If only Pat Boone could make the past like he used to. If only . . . since they don’t make the future like they used too, either. All you have is one snapshot moment, when all of time coalesces.
Like this: You stare at photographs of Pat Boone’s family in his book Together. You trace a finger across indelible family portraits of them on their bicycle built for six. Photographs of four generations of Boones, a family all together . . . whereas you, yourself, have no children, two divorced husbands, two dead cats, estranged relatives. Whereas you still feel as if you’ve never been anyone’s daughter. Pat Boone who, in his books about God and religion, in his teachings, provides answers to existence. Whereas you have no answers. None.
And no white bucks any longer either. You now realize you don’t know what happened to the pair you bought in junior high. Just lost—like so much else along the way.
Except for this longing, a pale throb of memory, a hum just below the surface of all the years since you first saw his image, first heard him sing.
Pat Boone and his manager leave the green room. By the time Marc and I collect our coats and enter the corridor, they’re gone. Vanished. Without a trace. Perhaps taken up in the Rapture, Marc might joke. I glance around. Which hallway back to the lobby? No one to ask. No Pat Boone. No sign from God pointing the way.
Huh?
Pat Boone hugged me. Yet my ailing body feels no different. So, no, not a laying on of hands, after all. Yet, yet—he noticed the embroidered flower on my jacket. Decades after my teenage crush, he touched me. Talked to me. It is a crazy world in which I’ve finally met Pat Boone after all these years. And crazy that I’m ill when the dream comes true. Or ironic, huh?
It is this almost-ironic, almost-earnest, almost-heartfelt “huh?” that saves Pat Boone. He sings the soulful “Moody River,” after all. He sings the jazzy “Tutti Frutti.” But Pat Boone’s river is never too moody. His tutti frutti isn’t too down and dirty. Pat Boone is neither too tutti nor too frutti. He’s not too “au rutti,” either, as if I know what “au rutti” even means.
Pat Boone is pure “huh?” with a question mark.
The joys were often sweeter because they came by surprise; the wounds, though they hurt like crazy, were also surprises, usually not preceded by dread and apprehension; and most of the fun and laughs were sweeter because they jumped up and grabbed us, with little or no preview. Isn’t your life like that? Isn’t the most precious escape the one that comes when there seems to be no hope and you are already resigned to your fate?
Pat Boone, Together
Huh?
Once Pat Boone’s music, his lyrics, his voice, his smile offered hope, the promise of a safe, bleached suburbia for all those bobby-soxer Christian girls. Wannabe Christian girls, too.
Pat Boone is hopeful for me. It is his own never-ending hope that I love.
And if Pat Boone considers himself a Christian Jew, then I can be an unbelieving believer, right? For here I am backstage in a green room with the father I always wanted, for the very first time.
Boone ex machina.
It is a crazy world, huh?
Oh, Jesus, yes.
My Sorted Past
My parents and I stroll across shaved lawns at Grossinger’s, a resort in the Catskill Mountains’ Borscht Belt. Warmth from the tennis courts, the golf course, and the post–Labor Day blank hotel windows rises and shimmers before dispersing into autumn. I notice a lone couple on chaise lounges as we approach the silent swimming pool. “Look,” I whisper to my parents. “Elizabeth Taylor and Eddie Fisher.”
My mother scrounges in her bag for a piece of paper. All she finds is a square white card, a reminder for my upcoming orthodontist’s appointment. I flip it over. The back is blank. Perfect.
My parents stand behind me as I hand the card and a blue ballpoint pen to Elizabeth Taylor. Her perfume, in my unimaginative teenage mind, must be Chanel No. 5. A pastel chiffon scarf cups her black hair. Her eyes are violet . . . or maybe simply deep with loss and desire. Pink lipstick. Although she doesn’t quite smile, she doesn’t seem annoyed at the intrusion. She props the card on her tortoiseshell purse with a silver clasp. She clicks open the pen and scrawls her name, the “E” in Elizabeth and the “y” in Taylor fancy flourishes in her well-rehearsed autograph. Her diamond ring reflects her starry life. She passes purse, card, and pen to Eddie Fisher, who signs below her. His smile is broader, more eager, though his autograph is smaller than hers, humbler.
I recall from reading movie magazines that Eddie Fisher’s first job at Grossinger’s was as a boat boy on the lake. He later returned as a singing sensation. He married Debbie Reynolds here at Grossinger’s. Only recently Eddie Fisher married Elizabeth Taylor (Michael Todd, her third husband, died in a plane crash), after their sordid affair, after he abandoned Debbie Reynolds, after Elizabeth Taylor converted to Judaism.
My mother once worked as a secretary for Michael Todd, but she doesn’t mention this tenuous connection.
Other than to ask for the autograph, I say nothing further. Yet I wish I could recline in the empty lounge beside her, pretend to be her child, a famous Hollywood daughter. I slip the card in my pocket so I won’t lose or smudge it. I envision bringing it to school. My friends will ooh and aah as if Elizabeth Taylor sprinkled stardust on me. As if fame can be conferred upon all who, even momentarily, enter its secret violet circle.
My parents and I continue across the stone patio, heading toward the parking lot. I glance back. Elizabeth Taylor and Eddie Fisher haven’t moved. They pose in their lounges, not speaking, not holding hands. Perhaps she pauses on this still autumn day to sort out her past as she learns the new role of sedate widow . . . or recently converted Jewish wife.
In this silence, you would never suspect her swirling life. She seems almost lonely. Based on the movie magazines, surely I know the real her, the real woman’s moods and thoughts.
How can she be lonely?
Soon she will wing back to Hollywood, whereas I will remain a whisper in the presence of fame, ebbing as quickly as the sound of the click of a ballpoint pen.
Years later, now an adult, I receive a phone call one evening out of the blue (or perhaps violet) from an independent Hollywood producer. She says she discovered me—well, not the actual me sitting at a drugstore lunch counter at Hollywood and Vine, but at least my memoir—in the Beverly Hills public library. She wants to purchase the movie rights.
To prepare for the interview with the screenwriter, I search through boxes stuffed with old photographs. She wants to see photos from the years when I acted out a sexual addiction—my misguided search for love—the focus of the movie. Photos capture time. Look: this is the lonely and confused girl I once was, right here. Look: here’s a wedding photo, back when I wanted to believe I could be an ordinary, normal wife. Here I am, in all these photos, as if I’m holding many variations of “me” in my hand.
In the midst of sorting photographs, I discover the square white card in a leather keepsake album. I trace a fingertip across those familiar autographs. I easily lift the card off the page, the old glue cracking. On the flip side is the appointment for the orthodontist.
Richard A. Lowy, D.D.S.
302 Main St., Chatham, New Jersey
MErcury 5–2303
If unable to keep this appointment please give due notice.
A nurse scrawled my name in a blank space, along with the date of the appointment: “Oct. 3, 11 o’clock.”
MErcury: Those old, evocative telephone exchanges.
In the movie Butterfield 8, Elizabeth Taylor plays the role of Gloria, who, according to the movie’s promotion, is “part model, part call-girl, and all man-trap.
“This is Danny . . . who knew that no one man owned Gloria!
“This is Liggett . . . who called Gloria whenever his wife was away!
“The glamour girl who wakes up ashamed! The most desirable woman in town and the easiest to find . . . just call BUtterfield 8.
“She must hold man
y men in her arms to find the one man she could LOVE!”
These could (almost) be advertisements for my own movie, my own life—minus the exclamation marks, minus the “glamour”—but full of the shame.
The screenplay is completed. The actors are cast. A date is set to begin production. I fly to Vancouver, British Columbia, to visit the set.
“A photograph!” I say, on cue, holding up a small, digital camera.
I recite my two words of dialogue as I emerge from a group of extras, partygoers. In the scene, the actors playing my father, mother, husband, and me gather together, smiling, as I snap the picture.
The scene depicts my parents’ anniversary party, and Grant, the director, asked if I’d like a cameo. The action takes place not on a sound stage, but in the dining room of a real family’s home, rented by the production company, to represent my parents’ house. This McMansion, though, is nothing like any place my family ever lived.
This photograph that I, playing the role of photographer, snap, portrays how my family always appeared perfect and loving in public. It was a façade, however, masking the real family, one in which my father misloved me in private, when I was a child.
The actress playing my mother flubs her line.
I step forward and, again, say, “A photograph!” I press the shutter.
This time, the actor playing my father forgets to smile. Also, one of the extras, perhaps wanting to be noticed in the crowd, gyrates her arms. “No dancing,” Grant instructs. The actors and I, as well as the real cameraman filming the scene, set up for take three.
Earlier I sat in the hair-and-makeup trailer beside Sally Pressman, the actress portraying me. Eye shadow, liner, mascara, lip gloss, powder, blush. Staring into the mirror, I watched my transformation. Yet there’s only so much that makeup can fix. I momentarily imagined I was Sally, a television star, with people waiting on me, enhancing my appearance, always surrounded, as we are now, by trailers for the cast, the crew, the production office, as well as trucks carrying cameras, lighting, sound equipment, props, and a catering service.
In my real life, I sit for hours in a room in my house with messy hair, wrinkled sweats, alone with a laptop computer.
Now I’m almost afraid to breathe. I don’t want to muss my hair or smudge my makeup. At least I haven’t flubbed my line. Even though my dialogue consists of only two words, I’m nervous I won’t speak with the correct inflection. Is it “a photograph?” or “a photograph!”? I decide the latter, though no one coaches me. I’m equally fearful that I’ll appear too serious. I’m supposed to smile, which is difficult, having dreaded my real parents’ real anniversary party years ago, where I also pretended we were a happy family.
Or suppose my smile looks like a grin, since those braces I once wore didn’t correct my overbite. I want a smile as dainty as Elizabeth Taylor’s.
My previous acting experience consists of the time in second grade when I was supposed to star as Little Red Riding Hood. On opening night I stepped from the wings to walk through the dark, cardboard-cutout forest. I wore a cape with matching hood sewn by my mother and carried a wicker basket with food for my sick grandmother. In reality (whatever that is), the basket must have been empty. Then, too, I pretended to be a happy little girl, just as instructed during rehearsals.
I was happy, at first. The starched cotton hood felt like a helmet, protection. I skipped from tree to cutout tree, believing that my magical cape was sewn with lightning and fire. Maybe, despite the script, I even believed it would protect me from the big, bad wolf.
Suddenly, a rustle.
Is that what I heard? What disturbed me?
Perhaps I sensed the wolf prowling the path behind me, gaining on me. Perhaps I glimpsed him from the corner of my eye—or maybe he appeared only in my mind’s eye—a furry, humid beast. I reached for the bow under my chin to tighten it, to assure myself nothing had slipped out of place, that my otherwise bare throat was protected. I was supposed to pretend not to even anticipate the wolf before he approached me.
I couldn’t.
In a breath, I forgot all the stage directions as well as my lines. Instead of waiting for the wolf, I crouched behind a tree, hiding. The wolf, cunning enough not to eat Little Red Riding Hood in public, was simply supposed to ask where my grandmother lived, was supposed to rush to her house before my arrival, eat the grandmother, don her clothes, wait for Little Red Riding Hood, then eat her, too.
I pulled the hood low over my face. I tugged the cloak around my body as if it could confer safety, invisibility, invincibility. The scent of glue and paste and waxy crayons rose from the floorboards of the makeshift stage, but it was as if I inhaled dank leaves and tangled vines.
I ran from the stage, crying.
I ruined the play, of course. Mortified, I refused to return to school for six months . . . even though the real wolf lived inside my own house.
“A photograph!” I say.
I wish real life had retakes.
I wish I could rewind my life back to the second-grade stage of Little Red Riding Hood. Then I could redo not just that scene, but the whole story. Instead of hiding from the wolf, I could lie in wait.
It takes less than an hour to read the entire script for the TV movie—105 double-spaced pages with wide margins, including stage directions. Before filming began, I wondered how the whole story could be conveyed so quickly. Even the shoot will last just three weeks, while the movie itself will run only two hours, including commercials. Now, watching the anniversary scene, I understand how, as with the snap of a camera (“A photograph!”), the movie condenses long paragraphs I wrote in the book into a moment of action.
Sally, then, will recover from my childhood and sort out my past in either three weeks or two hours, depending . . . whereas in the book it takes several hundred pages and, in reality, took years.
Cast and crew move to a new location, another house rented by the production company. It represents my home. I sit on a black canvas director’s chair, my name inserted into a plastic sleeve on its back. I scan the salmon-colored schedule sheet. This sheet lists each scene location as well as a one-line description of the action. The scene currently being shot bears the notation “the camera follows Sue’s cheating path.”
Sally prepares to leave the house to meet a man, an illicit lover, scant minutes after her husband departs for work. She applies perfume to her wrists, gloss to her lips, and walks downstairs. After she picks up the car keys to walk out the door, the camera, situated behind her, follows the back of her head before panning down to her legs.
Except, in the mirage of movies, they’re not Sally’s legs. A body double is used in order to give Sally time to rest.
In the monitor I watch the feet that resemble Sally’s, in high heels, walking toward the door. . . . My own real feet once, in midnight-blue velvet slippers with metallic stars sprinkled across the toes, charmed shoes to cast a spell on those illicit men, to conjure sex into love. . . .
The camera, in the second half of the scene, tracks the real Sally—not her body double—hair messy, now sneaking back home from the motel. . . . Kicking off those starry shoes, I stepped back inside my real house. I carried them, as if the shoes had lost their sorcery . . . or my cheating feet had lost their way.
Except in real life, testing the waters of recovery, I also wore those midnight-blue shoes to my first meeting of Sex Addicts Anonymous. It was as if, while I wanted to recover, my feet did not. The shoes themselves seemed to hold out hope they could lead me along an enchanted path—wandering toward some impossible love—or at least one last fling. I slithered onto a metal folding chair in a church basement. I crossed my legs, swinging a foot back and forth to attract the attention of the guy sitting beside me. My shoe sparkled starshine.
Love the shoes, he said, inviting me out for coffee after the meeting.
Ashamed, I never wore them again.
The director calls out, “Sue’s on the set. Sally’s on the set.”
I am
not, in fact, on the set. I am outside the range of the camera, watching. At times, they call Sally “Sue”; more than once I respond.
It is Sally who emerges from a dressing room in the lower level of the house. She climbs the stairs past the living room up to the bedroom. She wears a bodysuit, a terrycloth bathrobe over it. The upcoming sex scene will be a closed set to protect the actors’ privacy. A few minutes later, the male actor (a robe also covering his bodysuit), with whom I have an affair, appears.
I watch him follow Sally (or me?) up the stairs.
I imagine the bodysuits to be constructed of thin rubber, though I never see them. They must be molded tight against the skin—both disguise and protection.
In real life, when I met men, I climbed stairs—to apartments or motel rooms—without protection or body double. When I was a college student in Boston, a lover, old enough to be my father, gave me a maroon cashmere scarf—armor as flimsy as a red cotton hood. For years after the affair ended, I hid the scarf in a lavender box, a jumble of mementos from men. The souvenirs lasted longer than those random lovers: all that remained of the affairs, of the men.
Later in the movie, Sally will retrieve a facsimile maroon scarf from a facsimile treasure chest and press it to her face—an addict seeking the scent of a man—a temporary high. In the salmon-colored, one-liner scene notes, it says, “Sue’s treasure chest reveals her sorted past.”
Someone forgets a pair of headphones on the couch in the almost-deserted living room. Even without slipping them over my ears, I hear the disembodied voices of the actors and crew upstairs in the bedroom, planning the sex scene.
Grant’s voice instructs Sally and the male actor how to pose in bed. They whisper to each other. Sheets rustle.
Through the headphones, I eavesdrop on my life.
Is this me? Who was I back then, when I lived these events? Who was I when I wrote the book and interpreted my own life? Who am I now, watching and listening to someone else define me? Who is that me? This me?
Pat Boone Fan Club Page 20