by John Ridley
Sid got stares—a white fellow staying in a colored rooming house—and I gave the stares right back: The cat's with me, so lay off.
We got our keys and went up to our rooms. They were unattractive.
Same as I did whenever Sid was with me in a city that wasn't progressive, I told him: “I'm a big boy. If you want to head back to The Strip …”
Same as he did every other time, Sid waved me off, tossed out a few excuses. “Clip joints with neon trim.”
Time to kill, sitting around, we talked some about the upcoming show, did a back-and-forth about which bits I should go with. That got followed up with a little yatter on sports, weather.
Then, Sid, from left field: “I was talking to Frances.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Yeah. You know her new record's a smash.”
“Hear it all the time.”
“Yeah.” Sid took a beat, went on with: “CBS is giving her a special.”
“That's great. She's a great kid. If anybody deserves—”
“It's a pilot, really. If it does good numbers, they're going to give her her own show, a variety thing. Fatima's all set to sponsor.”
I rolled my tongue around in my mouth, wiped away the bad taste that was forming.
One time. One time Frances was on Sullivan—one sensational time—and now she was this close to becoming Ed in a dress. My jealousy broke its leash.
Sid told me: “You should call her.”
Thinking of me skipping her debut just to play Tahoe: “She's on her way. She doesn't want to hear from me.”
“She forgives you.”
That hurt some. Hurt a lot, Sid cutting deep to the truth, that I needed to be forgiven. But I did. I knew it, Fran knew it, Sid knew it.
Sid tried to soften the comment. “Frannie knows how much working Tahoe meant to you. It's what got you to Vegas, and you and I both know what a break it is doing shows here. So does Fran.” Pause. “She misses you, Jackie. If you would just call…”
“I did. You know I did, and I couldn't get through, so don't act like I didn't.”
“A couple of times after she did Sullivan, but other than that, how hard did you try?”
The question didn't get answered, but the truth, the truth that Sid and I both knew: not very. It wasn't fear of Fran's reaction that kept me from calling. I knew she'd understand me picking Tahoe over her, or at least, like Sid said, I knew she would forgive me. The thing that wouldn't let me make the call was my own shame.
I said: “Tonight's a big night. I better rehearse the act some.”
Sid didn't even bother making an effort to carry on the conversation. He said okay and left.
I didn't go over the act. I was too restless. I lay down and tried to nap. I was just restless in bed.
I went early to the Sands, leaving a message for Sid telling him where I'd run to.
At the Sands they would only let me into the Copa Room, and only through the back. For the moment that was okay. The Copa Room was all the more anywhere I needed to be. I sat in my dressing room staring at my reflection in the makeup mirror. I can't say how I felt inside—not like a man, but I wasn't a boy—but on the outside my face looked years worn. Permanent nicks from my father and his fists and belt and booze bottles and everything else he'd ever hit me with. A tattoo barb-wired into my cheek. Lines around the eyes, notches of worry, carved there night after late night spent in sleepless fret over my life, my career. Tommy. All that, and I wasn't even thirty. The thought of how I'd look in twenty-five more years made me turn away from myself.
A houseboy came 'round, asked if there was anything I needed.
Prime rib. Medium.
He went off to fetch it without a word.
I went out to the stage, looked over the show room—green accented with red—green walls, red chairs, green carpeting. Guys in redjackets setting the tables. I stood looking at the empty space projecting my thoughts a few hours into the future when the room would be packed with people eager to get entertained. Waiting to be entertained by me. Me opening for Eddie Fisher, at least. But even at that, I was far from Harlem, from the Fourteenth Street Theater, and not just in physical distance. I was on the opposite end of a ladder nearly impossible to climb. But I'd made it. Not to the top, but at least to this rung: the Copa Room in the Sands in Las Vegas, Nevada. And in my heart, regardless of whatever big dreams I'd been carrying around in my head, I knew where I was was farther than I ever really thought I could go. But I still wasn't where I wanted to be. I wanted to be able to walk out the doors and into the casino. I wanted to be headlining. I wanted Sullivan. I wanted the pilot Fran had. I wanted a shot at my own show.
I wanted.
I wanted.
With everything I had, I wanted more. That was the thing; for all its shine, success was nothing but a cheap back-alley score. And same as the hot bottle cap habit I'd witnessed my pop fix so many times, the more you got, the more you wanted. The more it made you want more. I could feel all my dreams getting twisted up. I could feel my desires becoming diseased: that it should matter so much to me to be fawned on out in a casino whose only affection was for the money you dropped, that I should have envy and jealousy for the best friend I'd ever had … I couldn't make sense of how I felt. I couldn't stand how the dope of need made me feel. The other thing I couldn't do was quit that jag if I'd wanted to. And I didn't want to.
I went back to my dressing room. The houseboy brought 'round my rib, wished me a good show. Time was I could never have eaten before I went up. Nerves would have worked on whatever was in my stomach every second I was onstage, made my gut sick.
Not that night.
That night I knew everything was going to be fine. The worst I had to endure in my ascent—from drunk hecklers to rednecks wanting to put a rope around my neck to other points along the way mostly bitter and bad—was behind me. What was going to happen in the Copa Room was the beginning of my true beginning: me hitting the stratosphere star-style.
The prime rib went down easy.
Sid was in the room. So quiet he was, I didn't even hear him enter. I looked up, he was there. I told him what I knew to be fact:
“It's going to be a good one tonight, Sid.”
He was slow to respond. When he finally wrenched his mouth open he closed it up again without saying anything.
“What?”
Sid looked away from me.
“What is it? Fran? You hot at me over Fran? Look, I said I would call her.”
“… No.”
“I'll call her right now, do all my make-up bits. That make you happy?”
“No, Jackie. It's not… You should …” He practically turned his back to me. “Just have a good show.” Sid was hiding something. Trying to hide something but not doing much of a job of it.
“What's going on?”
“Nothing. Nothing's going on.”
“Where'd you learn to lie, in a convent?” My biggest fear: “Did they cancel me?”
“No.”
My second biggest fear: “Are you sick? Are you o—”
“Just have a good show. The show's the thing; that's what's important. Anything else … it can wait.”
Sid had done a lot of hemming and hawing, but he hadn't answered my question about him being ill. I went to him, took him by the shoulders, and spun him around, my compassion and concern coming out rough.
“Tell me! Whatever the hell it is, just tell me!”
For a tick or two, nothing. Sid tried to talk. The effort he put into it no different than lifting boulders. Sheer force of will was the only thing that got words out of his mouth.
He said: “They couldn't find you back at Mrs. Shaw's, so they told me. I wanted to wait until after … I know how much tonight means to you, but… They called from New York. Your father …” Sid trailed off there. That was it. That was all the more he could stand to give me. And truth was, it was all the more I needed to hear.
Dead.
For a while, for lack o
f knowing what to say, neither of us said anything.
My father was dead.
Then, from Sid: “If you want me to talk to Jack …”
“No.”
“He'll understand. It's your father.”
“Sid, I'm opening tonight. I'm going up. The show must go on, and that jazz. My father's dead, so what?”
Like he'd taken a rock to the head; that's the kind of stunned Sid looked.
“Yeah, so what? You ever see him around? You ever see him come out and support? You ever even seen him, Sid? He died, it's sad, but it's the same kind of sad as if some other Charlie I never knew got hit by a car crossing the street. I can't not do my act every time somebody who doesn't matter dies.”
And with that I was convinced: My father didn't matter. I didn't care.
Sid didn't say anything about it. Sid just stared at me … stared at me….
Sid left.
Eventually the house filled and it got to be show time and I went on, stepping back into that waiting void.
I had a good set.
I had a good set for the first three minutes of my six and a half. Then I got to the bits on my pop being a drunk. I fell apart. I didn't break down and cry, I didn't go fetal or anything. I just announced onstage that my father had died, which pretty much brought the laughs to a stop. Talking about real-live dead people in a comedy show tends to do that. There were a couple of titters, people who figured I must be doing the setup for one hell of a punch line.
I wasn't. What I was was real suddenly on a guilt binge that wouldn't shake. I went on about how my father was never there for me, how he abused me, how I will always believe he killed my mother. It wasn't like opening night in Vegas I wanted to rap about any of that, but my grief was a groove that I couldn't pull out of. I was nose-diving for the ground kamikaze-style. The whole ugly scene lasted a minute. Less than. But less than a minute of that kind of crazy talk was enough to smack the smiles off any crowd. For the next hundred twenty seconds I worked hard as ever, tried to grab the people back and leave something resembling an audience more than a wake for Eddie to face. I did it. Barely. I got offstage to confused and smattered clapping.
Jack was furious—me not only bombing on my opening night, but turning his joint into a morgue—until Sid pulled him aside, told him the bits I'd done on my father weren't bits. He was dead for real. It didn't take any of the heat out of Jack, but what was he going to do? He knew if Frank found out he was giving me trouble because my pop had passed, he would get what he gave me in spades.
While Sid and Jack made peace, I sat, sick and getting sicker by the second. Feelings I'd been trying to shove aside were hitting me hard. Feelings I wanted nothing to do with. Regret and remorse and sorrow and …
And what I wanted, what I needed was to drink or gamble or lose myself in Las Vegas, in the swamp of all the sin it had to offer. But the situation of the day prescribed that I sit backstage in my dressing room far from the lily whites. Sit, or go back to Westside.
I thought about calling Tommy.
She'd been busy. I'd been busy. It'd been a while, not long, but too long, since we'd last talked. I knew just hearing her voice would make things if not all right, at least better.
I wanted to call Tommy.
But Tommy was working on her record. In my frame of mind I was afraid of what kind of crazy emotions might come spilling out of me over the telephone. And after a week, two weeks—more than that—of not speaking with her, then hitting her with the news of my father, breaking down to her the way I'd done onstage—weak and weeping—what would that do to her? What would that do to her when she was trying to put together the biggest break of her career? When I'd done everything I could to get her to Detroit, why should I burden her with my craziness?
“Because she's your girl,” Sid told me. “And when people love each other, they share with each other, their pain and their strength.”
Sid was going eloquent, the truth he spoke earned at the expense of his own loss.
Backstage, through the walls, I could hear Eddie swell to the end of “Cindy, Oh Cindy.” I could hear the audience applaud, whistle. He had gotten them back. He had used whatever magic he owned to make a room full of strangers love him.
Quietly, mostly to myself: “So many times I wanted him dead. I mean it. Not just that I wished some badness on him. I wanted my father to die. But now …”
“I know you must feel awful as hell, Jackie, but that'll pass. You've got to know, you've got to believe, wherever your father is now, he knows you love him. He knows, and he forgives you.”
My head rose. I looked at Sid, gave a hollow laugh at his misunderstanding. “You're reading me wrong. All those times I wanted him dead, and he's got to wait until opening night in Vegas to finally do it. That son of a bitch. Dead, and he's still messing with me.”
IRONIC. TRITE. Don't know which. Ironic, trite, me thinking Pop had waited until my opening night in Vegas to die. I gave him too much credit. He couldn't've been that slick if Hollywood'd written the script.The way it was: Years of drug abuse had weakened him. He had a … a seizure that hit him same as a stroke, left him mute and immobile. It took days—puddled silent, motionless on the floor of the apartment—for Pop to slowly, agonizingly, starve to death. Days more before his body was found. The reek of decay the only thing that made his passing even noticeable. From OD to discovery was over a week's time altogether. Over one week's time. Opening night in Vegas wasn't when he'd died, just when I got the word he was no longer alive.
Between Sid and Jack they were able to come up with an act to cover my remaining days on the bill. There wasn't much hard about finding someone who wanted to work two weeks at the Sands.
Nothing but a sack of mixed-up emotions, Sid got me back to New York. Grandma Mae, as she'd done years earlier with my mother, took care of most of the funeral arrangements, which, different than when I buried my mom, included finding enough mourners to give my father the semblance of having mattered to anyone. Mae put the word out she was cooking up a spread for the after-interment meal. That got bodies into the church.
The casket was closed. I didn't want to see my father. I didn't think anyone else cared to see him. I knew no one wanted to see his hands, fingers scraped raw to the bone from uselessly, feebly clawing at the floorboards for help as, day by day, he died.
Sid brought Fran by the services. The way he told it, she insisted on coming. She gave condolences. Despite knowing what kind of man Pop was, Frances came off as being truly sad, truly sincere.
Taking my hand, squeezing it: “It's all right, Jackie.”
I knew she wasn't talking about my father. I knew she was talking about me being absent from her Sullivan shot. And in those few words, “It's all right, Jackie,” she told me that no matter what I'd done, no matter what I'd done to her, nothing had changed for us. Just as before, same as always, she was my friend.
THE FRANKS—Sinatra and Costello—had heard about my father passing. After my performance at the Sands, they couldn't help but get the word. Both sent over wreaths to the funeral, some cash to cover any expenses I had.
Frank—Sinatra—phoned up with sympathy and support. We talked some, me hardly believing he would have time to waste on me. But he didn't seem to be rushing me off the phone: How you doing kid great I gotta go. Getting past my father, he talked leisurely, asked me what I had going on. I told him that in a couple of weeks time Sid had me booked into Slapsie Maxie's, my first ever show on the coast, that town west of Vegas where all the idiots lived.
Frank laughed at that. He gave me congrats, told me Maxie's was a hot joint—the audience most times peppered with industry types. A good show there could really break things for me. He added, as I would be in Hollywood anyway, I should run over to Ciro's and check out Smoky.
“Smoky?”
“Sammy. He's headlining with the trio. Kid puts on a swinger of a show.”
I told Frank that would be great but had heard when Sammy did shows they wer
e strictly SRO. Getting in was as good as impossible.
“Don't you worry about it, pallie. You just make sure you get yourself over to Ciro's.”
Frank had spoken.
CONTRARY TO MOST PEOPLE who'd just buried family, hot on the heels of my father's funeral I turned into Charlie Party. I made the rounds to every club and nightspot, every hole that offered some combo of music or liquor or any other legal distraction. I filled every minute of the day with dance and drink, because when I left a minute open, it was the minute I thought of Pop and the thoughts were lousy.
It wasn't fair.
He hurt me. He degraded me. I didn't care he was dead. I had no reason to care he was dead … and I felt wrong for it. Guilt is what they called it. It seeped through me, and bop and booze did nothing to sop it away.
Get out.
I had to get out. Out of the old apartment I'd been in too long, out of Harlem. Out of the life I used to know. I found some new digs, Midtown digs, quick as I could and packed my belongings. My essentials and nothing more. No mementos. No keepsakes. No nothing of my father's. All that got sent to the garbage man. No more baggage slowing me down. I'd buried my father and now I wanted to bury my past in the next hole over.
The day prior to me moving out. Some last-minute boxing-up getting done. Li'l Mo came 'round the apartment. Not having made the funeral, it had been a good few years since I'd seen him, the last time being when I'd quit the moving company and he gave me looks and attitude like I'd been making a play for his sister.
I opened the door and there he was. He looked different. More than just the years. He looked serious. Very serious, but not as if over one thing in particular. He looked as if seriousness were just an emotion he carried 'round with him constantly, same as a watch or a wallet.
I smiled when I saw him, and he sort of did the same. We hugged awkwardly and passed back and forth remarks about how good the other looked.
I invited Li'l Mo in.
He accepted.
Then we kind of stood around for a moment or more. That quick we ran out of things to say to each other.
