The Best Revenge (29 page)

“Just wanted to make sure he didn't leave the package. It's all right, the guy's gone and so's the package.”

“What's this all about?” Jane asked.

Mary said, “Nick's head.” She was asking Ben, “Isn't it?”

Ben looked like all the blood been drained out of his face. He said, “UPS never delivers this time of night. Why would UPS deliver a package to Nick here? Who would know he's here?”

“Hey,” I said to him, “you didn't send the package, did you, Ben?”

Ben just stood there.

I felt the stubble on my cheek. You shave it off every morning and by evening it's pushing its way faster than weeds.

I'm thinking I'm happy, and that package shows up at the door. I
got the damn computers back to Barone's guy, didn't I? My new lawyer said Barone accepted the parcel in Jackson Heights, didn't he? We're supposed to be even.

They were all watching me so I looked straight at them and said, half-laughing so they'd know I wasn't taking it too seriously, “Hey, maybe that was a real UPS package. You guys order anything from Bloomingdale's?”

Jane shook her head. “He asked for you.”

“Maybe it's a present. Maybe Barone forgot his little game is over. I better remind him.”

“How?” Ben asked.

I never got the chance to answer because Mary said, “This is no way to live.”

29

Ben

On opening night, when the usherette showed us to our seats in the back row with a “Good evening, Mr. Riller,” as if I were the only identifiable person in the party of four, Nick said, “What's the matter, Ben, don't you know anyone who could get you better seats?”

“I've already seen the play,” I said. “From here I can watch the audience.”

Nick shuffled us in so that it was Jane, me, Mary, and Nick last, which left Mary where, concealed by the wrap in her lap, she could move her left thigh as close to mine as she wanted to. The more I had warmed to Nick these past six weeks, the queasier I felt about Mary's heavy need to get her battery charged. At the same time I had to admit I felt a surge from attracting the wife of the man who'd had me in a half nelson when we first met. Why was Jane getting up? Had she seen anything?

“I'm going to use the facilities before the lines form,” she said, moving past us to the aisle.

Nick, who'd been riffling through the program like an excited
school kid, was trying to attract my attention. “I like that,” he said, hitting the title page with the back of his hand. BENJAMIN RILLER, IN ASSOCIATION WITH NICHOLAS MANUCCI, PRESENTS
THE BEST REVENGE
, A PLAY IN THREE ACTS BY GORDON WALZER. Then in a voice of old friendship he had started to use with me, a breathy, confidential near whisper, he said, “I didn't think my old man in the wheelchair'd be such a good idea for tonight. I want to bring him down later in the week, what do you think?”

I knew the feeling. I'd craved for Louie to see my first production. At every opening, I felt him all over the place, watching the play, watching the audience, watching me.

If you want to understand a people,
Louie had once said,
listen to their special words.
That's when he told me about the four-thousand-year-old secret of the Jews.
In Yiddish, Ben,
naches
means the pride a parent gets from the achievements of a child. Who else has an untranslatable word that means that? Nobody. And who else gives their kids such a need to provide
naches
to their parents?

Suddenly I remembered Louie saying
You run faster than Ezra. Make sure you're running in the right direction.
I'd forgotten to send Ezra tickets to the opening! Distraught, I glanced around, saw him sitting eight or nine rows down, next to the critic from the
Times.
Thank God Charlotte had remembered.

Tell the
Times
what a louse I am, Ezra. At openings, he and Sarah had always sat in the seats that Nick and Mary were now occupying.

Ezra had understood Louie better than I had. He had the distance. He was someone else's son.

We both chased Louie's
aperçus
to the mouth of the grave.

Louie had outrun us. We were too young, stopped at the door, not let in. Louie was too young and he was let in! After thirty-five years I still missed him. God in Heaven, I thought, now that You've got Louie, keep half an eye on him or he'll work himself to death up there, too.

A woman way up front in the fourth row turned in my direction. My heart jumped. Zipporah! Was she staring in my direction because I had thought of Louie and not of her? In a second I refocused; the woman looked very little like Zipporah. My brain needed brakes.

“How long till the curtain?” Nick asked.

“Couple of minutes.”

“Never been so nervous,” he said, forcing his voice to chuckle.

“You were right, Nick. We should have bribed the critics.”

“Yeah, but how do you bribe the audience?”

Nick had a first-class osmosis factor. He picked up fast.

Why was that woman turning around again and looking in my direction?

*

In 1954 I was up in New Hampshire to catch a local production of a new play that two or three people had said might be worth considering for Broadway with a better cast. The play was as good as the publicity. Backstage I introduced myself to the local producer and we arranged to talk deal over breakfast at nine the next morning.

When the phone in my motel room jangled me awake the next morning, it was only seven a.m. I'd left a call in for eight.

“I have a person-to-person call for Mr. Benjamin Riller,” the operator said.

Ezra was on the line. “I've got bad news, Ben.”

“Who's suing me this early in the morning?”

Ezra's silence got to me. “Say something.”

I could hear him swallowing. “Zipporah is dead.”

I'd talked to her yesterday morning. Zipporah was in perfect health.

“I'm sorry,” Ezra said.

How could she die in New York when I was in New Hampshire? “Just a minute.” I put the phone down. I found Kleenex in the bathroom and blew my nose.

“What happened?” I said into the phone.

“She was uncomfortable yesterday afternoon. When she couldn't get you, she called me and I called the doctor and told him to get his ass over there. He told her to take Bromo-Seltzer. It was a heart attack, Ben. It's very hot in New York now, and the funeral people want to pick the body up as soon as possible.

“Before it starts to smell,” I said.

“Stop it, Ben. There's a flight out of Keene an hour and a half from now. You can make it. I'll meet you at LaGuardia.”

I left my apologies for the producer to find when he woke up. It cost sixty dollars for the local taxi because I wouldn't wait for another passenger heading in the same direction. Ezra took my bag when I got off the plane, and shook my hand the way Jews do to seal a death. When we got to the apartment, the front door was open. I headed
straight for the bedroom. Two men—they looked like furniture movers—were heaving Zipporah into a body bag, her left breast flopping out of the nightgown.

*

Jane, just getting back to her seat, said, “The curtain's going up.”

30

Jane

Gordon Walzer was prickly the one time I met him after reading the play.

“It's very clever,” I said.

“You mean insightful.”

“Okay, insightful.”

“And you're wondering how a hippie-looking slouch who doesn't look like the people you associate with can have a brain that produces interesting work.”

I told him, “Mr. Walzer, you are not reading my mind successfully.”

“Oh yes, I am, Mrs. Riller. If you knew that Henry James picked his nose, you might not have read
The Princess Casamassima.
Anyway, how come your Broadway-smart husband picked a verse play to risk his ass on?”

“Because he wrote one once.”

“Riller?”

“Riller.”

During the first act on opening night I felt that I was seeing the play for the first time. Perhaps because I could feel the audience. A shared cigarette is not half a smoke, but a different experience.

Gordon Walzer was now working a whole theaterful of people.

On stage, Ruth Welch seemed to billow to twice Christopher Beebe's size, as she said:

George, you're wrong. Harvey

discovered the circulation of the blood

and thought there were humors in it.

A politician has to study history.

A doctor has to study his precursors,

who were mostly wrong. You need

to study yourself, George.

I measured the beat as the audience waited. Then Beebe said:

What's that supposed to mean?

And Ruth replied:

I love you, George.

George said:

You love yourself.

Ruth waited a second, then said:

I'm beginning to. When will you begin?

Beebe stood frozen as if in mid-breath. It was a fabulous silence, manufactured by Mitch.

Ruth, playing chicken with the audience, waited a beat, another beat, and then simply repeated,
When?

The applause was shattering. The auditorium seemed to vibrate. I could see people at each other's ears. The curtain was down on the first act.

I found myself searching the audience to see if I could spot Walzer.

“What is it?” Ben whispered.

I shook my head. “Nothing.” Ben was right to risk this play.

Nick, having a good time in an alien world, seemed to want to do something with his hands in addition to applauding. Was he echoing the audience's reaction, or had the play's magic walloped him, too?

Ben said to him, “Relax, Nick. A great first act makes it harder for what's to come. The audience won't forgive us if we let them down now.”

Comment by Mary Manucci

At the end of the first act the four of us were touching each other. Ben wasn't pulling away. Jane touched me and meant it. When we stood up, she hugged Nick for a second, I couldn't believe it. Theater makes people crazy. Look at Ben, he's moving through the intermission crowd, eavesdropping.

Nick said, “I want to do this.”

“Do what?” I asked.

“This, what we're doing.”

“Don't get carried away,” I said.

“Too late,” he said. “I'm away, I'm away.”

31

Ben

The second act held. In the last thirty seconds, nobody breathed till the bottom edge of the curtain touched the stage, then the applause came on like thunder. Some young people in the back shouted
Bravo
as if they'd never heard a verse play before. I felt like I was standing outside under a spring rain.

Louie's voice was so clear.

Stand up!

Was I the only one still sitting? I stood up.

It feels better standing,
Louie said,
if you've climbed up on your hands and knees.

I said to Jane, “It'll be harder for act three.”

The audience was one large porous membrane now, exuding the smell of success. Laughing, we wrapped our nerves with sound.

“Hey, hey,” Nick said, “looks good, looks good. Mary, look at old sourpuss Ben, he must be used to hits.”

“Nick,” I said, “there are fourteen men sitting on the aisles who are making notes instead of gossiping in the lounge. Six of them count. One counts more than the rest of them put together. I don't know what they had for breakfast or lunch. What the state of their lives is. Who they're mad at, including themselves. I don't know what's going
on inside their heads. Each of them is like Jane's father in his chambers just before he comes out with a decision. Jane's father is not more objective than the rest of us. Why should critics be what judges aren't?”

“Hey, hey,” said Nick. “Enjoy.”

Mary said, “Considering the number of good plays you've produced, the critics must look forward to reviewing one of yours.”

I remained silent for a moment because one of the critics was coming up the aisle close to where we were. He saw me and, stone-faced, nodded. I nodded back. Normal people who'd known each other for fifteen years would have exchanged a smile.

“Where's he going?” asked Nick. “Isn't he waiting for the third act?”