“I usually charge admission for this,” he said dryly, sitting on the edge of the day bed, which dipped and creaked as it took his weight. “How did you find me?”
Nellie told him.
“I’ve been trying to reach you for a long time,” she said.
“I know.” He laughed. “I’ve seen your messages.”
“But you didn’t bother to answer them,” she returned crisply.
“No.”
“Why? Why, Robin?”
He shifted his weight; the bed groaned. “I—” He brought his hands up with a hopeless gesture, and let them fall to his lap. “You see how it is with me.”
“Yes. I see. I see very well.”
“I didn’t want you to find out.”
“I have already found out everything I need to know about you.”
“No, you haven’t.”
“Indeed I have, and a good deal more to boot.” She shook her head determinedly. “It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters, except that I’ve found you.”
He slipped her a rueful smile. “Me? Who am I, Nellie?”
“You’re Robin Ransome. You’re Bobbitt.” She glanced at the window. “Do you know … what is happening to Bobbitt?”
“I know. But there isn’t any Bobbitt, you see.”
“Of course there is. I’m looking at him.”
He shook his head. “Dear Nellie, what you’re looking at is—Well, you know what they call us—‘has-beens.’ There isn’t any more Bobbitt and to tell the truth there really isn’t any Robin Ransome. Only Mr. Harboomsteen.”
“The names don’t matter.”
“Ah, but they do, you see,” he said sadly. “Names matter very much. You can call yourself anything you want to—Bobbitt, Bobby Ransome, Lord Ransome, Robin—it doesn’t matter what, but it doesn’t make you any more of a person.”
“Everybody is a person.”
“I suppose. Except in certain instances.” He smiled at her. “I played you a dirty trick, Nellie. I’m sorry. Really truly true.”
“If I did not believe that, I would not be here. I have gone to considerable lengths to find you.”
He had got up off the creaking bed and was moving aimlessly about the room, lingering over various objects, his back to her. When he turned again he held a teddy bear in his arms; the Bobbitt bear.
“‘Garumph,’ said the bear. ‘Harumph,’ said Missy Priss in her starchiest voice and giving the bear’s nose a tweak. ‘Oh, my goo’ness,’ said Bobbitt, and they all ran down the path together.” Robin said the lines in a mocking, self-deprecating way that brought out one of Nellie’s fiercest looks.
“Stop that,” she ordered. She pointed toward the window and repeated her words. “Robin, do you know the marvelous thing that has happened out there?”
“I haven’t been out today. Since you have no umbrella, I assume it isn’t raining. Is the sun shining?”
“I am not speaking of the weather. Do you know what is happening all over this city?”
“As you see, I have no television, and I seldom read the papers.”
“Robin, you’re famous!” she exclaimed. “As famous as ever. All over again!”
“Is that a fact?” Whatever the fact, it appeared of no interest to him. He stood on one foot, then the other, scratching his head. “It’s very nice, but I don’t want to be famous all over again.”
“They want you.” There were tears in her eyes. “The most wonderful thing has happened.”
“Are there still wonderful things?” he murmured, almost to himself. “I doubt it. And I doubt they want me.”
“But they do. They do.”
He shook his head and toyed with the bear. “They want someone else. They want that curly-headed little darling in his shorties and a big white collar. They want that yard-wide smile and a little dance. Look at me, Nellie, take a good look. This is me, not that one.” He sat on the bed again, hugging the bear. He moved to the wall corner, where he sat with his knees drawn up, the bear perched on top of them.
“Nellie—” He faltered, then began again. “Nellie, I told you a lot of stories. They were mostly lies. I did a terrible thing to you—”
“I said it didn’t matter.”
“It does matter, unfortunately. Will you hear one more story? No, you needn’t fear, it’s not another fairy tale. I won’t make it up this time. It’s really truly true. You remember the night we went for the ride in the hansom, through the park?”
“I shall never forget it,” she said quietly.
“You laughed and said I was such a boy, such a little, little boy. I said to you, Nellie, I don’t want to grow up; I don’t care if I never do.” He rose suddenly and ran his finger along a shelf of books, until he found what he wanted; he sat with the book on the bed, turning pages in the dim light, then said:
“Listen to this, Nell. ‘Peter: I ran away the day I was born … because I heard father and mother talking of what I was to be when I became a man. I want always to be a little boy and to have fun; so I ran away to Kensington Gardens and lived a long time among the fairies.’” He turned some more pages until he found another place and read again. “‘Peter: Would you send me to school? Mrs. Darling: Yes. Peter: And then to an office? Mrs. Darling: I suppose so. Peter: Soon I should be a man? Mrs. Darling: Very soon. Peter: I don’t want to go to school and learn solemn things. No one’s going to catch me, lady, and make me a man. I want always to be a little boy and have fun.’” He shut the book and set it aside and picked up the bear again. “Any ninny can tell you that that’s Peter Pan. It’s also Master Bobby Ransome. I know you think it is. Twenty years isn’t such a long time that I can’t remember back to that little fellow Vi Ueberroth stumbled across one rainy afternoon having tea and said he ought to be in the cinema. And I wanted to, so badly, I wanted to be a great big movie star. And you know something—I knew I could. I wanted to see my name up in lights over the biggest movie theater in Dublin. Me ma wanted me to come home and be an ordinary little boy. But Aunt Moira persuaded her. After I played with Fedora, I thought, Oh, boy, this is it, this is the most wonderful thing. And so it was. Then I went to Hollywood and Papa Baer and Mama Baer and everyone was so nice, and I thought, Well, Bobby, that’s just the way it’s supposed to be, and Little Willie, and all the rest. You can’t imagine what it was like for me, a poor dumb Irish cluck who’d never been as far as Liverpool and there I was having my feet stuck in Grauman’s cement. We were poor, Nellie; I mean poor. My dad was a hatter, nothing more; he brushed felt in a hat factory in Galway—not where the castles are and the fine houses, but in the back of a dirty room, brushing felts every day of his life. It drove him crazy y’know? The mad hatter, we called him. Well, now, Papa Baer didn’t want folks knowing I was the offspring of a mad hatter, so first off he gives me another father. All made up, a make-believe one—Lord Ransome—and next thing you know I’ve got a make-believe ma and she’s a Lady. Fancy that. Just like in the movie. Little waif adopted by rich folks. They didn’t even bother writing a new script. Life imitating art, so t’speak. Course, no one bothered to find out the truth; they took that as the truth. Well, now, I says to myself, this is all pretty swell, it’s nice being in Hollywood and doing so well. There we were living in a nice little house, just like I used to dream of, and if it’d stopped right there I guess I might’ve been happy.”
“But you were happy,” Nellie interjected. “You were such a happy little boy.” She gave him a doubtful look. “Weren’t you?”
“Ah, wasn’t I, though? Happy as a cat up a tree. Except I wasn’t.”
Her look turned to surprise. “You weren’t?”
“Never. What I was, was scared. Every blasted minute I was scared down to my socks. From the minute they put me in front of a camera, scared. The worst sort of stage fright you could think of. I like to threw up every time I had to run out on a stage with that yard-wide grin and do my numbers. All those folks out there, watching, and me having to be good. Flop sweat, that’s what I had, f
lop sweat. You remember I told you about that party at Willie Marsh’s house. All that Hollywood royalty all over the place and me being taken about to meet everybody famous. I was supposed to be one of them. But I was just scared. They got me up to sing and dance with Willie, with Noël Coward—they were old hands, but not me. ‘Oh, he’s a natural,’ they said, but I wasn’t. I should have been happy; God knows they liked me. Maybe it was Aunt Moira….”
“What has she to do with it?”
“Auntie? I’ll give you an example. You remember the little dog Willie gave to me? I called him Rags.”
“Rags. I remember.”
“You remember they always gave me a scene where I had to cry. Aunt Moira would come marching into my dressing trailer and she would set me down and say, ‘See here now, Bobby, it’s about your little dog Rags that you love so much…. Well, Bobby, I’m sorry to say it, but Rags is dead. Run over in the street. He’s gone, Bobby, under the sod he is.’ Well, you can bet I cried. Poor Rags wasn’t dead at all, but she made me believe it, and I could cry buckets. Just turn the camera on and let me go. Well, it seemed to me that if telling a little story like that—that poor Rags was dead—to get what you wanted was all right, any kind of story you could tell would be all right. So I started telling stories. And I’ve been telling stories all my life, to get what I wanted. It’s just a way you get into, then you can’t get out of it. Then you grow up—no, sorry; take it back—get bigger, and the stories get bigger, become real whoppers, but people still believe them. It’s so easy to make people believe, Nellie; the poor fools’ll believe anything you tell them.”
“I know,” she said wistfully. “It’s because they want to.”
“Exactly. Here’s Peter Pan, he says, ‘Do you believe in fairies? Say quick that you believe! If you believe, clap your hands!’ Everybody claps. ‘Oh, thank you,’ says Peter, ‘thank you, thank you.’ And Tinkerbell lives. Except I didn’t believe in fairies, I believed in goblins. I had ’em. In my dreams—hundreds of goblins, every sort of creature you can imagine, or that I could. Most kids have bad dreams, I guess, but mine were all movie bad dreams. I used to wake up screaming. Auntie wouldn’t put the light on, said I had to outgrow it. Just fantasies, she said. Then in the daytime the bad dreams were gone, but there were other fantasies. I lived off them. It was easy. You can make the dustman believe in fairies and such. It was easier that way, d’you see? I got so I could make anybody believe anything. All I had to do was use my big eyes and my big smile and they’d believe anything.
“And I’d be crazy, mad as my own pa, to tell you that part wasn’t a lark. I loved it. There was another, bigger house, and another, and that even bigger, and they came and did it up like a magic fairyland place, and there’s my picture on everything in sight, and everybody’s loving me, and the President’s shaking my hand, and I’m meeting the Queen of England. If the world’s truly an oyster, I got the pearl. A whole string of them. That was a fairy-tale world out there, Nellie, darlin’, and I was the fairy-tale prince. I thought I would go on and on, and—”
“Live happily ever after?” She gave him a soft smile.
“Sure. Why not? When things get that good you always think they’re never going to end. People want you; it never occurs to you that they may stop wanting you. Papa Baer’s fat and kind and funny and you think, Papa Baer’s my friend, good old Papa Baer. But he wasn’t, you know. He was just fat and rich, and he wanted to be richer. Never saw a man who wanted to be as rich as he wanted to be. But you see, the thing was, it was all make-believe, and life isn’t that, there’s not much storybook in real life. But I never had to make a decision, never had to stand on my own two feet, never had to do anything except turn on the tears or the smile and do what they told me. Everywhere I looked things were pretty, things were fun, things were … good. I thought everything, everywhere in the whole wide world was like that. Everybody was saying, Oh, dear, Bobbitt’s growing up. I could see how scared they were. They didn’t want me to grow up; that meant the end of everything. It wasn’t just the studio; it was everybody everywhere. They wanted me to stay a boy. When I saw them frightened, it frightened me. I got the idea that somewhere, out beyond the world I was living in, there was another world—the true one, the real one—and I didn’t like it. I didn’t want to go there and see. It was like going through the Grimly Wood. I didn’t want to see that other world. But then I wasn’t a boy anymore, I was starting to become a man, and they didn’t want that. They gave me everything except the one thing I needed. I needed to know what that world was like. I needed to know what was really truly true. But I didn’t. Then one day it was all gone, everything, overnight. I wasn’t Bobbitt anymore, I was just Bob Ransome. It’s a terrible thing, Nell, to be wanted and then not to be wanted. I think it’s better not to have been wanted in the first place. It’s like being poor and then rich—better not be rich unless you’re going to stay rich. If you stay poor, you never know what it’s like, so maybe you don’t miss it.
“Well, I said to myself as they showed me the door, that was fun while it lasted. Now what’ll I do? But I found I couldn’t do anything, except what I’d done. Just the one thing. Only I couldn’t do it anymore. Everything had changed, including myself. I never really knew how to act, you know; whatever it was I did was just a natural sort of thing, and if Rags was dead I cried, or if every day was like my birthday I was happy and that was it. But afterward I didn’t know what to do. All my friends were grown up now, and they seemed to be getting along just fine—but not me. I still wanted to be a little boy.
“All I could do was sing a little and dance a little and perform imitations, and they put me in nightclubs, but I knew I was a freak, people weren’t coming to see me, they wanted to see Bobbitt, but there wasn’t any Bobbitt anymore. Bobbitt had grown up, so they went away again. Managers don’t pay you when the customers go away.”
“But now it’s different,” Nellie protested. “They want you. They’re asking for you. They’ve been looking for you, too. The newspapers, the television. You remember last year, in the park—the ‘Broadway Stars for Children’?” He remembered. She told him of the plan, that he was to headline this year’s benefit. “Bobbitt for the children, Robin. You always said you loved the children. You must do it. For them.”
He laughed. “It’s the same story, don’t you see? They don’t want me, they want Bobbitt. What they want is their yesterdays, their youth, whatever they remember from then that made them happy.”
“You can make them happy now.”
“Dear, dear Nell, what a dear girl you are. And a forgiving one. But—” He shook his head. “I don’t want to make them happy. I don’t want to make anybody happy. I just want to be let alone.” He shook the bear so the eyes twirled in its head. “I don’t want to be famous again. I don’t want to be anything, except Mr. Thingamabob and go to the park and tell stories to the kids. I love kids, Nell, they’re really marvelous. I tell them a tale or two, and they love it so, and I pass the hat and I make enough to get along on and that’s fine for me.” He gazed around the room. “All this is fine for me. The truth is, I like it here. Not much of a place, I know, and this”—jouncing the mattress—“is not a bed of roses, but it’s easier.”
“There’s always something easier than something else.” She had got up and now stood looking at him with determination. He recognized the Missy Priss tilt of the chin, the gesture of her hands planted on her hips. He drew farther back onto the bed corner as she moved purposefully across the room, first to one window, where she snapped up the shade, then to the second and the third. The rollers rattled and flopped with her forceful gesture. The sun streamed through the grimy panes, flooding the small place. Robin blinked in the blinding light, shielded his eyes against it, groped finally for his dark glasses and put them on.
“Stand up,” she ordered. He stood. She moved about the room, puffing her cheeks and blowing. Dust rose in clouds, their motes sifting into the beams of light, forming dark, murky rays. She t
ook the teddy bear from him and gave it a shake. Dust flew in all directions. She blew along the shelves among the cups and breakfast bowls. She shook the dolls, the clothing. “Dust,” she muttered, “and more dust. Nothing but dust.” She turned to him. “Robin, is that what you’re going to do, live in dust the rest of your life? Because you’re afraid? Because if you don’t come out now, with me, that’s what you’ll do. And that’s what you’ll be.” She went and took him by the shoulders and gave him a good shake. “More dust.” Then she held him close and reached on tiptoe to kiss him. When she took her face away she was crying, and her voice trembled as she spoke.
“Listen to me, Robin, this is very important. You haven’t learned it, but it’s something you should know. Darling Robin, you can begin over again. People can. A new start. Everybody should get a second chance, no matter what they’ve done or haven’t done. Maybe not a third or a fourth, but at least a second. It’s the one thing people won’t be denied. Have your second chance, Robin. It’s there. Take it.”
“Take it?”
“Take it. Please take it. For me. For the children. For yourself.”
“I can’t, Nellie. It’s nice of you—of them—but I can’t. I just can’t seem to make anything work.”
He sat down again, staring at the buckled floor, his hands shoved deep in his pockets.
“Robin, do you remember?” she said quietly.
He looked over at her. “Remember what?”
“‘If only people wouldn’t put their hands in their pockets so much,’ said Missy Priss. ‘What should they do with them?’ asked Bobbitt. ‘Why,’ she laughed, ‘hold someone else’s. There’s the trick, the whole world holding hands and never letting go.’”
He nodded. “Sure, Nell—it’s a good line. Now you just go along and hold hands with all those folks and never let go.”
She went to him in a little murmuring rush and knelt and took his hand and squeezed it. “It’s your hand I don’t want to let go of. ‘We must love one another, that’s what we must do,’ said Missy Priss. That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Robin. We must just … love one another.” She kissed him. He gave her a half-hearted peck and tried to move away. She would not let him go.