Dangerous When Wet: A Memoir

by Jamie Brickhouse

  In “Is That All There Is?” her father takes her to a circus, which she describes with a wink in her tone as “the Greatest Show on Earth.” Her voice rises at the end in a question, so that you can almost hear her ask, “Right?” But she doesn’t say it, it’s implied. Her assessment of the spectacle of clowns, and dancing bears, and pretty ladies in pink tights? “I had the feeling that something was missing. I don’t know what.”

  “Most people think of this as the ultimate downer song.” Mr. Parker launched into his critical analysis. “I don’t. Conversely, I think it’s a celebration of the spectacle of life in all its joy and tragedy.”

  “Well, she does say that she’s not ready for that ‘final disappointment.’”

  “Oh! That ‘final disappointment.’ What a brilliant line. It’s a total alkie song.” He looked heavenward and opened his mouth like a choirboy as he sang, “She’s fan-taaas-tic!”

  “And what will she be doing when that final disappointment comes?”

  We answered in unison, “She’ll break out the booze and have a ball.”

  We took gulps of drinks and marinated in the meaning of the song as we let Peggy finish it uninterrupted. In the final verse she says that as fatalistic as her outlook may appear, she’s not going to end it all, and when that “final disappointment” comes, she’ll face it, the way she has faced the rest of life. She rephrases the song’s question as a statement that she’ll keep dancing and drinking “if that’s all.” Pause. “There.” Pause “Is.” Followed by a final vamp and bump bump of the tuba.

  We sat in silence and drank, staring ahead.

  Then Mr. Parker spoke. “You know, I have her phone number.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean to say that I have her phone number. Right here in my wallet.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “A friend of mine who knows I’m a major Peggy Person worked at one of the hospitals Miss Lee frequented. You know she was always in and out of hospitals.”

  “Oh, I know. I read her autobiography. She described more ailments and near-death experiences than … than Elizabeth Taylor.”

  Mr. Parker pulled out a folded-up, laminated piece of paper. He waved it at me. “I keep all the addresses of those near and dear to me so I can send letters and postcards from wherever I am. My friend slipped me Miss Lee’s phone number and address. You know it is one of Bunny’s and my dreams—dream number thirty-two, I believe—to open a bar called Is That All There Is? Anyway, I have her number.”

  “Give me that!” I grabbed the paper from his hand and squinted at the tiny type of Miss Peggy Lee’s Bel Air address and phone number. Without thinking of the time, I picked up the cordless phone and dialed.

  Ring. Ring. Ri—

  “Hello,” answered a young-sounding woman.

  “Hi. May I speak to Peggy?”

  “Who’s calling, please?”

  “Jamie.”

  “Okay. Hold on.”

  I covered the mouthpiece and looked at a slack-jawed Mr. Parker and stage-whispered, “I’m on hold. For Peggy. Lee.”

  He shot back with “This is wild!”

  Hold. Hold. Hold.

  And then “Hello?” was purred across the line in an unmistakable whisper of a voice. “This is Peggy.”

  Bravado trumped the surreal moment and I pushed forward. “Hi, Peggy. This is Jamie.”

  “Jamie?” Breath and pause. “Anderson?”

  “No. It’s Jamie Brickhouse. I’m a huge fan of yours. I met you backstage at one of your New York concerts,” I lied.

  “Oh. What are you doing?” Her voice was so sexy, the question could have been What are you wearing?

  “I’m sitting here with my best friend and we’ve been listening to ‘Is That All There Is?’ I’m in New York. I missed you at Carnegie Hall last year, and I’m still sick about it. Do you have any upcoming New York dates?”

  “No. Since the fall I can’t even get out of bed.” Her words seemed to sink into what I imagined was a cumulus, king-size cloud of a bed where she was nestled in a quilted, white satin bed jacket, a Princess phone cradled between shoulder and ear. She let her words lie there for a beat. Then with a twinkle in her voice she said, “But I’ve still got the voice.” I could almost feel her breath in my ear.

  I inhaled before speaking. “Yes, Peggy, there’s no mistaking that voice.” I mouthed, Wow, to Mr. Parker. “Peggy, it’s so good talking to you. I have to tell you, I think ‘Is That All There Is?’ is just about the greatest song ever. My friend Mr. Parker and I are a little drunk. We’ve been listening to it tonight. Over and over. I can’t tell you how many drunken nights you’ve gotten me through with that song.”

  “Well”—breath—“I guess my life was worth living.”

  I don’t remember the rest of the conversation. After that, I didn’t need to.

  I guess my life was worth living. Was it a backhanded slap that if she got some lush on the other end of the phone through another drunken night, then her purpose on earth was fulfilled, or was she truly acknowledging my reverence for her and the song, meaning that if she could move people so profoundly as she had me, then her life had meaning? I suspect she meant a bit of both.

  I thought about the life I had been living in the six years I’d been in New York. It was the kind of life I’d always wanted—the kind of life I imagined twitching myself into from the living-room floor in Beaumont, where I watched such movies as Breakfast at Tiffany’s, with Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly in the best party scene on film, and Humoresque, starring Joan Crawford as a glamorously unhappy alcoholic—but never believed could happen. And here it was: the charming brownstone New York apartment, an ascending career in publishing, and a man (with some men on the side) who loved me almost as much as Mama Jean. Well, no one could love me that much. And a recirculating waterfall of booze and parties. Delicious booze.

  The blur of our annual New Year’s Eve parties, where guests with raised champagne glasses were huddled together on our freezing rooftop deck for the stroke of midnight, had become as traditional and anticipated as Mama Jean’s Christmas parties. In the wee hours of the morning—after the guests were gone, after Michahaze was in bed, after those Holly Golightly parties were over—I’d stay up for just one more. One more was usually several bourbons on the rocks that disappeared as fast as I poured them. I’d survey the mess of the party and play my favorite songs: “The Ladies Who Lunch,” Elaine Stritch’s bitter booze ballad; anything by Judy Garland, whom Mama Jean once dismissed as “the worst degenerate Hollywood ever produced”; and of course, Peggy’s “Is That All There Is?”

  I’d sit there in the dark with the music and the bourbon, replaying the party, replaying my life. There was always such buildup to the parties: coming up with the right theme, designing a clever invitation, perfecting the music playlist, filling the apartment with a big, fun-loving crowd. Michahaze and I were always preparing down to the wire. The people showed up. The booze was broken out. A ball was had. And then it was over. And I still wanted more.

  I felt like Peggy at the circus. I had the feeling that something was missing.

  And I didn’t know what.

  FIFTEEN

  Alcoholics Can’t Count

  The second person who called me an alcoholic was Eddie Fisher. Eddie Fisher: crooner, really bad actor, man of a thousand face-lifts, and reformed boozer and druggie. He was the first husband of Debbie Reynolds, whom he dumped for Elizabeth Taylor, who dumped him for Richard Burton. He was also the father of Princess Leia, aka Carrie Fisher. I was two sips into a perfect gin martini, sitting outside Peacock Alley in the lobby of the Waldorf-Astoria, when I looked up and saw a joker mask floating about five feet four inches off the ground. It was Eddie. I was publicizing his second memoir (second because he said he was high as a kite during the first) and waiting for him in the hotel lobby while he freshened up in his room. He sauntered up to my table looking like a Jewish gangster with his winter-white topcoat d
raped over his shoulders. He aimed his finger at my drink in a mock-gun gesture and said, “A martini! It’s not even five o’clock. And you’re drinking alone.” Then in a singsong voice: “You’re-an-al-co-hol-ic!” I laughed and didn’t tell him it was my second martini.

  The first person who called me an alcoholic was Mama Jean, but it took Joan Collins for her to say it.

  I was riding high, four years into my second job at a major commercial publishing house. With that job I had risen to associate director of publicity, second martini to my boss, Jack, the director of publicity. Jack hired me over copious drinks in the lobby of the Royalton Hotel, a good omen since that’s where Michahaze had his first audience with Mama Jean. Jack had a personality as big as a Broadway stage, called people darling and doll face, and delivered his off-color remarks such as “Titties up, girls!” with an infectious laugh trailed by a puff of smoke. I adored him. And he adored me. Jamela, he called me. In Jack I found my perfect mentor. He was gay with a capital G, ten or so years ahead of me in both biological years and booze years. He was a good-time drinker like me. We worked hard and we had a ball playing hard during old-school, three-martini lunches that often slid into more drinks after work.

  I specialized in all the glitzy books by celebs such as Eddie, Oliver Stone, Helen Gurley Brown, Delta Burke, Aaron Spelling, and biographies of dead celebrities such as Lana Turner, Audrey Hepburn, and Jack Kerouac, who died when his booze-saturated liver exploded. In moving to New York and finding Michahaze, I had arrived. Landing at the successful publishing house where I got to hobnob with fading celebrities and drink while doing it, I had reached nirvana.

  I was shooting off my mouth to Mama Jean on the phone about the publicity campaign for Joan Collins’s second memoir, Second Act. Not only do I specialize in celebrity memoirs, but I have a subspecialty in second memoirs by celebrities.

  “Oh!” I bragged. “There’s going to be a fabulous party at Mortimer’s. You know, the Upper East Side ladies-who-lunch hangout?”

  “I know Mortimer’s. Have you forgotten who took you to lunch there in your salad days?”

  “I certainly haven’t.” Dad, she, and I lunched there during a New York trip after I graduated from college. We were seated in the back as we watched social X-rays air-kiss over lobster salads in the front, while a curmudgeonly old queen ruled the room with a steely gaze over his tortoiseshell readers.

  “So when is the party?”

  “October twenty-eighth.”

  “Well, I want to come, and that gives me plenty of time to book tickets for Daddy and me and line up some shows.”

  Before I could say that I wasn’t actually inviting her to the party, she had paid the airfare, booked tickets for a couple of shows, and reserved a bed (Michahaze’s and my bed). To quote Mama Jean about other headstrong women: “She had the balls of a brass monkey.”

  That last week of October I found myself juggling Joan Collins and Mama Jean, which was kind of funny because in the eighties Mama Jean had become known as the Joan Collins of Beaumont. Both she and Joan had their heyday in the 1980s. It’s the decade when Joan reached her summit of fame and success on the nighttime soap Dynasty, playing Alexis Carrington. That’s the decade when Mama Jean made her fortune as a stockbroker and had a ball doing it. She became the second-highest-grossing broker in Beaumont and “wrote her own ticket” to build the Flamingo Road house and retire early.

  Mama Jean and Joan’s character, Alexis, even had the same dog, a reddish-brown Lhasa apso. I don’t know about Alexis, but Mama Jean could never tame her Lhasa, Brennan. He was an incorrigible runaway. He used to air-bite at her finger as she shook it in his face, chastising him for running from the yard. It infuriated her when he did this, but it shut her up.

  I spent the day of the party squiring Joan to a round of television interviews—the Today show, Live with Regis and Kathie Lee—along with her personal publicist, who had the same clipped British tongue as Joan. We had some downtime before her twelve-thirty book signing at Barnes & Noble on Fifth Avenue, and Joan wanted to “hit the shops!”

  We hit the DKNY showroom on Seventh Avenue, but she was disappointed that the Gottex swimsuit showroom next door was closed. “What a pity,” she said. “I could use a new Gottex. During summers in the South of France, I absolutely live in my Gottex!” I imagined her drinking morning coffee on a terrace, sipping a Kir Royale poolside at lunch, hosting an evening cocktail party in an ocean-view living room, and wearing nothing but the same white, gold-belted, one-piece Gottex.

  When we reached Saks Fifth Avenue, we had just shy of an hour to kill before her book signing at Barnes & Noble, just a couple of blocks away. But before the shopping could begin in the vast, multilevel emporium, we had to strategize. I stood back while she and her publicist leaned over a glass-topped counter and devised a foolproof plan for us all to disperse and reconvene. With their theatrical British accents, spoken in cloak-and-dagger tones, it sounded more like they were plotting the perfect murder.

  “I want to hit the shoe department first. Then on to better dresses,” she said as if she had an imaginary clipboard.

  “Yes, Joan. That sounds good,” her personal publicist said as he nodded in agreement.

  “And if there’s time, on to the sportswear section.”

  “Very good, Joan. I’m going to peruse the colognes. Right. Over. There.” He extended his arm in a grand gesture to point to the men’s cologne counter while Joan stared intently at him, her cherry-red lips puckered, cheeks sucked in, and her head nodding as if he were explaining how the stock market worked.

  “Then I’m going to browse men’s accessories, behind the escalators.” More nodding of comprehension from Joan.

  “Then I’m going to come. Right. Back. Here. And wait to meet you at twelve twenty to get into the car and go to the book signing. I’m not going to leave this floor.”

  “Excellent. I will see you here at twelve twenty.”

  They looked at me and asked in unison, “And what are you going to do, Jamie?”

  “I’m going to run down to Barnes and Noble to make sure everything is in order for the book signing and then meet you two back here. At twelve-twenty.” When I spoke “twelve-twenty,” I involuntarily mimicked their perfect-murder accents, but they didn’t notice.

  At twelve-fifteen I found her personal publicist back in the appointed place. Twelve-twenty came and no Joan. At twelve twenty-three, he became nervous. “I don’t understand it. This is not like Joan. She’s never late.”

  “I’m glad you two made this plan and not I,” I said, absolving myself. I checked to see if she had gone to the car that was still waiting for us on the side street. No Joan. I suggested that we have her paged. Alas, there was no paging system. To hear over a loudspeaker “Paging Joan Collins. Paging Joan Collins” would have made the aggravation worth it.

  The clerk at the information desk was happy to call the obvious departments to ask where the MIA star might be. The shoe and better-dresses departments confirmed that she had been spotted. Sportswear never saw her. There must have been a black hole between better dresses and sportswear. Losing Joan Collins in Saks Fifth Avenue is like losing a float in a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

  Her personal publicist was starting to perspire and I was starting to feel the pangs of LBD. I checked the side street again. The car was gone.

  “I’m going on to Barnes and Noble,” I told him. “You stay. Right. Here. In case she shows up.” I dashed.

  When I reached the store, where fans were lined up to get their books signed, I was relieved to see the top of her hair bobbing up and down over the stacks. I reached the back of the store to find her smiling and signing. She cut her eyes away from an adoring fan and glared at grinning me. In a stage whisper she hissed, “Where were you?” I later heard from a colleague that when she exited the Lincoln Town Car solo, she had asked the question a bit stronger: “Where the fuck are they?”

  Apparently, intrusive fans had made shopping for h
er impossible. In her frustration and impatience, she forgot the meeting spot of the foolproof plan and left for the Barnes & Noble without us. Joan’s brief moment of displeasure, diffused by an audience of fans, was merely a little sand in my Gottex compared to what awaited me at the office.

  Glenn Bernbaum was the curmudgeonly old queen in tortoiseshell readers I remembered from the time Mama Jean had taken me to Mortimer’s. Curmudgeonly is a compliment compared to the nasty old queen he really was. Glenn, who owned Mortimer’s, was throwing the book party for Joan. The publisher was taking care of printing and sending the invitations. When I returned to the office that afternoon, Glenn chewed me out on the phone, claiming that I didn’t mail the invitations to everyone on his list. As a result, he claimed I had cost him a fortune in the last-minute telegrams that he sent. Telegrams?! When I asked him to tell me who didn’t receive their invitations, he fired a daisy chain of invectives—mother-fucking-cuntface-cocksucker-son-of-a-bitch—and hung up.

  This was at three in the afternoon, well past what I later learned was the 10:30 A.M. point of fermentation. I ran to Jack with the tale. He accused me of exaggerating and dismissed me with a wave of smoke from his Benson & Hedges cigarette, which he was illegally smoking in his office.

  Just before Jack and I reached the restaurant for the party, carrying a blowup of Joan’s face, Glenn had apparently had another fit and locked the door, barring everyone from entering.

  Almost everyone. There in the door’s tiny speakeasy window was Mama Jean’s face, her eyebrows raised. Somehow she had managed to get past the explosive, sodden queen while others had failed.