Vivian In Red (28 page)

No, it would have been far easier if I’d missed him, avoided his calls. Daniel is an actor-type who moves in struggling-actor circles, and it was wild chance that we met at all, back when I was trying to make it on my own and hanging out with other newly minted journalists in an East Village dive. That night a slurring drunk had sneered that I was a “cock tease” because I wouldn’t cram into a bathroom stall and let him screw me standing up, and I bolted out the door before anyone would notice the flush creeping over my ears. I was searching in vain for a cab out on the piss-smelling street when Daniel said, “Are you okay?” from behind me, causing me to jump almost out of my shoes. He insisted on seeing me home on the subway, because all cabs in New York seemed to choose that moment to vanish out of existence.

I think I first went out with him because he didn’t comment on how far uptown we were going. I hadn’t moved out of my dad’s place yet, with his clothes haunting me from the closet and his several pairs of reading glasses abandoned all over the apartment, accosting me each time I opened a drawer or moved a sofa cushion to find the remote.

That night on the train, he’d asked why I had burst out of that bar so suddenly, and alone. It wasn’t my scene after all, I told him, and it had been silly of me to even bother.

He didn’t reply. Just reached over and took my hand in his, and when I didn’t pull back, he stayed just like that, his large hand over mine, resting on my knee.

Now, on this chilly September night, I marvel at how if a cab had appeared, or if I’d just shucked off that one jerk and clung to my friends in the bar, I’d never have even known him. After all, we’d been in the same bar for hours, we later figured, and never even saw each other. It was just luck that he’d stepped out for some air just before I came outside myself.

The big townhouse door opens behind me. Esme leans out. “Miss Eleanor? You have a telephone call. A man named Alexander?”

I try not to look too shocked as I stand up and thank her. I tell her I’ll take the call in Grampa’s study upstairs. As I pass the entry to the parlor, I see Grampa Milo sitting at the piano, plinking out a melody, left-handed. It takes me time to identify it; he’s playing it slowly, awkwardly.

Embrace me, my sweet embraceable you…

I shake my head in wonderment at Alex’s call, and here. He’d emailed me after our last call with an apology of sorts, though he was more sorry for my reaction than for what he said about wanting the DNA test.

Sorry I was so pushy before. With my mom all upset right in front of my nose, it’s hard to remember that your grandfather is real and not just a fictional character. It’s not like I meet lots of ‘noted Broadway producers’ in my line of work. Just don’t forget my mom, either. She’s real, too.

Gotta go, because my work nemesis is practicing for his black belt in passive-aggressive emailing, and it seems I should respond.

I couldn’t help but smile a little at his humor, even as he reminded me what the stakes are, for him, for Millicent. I felt the joking camaraderie deserved a response in turn, so I joked with him about Eva’s black belt in competitive parenting and her sparring with Naomi and Joel in that area, and the email chain had continued on such topics, with him never once demanding the test.

I settle in to the large chair at this desk that’s now covered in Uncle Paul’s paperwork, and predict that even casual, slacker Alex has run out of patience at last.

“Hello?”

“Hi.” Alex clears his throat.

“What’s up? I’m surprised to hear from you here.”

“I hope it’s okay I called this number. I sort of pretended to know you really well when I called the offices. I guess I convinced them; in fact the secretary I think called me Daniel.”

“Ha, well done,” I say, leaning back in the chair, propping up one knee against the edge of the desk.

“Regular sleuth I am,” he rejoins, but something in his voice is strained and tight, as if he’s walking a high wire while on the phone. He’s going to ask me again, I know it, and for a moment I regret our easy joking, because he’s begun to feel a bit like a friend. That creates an obligation of a different sort.

“What’s going on?”

“I’m cleaning out at my… Estelle’s house. My mom and me.”

“Okay…”

“I found some things of Vivian’s.”

I sit up straight in the office chair. It’s absurdly tall for me, and my feet barely touch the floor. “What things?”

“Clippings, playbills, souvenirs. All from New York. And all seemingly connected to Milo.”

“Oh. Wow.”

“Sure seems like he was important to Vivian.”

“He did eventually remember her, by the way. He just told me she was a secretary of sorts, like an assistant, working on his early shows. At least one early show. Makes sense she would keep mementos from that time. Might be all it is.”

“Maybe.” He lightens his tone. “I know this is weird for you.” He leaves unspoken the rest of his sentence: weird that we might be cousins, my grandfather might have fathered a child we never knew.

“What did your mother say about the box?”

“I actually didn’t tell her yet.”

“Why not?” In the background, I can almost discern waves. “Are you outside?”

“Yeah. Work gave me a cell phone so they can harass me anywhere.” He continues, after a loud sigh, “I don’t want to get her fixated on it any more than she already is. I keep telling her that it’s just a chance.”

“How is she fixated?”

“It’s not like she talks about it constantly, but every now and then we’ll just be like, having dinner or something and she’ll blurt out how her Sunday school teacher told her she had a good ear for music. She’s also been renting old movies. We watched
The High Hat
the other day. It was good stuff. I wish we could just get the test.”

“Alex.”

“Even with what I just found? You won’t consider asking him?”

“Are there love letters from my grandfather in there?”

Lake Michigan roars away in the silence. I hear a gull squawk.

“Alex, I’m not trying to be defensive. I swear I’m not, but still, all that means is that she saved some things from that time of her life. I’ve got souvenirs, too. I’ve saved Playbills. It doesn’t mean I’ve had sex with the lyricist.”

“What do you need, then? What smoking gun would convince you to ask him?”

“Here’s something else to think about. If you think I’m being weird about it, you don’t know my cousin Naomi. My aunts and uncles. If they get wind of this, there will be a shitstorm. It’s not going to be perceived as ‘Isn’t this wonderful we might have another sibling,’ you know. They will close ranks. They’ll lawyer up.”

“They sound like lovely people.”

“It’s a normal reaction! We’d be asking them to rethink everything they ever thought they knew about their father, who, as I’ve said, is sick and perhaps on his deathbed.” I lower my voice, aware that I’ve been nearly shouting, and anyone could be coming down the hall any moment. “You think famous people don’t get crazy accusations thrown their way all the time?”

“Why wouldn’t they just test and prove us crazy hicks wrong and be done with it?”

I toss my glasses onto the desk and pinch the bridge of my nose. “Maybe so, but in the meantime it would be DefCon 4 around here. It’s better if only the two of us know, for now. I promise you, Alex, when we have clues that there really was a romance, and that the timing lines up, I’ll find a way to ask him about it. I promise.”

My heart jackhammers away, and I wish I could claw back that hasty promise.

“Fine, I’ll stop bugging you for now. I’m going to the library later, by the way, looking up birth announcements in the paper, double-checking my mom’s actual birthdate. And I’ll keep going through those boxes where we found the souvenirs.”

“Where did you find them, by the way? Where exactly?”

“Crammed into a corner of the attic, under the eaves. I almost pitched them out because they were filled with old clothes, mostly, and smelled terrible. But I figured I’d better at least take a look.”

Footsteps on the stairs. Probably Uncle Paul, judging by the weight of the step.

“I have to go, but Alex? Thanks for calling me. We’ll figure it out.”

“Sure. Okay.”

Neither of us hang up. For a moment I listen to the crash and sway of waves and the echoing hush of wind. Someone downstairs has switched the television in the parlor to baseball; about the only thing my grandfather ever watches on TV, besides the news. I wonder if distraction helps him. Maybe if his mind is on the pennant race and not on his past, not on music or lyrics or Broadway, he doesn’t hallucinate.

Uncle Paul steps in, and I break our distracted silence to tell Alex goodbye, and he seems distracted in his farewell, too, as if he had forgotten I was there.

“Hey, Ellie,” my uncle says, checking his watch as he comes in. “Do you mind? I need to do some work in here.”

“Oh sure. I just had to use the phone and figured this one had the most privacy.”

“Privacy, eh?” he says, as I stand up away from the desk to give him back his chair. I pick my glasses back up and slide them back into place.

I step away from the desk as he goes on, “Having a nice private chat with Daniel, were we?”

“Not him.”

“Oh? Too bad. He’s a nice kid.” He falls into the chair so hard it rolls away a little, and slaps his briefcase on top of the desk. He clicks it open, and I can see his mind whirring on a thousand details. I am about to slip out, but instead I turn around and suck in a sharp breath.

“You should have cashed my rent check.”

Uncle Paul looks at me over the top of his open briefcase. “Come again?”

“The rent. You sent it back.”

“You’re living here now, what difference does it make?”

“It makes a difference to me.” My voice has gone thin and high-pitched. I sound like the kid he thinks I am.

“Honey, it’s all family money. We just move it around from place to place.”

“It is not! That was my money that I earned, writing articles.”

Uncle Paul closes his eyes briefly and rubs his temples. “Kid, let me tell you something. Do you know where your cousin is today? London. Naomi flew to London.” Uncle Paul snapped his fingers. “There goes your rent check, on one leg of that plane ride. She flew to London because she’s got it in her head to bring over another
Les Mis
or
Cats
. As if we could afford the production costs! But does she listen to me? She used to listen to Pop, but not me, I’m just Uncle Paul, pushing the papers and making phone calls. I’m not the one who built this up, so what do I know?” He yanks out a file folder and slams the briefcase. “I’ll tell you what I know. That people work with Milo Short Productions because of Milo Short. I got the same last name, but I can’t get people to return my calls or take meetings, all of a sudden. So what am I gonna be when he’s truly gone for good? What’s this company going to be? Producing is all built on relationships, and I’m only just now realizing, kid, that I don’t have them. All along with my fancy title, turns out I was the errand boy. You know”—Uncle Paul tips back in the chair, appraising me, lacing his fingers over his middle-age pudge—“I talked to Bernadette’s people the other day, and they told me you haven’t been in touch yet. Don’t tell me you’re afraid of her. We’ve had her over for dinner for crying out loud.”

“I’m not! I just… I’ve been trying to nail down some details from Grampa’s early life, is all…”

“So what details? What have you been doing, exactly? Who have you talked to, how much progress have you made? You remember that tight deadline, right? If I’m going to pitch this book as part of our whole strategy I have to know it’s really coming. I went out on a limb for you, kid, when Naomi wanted to give it to some slick pro. So tell me: how much have you got done?”

I swallow hard, too hard, tasting panic at the back of my throat in the same way I did back in that poor mother’s kitchen, the one with the dead child who started screaming at me, with damn good reason. But now in the face of my bossy, frustrated uncle, I curl my fists tightly, my own nails biting into my palms, and draw up taller. “That’s between me and my editor. I’m working hard as I always have and I resent that you even imply otherwise.”

Uncle Paul sighs roughly and shakes his head. “You want to help the family? Write the damn book.”

And with that, he twirls his chair back to the desk and begins slapping papers around. He snatches the phone receiver up, and jabs the keypad with such ferocity he has to hang up and start dialing again.

I dash across the hall and slam my way into my room, standing with my back to the inside of the door, waiting for my pulse to slow down.

Diligent young Eleanor should redouble her efforts on the book, should get in touch with Bernadette Peters’ people and line up that interview, hell, maybe even start outlining the damn thing. If Uncle Paul is to be believed, the future of Short Productions—if it’s going to outlive Grampa Milo—may hang on a revival of
The High Hat
, with this book as a promotional tool. Help the family, he says. Help the family by writing the book.

I walk with shaky legs over to the edge of the tall bed and perch on the edge, my feet swinging free a few inches over the carpet. I put my head in my hands. No one’s ever asked me to help the family before. It was always everyone else trying to help pathetic little motherless Ellie.