To Be the Best (Emma Harte) Read online

  At one end, near the window, she had placed a small, dropleaf table and two bentwood chairs, an ideal spot for a snack. A small window box on the sill was filled with feathery spider ferns, and the kitchen had a gaiety and charm which owed more to her ingenuity and flair than to the amount of money she had spent.

  One of the colourful yachting prints caught Madelana’s eye, and she smiled to herself, thinking of her friend, Patsy Smith. Patsy was a Boston girl who had lived at the residency at the same time that she had, and two years ago Patsy had invited her to the Smiths’ summer home in Nantucket for the long Fourth of July weekend. They had done a lot of sailing over those four glorious days, and Madelana had loved every moment she had been on the water. It had been a new and exhilarating experience for her, and much to her amazement she had discovered she had a great affinity for boats and the sea.

  Perhaps one day I’ll do it again, she thought, turning to the refrigerator, taking out the ingredients for a salad.

  The telephone on the wall behind her rang. She reached for it. ‘Hello?’

  ‘So, you’re finally home.’

  ‘Oh Jack, hi. Yes, I was – ’

  ‘You cancelled our date in order to work, or so you said,’ he interrupted rudely, sourness curling around the edge of his beautiful, resonant voice. ‘But you ain’t been home, kiddo, I’ve been calling you all night.’

  Madelana felt herself stiffening at his tone, and she resented the fact that he had obviously been checking up on her. But she took a deep breath, managed to muster a reasonable tone, to say evenly, ‘I had to go down to the residency. To see Sister Bronagh.’

  ‘I suppose that’s as good an excuse as any.’

  ‘But it’s true, and please don’t take this attitude with me. I don’t like it, Jack.’

  ‘You don’t expect me to believe that’s where you really were, do you? Visiting a nun?’ He laughed hollowly. ‘Come on, babe – ’

  ‘I’m not a liar,’ she cut in, bristling with anger. Her voice rose, and she added coldly, ‘Nor do I appreciate being called one.’

  He ignored this remark. ‘Why won’t you tell me who you were with tonight?’

  ‘I have. I was with Sister Bronagh.’ She tightened her grip on the phone to steady herself. Her exasperation was running high, her patience growing thin.

  He laughed again, this time more sardonically. ‘Sister Bronagh indeed! That’s a laugh. Come on, babe, don’t start getting holier than thou with me. It’s Jack you’re talking to. Me. Jack. Jack your lover, Jack the big man in your life. But is he the only man in your life? That’s the question.’

  She realized then that not only had he been drinking again, but that he was, in fact, quite drunk. Although there was no slurring of his speech, she could recognize the signs these days. He became sarcastic, argumentative, aggressive and suspicious of her, and all of his insecurities started to show. And of course he enjoyed baiting her, which only infuriated her further. Jack was a bad drunk. In the last few months she had learned that firmness was the only way in which to deal with him, and that if she adopted the stern posture of a school teacher she could somehow get the upper hand. But she didn’t want the upper hand with Jack. She wanted an equal partnership, a balanced relationship in which neither one of them was manipulating or controlling the other.

  Sounding crisp and cool, she said, ‘Good night, Jack. Go to bed. I’ll call you in the morning.’

  There was a sudden silence at the other end of the phone.

  She heard him suck in his breath, as if he were taken aback that she was about to hang up on him.

  She said again, her voice firm and colder than ever, ‘Good night.’

  ‘Hey, wait a minute, Madelana, how about dinner tomorrow night? A quick, quiet little dinner. At my place. Or yours. Or somewhere in your neighbourhood. Come on, say yes, honey,’ he cajoled, unexpectedly much less hostile, almost contrite.

  ‘You know I can’t, Jack. I explained earlier in the week that I have to pack on Friday night. In case it’s slipped your mind, I’m going to Australia on Saturday morning.’

  ‘That’s right! Of course! I keep forgetting that you’re the little career girl dedicated heart and soul to work. Or should I say big career girl. Much more appropriate, no? And yes, indeedy, big career. Big job. Big ambitions. But tell me one more thing, babe, is work going to keep you warm in bed on cold nights?’ He laughed thinly. ‘I doubt it. You don’t need a big career, babe. You need a big man. Like me. Listen, I’ve got a great idea. Why don’t I come over right now and – ’

  ‘Y’all’ve had too much to drink, Jack Miller! Why you’re drunker than a skunk that’s been suckling at the moonshine barrel!’ she cried, inadvertently slipping into the idiom of her Southern childhood, as she sometimes did when she was angry or overly excited. ‘Go to bed,’ she instructed fiercely, ‘I’ll call y’all in the morning.’ She replaced the receiver quietly, even though she felt like slamming it down hard. She was humiliated by his attitude towards her, and resentful and angry.

  I hate the way he makes me feel these days, she said under her breath, opening the cupboard, taking out a small metal strainer. Furiously, she tore the lettuce apart, dropped it in the strainer standing in the sink, let the tap water run on the broken leaves.

  She stared morosely at the wall, her mind intently fixed on Jack Miller.

  He’s a jerk, she thought, and I’m a bigger jerk for continuing to see him. I’ve known for weeks that the two of us are not making it together. We’re going no place fast. I can’t tolerate his possessiveness, jealousy and accusations, and the drunken scenes he’s been creating lately are insupportable.

  She ran her hand through her hair distractedly. I can’t cope any longer. I just know I can’t. He makes me madder than a wet hen in a thunderstorm. Damn it, why do I take this from him? Well, I’m not going to, and I’m not going to aid and abet him in his own self-destruction!

  Opening a drawer, she took out a sharp chopping knife, began to slice the tomato. But her hands were shaking so much she put the knife down, for fear of cutting herself.

  Leaning against the sink for the longest moment, she endeavoured to still her fulminating anger.

  It’s all over between us.

  As this unexpected thought penetrated her brain like an arrow hitting its given mark, she felt her tension lessen. And very slowly the shaking began to subside.

  It was true. There was nothing left. At least, not for her. Even her sexual desire for him had diminished. His bad behaviour was turning her off ever more frequently. I’ll break up with him when I get back from Australia, she decided. There’s no point in wasting my time with him. I must get on with my own life. I can’t baby-sit Jack Miller, which is what I’ve been doing for several months now. No, I’d better tell him tomorrow. That’ll be much kinder than waiting until I come back. Now, why am I trying to be kind to him? That dude’s led me a real merry dance of late.

  Madelana expelled a wearisome sigh. Jack seemed to want to punish her these days. Or was it someone else he was punishing? Himself, perhaps? He had been out of work for several months, and that was proving extremely hard on him. When he worked he was a different man. A whole man. He stopped carousing in bars with his friends and never touched a drop of liquor.

  Poor Jack, she thought, the anger unexpectedly falling away. He has so much. Good looks and charm, talent and even brilliance. But he’s wasting it all, letting it drain away down the neck of a bottle. It was the boozing that troubled her; and it was the boozing that had come between them. Invariably, he was full of chagrin afterwards, and apologetic, but this did not take the sting out of the way he had behaved, the hurt he had inflicted.

  It struck her then that he needed her pity more than anything else. Broadway actor, almost but not quite Star, he was a virtuoso performer who could have made it very, very big if he had wanted, gone to Hollywood, conquered the silver screen as he had the legitimate theatre, which was his forte. His clean-cut handsomeness and silver-gilt hair an
d those marvellous baby blues were arresting and made him impossibly photogenic. And he even had movie star charisma – when he wished to exercise it. He could have been another Paul Newman, or so his peers constantly informed her. It was always on the tip of her tongue to ask, ‘Then why isn’t he?’, but she never did. Yes, his friends were most admiring of Jack Miller…he was an actor’s actor, they said. The best. In the same class as Al Pacino and Jack Nicholson. But to her way of thinking, there was something missing in him, something gone askew in his character. If only he were different of temperament.

  It seemed to her that Jack wasn’t driven, and certainly he wasn’t ambitious enough. Maybe that was the reason he was always jabbing at her, why he resented her career…because she had an over-abundance of ambition, while he had none. Maybe he had had it once, but he didn’t any more.

  Madelana let out a knowing laugh. Jack resented her career because at heart he was a male chauvinist. In his own rather oblique way, he had told her that more than once, hadn’t he?

  She picked up the knife and began to slice a tomato, and she was gratified to see that her hands no longer shook.

  Later, after Madelana had eaten her chicken salad, she sat drinking a glass of iced lemon tea in the living room, aimlessly staring at the television set, not really seeing the mindless movie that was playing, and certainly not listening to it.

  Lolling back against the cushions, she realized that she was much lighter in spirit. The constricted feeling in her chest had dissipated, and she had to admit that she was full of relief and felt better because she had finally resolved to terminate her relationship with Jack Miller.

  Also in the last half hour, she had come to understand that this decision had not been quite so quick or so sudden as she had previously imagined. She had wanted to cut the umbilical cord between them for some time, but she had simply not had the guts to do so before.

  She wondered why, wondered if she had stayed with Jack these last months out of loneliness – and the fear of being absolutely alone once more?

  Patsy Smith had gone back to Boston to live, and Madelana didn’t have too many other close friends in New York. Then again, because she worked so hard and kept such long hours, she had hardly any time for socializing with the few women she knew and liked.

  But Jack was a different matter.

  Since he was in the theatre, his leisure hours started after the ten o’clock curtain had dropped. Their odd time schedules had somehow dovetailed neatly.

  Several times a week she had stayed late at the store, or taken papers home with her and worked there, until she had met him at Joe Allen’s or Sardi’s for supper at eleven. And on other nights he had often come up to her apartment after the show, and she had cooked for him, and he had stayed over; and they usually spent Sundays together at his place on East 79th Street.

  But when he was not in a play, like now, he wanted to see her every night, regardless of her work. That wasn’t possible, and she religiously stuck to her own schedule, refusing to be budged by him, and that’s when the trouble started. He loved acting with a passion; in a way, it was the centre of his life. Yet he couldn’t seem to grasp that her work was just as important to her as his was to him. And thus there was conflict between them.

  Patsy had introduced them. She had known him for two years now, and she had loved him, and he was the one person she had grown truly close to in the time she had lived in Manhattan. In a way, he was almost like family, and perhaps that was why she had continued to cling to him when her deepest instincts had told her to run for her life.

  Family, she thought again, turning the word over in her mind, then she swung her head and looked at the framed colour photograph on the end table. They were all in it…her brothers, Young Joe and Lonnie, herself with baby Kerry Anne sitting on her knee, and her mommy and her daddy. How young they looked, even her parents, and there was such joy and love on their sweet and shining faces. Her family would have been charmed by Jack Miller, would have found him entertaining and likeable, because he was those things, but they wouldn’t have approved of him. Not as a boyfriend for her, at any rate.

  Her parents and her siblings had considered her to be unique and great things had been expected of her, especially by her mother, and for as far back as she could remember. ‘You’re the one who’s going to go out and do it, mavourneen, ’ her mommy would tell her in that lovely lilting voice that had never lost its beguiling Irish brogue. ‘You’re the clever one, Maddy, the one who’s been blessed…kissed by the gods, to be sure, me darlin’. Why, you’re one of the golden girls, Maddy.’

  Madelana became motionless, as if turned to stone on the sofa, suddenly hearing their voices echoing in her inner ear, every voice so clear and distinct and individualistic…Joe…Lonnie…Kerry Anne…her mommy…and her daddy…

  They were dead, yet she still felt very close to them.

  Each one of them had left little pieces of themselves behind in her; they were deeply embedded in her heart and very much a part of her, and they were with her all the time. She had the memories to cherish, and they sustained her and gave her enormous strength.

  For a time she drifted off, as if in a trance, travelling back into the past in her mind, but after a short while she roused herself and stood up. She turned off the television, went and got her guitar and brought it back to the sofa.

  Tucking her bare feet under her, she played a few chords, tuned it, then began to strum lightly, thinking of her family, reliving those happy times they had spent together. Each of the O’Sheas had been musically gifted, and they had enjoyed many lovely evenings over the years, playing their different instruments, harmonizing together or singing solo.

  And now, quietly, almost to herself, Madelana started to hum one of the old folk ballads which she and her brothers had sung, and when she finally got the feel of it, found the exact beat she wanted, her voice rang out clear and true and pure in the quiet apartment.

  ‘On top of old Smoky, all covered with snow, I lost my true lover, come a-courtin’ too slow. A-courtin’s a pleasure, a-flirtin’s a grief, a falsehearted lover, is worse than a thief. For a thief he will rob you, and take what you have, but a falsehearted lover will send you to your grave. On top of old Smoky, all covered with snow, I lost my true lover, a-courtin’ too slow.’

  Chapter 10

  She had arrived in New York shaking the dust of Kentucky off the heels of her silver kid boots.

  That was in the autumn of 1977, when she was twenty-three years old. It was probably her wry sense of humour that made her characterize herself as ‘just a poor country girl, a hillbilly who knows nothing much about anything’, since, in point of fact, she was neither.

  Her full name was Madelana Mary Elizabeth O’Shea, and she had been born just outside Lexington, in the very heart of bluegrass country, in July of 1954.

  She was the first daughter of Fiona and Joe O’Shea and she had been adored from the moment she had opened her eyes to the world. She had two older brothers, Joseph Francis Xavier Jr, so named after his father, and Lonnie Michael Paul; Joe was eleven at the time of her birth, and Lonnie was then seven. Both boys fell in love with their beautiful baby sister, and it was a love that never dimmed during the boys’ short lives.

  Everyone petted and indulged her throughout her childhood, and it was a miracle that Madelana grew up to be so unaffected and unspoiled, and this was due in no small measure to her own strength of character and sweetness of nature.

  Her father was third-generation Irish-American, and a Kentuckian through and through, but her mother had been born in Ireland, and had come to America in 1940, at the age of seventeen. Fiona Quinn had been dispatched by her older sister and brother to stay with cousins in Lexington, in order to escape the war in Europe. ‘I’m an evacuee from the old sod,’ she would say with a bright smile, her green eyes sparkling, enjoying being something of a novelty amongst her cousins and their friends.

  Joe O’Shea was twenty-three in 1940, and an engineer who wor
ked for his father in their small family construction business, and he was the best friend of Liam Quinn, Fiona’s cousin. It was at Liam’s house that Joe first met Fiona, and he had immediately fallen in love with the tall, lissome girl from County Cork. He thought she had the prettiest of faces and the most dazzling of smiles it had ever been his great good fortune to see. They had started courting, and to Joe’s delight, Fiona soon confessed that she reciprocated his feelings and they were married in 1941.

  After their honeymoon in Louisville, they set up house in Lexington, and in 1943 their first son was born, just a few weeks after his father had embarked for England to fight the war in Europe.

  Joe, who was in the US 1st Infantry Division, was initially stationed in England, and later his unit was part of the Omaha Beach Assault Force that landed in Normandy on D-Day, the sixth of June, 1944. He was lucky and survived this and other Allied offensives in the European theatre of war, and came home safely at the end of 1945, proudly wearing a Purple Heart pinned to his battledress.

  Once he had settled down to civilian life in Kentucky, Joe had again gone to work in his father’s small business, and slowly life for the O’Sheas had returned to normal. In 1947, Lonnie was born, and with the addition of Maddy seven years later, Fiona and Joe decided it might be wisest not to have any more children, wanting to give as much as they could to the three they already had. Most especially, they were thinking of the cost of college educations for the two boys and Maddy. Joe’s father had retired, and Joe had taken over the little family business and was making a decent living. Whilst they were not poor, they were not rich either. ‘Middlin’ comfortable,’ was the way Joe would put it, and he would always add, ‘But that’s no cause for celebratin’, or for bein’ extravagant.’