Jane turned to Elizabeth as Miss Hedeman went off to the theatre. “I guess a bare skin would be better than a bearskin at that.”
Elizabeth groaned. “Oh, Jane, that would have been pretty feeble, even for Ben.”
Jane pulled out a small, delicate handkerchief and wiped her forehead. “It's the best I'm capable of on a day like this.”
“I bet Miss Hedeman must have been beautiful as a young girl,” Elizabeth said.
Jane put her handkerchief away. “She's still a pretty grandlooking old dameâif only she'd leave the underwear ribbons
and dried flowers out of her hair. Hey, something's going on out there. Let's go see what it is.”
Strains of music came from one of the piers jutting out into the ocean, and Jane and Elizabeth stepped from the splintery boards of the boardwalk onto the older and even more rotting planks of the pier. A motley group of people were sitting on folding chairs listening to a Sunday afternoon concert. On a small raised platform a large woman in a violently flowered chiffon dress was singing one of Violetta's arias from
La Traviata
.
“Oh, no, Jane,” Elizabeth protested. “I love
Traviata
. She ought to be strangled.”
“If you ask me, she already has been,” Jane whispered.
Elizabeth tugged at Jane's arm. “Come on. Let's go. I can't stand it.”
“Have you no appreciation of
art
?” Jane demanded, but she turned away and they left the pier and started walking down the boardwalk again.
As they passed the milk bar Elizabeth said, “That girlâyou know, the one Ben and I told you aboutâis going to think we gypped her if she makes her boyfriend take her to
Macbeth
next week and they find I'm not in it after all.”
“Yes, there you'll be, in your usual place, asking if you can sew them to a sheet.”
Elizabeth felt Jane's forehead. “Aren't you feeling well, Jane? Your jokes are getting progressively older and feebler.”
“I must be hungry,” Jane said. “Want a milk shake?”
“Uh-uh. I'm much too hot to eat.”
“That isn't eating. It's drinking.”
“I'm too hot to drink, then.”
“You could explain to the girl you aren't going to be in the show next week.”
“I don't want to explain it to her. It'll be good for her to see it anyhow, and it'll be the best show of the summer so they ought to go.”
“Well, come in with me anyhow,” Jane begged. “I was so upset over Aunt Val and John Peter's tooth I couldn't eat any lunch. Or breakfast.”
Elizabeth sighed heavily. “Okay, but if it's hot in there, for heaven's sake, hurry.”
It was hot in the milk bar, even hotter than out on the boardwalk. A different girl was working and Jane ordered a hamburger to go.
“It's almost suppertime and Mrs. Browden's feelings will be hurt if you don't eat,” Elizabeth warned.
“Oh, she'll just think I'm still worried about John Peter. I'm having this so I can eat it on the way. Let's get back to the Cottage. Maybe it'll be cooler and maybe John Peter will be awake.”
As they neared the Cottage they met Ben coming from the theatre. “Hi,” he greeted them. “Help me carry sandwiches and coffee over to the theatre.”
Elizabeth looked at Ben unhappily because she could not help remembering Kurt's words.
“Andersen said they could work some and then break for supper at the Cottage, but no one wants to take makeup off.
Mrs. Browden will be so disappointed about her roast beef. Rehearsal's going pretty smoothly in spite of the lighting. I think we'll finish well before midnight.”
“It'll be the first time this summer,” Elizabeth said.
“Listen, Ben,” Jane said suddenly, “what we talked about this morning. I'll do it.”
“Swell,” Ben said. “That's wonderful, Jane.”
“What's that?” Elizabeth asked.
“None of your business,” Ben said. “Just something between Jane and me.”
“I wouldn't let John Peter know if you're having secrets,” Elizabeth warned.
Mrs. Browden had packed two baskets full of sandwiches and had filled two large thermos bottles with coffee. Ben took the bottles and Jane and Elizabeth the sandwich baskets.
“It's going to storm tonight,” Ben said. “This heat can't last.”
“How's the company holding up?” Elizabeth asked.
“Pretty wilted. That's another reason Andersen wants to get through rehearsal. She said she'd rather have them still alive tomorrow night. Thanks for the help, kids. Can you hang around a minute? Thank God I don't have a costume, so I can eat outside.”
“I've got to go back and wash my hair before dinner,” Jane said. “Got any shampoo I can borrow, Liz?”
“Sorry, I used mine all up this morning.”
“Oh, well, I'll use John Peter's shaving soap. It works pretty well.”
“You going to stay, Liz?” Ben asked hopefully.
“Yes, I'll stay.”
She sat down on the steps and waited until Ben came back out of the theatre, a cup of coffee and a sandwich in his hands. “How'd
Twelfth Night
go?” he asked.
Elizabeth looked down at her feet in her worn white sneakers. “We didn't do it. Everybody thought it was too hot.”
“What have you been doing?”
She shifted her gaze to a clump of Queen Anne's lace growing up between the steps. “Oh, nothing much. Jane and I went for a walk on the boardwalk.”
She knew she was not hiding from Ben the strain that Jane's and John Peter's and now Kurt's words had set up in her, and she was not surprised when he asked, “What's the matter, Liz?”
She reached between the steps and picked a piece of Queen Anne's lace. “Oh, nothing. I'm just hot. This is pretty, isn't it, Ben? Some people call it cow parsley, and I suppose it's silly of me but that makes it seem not nearly so lovely as when you call it Queen Anne's lace.”
“Yes, but what's the matter?” Ben asked again. “Are you mad at me?”
“Of course not. Why would I be mad at you?”
“I don't know. I thought maybe I'd done something or said something you didn't like.”
“No, Ben. Of course not.”
“What is it, then? You're not acting like yourself. Maybe you're not mad at me, but you're acting as though something's wrong.”
Elizabeth held her breath, then let it out in a kind of gasp. “Ben, have I been leading you on?”
“What?”
“Have I been leading you on?”
Ben reached for her face and turned it so that he could look into her eyes. She met his gaze and stared up at him unhappily.
“Listen, Liz, what are you talking about?” he asked. When she did not answer he said, “Somebody's said something to you.”
She nodded, looking up at the long lanky legs above her on the wooden steps.
“Who?”
“Oh, Ben, it doesn't matter.”
“It does matter. It matters like hell.”
“No. As long as you don't think I'veâI've been leading you on, it's all right.”
“Was it Dottie?”
Elizabeth shook her head. “It wasn't Dottie who told me.”
“You mean Dottie said something and somebody told you?”
“Yes.”
Ben stood up, towering above her on the steps. “This time she's gone too far. This time I'm going in and shaking her until the teeth rattle in that beautiful vicious head of hers.”
Elizabeth stood, too, and caught at his hand. “No, Ben, please, please,
please
don't!”
“When I'm mad I have to do something about it.”
“But it wasn't only Dottie. Jane and John Peter said something, too, only it didn't upset me so much until I heard about Dottie.”
“I'll teach John Peter to mind his own business. How I behave
and how you behave is our own affair, nobody else's. That's the hell about the theatre, everybody prying into everybody else's private lives. I'm not so surprised at John Peter, but I thought Jane had better sense. Wait till I get at her.”
“No, please, Ben, please. I never should have said anything about it, only you guessed something was wrong and I couldn't bear to have it there between us.”
Ben sat down heavily. “Listen, Liz, if you're going to work in the theatre, you've got to get used to people slitching other people. There's always someone around who'll do that. You've just got to see it for the pack of lies it is and pay no attention to what people say.”
“Aunt Harriet always says where there's smoke there's fire.”
“Are you going to start paying attention to what Aunt Harriet thinks at this late date?”
Elizabeth looked down at her feet again. “Ben, you don't”âshe started, paused in a panic, and then rushed onâ“Ben, you don't want more than I can give you, do you?”
For a moment Ben didn't answer. Then he said, “Listen, Liz, I like things just the way they are. Sure I want more, but so what? I don't want it if you can't give it, and I don't want any Dorothy Dawne whispering things to Kurt Canitz and then having Kurt Canitz whispering them to you and then you getting all upset over nothing.”
“How did you know it was Kurt who told me?”
“I don't think he's the only one Dottie's talked to about it, but he's the only one who's bastard enough to come to you with it. Sorry if I defame your idol, but you can hardly expect my feelings about him to be particularly cordial. Now listen,
Elizabeth Jerrold, just put it all out of your head. If you're going to stay in the theatre, you've got to get used to things like that and you've got to get used to paying no attention to them.”
“Is there always a Dottie?” Elizabeth asked.
“In all my great experience in the theatre I've never been in a company where there wasn't.” Ben finished his sandwich, carefully folded the waxed paper, and put it in his empty coffee cup. “They don't always look alike. In one show it'll be the character man, in another the star, in another the juvenile, in another somebody's wife or girlfriend. Everything's intensified in the theatre. All my lifeâand I'm a year older than you are and don't you forget itâI've noticed that people who work in the theatre can be much bigger louses than other people; and also they can be much more wonderful. They can live with beauty and integrity and I'm sorry if those are fancy words but they're the only ones that'll do, and they can live like swine. And you've got to learn to walk through a pigpen and not get dirty.”
For a long moment Elizabeth didn't say anything. Then, as she was about to speak, a voice from inside the theatre called, “Hey, Ben, Joe wants you,” and he stood up.
“See you tonight if we break early enough,” he said.
Â
After dinner Kurt telephoned from his hotel over to the Cottage for Elizabeth.
“Come on down to Irving's with me this evening, Liebchen.”
“I can't afford it, Kurt.”
“This isn't dutch,” he told her, his voice far away as though
he were not talking directly into the phone. “I'm asking you to go out with me.”
She shook her head as though he could see her motion of negation. “I don't think I'd better, Kurt.”
“Elizabeth, are you still angry with me for what I told you Dottie said about you and Ben?”
“I don't know.”
Now Kurt's voice came clearer, warm and persuasive. “Liebchen, darling, please try to realize I told you only because I love you so and I thought you'd want to know.”
“It's all right,” Elizabeth said. “I guess you were right to tell me.”
“Maybe I wouldn't have told you if you'd been going to stay the rest of the summer, but you've only got one more week, so it will be simple enough just to ease off Ben.”
“I won't have to,” Elizabeth said. “I told him about it.”
“You told Ben!”
“Yes.”
“Darling, you're out of your mind.”
Elizabeth shook her head stubbornly at the phone. “No. Ibsen says honesty is the only basis for any kind of a relationship between two people, and I like Ben too much not to be honest with him. It's all right, Kurt. Please. Let's just forget about it.”
It's a funny thing, she thought. Recently I've been almost fighting with Kurt about so many things and I don't know why.