Little Did I Know

by Mitchell Maxwell

“Or the seven tequilas,” Sid replied. “Cab on the way, sweetheart.”

  I had run out of batteries. Veronica poured me into a cab and put me to bed.

  When I woke, there was a heavy rain cleansing the morning air. Veronica and I were entwined like vines in a jungle. As I had railed last night, I promised that today was gonna be a good one, because we’d opened our eyes. For that matter, my day was already excellent; I had woken up next to Veronica Chapman.

  53

  Walt Frazier had swagger, as did Earl “the Pearl” Monroe. The ’72 Dolphins had it as well, and so did Cassius Clay as he stood over Sonny Liston. Swagger is not a given right but something earned, which makes it that much more special.

  The parade gave us all swagger. It felt better than sex. Our feet didn’t touch the ground. The jokes that had gotten mere titters in the last performance would slay them tonight. Our reviews, which we’d thought good, were sensational now after a second reading. We were Yaz in ’67 and Jean-Claude Killy in ’68. We were the US Navy at Midway and Churchill when he read the phone book. We were Seaver in ’69 and Willie Mays in ’54. We were unhittable. Unbreakable. Bigger than life. That allowed us to relax and get close to being as good as we were told we were.

  Today, Saturday, we would close our first show, Cabaret. Our second production, Anything Goes, would premiere on Monday. The compound felt different. We went about our rehearsals with a desire to make each performance that much better. Yet the level of intensity had changed. It was no longer the regular season but the opening game of the World Series, where ordinary moments became extraordinary, and every one of us was Joe DiMaggio. The parking lot was backed up with cars and the stacks of tickets diminished like the pounds off a crash dieter. We had become the “It” event and wore that mantle with a sense of pride. Now we needed to sustain it.

  Curtain time was at 8:30 p.m. We had never sold more than 107 seats for a performance since we had opened. Yet here it was closing in on 5 p.m. and we had a waiting list that exceeded a hundred people.

  The early morning drizzle had given way to pure sunshine, and by eight o’clock Van Gogh might have painted the landscape. Our car boys were waving their flashlights like magic batons so that our patrons felt safe, and they tipped accordingly. Programs sold at the concession stand like memorabilia from the Tony awards. As the director, I knew that final performances always had a special something about them, like the first kiss of a relationship or the last day of summer. I sat at the red picnic table taking it all in, feeling quite the cock of the walk. It was ten minutes to showtime, and people lingered, hoping for a cancellation or even a standing room spot or partial-view seat.

  It was 8:22 p.m. Suddenly everything went black.

  The compound, the streetlamps, the lights that offered a path from the parking lot to the theater were dark. The office, the houses, the box office, the exit lights, the houses surrounding the compound were ink. Black night. A sea squall had covered the sun, the sea swells were eight feet high, and we were sunk. We of course had emergency lights to guard against any real jeopardy, but within an instant festivity had been replaced by doom and concern.

  “Fuck,” I said several times with escalating levels of discontent.

  I ran to the office and called the electric company. A young perky voice answered on the first ring. “Hello, this is Emily. May I help you?”

  “Light, Emily, we need light. I’m Mr. August and—”

  “What a great parade,” she interjected. “I’m planning to come to see a show next weekend with my boyfriend and my mom and dad. Roy, my boyfriend, has never seen a musical.”

  “That’s so great,” I said. “I’ll look for you when you arrive. Emily, what’s up with the lights?” I asked this as if my leg were on fire.

  “Oh, sir,” she answered so calmly that I wanted to smash her face against a cement wall, “it’s a downed wire. A driver hit a pole on Rocky Hill Road.” She giggled. “But we will have it fixed in a jiff.”

  I held my breath. I looked across at the deck packed with a sell-out crowd. My fate rested on the definition of “jiff.” Hesitantly, and with an anvil resting on my chest, I asked Emily, “How long is a ‘jiff’?”

  She mused for a moment then said two words that stabbed me in the heart and twisted it with glee. “An hour.”

  I ran across the compound and told Jojo what was up. “We have an hour to kill until the lights come back on. Keep the company ready and on their toes.”

  “An hour?” she exclaimed. “No one will wait an hour.”

  “No choice,” I said. “I’m going to lie and then lie again. I’m not letting four hundred-plus people leave here tonight pissed off that all they got was a warm Coke.”

  I ran to the balcony where Duncan and Kasen ran the two spotlights and told them to put them on auxiliary power so we could get some light in the building. Kasen reminded me that “the emergency spotlights were working but the spots made everyone look like a cadaver.”

  “Do what I say,” I commanded, then raced toward the orchestra pit and Dr. Rosenstein.

  He listened, and Louis Rosenberg, his first chair, said at least twenty times, “Cool, my brother.” I guess that was good.

  I raced to the front of the theater and asked for the audience’s attention. The house quieted instantly. “Hello, everyone. I am Sam August and I want to thank you—”

  Rousing applause, some whistles, and audible comments all filled with goodwill and a spirit of unbridled joy cut off my introduction. This too was good.

  “Thank you so very much. Thank you for being here tonight. In the spirit of the theater, the show will go on!”

  Then I explained how a car had hit a pole and cut off the electricity, but that the electric company said the power would be back on in fifteen minutes. It was a beautiful night. We opened the concession stand for free drinks, and the band played. I encouraged the audience to get up and dance under the stars.

  I watched the clock. Every minute was a lifetime, and the crowd could turn ugly if someone had a babysitter waiting or if they were looking to get laid and their schedule was tight. It was now close to 9:10 and long past the promise of “fixed in a jiff.” Smiles began to turn into impatience and people inquired about refunds. I thought briefly about torching the entire place.

  At 9:15 I stood in front of the crowd with the hope of defusing the growing discontent. “Ladies and gentlemen, I understand that General Washington’s lights went out during his post-holiday dinner and that the Continental Congress had problems with their air conditioning right after they signed the Declaration of Independence.”

  None of that was close to funny, but I did get a few chuckles and realized there was some goodwill left in the tank.

  “I have just spoken to the electric company and they have informed me that the lights will be back on in less than five minutes.” My nose grew and my sphincter tightened, but the crowd responded with a round of hearty applause. “I thank you for your patience tonight. Everyone here this evening can take his or her stub down to the Full Sail after the show and Doobie will buy you all a cocktail.”

  I clapped my hands a few times and asked if everyone was comfortable, and nobody threw anything at me. I took that as a good sign. I ventured forth. “I thought it would be fun if we offered you something special tonight, something that only live theater can offer. As you know, you are here tonight to see the closing performance of Cabaret. It’s not your classic musical comedy, but it’s a great show that I’m sure you will enjoy immensely. Our next show, which opens Monday night—don’t ask when we sleep—will feature the music and lyrics of Cole Porter.”

  The spotlights were in my eyes and I couldn’t see anything. But I could hear the crowd rustling, and it appeared to be interested in what I was saying. I looked stage left, and Bobby was giving me the hand signal for “hurry it up or we give you the hook and then beat you to death.” I quickly moved on. “So we thought it would be a nice gesture, to thank
you for your patience, to give you a preview of Anything Goes, then go right into Cabaret.” The response was spirited and sincere.

  I thought of Emily at the electric company; it was now more than an hour since we had spoken. I made a mental note that when she came to see the show next week I’d make sure she sat behind a pole.

  “Great,” I said. “Now remember you are seeing a number from Anything Goes, which is rousing and fun. The lead character is played by Katherine Fitzgerald. Kat, take a bow.” Katherine stepped forward in her Nazi prostitute outfit and took a bow. “Katherine’s character is imploring Gabriel in heaven to shine down goodwill on the characters of Anything Goes, none of whom are Nazis.”

  Oh boy.

  “So with Dr. Rosenstein conducting the orchestra and the PBT company in their thirties Berlin garb, we offer you a rather unusual sneak peak of Anything Goes. Please note that, until the lights go on, this number will be performed with the auxiliary spots that offer no color or theatricality. We need your imagination right now. If this bombs, my mother’s going to make me go to medical school!”

  The theater filled with chuckles. “Ladies and gentlemen, PBT presents Anything Goes via Berlin, 1932. Let your imagination take flight. Enjoy, and thanks.”

  The curtain rose. The company took their positions in white-hot cadaver light. They looked surreal wearing Berlin outfits when the song they were about to perform was meant to be sung from the deck of an expensive frivolous ocean liner. I walked stage right and Veronica gave me a shot of JD and a huge kiss. The cast was ready for the downbeat. And the rest of us were ready to run.

  Dr. Rosenstein shouted, “One, two, three, four,” and waved his baton.

  Berlin vanished. Everyone began to sing about Gabriel and his horn, and how he played it with a vengeance. The dancers danced and the chorus sang their asses off. Danny Davis hit each trumpet riff. Fitzgerald sang “Blow Gabriel” like a star, followed by the chorus, followed by Danny blowing Gabriel’s horn, and then again and again, and the audience was clapping and cheering and they were glad they had stayed.

  At the apex of the number, when all twenty-four cast members and twelve in the band were singing their tits off for Gabriel to blow that fucking horn. . . the lights went on! The blacks and grays and shadows that had cloaked the stage suddenly became Oz, and the stage was alive in a rainbow of color. The cast took it a notch higher and the band blew the roof off the building; the audience leapt from their seats as if propelled. It was unlike anything you could ever have imagined, because you couldn’t make this stuff up.

  Bobby Stevens cried in the wings. First the parade, and now this. Applause cascaded over the stage in wave after wave, and with each bow the company took the crescendo grew louder. Finally, after six bows Jojo kept the curtain down and announced that Cabaret would start in ten minutes and asked that everyone remain seated. Of course, at that point no one was seated.

  Light had come upon us, and with the release of tension and the curtain down for a ten-minute break, the cast went into some crazy dance, a hybrid of an American Indian ritual, a twenties Charleston, a sixties twist, V-J and V-E Days, and Times Square on every New Year’s Eve since Adam kissed Eve. They hugged and leapt into one another’s arms and did handsprings and released enough energy to light the nation. The last couple in a lip-lock was the good doctor and Diana Cohen. He had left his station at the pit to share this crazy moment with someone who had waited for a long time to turn his frown-mustache upside down.

  “All good things come to those who wait, Diana.” I mused. Now they all had a show to do. Oh, the magic of live theater.

  54

  My father was born in 1921. His father, Samuel Shmorak, was a WWI hero of Russian descent who wore his many medals for bravery stoically across his chest. He married my grandmother Anne after meeting her on leave in London during a three-day pass. She married him on her fifteenth birthday and fewer than six months later was living in the blue-collar town of Lynn, Massachusetts, twenty miles outside the city of Boston.

  Samuel was a blacksmith with arms like Popeye. He never read a book, and used to give my brother and me hate lessons: wops can’t be trusted; mick bastards are thieves; kikes (his own kind) will steal from you if you look the other way; and darkies . . . you don’t want to know. These life insights were dispensed whenever he drove down to see the family in New York, which was about four times a year. Other than to come in the house to use the bathroom or sleep, he would sit in his car for the entire visit for no reason other than to be obstreperous.

  The Depression had hit when my dad was just under ten, so he worked jobs his entire childhood like so many others of his generation. He enlisted in the army after Pearl Harbor and spent three years overseas. He was D-Day minus six. He was on a troop carrier headed to the South Pacific when Harry Truman essentially ended the war by dropping the atomic bomb on Japan. Harry probably saved my dad’s life.

  He met my mom (who was born in a taxi on the way to the hospital) in 1946, on a blind date; he’d been coerced into attending the rodeo by his best friend, Norman Schletsky whose girlfriend’s girlfriend refused to be the third wheel. The rodeo was on a Friday night, and my parents were married that Sunday afternoon in a very expensive service at the Mayflower Hotel in Manhattan. My mother, an affluent college girl, had been betrothed in a prearranged marriage to a rich Mexican Jew by the name of Miguel she had yet to meet. She had my dad write a Dear John letter to her fiancé on Saturday night; by the time he received it, my mom was Mrs. Shmorak. After living with that lovely new married name for less than a week, she informed my father that he either had to change it or they would have to get divorced. My father, who at the time was August Herbert Shmorak, became Herbert August. The American dream played on into the fifties.

  When not dodging enemy fire in the army, my dad had produced and written many shows. His new father-in-law convinced him to give up his budding career in radio to provide a better life for his new family. He went to work for my maternal grandfather in the garment business. Lots of Jews, lots of gonefs and hondling, and all too much disappointment. He was a talented music producer in postwar radio and a frustrated, if more affluent, garment salesmen after making that unfortunate life choice. My dad always told me, “Follow your passion and money will follow.” He didn’t and it didn’t.

  Nobody knows what couples are like when they’re alone. Nor does anyone really know whether their family is functioning well. Because until you leave the nest it’s the only family you know. You think it’s the way all other families relate and behave. Your home is normal, and the word “dysfunctional” never comes into play. Sammy Davis Jr. said he loved the neighborhood he grew up in, until he left it and realized it was a terrible ghetto.

  When I was a kid I loved sports. They were important to my dad as well. We shared something, and it allowed him to win, because in athletics I seldom came in second. I was good at all of them: bigger, faster, and stronger than my peers. I was always the first one picked, and my identity in my early years was based on my ability to hit the ball out of sight and run over a multitude of would-be tacklers.

  My father came to every ballgame I ever played. Right through high school, in any weather on any day at any appointed time. He was always there, standing alone, watching with true intent. He brought a friend once to a football game during my junior year, but I was injured in the first quarter and played sparingly throughout the remainder of the contest. That was the last time he ever brought anyone to one of my games. To my great confusion and dismay, my mother never saw me play a single game of any kind. Ever.

  As a young athlete, I was vested in the ethic and philosophy of the great football coach Vince Lombardi. My coach Mr. Serpe, also Italian and also a graduate of Fordham University, threw Lombardi platitudes around as if he himself had led the Packers to victories in the first two Super Bowls. Of course I listened and made them my own.

  As I grew up, I began to realize that most quotes from famous people,
which initially sound so profound, begin to ring hollow when placed within the context of the life that swirls around them. Not everybody wins, even if “you leave it all on the field,” nor is a man’s character measured by “whether in his heart he found a way to win.” Sometimes the other team is luckier, has a better day, or are simply better.

  I came home from college one semester to visit for a week in late February. My dad had a beautiful office on Madison Avenue that he had secured through some barter arrangement. He looked enormously prosperous in those digs, while in reality he was struggling financially and trying to figure out a way. He didn’t have less character or skill or smarts or desire than other men who traveled to the city each morning on the 8:11 to Penn Station. Throughout that week in late winter I went with him each morning to his office and watched him make dozens if not hundreds of calls to make something happen, find some light, score some points, or just get up off the mat. Yet for whatever reasons, nobody was taking his calls; his messages were never returned during the week I was there. I thought more highly of my father during those five days than ever before. He never lost his sense of humor. His eyes were alert and focused, and he listened to my daily issues as if he didn’t have a care in the world. I watched him and learned that it is easy to have character when you are winning; the true heart of a man is tested when he is flailing.

  Vince Lombardi said many things that were quoted in practice, and I heard them all. I remember two:

  They may not love me now, but when flushed with winning, they will love me later.

  It’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get back up.

  And so it goes. It was about halfway through my hundred days at PBT and I had learned so many lessons. Two I will never forget. The first was that Vince Lombardi’s words offered sage advice. Although somewhat worn, they still held power and truth. The other, and more important, was that I realized my father was a good man. Flawed or mistaken at times, but good, and that is sometimes enough to win.