Best to Laugh: A Novel

by Lorna Landvik

  “But remember, I don’t want to do any stereotypical Asian characters—no laundresses or Samurai warriors or stuff like that.”

  “Belushi’s already done that Samurai character, anyway,” said Mike. “But how about a Samurai Laundress—”

  My look stopped him.

  “Kidding,” he said, laughing. “Just kidding.”

  Since I was using my real name (well, my real stage name) for my character, we decided we’d use the real first names of the actors who were hired and then figure out a fake last name.

  “Okay, so we’ve agreed your sidekick is a big dumb macho guy, right?” said PJ, flipping pages of a yellow legal pad. “And the show’s director is a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution and the wife of the president of CANS?”

  CANS—Columbia/American/National Broadcasting System—was the fictional network of our fictional talk show.

  “And then we’ve got the stoned cameraman and the depressed makeup girl.”

  “The casting sessions are going to be so much fun,” I said.

  “Yeah,” said Mike. “Especially now that I don’t have to go through one myself.”

  At my suggestion, both Claire and Melanie saw Mike’s act and agreed that he should play the show’s bandleader. Mike had already enlisted his old band mates to make up The Sorta Late Show Band.

  “I’m almost done writing the show’s theme song,” Mike told me. “I can’t wait to play it for you.”

  “I can’t wait to hear it.”

  43

  THE FLYER TUCKED UNDER MY DOOR gave the particulars of the first meeting of Tenants United!

  About thirty people were assembled on the east side of the pool, under Billy Gray Green’s apartment windows, and the talk as I entered through the gate ran more to shouting than conversational.

  “This place is a landmark!” said Melvin Slyke. “You don’t tear down landmarks!”

  “What about the lease I signed?” said Bastien. “I must honor the lease, but you don’t have to?”

  “This is our home!” said June, holding up her mangy white dog.

  “Yeah!” said Vince Perrogio. “I’ve been here since they built the place! I’ve written my best books here!”

  A slight man in a tailored suit stood in front of the group, his hands clasped behind his back, looking no more ruffled than if he were accepting compliments on his alligator shoes.

  “People, look. We’re well aware of the attachments people make to their homes. Of course we are. But you, as renters, must also be aware that the owners of a property have a right to do whatever they wish with their property.”

  “This isn’t just a property!” said Vince. “It’s Peyton Hall!”

  “For the first time,” I said, sidling next to Ed, “I’m thinking I might want to read one of his books.”

  “Read Raymond Chandler instead,” whispered Ed. “Perrogio’s a poor imitation.”

  “Mr. Delwyn?” said the alligator shoe guy, and Jaz, looking like he was ready to face the gallows, slunk forward.

  For a building manager, Jaz had not been much of a presence around the building he managed. When I ran over with my rent check or some homemade cookies, he’d half-open the door, offering a dim, apologetic smile. Where he once was like one of the showy bird of paradise plants that sprang up around the complex, now he was a withered and colorless houseplant.

  “Uhh,” he said, standing next to the man in the suit, but not looking 1 percent as comfortable, “well, you heard what Mr. DelaCruz had to say . . . and um, I think we should all thank him for coming here today, which he . . . um, certainly didn’t need to do. And with that, uh, thank you, and—”

  “Wait a minute,” said Ed. “Are you saying this is a done deal? That there’s nothing more we tenants can do?”

  “That is correct,” said Mr. DelaCruz. “The wheels are in motion. The complex will be torn down. A new building will be built.”

  A chorus of “No’s!” was unleashed by the crowd and with a brisk nod serving as a good-bye, Mr. DelaCruz picked up his alligator briefcase and made his way to the gate, Jaz loping after him like a dog hoping he’d earned a treat.

  After they exited, Melvin whistled for quiet.

  “If we’re united, we’ll beat this. Now who’s with me?”

  There was a unanimous show of hands, and by the time the meeting broke up we had elected Melvin president of our tenants’ union and Sherri as our secretary. Vince Perrogio asked to serve as sergeant at arms/bouncer.

  “Because, really,” he said, rubbing his thick hands together, “I’d like nothing more than to throw the bums out on their ears.”

  After the meeting disbanded, I decided to take a swim, but not before inviting Ed over to dinner. “Maeve’ll be there, too and we’re going to decorate my Christmas tree. So if you and Sharla don’t have plans—”

  “We don’t. She’s on location in Monterey. What time?”

  EVERYONE TOOK TURNS throwing an unbreakable game show dish against the wall (my tried-and-true party trick), and afterwards we sat down to the Yankee pot roast dinner that had been simmering all day in my Crock-Pot.

  Ed led off the conversation by telling us of a recent fight he’d had with Sharla.

  “She’s convinced she’s going to get an invitation to Reagan’s inaugural ball.”

  “So’s my mother,” said Maeve. “She was in a play once with Nancy. Although she voted for that John Anderson guy.”

  Ed shook his head.

  “Well, not only did Sharla vote for Reagan, she also contributed—a lot—to his campaign. An invitation’s pretty likely.”

  “So what was the fight about?” I asked.

  “I told her I wouldn’t go with her.”

  Maeve stared at Ed. “You told her you wouldn’t go to a presidential inauguration ball? Why not?”

  Anger was like a drawstring, pulling tight Ed’s features.

  “Because I went to school at Berkeley when Governor Reagan said our campus was, and I quote, ‘a haven for communist sympathizers, protesters, and sex deviants!’ I was there during the People’s Park protest, when he sent in the National Guard. Where I got gassed!” Ed’s pink face deepened in color. “I’m a public school teacher, Maeve, and Mr. Reagan is not a fan of public education. Tit for tat. I’m not a fan of his!”

  We sat for a moment in a silence cloudy with his anger.

  “And Sharla doesn’t respect how you feel?” I said finally.

  Ed sighed before offering a rueful smile. “Sharla respects how I feel when she feels the same way.”

  THE TREE DECORATION took all of five minutes (it was a three-foot artificial tabletop model I’d gotten at JJ Newberry’s), and as we all stood back to admire our masterpiece I tipped a lamp shade, and the concentrated light that shone on the tree also cast Ed’s shadow on the wall.

  “Ed,” I said, seized with artistic inspiration. “Move closer to the wall!”

  “Why? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. I’m going to immortalize you, that’s all.”

  “With that?” asked Maeve, looking at the thick black marker I dug out of the end table drawer.

  “Yeah. I’m going to trace his silhouette.”

  “You can’t draw on the walls with that! You’ll never get your cleaning deposit back.”

  “Maeve, this place is going to be torn down,” said Ed.

  “Don’t say that!”

  “Yeah, Ed,” I said, irritated. “You were at the meeting today; we’re not going to let it be torn down. Besides,” I said, turning to Maeve, “when I decide to move out—if I ever do—I can always paint over it.”

  Ed sidled up next to the wall. “How do you want me to pose?”

  “In profile,” I said. “Pretend you’re walking.”

  Ed was a compliant model, freezing into position as I dragged the marker alongside his leg, around his butt, up his back and around his arm and hand, over his shoulder, head, and around the features of his face, and back down the other si
de of the body.

  “Okay, now sign your name on the inside,” I said when I was finished and handed him the marker.

  In clear, teacherly handwriting, he wrote Ed inside one leg and Stickley inside the other.

  We all admired the handiwork, and then Ed traced Maeve who stood flexing her biceps.

  “Wow,” I said, squinting. “You made her look like Popeye.”

  “Well, I do look like Popeye,” said Maeve, nodding her approval. “Okay, Candy, I’ll draw you now.”

  I stood in profile, trying to pose like an Egyptian hieroglyph.

  “Oh, that’s good,” said Maeve. “But lift your leg up higher.”

  Maeve was a slow and methodical tracer, and struggling to keep my balance, I told her to hurry up.

  “Maeve,” said Ed, watching from the plaid couch, “you’ve got to have the pen closer to her body. It looks like she’s got elephantiasis in that leg.”

  As I began to protest, there was a pounding on the door.

  “What the—” I said.

  “Hey, don’t move,” said Maeve. “I’m almost done.”

  “Candy!” said Frank, bursting through the door Ed opened. “Candy, did you hear?”

  My heart pounded as I dropped my pose.

  “Hear what?”

  “John Lennon’s been shot!”

  The phone rang. It was Mike.

  “Candy, did you hear? John Lennon’s been shot!”

  A minute after that Solange called, and then Claire, and after that I left the phone off the hook.

  It was a strange night. We watched TV for a while but were turned off by the reporters whose reverence for the topic was undone by a breathless sort of excitement reserved for big scoops.

  I lit several candles, and I told my friends how as a little girl I’d watched the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show with my grandma.

  “Anytime the camera would pan to the audience, I’d stand up and go nuts, copying those screaming teenagers.” I smiled at the memory. “And then my grandma stood up and screamed with me.”

  Ed said that after getting the excellent news that he’d flunked his physical (flat feet) and wouldn’t be drafted to Vietnam, he drove around along the Pacific Coast Highway singing “Revolution” at the top of his lungs.

  “When I moved back with Pop after he got custody, he bought me Rubber Soul,” said Frank. “I think he wanted me to know he was still a hip guy, you know? I remember he said, ‘Norwegian Wood’ was just about the prettiest song he’d ever heard.”

  I passed around a box of tissues.

  “John was my favorite Beatle!” said Maeve, wiping away tears. “I got in the only fight in my life over him. It was in the eighth grade, and DeAnn Hoffman said he looked like a pointy old lady and that anyone who liked John better than Paul was a moron. So I punched her in the stomach and she punched me back and we wound up rolling around on the gym floor.”

  She inhaled a deep sniff.

  “You know what Miss Unger, the P.E. teacher, said after she’d pulled us apart? She said, ‘Don’t you know, girls, that all you need is love?’”

  After a moment of processing, we laughed, needing the release.

  “She didn’t tell you to get back?” asked Ed.

  Frank snorted. “Or just let it be?”

  This started a tribute, all of us trying to remember titles of Beatles’ songs to memorialize one of their creators.

  “Do You Want to Know a Secret?” I said, to which Ed replied, “I Want to Tell You.”

  When Frank scolded, “You Can’t Do That!” referring to the newly drawn silhouettes on the wall, I apologized, saying, “I’m a Loser.”

  Then picking up the marker, I asked Frank if he’d like to pose, because it could be a really cool wall, “With a Little Help from My Friends.”

  He stood facing the wall, one arm crooked and the other held high up at a diagonal, and when I was done tracing him, he took the pen and printed his name down his neck.

  We all sat on the plaid couch studying the four silhouettes on the wall.

  “You were posing like you were playing the guitar, right, Frank?” said Maeve.

  “Yeah.”

  “It doesn’t really translate,” said Maeve. “Can anyone draw a guitar? I think someone should draw in a guitar.”

  “I think it’s a great tribute,” said Ed.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “It reminds me of the riderless horse they had at President Kennedy’s funeral processional. The horse with Kennedy’s boots put in the stirrups backwards? So I’m thinking Frank’s holding Lennon’s invisible guitar is kind of like that.”

  “Man,” said Frank, “I wish I could say that’s what I was thinking.”

  “Maybe you were,” said Maeve. “Just not consciously.”

  44

  “PERFECT,” said Madame Pepper, admiring the old pink taffeta gown I’d found in a used clothing store on Vermont Avenue and a cardboard tiara I made out of a cereal box.

  The old seer wore the same shawl over her copper-colored beaded dress, and we left the complex with a giddiness reserved for those seizing the New Year while the rest of the world—at least Los Angeles—slept.

  It was our third annual stroll down Hollywood Boulevard, and I was happy to usher in a year already full of promise.

  But Madame Pepper’s mood, I soon surmised, had not risen to the heights of my own.

  “Are you all right?” I asked as we crossed La Brea and entered the boulevard’s commercial section.

  “All right is relative term,” she said. The hand she had tucked in the crook of my arm was spotted and veiny.

  “Why don’t you,” I said, trying to dismiss the thought that the tough old bird seemed fragile, “define it as it’s relative to you?”

  “My friend Polly’s moving. I have always lived next door to Polly.”

  “Don’t worry—we’ve got all sorts of plans. Melvin’s lawyer friend is helping us and he says he’s going to tie up the owners with injunctions, and then we’re going to petition the city council to have Peyton Hall declared a historical landmark and—”

  “—bah,” said Madame Pepper, with a wave of her hand. “Won’t happen.”

  I didn’t know if that was a prediction borne of intuition or pessimism; either way, I didn’t like how it made me feel.

  “Where is she moving to?” I asked.

  Madame Pepper’s sigh was heavy. “The Motion Picture Home! Polly’s going to move in with a bunch of old people!”

  “Well, she is old, isn’t she?”

  “Only four years older than I!” Madame’s gruff expression warned me not to say anything, but after a moment her features softened into a smile.

  “That is the thing, Candy; despite all evidence to the contrary, I am young. Inside I am nineteen years old and full of life, and yet every time I look in mirror, I wonder, who is this impostor?” She chuckled. “Zo, I don’t look in mirrors much.”

  The skirts of our party dresses swished along the granite.

  Dawn had arrived, a rosy loveliness rising from the edges of the eastern sky, and if a bus had deposited an actress from Abilene or a dancer from Dubuque on Hollywood Boulevard at this hopeful pink moment, how could they not think, “Yes, of course; this is where dreams will come true.”

  “How is your grandmother?” asked Madame Pepper companionably.

  “Good,” I said. “Sven’s got a little cabin in northern Minnesota, and they went up there for Christmas.”

  “Brrr,” said Madame Pepper. “That does not sound so inviting.”

  “Grandma said it was really cozy. She said they sat in front of the fireplace reading to one another from the stack of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books Sven’s got up there. And they saw the northern lights twice!”

  Madame Pepper stopped, clutching my arm. “The northern lights! Oh, Candy, have you ever seen them?”

  I shook my head.

  “They are . . . a marvel. I saw them when I was a young girl, fifteen y
ears old. We had taken a trip way up to Finland to visit an uncle who’d emigrated there.” Madame’s hand pressed against her chest. “Candy, the sky was alive with color—greens and violets and pinks! My uncle, a scientist, explained what we were seeing, but my ears closed to his voice, thinking, ‘This is beauty and mystery so far beyond your words of science.’ I thought just because there are explanations for things does not mean we really understand them.”

  We swung our held hands.

  “And then that night, the wolves cry. Howling into that cold, Finnish night and Sophie was scared and I am a little, too, but I make my voice sound deep and know-it-all like my uncle’s and tell my sister not to be afraid, that she should feel lucky, because she gets the privilege of listening to wolves telling jokes.”

  “Wolves telling jokes?”

  “That is just what Sophie said. After each wolf howl I would laugh and say, ‘Oh, that’s a good one’ or ‘Oh, I never heard that one before,’ and then Sophie gets into act, and as the wolves are crying we laugh ourselves to sleep.”

  “What a nice way to fall asleep.”

  Madame Pepper squeezed my hand. “It was.”

  Seeing the tall man shuffling toward us, his eyes fixed straight ahead, Madame Pepper reached into the cavern of her dress bodice and pulled out a folded bill.

  “You’re up early, Slim,” she said, holding it out to him. He didn’t break his stride as his fingers closed around the money.

  We didn’t get all the way to Vine; we thought Ivar was a good enough turnaround point, and on our way back a few people had come out of their nighttime hiding places to begin their first morning of the New Year.

  An agitated, bearded man pushing a shopping cart passed us, muttering something about Beelzebub being alive and well and working as an upholsterer in Boise, Idaho.

  “Another reason to love Hollywood Boulevard,” said Madame Pepper, as we passed him, giggling. “Where else could you learn of the current career and location of Beelzebub?”