Fagan

by jack coey

The obituary read:

Joel Fagan, one-time Best Supporting Actor nominee, was found dead in his hotel room by a chambermaid. The cause of death is under investigation. Mr. Fagan was runner-up for Best Supporting Actor award in1968. He lost the award to George Kennedy in a highly contested, controversial decision. Mr. Fagan continued to make films, but he never reached that level of prominence again.

Mr. Fagan is survived by a brother in Bethel, New Hampshire. Arrangements are unknown at this time. Mr. Fagan was sixty-two years old.

Todd Morgan was my brother-in-law, and director of the Morgan Funeral Home which was owned by his father. We had this tacit agreement that whenever there was an unpleasant duty or service he had to perform, he would call me for help. I can’t remember how it even started, and my wife, more than once, told me to say no. I couldn’t. When I read the obituary, I knew what was coming.

You see the obituary about a man named Fagan? he asked, found in a hotel room?

Yes.

The internment is Saturday morning at eleven, Our Lady of Grace, see you there.

When I got there, there was Todd, two gravediggers, and a woman dressed in black with a veil over her face. Todd convened us together and told the gravediggers to lower the casket into the grave. When that task was complete, Todd read the service, and said a few words about Mr. Fagan. What Todd didn’t know was I had acted with Mr. Fagan in a community theatre production about ten years ago, and knew something about him. When the service was over, the woman in black walked away, and I went after her.

Excuse me, ma’am. My name is Jack MacCoy and I acted with Mr. Fagan.

I couldn’t see much because of the veil. A husky voice said,

Joel touched a lot of people.

I had to suppress the urge to laugh. I thought, If that’s so, then where are they now?

Excuse me for being so forward, but who are you?

His second wife.

Nice to meet you, extending my hand, what did you say your name was?

The husky voice took my hand in a limp handshake, and said,

Olivia Perkins. I heard the sensuousness of her voice. I was curious to see what she looked like. She turned to continue walking.

I guess his brother couldn’t make it, I blurted out.

There’s a lot his brother didn’t understand, she said.

Miss Perkins I don’t want to bother you with this now, but are you staying somewhere here in town? How about I take you for dinner tomorrow night?

I’m in production at the Weathervane theatre.

You dark Mondays?

Yes.

How about Monday night if I drive to Whitefield and we have dinner together, what do you say?

Oh, all right. It’s a bother for me, and I’ll regret saying yes, but all right.

Great. See you then.

Todd sat hunched over the glass of beer.

There was an empty vodka bottle in the room the police told me, and he died alone. I got a phone call from a Brian Fagan in Bethel, NH. who wanted to send me a check to cover the cost of internment, and when I asked about family, he said never mind about that, just get him in the ground as quickly as you can. It is very rarely that I get offended by what people do, but I must say his coldness sent shivers up my spine. That’s when I called you.

I acted with Fagan ten years ago in a community theatre production of Inherit the Wind.

You did?

He was the biggest egomaniac, drunken bum, I ever met. We all hated him, but the audiences loved him.

A lot of those guys are that way. And when they kick off some former mistress or wife or neglected child writes a book about what a prick the guy was, and all the housewives are aghast. John Wayne had a mistress! Not John Wayne! It’s comical, it really is.

You know anything about the Lady in Black?

Got a phone call asking where and when the service was, Todd grinned and said, I got a hard on talking to her over the phone.

I laughed.

That voice is something else, isn’t it? Her name is Olivia Perkins and she was Fagan’s second wife, she told me. She’s in a play at the Weathervane, and I’m going to have dinner with her Monday night.

Nice.

Do you know the cause of death?

The cop said unofficially it was booze.

I would have no trouble believing that.

Why are you getting as involved as you are? I mean driving to Whitefield to have dinner with his ex-wife? What’s in this for you?

Curiosity, I guess. A man drinks himself to death, alone in a hotel room, and I have to think that if you work backward you will come across some kind of story. I’m curious to find out how men become such bastards. I remember the play I was in with him he screamed at a teenaged costume assistant, and she left the theatre in tears and never came back. I don’t treat people that way, do you? Of course not. So what happens that a human can become so callous to the feelings of others?

Wouldn’t it be easier to read a book?

You’re absolutely right, Todd, except it wouldn’t be as much fun.

##

The drive to Whitefield took about an hour and a half. I found the theatre, and had a hunch there were techies working on the set. I opened the door and walked into the lobby, and sure enough, I heard hammers pounding. I walked into the theatre and there were three or four undergraduates in tee shirts and baseball caps welding hammers and saws.

Can we help you? yelled one through the darkness.

I’m looking for Olivia Perkins, I yelled, and all motion and movement stopped, and the undergraduates looked out at me like I was alien. Silence.

The Coachman Motel on Route 31, a voice said.

31 North, another voice said.

Thanks, I answered, and as I walked back out of the theatre, I could hear them talking about me.

I found the hotel and went to the office for a room number, and again, I had the sensation that I was doing something unexpected. The old man gave me a good looking over before he said,

Room eighteen. To your left when you go out the door.

I knocked on the door and heard,

Who’s there?

Jack MacCoy. I talked to you at Joel’s service.

Oh, damn it, one moment.

I smiled, and turned away from the door, and looked at the hills surrounding Whitefield. It took awhile but finally the door opened. She was tall and her face was heavily made up which made her look cartoonish.

I’m not inviting you in so don’t even think about it. We’ll go to the lounge, she snapped.

Certainly.

As we were sitting she said,

You’re paying for this.

Certainly.

She lit a cigarette which was not allowed, but no one said anything.

My usual, she told the server who looked to be a young actor with the theatre. I ordered and the server said,

I really enjoy your monologue in the second act Miss Perkins.

Oh, go away, she said to the young server, and to me she accused, You’re probably a writer wanting to capitalize on Joel’s death.

No, I’m not.

Didn’t you tell me that you worked with Joel? Then you know he was an artist of the highest order.

Certainly. You loved him?

Olivia blew a puff of smoke from her red and purple – eyed face.

None of your business.

How’s the show going?

As you have heard, the monologue in the second act is noteworthy.

I laughed.

How long is your run?

Labor Day.

Where do you live in the winter?

Manhattan.

Really?

I audition for Broadway.

Certainly.

You’re annoying me.

I don’t mean to.

Stop saying certainly all the time.

Oh?

Good Lord Deliver Me with an extra dry martini.

Do you work a lot?

Mostly voice overs now.

You have a very distinctive speaking voice.

Tell me something I don’t know. It has made me a lot of money. Years of cigarettes and whisky and screaming in the bedroom pay off.

Do you have any children?

It’s not for lack of trying, but I never could conceive.

I’m sorry.

Don’t bother. It was meant to be.

The young actor brought our drinks, and Olivia finished hers in two gulps, and ordered another.

Wow, I thought.

How did you and Joel meet?

We met on the set of Thirteen Steps.

What year was that?

1967.

That was the year he lost the Oscar?

He didn’t lose it, darling, it was stolen from him. In 1968 that was.

What part did you have?

I played the nurse in the emergency room.

Were you married then?

I was married to a pathetic producer who’s not worth talking about.

What was Joel like back then?

Olivia didn’t answer for a moment. She looked at the ceiling, and exhaled a stream of smoke. The young actor placed her martini in front of her, and she raised the glass and took a sip.

Joel was an underweight Dylan Thomas with that head of curly red hair and freckles. Very Irish. Skinny. Beautiful blue eyes that looked through you. He was incredibly intense about his craft, and felt he could change the world with his art. He was disillusioned with the church, and was trying to free himself from the control and influence of the church in his life. His father was an abusive drunk, and I think his personal anger got mixed in with his philosophical views and he was trying to work out a bunch of feelings to find peace. But he was gifted and all those feelings gave intensity and vibrancy to his work. I remember I saw him in an O’Neill play and I was profoundly affected by what he did. We all knew he was a genius, and he had a drive that was extraordinary.

What was it like being married to him?

She laughed and answered,

Impossible, in a word, impossible.

I would think so.

But I must say he made love to me the way no other man could. He was incredible.

How long were you married?

Just about two years.

How long have you loved him?

A long time.

It must have been painful.

Darling, if you only knew.

You didn’t get tired of the suffering?

Sometimes we don’t have a choice.

You never loved any one else?

Not like Joel, no.

He had a problem with alcohol?

Oh, good gracious, yes, and it only got worse as he got older. His father was a drunk and he was too – I don’t think he could escape it.

And you loved him in spite of that?

He had a passion like no one else I’ve known – I don’t know how else to explain it. Whatever the experience was – good or bad – you knew with Joel it would be deep, profound, and there’s never been anybody else I’ve met who could duplicate that.

I looked at Olivia, and I could see that the alcohol was affecting her. Her glass was empty, and she said,

I would like another.

You sure?

The look she gave me took away any doubt. I signaled to the server, and she didn’t have to ask. In a moment, she brought a drink.

You like to drink?

Olivia laughed.

Alcohol has given me more pleasure than men have.

I looked at her, she thought she was funny, but she was sad.

All these years you’ve loved Joel?

Yes.

How often did you see him?

Whenever he got in trouble with the cops I was the one who went and tried to get him out or the emergency room or money when he needed it.

So whenever there was a crisis, you were the one to try and help him, and if he needed you it was all right, but if he didn’t need you, then, you were out of luck?

Pretty much, yeah.

She laughed at, I think, a memory, and said,

One time, he went to see a psychiatrist, and the shrink told him he was feeling guilty because of feelings he wanted to sleep with his mother, and he was furious, and stormed around the room saying, I will sleep with anything in a skirt, that’s true, but I draw the line at my mother. Gracious, he carried on about that for a month.

Tell me about his mother.

She was a concert pianist who had such a bad case of stage fright she couldn’t perform. She made recordings, but never played in the concert halls.

And his father was a drunk?

He was a successful lawyer until the booze caught up with him.

Pretty sad, all in all.

They were gifted people but tormented by demons.

Do you think one can be healthy and be creative?

Olivia laughed out loud.

Sweetie, all the creative people I’ve known it was a dead heat as to whether they were more crazy or creative.

So what happened with the Oscar?

Olivia didn’t answer until she’d taken a sip of her drink, and a drag off her cigarette. I had the feeling this was sensitive even after all the time.

Joel was cast in The Thirteen Steps as a serial killer, and at that time, not much was known about that behavior, and what Joel did that was so brilliant was he studied Capote’s In Cold Blood, and got an appreciation of the logic of a serial killer that was not understood or known. When I say studied, I mean he immersed himself in the book – he read it, oh, five or six times at least, and went to New York and met with Capote and got what he could from him until they got too drunk. The study and research he put into it paid off in the character he played – the audience was mesmerized by his portrayal, and the Academy nominated him for Best Supporting Actor and they gave it to George Kennedy. George Kennedy had ties to Bobby Kennedy and it was suspected that the Academy wanted a certain political alignment should Bobby be elected President which seemed like it would happen. Anyone knowledgeable about acting who saw the performances of both men overwhelmingly thought Joel gave the better performance.

But for political reasons….

That’s what we believed happened.

All right so Joel was robbed of an Oscar. It seems like he had enough going for him that he would be able to transcend that after a period of time.

He wanted to believe in something – just the way the rest of us do. He was struggling with the Catholic Church, and his deliverance, if you will, was his own talent. But, he discovered, not even that was his own after the Academy treated him so unfairly. He never got over it, he became cynical and jaded. I’m not a psychiatrist so I don’t know, all I know, is that I tried to help him whenever I could.

Joel felt he didn’t get what he deserved out of life.

That’s putting it mildly, and he wasn’t wrong. He was smart enough to know it. He never had anything to believe in, to trust, and that ate him up.

Yes, I should think so.

Death was really a release for Joel. Really, it sounds terrible to say, but some people are better off dead, and he was one of them.

God, that does sound terrible.

We sat in silence and she puffed on her cigarette. Finally, I observed,

Some people are born unlucky.

She looked at me.

You know, I’ve struggled with that question over the years, and I don’t think I have an answer, but only a dilemma.

How so?

Is it really destiny or self-pity?

Probably both.

Which comes first the chicken or the egg?

The realization that your life sucks, and then the decision not to make it better.

You think that is always possible? To make it better?

Absolutely. Humans have that choice. Whether they exercise it or not is another question.

But Joel was betrayed by those he looked up to.

So? He could have chose to make a life for himself without them. When I knew him, he was mean to people who didn’t deserve it.

Oh, that was Joel!

He was being unfair to others the same way he felt he’d been treated unfairly.

What goes around comes around.

But it didn’t have to is the point.

Easier said than done.

True.

We sat in silence.

I think I’ll have another drink, finally, she said.

Tuesday, September 07, 2010

2,824 words.