by Rita Rudner
Because tremors had been our only earthquake experience, we had no qualms about buying a four-story house perched on the top of a hill. Then at about four in the morning, while we were sleeping soundly in our newly purchased bed in our newly purchased house, a jolt tossed us both up into the air. The whole house swayed violently. I still remember opening my eyes, seeing the wood beams on our cathedral ceiling, and thinking, This is how I’m going to die.
Some people wake up and their brain begins functioning immediately. I am not one of those people. I need a cup of coffee and ten minutes of staring into space to enter the world in which we are all trying to live.
Martin is good in a major crisis; when our world is crumbling around us, he keeps his cool and thinks logically. I’m good in a minor crisis; if I run out of sugar when I’m making a cake, I can go to the supermarket and buy some more.
I know the quake only lasted about seven seconds, but it felt like an hour. Our bedroom, located on the top floor of our four-story home, incurred the most sway. To understand what I’m talking about, hold a long blade of grass in the air and wave it from side to side. We were the two people positioned on the tip of the grass.
“I’ll get a flashlight,” Martin announced as we were still being flipped by the force of the earth like onions in a pan. Earthquake virgins, we had not positioned the flashlight at the side of the bed, where everyone had told us to keep it, but in a drawer located in the closet. The door had separated from the closet and was blocking the entrance. (An earthquake tells you exactly how many nails a builder has used to hold your house together. Our builder turned out to be a minimalist.)
Martin doesn’t wear pajamas, so he had a very special incentive to get into the closet because that is where his robe lived. In the back recesses of my mind I remembered the advice to stand in a doorway. I stood in the doorway, effectively blocking Martin’s path to the closet. Another rumble shook me to one side, and my husband climbed over me and the severed door and quickly located his robe and flashlight.
“We’re still alive. We’re still alive,” I kept mumbling as we headed for the stairs. I saw the chandelier above the stairwell swaying like we were on the Titanic. We’d bought a house and we were on a ship.
We bolted out of the front door and joined our sleepy, shocked neighbors standing in the middle of the road.
Since we had only moved in a few weeks before, we had not really had a chance to get to know anyone, but we now knew our neighbor across the street rather well because she was naked.
“I didn’t have a chance to grab any clothes,” she explained as she attempted and failed to cover herself strategically.
Just then a man ran out of the house carrying a blanket. Our neighbor gratefully clutched the wrap to her body.
“Are you all right?” I asked the woman.
“I’m fine, and I wanted to tell you I really liked Peter’s Friends.”(Peter’s Friends was a movie Martin and I had recently written.)
“Thank you,” I replied.
We were definitely in Hollywood. We’d all just shared a near-death experience, and my naked neighbor was flattering me about our movie.
I noticed a smell of booze permeating the air. It turns out that in an earthquake not only do you find out how many nails a builder has used to put your house together, you also find out how much alcohol your neighbors’ houses contain. There was wine to the left of us and hard liquor to the right. I inhaled sharply. I needed a drink.
Martin and I had just splurged on our dream house. All of our available cash had been put up as a down payment and we had assumed a massive mortgage. Tears filled my eyes as I witnessed the cracked walls and the French doors lying on the ground of our front patio.
“Well, we bought a new house and now we own a fixe-rupper,” Martin commented.
The earthquake had happened not even ten minutes before and Martin had made the first joke.
The good news for us was that our house was still standing. The inspector assured us that the foundation to our house was intact and the damage was merely cosmetic. Our naked neighbor’s house had to be torn down and totally rebuilt.
The damage our house sustained was, however, substantial. The kitchen looked like a Greek wedding; every glass had been thrown into the center island and had smashed. The refrigerator doors had flown off and the fridge’s contents were slathered across the floor. Imagine if Jackson Pollock had painted with mayonnaise, eggs, and milk.
Upstairs, the cabinets had been tossed across the bathroom, and in the bedroom the brand-new television was facedown on the floor, surrounded by Martin’s extensive book collection.
“It’ll be OK,” Martin comforted. “We have earthquake insurance.”
We did. Our earthquake insurance covered the contents of our refrigerator. We were reimbursed eighty-five dollars.
The earthquake was over, but the aftershocks continued. Every time we had the cracks in the walls replastered, the earth would rejiggle and the cracks would open up again like burst surgical stitches. Eventually we decided that our handyman had made enough money out of us and it was cheaper to consider the cracks as deliberate. They also served as a reminder of what could happen.
Fifteen years later, even though we no longer live in Los Angeles, Martin and I still sleep with flashlights and robes on either side of our bed. In case of emergency, we want to be able to see where we’re going. And if we end up standing outside at four in the morning, we’d prefer not to be naked.
* * *
My aunt Sylvie is getting a neck lift, a breast lift, and a knee lift. Her surgeon is having a special: “All You Can Lift.”
* * *
Who Don’t You Trust?
AS I’VE GROWN OLDER, I’VE REALIZED THAT I’VE learned as much from my father’s bad behavior as I did from his good. It always bothered me that he had no friends. In order to have friends, an essential trust in human nature must exist. I think my father would have happily stayed in his mother’s womb forever because no one could get in to steal anything.
I remember as an adolescent having to turn on all the lights and turn up the radio volume when we left the house so we wouldn’t be robbed, and having to keep the lights and television on low when we were home so we wouldn’t be killed.
Once I came home from shopping with my friends an hour early. I rang the doorbell repeatedly but there was no answer. I knew my father was home, so I called through the locked window, “Dad, open the door.” Nothing. I went next door and called him. He answered the phone.
“Dad, it’s me.”
“Don’t come near the house,” he warned. “There’s a crazy lady ringing the doorbell and shouting, ‘Dad, open the door.’”
“Yes, that would be me.”
“It’s only three o’clock. You said you’d be home at four.”
“It’s still me, even if it’s three o’clock. You have to make the adjustment.”
My father was overly suspicious of everyone and everything. He stopped eating in his favorite cafeteria because he didn’t like the way the turkey carver looked at him when he held the knife. He retained a post office box because he didn’t want the mailman to know where he lived.
I remember one phone conversation during which my father informed me that his new neighbor was a prostitute.
“What makes you think that?” I asked.
“Every weekend there’s a different car parked in her driveway and they stay for a few hours and then they leave,” he replied.
“She’s not a prostitute. She has friends.”
“She lets them into the house?”
“Yes, some people actually let other people into their homes,” I informed him.
“That’s just crazy.”
After my stepmother died, my father would not even let a cleaning person into the house. He had a vague memory of a lawyer he knew being accused of sexual misconduct by a housekeeper, and so he would never be alone with a woman in any situation without witnesses. Even when staying in a hotel, the
maid would not be allowed in to clean his room for his entire stay.
I’d say, “Dad, put the Do Not Disturb sign up when you’re in and let her clean when you go out. Why is that not acceptable?”
“I don’t want anybody stealing anything either.”
“I’ve stayed in hotel rooms for years and the housekeepers have never taken anything.”
“I’m not saying it’s them. I’ve seen what happens. The maids leave the doors open. They block the doorway with the cart and anyone can move it while they’re cleaning the bathroom and come in and rob you blind.”
“What is it that you have to steal that’s so valuable? Socks? Underwear?”
“You’re joking, but they’re of very good quality.”
“Then put them in the safe.”
That was only the tip of my father’s paranoia. The bartender was slipping mickeys into his martinis (he’d had too much to drink and fallen asleep in the lounge). The man across the street was running a drug cartel (he was moving in). After an argument with my stepmother he threw away his mouthwash, suspecting she had tampered with it (she had loosened the cap on the bottle for him because she knew he was incapable).
Bizarrely, the same man who rampantly mistrusted innocent people placed complete trust in a person who was ripping him off. A painter quoted him $7,000 to fix a small portion of his roof. Without getting a second opinion, my father paid it. The same workman pointed out that the entire roof needed to be resealed for another $11,000 and my father didn’t blink. I don’t know what else this man spotted that needed thousands of dollars’ worth of attention because my father stopped telling me once I threatened to intervene and question the painter as to exactly the nature of the work he was performing.
“This guy Hank, he’s a hell of a painter,” my father would insist. “He’s a hell of a nice guy too. He brings me coffee every morning from 7-Eleven. Nobody’s ever brought me coffee before.”
I decided to let it go and let my father make his own mistakes. It was his money and I guess even a man as reclusive as my father occasionally needs a friend. After Hank ran out of fake home improvements he asked for money for a hernia operation. Then Hank disappeared, but my father remembered him fondly.
It saddens me to think of how many real friends my father could have remembered fondly if he had only trusted a tiny bit more.
* * *
I don’t plan to grow old gracefully. I plan to have face-lifts until my ears meet.
* * *
My Dog Bonkers
I’M A DOG PERSON. THERE IS SOMETHING ABOUT their hopeful faces and trusting eyes that I find totally irresistible. Often in a dog person’s life there is one dog you connect with more than any other. I’ve had other dogs in my life. I raised them from puppyhood. When I was a child, I had a ridiculously loyal German shepherd that I named Tiny and when I was a teenager I had a cute but not too bright Afghan-poodle mix that I named Agatha. I loved them both dearly, but Bonkers, who came to me already named and whom I didn’t meet until he was around two, was the dog that will always be with me.
There is really no way to tell what breed of dog he was. He looked like a cross between a bath mat and Kenny Rogers. I guess it was his good looks that got him noticed and plucked from a pound when he was a puppy to take part in a show called Superdogs at the Excalibur Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. This was an afternoon show where dogs from various shelters were loosely trained to run back and forth and jump over sticks.
We attended an afternoon performance of Superdogs, and that is where we first saw Bonkers jump through the hoop. He was magnificent. It was as if his back legs were springs. Bonkers was also the high jumper in the show. The final trick consisted of the emcee calling his name, and Bonkers running from behind the curtains and propelling himself over an impossibly high stick.
“That dog looks a little like my old dog Agatha,” I whispered to Martin during the show.
“I’ve always wanted a dog,” my husband replied. “My mother would never let me have one.”
I filed Martin’s request in an overstuffed back cubbyhole in my mind. Maybe one day we would get a dog. One day, but not now.
We enjoyed the show so much we attended it again the next week only to find that Bonkers was no longer a part of it.
“Maybe it’s his day off,” I reasoned. “Maybe he has friends coming into town and he needs to take them around sightseeing. After all, this is Vegas.”
“Go backstage and ask what’s happened to Bonkers,” my husband commanded.
I located Ben, Bonkers’s owner and the emcee of the show, and demanded to know what had happened to the shaggy star. The news was not good. Bonkers had been hit by a car and his back left leg had been shattered. He was being operated on at the moment and there was a chance he would not be able to walk again.
“We’ll take him,” my husband and I both said in unison.
“Wait until we see how he comes out of the operation,” Ben suggested.
I phoned Ben once a week to check up on Bonkers’s recuperation, and in eight weeks he was ready for us to pick him up and take him home.
Martin and I drove to Vegas to meet up with Ben. It was a little like a drug deal. Ben had told us to look for a white Honda Escort on the north side of the Excalibur parking lot, and he would be wearing a blue cap. We spotted the car and out popped Ben and a very skinny Bonkers. He had been shaved and a large scar now decorated his left back leg.
“He has a plate in his hip and a few teeth got knocked out in the accident, but I think he’s going to be fine,” Ben announced.
Bonkers was one lucky Vegas dog. He’d gone from a pound to being the star of a show to the brink of death to about to be sleeping on a pillow-topped mattress in Beverly Hills.
In no time at all, the bouncy dog we had seen in the show began to reemerge. Vestiges of his former show business life surfaced when we least expected it. Bonkers could be summoned into a room not by calling his name but by applause. Because “Happy Birthday” had been sung to kids in the audience he recognized the tune and would sing along. When friends came over we would occasionally bring out the hoop and Bonkers would instantly sail through it. He was an official member of the family and appeared on our Christmas card in various festive poses every year.
When I was once again booked to appear in Vegas we put Bonkers in the car and headed back to his homeland. Upon arriving at the hotel, we were told that no dogs were allowed on the premises and he would have to stay in a kennel. I was booked for two weeks, and that was quite simply unacceptable.
“Bonkers is in Rita’s show,” my husband, ever the problem-solving producer, lied.
“Oh, he’s in the show. Then I guess we could make an exception,” the entertainment president replied. “But he’s going to have to behave. Liza Minnelli snuck her Yorkie into the suite last week, and I don’t want to go into detail, but we’ve had to order a new sofa. By the way, what exactly does Bonkers do?”
“You’ll see,” I replied mysteriously.
Bonkers was back in show business. I just had to figure out his talent. He was on that night, so I didn’t have time to train him. I hadn’t traveled with his hoop and I really didn’t want to make him jump for a living. It was so undignified.
That evening I walked through the casino with a sixty-pound hairy hound and even the sober people were questioning what they saw. I deposited Bonkers in my dressing room, supplied him with a bowl of water and his favorite duckie toy, and told him to have a good show. I asked the stage manager to get Bonkers from my dressing room seventy minutes into my act and wait for me to call for him. I didn’t know what he would do, but I did know that the entertainment president would be in the audience waiting for Bonkers to appear.
At the end of my act I announced to the audience, “I have a special treat for you tonight. Would you like to meet my dog, Bonkers?”
“Yes!” was the resounding reply.
Phil, the stage manager, unleashed Bonkers, and he came bounding onto the s
tage.
“Sit,” I commanded. Bonkers ignored me. “OK, don’t sit,” I ordered. He continued not sitting.
“See, ladies and gentlemen, he didn’t sit.” I had stumbled upon our act.
“Don’t lie down,” I told him. Again, success.
The audience applauded. Bonkers ran to the edge of the stage, his tail wagging wildly. I had another idea.
“Let’s do some impressions. Bonkers, windshield wiper, windshield wiper,” I commanded. His tail flailed back and forth wildly. “Helicopter, helicopter,” I directed as I noticed his tail beginning to fly in circles. “Bark at the lady in the yellow dress in the front row,” I said as he began to bark anyway.
I remembered the certain spot on Bonkers’s back that made his back leg rotate. I scratched it.
“Start the motorcycle,” I said as his back leg moved around in a circle. The audience was in hysterics, and I sensed it was time for the big finale.
“Be as tall as Mickey Rooney,” I instructed as I patted my legs. Bonkers jumped up on my dress and I led him offstage to thunderous applause. Our act was born. Bonkers proceeded to perform in my show whenever I played Vegas for the next twelve years. He played seven different hotels and stayed in all the best suites, and they never once had to replace a sofa.
Aside from being a Vegas draw, Bonkers appeared on billboards advertising animal shelters and posters auctioning a motorcycle for charity. He was also polite. I taught him to say thank you when he was given his dinner, and he always tapped me on the leg lightly whenever he needed to go outside.
We were living in Las Vegas and Bonkers and I were performing at New York New York when it happened. My ever-hungry dog was carefully watching me eat spaghetti when he barked a bark I’d never heard before.
