Broken for You Page 4

  She slept exclusively with actors after that—right up to the moment when she met Peter. Always on the go, always leaving, always looking ahead to the next big part, they had a flighty but infectious spirit. They made her laugh. She got to watch their spotlit hammy antics from the obscurity of the sidelines; she liked that, too. And as she learned early on from Brian McConnell, good actors have a knack for improvisation, making them naturally gifted when it comes to sex—which is, of course, under the best of conditions a highly improvisatory event. But all that playfulness and self-absorption had a downside; eventually Wanda’s thespian paramours started to resemble the Lost Boys of Never-Never Land, and since she had no desire to be anyone’s mother, invariably the time would come for them to part. She was very careful to manage her personal dealings with actors as well as her professional ones, so that her affairs always ended amicably. This was important. Among stage folk, it is said that there are only thirty-three people in the theatre. To Wanda’s colleagues, this expression has a generalized, benign meaning: “Everyone is connected, part of a family. Everyone knows someone you know.” But to Wanda, it meant, “Don’t burn any bridges, and don’t screw and tell.” She had never left bad feelings in the wake of a breakup.

  Of course, she also had to interact closely with many other kinds of theatre professionals—directors and designers and light board operators and theatre technicians—and she strictly forbade herself from becoming romantically involved with any of them. She had to write cues, record blocking, attend production meetings, run rehearsals, oversee the running crews, command the proceedings of tech and dress rehearsals, maintain the quality and consistency of the show throughout its run. And she was good, very good, at all of it. But it was her ability to deal with actors—her skills as a peacemaker and go-between, her ability to smooth ruffled feathers, soothe bruised egos, and, when required, lay down the law—that made her a first-rate stage manager, one who could, based on word of mouth, her experience, and her qualifications, get work anywhere. She’d already secured a job at the biggest theatre in town, and she was confident that other jobs would follow. That part of her life, at least—the work part, where she was functional, extremely competent, and sane—would settle into a familiar routine.

  This move into Margaret’s house, however, was something entirely new, and she was mildly nervous about it. She had never in her adult life shared a living space with anyone but Peter. She had certainly never lived in a mansion with a woman of Margaret’s age and apparent social standing.

  Good thing I was able to get my shit together before she threw me out of the house, she thought, remembering how she’d rattled on about Peter and all but swooned in front of a total stranger. ‘I came to him like a pilgrim?’ Where the hell did THAT come from?

  Wanda walked over to Mickey and Minnie, pulled them toward her face, and inhaled. Nothing there but extra-strength Tide and fabric softener. She yanked the towel down and kicked it out of the way. Drawing close to the mirror, she stared at her face for the first time in two weeks. She looked like hell. She reached up and gave a few firm, quick tugs to her right eyebrow, then her left; several weak-looking, dark, curving hairs stuck to her finger and thumb. She flicked them onto the floor.

  “Thank God I’m getting out of here,” she said out loud. “Thank God for Mrs. Hughes.”

  By cab, Wanda’s first trip to Margaret’s had been an easy twenty-minute ride, culminating in an ascent up a winding street so dark and densely wooded that, even encased in the safety of a taxi, Wanda had felt like an endangered character in a Grimm fairy tale. But the woods cleared at the top of the hill, and there was the Hughes mansion.

  “Are you sure this is the right place?” Wanda had asked the cabdriver.

  He looked down at the piece of paper she’d handed him when she got in the cab. “Yeah. This is it. You’re gonna rent a room here?”

  “Maybe.” Wanda kept her eyes on the house as she gathered her things.

  The Hughes residence—which sat on a huge lot in a neighborhood where all the houses were mansions—was astonishing: towering ornate pillars, tiered and cantilevered porches, multipeaked roof, leaded and stained glass windows. There was even an adjacent carriage house. But beneath all this grandeur, Wanda sensed something tired and sad. An art historian would have described the Hughes mansion as a splendid example of early-nineteenth-century Neoclassic/Romantic hybridism; but to Wanda, the house looked like a big neglected wedding cake.

  “Geez. How much rent are they gonna be chargin’ you?”

  Wanda paid the cabbie and got out of the car. “Not nearly enough.” Then she started up the steps toward the massive front porch.

  She’d be a perfect Mother Abbess, Wanda thought when Margaret opened the door. Solid and androgynous, she looked nothing like her voice—which on the phone had been oddly high-pitched and squeaky. Margaret’s eyes, though, were the real surprise. They were shimmering, reflective. The turquoise of a glacial lake on the fairest day of summer. It was her eyes, Wanda decided later, that had disarmed her so completely. Why else would she have launched into her long confessional about Peter and come so utterly undone? Stupid. She’d nearly ruined her chance to win what had to be the best rental bargain in the city.

  The inside of the house was as remarkable as the outside. It had been built in 1909, Margaret explained, at a time when wealth from the Alaskan gold rush and the accompanying timber and shipping industries had begun transforming Seattle into a boomtown. Her father had been an investor in these growing industries. “He was good at making money,” she said dryly.

  The house was fifteen thousand square feet—the floor space of an average three-bedroom home, Wanda calculated, multiplied by ten—and it contained one amazing architectural feature after another: parquet floors, gilded canvas murals, carved oak columns and capitals, ornate plaster ceilings, brass fixtures, marbled and tiled fireplaces. Just this side of rococo, all of it was glistening and pristine and impeccably maintained. The outside of the house and its grounds may have been suffering from neglect, but on the inside, it could have been brand new.

  And then there were Margaret’s things. They were kept in glass-fronted built-in and freestanding cabinets which lined the walls of virtually every room in the house. The dining room alone contained what had to be thousands of pieces of functional dinnerware, coffee and tea sets, and serving pieces. Margaret identified a few of these, listing their names with detachment, as if she were reading from an insurance schedule. “Sherbet pails, 1781. Pigeon pie tureen, 1851. Chocolate service, 1815. Cheese bell, 1870. Tête-à-tête, 1775. Oyster stand, 1862. Strawberry dish, 1868. Ewer and basin, 1790. Coffeepot, 1730 …”

  As they moved through the rest of the house, Wanda discovered that there were even more pieces that were purely decorative. In the small downstairs parlor, one cabinet contained animals in general—cats, foxes, sheep, squirrels, horses, lions, elephants, camels, cows—while another was devoted to various breeds of porcelain dogs. The large parlor was populated with grouped figures: hunting parties, mothers and children, cupids, courting peasants, boccie players, Greek gods. And on and on …

  “Are all of these porcelain?” Wanda had asked.

  “Not all, but many.”

  “Where did they come from?”

  “My father. He owned an antique shop in addition to his investments. Here’s the library.”

  The walls were lined with floor-to-ceiling bookcases. One of these had been appropriated for Margaret’s collection of single human figures (dancers, soldiers, circus performers, map sellers, slaves, kings, musicians, and two entire commedia dell’arte troupes); the other cases were full of books. Most of them were related to art and art history, antiques, ceramics and porcelain, fine furniture. There were classic works of fiction as well (Dickens, the Brontë girls, Thomas Hardy) and another large nonfiction section was devoted mostly to World War II, religion, and European history.

  “I hope you like to read,” Margaret had said, completely without iron
y. “I would want whoever takes the room to feel free to borrow anything from the library, anytime.”

  The downstairs guest quarters, which Margaret referred to as “the Aviary Suite,” housed porcelain birds: swans, peacocks, geese, quail, pheasant, parakeets, falcons, ducks, and a single golden eagle. Each of the upstairs bedrooms, too, were identified by their contents: the Bonbon Dish Room, the Smoke and Snuff Room, the Game Pie Tureen Room, and so on. Margaret’s room was full of porcelain children. The room that would be Wanda’s displayed glossy pyramids of vividly colored food.

  What struck Wanda as even stranger than the volume of Margaret’s possessions was the laconic way in which she described them, the obvious lack of pleasure she took in being their owner. Wanda noticed that certain names (Factory names, maybe? Manufacturers?) came up again and again: Capodimonte, Meissen, Popov, Sevres, Vincennes. She memorized bits of new terminology: soft-paste, hard-paste, biscuit-ware, majolica.

  “Maybe you can tell me,” Wanda ventured. “I’ve never really known what porcelain is exactly, what makes it prized.”

  Margaret answered in her odd, emotionless manner. “It’s won where found.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “There are two general categories of clay. Primary or residual clay is ‘won’—retrieved—from the same place on earth where it was formed, thousands of years ago.”

  “And that’s an advantage?”

  “Primary clay—like china, from which porcelain is made—has never been transported from its original site, so it’s very pure. Some people value that sort of thing.”

  They had arrived at the end of the tour and were on the third-floor ballroom, where a vast collection of ornate candleholders was exhibited.

  “What’s the other category?” Wanda was less interested in clay at this point than in Margaret’s manner of response. How could she know so much about this stuff and care so little?

  “Secondary or sedimentary clays. They travel.” Finally Margaret stopped sounding like a bad recording of a boring textbook. “For centuries, they travel. Carried along by wind, rain, ice. They’re won thousands of miles from where they were initially formed.”

  “So they’re less pure.”

  “Yes. But because they’ve been buffeted about for such a long time, they’re composed of smaller particles.”

  “And that’s good because—?”

  “Smaller particle size means greater plasticity. On the other hand, china clay—being composed of large particles—is more rigid, harder to work with.”

  “Ah. It suffers no fools.” Wanda meant it as a joke, but Margaret looked so startled and tense that she feared she’d offended her.

  Margaret turned away. “That’s it, then. That’s the whole house.” She began moving through the ballroom, turning off the chandeliers and wall sconces. Her footsteps were heavy on the oak planks of the ballroom floor, their returning echoes even heavier. “Let’s go downstairs.”

  Wanda asked no further questions, certainly not the one which had been at the forefront of her mind: Fifteen thousand square feet? Eleven bedrooms? And you live here alone?

  Wanda took another sip of cold coffee and studied her city map and bus schedules. Getting to Margaret’s by bus was not going to be easy or quick; she’d have to walk several blocks to catch the first of two buses, transfer to the second bus, and hike another quarter of a mile to the top of the hill. It would take at least forty-five minutes to get there. She had just enough time to pack her small inventory of possessions, settle her account with the good people of the Young Women’s Christian Association, and be on her way. She grabbed her backpack and a small cardboard box from under her cot.

  Into the backpack went:

  1. Clothes: functional, tasteful, casual; a stage manager’s wardrobe, which meant nothing too feminine or suggestive—Wanda had learned long ago that women of a small build, if they want to command any kind of authority, can’t look too girly—but nothing too slouchy either. Pants and shirts, slightly tailored. Jeans, tees, and sweats for Mondays off. A black dress for opening nights. No jewelry.

  2. Shoes: a pair of hiking boots, a pair of tennis shoes, and a pair of really brazen, really expensive fuck-me pumps to go with the opening night dress. Once in a while it was okay to look girly.

  Into the cardboard box went:

  1. Papers: Wanda’s resumés, the city map, the bus schedules, legal papers, bank statements, letters of recommendation, old journals,

  2. The French press coffeemaker and two pounds of French roast,

  3. A small framed black-and-white photograph of a woman bowling, and

  4. A postcard featuring a sunset view of Mount Rainier and the Seattle skyline—“As seen from Kerry Park on Queen Anne Hill, Seattle is always beautiful.”—that had been mailed a little over two months ago. It was addressed to Wanda in care of her Chicago relatives and had been forwarded to Wanda’s New York address by her aunt Maureen. Wanda had received the postcard one month after Peter left.

  Aunt Maureen routinely forwarded Wanda’s mail. There was no special mention of the postcard in Maureen’s accompanying letter, and Wanda almost didn’t find it; it was squeezed between a credit card solicitation and Wanda’s Northwestern University alumnae magazine.

  Even though the postcard bore no message or return address, and the sender had obviously made an effort to disguise his handwriting, Wanda knew it was from Peter.

  Within two days, she had given up the loft and located someone who needed a New York-to-Seattle drive-away—a nice Manhattan programmer who’d been hired by Microsoft. She loaded her backpack and cardboard box into the backseat. She clipped the postcard to the visor and consulted her cross-country map: I-80 west and turn right at Cheyenne. What could be simpler?

  At first, she was confident. It was so like Peter—to tell her in this indirect way where he was, even though he said he wanted to be alone. To express his need for her without words. To make no overt demands.

  He might not even know why he sent the postcard, Wanda thought, serenely navigating Interstate 80 as it caressed the Appalachian Mountains. He might not realize how much he needs me. He probably still thinks he wants to be alone. He’s probably that delusional.

  She inched through traffic jams and construction slowdowns in Illinois, not stopping in Chicago to see her relatives. They weren’t expecting her; and besides, there wasn’t enough time.

  Maybe he thinks he’s doing me a favor by leaving me. Maybe he worries that loving him is too hard. Doesn’t he think I know he’s troubled? Doesn’t he think I’ve taken that into consideration? I’ve had my eyes open. I’m no fool. I can take it.

  She drove the length of the Nebraska panhandle without seeing another living soul. She started chewing her fingernails and developed a hair-pulling habit.

  On the other hand, maybe he really does want to be alone. Maybe he doesn’t want to be found.

  She drank truck stop coffee. She listened to CDs of Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Earl Hines, Rassan Roland Kirk.

  Fuck, she thought by the time she crossed the Rockies, I have no idea what he’s thinking.

  But it was too late to turn back. After Wanda merged onto I-90, she drove the last twenty-four hours nonstop, making the trip from New York to Seattle in only five days.

  Wanda stuffed the morning paper and the now-empty coffee cup into the trash can. She left Mickey and Minnie where they lay. She pulled Peter’s name off the wall, crushed it into a ball, and then tucked it into her jeans pocket. She was almost done.

  Under Wanda’s pillow were the last two things to go into the box:

  1. A small red and black journal.

  2. The Book: a dog-eared, repeatedly highlighted paperback called Creative Visualization. She’d bought it shortly before chasing Peter to Seattle.

  The Book put forth the theory that what a person envisions is what a person attracts, so that if you envision loss, despair, loneliness, etc., that is indeed what will befall you. The Book also claimed that a
ll of us lie to ourselves all the time, so why not tell positive lies—known as “affirmations”—instead of negative ones?

  For example, if Wanda felt like writing, “Nobody will ever love me again,” which, according to the book’s author, was a lie, she wrote instead, “A loving relationship awaits me.” If Wanda felt like writing, “All men are fucked-up dickwads who deserve to die,” she forced her hand into a steady calmness and wrote instead, “There are good men in the world, somewhere.” If she felt like writing, “Fuck the survival of the species. The world would be better off if humans became extinct,” she wrote, “Save the whales.” And if she felt her spooks coming on, those familiar voices that said, “You’re going to die alone. People started leaving you when you were six years old and they’re going to keep on leaving you, so why bother?” she would print, as if she were competing for a penmanship prize, “I love myself. I. Love. Myself. I do not need another person’s love to make me whole”; and she would think, What a load of bullshit, and watch the clear, precise lines of her script blur and melt into unrecognizable watery blobs.

  If all else failed, she would copy the affirmation that was supposed to be the be-all and end-all of all affirmations: “This, or something better, will manifest for me for the highest good of the universe.”

  She called this affirmation the New Age Hail Mary. Lately, she’d had to use it a lot.

  Wanda checked out of the YWCA, strode to the bus stop, and made the next bus with time to spare. Putting the cardboard box under her seat and the backpack in her lap, she settled in and began studying the other passengers, row by row, face by face, looking for Peter. One couldn’t be too careful; he probably knew Wanda had come looking for him and would avoid her if he could. Furthermore, he was probably wearing a disguise.

  After the first few stops, Wanda noticed a large woman getting on the bus. Her hairdo was suspicious; it looked like a Gabor sisters wig. Her broad hands were gloved. She wore dark glasses. Wanda thought she could detect a faint, smudgy shadow over her upper lip.