“Why are your feet screaming?”
“My feet aren't screaming.”
“They're all knotted up and they're screaming.”
“Feet don't scream.”
“Yours do.”
“You know Stella, feelings have to go somewhere. I think your feelings go to your feet.”
We're sitting at the dining room table. She helps edit my writing and we talk about the days when she was an actress.
“I've known you for thirty years. It's time you tell me why your feet are screaming,” I insisted.
“No one has ever asked me before.”
“I'm asking you.”
She looks like a character out of a Wagnerian opera. The caregiver has done her hair in braids and made little knots of them to rest on the top of her head resembling two small horns. Although she's almost ninety years old, her hair is naturally strawberry blonde. She's quite heavy and looks dramatic in her red satin blouse, black pants and jacket. There's an aura of the tragic and comic – a Brunhilde and Mother Goose combo.
“Did I ever tell you about the time I became one with God?” She asked.
“Yes, I think you have.”
“It was in Eva LeGalliene's Company. I was the understudy for the leading lady in “How Fair the Lilacs”. One night I had to go on. There was no time for rehearsal but I knew the lines down pat. Something happened onstage. My soul came alive. LeGalliene was in the audience. She came back afterwards and said, “Stella, you are a star. You are meant to be one of America's great actresses. Tonight I saw light radiating from your whole being and circling around your head like a halo.” Can you imagine Eva LeGalliene saying that to you?”
“It's hard to imagine.”
“I was very shy, but on stage I soared. Have you ever had such an experience?”
“There was opening night in ‘Company' in Philadelphia. Almost every gesture, every look of mine got a laugh. I had this extraordinary feeling of power. This power had a life of its own and I was its medium. That very same night I came down with bronchitis and was laid up at the Barclay Hotel for two weeks. Jeff came to visit on weekends.”
“He wanted to marry an actress like his mother,” she said.
“Are you going to tell me why your feet are screaming?”
“My feet started screaming when I didn't go on the road.”
“What road?”
“Oh forget it.”
“No, I want to know.”
“La Galliene offered me a supporting role. It was with Ethel Barrymore but it was on the road. Arnold, who was my fiancé, wouldn't stand for my being away. I was forced to make a choice. That night while I was sleeping I awoke to a blood-curdling scream. The scream came somewhere from me. I tried to get out of bed to turn on the light. I could hardly stand. My toes had curled way under. I couldn't even put on bedroom slippers. America's great actress had gone out the window.”
I look down at Stella's feet. She can only wear black cloth Chinese slippers that she buys in Chinatown!
There's a deafening silence.
“Did you want to be one when you were growing up?” Stella asked.
“One what?”
“An actress.”
“It was always special when Mama would take me to the movies. I can see Betty Grable now.” I said. She slithered from behind a curtain and sang, ‘I wish I could shimmy like my sister Kate…Da Ta Da Da Da….just like Jello on a plate'. She shimmied all through the song. Right then and there I became aware of something. Two weeks later, I saw Randolph Scott on his horse at a matinee. It clinched the deal. I became aware of sex appeal.”
“Oh for goodness sake.”
“Not long afterwards, my Dad's cousin came for dinner. He was on leave from the army. He wasn't your usual grown-up. He was getting married for the fourth or fifth time. Because of Betty Grable and Randolph Scott, I knew how to handle him. I flirted.”
“I think you're making this up,” Stella said. “Acting was much more meaningful for me. I had talent. I would recite poems and songs when I was a child. People would be awestruck. I could make them cry buckets if you just gave me a poem.”
“I don't understand why you gave up the theatre,” she said. “Was it the doctor's influence?”
“Yes and no.”
“I never liked the doctor.”
I knew that wasn't so. She was probably referring to the Thanksgiving when she came to Jeff's and my home along with the doctor and his family. She was sitting by the fireplace telling us how she and some other customers got locked in the meat freezer at one of the supermarkets. The doctor said with a twinkle in his eye, she must have been fucking scared. She turned beet red with embarrassment and delight. I think he had struck a place inside her that she forgot was there.
The doctor could be provocative. It helped bring out hidden parts of people's psyche that otherwise would take hours for them to discover in a more genteel conversation. People don't like those parts or they may like them too much. When they are revealed they usually disliked the doctor instead of themselves.
“Do you want to share the snack I brought?” I asked. “Carrots, celery, and olives.”
“Are you on a diet?
“No, I don't want to forget the dangers of the world. I became aware of danger at the age of four. Mama warned me never to talk or laugh while eating raw carrots. She said I could choke to death. Suddenly, the world became a whole different place.
“‘Carrot top. Carrot top.' That's what the kids used to call me, as if I were someone peculiar,” Stella sighed. “I had flaming red hair.”
“Did any of the people you went to school with amount to anything?”
I rattled off some names.
“I never heard of them. Marian?”
“Yes, Stella?”
“Do you have friends?”
“You're my friend Stella, even though you were once my mother-in-law.”
She gave a larger sigh.
“Well I better be on my way.” I said. “I'll visit again next week.”
“We didn't laugh today,” she said. “We usually laugh. Who was that fellow who laughed himself out of the hospital and wrote a book about it?”
“I think he's dead now.”