Читать книгу Kiss Me Like a Stranger: My Search for Love and Art - Gene Wilder - Страница 18

When I returned to New York, I got a job teaching fencing at the Circle in the Square Theater … forty dollars a week, under the table.

I also got a job working for “Chauffeurs Unlimited: We Drive Your Car.” I earned two dollars an hour, plus tips. The owner of the company had polio and conducted all business from his apartment. He knew I was studying or rehearsing almost every day, and he told me that I could refuse any job, anytime, if it interfered with my “real” work. More than that I couldn’t ask. The clients would usually want to go to the theater and then to some restaurant for dinner afterwards, so after I left them at their theater I drove to the HB Studio and watched an acting class for a couple of hours. I met Mary at one of these classes.

Mary was English. I’m always drawn to English people, man or woman – I suppose because of my days at the Bristol Old Vic. Besides being English, Mary was also beautiful – in classical terms. I don’t mean sexy – I wasn’t at all physically attracted. Her beauty was fragile, in the way that Greta Garbo was fragile and beautiful. She was also a wonderful actress. To top it off, she was also a painter, so the cards were stacked against me.

After we had seen each other several times at the HB Studio, she heard that I had to get out of my temporary apartment. Mary said that I could stay with her for a few days, until I found something I could afford. What fools these mortals be. I moved in with Mary.

She had twin beds, at right angles to each other. One night, after all the lights were out, I heard a gentle invitation to join her in bed. I thought that she would think that I didn’t find her attractive, which of course was the truth, but I didn’t want to hurt her feelings in that way. So I joined her. I wouldn’t say the rest was history … although in a way it was.

Several days later I saw an ad for a studio apartment that sounded very reasonable. I told Mary that I was going to look at it. Tears came to her eyes.

“Why do you have to go?”

“Well … what do you mean? You said I could stay with you for a few days, till I could find something else…. Don’t you remember?”

“But why leave?”

“But I have to find my own place, Mary.”

“Why?”

“I don’t think it’s healthy this way – I mean, emotionally – for either of us.”

“Don’t you like me?”

“Of course I like you…. What are you talking about?”

The tears flowed from her eyes like raindrops.

“So why do you have to go?”

I did look at that apartment; it was terrible. Sunlight got lost trying to find its way in. No wonder it was so cheap.

Several days later, while Mary and I were having dinner, I got a phone call from a friend of mine from class. He told me that his girlfriend was pregnant.

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

“I’m going to marry her,” he said. “I think I have to.”

After I hung up, I told Mary about the call, and she said, “You’d be out of here faster than a speeding bullet if that ever happened to us.” What possessed me, I don’t know – some kind of idiotic gallantry, I suppose – but I answered, “No I wouldn’t.” Mary stared at me for several seconds. I held her gaze. Then she came over and kissed me. We were engaged that night.

Mary worked at the British Information Service in Rockefeller Center. I would meet her during her tea break in the afternoons, and we’d have a quick kiss. I thought, perhaps, married life could be wonderful.

We were married that July. I borrowed a friend’s old Buick, and we drove to a justice of the peace in Suffern County, New York.

After the four-minute ceremony – a policeman and a postal worker were our witnesses – we drove to Mystic, Connecticut, for our honeymoon. We were no sooner out of the justice’s driveway than the battles began: which route to take – inland or the coast, which diner to stop at for breakfast, which music to listen to, which motel to stop at that night, which restaurant to have dinner in. It wasn’t a romantic honeymoon; it never was romantic from that time on.