8/30/2011 The French Farce

In real time split-screen encounters with other people, I find that my inner movie keeps pace with the outer movie.  For instance, when, at the Cat and Fiddle Wendy told me of her battles with her gay lover, Barbel, I simultaneously ran memory footage of Maureen’s disintegrating relationship with Christine.  Wendy wasn’t seeing my memory footage, just me staring at her and nodding in agreement as she talked.  So I didn’t seem distracted. 

But the more she elaborated on Barbel’s growing anger, “I’d come home from waitressing at midnight and she’d pour two huge glasses of red wine for us before lecturing me about how stupid I was for wanting to become an actress,” the more difficult it was for me to forget Christine’s wine-fueled rage as I sat at her kitchen table after dinner listening to her accuse me of being “an enabler” for encouraging Maureen in her “journez pathetique.” 

Affecting mock dismay, I’d reply, “Is that any way for you to be talking to your decoy?”

“De-goy?  What de-goy?”  Thop!  Christine pulls the cork out of an opened bottle of Bordeaux.  “Mon imbecile ex-mari thinks you are with me.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Je le detest!”  She says as she begins refilling her glass, “You were to be on time, n’est ce pas?  Mais non, you have a show, a show there’s a part for Maureen, only she is not cast, your friend, your de-goy amoureuse!  I hate you!”

“Does that mean you don’t want Roger to catch us in bed together?”

“Bave!”  It looks as though Christine is about to throw her wine in my face, but Maureen intervenes.

“Christine!”  Maureen snaps at her,   “Arretez!”  Then, turning on me, she smiles sardonically, “I bet you’d like that, wouldn’t you?  Like a scene from one of your plays, you jump in bed with Christine—“

“Merde!” Christine mutters, shuddering at the thought.

“And I stand watch at the window.”  There’s a gleam in Maureen’s eye; I can see she’s beginning to enjoy setting the stage.  “When I see Roger approach, I give you both the signal and then dash downstairs to try to waylay him.”

“While,” I gesture at Christine.  “We’re laying each other.”

“Salopard!”  She spits back. 

“It’s all an act, cheri,” Maureen says in a reassuring voice,  “I overdo the welcome home bit with Pierre, all hugs and questions about his weekend, but Roger’s no imbecile, he figures out what’s going on and pushes me aside to rush upstairs where, in my hurry to stop him, I’ve left the door ajar.”

And this is where Christine attacks both of us.  Wine is thrown, staining the table.  “Ce n’est pas le grand jest!” 

I grab my napkin to sop up the splattered wine.  Maureen raises her forearm to fend off a slap from Christine.   

“Vous etes en enfant!” Christine screams at Maureen, then snatches her napkin off the table and flings it at me.  “This is nothing but a game for you.  It matters not if you are a de-goy avec Maureen, ou avec moi—vous pensez this is all a farce for the Follies Bergere!”

Well excusez-moi, I remember thinking as I concentrated on cleaning up the wine before getting the hell out of there.  No longer a fifty-percent Pygmalion, or a failed decoy, I was now a full-fledged pernicious influence.  If Maureen was going to be an actress, it was going to be without my help in a drama of Christine’s own devising.

As far as my friendship with Christine, that was the last act for me.  I was never invited back.  And I was fine with that except that I worried about Maureen.  Not that I thought that Christine was abusive on the level of Barbel--she didn’t have the economic power over Maureen that Barbel had over Wendy in San Francisco—but I certainly felt she was unstable.  Whether it was the insecurity of losing her son because of Maureen, or losing Maureen because of her son, she was drinking too much and blaming the New York theater scene for making her life miserable.  It was no surprise when a year later, I heard from Maureen that she was in living in L.A. trying to break into the movies.  There was no mention of Christine.