And now here it was.
And tears.
Too late. Too much hoping. Too much waiting for that phone to ring, announcing this. And staring at the phone silent. Black and silent. Should I call my agent? A pride in the silence of failure. A hopeless, ridiculous pride, I won’t call him. I’ll wait. And waiting. And waiting. And the phone silent. And the call never coming. I’m Gillian Burke. I want a pock in the play. Well, here it is, she thought. A man on a shining white horse has galloped into your life, a ridiculous man with a big nose and eyeglasses, a man who makes me laugh, a man who is making me cry right now, Herbert Floren, knight on a charger, here he is, and he has told the others, he has spread the word, a supporting role on the wide screen in full color with stereophonic sound, russet hair whipping in the wind, green eyes flashing, here it is, Gillian Burke, here’s your part in the play, take it, a gift from God, take it, spend it, enjoy it. Now the pattern will change, now there will be success tucked behind your ear like a flower, the overnight success that took only seventeen years. But it will be just that to the others, Gillian, never forget that. This is the land of the jackpot, this is the land of the quiz show and the newspaper contest, and in the eyes of others you have struck it rich, your ship has come in, you’ve pulled the little lever and scored three oranges and now those quarters will come spilling out of the little spout and cover your feet in shining silver, you were lucky, you are an overnight success.
Please, please, she thought, why do I feel bitter?
Success does not come with soaring elation.
Success comes with a sudden taste of blood and a feeling of utter loneliness. Tears alone on a salt-sodden pillow. Alone.
How do you wear success?
You wear it the way you wore failure, I suppose.
You wear it in your throat and on your face. You are a failure because you’re daring to go for the biggest prize, and you haven’t yet reached it. So you duck people on the street, you see them coming, old acquaintances, and you duck into a doorway and study the items in a shop window, seemingly absorbed in the display, and you lift the collar of your coat because you’re ashamed of failure. You do not want them to say, “I hear you’re up for such and such a part,” you do not want that look of pity and curiosity, she’s not as young as she used to be, there are age wrinkles around her eyes. Character, you say to yourself, they give my face character. Did you notice the wrinkles, they whisper, why does she keep trying, isn’t she grown up enough now to quit this nonsense? So you lift the collar of your coat, and you find the empty doorway and duck the old friend, it is shameful to dream. How can you dream in the midst of concrete and steel? How can you dream? I wore failure like a cloak. And I’ll wear success the same way, and they’ll say, She ducks her old friends now that she’s been lucky, now that she’s an overnight success.
Yes.
I will avoid the dead.
I will avoid those with the dead dreams, those who stepped on their dreams and squashed them flat, who forgot there were ever such things as dreams or dreamers, who knew dreams only in the eyes of others, and who pitied those, and who told themselves dreams were for idiots, yes, I will avoid the dead men with their dead dreams, yes.
Yes, goddamn you, I’m crying tonight, what are you doing? Are you cooking steaks on your patio, are you having friends in for Bloody Marys, are you kissing your neighbor’s husband in the kitchen? Well, I’m crying tonight.
Success is not an acceptance of universal love. Success is a roundhouse slap in the teeth of the world.
She lay on the bed and wept into her pillow and thought, In June, I’ll leave for Rome, and wondered what it was like to be seventeen.
It began as a day of confusion for Kate, confusion upon confusion, confusion compounded until it built to terror, she would remember it always as the most terrifying day of her life.
It began with hot June sunlight sifting through Venetian blinds, stripes of black and gold, and weird discordant music far away, stripes like a prison, stripes like the bars of a cell covering her bed, and somewhere in the distance a strange music, the same music struck over and over again, the ticking of a clock in the silent gold-and-black-striped prison of her bed.
Ten o’clock.
The house still except for the music drifting up the steps and into her room, the sunshine streaking her bed in parallel bars. Mother, she thought.
She touched her hair reassuringly, and drifted back to sleep.
Thunder.
The echoing roll of thunder in a room gone suddenly black, streaks of lightning in a summer sky, what had happened to the sun? Thunder rolling ominously and downstairs she could hear her mother at the piano, the chords rolling like the thunder itself, but where had the sunshine gone, hadn’t there been sunshine? The ticking of the clock again, she looked, she opened one eye and looked as a streak of lightning struck close nearby, and she saw the time, eleven-thirty, and she wondered where the sun had gone, wondered what had become of the Saturday sun.
Confusion.
Voices in the house, the piano stopped now, only the voices coming up the stair well, shaking her from sleep, rain lashing the trees and the lawn outside, she rolled over and pulled the blanket to her throat.
“Amanda, look at what I’ve got. Road maps! Dozens of them! The whole damn country is open to us! We can go anywhere!”
“Excuse me, Matthew, I’m working. Can’t you see that?”
“What? Oh, sure, sure. I’m sorry, Amanda.”
The music again. Discordant, cacophonous, the same chord struck over and over again, resounding up the stair well, a sudden crash of thunder, Kate sat up suddenly and stared into the room.
“Have you ever been to the Grand Canyon? We could go there, Amanda.”
“I’ve never been to the Grand Canyon, no. Matthew, I’m trying to figure out this passage.”
“Honey, can’t that wait a few minutes? I want you to look at—”
“No, it can’t wait a few minutes!”