by John Irving
Seeking to change the subject, Jack said he admired how thin Gwyneth Paltrow was—to which The Wurtz replied: “She looks in need of intravenous feeding.”
When you’ve seen too many movies, time stands still; no one grows old or dies. Miss Wurtz mistook Anthony Minghella for Peter Lorre. (“I thought Peter Lorre was dead,” Caroline would tell Jack the next day. “He hasn’t made a movie in years.” To which Jack could only think to himself, True!)
Looking worriedly around, The Wurtz announced that a party of this size—and with so many celebrities—should have more than one bouncer; she thought that Ben Affleck was the sole bouncer.
Judi Dench was there, which prompted Caroline to confess to Jack that she’d always thought Judi Dench would be an inspired choice to play Mrs. McQuat—should anyone ever make a movie about The Gray Ghost.
“A movie about Mrs. McQuat?” Jack said, stunned.
“You know she was a combat nurse, Jack. The trouble with her breathing was because she’d been gassed—I’m not sure with what.”
Thus Jack was doomed to think of Judi Dench as The Gray Ghost, gassed but come back to life—a troubling thought.
Jack kept giving Wild Bill Vanvleck the eye—the eye that meant, “Isn’t it time to leave?”
But Wild Bill was nowhere near ready to go. He was back in Hollywood, reborn as the director of an Academy Award–nominated film. Jack didn’t begrudge The Mad Dutchman his triumph; The Remake Monster had admirably restrained himself in directing The Slush-Pile Reader. Jack had always trusted Vanvleck as a craftsman, and Wild Bill had stuck to the craftsmanlike part of his business; this time, he’d left the parody alone.
After they finally left the Miramax party, Jack and Miss Wurtz went out to dinner with Richard Gladstein and his wife and Vanvleck and his much younger anchorwoman, whose name was Anneke. Outside the Regent Beverly Wilshire, the protesters were still chanting and holding up posters of male and female reproductive organs—penises and thingamajigs galore. Miss Wurtz became incensed all over again.
“If you don’t like pornography, stop thinking about it!” Caroline said sharply out the window of the limousine to a baffled-looking man in a lime-green short-sleeved shirt; he was holding a poster depicting a naked child, above whom the intimidating shadow of a grown-up loomed.
It was a good thing The Wurtz wasn’t riding in the limo with Hank Long and Muffy and Milly Ascheim. Jack found out later that Milly had put down her window and shouted at the protesters: “Oh, go home and watch a movie and beat off! You’ll feel better!”
“Goodness, it’s already Sunday morning,” Miss Wurtz declared, when she and Jack were having breakfast at the pool at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills. “And your story has bogged down in Oslo, as I recall. It’s probably best not to try to imitate Ingrid Moe’s speech impediment. Just tell me what she said the way you would normally say it, Jack. The speech impediment is too distracting.”
Not surprisingly, Jack would elect to tell the story in this fashion when he told it to Dr. García, too. He made no effort to render an approximation of Ingrid’s awful affliction. (Knowing Dr. García, she would have referred to any effort on Jack’s part to re-create the speech impediment as an interjection.)
Thus Jack described Ingrid Moe’s vision of Hell as if it were his personal account of an actual visit to the place. He paid particular attention to Ingrid’s lack of forgiveness for his mother, which stood in such dramatic contrast to the fact that his father forgave his mother for everything—even the Amsterdam part of the story, which Jack was a long way from getting to on that Sunday morning in Beverly Hills. He felt certain that he and Miss Wurtz wouldn’t get to Amsterdam—at least not before the Academy Awards, which would commence later that afternoon.
Having been to the Oscars once before, Jack knew they were in for a long night. Miss Wurtz, wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat and smeared from head to toe with more sunscreen than a naked newborn, was pressing Jack for details about Helsinki. She was clearly impatient with Oslo and Ingrid Moe, although William’s appearance at the Hotel Bristol had thrilled her. The Wurtz was especially pleased to learn that William had not cut his hair.
“William had beautiful hair. You have his hair, Jack,” Caroline said, taking his hand. “I’m so glad you haven’t cut your hair short, the way everyone else does nowadays. Frankly, it doesn’t matter whether long hair for men is in or out. If you have good hair, you should grow it.”
The Helsinki part of the story took what remained of their private time that Sunday. Erica Steinberg had thoughtfully arranged for someone to come to the hotel to do Miss Wurtz’s hair. “Whatever do means,” The Wurtz whispered to Jack, before she went off with Erica after lunch. “I’m keeping it gray—that’s all I know. It’s too late for me to be a blonde—not that there aren’t enough blondes already, especially out here.”
Jack went to the gym, which was next to the pool. Sigourney Weaver was there. (He came up to her collarbone.) “Good luck tonight, Jack,” she said.
That was when he began to get nervous; that was when he realized that it meant everything to him to win.
“It’s just possible, Jack,” Dr. García would tell him later, “that winning the Oscar was some small consolation for what you’ve lost.”
She didn’t mean only his father. She didn’t mean only Emma, either. She meant Michele Maher, notwithstanding Dr. García’s assessment of the “unrealistic expectations” Jack had heaped upon Michele; she meant Jack’s false memories, the childhood his mother had fabricated for him, which he’d lost, too. (Dr. García also meant his mom, of course.)
Erica rode in the stretch limo with Jack and Miss Wurtz to the Shrine Auditorium. They saw the protesters from the night before—the same righteous faces, the identical posters. The limo was moving so slowly that, this time, Jack could count them. There were nine anti-pornography people altogether—not that this would prevent Entertainment Weekly, in its post-Oscar issue, from describing the “scores” of protesters ringing the auditorium.
Miss Wurtz looked wonderful. She wore a long, slender gown with a Queen Anne neckline; it was the same silver color as her hair. Jack’s all-black Armani, which included a black shirt as well as the black tuxedo and the black tie, made him resemble a shrunken gangster. He’d lost the twenty pounds he’d put on for the Jimmy Stronach role—he was looking lean and mean, as Michele Maher had once observed.
They weren’t on the red carpet more than twenty minutes before Erica steered them in the direction of the obligatory Joan Rivers interview. Jack was dreading Miss Wurtz’s answer to Joan’s predictable question regarding “who” she was wearing. But rather than say, “Jack’s father gave it to me when we were lovers,” Caroline answered: “The dress is personal, a gift from a onetime admirer.” That was perfect, Jack thought.
Joan Rivers knew all about the third-grade connection in advance; it seemed that everyone in the media knew. “What sort of a student was Jack?” she asked Miss Wurtz.
“Even as a child, Jack was as convincing as a woman as he was as a man,” Caroline answered. “He just needed to know who his audience was.”
“And who is your audience, Jack Burns?” Joan Rivers asked him.
“My father is my audience of one,” he told her, “but I suppose I’ve picked up a few other fans along the way.” Jack looked into the camera and said, for the first time in his life: “Hi, Dad.” He noticed that Miss Wurtz was smiling shyly at the camera.
After that, Jack couldn’t get off the red carpet fast enough. He was a wreck. (He almost called Dr. García.)
“Calm down,” Caroline said. “It’s not necessary for you to say anything to William. He just wants to see you—he wants, more than anyone, to see you win.”
There was a lot of waiting at the Academy Awards. Erica took Jack and Miss Wurtz inside the auditorium, where they waited for an eternity. Jack drank too much Evian and had to pee—this was before Billy Crystal was carried onstage like a baby by a motorcycle cop in sunglasses and a w
hite helmet, and the evening officially began.
Jack had a sixth-row aisle seat. All the nominees had aisle seats; Richard Gladstein sat in the aisle seat in front of Jack, and Wild Bill Vanvleck had the one behind him. Miss Wurtz was seated between Jack and Harvey Weinstein. Caroline didn’t remember who Harvey was—Jack had introduced them twice at the party the previous night—but she knew he was someone important because there was a television camera pointed at him from start to finish. For reasons that would remain unclear to Jack, Miss Wurtz deduced that Harvey was a famous prizefighter—a former heavyweight champ. (Quite possibly she’d overheard someone saying how much Harvey enjoyed a good fight. Jack could think of no other explanation.)
The Best Supporting Actor award was announced fairly early in the program. When Michael Caine won, Jack knew it would be a long wait for the writing awards, which were near the end of the evening. Almost no one sat through the entire program—especially not if you’d had as much Evian as Jack. But you had to pick your pee-break pretty carefully; they would let you leave or go back to your seat only during the TV commercials.
Miss Wurtz became enraged at those award-winners who overspent their allotted forty-five seconds for their acceptance speeches. Pedro Almodóvar really pissed her off; in accepting the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film for All About My Mother, Pedro went on for so long that Antonio Banderas had to pull him offstage.
“Buenas noches!” Miss Wurtz called out to Almodóvar.
They took their pee-break—that is, they took Jack’s pee-break, since he was the one in dire need of it—during the presentation of the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award. This year it went to Warren Beatty. Caroline was cross with Jack for causing her to miss it. Miss Wurtz had once had a crush on Warren Beatty. “Nothing compared to what I felt for your father, Jack, but it was a crush just the same.”
By the time they were back in their seats, Jack had to pee again. He whispered to Miss Wurtz that if he didn’t win, he would have to pee in his Evian bottle. (Jack was counting on there being a men’s room backstage—if he could get there.)
Finally, the writing awards came; thankfully the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay preceded the award for Best Original Screenplay. Kevin Spacey was the lone presenter. Annette Bening was supposed to join him onstage, but she was arguably too pregnant to risk the short trip from her seat. Spacey made a joke about how she was “due to go into production herself.” He said further: “I could not ask her to climb stairs, unless of course she wins the Oscar. Then she’ll climb up here on all fours.”
Jack took this as an unfavorable omen for his chances to win. Given his night in Helsinki with the pregnant aerobics instructor, the very idea of Annette Bening on all fours in her condition filled him with remorse. But it was only seconds after that bad moment when Kevin Spacey said, “And the Oscar goes to—” Jack didn’t hear the rest because Miss Wurtz was shrieking.
“Think of how happy William is for you, Jack,” she shouted in his ear, between kisses. Of course the camera was on them, and Jack was aware of The Wurtz looking past him to the camera; she knew exactly where the camera was because it had been pointed at Harvey Weinstein, the former prizefighter, all night. Jack was on his feet—Richard was kissing him, Wild Bill, too. Harvey crushed Miss Wurtz and Jack in one embrace. When Jack stepped into the aisle, he saw Caroline blow a kiss to the camera—her lips forming the name William as she did so.
Jack took the Oscar from Kevin Spacey and spoke for only thirty-five of his allotted forty-five seconds; in a small way, this made up for Pedro Almodóvar thanking the Virgin of Guadalupe, the Virgin of La Cabeza, the Sacred Heart of Mary, and all the rest of the living and the dead. Of course Jack thanked his third-grade teacher, Miss Caroline Wurtz, because he knew that the camera would go to her if he did. He thanked Mr. Ramsey, too, and naturally he thanked Richard, and Wild Bill, and everyone at Miramax. Most of all, Jack thanked Emma Oastler for everything she’d done for him, and—largely because he knew how angry it would make the blonde—he thanked Leslie Oastler for her contributions to the screenplay. Lastly, Jack thanked Michele Maher for staying up late to watch him. (In his heart, he hoped Michele’s sort-of boyfriend was watching, too. Hearing Jack thank Michele might make the boyfriend jealous and lead to their breaking up.)
Jack might have used the full forty-five seconds if he hadn’t had to pee so badly. When he left the stage with Kevin Spacey, they passed Mel Gibson coming on—Mel was the presenter for the Best Original Screenplay award, which would go to Alan Ball for American Beauty. Tom Cruise, a fellow former wrestler, tried to wrestle the Oscar away from Jack backstage; the way Jack had to pee, that bit of friendly fooling around could have ended badly. Clint Eastwood spoke to Jack. (He said: “Way to go, kid,” or words to that effect. Jack knew he couldn’t trust his memory of moments like that—the ones that mattered too much.)
Jack was still seeking the whereabouts of the men’s room when Alan Ball came offstage with his Oscar, and Jack congratulated him. (“Good job, mate,” Jack thought Mel Gibson said, but had Mel been speaking to Jack or to Alan?) After a night of waiting, everything seemed over so quickly.
At last Jack found the place he was looking for. His relief turned to awkwardness almost immediately, however, because he had never been to a men’s room with an Academy Award before. Leslie Oastler had attempted to diminish Oscar by describing him as a “gold, bald, naked man holding what is alleged to be his sword,” but in Jack’s estimation, an Oscar was longer than a porn star’s penis and a whole lot heavier. Jack wouldn’t recommend peeing with one.
It was an experience in childlike clumsiness that reminded him of Marja-Liisa’s four-year-old peeing in his parka pocket at the Hotel Torni. Jack couldn’t quite get the hang of it, so to speak. He tried pinning the Oscar under one arm, but that didn’t work very well. If you’ve just won your first Academy Award, fully understanding that you might never win another one, you’re not inclined to put it down on the floor of a public men’s room—nor would you attempt to balance it on the urinal by maintaining perilous little contact with Oscar’s sleek head by means of your chin.
Jack was glad he was alone in the men’s room; there was no one to observe his embarrassing struggle—or so he thought. Suddenly he saw, at the opposite end of the row of urinals, that there was someone else there. The fellow appeared to have finished with his business; no one could help but notice how Jack was failing to do his.
The man was broad-shouldered, with a weightlifter’s crafted body and an unbreakable-looking jaw. Jack didn’t recognize him right away, nor did he remember that the former bodybuilder had been a presenter; from Jack’s perspective, the opposite end of the row of urinals seemed a football field away. But Jack had no trouble identifying the big man’s inimitable Austrian accent.
“Would you like me to give you a hand with that?” Arnold Schwarzenegger asked.
“No, thank you—I can manage,” Jack answered.
“Goodness, I hope he meant he would give you a hand with the Oscar!” Miss Wurtz said later, when Jack told her the story. Well, of course Arnold had meant the Oscar—he was just being nice! (That the future governor of California might have been offering to hold Jack’s penis was unthinkable!)
It was bedlam backstage. At the next television commercial, Jack went back to his seat in the auditorium; he didn’t want to leave Miss Wurtz unattended. She might ask Harvey Weinstein about his greatest fights, Jack was thinking. Or, God forbid, what if there were a power outage and Miss Wurtz suffered an uncontrollable flashback to her experience in the bat-cave exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum? But by then the evening was winding down; The Slush-Pile Reader had won its only Oscar. It was American Beauty’s night, but it was Jack’s night and Emma’s night, too.
Miss Wurtz was perplexed that she could see no evidence of dancing at the Board of Governors Ball—the dinner party at the Shrine Auditorium after the Academy Awards. No amount of explaining could convince her that ball was an acceptable description o
f the occasion, but what did Jack care? He was happy.
They ate dinner at a table with Meryl Streep, who’d brought her daughter. Jack could see the wheels of The Wurtz’s mind spinning: here was that woman from Sophie’s Choice with an actual, living child! Jack told Erica that he thought they should leave and go to another party before Caroline committed whatever she was imagining to words.
They went to the Vanity Fair party at Morton’s next; Erica got them there somehow. Jack remembered how long he and Emma had waited to get into that party the night he’d been nominated but didn’t win the Oscar. It makes a difference when you win. Their limo driver waved the gold, bald, naked man out the window and they were swiftly ushered through the traffic. Hugh Hefner (among others) appeared to have arrived before them; probably Hugh had come early because he hadn’t been at the Shrine. The Playboy founding publisher had those twins with him—Sandy and Mandy.
Miss Wurtz was more incensed at Hef than she’d been at the anti-pornography people. “What does that dirty old man think he’s doing with those young girls?” Caroline said to Erica and Jack.
Rob Lowe and Mike Meyers and Dennis Miller were all talking about something, but they stopped the second Jack got near them. When that happened to him around men, Jack couldn’t help but think that they’d been talking about him as a girl. As it happened, Jack was on his way to the men’s room again—although this time he’d left his Academy Award with Erica and Miss Wurtz.
They went next to the Miramax party at the Polo Lounge in the Beverly Hills Hotel. Jack knew that Richard and Wild Bill would be there; he just wanted to be with friends. Miss Wurtz once more avoided making any prizefighter references to Harvey Weinstein.
Caroline had a little too much champagne. Jack had a beer—a green bottle of Heineken, which looked especially green alongside the gold of his Oscar. (He couldn’t remember when he’d last had a whole beer—maybe when he was a college student.)
