The Delilah Complex

Twenty-Eight

It was still light when I left the apartment and headed downtown for the parents’ meeting at the rehearsal studio. As I walked from Madison to Lexington to get on the subway, I watched the sky deepen. The twilight was thick and colorless that night and the skyscrapers blended into the gray of the evening, their tips disappearing in the cloud cover and ensuing darkness. The autumnal gold and red leaves were like bursts of fire against the dusky evening.

On the ride, I obsessed over the video, but as I walked into the lobby I forced myself to let go of Dr. Snow’s problems and just be Dulcie’s mom.

Young stars and parents alike sat on metal chairs in the makeshift auditorium, sipping soda, bad coffee, or even worse wine, listening to the director talk about the upcoming out-of-town preview. He handed out schedules that included the name of the hotel the theater company had commandeered for the weekend, the directions, the times of the performances and other pertinent travel arrangements. Then he talked about the kind of stress the kids were all facing and what we could do to help our children as they approached this momentous performance.

Dulcie sat between my ex-husband and me and shifted in her seat, unable to find a position to hold for more than a minute or two. Her glance never left the director’s face, and several times I noticed she was chewing the inside of her cheek, something I hadn’t seen her do in years. Her nervousness was escalating.

Afterward, the three of us had dinner at the Time Out café, an easygoing but trendy restaurant two blocks from the rehearsal studio. She had a soda; Mitch and I both had wine. It was much better than what had been offered at the meeting.

We got along well, this man whom I’d been married to for almost half my life, and I. After all, we had a common goal-to be the best parents we could be to our daughter. Dissolving a union is never easy, but our experience was sad as opposed to brutal, and neither of us felt animosity toward the other. We’d managed to stay friends through the proceedings, which I credit entirely to Mitch. He was generous and thoughtful.

If I am going to be truthful, I will say that part of my reason for being so reasonable was because Mitch and Dulcie have a very special relationship. They are more alike than she and I are. They share the same love of theater and film, of books and of physical activities such as skiing and mountain climbing. They have the same tall, lanky frame, the same near-sightedness, and the same taste in food, preferring their meals less spicy than I do.

I have, at times, been jealous of the bond they share, forgetting that Dulcie and I are also close. But having lost my mother so young, I worked too hard at connecting to my daughter and sometimes, in a moment of clarity, knew it did more to push us apart than bring us together.

We were on dessert. Well, Mitch and Dulcie were, each of them working on a slice of cheesecake. I was making do with an espresso. I’d been watching Dulcie all night, waiting to see the nerves relax even a little. But they hadn’t. Something was up.

“You okay?” I asked my daughter.

She nodded and then looked at Mitch.

I knew that look. I’d been seeing it for years. My daughter’s way of working out her problems never changed: she went to Mitch first and after that the two of them brought the dilemma to me.

When I’d talked it over with Nina years ago, she’d told me that it wasn’t unusual for the child of a therapist to be wary of that parent’s insight. That bringing in the nonpsychologist parent first gave the child a ballast and a buffer. Nina had helped me to accept the alliance, but that didn’t mean it made me happy.

“Morgan, it’s about the trip to Boston,” Mitch said, translating Dulcie’s look.

“Okay. Spill,” I said to her, trying for a lighthearted tone, hoping I could signal that I would just listen first and not react. But inside I was instantly worried. Instantly afraid. Some of this was my own projection about what she was going through, but more of it was coming from Dulcie.

Since she was a tiny baby, I had always picked up on her pain, both physical and emotional. Often, I’d be doing something miles away from her and get a sudden pain in my throat, or stomach, or hand, only to find out when I arrived home that she’d gotten sick or cut herself.

Other times, I’d felt a pang of homesickness or fear and found out that while she was on her sleepover or at camp she’d missed us and wanted to come back, or that in school some other kid had been mean to her.

Earlier that night, I’d felt nervous. I’d written off the feeling as what I’d assumed was her normal stage fright.

“I’d like Daddy to come with me to Boston.”

I felt relieved. “Of course he can come, honey. We’re both coming. You don’t even have to ask. Does she, Mitch?”

My ex-husband returned my gaze, warning me with his expression that I wasn’t hearing what Dulcie was saying.

“That’s not it, is it?” I asked her.

She was holding her lips pressed together, not wanting to explain, leaving it to me to do the work for her. It was easy enough. “You want me to stay home?”

She nodded and rushed into an explanation. “It’s not that I don’t want you to come. I just don’t want you to see the mistakes. I want to get all that out of the way first. I don’t want you to see the play till we open in New York. Till it’s right. Till it’s perfect.”

I nodded. Something that had been bothering me was suddenly making sense. “Hon, is that why you usually tell me to pick you up at one time, only for me to get there and realize I’m about ten or fifteen minutes later than the other parents? You don’t want me to see the rehearsals?”

She bit her bottom lip. “I just want you to see the play. On opening night. All perfect.”

There was something else she wasn’t saying, but I knew from the way her blue eyes had clouded over that she wasn’t going to tell me any more than that. She had inherited some of Mitch’s negative traits, too. That stubborn shutting down being one of them.

I picked up my glass of wine and took a long sip and tried to separate my hurt from a real clinical assessment of what my daughter was doing and why. But all I could think was what had I done to my daughter to make her think that I wanted-or needed-her to be perfect?

Putting my hand on hers, I leaned toward her. “Sweetheart, I don’t need your performances to be perfect. I’m not judging you.”

Tears came too quickly. “If I can’t do it right, you won’t let me keep doing it.”

“What makes you think that?”

No words now, just a shaky shrug of her shoulders,

“I love you, Dulcie, whether you get up there and belt out the songs like Judy Garland or flub your lines, or sing off-key. As for you continuing with acting, that’s a family decision. One that we’ll all make together when the run of this play is over. We’ll look at your schoolwork and what kind of stress you’re feeling and we’ll decide together.”

She nodded, but I didn’t know if I’d convinced her. Later, when I was alone, I’d deal with everything I was thinking. Right now all that mattered was saying something that would alleviate my daughter’s distress.

“I promise I am not going to stop you from pursuing this if it’s what you really want. You believe that, don’t you?”

She nodded.

“What about Boston?” she said with a slight catch in her voice. “Can Dad go with me? Can you wait to see me till it’s the final show?”

“If it matters to you that much…” I let the rest of the sentence drift off.

“It does. The rehearsals always go bad. Lots of the other kids have convinced their parents not to come watch.”

I glanced at Mitch. There were no answers in his eyes.