If Julian's career in music
sprang from his finger tips spontaneously in 1980, Yvonne's career as a director
was a far more difficult delivery. Her breakthrough also came in 1980, though.
Other than caring for Julian,
writing poems and playing her game in her notebooks, what Yvonne did through the
'seventies that lead her--less logically than chronologically--to the directing
of a major play in '80, was a treading of career and social waters. In the end
she played some pretty down-and-dirty politics. But for a decade there was an
ocean of high-tension monotony.
As far as work went, there was this stuff called art that made her spring from
her bed each morning day after day, year after year with only five hours of
sleep. Between the orderliness of duty and the raptures of art, Yvonne was
modulated passion, was homo sapiens harnessed, was rage and ardor with a plan.
So Yvonne, who was nailed to her
life and knew it and worked with it, was an anachronism. Through the 'seventies,
when there was the majority chat about "me"--me want mantra; me want far out
therapy group; me want to know what me want; me want both free-love lover and
life mate, soul mate spouse; me want both midwife and prestigious obstetrician;
me want both baby and my own space; me want crude wool loom and high-tech
kitchen; me want drugs and pure body; and, me want to find me--during all of
this, Yvonne's preoccupation was "I". THat is, if she could be said to have such
a preoccupation. That is, she was an I. A personage. A person. She found her
"me" interesting only if it served her "I", her art, her son. She knew what her
"thing" was. It was Julian and plays. Plays and Julian.
It wasn't that Yvonne was a
saint. She trafficked in most of the more blatant sins that came to prominence
in the 1970's for small periods of time here and there amid the years. It wasn't
that she didn't have to travel through layers of the 'seventies as if a
subterranean archeologist digging her way up through time. And it wasn't that
she didn't see herself buried and suffocated by all the dirt of her times. But
in the majority and in the long run, she could see her times as a soil out of
which wonderful things could grow.
But she was swamped in the early
years, from time of curiosity-or-weakness to time of curiosity-or-weakness, in
periods of mad soirees. Wall-to-wall actors, theatre technicians, writers,
directors and peripheral folks would decorate her rooms late evening after late
evening. A lot of what went on was useless, but she gained a thing or two from
these aquariums, as she called these parties. She observed a lot of behavior.
Made contacts. Improved, ended, and strengthened relationships. But she also
suffered through the drugged inhabitants of the aquariums, and the ones with
fashionable neuroses and psychoses, and the ones with overly dramatic senses of
their sexual identity problems.
And nearly every citizen of these aquariums who camped on her young and unwise
hospitality would come alone to her or call on the phone and in a series of
confessions would tell her all their problems. Yvonne foolishly would permit
them long-windedly to dissect situations that were remarkably convoluted and
also remarkably dull in the end. Yvonne loved the intricate, but these lives she
listened to were not so much tangles of depth as they were snarls of simplicity
played over and over again. These people, Yvonne saw after several years, by and
large had stories that were variations on themes only in that they sang simple
tunes and only varied which way they were off key. Yvonne was fooled by the
mélange for a time, but gained a thousand insights proportionate to every
million feats of legerdemain offered up for her critique.
Yvonne was only human. She had
several terrible affairs in these years. She even went into drugs. She had
three, very quickly done-with addictions. Alcohol, cocaine and valium held her
in thrall for a period of about three months each at various low points over the
years. But she leaped out of each addiction after a steep, rapid descent to
fairly deep levels each of the three times. A new play she wanted to act in
beckoned her up and out each time. And her notebooks were impossible to keep and
her poetry was unintelligible during drugs. But mostly it was her whining at
Julian, her screaming at him that was most awful. And drugs killed rapture. And
drugs killed duty.
When Yvonne
was twenty-seven, she became the dummy in a bridge game played for the benefit
of the press and the public. The other three players were Hal Howard, the
producer; his wife, Maggie Howard; and the producer's homosexual lover, Gabriel
Walker. The game was this: Yvonne played at being Gabriel's lover in public in
order to preserve Hal Howard's heterosexual image. Yvonne would be seen out at
high profile events and establishments with the younger gay guy. Sometimes she
would go as a fourth, Maggie Howard on her husband's arm, Yvonne on the arm of
the dashing Gabriel. Sometimes Yvonne and her bogus beau would attend parties
where the man and wife went because the producer could not bear to be without
his lover for the entire evening. Sometimes the four were seen together because
it was wise to be seen in such normal boy-girl, boy-girl symmetry all at once.
It all helped offset how often the two males were seen out alone together.
The producer's socialite wife,
formerly Margaret Smythe-Baden, was the scenarist for all this. Perhaps it
seemed an unnecessary charade in the 1970's, but Yvonne respected the origins.
Twenty-five years before when the couple had married, the marriage itself was a
necessary charade. And then the matter of disguising the series of Hal's more
serious and oftener present lovers followed naturally. And, Hal in those days
had been one of America's top five Hollywood heart throbs when he'd been a movie
actor, before the move to producing plays. It was Maggie who had been in love
with that movie star image. She had married Hal despite his full disclosure to
her concerning his sexual bent. She served Hal's need for a heterosexual cover.
And she meant now to preserve the world's image of her husband. She also meant
to maintain her own powers of illusion-making and sustain her own delusions, as
well. Maggie lived for her functioning schizophrenic, All-American, split-screen
vision.
If Yvonne found this
tacky and even garish at times, she also found more substance and depth in her
three gaming partners than in most of her contemporaries. She was tired of the
torrents of shallowness that had arisen from the tendencies among her peers to
let it all hang out, to be up front, to be real. Yvonne found disguises,
deception, and role-playing of the consummate sort much more real than the trend
of baring one's soul helter skelter. But then she always had found artifice and
art the preferred mode of behavior. That's why she was in theater.
So, the four of them were
wonderful friends. Maggie had approached Yvonne at a propitious moment when the
game had begun. The young actress had just ended a terribly painful
relationship. She found the game safe harbor. But she kept on at the game
because the four grew close. Maggie and Hal became the only grandparent figures
Julian ever knew because ties elsewhere were so totally severed. And Gabriel was
a sort of uncle to Julian. The three "relatives" took Julian to the circus in
the summer, The Nutcracker at Christmas, ball games in the fall, and to
kite flying festivals in the spring. They'd handle Julian's needs when Yvonne's
housekeeper was ill and Yvonne had a performance to do. They'd make a big to-do
about Julian's birthday. They would even show up with all the latest patent
medicines and deli soup if Julian or Yvonne had a cold. Yvonne had other close
friends, and knew hundreds, maybe thousands of people. But Maggie, Hal and
Gabriel were the only ones who had ever lifted the burden a bit from Yvonne of
feeling all alone in the world with Julian. And Julian suffered through all the
kid activities. He was indulging everyone because he could see it made his
mother happy.
After several
years' successful run, this sophisticated comedy became a drama and then a
tragedy.
A new playwright stepped
on this little social stage and changed the plot, the lines, the cast. His name
was Paul. He had had a few minor hits and some TV credits. But he now had in
hand a crackling fine play, a real play that broke up the play of life the four
partners had evolved.
Hal wanted
to produce Paul's play, Duck, Duck, Goose. Yvonne wanted to direct it.
The business complication was that Yvonne was a woman. This impediment was an
insurmountable barrier in Hal's mind regardless of their friendship, regardless
of Yvonne's credentials. Other than her many and varied acting jobs, she had by
this time directed revivals of major plays, experimental theater, and had had a
few critical victories directing Shakespeare.
The complications socially were
that: Maggie wanted this darling young Paul in her bed; Paul craved to have
Gabriel in his bed, but, also was down on his knees to Yvonne to save him from
his homosexuality; and that, however much Hal wanted Paul's play, he was
terrified of losing Gabriel.
Yvonne manipulated the elements of the plot so that the producer got the play,
she got to direct it, the producer's lover remained loyal, and the producer's
wife got the playwright. At least things started off that way. But at least
Yvonne got to direct her first brand-new, first-rate play, as well as taking the
lead in it.
In short order, the
other four characters tore each other to shreds.
Two years later, about the time
Hilary was due with Julian's baby, the producer and the playwright were living
together. Hal was writing a book with Paul's help on the subject of
homosexuality and the arts. Maggie was ensconced in several addictions including
roulette in Monte Carlo. And Gabriel was dead, having been beaten to death by a
male prostitute whose specialty was elaborate sado-masochism scenarios.
Yvonne was the only one of the
original little group who showed up at Gabriel's funeral. In fact, Yvonne was
the only one at all who showed up at the funeral. In fact, there was no funeral.
Yvonne had learned of the death late. There was no one else to make
arrangements. Gabriel had been raised in an orphanage in Georgia. When Yvonne
entered the chapel where Gabe's coffin laid, she saw that there wasn't so much
as a bag lady there sheltering from the February that raved out on the streets.
Yvonne came at noon and left after sundown.
There was pretty Gabriel, sweet
Gabriel, dead and lying in his closed-up casket.
Yvonne could see that she was
mathematically responsible for the young man's death. In the political equation,
he was the blood sacrifice so that Yvonne could direct Duck, Duck, Goose.
She felt guilty and absurd to think that title now, here, in the midst of
Gabriel's after-death drama. She giggled a bit hysterically and then sobbed. And
then she giggled a bit more when an animated image came to her of herself and
Hal, Maggie, Paul and Gabriel sitting on a summer lawn playing the child's game
Paul's play was named after. "Duck...duck...goose!" And in the end,
Gabriel lost. Everyone else had a seat in the circle. But Gabe couldn't run fast
enough, he wasn't tough enough. So he lost. Was odd man out. Was dead. Was the
blood sacrifice so that Hal and Paul could come out of the closet.
And Maggie! Maggie gone slightly
mad in Monte Carlo. A goose if there ever was one. A silly old goose. Standing
at roulette tables flanked by dinner-jacketed gigolos. Her greatest obsession of
all peeking out insanely from time to time. Her obsession with Cary Grant.
Grant, with holdings in Monaco and friends with the Raniers, put in regular
appearances, and Maggie lived for glimpses of him. It chilled Yvonne several
times a day of late when she thought of the letter stinking of insanity,
postmarked in Monte Carlo.
Sitting in the funeral parlor, Yvonne could now see the whole picture. The
shroud of goddish beautiful male celebrity that Maggie had knitted for Hal; the
shroud that had been brutally buried when Hal had moved in with Paul amid much
public pomp and circumstance. Yvonne, busy with the play, busy dealing with
Julian's new music career, had not run to shore up Maggie and Gabriel when the
double split came. She could have had an influence with both of them. But
instead, with no direction, Maggie and Gabriel had held hands and dragged each
other down. They had sobbed long hours and drunk too much for three months after
Gabe had lost his lover and Maggie had lost her paper doll.
Rewriting the script, remixing
the metaphor, Yvonne realized that Maggie might have taken Gabriel in hand and
made him her new paper doll. Then Gabe would have had a shepherd and Maggie
would have had a lamb. But instead, Gabriel and Maggie had quarreled in the end
like fishwives. Over who was the more responsible of the two for letting Hal get
away. And the shepherdess turned into an ugly old dowager, living on glimpses of
Cary Grant. Too broken to invent her own new idol, Maggie lived off the tried
and true, ready-made fantasy. And the lamb had gone on some unknown path, but
surely to the slaughter. There was no going back and rewriting that fate.
And now in the funeral parlor,
Yvonne realized that her own obsession, preoccupation with Grant where she had
directed him in her notebook plays was very little different from Maggie's game.
Yvonne shuddered at this revelation. And she shuddered at each of the many black
revelations that came like black lightening out of her black musings. Sometimes
she shuddered in convulsive series as images and ideas drove through her like
pulses of kilowatts through a condemned man.
And the slaughtered lamb lay in
the casket before her. He had bullied the sadistic prostitute with his
hyperbolic passiveness. He had driven the sexual hireling insane with an
unprecedented soft symphony of whimperings. Driving the trained bully to unused
levels of whippings and clubbings. Until Gabriel had dangled dead from the
rented chains. With a smile on his broken face, the police had told Yvonne.
"Goddamned games. Goddamned
scenarios," Yvonne sobbed. She was now impaled on a master bolt of black
lightening that emanated from scenes of her own manipulations and contrivances.
She saw the games she might have played, as opposed to the games she had, and
then she wondered if it were possible to play no games at all. "But there are
always games. It's the way of the world. Someone always gets hurt," she thought.
But it was no good. Her guilt assailed her until she cried out loud, "Am I my
brother's keeper?"