The Stork Club

by Iris Rainer Dart

  If things don't go well, Doreen will fly on to Nevada with her mother, who's leaving tonight to see her eldest son and his wife. Harvey Feldman had explained that Rick was going to be Doreen's final try at open adoption and if there was no match to be made, the girl agreed to give the baby up to a home in Nevada.

  I shouldn't be doing this, he thought with a pang of guilt mixed with fear. There's much too much potential for pain for everyone concerned. The little pregnant girl, her mother, me, but especially the innocent unborn baby. I shouldn't be doing this. Then why am I so swept up in the forward motion of this plan? The girl has already been hurt by some phonies, or should I say some other phonies, who thought she was too ugly to ever bring forth the brand of baby they thought they should have. Wouldn't another rejection be too much for her adolescent ego? Isn't it exquisitely selfish of me to drag her through that possibility one more time?

  No, he thought, arriving at the gate and watching through the window as the big carrier was being motioned in toward the gate. Because I won't reject her. If she'll have me as the adopting parent of this baby, I'll grab the chance and commit myself to making the experience good for the girl and for the baby.

  He needed love in his life so desperately. To give it, to get it, to exchange it, to hang on to it because he was finally starting to know it was all there really was in this world that mattered. And not having it was making him shrivel into nothingness. Bobo and Charlie and Patty and the kids had been the greatest source of his pleasure, his strength, his good feelings about himself for most of his life. Now Charlie was gone and Bobo was hanging on by a thread. Somehow he had to find a repository for all the love he knew he could give, and maybe a little baby was the answer. Babies required so much attention. Perhaps giving that attention would make him stop thinking only about himself.

  So that's why I'm here, he thought, joining the group at the gate waiting for the passengers to emerge from the flight. As the stream of people began to flow, he looked closely at the faces of every passenger, until he saw the unmistakable mother and daughter step arm in arm through the door. Within an instant the tiny gray-haired woman spotted him, looked piercingly into his eyes, tapped her wide-eyed daughter on the arm, and the girl, seeing him now too, flushed red. Then they all moved together to meet face to face.

  Rick extended his hand but Bea Cobb ignored it. She was all business. "Where can we go?" she asked.

  "We can go to one of the conference rooms at the Red Carpet Club, where I'm a member," Rick offered, but Bea waved that idea away with a gesture, then pointed to a nearby cocktail lounge. "What's wrong with that place over there?" she asked.

  For the first time in his always-running-the-show life Rick thought to himself, I will not make waves. I'll do whatever she says. "That'll be just fine with me," he said.

  The two women walked hand in hand and Rick looked at the face of the girl, who snuck a peek back at him, and when their eyes met it was with the mutually awkward shy and wary smile that probably characterized the meeting of a mail-order couple. With each of them thinking, If this works out, this stranger will soon be related to me in a lifelong way.

  She was as described, wearing glasses, with an upper lip that protruded in that way it does with people who have an obvious overbite. She looked very much like her mother, who was a few inches taller and also shaped like a little fireplug, except that Doreen's hair was wispy and fine and blond and the mother's hair was gray and cropped close.

  The cocktail lounge had the malty stink of stale alcohol, and Bea Cobb, squinting to adjust her eyes to the low light, spotted a table in the corner, tugged her daughter in that direction, and when they got there sat. There were no waiters, only a bartender, so Rick took their orders. After a few minutes he brought two diet Cokes and a light beer for himself.

  "Well now," Bea said, looking at him while Doreen looked everywhere else but. "I guess the first thing I want to know is how come you're not married?"

  "I can't explain it," he said. "I wish I hadn't let all this time go by without having one woman to feel close to and love, but I guess I was afraid."

  "Afraid of what?" she asked him. "Why would you be afraid? Being married and having a family are the best things anyone can do in this world. You think making movies is more important?"

  Rick held tightly to the cold beer glass and tried to decide what to tell her. He thought back over the last few months, and how he'd wanted to impress the young pregnant girls he'd met in his living room and in Harvey Feldman's office, and that the harder he seemed to try, the easier it was for them to see through the ruse. Maybe, you asshole, he thought, you ought to take a deep breath and tell the truth.

  "When I was a little boy my parents were looked on as royalty in Hollywood. He was a brilliant producer and director and she was one of the most beautiful and gifted actresses alive. When their private plane went down with my dad flying, it was an enormous tragedy. I was their only child. They doted on me. My father had been an astute businessman who invested his money wisely. So after their death, as a heartbroken, emotionally needy adolescent boy, I found myself with millions of dollars. The news hit the papers, and when the numbers got out, I became very popular. In fact, it didn't take too long, after I moved in with Uncle Bobo and Aunt Sadie, for women to start finding me. Dozens of them, every size and shape and age, some of them nearly my mother's age.

  "It was every boy's dream, but too much, too soon, and I knew instinctively that I couldn't trust any of them. Because it wasn't my beautiful eyes they were after, or all the other things they claimed made me so attractive. I was a little boy, and I missed my mother, so I went out with these women and that wasn't the answer. And pretty soon, I started to eat. Because food was something I could trust. Food didn't have an ulterior motive for making me feel good.

  "I never really got obese; pudgy enough to make sure that certain women keep their distance, but most of the time the combination of the money and the burgeoning success of my career made up for the fat, and made a lot of them hang in there and put up with my neurosis. Eventually, when it came down to it, by the time I was really at an age where getting serious with someone was what I should be doing, I found myself so cynical, so burnt out, that I never could close a deal with any woman." What a lousy story that is, he thought, but sadly it's the truth.

  Doreen's mother clucked her tongue, and the sound broke Rick's reverie. "How long ago was the accident?" she asked.

  "Thirty-two years. I was eighteen."

  "You're fifty?"

  He nodded. "Will be this year."

  "Same as me." She laughed, outraged at that idea. Rick was surprised. None of the women he knew in Los Angeles who were fifty would ever let their hair get gray, or for that matter admit they were fifty.

  "I'm a grandmother seven times already, and you're wanting to adopt a baby?" She laughed again. "I think you're crazy."

  He smiled. She was looking at him now in a friendly way, as if their mutual age made them comrades.

  "What'll my daughter do here for the next few months?" she asked him.

  "There's a young woman who's been my secretary for several years. She has a large apartment in a nice neighborhood. I'll pay Doreen's share of the rent while she lives there as the girl's roommate, and provide all of Doreen's other expenses, find her the best medical care, and if she wants to, I'll help her enroll in some continuing-education classes at a nearby college."

  She was nodding a little nod that Rick hoped was a nod of approval.

  "My other seven kids all had a meeting this week. They told me I was crazy if I let Doreen go off with some sharpie who's trying to buy her baby. They think she ought to have it at a home somewhere, and then forget about it for the rest of her life."

  "And why don't you?"

  "Because," she said, looking over at her daughter, who looked back at her wistfully as if she knew what her mother was about to tell him, "I didn't have eight kids, I had nine. My first one was born when I was Doreen's age. But in those days
they didn't have any such thing as open adoption. So my child, my oldest son, who is thirty-six years of age this year, is out there somewhere, and I don't know where. I don't know anything about him, except his birthday, which is March third. And on that day I always think about him. I light a candle for him every year."

  "That's very sad," Rick said.

  Her eyes held his for a while and then a smile broke out on her face and she said, "Fifty years old! You and I were teenagers at the same time. Did you like Elvis?"

  "To me he was the King," Rick answered, grinning

  "To me too," Bea Cobb said.

  "I had the good fortune to meet him," Rick told her.

  "No! Spare me," she said. "How did you meet the King?"

  "In the seventies I had a secretary who used to be a dancer. She danced in some of his movies, and they became great friends. So she invited me on the set of a television special he was shooting, and I actually shook his hand."

  "With this hand?" she asked, taking Rick's right hand in her two small ones.

  He nodded.

  "Ooooh," she said, doing a little mock shiver. "I touched the hand that touched the King."

  Bea Cobb and Rick Reisman laughed together, and then she said, "I want to tell you something, okay? And you might as well say okay, 'cause I'm going to tell you what I think even if you don't. You don't know what in the hell you're getting into. You think having a baby is something that'll do the same thing for you as buying a new car. Lift your spirits, make you feel sexier.

  "Well, take it from me, that's not anywhere near what it's about. And when I leave here, you're probably going to say to yourself, That hick doesn't know a goddamned thing. But that's okay because I don't give a damn what you think. I'm telling you from a life of a whole lot of experience that raising a baby turns a person around in ways they didn't even know there were. Teaches you patience, humility, and the real meaning of pain. On top of that, a child makes you tell the truth, because they don't buy into any lies. And anyone can see in your scared and sad eyes, you've probably told a lot of those in your many long years."

  This whole day felt surreal to Rick. And this was the strangest part of all. Being dressed down by this odd little woman who had his number in spades. He was sad and scared and wanting to adopt a baby for all the wrong reasons. But they were reasons which had been compelling enough to get him all the way to this part of the process.

  "So now," she said, "I'd like to have one more Coca-Cola, and after that, it'll be time to go check in at the gate."

  Well, Rick thought, that dismissal is loud and clear. He tried to hide his disappointment. You knew your chances were low, he told himself, and it was an insane idea anyway so . . .

  "What about you, Doreen? You want another cold drink too?" Bea asked.

  "Yeah, okay," Doreen answered, and it was the first time Rick heard her voice. He sighed and stood to go and get another round for all of them. And while his back was turned, there must have been some moment that passed between mother and daughter during which the decision was made, because then the young girl said with a laugh in her voice, "But if I were you, I'd forget the beer and make it a diet drink. 'Cause you're going to have to shape up if you're planning to be a father."

  19

  ONCE EVERY FOUR OR FIVE DAYS, Andrea would drive into the city from the Valley and when she did she would stop at Rick's house and drop off "the girl," which is how Bobo referred to Doreen. But despite the old man's tsking and shaking his head, and protesting at the "misbegoss of this crazy new world," Rick had already seen the grudging look of respect in the old man's eyes when Doreen beat him at gin rummy. Rick loved to observe the way Bobo got caught up in conversation with her when she asked him about his early film career. One at a time she had rented and watched each of the films Bobo and Rick's father, Jake, produced.

  "The kid's a sponge," Andrea reported to Rick one day at the office. "She signed up for a literature course at Valley College, because my place is five blocks from there. I couldn't get past the syllabus for the class, and she's already halfway through the books. Not to mention that she's reading to the baby."

  "How do you mean?"

  "She read somewhere that if you talk to the fetus and sing to it, that makes it feel good, reassures it with the sound of your voice. Well, she said she's a lousy singer, so she went and got all these children's books out of the library, and every night she lies in bed, reading stories to her own stomach."

  Rick liked the idea of Doreen's genes having reading and learning and especially cardsharking in them. There was something about counting down the months until the baby's arrival that forced life into him, enriched every choice he made, now that he knew he was making it not only for himself but for the baby as well. His baby. He was still eating more than he should, but not as frantically or as often. And more than a few times he would turn down a date in order to take Doreen to dinner, or say no to a visit from a woman to get the rest everyone told him he would need when the baby came.

  "Harvey Feldman said I shouldn't ask you this," he said to Doreen at dinner one night at the Hamburger Hamlet. He had ordered a broiled chicken breast; Doreen had ordered the onion soup, a salad, a bacon cheeseburger, and a strawberry shake. She stopped in the middle of the sip of the strawberry shake and a little of the pink still bubbled in a line above her upper lip as she put her hand up and said, "Don't. Because I won't tell you anything about the father of this baby. And if you have to know, I'll go right back to Kansas and forget our deal. He was in good physical health and he was tall. That's all you get." She was serious, so he dropped it.

  He had come to love his time together with her. She was confrontational and outspoken, a bright spot in his world, which was filled with the backstabbing politics and outsize egos of show business. A few times he took her with him to an invitation-only screening. On those nights he would notice she would wear a little blusher on her already pink cheeks, and a tiny bit of mascara on her otherwise invisible blond eyelashes. And always, because of her years of watching television night and day, she recognized more of the faces in the audience than he did.

  "Michael Keaton was there and Jack Nicholson," he heard her telling her mother on the phone one night. And then she let out a shriek of excitement.

  The man who lived two doors down from Bobo in the lodge was Arnold Viner. Viner had been a studio publicist who had represented Rick's father and Bobo for years.

  "It's right out of Sartre," Bobo said. "If anyone had asked me in nineteen thirty-nine to describe hell, I would have said living near Arnold Viner and being too old to run away every time he walked by." Bobo and Viner had had a fight in the early forties about an item that appeared in the paper, and they were still arguing about it ten minutes before they took Viner over to the adjacent hospital with a massive stroke. Bobo insisted on staying in the intensive care unit by his side.

  It was a day on which Rick was visiting, so he stayed too. He sat in the waiting room, reading some scripts he had in his briefcase and making notes on them until a few hours had passed. When the machines stopped bleeping and the doctors came in to confirm that Viner had died, a red-eyed Bobo came out to the waiting room, and took Rick's hand.

  "I sat in there because I knew his time was up," he said, "so I figured eventually the angel of death would come, and I could beg him to throw me into the deal and take me too. My luck, right? I fell asleep in the chair and missed the whole transaction." Rick put an arm around Bobo and walked him back to the lodge. They hadn't reached the room yet when he heard his name being paged on the loudspeaker.

  "Richard Reisman, telephone."

  He took the call in Bobo's room. It was Andrea's voice.

  "Doreen's bleeding. A lot. She called me at the office so I came right over. We tried to reach you all morning, but you weren't in Bobo's room. So I took her to the doctor. He said it's placenta previa. She has to stay in bed for the rest of the pregnancy. All the time, including her meals in bed too. She can get out briefly to go to the
bathroom or shower. That's all. Listen, she's a doll, but I'm not exactly the nursy type, and I have to come to the office every day. What do I do?"

  "Pack her up and move her to my house. The housekeeper's always there. Doreen can stay in the guest room and be tended to during the day. If that's not enough I'll get her a full-time nurse."

  "We'll be at your place by the time you get home," Andrea promised.

  Bleeding. Harvey Feldman, the lawyer, had forgotten to mention miscarriage, never discussed premature births or still-borns or any of the ways in which a pregnancy could end. And for some reason, losing the baby during the pregnancy was one of the possibilities that had never occurred to Rick. During all of this he had carried the vague feeling that somewhere in this seemingly unnatural set of circumstances was the potential for disaster, and maybe this was it. He stopped briefly at his office at Universal to pick up some scripts he needed to read, then hurried home.

  He was relieved to see Doreen already settled in the bed and very chipper when he walked into the freshly painted yellow guest room. She had an apologetic expression on her face as she lay on the bed with her little feet propped up on a pile of pillows.

  "My mom's gonna be real unhappy about this," she said.

  "The bleeding?" he asked.

  "No, my staying at your house. She doesn't think we should live together till after we're married." Then she made a face at him and laughed.

  "Very funny," he said. "Did you call the school and tell them you were dropping out?"

  "Yeah," she said sadly. "I'm going to do all the reading anyway. The trouble is there's not that much left, and I'm going to be stuck like this for a month."

  He had walked directly from the garage into her room, so he was still carrying the pile of scripts he'd brought home to read. He dropped them on her bed with a thunk.

  "Here," he said. "Read these for me. I have to start them over the weekend. You can tell me which ones are good and which are stinkers."

  "Really?" she asked. "Are you kidding? You really want me to read the scripts that you might want to make into a movie? Me?"