Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? (20 page)

It’s just her and me in the Edison – Liz opted for a snooze in the dressing room before the show, the only one of us sufficiently chilled out enough to actually be able to sleep at a time like this. Gym-starved little Alex strapped her iPod on and, as it’s one of those New York glass-clear days, said she was going for a brisk walk as far as Central Park to clear her head. Meanwhile the ever budget conscious Blythe always reckons eating out is an extravagance right up there with
not
shopping in discount stores, so she just brought in food from a local deli to eat in the theatre instead. But then that’s Blythe for you; three words you never hear slipping her lips are, ‘that’s reasonably priced’, while she maintains her favourite sentence in the whole of the English language is ‘reduced to clear.’

As usual with Chris, the chat inevitably turns to her husband and son and how she has the days counted till they’re both over for the big opening night, just three weeks away now. She politely asks me if Dan has booked his flight to come over yet…and that’s the only catalyst I need to start me off.

I don’t know if it’s just pre-show jitters, but for absolutely no reason that I can think of, I open up to her. Really open up, I mean, as opposed to smiling and obfuscating and changing the subject whenever Dan’s name is mentioned, like I normally would. Without my even knowing why, it all comes spilling out: the growing distance between us, how stifled I perpetually felt back in Stickens with him hardly ever around, the disaster that was Christmas, the bigger disaster that was our final weekend before we left…the whole shooting match.

Slowly I watched Chris’s face change from interest, to
concern, to…her favourite emotion of all…white hot fury.

‘But this is outrageous!’ she says way too loudly, thumping her fist off the diner table. ‘How can you stand for this? You have GOT to do something, Annie!’

‘Ehh…I think there’s a guy on Fifty-Third Street who may not have heard you. Any chance you’d lower your voice?’

No, of course not – I’ve inadvertently handed Chris her daily jihad now and there’s no shutting her up.

‘Did he call you to wish you luck in your first preview?’

‘Well…not exactly…’

‘Did he or didn’t he? Answer me!’

‘No, but you don’t understand, the hours he works are mental; every time I phone him he’s either dealing with a bullock that’s got a bad case of diarrhoea, a vomiting cat, a racehorse with a gammy knee…I could go on and on but we’d only miss the curtain call.’

‘Totally unacceptable behaviour,’ she splutters indignantly, ‘and you know what the absolute worst thing about this is? He’s got you thinking that this is the norm. That being ignored and brushed-over is all that you deserve.’

‘No, hang on a minute there…’

‘Stop defending his behaviour. You sound like a victim of domestic abuse, standing there with two black eyes and still saying, oh but I love him!’

Shit. She’s gone off on one of her rants now and there’s no stopping her. I try my best to explain that I’m not actually married to Robert Mugabe and that Dan is actually The Nicest Man on the Planet. I mean, everyone says so. Or at least, they certainly used to. And yes, of course I’m frustrated and exasperated at how he treats me, but when
it boils down to it, the only charges I can really lay at his door are thoughtlessness and being a workaholic. Aren’t they? I mean, it’s not like he cheats on me and beats me up, now is it?

‘Now you just listen to me, Annie Cole,’ Chris goes on, picking up her soup spoon and brandishing it at me, like it’s a weapon. ‘First thing tomorrow, you have GOT to call him and tell Dan that’s he’s coming over to the opening night and that’s all there is to it. Book the ticket for him if you have to, then it’s a
fait accompli
and he can’t wriggle out of it. All marriages need work and it’s up to him to put in a bit of effort here. For feck’s sake, Annie, does the guy have a brain tumour or something? Doesn’t he know that he’s in real danger of losing you?’

Two hours later, all my nerve ends jangling and feeling white hot terror like I’ve never known before in my life, I step out under the dazzlingly bright stage lights with closely husbanded courage and make my Broadway debut.

It’s well past three in the morning before I get back to the apartment, completely buzzed up and totally ecstatic about how the night went! I’ve never in my life known an adrenaline rush like it; like something fighter pilots must feel. Or burglars maybe. The show went astonishingly, beyond-our-wildest-expectations well and the word from the producers is that we’ll easily pack out the theatre for the full year and very possibly even longer.

Even impossible-to-please Jack actually looked reasonably satisfied afterwards and although we’re all in for another one of his long and exhaustive note sessions before tomorrow night’s show, he at least had the good grace to say ‘well done’ to each of us in turn. Praise from Caesar indeed.

Then Harvey Shapiro very kindly insisted on taking the whole cast to this fabulous, glass-walled, glass-ceilinged restaurant on Broadway called The Blue Fin, where we all partied like life offenders who’d just been handed eleventh-hour reprieves from death row.

‘Still a few creases to be ironed out, but overall…not bad. Not at all bad,’ Jack said to me, leaning against the bar, looking cool and unruffled in one of his Hugo Boss suits and sipping some kind of fancy looking pink cocktail that only a man deeply comfortable in his own sexuality could pull off.

‘So how does it feel to have played Broadway? Not too many actresses can boast of that, you know.’

‘
Ohmygodohmygodohmygod
,’ I gushed, still having to be scraped off the ceiling from the whole experience, ‘it was just the most unbelievable experience! There were laughs where I never expected them to be, and rounds of applause that I never saw coming…and when they gave us a standing ovation at the end…’

‘You better get used to it. Because I can tell you right now Annie Cole, that this show could change the course of your career. Possibly even your whole life.’

He looked at me hard, in that intense, focused way he has and I didn’t have time to even ask him what he meant before Chris commandeered the conversation, the way she somehow manages to commandeer all conversations, demanding to know exactly what he’d thought of her performance in an apart-from-that-Mrs-Lincoln-did-you-enjoy-the-play type manner.

It was well late by then and a lot of our gang had drifted off, so I made my excuses and went to grab my bag and coat.

Just as I was outside, hailing a taxi, Jack came out for a cigarette.

‘Home to ring the hubby?’ he asked, lighting up a Marlboro and casually studying me with interest.

‘As a matter of fact, yes I am.’

‘Do tell him I’m looking forward to meeting him. The elusive Mr Annie Cole.’

‘Don’t worry, you will.’

Anyroadup, it’s well past three in the morning and I’m back in the apartment now, way too hyped up to sleep and just about to call Dan. Eight in the morning his time, perfect. I dial the house number and Mrs Brophy answers, yelling even louder than usual, as if to compensate for her voice travelling across the Atlantic.

No, she screeches so loudly I have to hold the phone away from my ear, Dan left the house early for a call out to Lismore, but she’ll pass on the message. Will you tell him I need to talk to him urgently, I say, unapologetic about the theatrics. Best way to get his attention, I figure. I go back to bed and snooze for a bit, then try his mobile later on in the morning. Still no answer, but I’m determined to talk to him at all costs. As ever, it takes five goes to actually get hold of him, but eventually I do, at two in the afternoon my time, just as I’m heading out to the theatre for yet another notes session.

‘Dan? Is that really you?’

Jaysus, it feels like I’ve just got through to the White House.

‘Annie, I’m sorry for not getting back to you, it’s just been…well, you know what it’s like here. Same old, same old.’

Then a few stilted half questions from me and a few
mumbled answers from him. I tell him how brilliantly last night went and he apologises for not calling to wish me luck but he’d no signal on his phone all day…then he breaks off to tell me he’s got a call coming through and is afraid it’s a client ringing about a constipated goat, or similar.

I couldn’t quite tell because he hung up so fast.

And so the pattern repeats itself over and over again; I leave countless messages in tones ranging from exasperated to desperate to angry, via nagging. A good three days later, he calls back at seven in the evening my time, just as I’m getting ready for the show and of course I can’t talk, so I just get snappy with him for ringing at what he must know is the worst possible time for me and he gets defensive, saying that all he’s doing is returning my fifteenth message. Then I get irritated and of course, it all ends in a bloody, blistering row.

Unfair, I know, because it’s classic misdirected anger; what’s really annoying me is that I know it’ll be yet another three days of missed calls and unreturned messages before we actually do get to speak again. And even at that, I can already tell you exactly how that call will go: I’ll be tense and fraught, he’ll be busy, busy always busy.

Funny to think, but at one time, my proudest boast was that it was impossible to have a row with Dan, ever. Now it’s a complete doddle. All we have to do is speak to each other. And I’m surprising myself at how bitter I’m sounding. How ground down I am by the pointlessness of it all. Even our measly little half-slivers of conversations only leave me feeling more frustrated and confused and a whole pile of other emotions that are alien to me.

Also, a worrying number of times when I’ve rung home,
Lisa Ledbetter has answered the phone, making me highly suspicious that she’s physically gone the whole hog and moved herself and her kids in, all the better to sponge off Dan. At least, I can only hope that’s the only bleeding reason she’s been hanging around the house so much.

In fact these days, the only person I have any kind of regular contact with from home is Jules via Facebook, who’s basically been giving me a run down of all the bitching Audrey’s been doing about me behind my back since I deserted. ‘She’s off in New York, taking a marriage sabbatical,’ is apparently her killer phrase to anyone who’ll listen.

And you know something? Frankly, from where I’m sitting, it’s not starting to look like a bad idea. I strongly suspect that Chris has been doing her fair share of blabbing about my private life too; ever since I opened up to her that night in the Edison hotel, everyone else in the cast and even some of the crew too have been gently asking me how I’m coping and if everything is OK at home.

I’m well beyond putting on a brave face at this point, so when questioned, my policy now is just to roll my eyes heavenwards and make some smart arse comment about long-distance relationships being such a bloody nightmare. Nearly always works, bar when Chris is around, in which case I get a lecture right in the ear about how she’s in a LDR too and yet she’s able to make it work, isn’t she?

And I’ll bite my tongue and remind myself that she doesn’t mean to be smug; she’s actually trying to help, in her own ham-fisted way. Blythe chips in her two cents’ worth too, telling me that I’m not to worry. ‘Sure all marriages go through bumps in the road, love,’ she gently assures me. ‘Did you really think you were going to dodge that bullet?’

Blythe, I’ve noticed, is beginning to talk in Americanisms now.

Even Liz, who was dying with a hangover said to me in the dressing room the other night, ‘You don’t need to worry about Dan being so distant from you, hon. Everything will work itself out. You two were made for each other.’

‘Does absolutely everyone here know about my private life now?’ I asked her frustratedly. ‘What is this, published somewhere?’

‘Oh relax. We’re actors, we like following real-life soaps, that’s all. And remember, this is Dan we’re talking about, for feck’s sake. Mr Perfect Husband.’

Sad to think that there once was a time when she was right. But most definitely not now. Now it’s like Mr Perfect Husband has long since left the building and there’s some distant, remote stranger standing in his place.

With less than a week to go to opening night, finally, finally, I get to say what’s on my mind to Dan. As usual, it takes approximately two dozen attempts to get a hold of him, but when I do, I tell him straight. I’d like him to come over for the opening night.

But I’ve got to work, can’t possibly take the time off, no one can cover for me etc, etc, etc, he predictably says. But my antennae are on high alert, I’m fully ready for him and have my reply all rehearsed. It’s on St Patrick’s Day, I retaliate, it’s a bank holiday at home, surely to God you could take two days off? That’s all I’m asking for, I tell him, two lousy days, purposely keeping the stakes low. It’s Paddy’s Day, I insist, even the twenty-four hour Asian store in Stickens closes on Paddy’s Day, for feck’s sake.

He ifs and buts and pretty soon tempers begin to get strained, with me realising that here I am, actually pleading
with him to come over and how wrong that seems. How un-be-fecking-lievable, in fact. I mean, shouldn’t he actually
want
to come over to see his wife without my having to resort to begging?

The conversation rapidly disintegrates fast, as they always seem to do these days, but by the end of it, I feel a sliver of hope that he might come round. Between them, Andrew and James could easily cover for you, I tell him firmly. You need the break, we need to spend time together and it means a huge amount to me that you’d be here for what’s probably the biggest career night of my life.

And so he eventually agrees to ask them and I leave it at that, promising to look at flights for him first thing in the morning. Next day I text him, asking if I can go ahead and make the bookings and late that night when I still haven’t heard back from him, I call again.

Miraculously, unbelievable, I actually get him on my first try. Do you think you’ll be able to make it over, I ask him straight out, utterly dog-tired and shattered with it all by now. But there’s just one condition I forgot to mention. What’s that, he says, sounding like he hasn’t slept in a week. If you do say you’ll come, then I need your absolute guarantee, your solemn word that you
will not
let me down.