"I'll say whatever I think is best for Scottie,'' Barbara answered as evenly as she could. Ron Levine stormed out of the office and the phone rang. Barbara answered it numbly. "This is Barbara Singer."
"Hi, Mom."
It was Heidi, calling to break the news Barbara already knew. She was engaged. Ryan had presented her with a ring, she told Barbara, with a glow in her voice when she said his name as if he was and always had been a great guy. They were looking at apartments big enough to contain at-home offices for each of them. One of which, Heidi confided to her mother, could "maybe become the um . . . you know." And Barbara felt a stab to the chest because she did know that the "you know" meant a nursery.
The words "you don't get to pick" scurried again and again through her brain the way the messages of lights moved letter by letter across the Goodyear blimp, and she tried to let it go.
"I think we may want to ask you and Dad to consider the Bel-Air Hotel," Heidi told her.
Barbara had never priced the making of a wedding before, but she knew the Bel-Air Hotel, with its lush gardens and swan-filled lagoons, would be top of the line. She wondered if the future son-in-law had been someone she respected, someone who treated her daughter well and made her happy, if she would have relished the idea of making a wedding at the Bel-Air Hotel, of doing whatever the kids wanted, instead of feeling defensive and worried and annoyed by this news.
Why is it, she thought, the one area we're certain about with every ounce of our intuition, our intellect, and our years of wisdom happens to be, ironically, the one area in which we are completely powerless. "Insight doesn't mean a thing, and criticism is the kiss of death," Gracie had warned her.
"We'll come down in a few weeks so you can meet one another, and then we can talk more about the date and the place and all. Love you, Mom," Heidi said, signing off.
Barbara sighed as she hung up the phone, closed the back door through which Ron Levine had made his thunderous exit, and opened the front door for her first family of the morning.
31
DAVID REISMAN had a demanding personality, and though he put up with being taken care of by the nurse during the day, he was only completely happy when his daddy was home. He loved the nights when they roughhoused on the bed, then as Rick after a long day's work snored away, David used him as a pillow while he watched a "Sesame Street" video.
Of course they both loved playing in the pool with Rick holding David on the surface of the water, urging him to kick, kick, kick his chubby little feet. Patty was right, Rick thought when he held his son in his arms and the scent of the Desitin he had spread on his little bottom wafted up through the baseball pajamas. This baby owns me. I'd throw myself in front of a truck to save him, and every time he grins one of those little impish grins, I could weep.
Tonight David climbed into his lap. After they read a few of his favorite books, Rick picked up the scrapbook he'd been working to complete any time he had a spare minute. He had searched his drawers and filing cabinets and come up with a treasure trove of photos of his own family to include, so that David would know about his adopted family's history too. Pictures of the Cobbs, pictures of the Reismans. Rick mixed them on the pages, using his gift for the visual to juxtapose and combine them, and the album became David's favorite before-bed picture book.
Rick loved it too. Each image of his family brought memories tumbling into his head of his Hollywood boyhood in the big home in Bel-Air, of his father and his uncle, two handsome, dashing young Hollywood rakes, of his incomparable parents whose perfection might have tarnished had he known them when he was more than an adolescent. But he hadn't, and he was finally realizing at age fifty that the memory of their relationship, probably vastly rewritten to be perfect, contributed to making each relationship in his own life pale by comparison.
"If the shoe fits, honey," was what Patty had said to him when they talked about people who couldn't find love because they had some unshakable idea in their heads about how it should be.
"Uncle Bobo, Grandpa Jake," David recited, pointing at all his favorite photos. "Ooooh, Grandmama Jane, Grandpa Jake."
Rick looked at the picture, which was David's favorite. It was an old studio publicity shot of Jane Grant and Jake Reisman, so beautiful and elegant. And the way they looked at each other made it easy to see they were completely in love. Tonight, looking at the photo filled him with regret about his own wasted years, and he said a silent prayer to the two of them.
Help me, he thought, looking at their image, still missing them as much as he did thirty years ago. Help me so I can change, really change, and make a connection with a woman in this lifetime. Being a father has taught me I know how to love and feel and hurt, and put someone else's needs before my own. This little heavenly creature has raised my consciousness almost too high, so that some days the sky is almost bluer than I can stand it, the music sweeter than I've ever heard it before, and I know now that I want to share that with a woman.
David was squealing over every photo, reciting the names of each person, remembering who they were. "Birfmuvver" was how he said birth mother, "Birfmuvver Doreen, Grandma Bea, Auntie Trish and lots of carrot tops," he shouted, pointing at Trish's children and her husband, Don. Rick looked closely, very closely at the photo now, and felt a surge of sickness pour into his stomach.
The next morning Patty stopped at Rick's office toting a Saks Fifth Avenue shopping bag. When Rick peeked out of a meeting to ask Andrea a question he saw the back of a blonde with a great ass and was surprised when the blonde turned and it was Patty. She looked like a kid dressed in her faded jeans and funky sweatshirt.
"Hi," she said, her pretty smile brightening the room. "There was a sale in the boys' department, and since you always dress David in outfits that look like polyester leisure suits, I thought I'd take the liberty of my status as his unofficial aunt and buy him a few little items."
Rick walked over for a Hollywood kiss, a kind of touching of the sides of faces, and for an instant he wasn't sure if it was Patty's scent, somewhere between suntan lotion and Sea Breeze, that made him want to take her in his arms, or if the reason was his protracted absence from sex. "What's wrong with leisure suits?" he asked, backing up. Andrea was reaching into the bag pulling out the various shorts, T-shirts, and pants Patty had bought for David.
"Nothing if you're dressing Uncle Bobo," Andrea said. "And by the way, shouldn't you be on your way there now?"
Rick looked at his watch.
"I should. I'm going to close this meeting in my office, and then go get David and head out there."
Patty looked disappointed. "Ohh, too bad," she said, "I was going to ask you to come have a quick lunch with me and help me figure out some questions I have about Charlie's estate."
"Why don't I give you a call," he asked, "and we'll do it over the weekend?"
"Great," Patty said.
On his way to Calabassas, Rick thought maybe he should have invited Patty to join them for lunch out at the Motion Picture Home. Bobo was crazy for her. "A woman and a half," he said about Patty. "If I was a little younger I'd sweep her off her feet." Bobo no longer waited outside the entrance of the home the way he used to, because the journey from his room to the front was now too long and too arduous. He had a walker, which he refused to use at all except when Rick and the baby came to visit. And only every now and then would he agree to be helped out of bed to his feet and work his way down the corridor, just so he could show off Rick and David, whom he called "my boys." His enfeebled body used everything he had to move along beside Rick and behind David, who found the long carpeted corridor the perfect place to toddle.
But though Bobo's body was failing, his mind was still on full throttle. One day last week he shook his head watching the baby, and said, "My life has been full of surprises. If anyone would have told me, a man who has seen as many years in this century as I have, that I would approve of such a thing as you and that baby—no, I take back 'approve,' and change it to 'give my blessing'—I w
ould have said 'completely meshugge,' but you know what? It's a hell of a good thing.''
Today as Rick walked with David on his shoulders through the hospital corridor past the nurses' station on the way to Bobo's room, the nurse who was sitting there looked up at the two of them and said, "These visits with that baby are keeping him alive."
"Hi, lady," David said.
"Hi, baby," the nurse said, waving.
"My boys," Bobo said as they walked into his room. He was propped up on the bed.
"Uncabobobobo," David said, and he climbed onto his great-uncle's bed, sat next to the old man, and put his two fat little hands on Bobo's old face. "Hiya, Uncabobo."
"Yeah, sure. Don't try to charm me, you little stinkpot," Bobo said, smiling a smile minus his teeth, which were in a glass on the table across the room. Rick spread a blanket on the floor of Bobo's room, sat David on it and put a few toys on it, and the baby fell on them gleefully. Then Rick took his uncle's hand.
"Uncle B., I need your advice," he said to Bobo, and he told him his worries about Doreen.
"Ricky," he said when the story was told. "There's a reason why these ways of operating didn't exist in my day, or if they did it was so far underground, nobody knew or talked about it. Because somewhere along the way the idea breaks down, and is too full of whaddyacallit . . . complications. Never cut and dried, and that's true no matter what that fancy lawyer tried to tell you. And here's why. Can you walk away and say good-bye forever to that little girl? She gave you the most precious thing in life.
"Sure, if you have no heart maybe you say, 'It's not my problem.' But even with the crazy life you lead, you're a guy who turns the world upside-down for somebody you love. Do I know it? How many other old kockers in this place have a regular visitor like you? Only me!" Rick wanted to put his face down on the blanket and cry. How he loved this old man. This sweetheart of a human being who saw through to the good in him. And how unbearably sad that David would grow up and never know or remember him.
"I trust your heart. You'll figure out a way to help that kid. Meantime, who's the woman?"
"What woman?"
"In the past few weeks, either my eyes are worse than I thought, or you're actually looking svelte."
"Svelte?"
"Okay, svelte is pushing it. But cute would be accurate," the old man said, now opening both eyes and laughing. "Some dame is finally getting to you, please God?"
"Absolutely not."
"Don't lie to a dying man. On second thought, lie to me, so I can go to my grave with a grin."
"You're delirious, Uncle B."
The old man laughed again. "No, I'm not" was all he said before he fell asleep. What is he talking about, Rick thought while he packed up the baby's things, and with David back on his shoulders he headed down the corridors that were lined with the black-and-white photos of Hollywood stars on his way to the parking lot. But when he got to the freeway entrance to go east, back to the studio, he passed it, took the one going west instead, and drove out to Malibu to be with Patty.
Andrea was just about to turn on the answering machine and leave for the commissary. She already had her purse in her hand, and Candy, the new girl who worked across the hall, was waiting outside for her so they could have lunch together when the phone rang. Shit, Andrea thought. Maybe I'll just ignore it. Rick had called her a few minutes ago from the car to say he was making a stop before he came in, and that he probably wouldn't be back until three. So it wasn't him calling.
"Andrea," Candy called from the hall. "Should I start over there and get us a table?"
"No, I'll just be a second. Richard Reisman's office."
"Uhhh . . . hello. Uhhh, is Mr. Reisman there?"
"No, he's not." It was a funny voice and she could tell by the sound it was long distance. "He should be back in a few hours. Can I say who's calling?"
"Are you Andrea?"
"Yeah." Come on already, she thought. I'm like starving here.
"I'm Bea Cobb. Doreen's mother. This is an emergency and I need to talk to him right away."
She sounded panicky. "Why don't I try and find him for you, Mrs. Cobb?" Andrea said. "I'll have him call you as soon as I do."
Andrea put the phone down and went to the door. "Candy, I can't go to lunch. Something important is happening and I need to try and find Rick."
He wasn't at home, he wasn't in the car. She even called the Hamburger Hamlet in Beverly Hills where he sometimes liked to take David for a late lunch, but he wasn't there either. If he missed this call he'd be devastated, but she couldn't imagine where he might be.
"Well, isn't this a nice surprise?" Patty Fall said, opening the front door. "I was just hosing off the deck and planning to sit out there and do some paperwork. Come on in, you two."
David toddled through the living room and followed Rick and Patty into the kitchen.
"Shouldn't you be at work?" she asked Rick.
"I'm playing hooky. I just left Bobo and he's so obviously not long for this world that sometimes I'm afraid to leave him. Afraid I'll never see him alive again. It's so hard for me to think I'm really losing him that I guess going back to my office to work on a production schedule felt mundane."
"Well, I'm glad you decided to come here," she said. In a practiced way she gathered several plastic kitchen utensils and containers, scooped David up, and led Rick outside, past the deck and down to the beach. While David poured sand from one container to the next, Rick and Patty sat close to each other.
"Death is a part of life, Ricky. Bobo will die and you'll go on. You've had an unparalleled relationship with him. And he was a great influence on you."
"Sometimes I think he doesn't want to live anymore. That he's just hanging on until he nags me into getting married."
Patty laughed. "Who does he have in mind as the bride?"
"Beats the hell out of me. Today he accused me of holding out on him. Said I looked too good, so there must be a woman in my life." David had pulled off one of his shoes and was now filling it with sand.
"He's right," Patty said, smiling. Rick looked at her. When their eyes met they held each other's gaze and he saw her eyes searching his. "Is there a woman?" she asked.
Rick wasn't prepared for the surge of feeling, a combination of gratitude for her friendship and longing for her. A need to hold her and kiss her and cry with her over the loss of Charlie and Bobo. And to thrill with her over David. The ringing of the telephone on the deck broke the moment.
"Be right back," Patty said, and scrambled up to the deck. "Yes. Hello?" Rick heard her voice drifting down to the beach. Then she gestured for him to come, so he picked up David and ran to the deck to get the phone.
"Mr. Reisman, I just had an emergency call from Doreen Cobb's mother, Bea. I can call her back and patch her in to you at Mrs. Fall's if that's okay," Andrea said on the phone.
"It's okay," Rick said as Patty took David and gently wiped the sand from his little feet.
"Hello?"
"Bea."
"I'll get right to the point. Have you talked to my daughter lately?"
"Not for a few weeks. Why?"
"I thought maybe she'd show up out there. To see you or the baby, because a few days ago she ran away.''
"No," Rick said. Ran away. Now he knew he had to be right about the son-of-a-bitch brother-in-law. Goddammit. Why hadn't he said more to her when she called on the day of the adoption? Why hadn't he said, Doreen, this is a formality, not about the real connection you'll always have with this boy. You'll always be David's family. We love you. "Bea, have you called the police?"
"Well, I was going to, but my son-in-law Don told me to just leave it alone. He says it's a teenage thing she has to work out for herself, and that in cases like this the police can't do much, and that she'll come back."
The son-in-law probably hoped they'd find her dead somewhere. Rick felt hamstrung. He was lost in his own mental picture of Doreen's anguish. From far away he heard Bea say, "Don's been my adviser since my hus
band died eight years ago. He practically raised Doreen. Trish's husband. In those pictures we sent, he's the one with the red hair."
"Listen, Bea," Rick said, his head ringing with fear. "I'd call the police if I were you."
"Yeah, maybe," she said in a voice that made him know she wouldn't.
"And if I hear from her—" he began.
"You tell her to come home," said her mother, "because everyone in this family loves her and wants the best for her." But Rick knew the truth and feared for Doreen's life.
32
LAINIE DECIDED that the only sign of Mitch's deception was his patent avoidance of her. In the store while customers were around he was always the Mitch of Lainie and Mitch, the beautiful couple, with an arm around her, or a tender pat on her cheek. But at home, his eyes avoided hers. When she went off to bed, he stayed up late, saying he had work to do. Most mornings he was out of bed and in the shower even before the baby woke.
In contrast to his treatment of her, the way he focused on little Rosie, held her, kissed her, gave Lainie more evidence that his coolness to her wasn't simply due to his preoccupation with some problem at the store.
Why don't I tell him I know what he's doing? Lainie would wonder at three in the morning as she sat awake in their bed. And memories of looking out the bedroom window in her childhood room at dawn came back. Memories of watching her father return from God knows where, sometimes so drunk he'd forget to turn off the headlights on the car. She would hear him tiptoe up the stairs. And when she figured he was asleep, little Lainie would hurry down in her pajamas and turn out the car lights, then hurry back to her bed where she would feel that same kind of helpless feeling she now had about Mitch.
Is that what I should do, Lainie thought, wait until things blow over? Sit it out, the way my mother did until he died, so she could collect the insurance? Not me, Lainie thought, I'm not going to live a lie. But instead of saying a word, she went on about her life, her day, caring for the baby, stopping by the store, going to her classes, unable to shake the taunting question that was stuck in her chest and her brain.
The Stork Club Page 28
