Annabella and Other Stories
(© 2009 by Bill Carrigan. All rights reserved.)
Contents
Chapter
1 Annabella
2 Annie
3 B.D.
4 The Book
5 Born Again
6 Capital Crimes
7 Carlton
8 Charlie Was Here
9 Checking Out
10 A Cry of Absence
11 The Dark Corner
12 Dedicating Daisy
13 The Good Times
14 The Grab
15 Gurgle: A Campfire Tale
16 How We Came to See Clearly (Essay)
17 Jani and the Pigeon Man
18 Jekyll Generic
19 Lenz’s Way
20 Liberating Laura-Jean
21 Losing It
22 The Lure
23 A Machine to Save the World
24 Miz Tuttle
25 The Monkey in the Blue Pool: A Fable
26 The Occupant
27 Pillar of Truth
28 A Place for Discord
29 The Prisoner of Ozona
30 Puppy Love
31 Relativity
32 A Roof Over Our Heads
33 Rovers
34 Rube’s Revenge
35 Salesmanship
36 Shell Game
37 She Who Rode Standing
38 Stiffed
39 Teaching Old Dogmas New Tricks
40 Wake
41 Wench
42 What Would It Take?
43 Windmill Hill
Annabella
Stepping from the cab into icy rain, I barely recognized the busy junction in Washington’s Chinatown or the dark Oberon, the theater I had managed five years before. The night it shut down―the night of the accident―its marquee billed my play The Immortals. Hundreds came to see Annabella, who had won their hearts in earlier productions, and the little theater seemed to sparkle with promise. Tonight it looked dingy, dated, abandoned. I doubted it could ever be resurrected. Yet I’d returned from Paris expressly to give it a try.
Air France’s mobile barmaids had fortified me for the long shuffle through customs and the longer ride to a midtown hotel. From there I hurried to the theater. Sobered by the rain, however, I hesitated to enter the ill-fated building. I needed a moment to face my searing memories.
Under the marquee, I scanned the old posters of Annabella and other players. Vandals had cracked the cover glass and broken the light bulbs. The subway stop around the corner beckoned.
In its day the Oberon presented a variety of plays with some success. I made a start as performer, playwright, and director. But the violent death of four actors in full view of an audience, plus the ensuing panic, doomed the theater and my hopes. I left the hospital weeks later a broken man.
Drifting, I came to rest in Paris under the wing of a rich older woman, whose ready provision of alcohol and drugs helped me forget. Only the telegram from my uncle’s attorney could have drawn me back.
Steeling myself, I now entered a foreboding alley, where the stage door opened to a key still on my ring. The air inside smelled stale and cobwebs clung to my face. By a single light (“the ghost light”) that my superstitious uncle may have left on, I noted new surroundings. The explosion of gas in the furnace room that fatal night had called for extensive repairs, and I stepped onto a rebuilt stage where I’d last seen a fiery pit. The nightmare faded as I recalled my delight in watching The Immortals come alive.
I took a central seat, intending to rethink my plans. Still in an overcoat, chilled in the unheated building, I strove to reach a decision. My uncle had bequeathed the Oberon solely to me. I was free to sell it, rent it, or operate it. Free, that is, to the extent of my limited funds, and doubtful that Washington’s smattering of playgoers could be lured back.
Some time ago, my uncle put the place up for sale but received no acceptable offer. “Michael,” he wrote, “the Oberon has gone the way of Ford’s, but lacking a President’s assassination, it will never be a national shrine.”
I shared his pessimism. Yet, the notion of doing a play (though certainly not the one marked by tragedy) fanned embers of inspiration.
As I gazed at the stage, my thoughts of course turned to Annabella. We had fallen in love as I coached her for the lead. My love, now stronger than ever, magnified the ineffable loss, and I tried to dispel the painful if cherished images. Pointless to dwell on a loved one gone forever. Could I even summon the will to do a play without her? Sudden tears blurred my vision.
It was then that I heard, or thought I heard, voices―faint, indistinct, but somehow familiar. Actors speaking their lines, and echoes from the empty theater. A radio or television left on? No, they were lines from The Immortals, which, to my knowledge, was never recorded. Straining, I discerned figures seated on tall stools randomly spaced. They were my actors, just as I’d placed them years ago.
Poised to take front stage were talented mimics of Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart in the finale of Casablanca . . . Grace Kelly and Gary Cooper in High Noon . . . Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable in Gone With the Wind . . . My own voice, spoken at the wings, would interpose stanzas from W. E. Henley’s “Ballade of Dead Actors”:
Where are the passions they essayed,
And where the tears they made to flow?
Where the wild humours they portrayed
For laughing worlds to see and know?
Othello’s wrath and Juliet’s woe?
Sir Peter’s whims and Timon’s gall?
And Millamant and Romeo?
Into the night go one and all . . .
As the spectral images grew stronger, I distinguished Annabella’s features, which matched the character’s more through expression than make-up. On cue, she steps into the spotlight: Scarlett, indignant at Rhett’s contempt for her loveless marriages. Her beauty and vivacity bring the scene to new life. And I longed to embrace her as I did before Hell opened, when she promised to be mine.
Surely the tableau was illusory. I closed my eyes, expecting to open them to an empty stage. The voices continued, and I sensed the entranced audience around me. When I looked again, the figures were still there, the spotlight on lovely Annabella―and the play goes on.
Strangely, I find myself in the wings, and quote the second stanza:
Where are the braveries, fresh or frayed?
The plumes, the armours—friend and foe?
The cloth of gold, the rare brocade,
The mantles glittering to and fro?
The pomp, the pride, the royal show?
The cries of youth and festival?
The youth, the grace, the charm, the glow?
Into the night go one and all . . .
I had featured Annabella in several of Vivien Leigh’s more memorable scenes, confident that she’d grace any role of the versatile original. She shines with Robert Taylor’s look-alike in Waterloo Bridge and Marlon Brando’s in A Streetcar Named Desire. Other sketches fall between, serious or comical. Mae West and W. C. Fields in My Little Chickadee belie the melancholy ballad. Do great performers fixed on film ever really die?
The poet’s lines, by cruel irony, foreshadowed the fate of my own troupe. As I watched, the present forced its way, and I realized anew that my actors, as well as those they portrayed, were all dead.
Still, I hear my cue to speak once more:
The curtain falls, the play is played:
The Beggar packs beside the Beau;
The Monarch troops, and troops the Maid;
The Thunder huddles with the Snow.
Where are the revelers high and low?
The clashing swords? The lover’s call?
The dancers gleaming row on row?
Into the night go one and all.
The lights come up and the players take their bows. Annabella, demure but radiant, is still Vivien Leigh. I bow to her and then the audience. We get several curtain calls before the applause subsides.
#
Backstage, I caught Annabella’s hand and drew her toward me. “You stole the show,” I said with love and gratitude.
“Now I’m going to steal its writer and director,” she replied. A group of autograph seekers closed in. “Don’t forget,” she tossed, “we have a date.”
At length she led me into her dressing room and stepped behind a screen. Annabella herself came forth, quite as alluring as the star she’d portrayed. She donned a raincoat and we slipped out the stage door. She gave the cab driver her address.
There were beads of rain on her lashes and shadows of raindrops on her face. Though the beauty I gazed upon and the form I held seemed real enough, I feared to ask pressing questions. Had Annabella somehow returned to the living, or had I, too, become a ghost? If I dwelt on this, would it all dissolve? Was there a key to these strange events, to the phantom presence of the players, to this enchanted reunion?
We arrived at Annabella’s uptown apartment, my first time there. I was pleased to find the décor traditional, somewhat profuse, in keeping with its tenant’s Tuscan origin. She offered wine and cannabis, and I accepted both. Her face glowed softly in the smoke-filled candlelight. We listened to Ellington, and I heard subtle effects I’d missed before. Annabella lay on a couch and I caressed and kissed her, though afraid of waking.
“I think we’re both a little confused,” she said, “but it starts to make sense. My love affairs—which you’d read about, I’m sure—were brief, for real love always eluded me. Then we found each other, Michael, and I knew our love would be complete. But something, something dreadful, occurred to separate us. I don’t know how long I waited, for it was like a dream, and time has no measure in dreams. Now, though, my darling, we’re together and we’ll be as one at last."
“Does that explain why you’re here tonight, in this world? Because you . . . left unfulfilled?”
“It seems likely.”
“Then, if we make love,” I said with alarm, “you might vanish, disappear.”
She smiled. “We’ll have to see.”
I was uneasy; I couldn’t bear to lose her again. But anxiety soon yielded to desire. Her eyes showed no fear, only yearning, as our clothing fell around us. The music suggested sounds of the city, evocative, haunting, as we embarked on a passionate journey into the unknown.
#
When I woke the next morning, Annabella was no longer beside me. I searched, but she was gone. A trace of her scent?―I couldn’t be sure. I felt disoriented, as in waking from a vivid dream, and the unfamiliar surroundings lent to my perplexity. The former décor, warm and personal, had given way to drab modern. And where were the candles? wine glasses? records? I dressed while trying to get my bearings.
I was startled when the front door opened and a middle-aged couple entered. Their reactions passed swiftly from shock to anger. When I said I had come there with the occupant, they claimed they’d had the apartment for five years. “I don’t see how he got in,” the woman groused. “You must have left the door unlocked.”
Mute, I pushed past them and bolted.
As for the Oberon, I entered it several times in the weeks to come and sat in darkness, hoping the phantom players would return. Hoping of course to find her. The stage remained empty. The silence became oppressive and I began to see things—but only things that weren’t there.
Annabella, at last fulfilled, was at peace in another realm.
I had no further interest in staging plays. Eventually I opened a movie house, which I manage for a modest living. I no longer drink but take a hit now and then to make this existence bearable. What is there to live for except my thoughts of her? But I don’t despair. I have an abiding faith that we have a future together.
Sometimes I murmur to myself the last lines of the “Ballade of Dead Actors”:
Prince, in one common overthrow
The Hero tumbles with the Thrall;
As dust that drives, as straws that blow,
Into the night go one and all.