The Majestic Leo Marble, page 1
Copyright © 2024 by R. J. Lee
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
FIRST EDITION
This is a work of fiction, and is not intended to resemble anyone living or dead.
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Madville Publishing
PO Box 358
Lake Dallas, TX 75065
Cover Design: Jacqueline Davis with
painting by Robert Kuehnle
ISBN: 978-1-956440-93-5 paperback,
978-1-956440-94-2 ebook
Library of Congress Control Number: 2024931136
In loving memory of my brother, Byrnes Kuehnle
Table of Contents
The Overture
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
The First Act
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
The Second Act
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
The Third Act
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
About the Author
THE OVERTURE
Chapter 1
On the evening of April 11, 1946, the fetus who was destined to be an only child and who would be christened Leo Lawrence Marble quickened in an unusual way. His mother Louisa, she of the towhead blonde hair, full lips, and pale blue eyes, was halfway through the fifth month of his development, and she was sitting in one of the cheap seats in the Majestic Theatre in New York City watching a performance of Rogers and Hammerstein’s Carousel in its original run.
As a result, the first voice Leo heard through the thin wall of the womb was not his mother’s but that of John Raitt as carnival barker Billy Bigelow, singing. The deep, rich tenor notes made him take notice inside the warm, primordial, life-giving sea enveloping his very being. It came to him in a way he could not possibly understand when the voice started singing about gender assignment in life, whether Bigelow would become the father of a boy or a girl and how to handle either event.
The voice seemed more passionate at first about being the father of a boy, at the prospect of teaching him how to dive and swim in the bracing waters off the Maine coast, of just having fun with him as fathers and sons were known to do; but as the seven-minute song progressed, there emerged an equal enthusiasm for fathering a pretty little girl with pink ribbons in her hair—a tintype of her mother; of taking care of her and putting food on the table and watching out for her when her “little boy” suitors eventually showed up with their emotions on their sleeves. And it was then that Leo’s fledgling thoughts turned inward for a second in time that seemed an eternity.
“What am I going to be? A boy or a girl? Is it better to be one or the other? Can I be both at the same time?”
The answer did not come to him, of course, and then the quickening morphed into something else—something quiet and rhythmic and certain, the essence of a heartbeat. Suddenly, there was no further awareness of what was happening on the stage in the Majestic Theatre. There was just that stretch of time during which Leo was allowed a glimpse of what was to come in ways he could never imagine once he became part of the world in which his mother and father lived.
Three-and-a-half more months of quiet, incremental growth passed without awareness of anything more than being warm and cozy. Leo could not hear Louisa Marble’s constant complaints about all the on-sale, canned veggies she had to eat in their efficiency kitchen because she and her husband were on a budget.
“I’m gonna give birth to a bowl of peas and carrots,” she observed at one point with a wry expression on her face.
“But it’ll be our very own bowl,” her husband answered in kind.
Joseph Marble, whose rugged features were slightly marred by pockmarks leftover from teenage bouts with severe acne, was writing WWII fighter pilot and detective stories of the pulp fiction variety in his office in downtown Manhattan at Specialty House. Among his novellas were Red Hot Ice and Sultra, the Sumatran Spy. Of course, his family and friends back home in Beau Pre, Mississippi, thought he had snared such a glamorous job to get published and even be an editor at the New York level after surviving WWII as a decorated pilot. But the position didn’t pay as well as people imagined. Living in New York City was very expensive compared to a lazy riverport in Mississippi. His salary didn’t go very far after paying the rent on a two-room flat in Greenwich Village that featured a polka-dot toilet seat for their studied amusement. In fact, Joseph had managed to get a free ticket for his wife to Carousel from a fellow writer at the office, which was the only way she could possibly have afforded to go. Still, it was all undeniably their big adventure on the heels of their marriage in Beau Pre and honeymoon in the French Quarter in 1945, and the endless supply of peas and carrots were an exasperating part of it.
Leo was finally born with his blazing red hair and pink skin. Down the road, freckles would crop up on his arms, legs, and face. His mother thought that he looked just like a little Buddha when she bathed him in the sink all the time. Meanwhile, Joseph Marble had moved from Manhattan back to Beau Pre, “read for the law,” and become a partner in the firm of Carter and Marble to support his family, since his pulp fiction never quite fit the bill. He had given it his best effort but had fallen short.
Leo got through nursery school and kindergarten quickly enough, and even started taking piano lessons in the first grade from his Granny Marble at her music school, the only game in town. Following the untimely death of her husband Sykes due to cancer, Julia Trigg Marble, a short stocky woman with a mound of gray hair piled atop her head, had opened it successfully using her double major in music and math she had received from Randolph-Macon around the turn of the century. Leo took to his rote adventures in sharps and flats, even as he endured being teased on the seesaw at recess for being a “redheaded, freckle-faced woodpecker.” His mother told him not to pay any attention to classmates who ridiculed him, that they were just jealous. That it was okay to be different. He remembered those words, and they gave him a certain strength.
Then, at the age of six, it appeared. His parents bought him comic books to read all the time—Walt Disney Comics & Stories, Donald Duck and Little Lulu, mostly. They all had one thing in common: on the back covers were ads for Charles Atlas, the bodybuilder. They were supposed to be slightly comical with a bully kicking sand in the face of a scrawny guy in front of his girlfriend. The solution was to grow the sort of muscles that Charles Atlas had and show that bully “what for.” At least, that was the intention.
But that message was totally lost on Leo. Instead, all he saw at his tender age, was a handsome, muscular man who mesmerized him. Though he was far removed from puberty, Leo was constantly aroused by those pictures. He began to fantasize at first. He didn’t care about sand being kicked or anything else that was going on at the beach. It would be many years later that he would even know the term pecs or biceps. He did not need to know the names. He only wanted to feel them, squeeze them, and then have Charles Atlas take him in his arms and hold him close. There would be skin contact and warmth and closeness, and who knew what else? He did not think of Charles Atlas as a father. He was nothing like Joseph Marble. No, this bodybuilder was more like an equal of sorts. Not in stature, but in emotional feeling. Yes, Leo had actual feelings for this man.
Soon, the fantasies weren’t enough. Leo explored in all his innocence and found a part of him that did “double duty.” He knew quite well how to get up at night and pee. But neither of his parents had said anything at all to him about what else it was good for. That, he found out for himself—a definite stiffening. At night, when he was securely in bed. In the darkness. He was there. Charles Atlas was there with him. No one else existed. Leo started doing “double duty.” Over and over. He would get into a rhythm. Finally, every nerve ending in his body seemed to vibrate, and he would lie there breathless and exhausted. Only occasionally did the thought ever occur to him that he might be doing this because he was “different” and “redheaded and freckle-faced.” Could that possibly be it?
Mostly, though, he never knew what to make of it all. What did it mean? Should he bring it up to his parents? Something told him not to. It became his closely guarded secret, even if he did not understand it. But it felt too good to stop.
Once, when Granny Marble had come over to babysit for the evening while his parents went out to a party, he had succumbed to his urges and sprawled out on the bed naked while fantasizing about his muscular idol. She had wandered in to check on him and, to his surprise, had only said, “Well, if you’re more comfortable that way…”
At first, he was afraid she might report his activity to his parents, but apparently she chose not to because neither of them said anything to him about it. For that, he was eternally grateful to her.
During Leo’s elementary and middle-school years, he became quite proficient both at playing the pian o under the metronome of Granny Marble’s guidance— making friends with music notes; and playing with himself under his own guidance, in his own rhythm, entertaining images of someone who was so near and yet so distant. He would be happy with the status quo for several years to come, even though he understood nothing about it except that it existed.
Chapter 2
One winter well after Leo and the piano had become “best friends,” he came down with a lingering case of the flu, one that kept him home from school, which he hardly ever missed. His uncle, Dr. Brady Marble with his thick glasses and reassuring smile, was vigilant with his house calls and assured his sister-inlaw Louisa that he had “seen much worse around town” that winter and that Leo would recover sooner rather than later, despite appearances to the contrary. Still, it wasn’t fun for Leo running a fever, having a cough and the sniffles and being confined to bed.
Just at the point he didn’t think he could stand being sick and cooped up another day, his mother came into his room one afternoon with his lunch tray. It was his favorite—a toasted cheese sandwich cut diagonally and a big bowl of tomato soup with an island of nearly melted butter floating in the middle. She propped up his pillows and balanced the tray perfectly on his lap, handing over the spoon.
“I have a wonderful surprise for you,” she told him. “Start eating your lunch, and I’ll go get it.”
Leo blew on his first spoonful and swallowed dutifully. Tomato soup was something that reassured him even when he was well.
His mother entered the room with something that looked like a thin, oddly shaped book with a colorful picture on the cover. But it wasn’t a book.
“This is the cast album of the movie of Carousel that just came out,” she began. “I went down to Miz Lilly’s Records and bought it for you.” There was a brief pause. “And for me, too.”
It was then that she told him that she had seen a performance of the original Broadway production in New York ten years earlier while she was pregnant with him and had fallen in love with the story and the songs. She carefully explained the plot that took place one summer on the coast of Maine with Billy Bigelow the carnival barker falling in love with and marrying Julie Jordan, the sweet, trusting mill girl; and the troubles that followed them up until the very end of their marriage which ended with his tragic death during an attempted robbery.
“I thought listening to the songs might get your mind off being sick and help you get well. As a matter of fact, the first time I ever felt you kick was right in the middle of Billy Bigelow singing about becoming a father. A mother never forgets the first time she feels her baby move like that.”
Then she opened the album and put the vinyl 45 on the little record player that she and Joseph had given their son for Christmas the year before.
Leo continued to slurp his soup and munch on his cheese sandwich while the music played. He listened mesmerized as his mother provided an ongoing narration.
“The entire first act is called the Carousel Waltz. No one speaks. It’s all mimed.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It’s when people move their lips and gesture, but they don’t speak or sing.”
“Then how do you understand it?”
“The music and the action tell the story. Billy bumps into Julie in the crowd and then gives her a free ticket to ride on his carousel. It’s his way of telling her that he likes her. Billy is used to getting his way in life.”
Leo loved the sound of the music. It did have a “merry-goround feel” to it. He imagined the scene his mother was describing by focusing on the album cover picture of Gordon McRae as Billy Bigelow and Shirley Jones as Julie Jordan. Their names were on the cover in big, block lettering, and he was leaning against her, looking into her eyes as she sat astride one of his colorful carousel horses.
As the album continued throughout his lunch, Leo was drawn ever more deeply into the score. One memorable tune after another delighted him: “If I Loved You,” “June Is Bustin’ Out All Over,” “What’s The Use of Wond’rin?” and most of all, the tour-de-force of “Soliloquy” throughout which Billy Bigelow pondered his impending fatherhood. As his mother had predicted, it drew him out of his illness, and he was soon back in school with his classmates. For months after that, in fact, he played the album on his little turntable, practically obsessed with it.
For Christmas the year Leo turned twelve, his parents bought him a hardcover collection containing the entire repertoire of songs from all the Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals—the majority of which were from Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific and The King and I. His mother had written at the top of the title page: “Buddha plays Broadway.” The nickname Buddha, trotted out occasionally, was a leftover from the days when Louisa had bathed her little boy with all his baby fat in the sink. Leo energetically tackled every one of the songs until he could nearly play them by memory. It turned out to be the best gift since his parents had bought the upright for his lessons.
Chapter 3
It was hotter than usual the summer Leo turned thirteen. He announced to his mother that he was going to try out for the Junior Little Theatre’s production of Harriet’s Heartthrob, which surprised her somewhat. His previous experience onstage, so to speak, had been as Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer, in a forgettable, first-grade Christmas production that only a mother could love with enthusiastic but forced applause.
“Well, good luck, sweetie,” she told him, remembering the past but not about to bring it up.
When Leo got to the auditions a few days later, he discovered that he was the youngest kid there. All the others were either sixteen or seventeen, which made them seem like adults to him. After all, they were in high school. Among the two that stood out the most to him were Melanie Brooks and Dean Forsythe, who were going for the lead roles of Harriet Williams and her boyfriend Billy Carson in this production about teenage summer antics. Leo realized at once that they were going to get the parts, while the only role that he might pin down by default was that of Harriet’s Uncle Mike, who had little more than a walk-on appearance. Although he was far too young and immature, Leo did get the part because no one else wanted it or even tried out for it, and he was overjoyed at the opportunity.
“I only have twelve lines, and I’m only in one scene near the end,” he told his mother that afternoon. “But you watch, I’m gonna be very good.”
Louisa gave him a big hug. “I’m sure you will be. We’ll be there cheering you on.”
There were only three weeks of rehearsals during July for the brief August run. The Little Theatre building was not air-conditioned, so the considerable time spent there was uncomfortable for most everyone. But Leo didn’t mind so much because their bungalow on Orleans Street didn’t have air conditioning, either, and he was used to sleeping with a rotary fan blowing across his face at predictable intervals. Fitful sleep, it was at times, but he had grown used to it.
The first inkling of something akin to Charles Atlas and his comic book ads came from watching Dean Forsythe practicing his lines with Melanie Brooks. She was a tall, athletic brunette with an astounding amount of confidence in her looks and presence; he was even taller—the sort of blond with fierce dark eyebrows that somehow seemed to go together. More than that, Dean had a way of winking and flashing his dazzling smile at Melanie during rehearsal that was disarming, and every time he lifted his left eyebrow at her, Leo felt something in the pit of his stomach.
As rehearsals continued, it finally dawned on Leo that he wasn’t jealous of Dean, he was jealous of Melanie. She was getting Dean’s attention, and Leo wanted to be in her shoes. Then, something began to hurt inside. Really hurt. It didn’t feel like an upset stomach or anything close to that. This was something different that seemed to spread throughout his body, leaving him limp with a strange kind of exhaustion. It got to the point that he finally decided to tell his mother about it because he just couldn’t keep it to himself any longer, and he thought maybe she would have some insight for him. Wasn’t that what mothers and fathers were for?
“I think I’m in love with somebody in the play,” he said, the tears flowing while he was lying on his back in his bed one afternoon after coming home from rehearsal.
