Uncle Wallace’s room turned out to be a small cottage behind the company housing where we lived, a fairytale bungalow made for sheltering iconic television stars. I’d never seen it before, but then my room faced the lake. If Duke was sleeping with me in order to upgrade his accommodations, he would have done better to sleep with Uncle Wallace. The cottage had a fireplace in the sitting room with a comfy chintz sofa and a television. Who knew such inequities existed in the world? A painting of a greyhound in profile hung over the fireplace. There was a bathtub, a kitchenette, a small stone terrace ringed with red poppies. Duke had no interest in going to the hospital but he couldn’t wait to get inside the cottage.
The door was unlocked because everything at Tom Lake was unlocked. The place was so tidy that my first thought was that the management must have already sent someone over to take care of things. But after a few minutes I started to see what was his: a copy of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People on the nightstand, a wristwatch beside it. Uncle Wallace carried a pocket watch in the play. His black leather dopp kit was on the bathroom sink. Duke poked through the contents with one finger and came up with two bottles of interest.
“Put those back,” I said. “He might need them.”
“I might need them.” Duke fell back on the bed, his arms stretched wide, an orange prescription pill bottle in each hand. “Uncle Wallace is in the land of limitless refills now.”
I opened the dresser drawer, found his underwear, his socks.
“Come here.” Duke rattled the bottles like little maracas.
I went to the bed, then got down on my hands and knees to look beneath it, finding two empty suitcases.
“Since when are you no fun at all?” he asked, lifting his beautiful head.
For whatever reason, I took this to be a serious question. Had I been no fun at all since Uncle Wallace vomited a bucket of blood in my lap? No, wait, it was before that. Since I realized that I didn’t have the talent to play Mae but I was going to play her anyway? Since I realized that soon I’d be too old to play Emily, the only part I was good at?
“Jesus, are you crying?” Duke put down the pill bottles and sat up to take my hand. I shook my head. He pulled me into his lap, kissed me.
“Okay, cricket,” he said. “Here’s the plan: first, we’re going to smoke a cigarette. Ah! Don’t look at me like that. He’s never coming back so he isn’t going to know, not to mention the fact that Uncle Wallace smoked a few himself. Listen to me. We’re going to smoke a cigarette and then we’re going to pack everything up. Judging by the looks of the place that should take all of four minutes. Once we’ve got his stuff in the suitcases we’re going to put this bed to use as it has never been put to use before. Okay?” He gave me a squeeze and then a better kiss. He bounced me on his knees. “Doesn’t. Take. Much.”
He lit two cigarettes and gave me one, and when we’d finished he got up according to plan. He opened the first suitcase and put in the book and the bedside clock, though for all I knew the clock belonged to Tom Lake. He wrapped the watch in Kleenex and snugged it in the side pocket of the dopp kit so nicely I thought it made up for taking the pills. I opened the closet and took out the two suits, the dress shirts, the casual pants. I found a tidy stack of twenties in the nightstand and folded them in his suit pocket. I found his pajamas. I swear they were the same pajamas he’d worn on television, or at least the same style, a crisp blue and white stripe. He was wearing those pajamas when the orphans brought him breakfast in bed on Father’s Day. He was wearing them when the little girl woke him in the middle of the night, crying from a dream about her dead mother. “Come on,” he’d said, and held up the covers, scooting over to make a place for her in his bed.
I continued with the dresser drawers and Duke went to the kitchen. I wouldn’t have thought to check the kitchen. Then I heard him whistle, long and low.
“What?”
The freezer was full of vodka, proud Russian soldiers standing shoulder to shoulder beside the ice maker. I came and stood next to him to see. The cold air was beautiful. “Therein lies the problem,” I said.
Duke peered inside. “I always thought he was a gin man.”
“I think he is. I think that’s why the vodka’s still here.”
Duke took out an open bottle, twisting off the cap to drink. He closed his eyes and shivered. “To Uncle Wallace,” he said. “Za lyubov.” He raised the frozen bottle in salute then handed it to me. The day was hot and I touched it to my forehead before bringing it to my lips.
This would be as good a time as any to talk about alcohol.
Duke’s drinking did not distinguish him from anyone else at Tom Lake that summer. Drinking was what we did to pass the time when we weren’t onstage, and while he would be the first to say he drank more than most (though less than Uncle Wallace), he wasn’t in imminent danger of rupturing anything in his esophagus.
But Fool for Love tipped the balance. Fool for Love could just as easily have been called Fool for Tequila, the bottle being the central prop in much of the action. It’s Eddie’s bottle, and it starts the play full and ends the play empty. Eddie drinks a lot; Mae, who’s on the wagon, drinks a good bit, and the other two characters, the Old Man and Martin, both drink some. Duke believed that if the stage directions said the character was drinking tequila, then it was his responsibility as an actor to drink tequila.
I was a lousy drinker.
“That’s because you don’t practice,” Duke said. “Look how much better your smoking has gotten!”
Everybody smoked through rehearsals now. Ten o’clock and I was halfway through my third cigarette.
“Eddie has a problem,” he said to Cody in rehearsal. “Mae has a problem. The Old Man has a problem but he also has his own bottle.” The Old Man drank whiskey, though he gets a shot of tequila along the way.
“What about me?” the guy playing Martin asked. “Do I have a problem?” The guy playing Martin was a Sault Ste. Marie Chippewa named Homer. He was cracking himself up. “You need to find your own backstory.” Duke handed him the bottle he’d bought for rehearsal.
Cody was stumped. Cody took Sam Shepard’s stage directions to be the Nicene Creed. He listened to Duke’s madness while having no clear understanding of how a group of actors could function on that much booze. “Are you wanting to do this in rehearsals, too?” he asked.
“Rehearsing means getting ready to play the role,” Duke said. “No one drinks their first bottle of tequila on opening night and expects to survive. That’s what I’ve been telling Mae here. You have to work up to it.”
I wanted this to work. I would have done anything to be good in the part, to be as good as Duke was. I even wanted to please Cody, who I couldn’t stand. I just didn’t want to drink tequila first thing in the morning.