bed and collapsed on it, doubling over a pillow and wedging it under her neck. “Now come here.” She patted the bed. “Come lay beside me.”
Max sat down obligingly but did not lay back.
“Come on,” she said, “lie back. Gaze at the stars with me. See if you can find me up there in the hemisphere.” She reached over and wrapped her hand around his fingers, squeezing gently. “I think my Molly is still feeling hurt. Come lie down. You refused my invitation in the train. Will you refuse me again? I want to tell you something. Please let me tell you why.”
She drew her knees up toward her chest and worked her feet under the bedspread, as though dipping them back into Uncle Faure’s pond, ready to start committing herself to the dream. “It is time for me to leave.” The word
“Excuse me?”
“I cannot act anymore.” And the sound of those words seemed to come from some other place in the room, distant from beyond her body. When she was onstage assuming her characters, they became a part of her. It was their hearts that pumped through her chest. Their nerves that rattled her spine. Their breaths that she tasted and inhaled. But once she had to speak passionately from her own being, Sarah felt no connection. As though she had sacrificed herself for all those characters.
Max did not quite respond with the emotive outburst that she had anticipated. Instead he lay flat on his back, his eyes traversing the ceiling. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I will smooth things out for you.”
“You don’t understand.” Her voice still did not sound convincing. Instead it fell rather flat and indifferent. “I can’t match their passion anymore. I am just a maypole for the young actors to dance around.”
“Perhaps this has been partially my fault,” Max said with hardly a pause. Now it was time for his prepared speech. “I probably have not considered the pressures that you have been under. For that I apologize. But we’ll be done with the tour soon. By the time we go back to France this will seem like a lost dream. Back to normal. We’ll be trying to remember what the bishop’s name even was.”
She shook her head, but all she could muster was a quiet no. “It is more than forgettable bishops.” It was all building inside her, ripping apart her gut and pushing on her rib cage as though it might shatter and splinter into a thousand kindling shards. She felt the curse of the French woman, where emotion is a closed-door endeavor, and any display that is shown outwardly is likely to label you somewhere between whore and demented. Or a world- renowned actress. She had never felt more debilitatingly ordinary.
“Our last chance for a thorough run-through is at four today.” He was already on with the schedule, and planning. “We can work out some bugs after dinner, in order that we’re ready for the first curtain tomorrow. You have a little more time here if you need it. Rest up. Gather some strength. Then you can enter the glorious diva at four.”
“I am not doing tomorrow night’s show,” she said. “Or any show again.”
He turned his head to her, awkwardly twisting his back. “Darling, the hysterical hour is over. You’ve already used up your comfort time. So now we are down to business.”
His matter-of-factness and ease with the situation suggested that she had made these types of declarations before—something that Max obviously attributed to jitters and pressures. And the way that he clapped his hands with such a rise-and-shine bravado and told her that the best cure at this point was a nice long bath, followed by a spoiling of Burgundy from the last case in his room, topped off by a good solid nap was further indication that all this was nothing more than routine. But this was not the regular accumulation of demands and threats and insolent posturing that accompanied her stubbornness. This decision was a conscious philosophical verdict born from soul searching and examination.
Max pushed up from the bed. “Now shall I run a proper bath for you?”
“No.” She did not move from under the covers. “You are not listening. I quit…I quit being an actress forever.”
Max’s body swayed with the irritation of someone late for an appointment. “Explain to me.”
“I can’t.” She sighed. “You will just think that it is everything that you have heard before.”
“You never explain
“I have never…”
“As predictable as the full moon.”
Sarah pulled the covers up over her head, drowning herself in her own breath. She closed her eyes to make the darkness even darker, trying to recall this patterned conversation that Max alluded to. Maybe she was like one of those idiots that you always hear about—they can’t wipe their own asses but can play the piano with genius precision. Maybe it was faulty wiring that only allowed her to activate her feelings in performance. She kicked the covers off with a rage of emotion that felt more liberating than it did angry. “I am done,” she said. “Retired.”
Max walked into the bathroom, apparently ignoring her. He closed the door partway. The faucet squealed, and then the force of water burst into the bathtub.
“Molly, I will not be there today,” she yelled.
The sound of water rushed even harder.
“Do you hear me? I will never step foot on a stage again. I will not be there at four today. I will not be there ever.”
He called from the bathroom. “Should I put the bath salts in? Is it that kind of bath?”
“Do what you please,” she said to herself and pulled the covers back up, tucking them in around her neck. Maybe she would try to tell him once more, but probably she would have to quit before it became a reality. He would have to be sitting there at the 4:00 P.M. rehearsal nervously tapping his feet. She could picture him looking at the rear door in a combination of fury and disappointment each time that it opened and she wasn’t there. At some point Max would have to figure it out—reflect back on what she had been saying in the hotel room about losing the passion and the fight. He would have to give up his opium jag excuses and realize how serious she had been. And then she would be waiting for him here in the hotel room. She would still be under the covers, ready to comfort him. Hold him with the reassurance that what they were about to embark on would be fine.
Max stepped out of the bathroom and pointed to the door. “It is ready for you, dear.”
Sarah didn’t move. She didn’t smile or nod.
“Oh, please,” he said. “You are not mad at me for not taking you seriously. You know that I always do. It’s just that we have lost so much time after the change in plays, so we need to eliminate one step from the routine. Let’s just see this one through, get on to Paris, and then you can quit the theater business from there. But for now you should rest and relax in your bath, and then be at the stage at four.” He looked too rushed to have a definable expression.
“Don’t wait for me.”
“Please. Save it for Paris.”
Sarah pulled the blanket up over her face.
She left the covers over her head until she heard the door close. Even though she could barely breathe.
SHE HEARD MAX’S FOOTSTEPS fall away down the hall. But when they stopped, Sarah pulled the covers back over her head. The footsteps started again, thankfully fading in the distance, instead of returning for one more round of sparring. She stayed in bed. She wondered if her new life would afford her the comforts that she had become accustomed to. Maybe reduced to some level of charming squalor that eschewed the bourgeoisie yet had no true revolutionary or radical convictions—more a matter of gliding through and enjoying her life. Perhaps a quiet retirement, reinvesting herself in the occasional company of her son, Maurice (of course that is its own story altogether). She pictured her future in a modest fourth-floor walk-up apartment. She would be able to add some air of romance to the flat, instead of it being like a traditional actor’s flophouse (although the presence of all her pets—Bizibouzou the parrot, Darwin the monkey, and all the dogs might suggest otherwise).
She would be all right.
People would probably still care what she had to say (even though she wouldn’t care anymore). And at least this ongoing war with the Visigoths of morality might end, or at least see a truce that would fade from stagnation. And certainly all thoughts of opium would vanish (as they already did just thinking about it).
She had had a brilliant career. But, like the members of her company, the real passion had been reserved for her hungry youth. The days when the only serious matters were the moments between the opening curtain and the final bow. When she awoke each morning with gloved fists ready to take on the world, swinging and flailing, but
