Most of the comedy writers Ruthie knew were funny by feel, instinct, up from pain. Louie Kweller had all of that, but he combined it with an educated overview, and the combination had caused him to become one of the most successful producers in television. He had recently made a highly publicized deal with a studio, giving him what they swore in the trade papers would be a production company with "complete artistic freedom" plus some unheard-of amount of money to do it.
"So you're a hit," Ruthie said to him as he sat on the deck chair next to her. It seemed like forever since the old days when they'd sat for hours in the group of struggling writers at the Hamburger Hamlet on Sunset. When Ruthie and Shelly used to split one bacon cheeseburger between them, because two bacon cheeseburgers were more than they could afford.
"And you're a hit too," he said, smiling. Ruthie found him almost humble for someone who had just been told his every idea was worth millions of dollars.
"But not like you. You could sell your laundry list now for more than I could get for my house."
"Yeah, but you've got a kid," he said, patting her hand. "Is that him in the red shirt over there?" He gestured in the direction of the big wooden structure with a fort at the top where Sid was climbing up the ladder.
"How did you know?" Ruthie asked.
"Because he's so cute," Louie said and looked into her eyes, and Ruthie was shocked when a flame rose in her cheeks the likes of which she hadn't felt in what seemed like a lifetime. Calm down, Zimmerman, she thought. You're losing your mind.
"So what are you working on?" Ruthie asked him, hoping Louie wouldn't notice that something he'd said in passing, probably as a joke, had stirred her. Made her heavyhearted self feel for even a tiny breath of an instant desirable. No. Better than that. Womanly. The party was getting busier and noisier as more and more people arrived.
A very skinny, pretty girl, wearing a spandex dress that was so tight it showed her pelvic bones, spotted Louie and hurried over to remind him that she was on an episode of one of his shows a few weeks ago and that the script was "soooo brilliant." Ruthie liked the way Louie thanked her with seriousness, didn't come on to her, and after she walked away didn't make some snide comment about what an airhead she was. He was an appealing, gentle man.
"You did a good thing, you and Shelly," Louie said now. "By having that baby together. I bumped into Shelly the other day and he's completely changed. Much more serious than I've ever seen him. Is that your observation?"
"That Shelly's more serious? Definitely," Ruthie said, feeling really guilty now that she hadn't left with him.
"Are you living together?"
"Yes."
"Hey, Kweller," somebody yelled from the house and Louie waved and Ruthie watched him, impressed by the fact that there was no apparent show of his newfound importance. There was no patronizing air that usually accompanied success in Hollywood.
"So, I mean," he said, looking back at Ruthie, and she knew what he was going to ask her. It was a question she'd been asked before. "I mean, I know this is none of my business, and if it's rude you can say so and I'll shut up, okay? But how does that work?"
She knew exactly what he meant, but she wasn't going to make it easy for him. "How does what work?"
"I mean, is it a love affair, a romance? Anything like that?"
"You're right. It is none of your business, but how it works is, he's my best friend. The closest person to me in the world. I love him more than I've ever loved any man or probably ever will, but we each sleep in our own bedroom and we don't have sex." Louie Kweller was expressionless. "And it's okay," Ruthie told him.
"Mommeeee," Sid shouted suddenly, and Ruthie jumped to her feet and ran over to the play yard where her son was screaming at the bottom of the slide, because he'd just been kicked by a bigger boy. She snatched him up and held him and soothed him and kissed him. After a few minutes he dried his face against her shirt and wriggled away to go back to playing.
"We're going home soon, honey," she called after him. "In a few minutes we'll go home and see Daddy. I'll get us a ride."
"I'll take you home." Ruthie turned to see that Louie Kweller had walked to the play yard too, and was standing behind her.
"Don't you live around here?" Ruthie asked. "I mean, wouldn't it be out of your way?"
"Yeah, but that's okay. I feel like taking a ride."
Louie Kweller. He was coming on to her. If he only knew what was going on in her life. That Shelly often woke with night sweats, that no matter what the doctors said about her status and Sid's, she was afraid she'd never stop feeling panicky over every rash, every loose bowel movement.
Louie, oh Louie, she thought, this flirtation is a very nice Christmas present for me and I can use it, but there's no room for anything in my life now. I work for a son of a bitch who I hate, I come home and I raise my kid, and I love Shelly Milton. After that I have nothing left. But when she picked up a protesting Sid, and thanked her host, and Louie Kweller carried the diaper bag over his left shoulder and put his right arm around her to walk her out to the valet parking, it felt very nice.
"You Ruth Zimmerman?" the parking attendant asked.
"Yeah."
"Your husband left the baby's car seat with me so you could use it on the way home," he said, producing it from next to the telephone pole where Shelly had left it. When they brought his Buick sedan, Louie buckled the baby seat into the backseat and Ruthie lifted Sid into the seat and closed the strap around him.
On the console in Louie's car was the box from an audiocassette of William Faulkner reading passages from As I Lay Dying. "I guess you don't have Dinosaur Ducks," Ruthie said. "Or Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree?"
"No," Louie said, smiling in a cute crooked way, "but I'll be glad to order them."
Eastbound traffic was bumper to bumper all along Sunset.
"You still working for Zev Ryder?" Louie asked.
"I'm sorry to say the answer to that is yes."
"He's a no-talent schmuck," Louie said.
"I couldn't have put it better myself."
"He hates women, Jews, and gays. I'm amazed you two have survived there this long."
"You call this surviving? He's already fired Shelly, he's constantly waiting for a reason to fire me. Every day has been a struggle."
"Want to work on one of my shows? Want to date me? Want to fall in love and marry me?''
Louie was kidding, but Ruthie was suddenly uncomfortable that Sid was hearing him say all of that, maybe because it was straight out of her fantasy of what she wished somebody would say. Somebody who would appear and save her from the dread she lived with every day.
"Yeah, sure,'' she said. They were pulling up outside her house.
"I mean it," he said. "Let's go to dinner one night. I won't jump you. I promise."
"I've got to go, Louie," she told him. "But thanks for the ride."
In the living room, Shelly sat on the sofa with the television on. He stared at it and channel-danced with the remote control. "Who brought you home?" he asked her.
"Louie Kweller."
"What did that rich asshole have to say?"
"He sends you his warmest regards."
"Whoopie."
"Daddy, come play."
"I will, honey," Shelly said to Sid, but he didn't move.
"Why don't we open some of our presents now? We don't have to keep the rules," Ruthie said. "As you so aptly pointed out, we're Jewish." Maybe opening presents would cheer Shelly up.
"Daddy! Open presents. We're Jewish," Sid said, climbing onto Shelly's lap. His sweet, innocent face made Shelly grin.
"Do you think we should?" Shelly teased.
"Yaaahhhh!" Sid replied, and climbed down to run to the tree. Ruthie and Shelly followed and watched Sid rip open the paper on his gifts: Talking Big Bird, and an airplane on wheels, the Match Box garage, and the Lego airport, and all of the Star Wars characters, and a child's tape player. Then Shelly opened his from Ruthie. An IBM personal computer, and an
HP laserjet printer. After he tore off the paper, he pulled the Styrofoam packing out of the boxes and then all of the components.
Since the day they started writing, their style of putting words down had always been first in longhand on legal pads with pencil. When they weren't working on a show where a typist was provided, they typed their own drafts on a very old portable typewriter, then paid a typist to redo the script neatly. Now, staring at them, was the high tech of the 1990s.
"Merry Christmas," Ruthie said, knowing she'd gone a little overboard, but so what? Shelly pulled a manual out of the box and thumbed through it, shaking his head in wonder. "Shel, I know it seems overwhelming and confusing, but the best part of this gift is that I hired someone from the computer store to come over here at night and teach us how to use it. She's a terrific woman who's worked with a lot of writers, and she explains things in plain English, not computerese. She swears that in a few years we'll wonder how we ever lived without it."
Shelly put the thick notebook of a manual down on the coffee table and stood, then he nearly tripped over Sid, who was lying on his stomach running the Match Box cars along the floor and using the coffee table as a tunnel. Ruthie, who still held the first of her unopened gifts in her hand, watched him walk into his bedroom, and she followed him and stood in the doorway.
"What are you thinking?" she asked him. He sat on his bed, looking out of the French doors that opened onto a balcony.
"That in a few years I may not be here. Why do you think that corner of gifts for Sid is three feet high? I bought him stuff he won't be able to play with till he's twelve, because I figured when he was twelve, I wouldn't be around to give them to him. I don't want to take up any of my time learning how to use a computer."
"It won't take long. You learned to work the video camera, and goddamn you, in the time you take worrying about it, you could be learning it, mastering it. By next Christmas you could be Steve Wozniak, for God's sake. And a simple thank you will suffice." She was about to walk angrily out of the room when Sid came running in, carrying the gift he'd just unwrapped on his own, his Ninja Turtle evaporator gun, and he aimed it right at Ruthie. "Yaggggh," he shouted.
"That's what I like to see," Ruthie said. "Another satisfied customer."
In the living room she opened a package from Shelly to her. It was a professionally taken photograph of Sid. The two of them had gone to a studio as a surprise for Ruthie, and Shelly had the picture framed in an antique frame.
"I love you," Shelly said, coming into the living room.
"I love Mommy, too," Sid said and grabbed Ruthie hard around the leg. And Ruthie held the frame to her chest and loved them both so much she wanted to cry. But that didn't stop her from wondering at that same moment what Louie Kweller would be like in bed.
40
ON CHRISTMAS EVE Lainie's health club was open, so first she dropped Rosie off at her mother's house, where the baby went happily, and then she drove over to take an aerobics class. Today as the class started, the rock music was booming so loudly she could feel the floor under her feet vibrating. Because she liked to be able to see herself doing the exercises, she always worked out in the front row.
Today she looked in the mirror at her body, which had been decimated on the inside by illness, and thought how miraculous it was that the exterior still looked good, well-formed, shapely. Thank God, she thought, for good genes. Her mother, who had never owned a pair of tights or sweatpants, never even took a long brisk walk, still had a taut, thin body.
"Arms up and breathe, and exhale. And again, breathe into it, ladies, and feet apart, bend the knees and stretch."
Christmas Eve without Mitch, and all their rituals of the night before Christmas would be wrenching. Last year they bought ornaments that said Baby's First Christmas, and took Rosie, who had no idea what was going on, to the May Company to see Santa. This year Lainie hadn't even bought a tree. After class she would pick Rosie up, take her home and feed her, and rock her to sleep. After all I've been through, she thought, that should be enough of a celebration. I am alive and well and I have a baby. Thank heaven for those blessings.
When the heavy aerobic part of the class got under way, the uncomfortable pounding made her want to drop out, to give the teacher a little good-bye wave and just leave. But instead she made herself stay, and after a few minutes the rhythm was getting to her, and her spirits were lifting. Maybe it was endorphins, something she'd read about that was released in the brain during physical exertion. Whatever it was, by the end of the class she felt strong and powerful and ready to handle anything.
"She's been as good as gold," her mother said, opening the door for Lainie. Rosie ignored Lainie's entrance. She was sitting and playing with a musical jack-in-the-box next to her grandmother's two-foot-tall Christmas tree. It was the kind of tree Margaret Dunn had bought for herself over the years since her husband died, as if she were making the statement that a woman alone only needs half a tree.
"Her father called here," Margaret said to Lainie quietly as they stood in the foyer of her Studio City house. "Said he called your place to check on her, but when you weren't there he figured you'd probably be at school, so he tried me. He was in a foul mood."
"Really?" Lainie asked. She knew she was skating on thin ice. That unless she and Mitch put their marriage back together soon, her current custody of Rose was a limited privilege for which she would have to fight if there was a divorce. Mitch could drag her into court and say God knows what about the disposition of custody of the little baby girl he always referred to as "my daughter."
With a nod of her head Margaret invited Lainie into the living room, where she'd been all evening, watching the baby play from her recliner. "Join me?" she asked her daughter, gesturing at a bottle. Lainie rarely drank, because it was dangerous for a diabetic. Now and then she'd sometimes had a glass of champagne with Mitch to relax her in the days when she was trying to conceive, or to celebrate an anniversary.
"No . . . I don't think I can . . . " But the needy look on her mother's face made her reconsider.
"A short one?" Margaret asked.
It was Christmas Eve. Tomorrow Lainie would open gifts with Rosie in the morning, packages friends had sent over, toys she'd bought for the baby. Then Mitch would come to pick up the little angel and take her to one of his sister's houses where his family would be assembled. All of them would be glad, Lainie thought, that she was not among them. Then, because she'd promised she would, she would go over to her friend Sharon's Christmas party. It promised to be a time to get through, and move on to the new year. Barbara Singer had warned all the people in the group not to pin any expectations on the holidays. Well, Lainie thought, I should at least stay and have a glass of wine with my mother.
"All right," she said.
"We're both alone now," her mother said as she poured Lainie's wine. "I can only tell you that for me it's the way I like it."
"I don't like it that way, Mother. I just don't know how to change it right now."
"Well, it looks to me as if it's a package deal. You want that baby? You're going to have to take Mitch. Otherwise I can tell you for certain, he's going to pull her away from you."
"Did he say that to you?" Lainie asked, worried.
"Darling, you forget. I work in an office that specializes in divorces. I've seen perfectly nice men turn into fire-breathing maniacs fighting over belongings they didn't even know they had until some lawyer told them they should go after it. Decks of cards, fish forks, we had one pull a gun on his wife until she handed over the papier-mâché napkin rings they bought together in Tijuana. So you can imagine how weird they can get when it comes to what they're going to do about their children."
Lainie took a gulp of wine and it tasted good. She was so unused to the effects of alcohol that after another sip heat flushed through her. When Rosie crawled over to her and into her lap, she kissed the top of the baby's little head, inhaling the sweet baby smell of her, and felt overwhelmingly helpless. All the s
trength she'd felt after the exercise class was gone.
"Mother,'' she said." What are you doing for Christmas Day?"
"Oh, I don't know. Some of the girls at the office invited me to come by. But you know I'm not much for parties, so I'll probably stay put."
"Well, don't do that. I mean, you're right. We're both alone, and we shouldn't be." There was a loud plink, and then a screech of surprise as the jack-in-the-box popped out at Rosie, who slammed the lid of the box shut, and started turning the musical crank again.
"Why don't I stop at the Safeway near my house on my way home and pick up a turkey and some yams, I know you love yams, and tomorrow night you and I will have dinner together at my house. Mitch will bring Rosie back at about seven-thirty. Please say yes. I don't want to go to any parties with strangers either. Let's do this."
Margaret Dunn was quiet, took another sip of wine as Lainie did too, then finally she answered. "On one condition."
"What's that?"
"That I can make some baked apples for dessert." Baked apples. The one dessert Lainie loved and didn't feel guilty about eating. The dessert her mother started making for her years ago, after Lainie had been diagnosed as a diabetic. A gesture of love.
"It's a deal," Lainie said. She would have company when Rosie and Mitch went off to spend their Christmas without her. And maybe she and her mother could strengthen their relationship. Both those thoughts made it easier for her to gather up Rosie's things and know she was taking her home to a Christmas Eve without Mitch.
She was driving down Ventura Boulevard when she started to feel it. A tingling inside her mouth. My God, she thought, knowing she should stop the car, pull over, and get herself something to take care of it, but the baby was with her and she wasn't sure where to stop. And it was too late because . . . she put her hand up to her hair and her head was soaking wet. Perspiring. Maybe she should turn into one of those side streets and pull over. For some reason the wheel felt hard to turn, but something, probably it was knowing she had the baby in the backseat, made her able to manage. At least get the car around the . . . red light. There was a flashing red light behind her. No. Her foot pushed down on the gas to get away from the red light.
The Stork Club Page 34
