But the red light was staying with her. Following her, and then a loud voice from somewhere said, "Pull over." For a minute she couldn't even remember how to pull over. So she turned the wheel hard and grazed a parked car and put her foot on the brake. And somehow she made her aching hand pull the emergency brake. The looming figure of a policeman was moving toward her. It had to be that he was coming over to save her from whatever was happening because she knew she was slipping away. The policeman stood next to the window now.
"Evening, ma'am. You seem to be having a problem."
Lainie was shaking and leaning against the steering wheel.
"May I please see your driver's license and registration?"
License was where? Purse. Yes.
"Um . . . I . . . "
"Ma'am, can I ask you to step out of the car?"
"Baby" was all she could get out.
"The baby will be all right," the officer said, opening Lainie's door, and Lainie, wobbly-legged, stepped out and fell against the policeman.
"Whoa, easy, lady," he said, steeling her, and a female officer got out of the car and came over to Lainie's car. She turned off the engine and Lainie could hear her talking gently to Rose. Most of what the policeman said to her next was a blur, about standing on one foot, which she knew she couldn't do even if she held on. To close her eyes and touch her finger to her nose. No, Mitch. Mother. Help. An insulin reaction. She should have eaten dinner before the exercise class, that was what the doctor warned her.
The policeman put handcuffs on her and edged her into the back of the police car, and said something to her about the fact that the woman officer was taking Lainie's car with Rosie in it, but Lainie was trembling and still unable to tell him she wasn't drunk, just very close to death.
She didn't remember much about what happened after that except that it was a miracle that they took her to the Van Nuys police station because there was a medic there who knew right away she was having an insulin reaction. He gave her orange juice immediately, which brought her blood sugar back to normal. Not a drunk driver, insulin reaction. Little by little the world came back into focus and when she was feeling as though she was able to get up and walk around, they brought her Rosie, who screamed "Mammmma'' when she saw her, then buried her face in Lainie's neck and cried.
For a few minutes she sat holding the baby, trying to decide what to do. Christmas Eve in the police station. All she wanted to do was to be with Mitch. To be with Mitch and Rosie, her family. At the pay telephone she dialed her sister-in-law Betsy's number. When Betsy answered, Lainie heard the sounds of laughter and loud music in the background.
"Betsy," Lainie said from the pay phone of the police station. She was holding her baby on her hip and looking back at three people who were waiting in line to use the phone. "Let me talk to Mitch, please."
"Who is this?" Betsy asked with that bitchy edge she always had in her voice.
"It's his wife," Lainie answered.
She listened to the music and laughter in the background at Betsy's as she looked around the police station. A couple of hookers were being booked at the desk. When it took Mitch a very long time to get to the phone, Lainie imagined that his sisters were detaining him on his way to take the call, telling him what to say to her.
"Hello,'' Mitch said into the phone at last, and Lainie was so moved by how it felt just hearing his voice that she had to catch her breath so she could talk.
"It's me," she said. "I'm at the Van Nuys police station. I had an insulin reaction which the police who stopped me thought was drunk driving, so they brought me in. Rose's fine, I'm fine. But Mitchie, in those few minutes when I was sure I was dying, all I could think about was that I miss you and I love you and I don't want to spend another minute of my life without you. And all the stuff with Jackie is going to have to be thought out and worked out and made right. But I know we can do it together. So, I think I can get us home from here all right, but what I want is for you to be there too, so we can work it all out."
"Baby," he said, "I'm there."
"Mitchie, I love you," she said.
"Oh, Lainie," he said, "God knows I love you like crazy."
Before Margaret Dunn came for Christmas dinner the next day, Lainie called to warn her that the evening would be a little different than she had described the night before. And that she should make four baked apples, because at dinner there wouldn't just be Lainie and Rosie waiting to see her, but Mitch too. And it would be a special Christmas for all of them.
41
THE AIRPORT NEWSSTAND was decorated for Christmas, and spread across the back wall once again were several magazine covers with pictures of Kate Sullivan in various attire and poses. Ladies' Home Journal, Vanity Fair, People, and Los Angeles. On Los Angeles she was wearing a red sweater and red tights and a Santa Claus hat. Her photograph was everywhere because she was promoting her new film, Always a Lady, the project that had once been Rick's; it was the studio's hot Christmas release. They were putting countless millions in advertising and publicity behind it, and she had directed it herself.
Last night every time Rick flicked the TV remote control, she was there. On CNN, on "Entertainment Tonight." "This is your first time out as a director," Leeza Gibbons was saying, Wendy Tush was saying, Larry King was saying. Kate Sullivan got exactly what she'd wanted all along. Not for Rick to direct her in the film, but to make the situation so intolerable for him that he'd be forced to walk away from it. Then she could say to the studio, "There's no one left to direct this, so I guess I'll have to do it myself."
What does it matter, he thought, knowing that the minute the holiday was over he'd be stepping back into the cold editing room where he'd spent the last few weeks and would spend the next several months cutting his own new film. And the months would only be broken in their intensity by daily visits from the nanny bringing David to visit, or by midnight dinners with Patty, who understood the director's life-style so well from her years with Charlie Fall.
Patty, bless her pretty face, was so solid. Some nights she just showed up at the editing room with a picnic basket of food she'd prepared. And she'd not only cater for Rick, but the editors too. Then she'd slip away, leaving a flower or a funny note. David's nanny said Patty stopped by the house now and then to check on the little boy too.
When the editing process was complete, Rick would have to wait through that agonizing trying-not-to-think-about-it time until his film was released and he learned what the audiences thought of it and what the critics thought of it. What did it matter? This morning he'd spent three hours lying on his stomach on the floor of his living room, setting up an electric train underneath the eight-foot-tall Christmas tree. And that was the kind of thing that felt important to him these days.
Then, as David happily watched the train go round and round through the miniature village, clapping and shouting every time it passed, Rick made popcorn and strung all the pieces David hadn't eaten, and soon there was yards of it. Then he held David up high so the little guy could sling the long white strings across each branch of the tree, because that was what Rick's parents had done with him every year when he was small.
After lunch they had a party to attend, so Rick bathed David and dressed him, showered and dressed himself, and pointed his car west toward the address on St. Cloud Road. There were live reindeer in the front yard, and a backyard full of imported snow, which, thanks to the cold wave, wasn't melting. There was an actor in a Santa Claus suit giving gifts to the children, pretty girls dressed as Santa's elves passing hors d'oeuvres, and a lot of familiar people from the business.
David sat in his usual spot on Rick's shoulders looking over the crowd. A few passersby waved to the cute baby as Rick stopped and talked about his latest projects with an agent from CAA and a guy he knew from Disney. Then at one of the buffet tables, without bothering to get a plate, he made himself a roast beef sandwich on a small roll, ate that quickly, and followed it with a ham sandwich, which he munched while he handed p
ieces of fruit up to David, who put them in his mouth and let their juice roll down his chin and onto Rick's head.
When a strikingly pretty young actress reached past Rick to get a napkin roll filled with silverware, he said to her, "I know it's probably the pineapple juice on my forehead that makes you think I'm attractive, isn't it?"
The girl looked blankly at him, then up at David, then back at Rick and said, "Ahhh, your grandson is really cute."
Rick let out a loud burst of a laugh in appreciation of the joke, then looked around to see who was watching. He was trying to figure out who had set the girl up to say that to him, but there was no one around that he recognized. She wasn't kidding, and certainly he was easily the right age for her to think that. But for some reason it didn't matter to him one bit.
"You know what?" he said to David as the girl strolled away. "I think it's time for you and me to go to the airport."
"And see airplanes!" David said in agreement.
Now the two of them were at the same gate where Rick stood lifetimes ago when he'd waited alone for the pregnant Doreen to arrive. She had been a little pink puff of a girl then, and he was aware that the time which had passed since he last saw her would make a difference in her appearance, but he wasn't prepared for the person who walked through that same door today. Something about her appearance, much more dramatic than the added years, was so different it startled him. It was her entire mien, her posture, the look in her eyes, and it could only be described as beaten.
The sight of Rick brought a nod of acknowledgment as their eyes met, but hers were the eyes of an unhappy woman. Light-years older and wiser than the ones that used to contain an irrepressible twinkle. The sight of David at Rick's side brought first a look of amazement but then a look of pain, filling Rick with instant regret that his hopes for this visit had been foolish, or worse yet, a cruel mistake.
"Hello, you guys," she said, offering her best smile, which was meager, and hugging Rick weakly. David grabbed Rick's pant leg and hid behind it.
"A shy guy, huh?" Doreen said and knelt, and when he peeked around and looked at her and repeated, "A shy guy," she squeaked happily, "He talks like a big boy!"
In the car she sat in the back with David and held his tiny hand, but said very little to Rick. "How's Uncle B.?" she asked at one point, and Rick filled her in on Bobo's life and illnesses and friends at the home, looking in the rearview mirror to see if she reacted, but for the most part she looked blankly out the window.
At the house she unpacked gifts, which she stacked under the tree, and then she walked around the kitchen helping Rick with the dinner preparations while she held David, who never left her arms for hours. He babbled, impressing her with his vocabulary, amusing himself by trying to remove the eyeglasses from her face.
When the last fork was laid on the table and the dinner was bubbling away on the stove, the doorbell rang.
"Yayyy," David shouted, running to the door.
God, they were a beautiful sight to Rick, the whole group of them standing in the doorway. What could make your heart dance like the faces of the people you loved? It was raining so they hurried in. Howard and Mayer and Mayer's billowy blond fiancée, Lisa, were holding brightly wrapped gifts. And Patty, smashing-looking in a bright red coat, was holding Bobo's arm, giving Rick a look he knew meant it had been a near miracle for her to get the old man here. But it was worth it all when David shouted, "Uncle Bobobobobobo!" and Bobo laughed a big hearty laugh, and said, "Hiya, boychik."
This is the best night of my life, Rick thought to himself as he took their coats and introduced Doreen to the boys and to Patty. I have a family. A support system, Barbara Singer calls them. Rick looked at Doreen, flushed and wiping her hands self-consciously on the kitchen towel she'd stuck in the waistband of her slacks. She was okay with Bobo, who greeted her warmly, but she seemed awkward with Patty and the boys and Lisa. A few times she called Patty "Mrs. Fall" and Rick overheard Patty say, "Please call me Patty."
Howard was focused on a computer game some friend had given him and he was pushing buttons so it blipped and bleeped. Soon Doreen was sitting next to him on the sofa, and Howard gave her a turn at it, and they were laughing together. Lisa oohed and ahhed over David, and Mayer roughhoused with him. Rick carved the turkey and Patty arranged the plates in the kitchen and brought them to the table. By the time they were eating, Rick was relieved to see Doreen joking with both the boys and Lisa. Yes, she was doing fine, holding her own, seated next to David's high chair, wiping cranberry sauce from his chin.
"This kid's a genius," Howard said. "You know those games where they have all the different shaped holes and then the blocks to put in them? He never misses."
"That's because he has such great genes," Doreen said and laughed.
Bobo and Patty were chatting away too, and the time really felt right for what he wanted to say, so Rick picked up his spoon and tapped gently on his wineglass.
"Attention, please. I know as soon as this meal is over we're rushing over to the Christmas tree to dig into our gifts, but there's one gift I'd like to give separately from the others because this is for someone who has done so much for my life, and I want to acknowledge her with a gift that isn't under the tree."
As he was about to take the gift out of his pocket, he caught sight of Doreen's face and knew by the way she reddened and her half smile that she thought he'd been speaking about her. And that when she realized he wasn't, she might be hurt. When he looked at Patty he could tell by her expectant eyes that he had to go on. So he pulled the box out of his shirt pocket, looked at Patty, and said what he'd thought about for weeks. "If you like we can have a very long engagement until you decide how you feel, but I'd like to ask you to marry me and David too."
There was an instant of shocked silence until the two boys laughed and said, "Oh wow!"
"How romantic," Lisa said.
"Thank the good Lord I lived to see it," Bobo said chuckling.
Patty opened the box to see the diamond ring Rick had chosen after endless meetings with a jeweler. When she looked at Rick, her eyes were sparkling brighter than the stone and she said, "This is completely crazy. You're completely crazy, and I should take a long time to decide, like forty or fifty years. But right here in front of God and everybody, I have to admit I really would like to marry you both."
He stood, she stood, and they embraced. Mayer lifted David out of the high chair and squashed the little boy in a happy hug, and it sounded to Rick as if he said, "I've got another brother." Then Patty, visibly shaken, walked over to Bobo's chair and hugged the old man, who was grinning happily. The boys hugged their mother, and Mayer said, "My dad would have been happy about this. He loved you, Uncle Ricky." And Lisa hugged Patty and said, "Maybe we should have a double wedding," and Bobo said, "Just make it soon, will you, I'm a very old man."
Doreen had a smile on her face as she watched it all, as if she were watching a movie, and when Rick went over to hug her he felt her body tense. Maybe, he thought too late, making the announcement tonight when she was here was wrong. He had hoped it would make her happy to see David getting an experienced grown-up woman as a mother. But probably she felt afraid that her own relationship with David would now be threatened.
"She'll be good with him," she said as they all sat back down to eat.
Rick could hardly wait for them to open their gifts. Howard was fascinated with computers but was still using his old Apple II, so Rick bought him a brand-new Macintosh. There was a thirty-five-millimeter camera Mayer had been longing for and Rick bought that for him with two lenses. Bobo liked to think of himself as a dapper dresser, so both Rick and Patty bought him clothes, including a beautiful robe from Neiman-Marcus. That way he could still look handsome to the ladies at the Motion Picture Home on those days when he was too tired to put on his street clothes.
For David's Christmas, Rick had gone totally berserk. A rocking horse, and a playhouse and a climbing gym for outdoors, a jeep that the boy could get insi
de and drive with his feet, and a whale he could sit on in the pool. Rick, so full of joy tonight, wondered where Christmas had been for him for so many years. Aside from a dinner with Bobo at some restaurant in the Valley, he had spent most of them at parties like the one he and David had attended that afternoon. Parties populated with people who took each other's hands in their own and with the most sincere expression they could muster looked into each other's eyes and said, "We're family." But not one of them gave a shit about the others, unless there was a deal to be made. Family.
One of Doreen's gifts from Rick was a college guidebook accompanied by a note which said IOU four years of college tuition, something he thought would thrill her, but instead he saw her trying to summon enthusiasm. She's a teenager, he thought, they live in the now, she doesn't understand at this moment what that's going to mean to her life. He wasn't surprised when the curling iron and hair dryer and vanity mirror Patty had bought for her got a bigger reaction.
On the last day of her visit, she was quiet, sitting next to David on the trip back to the airport. The baby, who had been chatty and giggly at first, fell asleep in the car seat.
"What have you told Bea about why you ran away?" Rick asked her, breaking the silence.
"Nothing yet."
"You know you have to tell her, don't you? To tell someone."
"Well, I didn't want to spoil everyone's holidays, because it's going to be ugly when I finally do tell. I've been thinking about exactly what I'm going to say," and for the first time since she arrived he heard a lilt in her voice, as if she knew what she was telling him now would please him. "But I'm just trying to figure out when the best time is to say it. I mean, Don and my sister have been fighting a lot. I keep thinking he's going to leave her any day now, and that'll make it easier to do what I have to do." Rick felt assured by the sound of hope in her voice that soon things would work out for the best.
The Stork Club Page 35
