Show Business Kills
Page 33
“Yeah… and what happens?”
“We’re trying to get Kevin Costner to play your husband,” Ellen said.
Betty lit up. “Swear to God? I love Kevin Costner,” she said, and that was when she dropped her arm for an instant, and the burly guard who was standing at the door tackled her and another one grabbed the gun. The audience on the sound stage loved it, and they all burst into wild applause.
“Oh, God. I didn’t mean it,” Betty said. “Don’t hurt me. I didn’t mean to kill her. I only wanted to get into the business…”
Rose put her face on Marly’s shoulder. She couldn’t bear to watch Betty’s struggle as they carried her away, through the door of the sound stage.
“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen,” they heard Ken’s voice saying over the PA as the lights came up. “Next show in ten minutes.”
“He never even played the film back,” Rose heard someone say in the line as the people filed out of the sound stage, and she and Marly went up to the booth to find Ellen.
* * *
36
When they arrived at the hospital that night, they were asked to wait because the doctor was still in with Jan. While they stood at the nurses’ desk, Ellen noticed that the cubicle where she’d visited with Fred Zavitz was empty. A young frizzy-haired nurse she hadn’t seen before sat at a computer keyboard, typing.
“I guess Freddy Zavitz made it out of here,” Ellen said to the nurse, who looked up distractedly, then focused on what Ellen had just said.
“Oh, they took Mr. Zavitz away a few hours ago. He died of cardiac arrest.”
Ellen leaned sorrowfully against the nurses’ counter and listened to the plunking of the computer keys. A nurse came out of Jan’s cubicle, and a few seconds later she was followed by the neurosurgeon. He stopped when he saw Rose and Ellen.
“You can go in and talk to her now,” was all he said.
Ellen walked slowly past him and into the room and over to the bed, seeing Jan’s face without a tube in it for the first time since the shooting. Her cheeks were gaunt, but her skin was luminous, and her expression was peaceful.
“Janny,” Ellen said, standing close to the bed. “Betty Norell is in police custody. She was arrested this afternoon. She won’t hurt anyone else. I can’t imagine how she could ever hurt you. She was at the studio looking for the rest of us when we caught her.” Rose stood back as if waiting in line for her turn as Ellen went on.
“I wanted you to know that so you wouldn’t worry. I also want to thank you for all the joy you’ve brought to my life from the day you borrowed my red crepe evening dress and left it in some fraternity boy’s room, and could not only not remember which guy, but which fraternity…” She laughed a tiny shrill laugh at what she’d just said.
Rose watched her through wet eyes, seeing all the bravado and savvy of Hollywood honcho stripped away leaving Ellen Feinberg, the girl whose room had been next door to hers in the dorm. The girl who got the munchies before she smoked the dope. The funny, vulnerable way she was before the divorce and single-motherhood and before she dated or made a deal with what she liked to call “every asshole in Hollywood,” and became so toughened up by it all.
“I want you to know I’ll always keep the promise I made to you at Joey’s adoption ceremony when I said I’d help to be responsible for his welfare forever,” Ellen said. “And I had a little boy once, and he turned out damn good, so you know I know what to do,” and then the runaway emotion made her have to turn from the bed and lean on Rose. Her thick auburn hair covered her face as she held Rose tightly and trembled but couldn’t say a word.
After a little while she moved to a chair, and Rose walked to the bed and put her hand on Jan’s arm, above the plastic hospital bracelet. The IV tubes had been removed too, and she was able to take Jan’s slender hand in her own. “Janny, the other day Julie and Marly talked on the phone for a long, serious time, and they came to the conclusion that because of Julie’s life being up in the air at the moment, and because Marly and Billy are going back together, that Joey would be better off living with Marly and Billy. Ellen and I think so, too. Marly jokes that she’s semiretired anyway so she’ll have a lot of time to devote to him, and she loves him and the twins do, too.”
“We all thought that would be okay with you, and Julie said she’ll come out and visit and be with him as often as she can,” Ellen lied, moving back to the bed.
Both of them looked up when they heard the sound of the pocket door sliding open and waved a little wave to Marly. Each of them choked back the kick of emotion they felt when they saw that she was holding Joey. It had been one thing to plan his visit to say good-bye to his mother. To talk about the theories of whether or not it was good for him. But another to see him there, her love, her life, this angelic child who had already suffered so much. His blond hair was askew and his big blue eyes were wide as he looked down at the bed, and then buried his face in Marly’s shoulder.
Last night, when they discussed the idea of his coming to the hospital, Ellen had voted against it, afraid it would traumatize the little boy forever. Rose, who at age seven had kissed her own mother good-bye in the coffin, insisted on it. Marly thought the child needed this moment because the last time he saw Jan she was being taken away bleeding into an ambulance. So she called a child psychologist who specialized in children and death. “With adequate preparation and the right to say no to the visit at any point, I think it’s essential for him,” the doctor told her.
Now Marly rubbed his back and held him tightly. The others could see that Maria was behind Marly, and Joey was looking out the door at her.
Marly spoke softly to the child. “Remember when I told you that Mommy won’t be able to talk to you, but she can hear you?” After a moment his little head nodded in her neck. “And remember we talked about how you’re allowed to touch her, though she can’t touch you back?” He nodded again. “So before she goes away, maybe we can go over to the bed together and say good-bye. But only if you want to do that. It’s okay if you don’t. If you say you don’t want to do that, Maria is standing right there and she can take you for a walk, or back to play with Jennifer and Sarah. And honey, it really is okay with all of us and with Mommy if you don’t want to get any closer.”
There was an eternity of silence while they waited for the little boy’s reply. This brief window of time that the doctor warned them might be a matter of just a few hours was the only moment when this could take place. The frightening, noisy respirator was gone, there was no jumble of wires from hanging IV tubes, just Jan going quietly to her rest. And if the nurses’ theories were true, Jan was able to hear their words.
Joey turned slowly back to look at the bed, then wiggled his way out of Marly’s arms and stood on the floor, his little face just about level with the hospital bed. Slowly he walked nearer to the bed to look more closely at his dying mother. He was so tiny that the shorts he wore were wide around his skinny little legs. His T-shirt said LITTLE SLUGGER across the front. Rose and Ellen had their arms around one another’s waists. Marly moved with him, and Maria stepped into the room, bowing her head sadly when she saw Jan.
He took another step, and then another, never taking his eyes from Jan, until his body leaned against the metal rail of the bed. After a minute he lifted his arm, touched Jan’s hand and patted it gently and consolingly, the way the others had seen him reassure her before. His soft dimpled little-boy fingers touching her repeatedly the way he would a baby animal as he said, “It’s okay, Mommy. It’s okay.”
Then he moved from the bed, walked to the doorway, and threw his arms around the legs of Maria, who walked him out into the hall. She was going to take him back to Marly’s, and the friends would stay at the hospital with Jan.
They stood by the bed for a long, silent time.
“Aren’t you glad you didn’t get a face-lift?” Marly asked Jan. “How in the hell would you have explained that to St. Peter?”
Ellen shook her head and both she and Ros
e smiled at the black humor that had carried them through everything.
“Janny,” Rose said softly, “make sure to find Allan and tell him how much I miss him, and love him and dream about him all the time.” Her eyes stung with tears.
Marly leaned in and put her arms around the blanket to hug Jan’s body. “Janny O’Malley, we love you so. And there will never be a Girls’ Night that isn’t dedicated to your memory,” she said. “We’re so grateful for the years we had you with us.”
They stayed by the bed talking to her and one another for nearly an hour, often erupting with sentimental laughter. But soon the room got very quiet when they knew that the time had come, and that Jan’s beautiful spirit was gone. And just before they left the room, Marly stopped them and turned back for one last thought. “I think I can safely speak for all of us, Janny, when I say to you, wherever you are, thanks a million, Maximilian.”
“EVERYONE WHO LAUGHED AND CRIED WITH BEACHES WILL LOVE SHOW BUSINESS KILLS EVEN MORE. I ADORE THIS BOOK.”
—Bette Midler
Soap opera star Jan is nearing fifty and considering a face-lift. Ellen fought her way to the top of a Hollywood studio only to face menopause jokes from her male colleagues. Rose, a screenwriter, is finding it tough to pitch stories to executives young enough to be her kids. And Marly, whose bikini-clad figure once adorned commercials, now appears on TV proclaiming “My doctor told me…Mylanta.” They’re four friends whose drug of choice is estrogen—and who are struggling to make it in youth-conscious Hollywood where forty-something women get squeezed out. Here their tradition of a “Girls’ Night” allows them to keep their sanity. But when a stalker strikes, they’ll need “Girls’ Night“—and all their time-acquired wisdom—to keep them alive…
From Iris Rainer Dart, acclaimed author of Beaches, SHOW BUSINESS KILLS is rich in feelings and hilariously funny—a story for everyone who dreams in Technicolor and believes in the power of friends.
“A RISKY, BRAVE, AND WITTY STORY OF THE
DARK SIDE OF THE HOLLYWOOD DREAM.
WONDERFULLY WRITTEN AND UNFORGETTABLE.”
—Pat Conroy, author of The Prince of Tides