Still Holding

by Bruce Wagner

  • • •

  “THAT’S THE THING about Jerry that always bugged me,” said Robbie.

  (Lisanne left the house in Rustic as soon as Philip finished his little story; the telethon was on at the Sarsgaard’s, too.)

  “He’s mean,” said Robbie. “I mean, I love ‘im and everything—and he’s the world’s biggest softie. But Mr. Lewis can be meaner than hell! Right, Max?”

  “That is correct,” said the old woman from her La-Z-Boy.

  Lisanne recalled the first time she saw her, in Albany, standing in the dusky kitchen. At the motel, Robbie had lied, and said he was sharing his home with his paternal grandmother. She remembered thinking, Something fishy there. Maxine Rebak was in her late sixties, and the alliance was comical to Lisanne at first but then poignant—everybody loves somebody sometime. Looking back, she wondered why he drove them over to see Max in the first place. Maybe it was some kind of ambivalent last gasp defiance toward his wife-to-be. But whatever ambivalence he might have had was now gone. They had the soft, comfy edges of any long-married couple.

  Robbie met Maxine on a singles Web site. A Christian Scientist, she had registered her age as ten years younger. He advertised himself as a retired ambulance driver who became further disabled during WTC cleanup efforts, the truth being that on 9/13 he actually did start into Manhattan but was sidelined when a piston blew. That kind of bravado was pure Robbie. He was more a dreamer than a deceiver, and Lisanne loved him because he didn’t have a malevolent bone in his body. (Doesn’t have a bone at all, her dad would have wryly said.) He was a passive, sweet-hearted man. Maxine was a widow with a little bit of money. Shortly after they introduced themselves at a coffee shop rendezvous in Syracuse, she sold her house and moved in. She’d grown ill over the last few months; the road trip to L.A. took it out of her. They were married in Vegas, on the day they visited the Hoover Dam, “a thing of profound beauty” that Maxine had always dreamed of and wished to see before her death. But Siddhama superseded any morbid notions—she loved the idea of her husband being a sudden father, and seeing him with the boy gave her renewed life.

  Lisanne had been in the hospital only a few days when Reggie tracked Robbie down. Reggie and the Muskinghams met Robbie and Maxine for dinner, and that was when Philip offered to lease them a duplex in the Fairfax area. The nannies’ living quarters were on the second story (that way, Max wouldn’t have to negotiate stairs), and they worked in revolving shifts so that the Sarsgaards were never without help. Between hospitalizations, Lisanne visited Siddhama whenever she wished, and while no one broached the topic of the baby returning to Rustic Canyon to live, she knew she wasn’t ready. But she was no longer afraid of her child. The aberrant ideation of his Panchen-like abduction receded, as flotsam upon floodwaters, and she reveled in their communion, staring deeply into his eyes with unneurotic affection. It was in this fashion that she willed Siddhama into being, assembled him with her love, and that he grew more real with each passing moment. She could not fathom this luscious, magical creature not being in her life.

  Meanwhile, Lisanne did everything she could to reclaim her health and spirits. She went to an obesity clinic at UCLA and drank protein powder packets each day. She chugged down potassium pills with sugarless Metamucil, morning and night. She lost thirty pounds in the first month. She did yoga, Pilates, and Gyrotonics, returning to her five-mile walks along the bluff. She lifted weights and submitted herself to the energetic meridian needlings of Dr. Yue-jin Feng. (The only thing she didn’t do was meditate.) She saw Calliope Krohn-Markowitz for talk therapy five hours a week in conjunction with cutting-edge palliative care provided by Chaunce Hespers, M.D., the renowned Camden Drive psychopharmacologist. All was relatively well with the world.

  She emphatically knew who this baby was—a beauteous boy child, born of the union of Lisanne Emily McCadden and Robert Linden Sarsgaard.

  “Did you hear what Jerry said just before Julius La Rosa came out?” said Robbie, poised before the campfire of the TV. “Lisanne, you didn’t hear? Maxine! Max, come on, you guys have to watch! Ed McMahon was announcing Julius La Rosa—Maxine, you know Julius La Rosa”—she nodded from her chair and said, “He’s of the where-are-they-now ilk”—“what they call a singer’s singer. Tony Bennett worships him. And if Bennett’s considered a ‘singer’s singer,’ I guess that means La Rosa’s a singer’s singer’s singer. Whew! That’s a tongue twister. Sinatra loved him too—Lisanne, you’re too young. But I happen to know my saloon singers, and La Rosa coulda been big as Frank. Right, Max? Hands down. But he was cantankerous. This guy pissed everybody off . . . Arthur Godfrey, Ed Sullivan, the mob guys. Everybody. So McMahon introduces him—this was just twenty minutes ago!—and Jerry says, ‘Is he still alive?’ And you know that had to hurt. Jerry, with that pumpkin face full of cortisone, like he should talk! The guy comes on and sings— beautifully— What’d he sing, Max? ‘Cat’s in the Cradle’? Beautiful. And I was never wild about that song—that’s Harry Chapin, a Brooklyn boy—but it was like we were hearing it for the first time, huh, Max. La Rosa was in a tux, that’s their thing, all those saloon guys, but handsome, like he was born in it”—Maxine said, “Very”—“and probably older than Jerry, if that’s possible! So, after he sings, Jerry looks in the camera with those crocodile tears and says, ‘It don’t get any better than that, folks’—and how if there’s a pantheon, the top guys would have to be Frank and Tony and Julius (he throws in Jack Jones only cause Jack’s coming on later), and you kind of get the feeling he means it but it’s too late! OK? He’s already made the Is he still alive? remark, and that’s the thing that makes me uncomfortable about Jerry”—“So why do you watch?” interjects Maxine, without expecting an answer, then says to Lisanne, “You can’t tear him away”—“A mean motherfucker, pardon my German. And that’s why if I was famous, I would never do that show”—“Fortunately, you will never have that problem,” said Maxine—“I don’t care how many sick kids you supposedly cure. And I don’t think they’ve cured one yet. But they will, and I’m not taking that away from him. But if you do go on that show, and I don’t give a hoot if you’re the Pope, Uncle Jerry is gonna take a crap on you sooner or later. He’ll take a giant shit on your head—pardon my French—that’s from Full Metal Jacket—great movie—Uncle Jerry will crap on your head and you’ll never know until it hits you.”

  True West

  THE PLAY OPENED in a ninety-nine-seat house for a run of twelve performances. Access Hollywood reported that scalped tickets were going for nineteen thousand dollars on eBay.

  As the curtain fell on opening night, the crowd thundered, screamed, and wept. No one had ever seen anything like it or ever would. At the star’s insistence, the uncharacteristically tearful Jorgia Wilding emerged from the wings to join the cast in deep bows. That bittersweet mix of first and last hurrahs.

  Though critics had been barred, many in the audience (culture vulture luminaries) posted Internet opinions—word of Web being that while Kit Lightfoot’s transcendent performance was at times halting, it was more haunting than anything else. Toward the end, representatives from a few national publications smuggled themselves past the box office, yet by the time their reviews ran (breathlessly)—the New York Observer headlined “Long Day’s Journey Into Lightfoot”—they sounded dated and glowingly apocryphal, for production had already triumphantly shuttered, having spiritedly entered the deathless annals of mythic theater lore.

  Viv Wembley sent flowers.

  The Leno Show

  THE BAND PLAYS the Supertramp theme from World Without End as he comes out. The longest ovation in Leno’s history.

  For the next five minutes, hoots, catcalls, coughs, and whatnot as the mob cathects then settles upon its collective seat.

  “Wow,” says Jay. “I cannot tell you how happy I am—how happy the world is—that you’re back.”

  Tsunamis, then tidewaters of applause. Kit humbly smiles and begins to respond—forced to give up, as the audience dam breaks. Awash ag
ain.

  Second longest ovation in Leno’s history.

  Kit’s jaw is clenched, his eyes wet. Bodysurfing the no-silence.

  Jay, too, wipes away a tear. “I’m getting very emotional,” he says, sweetly shaking that ridiculous-sized chin. Slightly embarrassed, or playing at such. Now and then it’s OK to be unmanly.

  Kit smiles and says nothing. Stop-starts, charmingly stymied. Audience, charmed too—way, way on his side. Still, though, he hasn’t said a word, and they’re kinda nervous about that. . . .

  How will he sound? All retardy?

  Time now overdue for that first sentence moment—utterance to be reported the next day, the quip heard ‘round the world.

  (That one-giant-leap-for-mankind moment.)

  Finally, after a great sigh it comes:

  “What a long, strange trip it’s been.”

  Laughter, tears, ovation! The sentiment funny and true! And he sounds normal!

  Just like they knew he would.

  . . . more than anyone could have dreamed or hoped for.

  Kiki had six writers spend two weeks brainstorming. Then Cela heard the Grateful Dead song on the radio—her suggestion. Kiki agreed. The writers’ picks were too jokey. This, the most real.

  The crowd deftly replays his words in their heads, picking them clean for slurs, impediments, I Am Sam–type aftershocks.

  Nothing!

  (The collective Eye had already searched for skull craters beneath the chic, barely grown out buzz cut—none visible.)

  “I just have one thing to ask,” says Kit.

  They hang on his words. You could hear a pin drop.

  “Because people worry about my mental faculties.”

  All anxiously hold their breath. He’s going to say something . . . serious—

  “You are David Letterman—aren’t you?”

  Hilarity! Foot-stomping ovation! The kid stays in the picture!

  Now Jay and Kit ease into the familiar, comforting shuck-and-jive What was it like?/How does it feel to be back? shtick.

  Ice-breaky stuff to give guest and host (audience too) their sea legs.

  Jay says, “Now, one thing the people out there may or may not know is that there was an irony connected to this whole ‘event.’ ”

  “Event? You mean, when I got hit on the head?”

  Laughter. A man of the people, regular guy. Deserving, courageous.

  “Yes!” says Jay. “Mind if we talk about it?”

  “That’s why I’m here. But you talk—I’ll listen.” Laughter. “Because, man, I am tired.”

  Applause. Whoop-whoops.

  Jay says, “OK. That’s fair. Fair deal.”

  “I just flew in from rehab,” says Kit, on a roll. “And boy, is my mind tired.” Laughter: tidewater ripple: tsunami applause.

  “Carrie Fisher wrote that for me.”

  Jay cracks up.

  Kit adds, “And I’m [bleeped] nervous.”

  With the unexpected obscenity, Leno joyfully loses it. The crackling realness of the moment. Rapture from the crowd, then—

  A (lady’s) voice, from audience: “We love you, Kit!”

  Jay, sternly: “Have that woman escorted from the studio . . . and immediately taken to Mr. Lightfoot’s hotel room.”

  Laughter. Whistles, catcalls. Applause.

  A (man’s) voice, from audience: “I love you, Kit!”

  Jay and his chin lose it again.

  Giddiness, contagion. Punch-drunk love. Admiration for the conquering hero’s return.

  Jay gently admonishes the audience like the old friends they are. “All right, calm down now.” Back to his guest. “And I want to talk about the play, True West—what a triumph— [applause begins; Jay deftly thwarts another prolonged salvo by continuing] but . . . and this fascinates me. You were preparing to do a film when you got [awkward] hit on the head . . .”

  Kit nods matter-of-factly. “Darren Aronofsky. Wonderful director.”

  “ . . . now the irony is that you were actually going to play—to portray—a character who was very much like you. A famous movie actor who was normal—at least, relatively!—until he was involved in an automobile accident that rendered him with [awkward for Jay now], well, not ‘diminished capacity,’ but I guess what you’d call a kind of neurological disa—”

  “Brain damage,” says Kit tersely.

  The audience laughs, though slightly discomfited.

  “Oops,” says Kit. “Sorry to be political incorrect.” (In a nanosecond, sharks to blood, the mob registers possible retard-omit of - ly from politically.) “Politically incorrect,” says Kit, self-correcting without fanfare—and all is well again. Just a case of nerves.

  “Come on!” Kit says boisterously, throwing down a challenge to the crowd. “You can say it— brain damage!”

  Raises his arms like a conductor while Jay bashfully shakes his head at the mischief making. The audience reverberates: “Brain damage!”

  Not once, not twice, but three times.

  Applause—ovation.

  They are his.

  Together Again

  “HOW LONG HAVE you lived here?”

  “About a year. It used to be Woody’s—Woody Harrelson’s.”

  “Very cool.”

  The Taosified beach house sat on two lots, north of the Colony.

  She invited him over after seeing him on Leno. Why not? She apologized for not coming to the play. She said, with a laugh, that she was worried he’d have seen her in the audience and freaked out.

  “Does Alf stay with you?”

  “No.”

  A vexing beat as the waves crashed.

  “Did you know that Woody’s father is in jail for shooting a federal judge? He’s a professional hit man! People even think he might have been the guy on the grassy knoll.” Kit nodded indifferently. “You look . . . so great. You were so funny on Leno.”

  “I missed you,” he said.

  Past tense. The air went out of her. “I missed you too! It’s just . . . I—I . . . Kit, it was so hard for me. It’s been really hard! And . . . I know that sounds so self-obsessed and it’s true. I so fucked this up . . . and it’s been so weird just to try and stay present, to see that—to see that that’s the kind of person I am, or wound up being, because I don’t even think I’m— Sometimes it’s like, I look back and say, ‘Who was that?’ ”

  He smiled sardonically. Then, with the smallest hint of a stammer: “This—this is the part where the girlfriend hasn’t seen him for a long time.” She wasn’t sure if he was being cruel. “This is the scene where they feel bad together.”

  “Kit,” said Viv, starting to cry. “I am so sorry for what happened. I am so sorry that I—that I couldn’t deal with it.”

  “Not your fault,” he said stalwartly, determined not to get emotional. Not to give her that.

  “The whole thing with Alf—”

  “Not your fault, Viv.”

  “—has been pretty much over for three months.” She felt like she was on the witness stand of her own court-martial. “Not that that means anything. Or should. But he— Alf was my connection to you. And I know that sounds weird and like a cop-out . . .”

  “It’s OK.” He wouldn’t look at her.

  “It’s not OK. And I just need you to—I just walk around this planet feeling so fucking miserable. Kit, I still love you so much! And when—when you got hurt . . . I know it sounds like some stupid cliché—I was talking to Steve Soderbergh (not about this), and he said, ‘Clichés are true, that’s why they’re clichés’—but I think I just loved you too much to go to the hospital and see you that way—”

  He looked toward the ocean. “I thought I saw a seal out there.”

  “Probably just paparazzi,” she said, vaguely relieved to be taken out of her moment. “Their Malibu disguises are really resourceful.”

  She changed tack and gossiped about the business. Who was sleeping with whom, who’d been fired, who was at Promises. That she’d signed with Gerry Harring
ton, and Angela wanted to throw Kit a dinner—Angela was working for Dolce now. They walked on the sand and smoked weed. The conversation got looser. Viv asked if he still liked to fuck. He said that he did and managed pretty well. She took a flier and said maybe they should, “as a healing thing.” Kit laughed, then she said all actresslike that no one ever fucked her like he did.

  “I have a girlfriend,” he said. Square business.

  “Oh. Who?”

  “You don’t know her.”

  “Is she an actress?” He shook his head. “Is she a Buddhist?”

  He smiled. “Civilian. High school sweetheart.”

  “Oh right—the old flame. I think I read that in the Post. What’s her name?”

  “Cela.”

  “So if she’s the old flame, what does that make me?”

  A beat, then: “Candle in the wind.”

  Crash Course

  THE AWFUL THING was that Rob Reiner wanted her to come back and read with Ed Norton but she had to say no because of a scheduling conflict with 1200 North. Becca said, “When it rains, it pours.” Dixie said, “You mean, it’s either feast or famine.”