Come to the Edge_ A Memoir - Christina Haag [45]
A few weeks later, I heard that he’d gotten back with his girlfriend. In October, we met with Robin at the P & G bar on Amsterdam to look at pictures from the play. She gave us each an orange plastic flip-book of three-by-fives, and we went over the contact sheet with a magnifying glass, circling the others we liked in red pencil. When she left to use the pay phone, I asked him how he was. It was good things had worked out as they had, he answered coolly, fixing his eyes on the ceiling, the bar, the door—anything but my face—until Robin returned.
I buried myself in work: a leading role at school that fall and the PBS Live from Lincoln Center broadcast, in which, somewhat prematurely, I was cast as Blanche DuBois seducing the paperboy. Slipping into someone else’s skin had always been a saving grace for me, and it was then. Some days I succeeded in not thinking about him at all.
One day, I got a note from the head of the Drama Division asking to see me in his office. A summons, though not uncommon, was cause for trepidation. Michael Langham was an exacting director and a brilliant mind. During World War II, as a lieutenant with the Gordon Highlanders, he’d been captured near the Maginot Line and had spent five years in POW camps. There with the approval of the German guards (and fellow prisoners as actors) he had begun to direct plays. For many years, he’d served as the artistic director at the Stratford Festival in Canada, and later at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, and his innovative productions of Shakespeare were renowned. Now in his mid-sixties, with a shock of silver hair, he was still dashing and often wore pink cashmere, as he did on that day.
His door was open. I knocked anyway.
“Come in.” I heard the clipped, familiar voice from inside. “Close the door behind you.”
I sat across from him in the low-ceilinged room, its walls lined with framed costume sketches and the wide desk between us. His eyes, sharp with thought, were a deep, changeable blue.
“So, what’s wrong with you, my dear?” he began, dispensing with small talk.
I’d lost weight in the past month, and I mentioned the cold I couldn’t shake.
“That’s not what I meant.” He was impatient. His eyes hadn’t left me, and he flexed his fingers under his chin. “You’re distracted. I saw your last performance. You had glow but not enough glitter.” As he spoke, I let my eyes wander up the curved cable pattern on the arm of his sweater. “I’ve spoken with your teachers. It’s apparent on the stage.”
I closed my eyes, mortified. Not just Michael—the whole faculty. I saw them seated around a long, oval table discussing my personal life. The year before, I’d been let in on a secret. Two students in the class ahead had broken into the office one night and read the files, recounting that the notes on each of us included not just missed classes and lazy consonants but who was with whom and in what extracurriculars they indulged.
“Do you drink?”
I shook my head.
“Do you do drugs?”
“Well, I—”
“Are you addicted?”
“No,” I said quickly. Michael had been sober for years, but there were rumors of his indiscretions. One in particular, with a red-haired actress in Minneapolis, that had almost ended his marriage.
“Still, it’s something.” He got up and moved around the desk, his hands clasped tight behind his back, his head proceeding slightly in front of his body. “I believe it’s love,” he concluded with some distaste, as if I were an awkward bit of staging to be solved. “You’re addicted. I believe you’re in love with love!”
I burst into tears and began to apologize.
Michael handed me a handkerchief from his pocket. He didn’t require details, and for that I was grateful. It was about the work. He patted me lightly on the back and told me to take care of things. “We have great hopes for you,” he said before I reached the door. I turned and saw that his face