Chapter Twenty-One
From Theater Language: A Dictionary
by Walter Parker Bowman & Robert Hamilton Ball
"in order of appearance: Said of actors, in
listing their names on a program:
In the order of their entrance or in the order in which they speak onstage,
rather than in the order of their importance in the cast."
"Max, I need you," I called out to him in the next room.
"What is it, Paul?" he answered me. I could tell he hadn’t moved an inch from whereever he was next door.
"I don’t want to shout out everything. Come in here, please."
"What is it?" He was standing in the doorway looking at me sitting there at my dressing table staring into my mirror. I knew that from the closeness, the proximity of his voice and by the slight creaking of the door hinge just above the level of his hand, obviously leaned against it.
"Why do you always do that? Why make me call for you twice?"
"I’m sorry, Paul. I was studying."
"Studying?" I did look up at him when I said that.
"Yes. You know I have my exams coming up in a fortnight." No one else I know would every use the word fortnight.
"Of course you do."
"So, what is it? I’m here. How can I be of help?"
"Would you just take a look, please, Max, at my makeup box and see if there’s a number three pencil there. I don’t dare leave this eyelid without applying that line I like that takes off ten years. I’m afraid if I let go, I’ll never get the angle right again."
"A number three? Let me look." I heard him rummage in the top section of the kit, and I knew it had to be there. There had always been a number three, slightly gray, almost white when applied delicately.
"No, Paul, I don’t see it."
"It must be there, Max. Look again.
"It’s not there, I tell you."
"Well, look in the lower section. Maybe you threw it in instead of placing it where it ought to be." I could hear him moving the compartmented upper piece out of the kit and then I heard him moving things about in the deeper pocket of the box. His fingers halted. Then started up again, moving things carefull to search for the pencil that I had alreaady removed from the kit and placed carefully under the makeup towel on the table.
"I still don’t see one, Paul. You must have lost it."
"It’s not my job to lose these things, Max. That would seem to be your bailiwick these days."
"Nonsense, Paul."
"Nonsense! Indeed. Anyone would think you were accusing me, now, of something."
"Well, they are your things. I only help with them. They’re your responsibility."
"I took you on to take care of such matter, Max. Remember that."
"Yes, Paul. Yes, Paul. I will remember, and be grateful, Paul." The tone of his voice was insolent and resentful, but the words were nice to hear. I admonished him anyway.
"Watch that tone, please. Remember how that alters my performance." I dropped the eyelid and turned to look up at the boy, the young man, Max. He stared for a moment into my eyes and then he smiled. I couldn’t help myself. I returned the gesture.
"I’m sorry, Paul. I’ll find you another one somewhere. Give me a minute, please."
He was heading for the door when I decided to make things right between us again. I reached under the towel and pulled out the pencil. I dropped it quickly onto the floor at my feet and moved it slightly out of sight. Then I turned and called out to him before he could leave the dressing room.
"Max, wait," I said with a certain tone of urgency. "Let me...what’s this?" I moved my foot and gave a little kick. Then I leaned forward to see the pencil that I knew would be there. "Why, Max, you must have knocked it to thefloor when you were ransacking the kit. Naughty, Max."
"I’m sorry, Paul. I’m..."
"It’s all right now, Max. I have the damn thing and I’ll make my youthful line and all will be right with the world again."
"Can I go back to studying, Paul, or do you need me for any more little chores?"
"Of course you can study. Of course. I’ll be just fine. Thank you, Max."
I watched him go back into the other room and heard the slight skriech of the divan’s springs as he sat and stretched out his long, slender legs. I reasserted myself with the eyelid, held it fast and made the mark that took away the tired look of aging eyes. Now, even in the front row, I would appear younger, stronger, more virile, more well-suited to my voice. I would fool some of the people for some of the time and a few for a little while longer during the performance. I would fool no one all of the time, not even myself. That was my future and I knew it. Still it was good to be singing again, live and in person, and it was a help to have Max with me.
He was studying for his exams, earning at last his diploma from the school he had dragged himself to, day after day for six of the seven years he had been with me. I never understood what it was he wanted to achieve. A diploma, of course, but for what purpose? He worked for me, lived with me, had a life than many men would envy. This new knowledge he pursued wasn’t going to make a shard of difference in the way of the world, not of his world certainly. He was destined for the performance venues as an able and effective assistant to the star. That was what he did so well. Why would this knowledge of European history he craved ever be useful to him in the life we forged together, or even in the life he had put behind him to be with me? I didn’t understand.
"Max?"
"What now, Paul?"
"Max, I need you a moment. Just a moment, please."
"Don’t beg, Paul," he said, coming into my inner sanctum. I stood up.
"How do I look?"
"Lovely."
"How old do I look?"
"Thirty-five and not a day older." I could hear the gentle exasperation in his voice but I went on with the ritual.
"Who is the handsomest man in the world?"
"Phineas."
"Phineas?"
"...as played by you, Paul."
"And who’s the hero the women adore?"
"That’s Phineas, too, Paul."
"And who gets to sing the loveliest song in all creation?"
"It’s you."
"Thank you, Max."
Phineas was the role in the new operetta I starred in. The producers had offered it to me in the fall of the previous season, but it wasn’t right for me then. Max read it and made two suggestions which I passed along to the authors and, as in days of old, they made the changes to suit the artist. Now the role was me and I was the role. What was done for me was simply this: Phineas had youthened from a man of 45 to a youth of 38 and secondly Phineas had the two songs that closed the two acts. No longer did a younger man sing the plaintive ballads about love lost and love never recovered, but Phineas, the man of strength and character could reveal his deepest emotions through those gems of song. Max had known where they belonged and to whom and he had set things aright.
"Do you ever miss her, Paul?"
"Who? Helga?"
"Yes, of course, who else?"
"No one, naturally. Helga. Miss her. Those two concepts no longer fit together."
"Why? You loved her once. I remember that."
"Like a baby craves mother’s milk after being weaned from the teat I craved Helga Meerstadt in her day. She was mine for a time, but never mine in reality."
"You’re such a phony." That comment brought me up short. I lost my sense of person.
"What the hell do you mean by that?"
"Listen to yourself, sometime, Paul. You can’t say anything honest in an honest way. It always has to be ‘special’ for you."
"Max, you’re getting out of hand."
"A bit. Yes."
"What is it, baby?" I asked him.
"I don’t know."
"Well, Papa Paul has an appointment in five minutes with 1,836 people who came and paid to hear him sing and watch him act, so" and my voice went deeper here, into my singing range, "stay put and wait for me. We’ll fix you up later."
As if on cue the knock on my door alerted me to the fact that I had said the right thing at the right time. I was needed on stage.
A good performance is always a joy to be holding center stage in and this night was a very good performance. Everyone was into it. There wasn’t one slaggard. Light cues were perfect and the audience got into the emotional swings and we were on fire. It happens now and then, just that way. The stars are aligned or something, I don’t really understand it, but electricity strikes through the empty space between stage and audience and illuminates the heart and soul of every participant on either side of the orchestra pit. At the end of Act One I came back to the dressing room drenched with sweat and needing my Max.
"Max, I need you, now boy." I dropped onto the chaise and kicked off my shoes.
"Max, now please!"
There was a knock on the door and before I could shout "no visitors" the door opened and she was there. Suddenly I knew what had been bothering my baby boy earlier. SHE was there.
"Helga," I said softly.
"Paul, before you must say something, try to listen, yes."
"Helga, this is not the time. I have to rest and prepare for the second act."
"Paul, I am coming to tell you of the mistakes of the past."
"But this is not the time." I took a deep breath and let it all out in one syllable.
"MAX!"
"He is not available. I am on an errands sending him."
"How dare you! Helga, leave my dressing room."
"And who, if not Helga, will help you prepare. She knows your ways."
I was about to protest but she had dropped to her knees before me and placed her mouth where it hadn’t been in far too many years. As she closed her lips tight, I leaned my head back against the pillow and settled in for what I knew would make me even more brilliant between 9:55 and 10:48 that evening.
When she had completed her task and I was wiping myself dry again she sat doen on the chair at my table. She was smiling the smile I recalled from all of those trysts that had been arranged so well for us in the old days at the Metropolitan. I was smiling mine as well. I knew that from the itch that always attended the broad, Helga smile providing deep dimples in both my cheeks.
"Have you missed me, Paul?" she asked in perfect English.
"Of course, I have," I told her.
"I was, of course, wrong to betray our love, Liebling," she said. "You put aside your California girl and I could not desert the man who was husband. I was unfair to the pride of our affection."
"You had scruples, Helga."
"I had baby in the oven," she said.
"His?" I asked.
"What do you think?" she replied.
"Mine, then?"
"My son must carry the legal name of his legal father," she replied.
"So, his?"
"You can ask this?"
"Then, mine."
"I am a moral wife, even if I am an immoral mistress."
"Helga, I’m confused. I have a performance. I must think of my Phineas."
"As I think of mine."
"Your what?"
"Phineas."
"Thank you." I moved to kiss her, but she took a step back from me.
"Phineas." She said it again.
"You must call me Paul. I only play Phineas."
"It is his name."
"Yes, the character I play."
"No. Baby Phineas."
"There is no baby Phineas, Helga. In the play I am unmarried, but sympathetic in spite of that."
"The baby Phineas."
"You said that. It makes no sense.
"Her baby, Phineas, Paul," said a voice from behind me. Max’s voice.
"Her..? Who? Helga," I said, turning back in her direction, "is there a baby named Phineas?"
"Mein Gott," said the Meerstadt. "Mein Lieber Gott!"
"Her baby is named Phineas. She sees this as a psychic connection, Paul. She thinks the baby must be yours, calling out to you. That’s what she told me."
"Max, it’s ridiculous."
"Why, Paul? You were lovers once."
"Max, you know my tastes. Do you think that’s only with you? I may not know much about science, but I know this much...no intercourse in the whim-wham and no baby."
"So you never....?"
"Max. I repeat. You know my tastes."
There was a knock on my door and the stage manager called five minutes.
"Helga, out, I must change. Max, my costume. Helga, later, please. Goodbye."
Max escorted her gently to the door and moved her through it. I heard it close again.
"Max, you do believe me, don’t you?"
"Paul," he said sweetly, kissing me on the forehead, "how could I ever have doubted you."
All was well. Order of appearance in perfect alignment. Costume in place. Music to sing. An evening in perfect harmony with itself.
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