The Girl of the Lake Read online

  “He does seem it,” Miller said. “Just this side of control.”

  “So long as he doesn’t drink.”

  “He’s a hell of an actor. I’ll keep him close.”

  “He could have been a Postlewaite. That’s what I’m trying to say.”

  “He will be yet.”

  “No, never. And he knows it, too. He’s a case study in self-destruction.”

  Suddenly the druid sun hit the daily slot between the neighboring buildings and filled the office with light. Shielding her eyes, Marcia came to Miller, put her cheek firmly against his, welcome touch, said very softly, “Miller Malloy, you’re getting too big for your britches.” She took his hands, and they shared a long moment affectionate as between any couple, all that Miller needed, he told himself, thirstily lapping every single drop.

  JOHN POSTLEWAITE HAD DEMANDED the Royal Shakespeare’s Tamara Keith for director and Tamara had consented, if expensively. Using the two names in tandem, Miller had presold every ticket to every show, added a week, and presold all of those tickets, too. And not only that, with his new price points they’d doubled the take while making two long rows of unprecedented five-dollar student seats available balcony rear, the area where lights had once been stored, made accessible by the new fire egress Miller had seen built. More important, he was pulling in grants they’d never before had a chance at. This year, all of the actors would be paid, and handsomely, even while the endowment continued to surge.

  The start of rehearsals at Rocky Pond Theater was always a heady time, but more so this year. The renovations were complete, a dozen new professional actors had joined the company, the crew had arrived, the college interns, the groundskeepers, also a daily cohort of volunteers, and Sir John Postlewaite himself was due at any moment. Sir John! Already five days late, but never mind. Marcia had discovered that he was over eighty years old, perhaps perfect for Lear, but theirs was going to be an exhausting schedule for such an old fart—why begrudge him a few days? Tamara Keith, reputed dragon, was right on time and so cheery and kind and direct that even her most blunt criticisms came off as love. Miller got his widower’s eye on her. She was sixty years old if a day but cute to him as a campus canary, and appealingly sly: “I see you’ve taken to dressing for me.”

  Which was true.

  She took every single cast member, even the lowliest knights, off for walks and private discussions about their roles, ways to bring surprise and clarity to sometimes difficult lines, bring light to opaque meanings. She confided in Miller, bounced ideas off him (“Let’s light the bloody castle scene with torches . . .” and “Let’s take the entire thing outdoors for an act, scenes in the lake, the whole audience in silent procession to the beach . . .” ), feigned hurt when he shot them down, but let him shoot, called him her producer, knew what she was doing: owning him.

  As a group, they began to block scenes. Miller watched closely, drew maps and diagrams for future reference, studied Tam’s management style, found he admired her more and more hopelessly, noticed the way her tongue traced her lips when she listened, noticed her long body, her dark chocolate skin, ran off on constant errands for her, whatever she needed (those torches he’d thought he’d nixed). Third day, the company gathered to work on staging the more complicated scenes. It was a given that everyone had their lines down. The action, though, that was the physical body of the play, constant movement to keep away from that kind of amateur stasis that ruins Shakespeare for everyone: flow was Tamara’s specialty, her fame.

  She grew testy, visibly unhappy with the sword fighting and knife play. “You look like you’re in fencing class! Too polite! Kill him! Kill that fucker or die yourself! It’s life and death! It’s not just lines on a page! No, no, no! You look as if you’re playing a childhood game! Clash! Clash! Clatter! Kill!”

  But with the heavy wooden swords, no matter how hard the young actors tried, it remained a game.

  Tamara knew a Hollywood violence choreographer (Miller wanted that title!), and as it happened the fellow was directing a martial arts movie in New York. A couple of phone calls and Miller had secured his services for the cost of travel: another guy who’d do anything for Tamara, and likely anything to get a break from his film, which had reached some kind of financial impasse. He was Park Ji-Hun, known as Honey, Korean, speaker of schematic English, full of cheerful, deadly advice as he took over rehearsal: “If you want to be assassin, push knife upward from belt and in under ribs, spin, then retract.” Big grin. And of course he demonstrated, palming a big, very real knife just as his hand hit Miller’s chest in an upward stroke, so convincingly that everyone screamed. Even Miller thought he’d been punctured, exhilarating relief to find he was not. Honey let everyone have a try. Jack Dance was extraordinary at it, stalked the stage killing everyone realistically to shouts and laughter.

  Honey just kept grinning, moved on: “If your character is amateur killer? Fist around handle, so. Turn wrist down on impact, so! Loud grunt helps!” And he made a few Psycho plunges with his knife, accompanying shouts and groans, genuine horror in it. Late in the morning, he switched out the Rocky Pond prop swords for real ones he was willing to loan and coached Edmund and Edgar, who were already pretty good (years of fencing class and attendant delicacy—Tamara had been right—these dedicated pretty boys, not exactly street toughs). Honey offered a dozen simple tricks for making it all look real, even live and close-up. You caught the sword under your arm, sure, but it was all in how the victim snapped his head, the aggressor arched his back, all about the noises you made, the surprise you evinced at dying.

  Honey suggested a siesta, that everyone take a rest, unheard of, but off to inns and the company dorm went one and all (Mr. Park with Tamara, as Miller sussed out: They were lovers! Damn!). Afterward, Honey gave an amazing class on using the motions and interactions of violence in scenes that weren’t violent, very useful in Lear. Stabbing motions, feints, dodges, all weaponless, all while saying age-old lines, brilliant. And strong praise for Jack Dance: “Brutal.” And then they all practiced dying and reacting to death. “Don’t let go easy!” Honey kept saying. And, “Look him in the eye!” Death, he meant.

  (Miller, observing, kept thinking of Lou’s late lying in hospice—seventy pounds and fearless—then one morning a long whispered sentence, eye contact eternal, her last great scene.)

  SIR JOHN POSTLEWAITE WAS, as it turned out, a very lovely gentleman, made his entrance as Honey Park made his exit. He rode in a limo from New York, using his own driver on his own schedule, swept onstage unannounced during the first read-through (clearly on intelligence from Tamara Keith), gaily interrupting everything. He shook each hand superciliously, already playing Lear. His presence was electric, pure magnetism. He greeted his favorite knights, snarled at the disfavored lords, disdained his youngest daughter, Cordelia (a beautiful, hurt Russian actress with very formal English), fatherly kissed Goneril (the estimable Emma Murdock), kissed Regan, too (Lois Tremaine, smelling of wine and swooning), cried, “Let’s simply begin! I call for Kent!”

  Someone had warned him about Jack Dance.

  Who else but Tamara Keith? She called for silence, and sober Jack took the stage in the plain daylight streaming through the barn doors, act 1, scene 4. He was loyal Kent, come back to aid his addled Lord Lear, though Lear has by that time in the play banished him. Kent has disguised himself as Caius, and so Jack was a man playing a man playing another, famous lines—“If but as well I other accents borrow / That can my speech diffuse / my good intent / May . . .” Jack froze, forgetful in the face of Sir John, who glowered. “May . . . My good intent may . . . Goddamn, this isn’t how it’s done. With all you goddamn knights looming in the wings. Quiet back there!”

  “Speech,” said Tamara Keith bluntly.

  Jack pulled himself up, got stuck in the same spot.

  And here came Sir John Postlewaite, dressed as Lear (every rehearsal was full dress for him), trundling onstage and saying Jack’s lines for him, suddenly an entirely differ
ent person: Sir John as Lear as Kent as Caius. When he finished, a flourish, he said, “That’s how it’s done. Now enter Lear!”

  “Yes,” said Tamara Keith. “That indeed is how it’s done. Enter Lear!”

  Jack flushed mightily, clenched his fists as the knights’ positions backstage were resumed, gripped the invisible knives Honey had taught as Lear retreated. Jack made his entrance again, continued forward through the whole scene, gave the reading of his life opposite the best Lear he possibly ever could have imagined, Sir John’s power flowing into him. The knights, twelve actors from around the English-speaking world, applauded when the scene was done.

  Miller Malloy shouted, too. He was proud of his own manipulations, sometimes too proud, pride going before a fall, all that, and sorry, Lou (who hated secrets, machinations of any kind, the misuse of psychology, deliberate misdirection, what Miller thought of as business).

  “Jack, that was screamingly beautiful,” said Tamara. “You have invented a Kent I’ve never seen, steadfast but wounded as well, suppressing narcissistic injury. It’s genius.”

  “Well,” Jack said as the applause continued.

  The (very expensive) Hendrick’s gin, never opened at the party, was missing from the milking room pantry, Miller noticed. And then proceeded to think everything through as well, working from the signs. Jack was going to be great as Kent. But Jack would need extra love for the entire run. As much love as Miller could find in his heart, which was, Lou always said, a very great lot. Some efforts at containment for Jack, a good talking to, but primarily love and respect and kindness, a firm grip. And Jack would be great, and would ride the greatness into his role as Felix, and that was the big picture going forward. And all for the future of Rocky Pond.

  Which Lou had loved.

  MILLER MALLOY OBSERVED EVERY minute of every rehearsal, watched the unattainable Tamara give notes after, and (expressly invited by both) sat in on every session she had with Lear in his dressing room: acting lessons, basically, and nothing defensive about Sir John Postlewaite. He’d nod his head and think a moment. “Like this?” he’d say. And try her suggestion without prejudice, very impressive, also moving: the consummate pro, still growing.

  And she’d say, “Yes, yes.”

  Jack Dance was more brittle, of course, but in the end he always came around, saw what Tamara was doing for him, always made a crack about Miller’s presence. But with a man so difficult, Tam felt a witness made the discussions go better and helped make everyone’s memory line up if later there were complaints or differences. Jack called her a snob, called her meddling, called her distant, called her worse than that, but only behind her back, and harmless.

  Tamara, far from being aloof, took the whole company under her wing. They were various and many of them young, and they reacted to her, Miller noticed, in wildly divergent ways. The actors (all but Jack) thought her a special personal ally; each in turn told Miller that she favored him or her. The lady was frank, she was loving, she had a gift, praised the actors for what wasn’t yet emerging and thereby made it emerge.

  Management style, Miller had always called it, sexy as hell. He stuffed down his growing crush, redirected the energy, all for Rocky Pond!

  Quickly it became apparent that Sir John Postlewaite was not all there. He didn’t remember lines and, more upsetting, gave whole speeches from the The Merchant of Venice and Macbeth. He’d exit left when he was supposed to exit right. He’d sit when he was supposed to stand. He’d gather Lois in a clinch backstage and soul-kiss her in front of anyone. (Lois seemed to take it in stride—perhaps a great deal more was going on after hours.) He’d arrive from the elegant Inn of the Lakes still wearing pajama bottoms, his hair wildly uncombed. But despite all, he was Postlewaite, and Postlewaite was Lear!

  Miller took up position in the wings and served as Sir John’s personal prompter. The other actors compensated, too. Something so very likeable about the great man. If he faltered, just repeat the cue as if in reverie: give the old crumpet a chance.

  Jack Dance was impatient, though. “Goddamn!” he’d shout. “Just say the goddamn line, Sir John!”

  And Postlewaite would freeze him with a glance.

  Miller took it upon himself to run lines with Sir John every morning, keep that memory fresh, enjoyed realizing that he was as off-book as the actors, knew all the lines by heart, every word of the play, made himself a further resource.

  Betimes, the professional stagehands built the sets (earning scale!) — including a scary heath complete with real birch trees. At the second dress rehearsal, standing in the wrong place among them, Postlewaite drifted into lines from Hamlet, Hamlet talking to Yorick’s skull: “I knew him, Horatio,” very moving, brilliant in fact, wrong play. But Jack Dance had had it. He stormed off the scene, kicked a panel of the castle set out of his way, exited the theater by way of the milking parlor pantry, stormed out the barn doors at the back with two bottles of expensive red wine in each hand, total silence in his wake, perhaps his greatest performance ever, his car starting after some grinding, his tires spinning in the gravel lot.

  “Sir John!” Tamara Keith pleaded. “This is Lear, you are Lear!”

  “Indeed,” Postlewaite said unperturbed.

  “John,” Miller called from the wings. “John, it’s: ‘Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!’ ”

  “We used to giggle at that line,” John said happily.

  “ ‘Blow winds,’ ” Miller repeated.

  John gazed at him with pity, found his place: “And crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow! / You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout / Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks!” He giggled expressively, seemed fourteen. “Drown your cocks and crack your cheeks! Blow winds!” He didn’t notice that no one else laughed.

  Or that then everyone laughed. And that then a great hubbub broke out. Tomorrow was opening night. John kept giggling.

  “From ‘Blow, winds,’ ” Tamara said gently when he had subsided. “And really great preparation, sir. The madness has infected you.”

  “Blow winds,” John said again, but mightily, no trace of the sillies. And onward: “And crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow! / You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout / till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks! / You sulphurous and thought-executing fires, / Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts, / Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder, / Strike flat the thick rotundity o’ the world! / Crack nature’s moulds, all germens spill at once / that make ingrateful man!”

  The doomed fool, played by Mark Berryman, a real comedian (brilliant casting—thanks to Tamara), said his scorching lines, then Lear ranted further. Then Berryman, beautiful rhythm and energy between them.

  And then, of course, everyone realized that Kent was not there to say his lines. Miller let but a beat pass and stepped out, a fair imitation of Jack’s entrance, good enough.

  And Lear said, “No, I will be the pattern of all patience; / I will say nothing.”

  “Who’s there?” Miller Malloy said, a force he’d never felt before filling him, equal parts desire, sadness, ambition, despair, and the feeling, weird, of being another man, also sudden terror that was not entirely his own.

  They finished the scene and Lear hastened away across the heath, mad soliloquy breaking every heart in the house, from soundman to intern to actor to director—certainly Miller’s. To end, Sir John staggered forward to the edge of the stage, collapsed in desolation, truly a thing of beauty, searing, forceful, commanding. But it was out of place.

  Miller tried an ad lib: “Come, my king. Up and to the hovel.”

  The king swayed to his feet and looked out over the empty seats of the theater. He roared, he shook his staff, he roared again. Then he cast Miller’s or Kent’s arm off him, spun and swept away, Lear’s last proud moment. But, compass broken, Sir John had swept the wrong direction, swept in all his glory right off the stage and into the orchestra pit, where he crashed onto the kettle drums and crumpled like a bag of sticks and wet leav
es, the drums making a sound like thunder, the great actor nothing now but an old man lying bleeding and unconscious on a cement floor.

  JACK DANCE’S BIG OPPORTUNITY had come, but Jack Dance was nowhere to be found. Opening night was Thursday, a sold-out house, the Donor Dinner beforehand. And Thursday was day after tomorrow. Miller had accompanied Sir John to the hospital, confirmed that his injuries were not life threatening, contacted all of the great actor’s people, assured he’d be in good hands, and then he called Jack, left three careful messages, each building on the last—logic, then pleading, then full supplication—all while driving back to the theater. There, he and Marcia huddled. She was devastated about Sir John but agreed Jack Dance was their only choice, tried a different tactic with him: unveiled threats. In the end, after they’d both left messages for the old shit all over New Hampshire and New York and even Los Angeles, they started on Florida, enlisting Jack’s ex-wife Candy, but come morning, there was no Jack to be found. Lakes County Regional Hospital had confirmed that Sir John was out for the duration with a broken hip, broken jaw, and bruised ribs, about to be airlifted via private medical jet to England. At least he was only blaming himself.

  The day’s rehearsals started as usual at 10 a.m. Tamara Keith called the company together, no sign of panic. “Tomorrow is opening night,” she said. “And tomorrow we go on.” She pointed at one of the young knights of Lear’s retinue. “You are now Gentleman.” She pointed at the able fellow who’d been playing Gentleman, a kid from the Yale School of Drama. “You are now Kent.”

  The new Gentleman quailed, but the Yale kid said, “My pleasure,” with comic flair, and everyone saw he could do it.

  Tamara squashed down her afro, pulled it back high, squashed it down again, unconscious gestures of worry to which she finally gave voice: “You’ve both got some lines to learn. We’ll run it three times today, run-through, off-book after lunch, dress after dinner. Tomorrow we’re off till curtain. Stage doors open four o’clock. Be here no later than five.”