The Stork Club

by Iris Rainer Dart

  "I know what I said, but, Lainie, I need you to listen."

  Lainie opened the door and looked at her. "I don't care what you need. Go away. You've done enough." The sharpness in Lainie's voice awakened Rosie, who opened her eyes. And then, though she was just getting to an age where she was afraid of strangers, she smiled, showing all her new teeth, and put her arms out to Jackie. It was clear this was no stranger.

  "Hello, darling girl," Jackie said, her own blue eyes filling. The baby bounced up and down with glee to see her. "I made the deal because I was stupid," she said to Lainie. "I thought the pregnancy experience could be separated out of the experience of creating an ongoing life. But it can't. I need to be with her. Listen, Lainie, you and I and Mitch could fight about it like those people in New Jersey did, and all those other ugly cases, and maybe I'd lose, but you know what? I'm her mother. She has my genes, and she grew inside me and she'll grow up and, yes, she'll have lots of De Nardo in her, but one day you'll hear her laugh my big dumb laugh, or hear her voice on the telephone and for a second you'll think it's me. Or you'll see her putting on weight in the same spots I do, and just like you see your own mother in you, we all do, you'll see me in her.

  "Lainie, I made a mistake, a big one. And so did you and so did Mitch. You were probably afraid he'd love you less or leave you if you said no to the whole idea, and I had some big need to feel important and special the way I did once before in my life, and that was when I was pregnant and gave birth to my son. So for each of our own reasons we went for it, and pretty soon, before we knew it, my baby with your husband was growing inside me. Well, all I can say is that even though I've only seen her these few times since she was born . . . I love her.

  "Let's continue the good relationship we had when I was pregnant and let me be with her. Look at me, Lainie, and talk to me from the womanness inside you. Not the place that's afraid maybe someday Rose will decide she likes me better than she likes you, and not the part where you're afraid your mother or Mitch's sisters will tell you you're crazy for letting me be around her, but from the feeling, caring person who knows what it is to hurt and suffer and be taken advantage of, because I know in that part of you, you have to believe nobody can have too many people loving them, too many mothers looking out for them.

  "I don't want Mitch. Believe me, I never have, or you would have known it instinctively and never picked me as a surrogate. And Mitch doesn't want me. But what he understood when I came to him, in some primitive instinctive way, was something that shook him to the core and made him bring the baby to me—he understood that no legal papers in the world are going to make me not her mother.

  "And by doing that was he cheating on you? Fuckin' A, he was cheating on you, worse than if he had been screwing me six ways till Sunday every time we met. Because his was a lie of the spirit, and it was bad for Rose to be a party to it. Mitch should have been able to speak up and say to you, 'Lainie, I did bad. This whole thing was wrong. I should have kept on trying to adopt, because as long as Jackie needs to be near this baby, we have to work something out.' Only he was afraid. He had fallen into his own macho trap. And then he saw how much you loved the baby. How connected you were to her from day one, and how transformed you were by having her. He was afraid if he even mentioned my name you would hate him or leave him or both.

  "Lainie, what do we do? Don't keep that baby from me. Let me see her sometimes, I beg you."

  My God, Lainie thought, what can I do? Their eyes were locked as Lainie rolled back and forth from her heels to her toes in a way she had learned that the baby found soothing. Rose had her tiny head against her chest now, and was making that keening noise she made just before she fell off to sleep.

  "This is a nightmare," Lainie said, and she heard her own voice sound almost unrecognizable and filled with pain. "And what makes it so difficult is that I look at you and I think, This woman is right. If I had given birth to Rosie, no matter what I'd signed or how much anyone had given me they'd have to kill me first before they could take her away. Dear God, why did I ever agree to this? Dear God, forgive me for being a party to this, Jackie, I'm so sorry," she said, and wept, and the two women embraced and wept holding on to each other with the baby, their baby, asleep in the middle of their tearful embrace. And when Jackie left, after Lainie promised to try to figure out what to do about all of it, the scent of Shalimar was still in the foyer.

  35

  THE MEMORIAL SERVICE for Davis Bergman was held at the big rambling house in Brentwood that Shelly and Davis had completely remodeled when they were together. As Ruthie and Shelly entered the backyard where the rented white folding chairs, the ones with the padded seats which cost a little more per chair, were lined up in rows facing a rented podium, Ruthie watched Shelly trying to maintain his equilibrium. But as they turned the comer and he looked at the rose garden he'd created and tended, and saw it now in full bloom, the profusion of open peach and fuchsia and crimson flowers made him stop and emit a pained sound. As if someone had kicked him in the stomach. For a long moment he was immobilized.

  Marsha Bergman, Davis's widow, was surrounded by a group of her friends. Shelly and Ruthie walked to the area where she was standing in order to wait to express their condolences. But long before it was their turn, someone gestured to Marsha from across the glaring turquoise of the pool, and to their relief, since neither of them knew what they would say to her, she turned and walked in that direction. Shelly said he recognized some of the people from Davis's law practice, but Ruthie didn't see one familiar face.

  In the newspaper that morning, the cause of Davis's death was listed as pneumonia. Ruthie suddenly wondered why she'd come to the memorial service of a man she had once hated. She had a strong desire to turn around and leave, but she knew Shelly needed to be there, needed her to get him through this, so she stayed, holding his hand and feeling his anxious presence next to her. Soon most of the white chairs were filled, and she took Shelly's arm and led him to the end seats in the back row.

  The service was a kind of free forum with friends of Davis getting up and talking about their memories of him. Sometimes two people would start for the podium at once, and one would defer to the other and sit down. Essentially all the people said what a wonderful guy Davis was and what a happy couple he and Marsha were, and how much they would miss him. Ruthie looked at Shelly to see how he was bearing up, and noticed for the first time that he was holding a small pile of note cards in his hand. When he saw her looking at them, he handed them to her and whispered, "Quick. Punch these up!"

  The cards contained notes in Shelly's funny little handwriting that he had prepared so that he could get up and speak about Davis. About his relationship with Davis. (A) Hilarious sense of humor about our situation. (B) Every day I spent with him was a gift. Ruthie looked up from the note cards and into Shelly's eyes, and shook her head. "Shel," she said, "I love you. But this material won't play to this crowd." She knew that was the last thing he wanted to hear, and how much he wanted someone to listen to how hard it was on him that Davis was gone.

  At first she saw resentment on his face that she would try to deprive him of this moment, and she was sure he was going to jump to his feet the minute the next speaker was through and storm the podium. But then she saw the resignation, and he took the cards back from her and looked down at them. These were Marsha's friends, at Marsha's house, and they didn't want to hear what Shelly had to say about his love for Davis. Throughout the rest of the speeches, as he listened he took each of the note cards and slowly tore it into small pieces and stuffed the pieces into the pocket of his shirt.

  The Hollywood show-business community is small and it didn't take long for Zev Ryder to learn that Davis Bergman, who everyone knew was a former lover of Shelly Milton's, had died, and how. "Oh, fuck! You mean to tell me I'm peeing in the same men's room as this guy? I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm gonna start using the can downstairs. What if it comes off on doorknobs? Oh, Christ. Sometimes at meetings I've picked u
p half a doughnut out of the box. What if he's the one who ate the other half?"

  Zev didn't say those things in front of Ruthie and Shelly, just everybody else. And nobody had the nerve to tell him to shut up. Ruthie first got wind of the remarks when Ryder's secretary, a tall, severe, black-haired, white-skinned woman everyone in the office called Morticia, tried to apologize.

  "Isn't he just being the bastard of all time?" she asked Ruthie one morning when they both emerged from cubicles in the ladies' room.

  Ruthie rinsed her hands and avoided looking at what she knew was her own exhausted face in the mirror. "If you're talking about Zev, yes, he's always the bastard of all time, also the rat, the pig, the schmuck, and the shitheel. So what else is new?'' She pulled a paper towel down from the metal container on the wall, and watched Morticia apply the dark purple lipstick that made her white skin look even whiter.

  "But all the stuff he's been saying about Shelly is really over the top," Morticia said, rubbing her purple lips together to get some effect that Ruthie, who seldom wore makeup, couldn't understand. "I mean, he's got the writers afraid to eat the muffins you make. Haven't you noticed how many are left at the end of the day?"

  "Meaning?"

  It was clear that Morticia, whose real name was Alice, was reluctant to tear herself away from the mirror, but now she did, and she looked squarely at Ruthie. "Listen, Ruth, I'm telling you right now, you can't quote me. I've got a daughter to support, and you know if Zev suspected I'd said a word he'd throw me out of here . . . but I happen to know he's looking for a way to screw up Shelly's contract. I've heard him on the phone with the Writers' Guild, looking for loopholes, ways to dump him and not have to pay him full salary. Not telling them who he is when he calls, but asking the contracts department at the Writers' Guild what kind of breach of contract, like not showing up, has to take place before you can fire somebody without a payout."

  Ruthie gripped the cold porcelain sink hard, and felt her whole body trembling with anger. "What did you mean about the muffins?"

  "Well, after he heard that Davis Bergman died, and everyone knows that Davis and Shelly used to be . . . Then she gestured with a kind of hands-apart shrug, meaning she didn't know what word to use for what Davis and Shelly were to each other.

  "Lovers. They were lovers . . . go on," Ruthie said.

  "Well, it totally freaked him out. Because he knows you and Shelly live in the same house, and you make those muffins all the time, and you know how health-conscious Zev is, so . . ."

  "So now he's campaigning to dump us?"

  "Not you. Shelly."

  "There's no such thing as that. We're a team, and he can't fuckin' do this. It's discrimination. I'm calling a lawyer."

  "Oh, shit," Morticia said. "You bring a lawyer into this and I'll be dead meat. He'll know it was me. I have too much information."

  The white face got even whiter as Ruthie took her hands and looked into her eyes. "Alice," she said. "Shelly and I have a child to raise, too. I can't let that vicious, bigoted little man destroy our family the way I've seen him do to other people. I won't hurt you in any way. I promise. But I guaranfuckin'tee you, I'm not going to sit by and let Zev Ryder pull down our lives."

  There was a rehearsal at two o'clock. When Ruthie got downstairs, her assistant handed her a pile of phone messages. One of them was from Shelly. It said he wouldn't be at the rehearsal. He had to leave abruptly to go to a doctor's appointment. In the studio she slid into the back row of seats, and when Zev Ryder saw her sitting alone she felt him looking over at her while she sat making notes on the script in an effort to avoid him. And that night when she got home and Shelly was sick with a flu which the doctor informed him would probably keep him at home for a week, she knew Ryder would use the absence as a reason to get rid of them without pay.

  She kicked her shoes off wearily and brought Shelly some soup, fed and played with Sid and bathed him, and heard Shelly calling to her from his room.

  "Let me see the new pages," he said.

  "Don't worry about the pages, I've got that covered."

  "The doctor says I'm going to be stuck in bed for a while, but there's no reason why I can't write my stuff from here." Ruthie gave him this week's script. It was true he could write from bed, and the changes Shelly made that night before he fell asleep were better than any of the other writers could do in a week's worth of meetings. But the flu was one that left him bedridden for two weeks, at the end of which, on a Friday, he got a call from Morticia saying, "Mr. Ryder wishes me to tell you that because of your protracted absences, you're no longer on the staff of the show."

  "The filthy little turkey didn't even have the balls to do it himself," Ruthie said.

  "I've been out of the office a lot, Ru. He can prove it. But you can't quit. He'll destroy you if you do. You have to hang in for the baby's medical insurance and the weekly paycheck. Promise me you'll keep going in until we figure out what to do."

  Bright red rage made her want to scream. There's no fucking way I'll keep working for that monster! But she looked at Sid, now climbing all over his daddy, and she said, "Yeah, okay. I promise."

  On Monday the nanny didn't show up and Shelly was too weak to get out of bed, so Ruthie packed up Sid and took him with her to work. The baby had been to the studio often enough for her to know that if she put him in the portable playpen in a corner with just the right toys, he would amuse himself with the pound-a-peg or the "Sesame Street" pop-up, and except for an occasional loud squeal would be less disruptive of the meetings than most of the writers themselves.

  Today Ruthie sat at the head of the table near the playpen, and she could tell by how shockingly quiet it was that everybody knew everything, or more accurately, everybody knew something. She was going to have to clear up the story now, before any of the rumors went any further.

  "Guys," she said, "Shelly doesn't have AIDS."

  "Oooops," Arnie Fishmann said as he knocked over his Styrofoam coffee cup and the tan liquid made a large puddle on his yellow lined legal pad and then seeped off it onto the conference room table. Three of the other writers stood and gathered napkins from the coffee cart and mopped up the spillage. Ruthie waited until all the wet napkins were in the wastebasket before she went on. "He's HIV-positive, but he doesn't have AIDS. He's very vulnerable, but please God, he'll go on for a long time."

  This group of clowns has a gag line for everything, she thought, but for some reason, they're acting like humans for a change. "You can't catch it by working for him, by laughing with him, or by peeing in the same urinal. I don't have it, Sid doesn't have it, and as you all know he is Shelly's biological child, and we both drink from his glasses and use his towels and hug him and kiss him all day and night.

  "But the point is Zev Ryder fired him. He says he fired him because he's been out and doesn't do the work. You all know what I know and what Zev knows, which is that Shelly can phone it in funnier than all of us in the room can make it even when we work until midnight. This is homophobia. This is discrimination. I intend to get a lawyer and sue that son of a bitch and bring him down for hurting the career of my partner and my best friend and my son's father. And I can't do it unless you fellows are prepared to stand up and talk not just about Shelly's contribution to the show but about Zev's dangerous and damning condemnation of him. Of us. And his horrible treatment in general of every one of us—the women on the staff who get sexually harassed by him, the writers who are spiritually annihilated on a regular basis. Because you have to know that an attack like this on one of us is really an attack on all of us and that next week it could be you, Fishie, or you, Jerry, for whatever reason he can think of. So please say you'll stand behind us and help us fight this man, and kick his ass the way he's been kicking all of ours for so long."

  No one looked at her or spoke. Even Sid was quiet in the playpen. The only sound in the room was the sound of Arnie Fishmann lifting and dropping and lifting and dropping a pencil, which plunked repeatedly on the conference room table
. Somebody sighed, one of them cleared his throat, and after a few minutes Ruthie got the message. They were all too chickenshit, too threatened to put their asses on the line for a friend.

  "Okay, fellahs," Ruthie said, wishing she had the strength to throw the table over on them. "Let's write something funny."

  36

  TODAY I THINK we need to talk a little bit more about support systems," Barbara said to the parents, all of whom were now wearing the Stork Club sweatshirts brought in by Ruthie and Shelly.

  "Why does that expression, 'support system,' always make me think of an underwire bra?" Rick asked.

  "Because, as usual, your mind is in your groin," Judith said, laughing.

  "There are people in your lives who are going to enhance your children's worlds, families with other children their age, Mommy and Me groups you can attend regularly at schools or temples and churches in your neighborhoods. Try to branch out and find people who are dealing with the same developmental issues you are, and whose children will love having play dates with yours.

  "I also recommend that you stay in touch with and visit your families, and have them visit you. The more people there are for these children to love, the better. Ruthie and Shelly, you're lucky you have all your parents still alive and well. Get them out here to visit Sid, and take him back to be with them."

  "You haven't met our parents or you couldn't have used the word 'lucky' in reference to any of them," Shelly joked.

  "Oh, I don't know. They did raise the two of you, so they must have some good qualities," Barbara said.

  "You're right," Shelly said, serious now. "Our families would love to be with Sid."

  "What about you, Judith?"

  "I have friends from work, and particularly my friends Jerra and Tom, who don't have any kids. They love it when I bring the girls by. It makes their own family feel bigger when they include us in their celebrations."