Cascade (47 page)

Jacob glanced around, then spoke in an embarrassed rush. “You sent me a letter, years ago, after that first one.”

She looked at him: yes?

“I found it,” he said, as if he had been waiting forever to tell her. “Just a few months ago, cleaning out Ruth’s closet. I found that letter. In a candy box. And there were all these other things. Clippings about you, that sketch I did of you. It had gone missing early on, when we were first in New York.”

She shook her head, confused.

“I never got that second letter, Dez. I never knew Ruth intercepted it. I never even thought she knew about you.”

“Oh,” she said, a single, startled syllable.

The last fingers of sunlight illuminated one side of his face and she saw the lines around his eyes, saw that he was changed, after all. Of course, they were both changed.

“The letter didn’t really excuse anything, but it was an explanation,” she said. “An apology.”

“I know.” And he had written his own letter in haste, he said. In anger. It was pure coincidence that her first letter had come right after he’d spoken with Al Stein. “I’m sorry I didn’t give you the benefit of the doubt.”

“Well, it appears we were star-crossed, Jacob. It seems fitting, considering we’re at a Shakespeare theater.”

“Tell me,” he said. “And I won’t be embarrassed if you say no, but did you run those ads for me?”

She pressed her lips together. Across the lawn, James and Abby and the others stood in a circle. Abby leaned in to say something and the group erupted in laughter. “Partly,” she admitted.

“I missed you all those years,” he said. “Missed your friendship. You were right, you know. We were two people alive in the same city and not seeing each other—I don’t know. It would have been wrong, I know, but in better ways it would have been right.”

She heard his words as if from some great distance and wondered when he had changed his mind. Before the war? During it? He surely must have grasped the brevity of a single lifetime, even before Ruth died.

“I saw glimpses of you,” he said. “The
Life
article, other mentions here and there. I went to see
The Black Veil
at the Whitney and God, Dez, I wished I could talk to you about it.”

“You saw it?”

“I went as soon as I heard about it.”

“I’m so glad. And you understood what I was trying to say?”

“The Nazi message, yes, of course. It was brilliant.”

She looked down into her glass, at the slender threads of rising bubbles, to hide her disappointment. It wasn’t his fault he didn’t understand her cryptic apology, especially after all the publicity the painting received.

“It wasn’t intended to be a political message.” She smiled at his confusion. “That was just the way people interpreted it. It was Cascade, Jacob. It was a message to
you,
” she explained, and as she did, he half-closed his eyes, trying to see the painting in his mind’s eye.

“God, I wish I’d known,” he said. “For years I was sure you would want nothing to do with me after that awful letter. But then I saw that ad.” He rested his fingertips against her wrist and they burned. Even now, they burned. Rational thought unraveling, ready to fly out the window. Desire was so primal, so hard to control. And to think it had been smoldering all those years, when she was telling herself she could think of him with bemused distance.

Maybe an epistolary correspondence
, she could say.
We can be proper, old-fashioned
.

But she couldn’t do it, couldn’t stir it all up again.

“I’m married, Jacob,” she said. How could he not have known? “To James.”

He took a single, reflexive step backward. “Right,” he said, almost to himself. “Of course.”

“I thought you would have known.” The marriage had caused a modest amount of publicity.

He lifted his head, becoming the cordial, correct self she remembered. “I didn’t.”

An usher emerged from the playhouse, ringing a bell, and she was aware of James seeking her out, beckoning, striding across the grass.

Stay for the afterparty, she urged, but he didn’t get a chance to reply. Something was happening, causing everyone to look around and up. There was a collective sound of appreciation, a drawn-out “ohhhh…” followed by applause.

On the roof of the playhouse, the gathering dusk and a flick of a switch had illuminated a row of round lightbulbs that spelled out
SHAKESPEARE
in white electric light.

James headed toward Dez with mild disappointment in his gait—obviously someone had switched on the lights before he intended. But no matter, his manner seemed to say. He made a sweeping, offering gesture with his arm, from Dez to the roof.

A gift.

James.

And next she thought of him, Jacob had slipped away, part of the crowd sweeping into the theater.

The theater was a polished jewel. Its Elizabethan-style paneling, refinished and waxed, gleamed. New electrical wiring fitted out the lanterns, which glowed with amber light. The new drapes were thick burgundy velvet. Dez and James made their way down the center aisle to the stage, clutching their programs, calling out hellos and thank-yous, waiting for everyone to settle in. The sound of excited chattering was almost deafening, and it was a giddy feeling to look around and imagine her father’s delight. When every seat appeared to be occupied, even up into the rafters, she turned to James. “I think we can begin.”

James spread his arms and began to clap for silence. The noisy buzz turned to a few voices, then subsided. All eyes looked to him.

“Dez and I decided not to open the production with a lot of fanfare,” he said. “We would like tonight’s performance to speak for itself, but we would of course like to thank everyone who had a part in preserving this historic gem and we would like to thank all of you for being here.” He looked to Dez. “Desdemona?”

Dez gave the audience a small wave. The rows; no single face was distinguishable. “This is the day my father trusted would happen. It’s the day he talked about on the last day of his life. I know he is looking down on us with complete and utter delight. We’ll talk and celebrate later, but for now—” She held up both hands like a conductor. “Let the show begin.”

They took their seats to the sound of applause, clutching each other’s fingers.

“At last,” James whispered.

“At last.”

The lights blinked off. There was a long, drawn-out moment of inky darkness and the play began with
a tempestuous noise
: a loud crack of thunder and roiling waves, a shipwreck just offshore from an island. In the background sat the stark, skeletal remains of other wrecked ships. Sailors on board cried out and abandoned ship, saying good-bye to their lives.

As the performance progressed, she imagined her father, standing just offstage, cuing actors, adjusting gowns and crowns and wings. She imagined him simply folding his arms and watching over what he had helped bring to life. Dez had to hand it to the director, his attention to detail was spot-on—sounds that set the right mood, flawless stage sets and lighting, superb performances. Ferdinand and Miranda were perfectly cast, and when they got to the part where they declared their love for each other, when Miranda asked,
Do you love me?
and Ferdinand, almost ashamed that she even had to ask said,
O! heaven! O earth! bear witness to this sound. I, beyond all limit of what else in the world, do love, prize, honour you
, Dez couldn’t help but think of Jacob, somewhere behind her in the dark.

“I am a fool to weep at what I am glad of!
” Miranda said, and Dez took James’s hand. Their life was satisfying and good. She must not weep at what she was glad of.

During the brief intermission, swallowed up in the crush of people at the bar, Dez saw no sign of Jacob, but it was James’s moment anyway, and it was her father’s. The buzzing, the excitement, the glasses raised in William Hart’s memory, belonged to the two men who had made the playhouse happen.

Her father would have approved of the audience’s eagerness to settle back into their seats. He would be gratified to see the rapt attention they gave the rest of the play. When Richard Leslie paused with quiet fanfare, then gathered himself up to speak the play’s most famous lines, everyone became still and attentive in that way Dez had forgotten.

“Our revels now are ended. These our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air. And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, the cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself, yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve. And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind
.
We are such stuff as dreams are made on
,
and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”

Leslie very emphatically emphasized the
we
, which seemed to be his way of reminding the audience that they were really listening to Shakespeare talk down through the ages.

“Thank you,” Dez whispered when James inclined his head toward hers. He was nearing sixty now, but he was vigorous and fit, a man who had built an empire of steel yet always found time to appreciate the three graces. Their marriage had been a successful and independent meeting of the minds. They lived weekends in Hastings-on-Hudson; weekdays found Dez in her Central Park studio.

The play wound to its end. Prospero, having relinquished his magic powers, cued the audience to clap by asking them to let him leave the island
with the help of your good hands
. The clapping filled the rafters, real and enthusiastic—real applause always so spontaneous and exuberant, hard to fake.

The production was a success. Newspapers, next day, would call it a marvelous blend of pageantry and poetry as they praised Leslie’s soaring performance, calling it both arrogant and humble.
With the addition of the William Hart Shakespeare Theatre, Lenox promises to be an arts mecca for decades to come
,
The Sunday Call
would write.

Everyone gathered in the vestibule after the show, the actors, still in their costumes, mingling with the guests. Dez was conscious of her eyes sweeping the crowd for Jacob, but there was no sign of him, and she told herself it was for the best. As much as she was tempted to renew the relationship, she couldn’t do it, couldn’t walk into infidelity with her eyes open.

James, behind the drinks bar, signaled to Dez—
ready?
He pushed on the corner of the concealed cupboard and the door swung open. Dez reached in to retrieve Portia’s casket, the moment almost unreal, but the lead cold and hard to the touch, quite real. She hopped up on the stool that someone had provided and signaled to James, who clinked two glasses together to get everyone’s attention. When the crowd had stilled, upturned faces smiling at her expectantly, she began by thanking everyone, by reciting a brief history of the playhouse, and the tale of its removal from Cascade to Lenox.

Then she held Portia’s casket up high and explained its story. “Those of you who knew my father can well imagine the glee with which he’d have planned something like this. I know he died more comfortably knowing that he would be part of this production tonight.”

“So a toast,” James called out. “To William Hart.”

“Toast!” A hundred glasses lifted into the air. “To William Hart!”

Dez fitted the key into the lock. Her wrists trembled even as she steeled herself for a letdown. Like the unmasking of D. H. Spaulding, nothing in Portia’s box could possibly live up to the excitement and mystery of the unknown. But as she lifted the lid, her heart thudded like
hammer blows, regardless. Inside lay two folded sheets of stationery and a rolled handkerchief that she immediately recognized as her father’s. She pressed it to her face with bittersweet disbelief—the smell of his shaving soap still lingered in the fabric, even after the passing of so much time.

Her eyes flooded and she looked down, blinking furiously. She opened the handkerchief, revealing the initials
WH
embroidered in small, square black letters. A sturdy iron key fell out.

She held up the key to show the crowd, and shrugged to show that she did not know what lock it fit. She unfolded the letters. One was personal.
My dear Dez—
She squeezed her eyes shut. Later. She would savor it later.