the third act
She walked off her imaginary stage and they met in the middle of the room, joined by a passion that was not sexual, but rather of the beauty of dedication and belief. And he took both her hands and held them in honor, and she swore she felt the electricity that he had sent into those lightbulbs travel along every nerve ending in her body.
“I suppose that we should go back,” she said. “It is getting late, I’m sure.”
“My wife will keep them entertained. Unless you are getting tired. Two performances in one night. We should do three—and record the third. How about a monologue that combines English and French. Is that possible?”
“It is a long trip back to New York, right?”
“You would be lucky to be back at your hotel by midnight in this weather. You might as well stay and enjoy the evening. You are out here already.” He walked up to the organ and opened the seat. He removed a book of sheet music and then produced a small brown bag. The bench slammed shut as he walked back to the table where Sarah was waiting. He crinkled the top of the bag into a funnel and poured a fine white powder along the surface. “Have some so you can enjoy the rest of the night.” And together they both inhaled the cocaine, tasting the bittersweet powder on the backs of their tongues, before it clogged their throats and fully awakened them.
The hit freed Sarah like a claustrophobic from a closet. She felt her body lift from a solid form. Breath flowed through her mouth and straight through her pores, as though there were no need for lungs, but instead for a cleansing. And with that her chest turned hollow and light, her breasts inverting and disappearing until her essence of femininity had graciously stepped aside, liberated by a sexless purity. She realized how tight her body had been. Her neck muscles gripped in one last squeeze before fully releasing themselves. Her eyes felt softer, and the inside of her head buzzed in liberation, as though some other extra being had taken up residence there. And when she looked up at the ceiling, she swore that she saw the world-famous Divine Sarah Bernhardt floating freely, throwing back the occasional reassuring smile, letting her know that all was okay.
“What is it like,” Edison asked, “to be a woman playing Hamlet?”
“The theater, like much of the world, is obsessed with difference. No matter what the essence of the art is, the issue is always turned back to novice aesthetics. Can a woman play a man? Can an old woman play a young girl? Critics have the audacity to compare my Hamlet to Booth’s—bit by bit, male versus female—and he hasn’t played it for fifteen years. They would never have done that with another man. Art is always being judged without ever considering the art.”
“Even machinery must be critically interpreted, it appears. And most people seem unwilling to accept the unexpected.”
“Please.” She dropped her head back and laughed. “They are still talking about it. I have never seen anything like it. Face the truth. Everybody, whether they care to admit it or not, is sick and bored with the usual Booth Hamlet, played by both Edwin and his father before him. Strong, yet melancholy. Shy, but romantic. Gravely serious with every reaction. Hamlet was a boy, barely a man. And they played him as though he were weighted by the souls of a thousand lifetimes. I make him a boy. Impetuous. Curious. Give him some humor. I make him real.”
“What do you do to bring out the childishness?”
“Little things. When Polonius wants to sit beside me, I kick my feet up on the chair to keep him away. I don’t do the old school scooting away in gentle cowardice. This is now a deliberate boy. I run. I jump. I skip. I make even the most frightening moments for Hamlet filled with wonder.”
“Your Hamlet is happy?”
“Of course not. He is sad. It is tragic. But still he is impulsive, and reacts like a boy would. He plays at revenge. He does not mastermind it. He is a sad, sad boy. But he plays with every situation like a toy to try to make himself feel life. It is nuance that speaks loudest.”
The room carried a strange haze that discolored the black, only clearly visible in waving plumes across the electric lights.
Edison stared up at the ceiling. Smiling to himself, before drawing a stern but thoughtful expression. And though his skin was still taut from youth, his face looked old, as if the ghosts of wisdom and hardship had laid permanent rest. He was fragile and worn. Something that there is always beauty in. “This age of invention,” he began, “is not so much different. We take inanimate objects, and through manipulation create meaning. Right? We place a needle into a wax cylinder, and the friction that is created we accept as music. Or the incandescence of filaments and electricity as sunlight. We have to choose to believe our interpretations. Otherwise, there is only a needle grinding into wax.”
“This is what you think about in your workshop?”
Edison laughed.
She reached over and took his hand. There was nothing sensual or maternal in the touch. Two comrades falling through space, holding on boldly and passionately to make the landing more graceful. Edison squeezed her hand. And for a moment, that flesh and bones coupler of interlaced fingers was all that ground them to the earth. In a workshop in New Jersey. Where genius flowed so discreetly. Two wayward stars looking for a galaxy.
They did not leave the lab for another hour. Edison talked about how he always imagined the rhythm and structure of Shakespeare’s poetry with each invention that he was working on, knowing that the same balance and science of intricacy could be applied to both, while Sarah laughed and slapped the table, exclaiming at the irony that she only saw the fineness of invention in her art (and also mentioned that recently she had become intrigued by sculpting in order to be able to touch and feel the art). And where candles would have dimmed to suggest the passing of the hours, the electric lights burned bright and timeless.
When they finally got back to the house at half past two, Max and Edison’s wife were left sitting alone together, facing each other in sleepy silence, each with their own aggravations. Mary Edison’s fiery jealousy could be witnessed by her refusal to make eye contact with her husband. Her resentfulness was not rooted in the fear of infidelity, but in the betrayal of her husband’s isolated and private world, which she had ascribed to his genius. In fact,
And poor Molly. He was twisted and contorted in his chair, arms folded against his chest, his legs crossed tightly and kicked under the seat, as though closing himself off from any intimate conversation that might accidentally come his way in the deep and silent night. His greeting was one of relief and of frightened disappointment. In fact, he had whispered in her ear in French something to the effect that he was worried that she was going to leave him here all night drowning in dilettante discourse. Mary Edison offered a cordial but not forthright invitation to stay in the guest room, but the waiting coach (which was on the clock that only got punched in New York) was the saving excuse. They parted quickly. Standing on the porch under a light snowfall that diamond sparkled in the lamplight, each offered cultured graciousness in their farewells. Sarah forgot to thank her host formally for such an inspiring and magical evening. As she stepped off the porch, Edison ran after her, slipping on the last step and gripping the banister for balance. Mary Edison looked away. Max Klein hustled into the carriage (“we will be lucky to get back to the Albemarle Hotel by four A.M.,” he grumbled, “and then we’re sure to be a wreck for Boston”). Edison grabbed onto Sarah’s arm. He forgot to make the recording, he had said. She thought she would cry.
The next afternoon’s dailies hardly reported on it.
No conflict. No drama.
No drama. No news.
The hotel waiter served Sarah’s plate over her right shoulder, and then followed with Max’s. Abbot Kinney broke the conversation to say, “Thank you, Anthony,” before returning his attention to Max’s authoritative yet lacking dissertation on the science of the lime light. Sarah leaned over to paddle the eggs’ rising steam toward her. She took in the buttered perfume and let it awaken her stomach, allowing the steam to wash over her face. She barely heard Kinney when he asked, “Much more satisfactory now, Madame?”
She looked over at him without raising her head, and in her most rehearsed role of gentility and public manners, she told him that they were
“And by the way,” Kinney added, “I have spoken with some of my press contacts and it appears that this
