Knock Wood

by Bergen, Candice

  We sat, in silence, watching the sun set; close by, the sound of chirping turned our heads to two birds perched side by side in a tree, wiry bird feet clamped fast to a branch, nuzzling and preening, smoothing and ruffling, as birds do. My father looked at me and smiled. “Look, Candy, look at the two lovebirds billing and cooing. Do you want to ’bill and coo’?”

  Something told me I didn’t want to look. Whatever those birds were doing, it was none of my business. I did not want to know any more about birds right then. Lovebirds in particular. I quickly looked away.

  “Do you know what it means to ’bill and coo’?” my father asked me. Uh-oh. Eyes fastened on my feet dangling below me, seeing my saddle shoes for the first time, a speck of white polish on the navy blue, yet beautiful, pristine; Dee did a good job on my saddle shoes.

  “Candy?” There he was again.

  No, I don’t. I don’t know what it means to “bill and coo.” But somewhere I did. Somehow, I had an idea what it meant to “bill and coo,” and what’s more, I was afraid I wanted to do it with my father.

  “ ’Bill and coo’ means to hug and kiss and that is what the lovebirds do,” he said.

  I knew it. Tiny six-year-old heart thumping, wildly beating in my breast, a sickly smile of terror twisted on my face, intensely absorbed now in the soft folds of my socks.

  Can we go home please? Can we just forget the birds? This is hard here. This is too hard for six. I am too short to understand. I am in over my head.

  Dear God, how I must have loved my Dad.

  My sixth Christmas I made my debut as a guest on the “Edgar Bergen Show,” appearing in a skit with my father and Charlie. My father rehearsed the lines with me in his study and again in his car as we headed down Sunset to the studio for the read-through, where I proudly took my seat at the long table in the rehearsal room with my father and the writers and the other guests. “Now remember, Candy,” my father warned me sternly, “wait till it’s quiet to say your lines. Don’t step on the laughs.”

  The night of the show, my hair brushed and burnished, taffeta ribbons tied crisply and tight, I hovered backstage, faint, heart fluttering. It was my first time to be up there with the two of them, to make my mark, and as the program began, I waited for Charlie to give me my cue.

  “And now, here are Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy… . Our guests tonight are Mimi Benzell and Candy Bergen.…”(Applause)

  EB: Ah, Charlie, my dear, sweet little Charlie, this is going to be the happiest Christmas of my life.

  CHARLIE: Oh? You mean you’re not giving out any presents?

  EB: No, Charlie, this is an occasion for which I’ve waited six years, ever since my little daughter, Candy, was born.

  CHARLIE: You mean you’re sending her to work?

  EB: No, Charlie, tonight Candy’s going to be on this show and that’s why I’m so happy. You know, she’s the apple of my eye.

  CHARLIE: Yes, of course, but don’t forget, I’m the cabbage of your bankbook.

  EB: Charlie, I hope you’re not jealous of Candy.

  CHARLIE: Oh no, Bergen, I welcome a little competition. Ha, what have I got to worry about? Let the kid have her chance.

  There it was, and someone squeezed my shoulder, crumpling my puffed sleeve, and I walked out on stage to my first burst of applause, stepping up to my little low microphone alongside my father and Charlie. Reeling at the rows of faces smiling up from the darkness that spread out below us—pleased, expectant, friendly—I recited my well-learned lines with considerable poise and polish—a perfect little ham, a wind-up doll—a dummy. A daughter determined to make good.

  CANDY: Hello, Daddy, hi, Charlie. (Applause)

  CHARLIE: That’s enough, folks. That’s enough. Let’s not let things get out of hand. Goodbye, little girl, get outta here, goodbye.

  EB: Now, now, please, Charlie. Candy, my own little Candy, tonight is the happiest night of my life. Tonight, my little girl steps out into the footlights of life… .

  CANDY: Down, Daddy, down. …

  CHARLIE: Hey, this kid’s getting laughs. Watch it, kid, remember—there’s only one star on this show.

  CANDY: Yes, Mortimer is clever.

  CHARLIE: Well, that does it. This kid’s gotta go.

  CANDY: But I want to be on the show, Charlie. I want to be just like Daddy.

  CHARLIE: Just like Daddy, huh? No ambition, eh?

  CB: Now, Charlie, you don’t mind my being on the show, do you?

  CM: No, Candy, not at all. After all, you’re growing up and it’s about time you helped me support your old man.

  CB: You shouldn’t have said that, Charlie. Daddy resents the idea that you support him.

  CM: Does he deny it?

  CB: No, but he resents it.

  CM: How do you like that? A trial-sized Lucille Ball.

  My father had trained me well. Not only was I letter-perfect, I also waited for and got the laughs, commenting casually to him later, “Gee, Daddy, I had to wait a long time.”

  Pretty heady stuff. Some people have early success to overcome, but six is peaking pretty young. All that attention. All that acclaim. Appearing onstage with my father.

  We were a team, my father and I, like Fred and Ginger, Irene and Vernon Castle. A dazzling duo. Didn’t he declare his love for me on network radio? For all America to hear? Didn’t he say it was the happiest night of his life?

  Without question, it was the happiest night of mine. I would be hard-pressed to find another half so fine. I wished that I could be Charlie, always up there with my father. I wished I could take his place in the sun. When Charlie protested as my father put him in the trunk after each show—“Oh please, Bergen, don’t lock me up! Please help me! Bergie, not the trunk!”—till the key clicked in the lock and the cries died out, I wondered if there was a chance my father might leave him in that trunk, might forget him or lose him or something. Then I would have to fill in. It would just be me performing for my father, making him proud.

  My father might forget a great many things but he was not about to forget Charlie. None of us would ever forget Charlie.

  The Christmas show was such a success that I was brought back (by popular demand) for an Easter skit, in which Charlie and I are on an egg hunt in the Enchanted Forest when along comes my father as Prince Charming:

  EB: How do you do. I’m searching for my Fairy Princess but I seem to have lost my way. Can you help me? I am Prince Charming.

  CHARLIE: I know this is the Enchanted Forest, but this is ridiculous.

  EB: No, but I am Prince Charming. Can’t you see—I’m young, dashing and handsome?

  CB: Gee, Daddy—aren’t you glad we’re not on television? (Laughter. Applause.)

  CHARLIE: I’m beginning to like this girl.

  I got the laughs, I read my lines, but there was more that I wanted to say. In the script I made fun of my father as Prince Charming, but that’s not how I would have written it. I would have said, “You haven’t lost your way—I can help you. I’m your Fairy Princess—it’s me! I’m here!”

  In the years when I was a child, my parents traveled frequently—broadcasts from the East Coast, appearances abroad—but, once home, my father saved weekends for me. Overnight bags in hand, Mom and Dee waving us off, we’d climb into his car and take off together for the tiny airport snugly nestled in the orange groves in the Valley.

  In the particular romance that men have with machines, my father kept airplanes the way some men keep mistresses—never more than one at a time, changing old familiar favorites for newer, flashier models, approaching them with a titillating blend of fear, fascination and reverence, never comprehending what made them tick or their engines turn over. But he had made his peace with the Wild Blue Yonder and negotiated its skies respectfully, taking off tentatively, even tensely, giving one the sense that this particular union between man and machine was somewhat shaky—that they did not quite move as One. Not a reckless man by nature nor one to overstep his abilities, he timidly took his
place in the heavens and always seemed grateful to land.

  Kicking the blocks away from the wheels, the airport attendants would push the dun-colored plane from its hangar, revealing the silhouette of Charlie neatly stenciled, like a birthmark, on its side. While the mechanic made last-minute inspections, my father would circle the plane slowly, running his hand along the wings like a practiced physician, enthralled with his patient, feeling for new dings or dents, moving the wing and tail flaps, eying the ailerons. When the plane had passed its preflight, we hopped gingerly onto the wing and folded ourselves inside. Seat belts and earphones on, we waited as the mechanic wrenched the propeller around, cranking it till it caught, giving a thumbs-up sign to my father who called out, “Clear props!”

  “Props clear!”

  “Contact!”

  And he started the ignition as the prop spun furiously and the engine sputtered into life. Anxiously ticking off his checklist, he taxied away from the tiny tower, waving goodbye to the mechanics. Bringing the small radio mouthpiece to his lips, he spoke into it, “This is 6997 Charlie, request clearance for takeoff. Over.”

  “Roger, Edgar, we read you. 6997 Charlie, you are clear for takeoff. Over and out.”

  He nudged the throttle, boosting the sound of the engine; his feet moved firmly on the pedals, his hand rested lightly on the stick, and the propeller pushed us forward. We chugged down the dusty runway—faster, faster—picking up speed, suddenly lifting off and hurtling out over the tidy dark-green bunches of citrus, higher still, as row upon row became a vast, wide-wale weave—and out—soaring now to the tight, high-pitched hum of the engine that carried us up and over the spring snow of the San Bernardino Mountains and beyond.

  Propped up on his briefcase and stacks of flight manuals so I could see over the nose, I listened in nervous excitement as he explained the dials and gauges to me, showed me the navigation points and said, “Okay, you take it for a while now, Monstro, head for that mountain and stay on course.” And I did.

  Each weekend our headings were different and our course changed. We rode donkeys down the Grand Canyon, fished for trout in Yosemite, mined ore in Nevada, and went on breakfast rides in Palm Springs.

  We touched down at a dozen different runways—some of asphalt, some of dirt—taxiing down deserted airstrips with old, dog-eared windsocks, up to small-town adobe airports or log-cabin towers. Wherever we landed people greeted us gladly, recognizing either Charlie’s profile on the plane or my father in it. “Well, hello, Edgar, where’s Charlie?” they inevitably asked and my father answered good-naturedly, “I’m afraid Charlie couldn’t come. He had to stay home—he’s behind in his studies. I brought my daughter, Candy, instead.”

  Usually we shared a room together, and my father, as best he could, dressed me and braided my hair. On Sunday afternoons we’d arrive home, tired and dusty, my mother and Dee waiting to greet us, gasping at my lopsided braids and mismatched socks and untied sneakers.

  A lesson in ventriloquism

  Weekends with my father: my father who flew and was famous. Known and loved wherever we went. Known for giving life—breathing it into blocks of wood, sending blood through lifeless glass-eyed bodies. Flying and famous and giving life, making magic. Like God, sort of, or Superman, it seemed to me then.

  And he’d be off on another trip—this time with the Other Woman, traveling with my mother to Europe or New York. Gamely I’d resume patrolling the hills alone with my dogs after school, having dinner with Dee. Relentlessly cheerful, infallibly good-hearted, Dee was the constant in my life, racing briskly about, blond ponytail bobbing behind her, seeing to and looking after.

  For ten years, while my parents traveled, she slept in the bed next to mine in the nursery, our days ending in darkness as eyes wide, by the glow of the radio dial, we lay facing each other, breathlessly listening to “The Lone Ranger” and “Inner Sanctum.” Hers was the face I’d see last in the evenings, the first smile I’d see when I woke. She got me up, put me to bed, combed and washed and dried me. There was little for me she didn’t do; she was so much a part of my days and nights that, on her rare evenings off, sleep would not come unless she came with it and I’d wait up to hug her goodnight. I loved her completely and occasionally abused her, skittering around the fuzzy boundaries of the child-governess pact, challenging her on the grounds of illegitimate authority. While counting on her complete availability, taking her constancy for granted, I depended on her totally.

  On Sunday evenings at six, in my parents’ absence, Dee and I would pull our chairs up to the Philco console, turn on the radio and listen to what was now “The Edgar Bergen Show—with Charlie McCarthy,” carried to millions on waves of ether. Edgar Bergen—that’s my Dad.

  Sometimes my father would take me with him to his office on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. He owned a cluster of old Spanish baroque buildings that gave onto a tiled courtyard with olive trees and elephant ears and a wishing well. His suite of offices was upstairs over the patio, and when it was still, you could hear the soft splashing of water from the moist, mossy bucket into the stone well. The inside of the old oak bucket and the bottom of the well were thickly dappled with pennies and nickels pitched there by people gambling on their future with small change. There was a restaurant in the patio, and my father and I ate at a table near the well whose wishes caught the sun in bright copper flashes.

  After scaling the steep tiled steps of the office—steps that, in later years, my father would take with difficulty and some caution—a smiling secretary, efficient and overweight, would heave open the heavy oak door and cheerfully escort us inside.

  It may have been called an office, but, once inside, it was more like a shrine, an anteroom for a sovereign, a high head of state—or low head of state, in this case, the object of worship being a dummy three and a half feet tall. A large portrait of Charlie hung in the foyer, deftly done in charcoal and pastels; neat rows of framed photographs extended from either side like wings of honor guards: Charlie shaking hands with Harry Truman, Eleanor Roosevelt, King Gustav of Sweden, Winston Churchill, Marilyn Monroe, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Mae West and W.C. Fields, and seeming easily more important than any of them.

  A McCarthy family crest featuring a top hat, monocle and pine tree emblazoned on a shield was suspended over memorabilia glittering in large glass showcases: a special wooden Oscar with a movable mouth, star-shaped gold decorations on grosgrain ribbon from the King of Sweden, radio awards, a gilded, mounted microphone, endless keys to as many cities, and, shining in the center, a golden, jewel-encrusted scepter. On lower shelves, Charlie radios and Charlie watches were displayed alongside Charlie and Mortimer toy tin cars. Charlie’s head grinned on enameled compacts, teaspoons, tie tacks, cuff links and comics. There were silver cigarette cases inlaid with the famous top-hatted profile, tiny gold Charlie charms with heads that swiveled over ruby boutonnieres, and crisp stacks of dollar bills with Mortimer’s head on one side, Charlie’s on the other, proclaiming in a federal flourish, “E PLURIBUS MOW’EM DOWN’EM.” This was no ordinary office.

  My father dictated letters on stationery embossed with Charlie’s insignia (his profile in top hat encircled in blue), rewrote radio scripts, held meetings, and signed checks—an activity that seemed to exhaust him—in his corner office. An abstract painting of a block of wood with monocle and top hat and a radio tower sending signals in an empty landscape hung on the wall facing him, and two lamps lit the bookcase behind his desk. The lamp bases were fashioned from porcelain figurines—one of Charlie stretching a taut bow and arrow, taking aim at the figurine of Mortimer, who faced him nobly across the shelf, straw hat in hand crossed over his heart, an apple on his head. The bookshelves below were lined with volumes on vaudeville, manuals on magic, medical textbooks, investment guides, the evolution of the steam engine, the romance of the railroad, the age of aviation, the complete works of Shakespeare and biographies of Houdini and W.C. Fields.

  In an adjoining empty office, I, too, dictated letters to
invisible secretaries, rewrote imaginary scripts and held high-level meetings alone. I was always eager and excited to come with my father to the office, proud to be admitted to his world of dreams and doings, privileged to be made an honorary partner of the family firm—Bergen and Bergen.

  Sometimes I played at Charlie’s desk: a sleek, scaled-down model in pale-blond wood with his nameplate on it. What I lacked in authority as the desk’s rightful owner, I gained in the assurance that he would not arrive unexpectedly. One afternoon as I fiddled happily there, giddy with a seven-year-old’s delusions of grandeur, my father, finished with business, came out of his office. “Okay, Monstro, let’s go home,” he announced, patting me with a clean, smooth hand. My father had nice hands, elegant hands, with a platinum cat’s-eye ring on the left fourth finger. He often called me “Monstro” (there was a whale of the same name in the Disney film Pinocchio) in that deceptively casual way that parents address their children.

  Waving goodbye to the secretary and the bookkeeper, we marched down the stairs, across the courtyard, and into the long, dark tunnel that led to the garage. Doors opened off the tunnel, leading to additional, smaller offices I had never seen, one of which my father kept as a storeroom.

  That day we stopped at the door in the cool, dark tunnel while my father fished for the key, explaining he’d left something inside. He unlocked the door and we walked in. The room inside was dark and airless, shapes and forms just visible in the dim gray light—a series of shapes suspended at eye level, the forms familiar like small, bulky bodies.

  My father found the light and the forms took focus—becoming bodies, in fact—an entire row of them, clothed, in full finery, hanging, headless, from a rack. They were Charlie’s bodies, I could tell that from the costumes: his traditional white tie and tails, Napoleon’s full-dress uniform, Sherlock Holmes’s tweed suit and cape, monogrammed pajamas and silk dressing gown, all impeccably tailored onto trim little torsos whose legs dangled limply in tiny, shiny shoes.