The Chelsea Girls(82)

Ugh. In the five months since she and Charlie had been caught in flagrante delicto, she’d hoped the hate mail had died down. That terrible summer seemed so long ago, and she hadn’t heard from Charlie since. One day she’d even stopped by the offices of American Business Consultants in the hopes of finding out where he’d disappeared to, but they’d rebuffed her, which came as no surprise. His absence, and that of Maxine, left a dark hole in her life, though she hated herself for thinking so.

She grabbed the stack of mail and thanked Mr. Bard once more.

Her preference would have been to fall into a tub of hot water and soak, letting the muscles tensed from days on the road work out their kinks. But two weeks wasn’t much time, and she had to make the most of it. She changed into clean clothes and refreshed her face with some cool water before heading uptown. Her mother hugged her and brought her inside the apartment, where the smell of a pot roast made Hazel’s stomach growl. For all Ruth’s faults, she was an excellent cook.

Ruth embraced Hazel and took her coat. “Come in, see your father, and we’ll eat right off.”

Hazel handed over the bag of groceries she’d picked up at the store on Broadway. While she was earning money, she wanted to share the largesse. Or perhaps it was a proud gesture, to prove that she was still a successful artist and that nothing had changed. Even though everything had changed.

“You are a dear.” Ruth kissed her on the cheek and laughed—a light, tinkling sound better suited to an ingenue. Hazel and Ben had been certain she’d cultivated the giggle as a schoolgirl and refused to part with it, despite her advancing years.

Both her parents had aged greatly since Hazel’s fall from grace. Their theatrical friends had mostly abandoned them after the news of Hazel’s affair with Charlie broke, and they were left outcasts. Her father had faded into himself more and more, no longer making any grunts of approval or even raising his eyebrows, while her mother had become a constant source of noise, either humming or talking back to the radio, as if to make up for the silence.

How far they’d come. When Hazel was a struggling understudy, Ruth had been angry at what she perceived to be her lack of ambition and refusal to take direction. When Hazel made it into the big time, Ruth resented her independence. Yet these days, her mother was nothing but supportive and kind, and no longer controlling. She’d stood by Hazel, unlike most of the others, and only wanted her daughter to be happy. Hazel’s trajectory had allowed her mother to finally work through her sticky grudges and come out the other side a softer woman.

“You don’t have to go back to that hotel, Hazel.” Ruth placed a large slice of beef on Hazel’s plate before turning to her husband and cutting his food with a practiced efficiency. “You could move back into your old room.”

“I’m fine there. Thank you, though.”

“Why pay all that rent money when you’re on the road most of the time, anyway?”

“Mr. Bard’s been very understanding.”

“He’ll get tired of it before long, trust me. I really don’t understand it.”

Hazel knew there was no point in explaining. True, economically it made sense to move back home. But there was no place like the hotel, her oasis of crazy calm. She loved hearing Mr. Kleinsinger’s piano compositions as they drifted down and around the serpentine stairway from his room on the tenth floor, like a melodious ghost. Sure, his pet boa constrictor occasionally turned up in the hallway, but no one really seemed to mind. Artsy and crazy were one and the same here, no questions asked.

It was the only place she could write, as well. The only place she wanted to write. Not that she’d had much luck lately. The two scripts she’d tried to submit under a different name had been rejected. No doubt the radio producers had asked around and figured out her true identity. All the blacklisted writers were trying the same scam.

Back at the hotel later that evening, determined to not waste a minute, Hazel sat at her desk by the window and rolled a sheet of paper into her typewriter. Really, she should go to bed and start fresh in the morning, but waking up to a blank piece of paper tomorrow would be the end of her. Better to get something down now, even if it was just a page, something she could shape and edit, than to have nothing at all.

What, though? A new play? A novel?

She could write about her terrible experiences of the past year, but it was too close. No one cared, anyway. Her voice had been stifled and that particular fire within her extinguished.

For a split second, she thought of stepping down the hallway and talking it through with Maxine, before remembering that Maxine was gone and had betrayed her. On the tour bus back to New York, Hazel had opened a magazine that one of the actresses had left lying on the seat to a full-page spread of Maxine and her leading man somewhere in Europe, posing for photos, Maxine’s mouth wide and smiling. But Hazel knew that smile. That smile meant she had something to prove. That smile was her defense when she felt small.

Hazel ripped the sheet of paper out of the typewriter, rolled it into a tight ball, and pitched it across the room, before instantly regretting wasting a perfectly good piece of paper. The stack of mail sat on the very edge of the desk. A diversion.

Only one was an anonymous letter of fury, which she dumped right into the trash. A couple were from playwrights she knew in passing, offering their support. That was an unexpected surprise. Maybe eventually the tide would turn and she’d no longer be a pariah.