“Great.”
“I thought there was something fishy about him, Dwyer. I really did.”
“See you, Stan.”
In case you don’t already know, Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night is the autobiographical drama of America’s greatest playwright. It’s his tortured recollection of his mother, a morphine addict, his father, an insensitive cheapskate, and his brother, a doomed alcoholic. In the inscription he wrote to his wife Carlotta, O’Neill says, “I give you the original script of this play of old sorrow, written in tears and blood.” He ends by saying that at last he can “face my dead and write this play — write it with deep pity and understanding and forgiveness for all the four haunted Tyrones.”
The tone of his inscription was the mood on stage when I reached it.
Evelyn Ashton and her mother Sylvia and her father David sat on the couch, while at the table Keech, who played my younger brother, sat with a beer in his hand. Anne Stewart, who played our mother, sat across from him. There was no conversation. They were just staring blankly. From the wings, I watched for a time. At one point Evelyn, even in blue jeans and a wrinkled white blouse the beautiful ingénue, put her head on her mother’s shoulder and began crying softly. The rest of us had lost a director — she’d lost a lover. For some reason Keech looked irritated with her tears. He scowled in her direction, but then he met Anne Stewart’s disapproving gaze and softened his expression.
When I came on stage, only David Ashton seemed much interested in me. He came over and poured me some wine from a bottle on the dining room table. While I waited for him to finish, I turned and looked out at the theater. There was something lonely about all those empty seats.
“Here you are, Dwyer. Glad you decided to show up.” He leaned in so his daughter wouldn’t hear him. “I suppose we’re holding our own impromptu little wake here.” He wore his standard blazer and white shirt. He had good features and his blond hair lent him an almost dashing quality. But there was something weak about him. I was never sure how to explain it. He struck me as a boy wearing his father’s clothes. “Why don’t you come over and sit down?”
I did, but the next ten minutes made me wish I’d done what Donna had wanted me to do, which was meet her at an Italian place for dinner and then go over to her place and watch a very good lost movie called Who’ll Stop the Rain.
I don’t know what was said; I hardly listened. I just responded on autopilot. Wasn’t it terrible? Indeed it was. Could any of us have guessed that Wade was in such desperate straits? Indeed we couldn’t have. Poor Michael; poor Evelyn; poor Bridges Theater. Indeed indeed indeed.
Keech said, “Have they found the cocksucker yet?”
Ashton said, “That sort of language is hardly called for. There are ladies here.”
Keech, his curly hair like an aureole around his head, said, “Have they, Dwyer?”
“Not that I know of.”
“And not that you’d give a shit, either.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I was tired and edgy enough that my temper responded before my brain did.
“Just that you’re probably a lot more worried about Wade than about Michael. You and your girlfriend got pretty chummy with the drunken bastard.”
Ashton said, “Do we have to argue among ourselves? Don’t we have enough to feel badly about?” He had the whining intonation of a fourth-rate minister.
“Why don’t you both shut up?” Evelyn snapped at us. “Anyway, Keech, you’re a fine one to defend Michael.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Keech said.
“I was in the parking lot the other night when you tried to punch Michael. I suppose you call that being a good friend?”
It was as if Keech had been ready for her. He did it quick and he did it ugly. “I suppose now’s not a good time to tell you about the girl Michael was keeping on the side.”
“You’re a liar!”
Keech laughed. “You know better than that, Evelyn. It’s time you quit kidding yourself.” Keech stood up, drained his bottle, and set it down. He was one of those little men who seem physically perfect — the sort who inevitably get called “cute” — but his size had made him insufferable. He was far too fond of himself. He looked around with what seemed to be pity and amusement and then said to me, “I hope they shoot the fucker, Dwyer. That’s what he’s got coming.”
There wasn’t anything to say to that kind of malice. There never is. To Ashton, he said, “Let me know when we’ll do another performance.” With that, he left the stage.
When he was sure Keech was gone, Ashton stood up and said, “Well, that wasn’t very pleasant, was it?”
Evelyn looked at her father and shook her head. “Can’t you just call him a name, Daddy? Do you always have to be so goddamn polite?”
Sylvia took her daughter’s hand. “Dad hardly has that coming, darling.” Sylvia’s dark good looks were spoiled only by her mad eyes. Though nobody in the cast had been ungallant enough to say it, she was reminiscent of the mother in the play: living in her own world, dealing with the worst sort of atrocities but pretending there was absolutely nothing wrong. “Now apologize to your father.”
Evelyn glared at the man. “I’m sorry, Daddy.”
“I don’t want to stoop to his level, that’s all, honey.”
Evelyn was not persuaded.
Anne Stewart stood up next. She was wearing a leotard and very tight Levi’s. She had auburn, gray-streaked hair pulled back and tied up in a piece of Navajo jewelry the size of a fist. She had a nose that a queen would envy and dark eyes that you could study for a century and never quite figure out. She was fifty and sexy in a breathtaking way that not even Evelyn’s beauty could match. “I guess I’ll go, too,” she said.
“No more wine?” David Ashton said.
Anne shook her head. “It’s really getting to be a downer, I’m afraid.”
“The rain isn’t helping,” Sylvia Ashton said.
Anne nodded in agreement. “Well, everybody, good night.”
We all said our good nights.
When Anne was gone, Sylvia said, “Where do you suppose he went?” She stared at me.
“Wade, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know.”
“It said on the news tonight that you were the last person to see him.”
“Me and my lady friend, yes.”
She looked as sad as a child who’d just been told that her Daddy had died. “Do you suppose they’ll kill him? Then Michael will be dead and Stephen will be dead.”
You could hear it in her voice, whatever happened when she started on her inevitable path to the madhouse again. I felt sorry for her. I wanted to touch her in some way, just a reassuring touch, but that’s always a bit difficult to do with a husband less than ten feet away.
Obviously David Ashton heard it in her voice, too. He jumped up as he’d jumped up many times in his life, and his hand went out, a life preserver of sorts. She took it without fuss or hesitation.
Even Evelyn stopped feeling sorry for herself long enough to say, “Come on, Mom, let Daddy and me take you upstairs and we’ll watch some TV.”
“Isn’t Jack Benny on cable?” Sylvia wanted to know.
“Yes,” Ashton said gravely. “Yes, darling, he is.”
“Then let’s hurry,” Sylvia said. She sounded bright and happy all of sudden. She also sounded spooky as shit.
“Thanks for coming by,” Ashton said. He had one of those strong grips that bland men sometimes surprise you with. It was like sticking your hand in a vise. “I don’t suppose we’ll open again for a few days.”
I pulled my hand away. It stung.
They left the stage. I stood and looked out at the empty theater again. Two years ago I’d been a cop, and that’s all I’d wanted to be. Then I had gotten a part in a traffic safety spot and people started telling me how well I’d done. All of a sudden, being a cop wasn’t enough. I wanted to be an actor. Of course I’d had a wife back then, too. She hadn’t understood and she’d found a man who hadn’t understood right along with her, a good enough man that my fifteen-year-old son liked him a hell of a lot more now that the guy was his stepfather. I usually saw my wife when I picked our boy up. Recently, she had started looking as if she’d just discovered oil in her back yard. I don’t think she ever looked that happy all the time we were married. Probably with good reason.