The Girl at the End of the Line Read online

  The woman seemed just as petulant and self-involved in real life as she had on stage. When Molly asked if the little girl who had played her daughter was scared about having such a mean mother on stage (in one particularly frightening flashback Mrs. Lewis had bent the girl’s pinky finger back until she would say “I love you, Mommy”), the actress replied with a curt, “Realism is important.” Molly looked around for Tuck, but he was nowhere to be seen. The DA actor continued to stare at her.

  “Do you like being an actress?” said Molly, trying again with Mrs. Lewis.

  “Actor. You wouldn’t say doctoress or lawyeress. A person who acts is an actor.”

  “Sorry,” said Molly. “Do you like being an actor?”

  “To me,” announced the woman, striking a pose as if everyone in the restaurant were waiting for her answer, “being an actor is the single most important contribution a person can hope to make in the world today. Actors are our storytellers, our spirit guides to the magical essence of life, our touchstones for the creative forces of the universe. By literally bringing themselves into the creative process, actors gift audiences with the most precious human experience available in our egocentric, antihumanistic society.”

  Mercifully a waiter arrived at this point and cut her off.

  “What can I get you guys?” he demanded.

  Nell pointed to a bottle left by an actor who had paid his check and exited just as they were getting settled.

  “Right. Heineken for you.”

  “Me, too,” said Molly, happy to see Nell order for herself for a change. Nell hardly ever tried to communicate with waiters or salespeople or anyone else for that matter, preferring to let Molly do it for her. Perhaps it was because when she did try, nobody in Pelletreau seemed to understand her. People here seemed a whole lot quicker.

  “Two Heinekens,” said the waiter, “anything to eat?”

  Nell put her thumb and forefinger together and twisted her hand back and forth.

  “Screwdriver,” guessed the waiter not missing a beat, as if customers ordering in pantomime were a regular occurrence at Ralph’s.

  Nell shook her head and repeated the hand motion.

  “Key,” said the waiter after a moment and seemed to quiver with delight when Nell nodded her head. Then she touched her ear.

  “Sounds like.”

  Nell dug into her pocket and went through her change until she found the coin she wanted.

  “Dime. Sounds like dime. Rhyme. Time. Lime. Lime! Key lime pie!”

  Nell nodded happily. Molly was amazed. And not just by Nell’s sudden talkativeness.

  “How can you want to eat lime pie when you’re drinking beer? What kind of combination is that? You want to get sick?”

  “Oh, leave her alone,” said waiter. “She’s obviously a very creative person. I suppose you want something conventional.”

  Nell folded her arms in front of her and grinned smugly.

  “Yes, I do,” said Molly. “Do you have pretzels or something like that?”

  “We do, but you’re an idiot if you have anything but the fried calamari.”

  “Of course, she’ll have the calamari,” declared Tuck in a sonorous baritone, returning to his seat next to Nell. “My treat.”

  “I don’t even know what calamari is!” said Molly.

  “Where are you from? The moon?” muttered the actor who played Mrs. Lewis, getting up and heading toward a friend at another table.

  “North Carolina,” murmured Molly. She had always thought of herself as smart and sophisticated. In Pelletreau, where barbecue was considered an art form, she was. Here among this crowd she felt like a hick.

  “Trust me, bubee, you’ll love it,” said the waiter and escaped in the direction of the kitchen.

  “What did I just order?” said Molly.

  “Fried squid,” said Tuck. “Very delicious. So tell me about Margaret. I truly am very sorry to hear about her passing. We were all so young then, so very young. I was fresh off the farm. Literally. Those were my salad days, and I but a spring lettuce. Tucker Aloysius Wittington, Radicchio theatricalis. The kiss Margaret and I shared in the play was actually my first from a representative of the opposite sex. So what was Margaret up to all these years?”

  Molly explained diplomatically that her grandmother had lived a quiet life in Pelletreau. She told how they had come to New York after finding the program and what they had managed to learn at the library.

  “Poor Margaret,” Tuck muttered, remembering. “The critics really destroyed us.”

  With deep sighs and dramatic hand gestures, he recounted how well things had gone on the road for Without Reservations— the changes the playwright had made in Boston, the applause and curtain calls in Philadelphia, and then the silent Broadway audiences, the vicious reviews, the snickering.

  “The producer had seen it coming, of course,” Tuck said with a sigh. “That’s why he opened on Thanksgiving—he knew he had a turkey and just hoped to feed it to a weekend of happy holiday audiences. But one was allowed to fail in those days, not like now when everything costs so much money. It was a truly creative time then, so many more productions, so much more energy. And what performers we had. My first play, and there I was, sharing the boards with Arthur Page Anderson and Lillie St. Germaine. There were giants then. Giants.”

  Tuck had ended this pronouncement with a hand thrown up theatrically, as if he were tossing a bouquet of flowers into the air or concluding a tango. Nobody else at the table paid any attention except for the DA character who sat a few seats away, quietly nursing his drink and watching Molly, who wished he would just go away.

  The waiter returned with their food and drinks. Nell tore into her key lime pie. Molly tentatively tried a ringlet of her calamari and was surprised to find it pretty good, if a little rubbery.

  “Tell me about my grandmother,” she said, offering Tuck a piece that looked suspiciously like a tentacle—probably because it was one.

  “Oh, Margaret was a darling,” said Tuck, “very earnest, very nervous about her part, but funny, always joking around. She had a wonderfully raucous laugh—like a horse, I used to kid her. Then those reviews came out. I didn’t see her much after that, except on stage. She hid in her dressing room until we closed, poor thing.”

  “Did she ever talk about her family, about where she had come from originally?”

  “Not that I recall.”

  “She left us a ring with a big stone. Do you remember it? Do you know where she might have gotten it?”

  “Have not a clue. Who could notice jewelry when there was Margaret to look at? She was dazzling.”

  So much for that, Molly thought.

  “You know,” Tuck went on, “when I first met Margaret she had stars in her eyes. It was amazing. I mean you could actually see them twinkle. I wouldn’t have thought that a few bad reviews could destroy her, but you never know about people. Margaret really took it to heart. A few months after we closed, I ran into Dickie on the street, and he said she still wouldn’t even come out of the apartment. Then they got divorced and I never saw her again.”

  “Dick Jellinek.”

  “Yes, that was before Dickie changed his name.”

  “Dick Jellinek changed his name?” exclaimed Molly.

  “Of course. What kind of career could you have with a name like Jellinek in those days? And Maggie really was a laughingstock for years after we bombed so badly. I suppose Dickie got tired of people thinking about her when they saw him. So somewhere along the line he became Dick Julian, and did a lot better.”

  “You mean he kept on acting?”

  “He was an actor, my dear,” exclaimed Tuck. “What else would he do?”

  So that was why Richard Jellinek had vanished from the Theatre World annuals, Molly realized. He had become someone else. Richard Julian.

  “Dickie was a leading-man/best-friend type, quite a competent fellow,” Tuck went on. “And very attractive. He and I even did a few shows together in the sixties,
then Dickie was off in Hollywood for a while doing television dramas. But he was basically a creature of the stage and always made his way back to New York.”

  “Do you know where I can find him?” said Molly, excitedly. “Is he alive? Is he still working? I’d love to talk with him.”

  “Oh, Dickie hasn’t been around for years and years,” clucked Tuck. “God only knows what’s happened to him.”

  “Maybe Equity would have an address or a contact for him,” said Molly.

  “Well, I know his agent was poor Burt Wolfanson at Ajax Bowles if that’s any help.”

  “Not really,” said Molly her heart sinking.

  “You know who might know is Bobby Prince,” declared Tuck, snapping his fingers dramatically (Molly suspected that everything Tuck did—down to and including setting his alarm clock and tying his shoelaces—he did dramatically).

  “Is Bobby Prince an actor, too?” she asked.

  “Oh, indeed. And just as beautiful as Dickie. His name was originally Plotkin, as I recall. Anyway Bobby and Dickie were always up for the same parts and they became inseparable. I’d see them at the same auditions and the same bars. They were always hanging around together. If anyone would know what happened to Dickie it would be Bobby Prince. He’s been retired for years, but I shall track him down and give him a call on your behalf this very instant. It’s the least I can do.”

  “It’s not too late to call?” said Molly. Her watch had stopped hours ago, but it had to be after midnight.

  “Of course it’s too late, but this is for old times’ sake. Now who would have his number? Nick Lawlor? Suzy Winston? Chita? I’ll have to check around.”

  Obviously relishing the prospect of waking half the people in New York, Tuck bounced up from his chair and headed toward a bank of telephones near the restrooms. Someone turned up the volume on the jukebox, which was blaring show tunes. A guy from another table came over and without a word pulled Nell off to a small open area where people were dancing. Molly nervously watched her go, then looked over to find herself alone at the table with the unpleasant actor who had played the DA in the play.

  “Why doesn’t your sister talk?” he said, taking a sip of his scotch.

  “I’d rather not go into that if you don’t mind,” said Molly, trying to be polite. “It’s very complicated.”

  “You’re her keeper?”

  No, she didn’t like him at all.

  “I’m her sister,” Molly said evenly and turned away, using every ounce of body language she could muster to let the man know how she felt about him. It didn’t work. He scooted over into the chair next to hers.

  “You live together in North Carolina?” he asked.

  “How did you know we’re from North Carolina?”

  “You mentioned it. Liz asked if you were from the moon. You said North Carolina, though I could tell anyway from your accent.”

  “I don’t have any accent. Y’all are the ones with accents. Do you always listen to other people’s conversations?”

  “Sometimes. So how long have you been taking care of your sister?”

  “What is this? An interrogation? The play is over. You’re not really a courtroom lawyer, you know.”

  “I am, actually.”

  Molly gave this the look it deserved.

  “No, it’s true,” he said, cracking a smile, the first one Molly had seen from him, onstage or off. “I was an assistant district attorney in Stamford, Connecticut. The woman who wrote the play you saw tonight served on a jury of a case I tried. When Longwharf first presented Bank Street Story, they couldn’t find anybody believable for the prosecutor so she persuaded the producers to give me an audition. I hated my job and desperately wanted to change my life. They offered me the part, and I grabbed it. When the play moved to Broadway, I came along. My name’s David in case you didn’t read your program. David Azaria.”

  “Molly O’Hara. As I’m sure you’ve overheard. I enjoyed your performance tonight. Sort of.”

  “Thanks. Sort of.”

  They sat in awkward silence for a moment.

  “So are you going back to being a lawyer when the play closes?” Molly said finally, just to get him to stop staring at her.

  “Nope,” he said. “Not that I like acting so much. The rehearsals are great, but after the first month of performances I was so bored I was ready to shoot myself. Then I started appreciating it from a deeper perspective. Doing the exact same sequence of actions, night after night, can be very Zen if you let it. Like the Japanese tea ceremony. I’m using the time to learn more about the craft. Already casting directors are fighting over me for daytime TV, and I’m doing voice-overs.”

  “Voice-overs?”

  “Narration for documentaries, commercials—that sort of thing. Eventually I’d like to direct, but already I’m making more money now than I ever did as a prosecutor. And having a lot more fun, which is the point, isn’t it?”

  “You mean you don’t believe that being an actor is the single most important thing in the history of the world?”

  He smiled again.

  “I just prefer to spend my time entertaining people than sending them to jail. You still haven’t answered my question.”

  “Which was?”

  “Why is your sister your responsibility?”

  “Because she’s my sister,” said Molly. “We don’t have any other family.”

  “She lives with you.”

  “Yes.”

  “What about work?” asked David Azaria, taking another sip of his drink and staring at her with the same cold calculating expression. “What does she do when you’re at work?”

  “We work together. We have an antique shop. Look, why are you so interested in my sister and me?”

  “What about dates? Does she go out on dates with you?”

  “I don’t go—” Molly stopped, flustered.

  “You don’t go out on dates,” David said, finishing the sentence. “Have many friends, people you get together with?”

  “Sure I have friends.”

  “Name a few.”

  Molly didn’t say anything. Besides Oscar, who she didn’t see socially, and Taffy, who she didn’t see unless she had to, Molly couldn’t think of anyone who even knew she was alive, except for the dealers who were her professional competition.

  “In other words, you’re sacrificing any chance to have a normal life so you can take care of your sister,” said David in a surprisingly gentle voice. “Why?”

  “I’m not doing any such thing. And I don’t see how it’s any of your business.”

  “I don’t care if you lie to me. I’d just like to know why you’re lying to yourself.”

  “Because what happened to her was my fault,” snapped Molly, then brought her hand instantly to her mouth.

  She couldn’t believe she had told him. She’d never told anyone, not in all these years. And now she’d blurted it out to a stranger in a bar, a stranger she didn’t even like.

  “What happened to her?” he asked after a moment.

  Molly shook her head.

  “Come on,” he pressed. “You want to tell someone. I can see it in your eyes. Who better than somebody you’re obviously planning never to see again?”

  Molly didn’t intend to tell him anything. She was surprised therefore to hear herself talking.

  “When Nell was a little girl she saw someone murder our mother, if you must know.”

  “How was that your fault?”

  “Because she was supposed to be with me,” said Molly angrily. “I was supposed to take her with me to the movies that day. But my friend Taffy didn’t want to be bothered with my little sister and I let her talk me into leaving Nellie at home. If I had taken Nellie with us like I was supposed to, she never would have seen what she did.”

  David Azaria took a sip of his drink and continued to stare at her.

  “How old were you when all this happened?” he said finally.

  “Eleven,” said Molly, wiping her eyes w
hich had become moist somewhere along the line.

  “How old are you now?”

  “Twenty-eight.”

  “Seventeen years for going to the movies. Pretty rough sentence for a kid. I’ll bet the guy who did it got less time.”

  “They never caught anybody.”

  “Sounds familiar. Professionally speaking I’d say you’ve paid in full for whatever blame is rightly yours for what happened to your sister.”

  “My life isn’t some kind of punishment, Mr. Azaria,” said Molly. “I love my sister. I’m the only real family she has. Somebody has to take care of her.”

  “Call me David,” said David Azaria. “And it looks to me like your sister can take care of herself.”

  Molly followed his eyes to the dance floor, where a handful of people were executing wild and intricate dance sequences. A radiant Nell was matching the Broadway gypsies step for step. Where had she learned to dance like that, Molly wondered. When had she become so beautiful?

  “You don’t understand,” whispered Molly. “She needs me.”

  “Can she dress herself?”

  “Of course, she can dress herself.”

  “Can she feed herself?”

  “She’s a wonderful cook, but that doesn’t—”

  “Can she read and write?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Maybe it’s you that need her,” said David, “not the other way around.”

  “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” sputtered Molly. “How could she make a living? Nellie can’t even talk. And she gets terribly frightened sometimes, she has these … these fits. I don’t know what would happen to her if she were alone.”

  “Well, she’s never going to find out if you keep treating her like some little baby, is she? Plenty of people who can’t talk or hear or even see make lives for themselves. If she had to, maybe your sister would do just fine on her own.”

  He fixed Molly with his huge, coal-black eyes. She met his gaze for a second, then looked away.

  “You’re crazy,” she said. “And it’s none of your business.”

  “How about going out with me sometime?” he replied.

  “If you ever get to Pelletreau, North Carolina, you can give me a call.”