Chapter 8
In the days that followed, the success Sophia had known after the episode at Keith's apartment was lessened by her building concern over Margo. She had no desire to talk with Keith McClure at all, and her efforts to talk with Mr. Barker were constantly repulsed. But she was able to draw out Eddie, the dance director, a few of the dancers and several members of the cast. Pretending casualness, she attempted to learn things about Margo, to piece together the questions in her own mind about the fast-moving girl who was a bundle of contradictions.
Within the first week of rehearsals, Sophia was accepted into the group by everyone but the frowning and elusive director-and, of course, the rejected Mr. McClure who, when he noticed her at all, glared at her. Everyone knew she was Margo's sister, but this didn't cause the slightest rupture, didn't put her on trial. She found herself capable of exchanging gags with the crew, of sharing the natural give and take with her colleagues, necessary in the course of working together in groups.
Everyone talked glowingly of Margo. Best trouper in the business. Heart as big as the United States and Canada. Why, d'ya know, last Christmas she sent gifts to each and every person connected with the show. Nobody can belt a song across like Margo, and no one can shoot a laugh like Margo. She's full of pep and can give anyone the feeling that life is beautiful.
Each hosanna was good to hear, but Sophia continued to be disturbed; nothing jibed with the picture of the groping and the quiet desperation she'd seen in Margo that night in the bedroom.
In time, as the rehearsals became more intensified and her own duties in the chorus line became more time-consuming and challenging, Sophia was almost ready to believe that the scene in the bedroom hadn't even occurred. Certainly Margo was behaving herself like a shrine of health, here in the studio. Her pep was uncanny; she had more get-up-and-go than everyone else put together.
Whenever Larry Barker deigned to come off his gilt-edged pedestal, it was to express in his peculiarly tight-lipped way his appreciation for Margo's work.
More and more, Sophia could understand Margo's love for him, and the cast's slavish devotion to him.
He certainly wasn't civil to anyone. He stalked about as though someone were on the verge of doing something out of step and contrary to his instructions of how a well-oiled television show should be run. But every instruction he gave was right. You felt it as he ordered it, and then when you carried it out, you saw how right it was. Added to this was his extreme attractiveness. Tall and muscular and tanned, he charmed the girls and gained the respect and admiration of the men.
I have no right to want him so badly, anyway, Sophia decided. As the night approached for the first performance of The Keith McClure Party, she worked hard to put everything out of her mind except the work expected of her and the opportunities she could build for herself. Her assertiveness at McClure's apartment had strengthened her. Somehow she had come of age, she was sure, and would no longer need to submit to men for whom she cared nothing.
She dated one of the boys from the cast, a nice, harmless fellow named Pat Greer, and she didn't fall apart with fear or helplessness when he touched her arm. She could be gay and witty and sensitive, and she could accept his interest in her without having to prove herself further as a woman by shamelessly enticing him. Pat seemed to take the cue, for when he was gently rebuffed after making a mild pass, he didn't fold up or explode.
As though by magic, a great weight of pressure lifted from Sophia. She found the courage to write a letter to her father, to write as honestly as she could of just what her problem had been and how imperative it had been that she leave Willetsville and start a new life independently. She oriented herself to the city. She mailed a third of her first week's advance salary to Rick Warren, promising in an accompanying letter that her debt would be squared within the next six weeks. She found out how much her purchases at Mme. Borget's shop had come to and, despite Margo's protests of, "I don't want one red cent from you," she planned to set aside a certain amount of her salary each week until the dress bill was paid off. On her own, she investigated the dancing and dramatic schools available in New York.
She kept briskly busy, permitting herself no rest, no time out to think about the morass in which she'd been swimming for so long. For no reason she could wholly interpret, she had broken from the blonde neurotic named Sophia whose life had been so formless and doomed.
Living hard against the tempo of the city, the new Sophia was getting mobilized.
On the morning of the show's debut, Sophia received a letter from her father. She sat in a crowded subway train on the way to dress rehearsal and toyed with the letter. It couldn't have come at a poorer time. She knew that whatever he had chosen to say would have an emotional effect that would show in her performance tonight. Finally she ripped the side of the envelope and read: Dear Sophia, I suppose I am expected to thank you for your letter but, cannot do this and be truthful. Am glad, of course, you are well and also have made good connection on television (will look for you this Friday night). But although I never raised my voice to you or showed displeasure, am certain now I was always too lenient and made mistakes by so doing.
You were always a strange child and hard to figure out. Even your mother knew this. Your sister Margo was also self-willed, but she set a sight for herself, at least, and knew how to go after it. Cannot recall that you ever did. Even your Uncle Norvel says this. I tried for as long as possible not to face this because you were my own flesh and blood, but facts must be faced.
It was not you but myself who had to remain here in Willetsville and bear brunt of your behavior to George March and his family and the people here in town. Aside from the fact that I am not a well man, it was also hard because I could think of no good explanation to give.
As your Uncle Norvel says, things are forgotten in time and time heals all wounds, etc. Maybe so. But I do not appreciate any of your conduct of past few years and must admit so.
If you make good in N.Y., my congratulations; I will be very happy to have not one, but two, daughters who made good in spite of fact their father never did.
But I believe that inasmuch as no one caused this scandal but you, whereas you left us to face the music, as the saying goes, it is difficult to find any more forgiveness for you. Therefore I do not care for you to write here again nor will I welcome you into this home.
Your father When she finally brought her eyes away from the paper, Sophia realized she'd gone one stop past her station. She had been traveling for nearly twenty minutes in what approximated a trance; she had read and reread the letter, unbelievingly at first and then in horrified disbelief.
Outside the subway she took a cab for the eight blocks back. In the back seat, slowly tearing the letter and envelope to shreds, she was conscious of a very strange thing:
Daddy's letter did not overwhelm her and plunge her into despair.
If anything, she felt a firm, cold sense of relief.
The quiet hostility she had felt for the past several years for her inadequate, self-confessedly weak father now bore its righteous fruit.
Yes, she thought, he was weak then and he's weak now. I never allowed myself to admit it, but it's true. This letter proves it. And he couldn't even have been sober when he wrote it. I know his technique. Daddy was always articulate, but when he's been drinking he gives with the inasmuch-es and the whereas-es and the dropping of pronouns and articles-when he's writing and even when he's talking.
Uncle Norvel must have put him up to writing this, she thought and this makes it a thousand times worse-that I couldn't get his own true feelings expressed.
Well, all right. If that's the way the game is played, then I'll go along with it. It was my own fault to begin with, that I never had the guts to go to him when I really needed his love and understanding and protection. Getting myself into jam after jam couldn't have been all my own fault entirely.
I won't blame Daddy. But I won't grovel before him, either.
I'll make my way in television. I'm a lot stronger now. I can reject someone like Keith McClure. I can be accepted by decent guys like Pat Greer without shaking my torso in front of them. I can look across a studio room at Larry Barker, that human refrigerator, without feeling automatically that he's being an iceberg because of me.
I'm through skulking around corners for crusts of bread like an overgrown Oliver Twist. From now on I'll push some weight around. If the only surefire way to succeed in life is to be tough, then tough I'm going to be.
And no one's going to stop me. 'Everything went wrong in the final rehearsals. The tempers of the most placid members of the group became short; Keith McClure made one of the dancers bawl by cursing her clumsiness; lines were fluffed; cues were missed; and when the producer scurried forward with a stop watch in his hand and cried that the show was running four and a half minutes over, Larry Barker bellowed for the writers and ordered them to get to work, fast, and cut the script.
The rehearsal, which ran all the way up to the start of the actual show, felt and looked like a shambles. But Charlotte, the cute trick who danced next to Sophia, confided in her, "I've been on this show for three years. The only time it's been out-and-out lousy was the time the final rehearsal went smooth as punch. Larry's acting worried, but it's only an act; he knows everything's going to fall right into place the second that red light snaps on and the orchestra plays."
And then, suddenly, the red light did snap, and it was ten o'clock and The Keith McClure Party was underway.
Sophia was the second dancer to appear from the wings. She had expected butterflies to invade her stomach, but they didn't; she was composed all the way through the opening number. Briefly she thought of Daddy, sitting in the drab living room in Willetsville, watching her. Did he regret the pompous letter he'd written her, she wondered. What were his thoughts when he saw her performance in only the flimsiest dancing costume? Was he thinking of his wayward, sinful daughter who was exploiting her good body? The biddies in Willetsville certainly had enjoyed a field day when they'd gossiped about the way she'd dressed and walked. Was Daddy agreeing with them, that his younger daughter was nothing but a conscienceless hussy?
Then the opening dance was finished. She changed her costume for the finale and had a few minutes in which to stand in the wings and watch her sister at work.
Margo was in wonderful condition, wowing her audience. She was doing the hillbilly sketch with McClure. It was all low hokum, but it was acted with skill, and the audience roared.
Sophia detected Larry Barker standing in the control booth, his attention focused obviously on Margo. And just as obviously he was approving of Margo's performance.
Then the cue for the finale sounded and Sophia was on camera again. Although she didn't attempt to steal the spotlight from the other girls, she put all the rhythm within her into the dance and the come-hither smile; and when the red light snapped off and they were off the air, she knew she'd come across successfully.
A letdown set in on everyone once Barker announced, "Okay, kids, good job. That wraps it up for the week." Sophia walked with the others to the dressing room, changed her clothes and wondered again if Larry Barker had made a major point of ignoring her. Am I overlooking the fact, she thought, that he did occasionally glance my way? And when he did, was there something special in his eyes? Or was I just helping myself to some gooey fantasies?
Too, she wondered where he and Margo would go now, what they would do,-what they would say to one another.
She wondered if he suspected, as she suspected, something faintly curious about Margo. For Margo did act strangely now and then. First all cheerful and giving, then, without preparation, viperish and nasty.
Sophia wouldn't try to analyze it. Margo had been much too good to her.
She was the last one to descend the stairs. No other members of the cast were to be seen. Walking toward the stage door, she struggled to overcome her profound sense of emptiness.
Near the door, though, she faced Larry Barker. He stood, certain of himself, as if he had been here for some time.
As if he had been waiting for her.