Sarah dangled her arm off the bed and swatted at the newspaper. Max was due soon. And she had not changed out of her nightgown yet. The entire walk back from Kinney’s office he had implored her to rest, sleep to take the edge off of what he had described as a “frightful yet manageable bump in the arse.” Then a good dinner would help settle things. A gastronomic cure can always heal the ills of the mind. “Anything other than the King George,” she had said.
“Kinney spoke highly of it. He said your recommendation would back him up.”
“Anything other than the King George.”
Max had assured her that he would find a different restaurant. She could tell by the deliberate pauses between words and the evenly stressed syllables that he assumed her doped beyond comprehension. Still he had been gentle and nonplacating. She allowed him his concern. She didn’t protest with annoyance or insult. She had just looked down, smiling at the misted walkway and repeated, “Anything other than the King George.”
Now she hoped that he didn’t pick anything too nice. An advantage to eating in the United States was that one did not always have to dine. No meals where course upon course was delivered throughout the evening. The European edict of civility and formality was eschewed in the American restaurant. You could eat because you were simply hungry. Any time of day. Sit down and read the menu and order to your heart’s delight. In America you can get “a bite.” She looked forward to that on all her tours. But of course most people wanted to entertain her at the finer restaurants that replicated the European experience, either run by displaced emigrants or born-and-bred citizens bored with their American-ness. Tonight she wanted simplicity. She wanted to forget the doting and camaraderie and deference. She wanted to figure out how she could leave all this behind. Roll up her blouse sleeves, put her bare elbows to the table, and lean forward with a prejudice for honesty. She didn’t want to just blurt out a statement that seemed derivative of thoughtless passion, and watch Max’s face drop before he settled into a logic marathon that eventually converted her out of nothing else other than pure boredom and wear. Not this time. Now she wanted an understanding built. Even if nothing changed. If she ended up doing the same thing until she was one hundred and one years old, at least there would be an understanding of why she decided to continue. And Max probably wouldn’t get it. He would likely do one of his Molly gestures, swatting his hands around, rolling his eyes and pursing his lips. (Max Klein would have made a hell of an actor, because he understood the importance of gestures and their use in making the finer points. She told him that often. He never listened.) But she knew this time that he would be absolutely mad with fear, and his arms would fly in a pedestrian rage. She would tell him not to worry. They could still continue on. There is more to life than acting. It’s just one thing. They could run a hospital. She had done it before. She had put acting aside during the Franco-Prussian war and started a military hospital at the Odéon. The establishment and the reporters all had had a good laugh about it. Wrote stories about the dainty little stage star traveling to the Ministry of War and requesting the authority to open a military hospital. Some thought it was cute. Others a show of patriotism that would last as long as the next curtain’s rising. But months and months went by. She held the hands of the infirm. Patted cold towels on feverish foreheads. Sought food for the wounded brave. Met the ambulances at the front. Carried stretchers to the basement when Paris was bombarded. And the whole time she made sure the flag always flew, all the way through the armistice being signed. There was nothing darling or adorable about what she had done. It was sweat. It was blood. And acting had been the furthest thing from her consciousness until the war had ended. The Divine Sarah had walked offstage and been hung on the costume rack as the stage was struck, waiting until the marquee shone again, while the real Sarah (or was it Henriette-Rosine?) held her breath in constant fear, trying to steady her hands and voice in the name of calm and comfort. There is more than just the theater out there, Molly. She would tell him that. More than just the stage life. All kinds of roles to play. Even for a Molly House boy trying to belong.
Sarah stared up at the ceiling, admiring the smooth plaster. A hotel room new enough that there were not even cracks yet. The ceiling reached higher than she had imagined. Almost as arching as the prayer room had been at the Grandchamps convent where the budding novices were corralled daily, taken from being giggling squeaky girls and transformed into silent, respectful conduits of God’s word. They would be marched in single file out of the butter-lit fields and placed an arm’s length apart on dark wooden pews where candle shadows often made strange and ghostly images. Then they would kneel. Forget the girl next to them. This was just about you and God, until there was no you. The real weakness, the true temptation for most of the girls, was not to laugh. Something about the abject silence and the forbiddingness of the room tempted hysterics. The trick was not to look at your neighbor. If you could resist eye contact, you would soon be absorbed into the wholeness of God. But if you laughed, you would be absorbed into the Mother Superior’s ire, which usually concluded with a strap across the hand, followed by an excruciatingly long silence from her that might last through two meals. When the pressure became too great, Sarah’s trick was to pinch her leg. She would move her hand up her dress until it touched her inner thigh, then she would squeeze a tuft of skin until the urge to laugh had subsided. The privacy of her thighs covered the shame of black bruises. Sometimes she left her hand there. In the cavern of piousness, where all was sacred and guarded by unseen powers, the softness of her skin left her reassured that her corporeal body was connected to God’s comfort. She knew if she were ever caught that the Mother Superior would think her dirty, and though she might not actually say it aloud, would assume that this was the result of the Jewish blood that had flowed down through Sarah’s grandmother. They were a dirty people who could never know the cleanliness of truly loving God. They left Christ to be killed on that cross and never washed their hands again. Mother Superior as much as said that once to Sarah, hoping to undermine Sarah’s unspoken ancestry. Sarah had nodded politely, thinking to herself that if there wasn’t that Christ hanging off the cross, what would there be left for the church to talk about? Still the fear of being caught never stopped Sarah’s hand. She secreted her fingers to her thigh with every prayer. And she never once felt dirty. Nor afraid. Nor was there anything sexual about it. She still spoke her prayers. But felt a little more whole. More connected to herself.