wearing a stylish beige linen jacket, expensive, definitely Italian, which was odd, because Teddy was generally indifferent to fashion. His ironic woebegoneness, partly attributable to his face and partly to his disposition, was in place, but there was a brightness about him I’d never seen before. His habitual lethargy had been replaced by something more sinuous and expansive. “You look great,” I said.
“Did I look bad before?”
“I don’t know. You look happy.”
“I am. I really am.”
“Do you have a job?”
This made him laugh. “Not exactly, but in a way yes, I do. Or maybe not.” He handed me a glass and we went out to the sitting room. There was a large painting I hadn’t seen before hanging over the fake fireplace, very dark with dots of bright color that made me think of lights on a bridge at night.
“That’s new,” I observed.
“It is,” he said. We sat in the armchairs which had been turned to face the painting. “So how was it? Were you a success?”
“I was,” I said. “It was great. It changed my life.”
“I’ve had a transforming summer myself.”
“So what do you mean about the job? Do you have one or don’t you?”
“I do. It’s a new part for me. I’m in love.”
“That’s not true. You’re always in love,” I said.
“But this time it’s different.”
“It’s requited,” I suggested.
“It is so requited.” He sipped his drink, his eyes alight with amusement.
“Is it Jasmine?”
“No. But that’s a good guess. It is someone in her family.”
“She has a sister?”
“No. She has a brother, no sisters.”
“It’s not Mrs. Lee!”
He sputtered with delight. “No, no, not Mrs. Lee.”
“You look like you’re going to pop,” I said. “Who is it?”
“It’s Jasmine’s brother,” he said. “Wayne.”
“You’re joking,” I said. And it was a good joke, but I failed to see the point of it.
“I’ve never been more serious in my life.”
My jaw went slack with amazement. “I see you’ve been keeping something from me,” I said.
“I’ve been keeping something from myself. And it’s been killing me. Slowly, slowly, year after year.”
“I’m dumbfounded,” I said.
“I know you are. I was too.”
“Give me a little more Scotch for the shock and tell me exactly how this happened,” I said.
“I can’t wait to tell you,” he said, passing the bottle. I settled
in my chair, ready for a story packed with my favorite subject, unexpected and powerfully conflicted emotions.
“You know Jasmine and I hit it off that night we met her at the restaurant, and after you left we went out a few times. Mindy was giving me such a hard time and Jasmine is a sprite and so undemanding it was a relief to be with her. One night she invited me to dinner with the family—to taste real Chinese food, she said—though I think she’d already figured out more about me than I knew about myself The inscrutable Chinese, you know. We don’t get them but they see right through us.
“So I went down there and it was her parents, the aunt, Mrs. Lee, who you met, and her husband—he doesn’t speak English—and Jasmine’s brother, Wayne, who was in the kitchen when I arrived. He’s an incredible cook. I was sitting at the table with the family when he came in carrying a tray of the most fabulous dumplings and when I saw him my heart just stopped. All I thought was, What a handsome man. Jasmine introduced him and I stood up to shake hands, and I tell you Ed, the look he gave me went through me like a skewer through a hot dog. Then we all sat down and pitched into the dumplings and everyone started talking half in Chinese and half in English. This went on for about six courses. At one point Wayne was bringing out a platter of noodles and he lowered it to the table from behind me. I said something idiotic like ‘I love noodles,’ and he laughed. Then he put his hand on my shoulder, just the lightest squeeze and he said, ‘So you like Chinese noodles,’ and everyone laughed hysterically. They’re very giddy, that family; they laugh a lot. So different from dinner at the pater’s; I can’t tell you.
“The evening wore on and I learned that Wayne was a painter and he’s even had a few pictures in shows. He works in a gallery in SoHo and has a studio in the East Village, and everyone in the family knows he’ll be a great painter and they’re proud of him. Again, the opposite of my experience.”
“East meets West,” I said.
“It was just mind-boggling. I kept drinking rice wine and trying not to look at Wayne, but it was hopeless. And I was having a good time. Jasmine was being enormously sweet, and the mother wanted to know all about Stella Adler—she thinks Jasmine should study with her. The mother is completely informed about theater, which is astounding. Anyway, somehow I got through it without fainting away, and as I was leaving Wayne said I really should come by his studio to see his work. I said I’d be very interested in that, and he said, ‘Come tomorrow,’ which was a Sunday. ‘I’ll be there all day.’ So I said I would come around four and he told me the address and that was that.”
“So you went to the studio,” I said.
“I did. But first I came home, of course, and tried to make some sense of what had happened to me. I sat in this chair and drank a big glass of Scotch and halfway through I started crying.”
“You felt sad?”
“I felt scared. I was scared to death. I decided not to go. I couldn’t deal with it. Then I’d think of that little squeeze on my shoulder and I knew I had to go, and that made me cry harder. I cried all night. I hardly slept at all. On Sunday I just read the paper and drank coffee all day, trying not to know what was
going to happen. I told myself he was just a friendly Chinese man and I’d go see the pictures and we’d have a nice chat about the art scene. The hours dragged by; I think I read every single line of the entire Sunday
Times
. Then, at last, it was time to go. I was wired to the limit from no sleep and the tears and then all the coffee; I’d eaten one piece of toast. I arrived at the door—it’s more like a garage door, it slides open—and I rang the bell. There was this sound like the gate of a prison rolling back and there he was.
“We went inside and he offered me some herbal tea which was really welcome. We started talking about the dinner and the family and what Jasmine should do about her career. I felt completely comfortable. I took my tea and he showed me around the studio—it’s pretty bare, very Zen, though Wayne’s not a Buddhist—and I walked around looking at the paintings everywhere. He’s done a lot of work. Some were stacked against the walls and some were hung up. I went along admiring each one and I stopped at this one.” Teddy looked up at the painting over the fireplace. “This fantastic picture.”
“It’s his?” I said needlessly.
“Oh yes. Do you like it?”
“Yes,” I said. “I do.”
“I stopped in front of it and I said something, who knows what. What did I say? My heart was just racing. Wayne came up beside me and he did the dearest thing; he just put his arm around my shoulder and he said, ‘You like this one particularly?’
“‘I do,’ I said. He took the teacup away from me and put it on the floor and then he stood between me and the picture and
put his arms around me and kissed me. And all I could think was, God help me, I’m in love with a Chinese man.” Teddy paused, allowing me to savor the moment.
“Amazing story,” I said.
“It is,” he agreed. “I’ve been waiting for you to get back so I could tell you.”
“Does anyone else know about it?”
“Oh yes. But not the details. And of course my family knows nothing about it yet. The pater will disinherit me when he finds out.”
“That’s big.”
“It is. But there’s nothing to be done about it.” He said this frankly, without self-pity, as if he was describing an approaching weather system.
“So,” I said. “You’re out of the closet.”
He frowned. “I’ve never liked that expression. But it’s apt, I guess. That whole business about being in a closet, it irritates me. I always picture this absurd fag standing just behind the door, stripping down to his briefs and then—BAM—he kicks that door open and leaps out singing, ‘I Gotta Be Me.’” He sang this line in a thin falsetto that made me laugh.
“But I wasn’t just behind the door, Ed, I was way, way back in the darkest corner of the closet, behind the coats and the old badminton sets, and the snow boots, just crouched back there like a little mouse nibbling on crumbs I found in the coat pockets, and it was dark and I was scared, and also sad. I’ve been so sad for so long.”
I considered this confession. “It made you kind,” I said. “And it made you an actor.”
“But not a
good
actor. That’s one of the things I’ve been sad about. And here’s a really funny part. A few weeks after that kiss, I had to do a scene for Ms. Adler and I just ripped right through it; I felt absolutely confident and powerful as I never have before, and when it was over she said, ‘Well, Mr. Winter-bottom, I see that I am a very talented teacher.’ Poor old lady, she thought it was her teaching that finally got me to some kind of breakthrough, but it had nothing to do with her. It was my wonderful, beautiful Wayne who led me out of that suffocating darkness I’d been trying to thrive in and into the glorious light that is just pouring over me now, just blinding me with the joy and the freedom of it. When I think of how close I came to marrying Mindy Banks my blood runs cold. My God, Ed, I wake up in the morning feeling absolutely great. I can’t wait to jump out of bed and spend another day basking in this wonderful, wonderful light.”
He’d gotten out of his chair at some point and finished his aria standing beneath the painting, his arms opened wide to embrace his new self. It occurred to me that he’d probably bought the picture from Wayne. Teddy was, after all, rich, at least temporarily, and Wayne was surely poor. “That picture is actually rather dark,” I observed.
Teddy smiled beatifically down upon me. “It is, isn’t it?” he said and we both laughed.
“How did Mindy take the news?”
“Not well. She thinks Wayne will break my heart and I’ll come crawling back to her.”
I thought so too, but I wasn’t going to tell Teddy; it would have been cruel. The whole idea of Teddy’s Chinese man gave
me the creeps. I imagined Jasmine had figured out Teddy was rich and ripe for exploitation by her brother. The whole family may have been in on it. But whatever happened, Teddy was visibly, seriously altered, and I believed what he said about his acting having been hampered by the denial of his sexual attraction to other men. That part made sense. “It’s not going to make your life any easier,” I said. “But it doesn’t look as if you’ve got any choice.”
“Are you shocked?”
“Of course, I’m shocked. But we’re still friends, I hope.”
“I want you to meet Wayne.”
I didn’t want to meet Wayne. I wanted Teddy to get over Wayne and go back to being reserved, ironic, and up for late-night drinking sessions at the Cedar or Phebe’s. “Let’s just wait a little on that,” I said.
He threw himself down in the chair. “No one is happy for me. I don’t understand it.”
“If you’re happy, I’m happy for you. I just need a little time to get used to the new you.”
“Everything’s changing,” he said. “The old crowd is pulling apart. You know about Guy and Madeleine.”
The conjunction of these two names irritated me so much that I squirmed in my chair. “What about them?”
“They’re married.”
“You’re joking,” I said, because surely this was a joke.
“No. They got married a few weeks ago. They went to City Hall. Mindy was a witness.”
“Is she out of her mind?”
“Mindy?”
“No, Madeleine.”
“I don’t think so. But there was motive for haste. She’s pregnant.”
“I know that,” I said.
“She told you?”
“No. Guy told me.”
“I guess it was an accident, but they seem pleased about it. Guy especially.”
“So they’re living together.”
“They are, at his old place. But they’re looking for something better, for when the baby comes.”
Physically speaking, anger is a complex emotion. It takes many forms, depending upon the degree to which it is allowed to be expressed. In our society no one wants either to see it or own to feeling it, so it breaks out in all sorts of inappropriate hostility, particularly in the workplace. It can be slow in developing, gathering force over a long period of time. This is what we mean by the expression “the last straw.” Or it can be quite sudden, full-blown, and overpowering, as in “I saw red.” What I felt at Teddy’s news was largely of this latter variety and I was at pains to conceal it, but there was also something of the slow simmer coming to a boil, something that had known from the first time I saw her that Madeleine would bring me to seeing red. “I can’t believe this,” I said.