Beautiful Ruins (86)

Strong, secure Alvis shrugged off her history with Ron and told her to go for the part. So she did—and she got it. But once rehearsals started, Debra realized Ron had made a connection between himself and Miller’s protagonist, Quentin. In fact, he saw himself as Arthur Miller, the genius waylaid by a shallow, young, villainous actress—the shallow, young, villainous actress being, of course, her.

In the theater, Dee swung her legs until they were no longer touching his. “Look, Ron, about what happened between us—”

“What happened?” he interrupted. “You make it sound like a car accident.” He put his hand on her leg.

Some memories remain close; you can shut your eyes and find yourself back in them. These are first-person memories—I memories. But there are second-person memories, too, distant you memories, and these are trickier: you watch yourself in disbelief—like the Much Ado wrap party at the old Playhouse in 1961, when you seduced Ron. Even recalling it is like watching a movie; you’re up on-screen doing these awful things and you can’t quite believe it—this other Debra, so flattered by his attention, Ron the pipe-smoking actor who went to school in New York and acted Off-Broadway, and you corner him at the wrap party, ramble on about your stupid ambition (I want to do it all: stage and film), you play it coquettish, then aggressive, then shy again, delivering your lines impeccably ( Just one night), almost as if testing the limits of your powers— But now, in the empty theater, she moved his hand. “Ron. I’m married now.”

“So when I’m married it’s okay. But your relationships are, what . . . sacred?”

“No. We’re just . . . older now. We should be smarter, right?”

He chewed his lip and stared at a point in the back of the theater. “Dee, I don’t mean this to sound harsh, but . . . a fortysomething-year-old drunk? A used-car dealer? This is the love of your life?”

She flinched. Alvis had picked her up here twice after rehearsal, and both times he’d stopped for a couple of drinks first. She pressed on. “Ron, if you cast me in this play because you think we have some unfinished business, all I can say is: We don’t. That’s over. We slept together, what, twice? You need to get past that if we’re going to do this play together.”

“Get past it? What do you think this play is about, Dee?”

“It’s Debra. I go by Debra now. Not Dee. And the play is not about us, Ron. It’s about Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe.”

He took his glasses off, put them back on, and then ran his hand through his hair. He drew a deep, meaningful breath. Actor tics, treating every moment not only as if it had been written for him but as if it were the pivotal scene in the production of his life. “Did it ever occur to you that maybe this is why you never made it as an actress? Because for the great ones, Dee . . . Debra . . . it is about them! It’s always about them!”

And the funny thing was, he was right. She knew. She had seen the great ones up close and they lived like Cleopatra and Antony, like Katherina and Petruchio, as if the scene ended when they left it, the world stopped when they closed their eyes.

“You don’t even see what you are,” Ron said. “You use people. You play with their lives and treat them like they’re nothing.” The words stung with familiarity and Debra could say nothing back. Then Ron turned and stormed back toward the stage, leaving Debra sitting in the wooden theater seat alone. “That’s it for today!” he yelled.

She called home. The sitter, the neighbor girl, Emma, said that Pat had broken the knob off the television again. She could hear him banging on pots in the kitchen. “Pat, I’m on the phone with your mom.”

The banging got louder.

“Where’s his dad?” Debra asked.

Emma said that Alvis had called from Bender Chevrolet and asked if she could babysit until ten P.M., that he’d made dinner reservations after work and that if Debra called, she was supposed to meet him at Trader Vic’s.

Dee checked her watch. It was almost seven. “What time did he call, Emma?”

“About four.”

Three hours? He could be at least six cocktails in—four if he didn’t go straight to the bar. Even for Alvis, that was some head start. “Thanks, Emma. We’ll be home soon.”

“Uh, Mrs. Bender, last time you guys got home after midnight, and I had school the next day.”

“I know, Emma. I’m sorry. I promise we’ll be home earlier this time.” Debra hung up, put her coat on, and stepped out into the cool Seattle air, a light rain seeming to come off the sidewalk. Ron’s car was still in the parking lot and she hurried to her Corvair, climbed in, and turned the key. Nothing. She tried again. Still nothing.

The first two years of their marriage, Alvis had got her a new Chevy from his dealership every six months. This year, though, she’d said it was unnecessary; she’d just keep the Corvair. And now it had some kind of starter problem: of course. She thought about calling Trader Vic’s, but it was only ten or twelve blocks, almost a straight shot down Fifth. She could take the Monorail. But when she got outside, she decided to walk instead. Alvis would be angry—one thing he hated about Seattle was its “scummy downtown,” a bit of which she’d have to walk through—but she thought a walk might clear her mind after that awful business with Ron.

She walked briskly, her umbrella pointed forward into the stinging mist. As she walked, she imagined all the things she should have said to Ron (Yes, Alvis IS the love of my life). She replayed his cutting words (You use people . . . treat them like they’re nothing). She’d used similar words, on her first date with Alvis, to describe the film business. She’d returned to Seattle to find it a different city, buzzing with promise. It had seemed so small to her before, but maybe she had been shrunk by all that happened in Italy, returning beaten to a city that basked in the glow of the World’s Fair; even her old theater chums enjoyed a new playhouse on the fairgrounds. Dee stayed away from the fair, and from the theater, the way she avoided seeing Cleopatra when it came out (reading and reveling, a little shamefully, in its bad reviews); she moved in with her sister to “lick her wounds,” as Darlene aptly described it. Dee assumed she’d give the baby up for adoption, but Darlene talked her into keeping it. Dee told her family that the baby’s father was an Italian innkeeper, and it was that lie that gave her the idea to name the baby after Pasquale. When Pat was three months old, Debra went back to work at Frederick and Nelson, in the Men’s Grill, and she was filling a customer’s ginger ale when she looked up one day to see a familiar man, tall, thin, and handsome, a slight stoop to his shoulders, a burst of gray at his temples. It took a minute to recognize him—Alvis Bender, Pasquale’s friend. “Dee Moray,” he said.