Cynthia Nixon (33:38)
The Ladder we had the builders in at the time, my father says in his accuracy way, if he ever mentions his second marriage, the one that so quickly went wrong. And he says, clearing a small apology from his throat, as though preparing to say something immodest, we happen to be without stairs. It is true. I remember that summer. I was 15 years old. I came home from Ms. Compton's school at the end of the term, and when I got to our place in Devonshire, not only had my mother gone, but the stairs had gone too. There was no staircase in the house. We lived in an old crab colored cottage with long windows under the eaves that looked like eyes half closed against the sun. Now when I got out of the car I saw scaffolding over the front door and two heaps of sand and mortar on the crazy paving which my father asked me not to tread in because it would make work for Janie. This was the name he called his second wife. I went inside. Imagine my astonishment. The little hall had vanished, the ceiling had gone, you could see up to the roof. The wall on one side had been stripped to the brick and and on the other side hung a long curtain of builder's sheets. Where are the stairs? I said. What have you done with the stairs? I was at the laughing age. A mild trim voice spoke above our heads. Oh, I know that laugh, the voice said sweetly and archly. There was Ms. Richards, or I should say my father's second wife, standing behind a builder's rope on what used to be the landing, which now stuck out precariously without banisters like the portion of a ship's deck. The floor appeared to have been sawed off. She used to be my father's secretary before the divorce, and I had often seen her in my father's office, but now she had changed her fair Hair was now fluffed out, and she wore a fussed and shiny brown dress that was quite unsuitable for the country. I remember how odd they both looked, she up above and my father down below, and both apologizing to me. The builders had taken the old staircase out two days before, they said, and had promised to put the new one in against the far wall of the room, behind the dust sheets, before I got back from school. But they had not kept their promise. We go up by the ladder, said my father, cutting his wife short. He pointed. At that moment his wife was stepping to the end of the landing, where a short ladder with a post to hold onto at the top, as one stepped onto the first rung sloped to the ground. It's horrible, called my stepmother. My father and I watched her come down. She came to the post and turned round, not sure whether she ought to come down the ladder frontward or backward. Backward, Called my father. No, the other hand on the post. My stepmother blushed fondly and gave him a look of fear. She put one foot on the top rung and then took her foot back and put the other one there and then pouted. It was only 8ft to the ground. I remembered her as a quick and practical woman at the office. She was now, I was sure, playing at being weak and dependent. My hands, she said a moment later, looking at the dust on her hands as she grasped the top rung. My father and I stopped where we were and watched her. She put one leg out too high, as if artlessly she were showing us the leg first, and she was. She was a plain woman, and her legs, she used to say, were her nicest thing. This was the only coquetry she had. She looked like one of those insects that try the air around them with their feet feelers before they move. I was surprised that my father, who had always been formally attentive to my mother, especially when he was angry, and had almost bowed to me when he met me at the station and helped me in and out of the car, did not go to help her. I saw an expression of obstinacy on his face. You're at the bottom, he said at last. Only two more steps. Oh dear, said my stepmother, getting off the last rung onto the floor, and she turned with her small chin raised, offering us her helplessness for admiration. She came to me and kissed me and said, doesn't she look lovely? You are growing into a woman. Nonsense, said my father, and in fear of being a woman and yet pleased by what she said, I took my father's arm. Is this what we have to do? Is this how we get to bed? I said. It's only until Monday, father said. The both of them looked ashamed, as though by having the stairs removed they had done something foolish. My father tried to conceal this by an air of modest importance. They seemed a very modest couple. Both of them looked shorter to me since their marriage. I was rather shocked by this. She seemed to have made him shorter. I had always thought of my father as a dark, vain, terse man, very logical and never giving in to anyone. He seemed much less important now that his secretary was in the house. It is easy, I said, and I went to the ladder and was up it. In a moment mind called my stepmother, but in a moment I was down again, laughing. While I was coming down, I heard my stepmother say quietly to my father, what legs she is growing my legs and my laugh. I did not think that my father's secretary had the right to say anything about me. She was not my mother. After this my father took me around the house. I looked behind me once or twice as I walked. On one of my shoes was some of the sand he had warned me about. I don't know how it got on my shoe. It was rather funny seeing this one sandy footmark making work for Janey wherever I went. My father took me through the dust curtain into the dining room and then to the far wall where the staircase was going to be. Why have you done it? I asked. He and I were alone. The house has wanted it for years, he said. It ought to have been done years ago. I did not say anything when my mother was there. She was always complaining about the house, saying it was poky, barbarous. I can hear her voice now saying barbarous as if it were the name of some terrifying and savage queen. And my father had always refused to alter anything. Barbarous. I used to think of that word as my mother's name. Does Janie like it? I asked. My father hardened at this grand question. He seemed to be saying, what has it got to do with Janie? But what he said was, and he spoke with amusement, with a look of quiet scorn. She liked it as it was. I did too. I said. I then saw. But no, I did not really understand this at the time. It is something I understand now that I am older, that my father was not altering the house for Janie's sake. She hated the whole place because my mother had been there, but was too tired by her earlier life in his office. Fifteen years of it, too unsure of herself to say anything. It was an act of amends to my mother. He was punishing Janie by getting in builders and making everyone uncomfortable and miserable. He was creating an emotional scene with himself. He was annoying Janie with what my mother had so maddeningly wanted. And he would not give her. After my father had shown me the house, I said I would go and see Janie getting lunch ready. I shouldn't do that, he said. It will delay her. Lunch is just ready, or it should be. He looked at his watch. We went to the sitting room, and while we waited, I sat in the green chair. And he asked me questions about school. And we went on to talk about the holidays. But when I answered, I could see he was not listening to me. But trying to catch sounds of Janie moving in the kitchen. Occasionally there were sounds. Something gave an explosive fizz in a hot pan and a saucepan lid fell. This made a loud noise and the lid spun a long time on the stove stone floor. The sound stopped our talk. Janie is not used to the kitchen, said my father. I smiled very close to my lips. I did not want my father to see it. But he looked at me and he smiled by accident, too. There was a sudden understanding between us. I will go and see, I said. He raised his hand to stop me, but I went. It was natural. For 15 years, Janie had been my father's secretary. She had worked in an office. I remember when I went there when I was young. She used to come into the room with an earnest and hushed air, Leaning her head a little sideways and turning three quarter face toward my father at his desk, Leaning forward, forward to guess at what he wanted. I admired the great knowledge she had of his affairs. The way she carried letters, how quickly she picked up the telephone when it rang. The authority of her voice, her strength had been that she was impersonal. She had lost that in her marriage. After 15 years, a life had ended. She was resting. But Janie had not lost her office behavior. That she now kept for the kitchen. The moment I went to the kitchen, I saw her walking to the stove. Where the saucepans were throbbing too hard. She was walking exactly as she had walked toward my father at his desk. The stove had taken my father's. She went up to it with impersonal inquiry, as if to anticipate what it wanted. She seemed baffled because it could not speak. When one of the saucepans boiled over, she ran to it and lifted it off suddenly and too high. In her telephone movement, the water spilled at once on the table beside the stove were basins and pans she was using, and she had them all spread out in an orderly way, like typing. She went from one to the other with the careful look of inquiry she used to give to the things she was filing. It was not a method suitable to a kitchen. When I came in, she put down the pan she was holding and stopped everything, as she would have done in the office, to talk to me about what she was doing. She was very nice about my hair, which I had had cut. It made me look older and I liked it better. But blue smoke rose behind her as we talked. She did not notice it. No. It was not the way to cook a meal. I went back to my father. I didn't want to be in the way, I said. Extraordinary, he said, looking at his watch. I must just go and hurry Janey up. He was astonished that a woman so brisk in an office should be so languid, independent in a house. She's just bringing it in, I said. The potatoes are ready. They're on the table. I saw them on the table, he said. Getting cold on the kitchen table, I said. That doesn't prevent them getting cold, he said. My father was a sister sarcastic man. I walked about the room humming. My father's exasperation did not last. It gave way to a new thing in his voice, resignation. We will wait, if you do not mind, he said to me. Janie is slow. I looked at my father. He had changed. His rough black hair was clipped closer at the ears and he had that too young look that middle aged men sometimes have. For by certain lines it can be seen that they are not as young as their faces. Marks like minutes on the face of a clock showed at the corners of his eyes, his nose, his mouth. He was much thinner. His face had hardened. He had often been angry and sarcastic, sulking and abrupt when my mother was with us. But I had never seen him before as he was now, blank faced, ironical and set in impatient boredom. After he spoke, he had actually been hissing a tune privately through his teeth at the corner of his mouth. At this moment Janey came in, smiling too much and said lunch was ready. Oh, I laughed when we got into the dining room. It is like. It is like France. France, they said together, smiling at me. Like when we all went to France before the war. And you took the car, I said. What on earth are you talking about? Said my father, looking embarrassed. You were only five before the war. I remember every bit of it. You and Mummy on the boat. Yes, yes, said my Stepmother with melancholy importance. I got the tickets for you all. My father looked as though he were going to hit me. Then he gave a tolerant laugh across the table to my stepmother. I remember perfectly well, she said. I'm afraid I couldn't get the peas to boil. Oh, I've forgotten the potatoes. She looked as though she were going to cry. I went to get them. When I came back, I could see that she had been crying. She was one of those very fair women, and even two or three tears brought a pinkness to her nose. My father had said something to her sharply, for his face was shut and hard. And she was leaning over the dishes, a spoon in her hand to conceal a wound. After lunch I took my suitcase and went up the ladder. It was not easy to go up carrying a suitcase, but I enjoyed it. I wish we could always have a ladder in the house. It was like being on a ship. I stood at the top, thinking of my mother leaning on the rail of the ship with her new husband going to America. I was glad she had gone, because sometimes I. She sent me lovely things. And she had promised me that I should go to America, too. Then I went to my room and I unpacked my case at the bottom. When I took my pajamas out, they were the last thing. There was the photograph of my mother face downward, where it had been lying all the term. I forgot to say that I had been in trouble the last week of school. I don't know why. I was longing to be home. I felt I had to do something. One afternoon I went into the rooms in our passage when no one was there. And I put the snap of Kitty's father into Mary's room. I took it out of the frame and I put Mary's brother into Olga's. And I took Maeve's mother and put her into the silver frame where Jessie's mother was. Maeve cried and reported me to Ms. Compton. It was only a joke, I said. A joke in very poor taste. Ms. Compton said to me in her voice, how would you like it if anyone took the photograph of your mother? I haven't got one, I said. Well, it was not a lie. Everyone wanted to know why I had an empty frame on my chest of drawers. I had punished my mother by leaving her photograph in my suitcase. But now the punishment was over. I took out her picture and put it in the frame on my chest. And every time I bent up from the drawers, I looked at her and then at myself in the mirror. In the middle of this, my stepmother came in to ask if she could help me. You are getting very pretty, she said. I hated her for admiring me. I do not deny it. I hated her. I thought, there is my mother thousands of miles away, leaving us to this and treating us like dirt. And we are left with Ms. Richards, of all people. That night, after I'd gone to bed, I heard my father and my stepmother having a quarrel. It is perfectly natural for the child to have a photograph of her mother. I turned. My father say a door closed. Someone was wandering about on the landing. When whoever it was had gone, I opened my door and crept out barefoot to listen. Every step I made seemed to start a loud creak in the boards, and I was so concerned with this that I did not notice I had walked to the edge of the landing. The rope was there, but in the dark I could not see it. I knew I was on the edge of the drop into the hall and that with one more step I would have gone through. I went back to my room feeling sick. And then the thought struck me and I could not get it out of my head. All night I dreamed it. I tried not to dream it. I turned on the light, but I dreamed it again. That Ms. Richards fell over the edge of the landing. She hated me for being like my mother. I was very glad when the morning came. The moment I was downstairs, I laughed at myself. It was only 8ft. Anyone could jump it. I worked out how I could jump from the top and land on my feet. I moved the ladder. It was not heavy to lift, to see what. What you would feel like if there was no ladder there and the house was on fire and you had to jump to make amends for my wicked dreams. In the night, I saw myself rescuing Ms. Richards, I should say my stepmother, as flames teased her to the edge. Perhaps if the builders had come as they had promised on the Monday, my stepmother's story would have been different. I am so sorry we are in such a mess, she said to me that morning at breakfast. She had said it many times, as if she thought I regarded the ladder as her failure. It's fun, I said. It's like being on a ship. You keep on saying that, my stepmother said, looking at me in a very worried way, as if trying to work out the hidden meaning of my remark. You've never been on a ship to France, I said when I was a child. Oh, yes, said my stepmother. I hate mess, said my stepmother to both of us. Getting up in a prosaic person emotion looks grotesque, like clothes suddenly become too large. Do Leave us alone, father said. There was a small scene after this. My father did not mean by us, himself and me as she chose to think. He was simply speaking of himself, and he had spoken very mildly. My stepmother marched out of the room. Presently we heard her upstairs. She must have been very upset to have faced going up the ladder. Come on, said my father. I suppose there's nothing for it. I'll get the car out. We will go to the builders. He called up to her that we were going and asked if she'd like to go with us. Oh, it was a terrible holiday when I grew up and was myself married. My father said it was a very difficult summer. You didn't realize you were only a school girl. It was a mistake. And then he corrected himself. I mean that my father was always making himself more correct. It was his chief vanity that he understood his own behavior. I happened, he said. This was the correction to make a very foolish mistake. Whenever he used the phrase I happened, my father's face seemed to dry up and become distant. He was congratulating himself not on the mistake, of course, but on being the first to put his finger on it. I happen to know. I happen to have seen it was this incidental rightness, the footnote of inside knowledge on innumerable minor issues and his fatal wrongness in a large, obstinate, principled way about anything important that I think made my beautiful and dishonest mother leave him. The promptness of his second marriage, perhaps, was to teach her a lesson. I imagine him putting his divorce papers away one evening at his office and realizing when Ms. Richards came in to ask if there was anything more tonight, that here was a woman who was reliable, trained, and like himself, happened to have a lot of inside knowledge. To get out of the house with my father, to be alone with him, my heart came alive. It seemed to me that this house was not my home anymore. If only we could go away, he and I. The country outside seemed to me far more like home than this grotesque divorced house. I stood longing for her not to answer, dreading that she would come down. My father was not a man to beg her to change her mind. He went out to the garage. My fear of her coming made me stay for a moment and then I do not know how, the thought came into my head. I went to the ladder and I lifted it away. It was easy to move a short distance, but it began to swing when I tried to lay it down, and I was afraid it would crash. I could not put it on the floor, so I Turned it over and over against the other wall, out of reach. Breathlessly, I left the house. And then my terrible dreams came back to me. I was frightened. I tried to think of something else, but I could not. I could only see my stepmother on the edge of the landing. I could only hear her giving a scream and going over head first. We got into the town and I felt sick. We arrived at the builders and my father stopped there. Only a girl was in the office. And I heard my father say in his coldest voice, I happen to have an appointment. My father came out and we drove off. He was cross. Where are we going? I said when I saw we were not going home to Longwood. He said, they're working over there. I thought I would faint. I, I. I began. What? My father said. I could not speak. I began to get red and hot. And then I remembered I could pray. It is seven miles to Longwood. Well, I thought, she is over. She is dead by now. I saw visits to the hospital. I saw my trial. She is like you, said the builder, nodding to me. All my life I shall remember his mustache. She is like my wife, said my father. My first wife. I happened to have married twice. He liked puzzling and embarrassing people. Do you happen to know a tea place near here? He asked. Oh, no, I said. I don't feel hungry. But we had tea at Gilling. The river is across the road from the tea shop. And we stood afterward on the bridge. I surprised my father by climbing the parapet. If you jumped, I said to my father, would you hurt? You'd break your legs, said my father, her nicest thing. I shall not describe our drive back to the house. But my father did say, janie will be worried. We've been nearly three hours. I'll put the car in afterward. When we got back, my father jumped out and went down the path. I got out slowly. I could hardly walk down the path. I stopped to listen to the bees. But I could not wait any longer. I went into the house. There was my stepmother standing on the landing above the hall. Her face was dark red. Her eyes were long and violent. Her dress was dusty and her hands were black with dust. She had just finished screaming something at my father and her mouth had stayed open after her scream. I thought I could smell her anger and her fear the moment I came into the house. But it was really the smell of a burnt out saucepan coming from the kitchen.
