Name and address withheld.
The Beheading
The paid previews had begun on the day before Easter.
I spent Easter Sunday with my family in the country, and then packed a bag on Monday afternoon and left for an apartment on West Tenth Street in the Village, graciously loaned to me by two friends who were spending Easter week in Chicago. The apartment was small and comfortable, with one bedroom, a tiny kitchen overlooking an enclosed back yard, and a living room with a real wood-burning fireplace. In the bedroom fronting on Tenth, there was a large double bed with brass headboard and footboard, covered with an opulent red brocade bedspread. A reading lamp hung over the bed on the wall, a radio-alarm clock was on the bedstand beside it, and a note from Dotty was pinned to one of the pillows:
Dear Gene:
The sheets were changed yesterday, there is fresh linen if you need it in the closet near the kitchen. Help yourself to anything in the fridge or the bar, use Mike’s spare razor if you want to, and also my typewriter which is on the desk in the bedroom near the windows. Paper is in second drawer left, erasers, etc. The cleaning woman name of Eudice out of South Carolina comes on Thursday, I’ve already explained you’ll be using the apartment. Have yourself lots and lots of lovely previews, we will be back in time for the opening.
Love,
I read the note and settled in. Actually, there wasn’t very much settling to do since I’d packed only one bag with a half-dozen clean shirts, a sweater, socks, a pair of pajamas, a toothbrush and my own electric razor. I felt strange in an apartment in New York City. Natalie and I had moved to the country shortly before our first child was born. Peter was ten when the play went into rehearsal, which meant that we had been living in the old gray-shingled Cape Cod for close to eleven years. The house had a widow’s walk, and once — while we were still negotiating for rights to the play, and I stayed late in the city over too many martinis — Natalie stood waiting for me on the narrow platform running around the second story of the house, her hands clasped in the classic pose of the seafarer’s wife, back straight, head erect, silhouetted against the dying sun.
I missed her that first night alone in the city. The automobile sounds below seemed incessant. At three a.m., I heard a girl laughing and thought for an insane moment that Natalie was with me in the bedroom. I got out of bed and walked to the window. The girl was wearing a green dress. She was blond, and she was leaning against her escort, helpless with laughter, one hand draped languidly on his shoulder. I went back to bed, and at last I fell asleep. The radio-alarm went off at nine the next morning. Rehearsal was scheduled to start at ten.
By noon, I knew what had to be done.
I suppose I should explain that a strange sort of self-hypnosis gradually overcomes the people working on a play. The writing of a play is a solitary task, but once it has been optioned for production it becomes of necessity a group effort. I used to think that the only pure production of a play was the one the author saw on the stage of his mind while he was writing it. There was no human error then, no actor who might nullify a character through inadequacy or misinterpretation, no director who might call for an emotion never intended, no designer who might visualize a setting contrary to the one the author imagined. There was, instead, a marvelously unique creation, a newborn child who miraculously was not the result of any collaboration, who (as ugly as he may have been) seemed radiantly beautiful to his only parent. I used to think that a play was not only being written while it was in the typewriter, it was being staged and performed and cheered by capacity audiences as well.
I now know that a play is nothing but a manuscript until it is put on the boards. It is only then that it comes to life, and the life it realizes is sometimes quite different, and very often immeasurably better than the one it aspired to on paper.
We had been rehearsing my play for five weeks, and we had nine days of previews still ahead of us, with two performances on Wednesday and another two on Saturday. I had, of course, rewritten many scenes in the play even before we went into production, and I had since rewritten almost half of the second act. I had watched our cast of six explore their respective roles, come to grips with the characters they were portraying, settle into performances they were now polishing and refining before opening night. I had seen our director wrestling with difficult scenes, badgering and cajoling his actors, desperately seeking the play’s inner secret, the single factor that would transform it into a semblance of reality, an illusion of vibrant flesh and blood. I had eaten breakfast, lunch, and dinner with each of the people involved in the show, either separately or together, I had listened to complaints and petty quarrels, I had even resisted a blatant seduction attempt by the ingenue who was determined to “get close to the well-spring,” as she put it. I had been at every rehearsal but one (when I had to rush crosstown to talk with a man from the Times who was doing a piece on me) and I had been convinced completely and utterly that we were on the right track, that we were all working together toward the successful realization of my play.
And then suddenly, that Tuesday morning, the spell broke as sharply as though a hypnotist had snapped his fingers and commanded me to open my eyes. I saw the play, really saw it, for the first time since rehearsals had begun. I saw it from beginning to end, and I wanted to weep. I left the theater as soon as Danny, our director, began giving his notes to the actors. I walked up Broadway and wondered what I should do, and then I decided to call Natalie. I caught her in the middle of leaving for nursery school to pick up Sharon, our four-year old daughter.
“Nat,” I said, “we’ve got trouble.”
“What is it?”
“The play stinks.”
“The play does not stink,” Natalie said.
“Honey, I just sat through it, and it’s terrible. I don’t know what to do.”
“What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Gene, you do know.”
“Yes, I do. I think I want to get rid of Danny.”
“Yes.”
“I think I’ve wanted it all along.”
“I know you have.”
“But, honey, I like him.”
“Is he harming your play?” Natalie asked.
“Yes.”
“Then replace him before it’s too late.”
“Honey...”
“Honey,” she said, “you spent a year writing this play. Do you want to see it die?”
“No, but...”
“Then do it. Replace him.”
We were both silent. Outside the corner phone booth, a traffic jam was starting, horns honking, a patrolman approaching a stalled Cadillac, his arms in frantic motion.
“All right,” I said at last.
“I have to get Sharon.”
“All right.”
“Gene?”
“Yes?”
“I love you. Call me later, will you?”
“Yes, sure.”
“How’s the apartment?”
“It’s nice.”
“All right, I’ll talk to you later.”
“Right, right,” I said, and hung up.
I had lunch at the Automat, and then went back to the afternoon rehearsal. I took a seat in the balcony and tried to see the play objectively, telling myself that this morning’s shock may have been due to pre-opening jitters, willing everything on that stage to come to unexpected life. But nothing happened. The actors went through scene after scene, the play unfolded listlessly; it was make-believe, it was fake, it was rotten. Unobserved, I listened to the actors when Danny called a break. Scenes that once were clear to them now seemed troublesome; they were asking far too many questions for a company that would be opening in a week. And worse, Danny had no answers to give them. If he had ever understood the play, he did not seem to grasp it now. I listened as he fumblingly tried to explain the relationship of the father to his young son in a scene I had sweated over for months, and I fairly screamed aloud from the balcony when I realized he was only confusing it beyond all comprehension. If I had had any doubts, they evaporated in that moment.