Tom Lake(61)

“Maybe you could pack up his room for him. That would be helpful.”

“Sure, I can do that.”

She stretched out her legs and yawned. She must have driven through the night. “I’ll tell him you came when he wakes up. I’ll tell him the sweet girl from the play came to see him. What did you say your name was?”

I told her it was Emily.



“When did he die?” Emily asks me. There is so much tenderness in her voice. Had we told this story earlier in life, Emily might have grown up convinced that Uncle Wallace was her father, though really, that might have been worse.

I look at Joe. “Fall? Winter maybe? I can’t remember.”

Maisie takes out her phone and taps in his name. “July twenty--eighth, 1988.” She reads the names of his three wives, his two children, his major roles. “The actor will be remembered as the beloved Uncle Wallace. The second wife was Elyse Adler. She played his girlfriend on the show for two seasons.”

I looked at her tiny picture on the phone. “Oh my god.”

Nell and Emily lean in to see her pretty face.

“So he died just a couple of weeks after I saw him.” So much had happened that summer, and in the confusion, I had forgotten him. “How old was he?”

Maisie takes a moment to scroll, stopping to admire the other two wives. “Born January twentieth, 1931, died July twenty--eighth, 1988. Fifty--six.”

“What?”

She holds up the screen to show me. There he is. No picture of his own children, just those little orphan actors in his arms.

“He was my age,” I say.

Emily shakes her head. “You’re fifty--seven.”





14


I am fifty--seven. I am twenty--four. After dinner the girls head out with Hazel, some blankets, and a six--pack of beer. They have plans to sit in a field far away from their friends and watch The Promised Man just as the last of the fireflies flickering in the tall grass turn out their lights. The movie is a cause for merriment, not because it’s happy—-in fact, I remember it as soul--crushing—-but because activities unrelated to work are few and far between these days. Benny will meet them there. On this windless night, the Otts have strung a king--sized sheet between two trees and pulled it taut. They have a video projector. They call to ask if Joe and I would like to come, but I decline. They have no idea we’re living our own version of the Peter Duke film festival over here.

“That one?” Joe stacks the dishes in the sink once the girls have gone.

“I don’t even like to think about it.” I open the back door and shake out the placemats, wipe off the table.

“It’s a beautiful piece of work, though. Certainly Duke’s best.”

My husband’s sleeves are rolled and the hot water steams his glasses. It’s so easy to forget what Joe is capable of, so easy to remember. “Were you ever sorry?”

He laughs. “We could be living in Los Angeles now.”

“You could be on your third wife.”

“Come dry.” He holds out a towel to me.

It’s not as if I don’t understand. It’s exactly what the girls have been saying to me: Are you sorry? Don’t you wish? But Joe was better than I was. Sometimes I wonder what he would have done had he stayed. “You were so good.”

He shakes his head. “You are so good,” he says, correcting me. “That’s what you’re supposed to say.”

“Were and are, both things are true.”

“You’re spending too much time in the past.” He passes me a dripping Pyrex casserole dish.

“So tell me how to get out of it.”

He shakes his head. “There’s no way out but through.”

“You were a very good Stage Manager.”

“I was no Uncle Wallace.”

“You were different, that’s all. You were your own man.” It’s true that no one else would ever be the Stage Manager for me—-Uncle Wallace took the part with him—-but Joe had a radiant optimism and health that no amount of gray shadow beneath his eyes could diminish. No one thinks of the Stage Manager as a young man but why shouldn’t he be? God can be anything. “You were strapping.”

“And you—-” He turns and looks at me, a wet plate in his hands.

I start to put the glasses away. I wait for him to finish his thought but nothing comes. “What was I?”

“You were Emily. I could have watched you forever and never understood how you did it. I believed you every minute you were on the stage. Everyone did.”

I stretch up on my toes to kiss him and he meets me. “We were in that play together. It really is miraculous when you think about it.”

“Those drives back and forth three times a week.” Joe takes the towel from me and dries his hands. “I wanted to kill Uncle Wallace for drinking and I wanted to kill Lee for being himself.”

“So why did you do it?” I ask. “I mean, I know Gene was leaning on you and everyone was in a pinch, but we were living in a summer town full of actors. You can’t tell me that no one else at Tom Lake had ever played the Stage Manager before. Somebody could have pulled it together. You could have done one performance and then made Gene take the part.”

“That was the plan.”