I'll Love You When You're More Like Me

by M. E. Kerr

  “What do you mean if?”

  “Why should I move to New York where I’ll be mugged by some heroin addict, when I can live out here by the ocean?”

  “Hey, don’t get cold feet,” I said. I remembered something Storybook Sabra had been told by her mother’s best friend, Etta Lott, who’d been ostracized by everyone in Pine Bluff for having her baby without marrying or identifying the father. He was Pine Bluff’s powerful mayor.

  “Don’t be afraid of what’s new: It’s the old, tried-and-true ways that should terrify you. Nothing creative, original or beautiful was ever begot by walking in step like everyone else. You have to step out of line to give the world something special.”

  “Well I have stepped out of line,” Charlie said. “I don’t know about giving the world something special.”

  “You’ll do that in New York,” I said. “New York will appreciate you.”

  “Will I appreciate New York, though?” Charlie said.

  “Why are you even having second thoughts, Charlie? You said yourself your father wishes you’d go even farther away.”

  “Why should I live my life in a way that’ll make him more comfortable?” Charlie said. “He never lived his to make mine more comfortable.”

  I became Etta Lott again. (It was funny: I couldn’t even remember who’d played Etta on the show, but I could almost see her idiot cards cueing me.) “Don’t find excuses to conform. Find excuses to excel.”

  “My father likes to say that if an ass goes traveling, he doesn’t arrive somewhere else a horse.”

  “Your father is typical of the great unwashed,” I said. “That’s a name we use for those members of our viewing audience in the sixty-to-seventy I.Q. range.”

  “I could excel here, is all I mean,” Charlie said. “I don’t know what at, though.”

  Etta Lott told him, “Take long steps and by all means look back. You’ll see everything behind you getting smaller, and eventually passing completely out of view.”

  “I like the way you put things, Sabra,” Charlie said.

  Charlie beat me again in backgammon, then went down to take a swim. I bathed and washed my hair. I heard Mama when she came back, banging things around in the kitchen. When the phone rang, Mama called out “St. Amour residence!” Then I heard Mama talking in a low voice, for a long time. I went out into the hall and tried to make out what she was saying, but I couldn’t hear her clearly. When my curiosity got the best of me, I pretended I’d picked up the phone in my room to make a call. Mama was talking to Bernadette Young, who did publicity for Hometown and was a friend of Mama’s from the old days.

  “Oh, and did you get my letter, Peg?”

  “It came this morning.”

  “Is that you, Sabra?” Bernadette said.

  “Sabra, are you on the extension?” Mama said.

  “Be sure and tell her about the book,” Bernadette said.

  “I’m right here on the extension,” I said.

  “I’ll tell her,” Mama said.

  “He’ll only be in New York for twenty-four hours, Sabra,” Bernadette said. “He’s passing through on his way from Europe to the coast, and the idea just came to him.”

  “Who?” I said.

  “Oh my God,” Mama said, “I’ll give her the message!”

  “Milton Tanner is who,” said Bernadette. “G’bye.”

  I hung up and ran downstairs with my hair still wet. “Mama, did Bernadette say Milton Tanner? The Milton Tanner?”

  Mama was quartering a chicken. She’d fixed a tray for me with some chicken already cooked on it, and a glass of milk, cottage cheese and sliced tomato. “She mentioned his name, yes. Take your tray up.”

  “She more than mentioned his name, Mama,” I said. “She said something about a book.”

  “Well that’s what he is. He’s a writer who writes books.”

  “I know he’s a writer, Mama,” I said. “I know Milton Tanner. He writes articles, too.”

  Everyone in the business knew him, although most of the people he wrote about weren’t daytime stars. They were nighttime: stars of series and specials, and movie stars. Everybody in daytime has this big inferiority complex about being daytime. Daytime stars are seldom asked on talk shows or even game shows. They usually only get bit parts in nighttime drama. I was the only daytime star who’d ever had my own evening special.

  Mama tossed the quartered chicken into a large casserole. “I didn’t tell Bernadette you’re leaving the show, because we must tell Fedora first.”

  “Mama, what does he want?”

  “He wants to talk about doing a book. Don’t you love it? He’s only going to be at The Plaza for twenty-four hours. Some notice. Twenty-four hours with Labor Day weekend coming up!”

  “A book about me?”

  “Not a book about me,” Mama said.

  “Oh, Mama!”

  “Don’t oh Mama me. This is your vacation, and after it, you’re going to college. Remember?”

  “But I could talk with him, couldn’t I?”

  “If he still wants to talk with you after he finds out you’re leaving the show, then he can come back to New York.”

  “We could go in tonight, Mama,” I said.

  “You’ve got a date tonight.”

  “With Wally, Mama. Just with Wally.”

  “And I’m fixing Charlie a complete Spanish dinner which I’m now in the process of preparing.”

  “We could drive into New York very late. We’d avoid traffic.”

  Mama said, “I’m not going to cook a complete Spanish dinner and then haul my ass into New York because some big-shot writer had a lightbulb go on in his head while he’s sipping martinis over the Atlantic. If he still wants to do the story after he learns you’re leaving Hometown, he can fly his butt back and set up an appointment with you!”

  Mama took out the chopping block and banged an onion down on it.

  “Any other time you’d jump at the chance,” I said.

  “You’d jump at the chance, Maggie,” said Mama. “You got your ulcer jumping at chances in case anyone should ride up on a bicycle and ask you!”

  I picked up the tray she’d fixed for me. “What letter was Bernadette talking about?” I asked.

  “A personal letter,” Mama said. “Am I allowed a personal letter?”

  I left Mama in the kitchen hacking an onion to pieces and took the tray up to my room. I blow-dried my hair and tried to put together something to wear, while I munched on the chicken.

  The sandals I’d worn to The Surf Club were the only shoes I’d brought out that I could dance in; they didn’t go with jeans. What would go with my jeans were shoes I’d used on the show, but I couldn’t dance in them. All the shoes we wore in the show had rubber on the bottoms, a fluted kind of rubber that kept us from slipping on stage. Most of them were nude colored so they didn’t draw attention to our feet.

  I was pulling hangers out and opening drawers for a long time. I heard Charlie come back from his swim, and Charlie and Mama laughing. I finally decided there was no way I could go to that party and look or act like Nancy Normal, so I went the other way. I wore my nude-colored shoes with the rubber soles, jeans and a TELL ME MORE T-shirt. I carried my blue zippered jacket with HOMETOWN lettered on it, and my blue canvas bag with HOMETOWN stitched across it. We wore a lot of that kind of thing on the set, while we were rehearsing.

  Just before the taxi pulled in with Wally, I went downstairs and sneaked into Mama’s bedroom. There was a pile of mail on her dressing table, bills mostly; I sifted through them. The letter from Bernadette Young was on the bottom.

  Dear Peg,

  Lamont has this feeling he can’t work with Fedora or Sabra because of your antagonism. I quote: “Ever since our meeting at The New School, Peg seemed for me. We had a good relationship, as you know. She told me about the opening for writers on Hometown and encouraged me to try out. But after I started with the show, she changed. It’s Sabra, of course; it always is. Peg imagines she’s prote
cting Sabra (from heaven knows what!) but the truth is Sabra controls Peg in a very insidious way. Peg could never tell her about us, and she discarded me the same way she did Nick: ‘for Sabra’s sake.’ Then Peg got it into her head that Sabra was attracted to me, or I was to her. Now she just wants me out. . . . I want this job, Bernadette, but I’m caught between these two females: one, a lonely, lovely lady who won’t let her daughter grow up and take her own chances; the other, a self-absorbed child who lives in the fantasy of her own storylines, and won’t let her mother go.”

  These are harsh words, maybe, Peg but we’ve known each other for a long time. I think there’s some truth to what Lamont says, and I hope when you meet with him in Seaville, you’ll view him more objectively, and also keep my confidence re: the above.

  Lamont does deserve the job. Pigheaded as he is, he’s the best writer for what Fedora has in mind. Think about it.

  Love,

  Berna

  17. Wallace Witherspoon, Jr.

  When I got there, Charlie and Mrs. St. Amour were sitting on the sun porch drinking sangria. Sabra had her bag under her arm and seemed eager to go. I asked her to open up the package I had with me, first.

  She pulled out the T-shirt and held it up.

  “Grab the Reins!” Charlie said. “That’s what your shrink said to you.”

  “That’s what her shrink on the show said to her,” Mrs. St. Amour said. “That’s not what her own shrink said to her ever. Her own shrink says hello and goodbye and very little in between, which we pay her fifty dollars an hour for!”

  “Was it the shrink on Hometown?” I said.

  Mrs. St. Amour said, “Yes, Dr. Day, played by Paula Willow.”

  “My own shrink said something very similar, if not those very words,” said Sabra.

  “When?” Mrs. St. Amour asked.

  ‘Sabra ignored her mother’s question and glanced over at me. “Thanks a lot, Wally. Shall we go?”

  “ ‘Grab the reins’ was Lamont’s line in case anyone is interested,” said Mrs. St. Amour. “I know everything he ever wrote for Hometown.”

  “And you always called it garbage,” said Sabra.

  “Well you remember garbage,” Mrs. St. Amour said, laughing, “Lamont wrote it.”

  “It doesn’t matter who said it,” Charlie said. “It’s still a good line.”

  “It’s good garbage, hah?” Mrs. St. Amour laughed again.

  Sabra wasn’t even smiling.

  I said, “I guess you’re not going to Deke’s party, Charlie.”

  “We’re going to have a complete Spanish dinner,” Charlie said. “Just Mrs. St. Amour and me.”

  “You can call me Peg, Charlie,” said Mrs. St. Amour. “You can, too, Wally.”

  “I don’t think I’d have a great time at Deke Slade’s house anyway,” Charlie said.

  Mrs. St. Amour said, “Oh is that why I’ve been cutting up chickens and chopping onions and frying sausages and steaming mussels, because you don’t think you’d have a great time someplace else?” She mussed up Charlie’s hair and went back to the kitchen.

  “Hey, don’t go away mad, Peg,” Charlie called after her.

  Sabra let out a long, exasperated sigh and snatched the car keys from the table. “Ready, Wally?”

  “Grab the reins,” I said.

  “Okay, you made your point.”

  “What does that mean: I made my point?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “I just hope you’re not going to say that all night long.”

  For a while, I didn’t think I was going to get to say anything all night long. On the way to Deke’s, she kept up this running monologue about some writer who wanted to do a book about her.

  “Did you ever hear the name Milton Tanner?”

  “Who’s he?”

  “Who’s he,” she said sarcastically.

  “Well tell me who he is, if he’s someone.”

  “Skip it,” she said. “Will there be a lot of people at this party?” She had her foot down on the gas pedal; we were clocking eighty-five.

  “If we live to get there,” I said.

  I was getting a little steamed. I kept thinking that Harriet or Lauralei would have put on any T-shirt I’d bought them, immediately, and worn it to the party. Sabra was wearing one with her own picture on it, carrying a jacket and a bag with her show’s name on them. It was hard to get her attention, too.

  When I said, “I’ve been thinking of going to college in New York City—N.Y.U. or Columbia,” she said, “Nobody in daytime has ever had a whole book written about her.”

  “Of course it’s a year away,” I said.

  “The first book Milton Tanner wrote was about Marilyn Monroe.”

  “Anyway, I’m not going to follow in my father’s footsteps. That’s all settled.”

  “He wrote one about James Dean, too,” said Sabra.

  Deke’s party was in an old, cleared-out greenhouse behind the Slades’ house. Mr. Slade was expanding to the lot next door, where the new greenhouse was and his nursery. Sabra had to park the Mercedes about ten doors away, there were so many cars on the block already. We could hear a Captain & Tennille record blasting while we were still locking the car.

  Deke always stocked up on French cigarettes when he gave a party. He passed them around in case someone from his family wandered in and smelled the pot. Deke would hold up a Gauloise and say, “This is what smells.”

  “Yiiiiik, grass!” Sabra said when we walked inside. “I hate that smell!”

  “I thought you lived a sheltered life.”

  “I do,” she said. “We had an actor who’d get so laid back on grass we had to stop the tape for him every time he tried to say his lines.”

  “It gives me a headache,” I said. I’d only had it once, with Lauralei Rabinowitz. I felt as thought an ax was impaled somewhere between my ears, and Lauralei kept whispering, “Are you flying?” (“No, but if you are, fly down to the drugstore and get me some Anacin,” I said.)

  Deke Slade came rushing up to us. “You must be Sabra St. Amour.”

  “Tell me more!” someone sang out.

  Sabra’s face brightened. “Here we go,” she said. “Fasten your seat belt, Wally.”

  At first there was this huge fuss over her. Duffo Buttman asked her for her autograph again; he said there were butter stains all over the lobster bib she’d signed for him. Some of the other kids came by to be introduced, and she signed the cast on Linda Crawford’s leg which Linda had broken falling out of Eddie Gallagher’s speedboat. Sandy Rapp, Seaville High’s favorite drama department star, asked Sabra how to get an agent, and Annie Butler, Seaville High’s aspiring television director, asked her a question about unions. There was the usual autographing and barefaced gawking.

  I got a beer for myself and a ginger ale for Sabra. When I started back toward her, I saw something beginning to happen. I heard it, too. There was this peculiar voice change, almost as though she was doing a parody of herself. She was talking very slowly, pronouncing every word very exactly, in this high, stilted tone. She would emphasize some of the things she said by closing her eyes for a moment, as though she was punctuating that way. I got a little closer to her, and I heard her say, “. . . and I told him, ‘Accept me as I am, so I may learn what I can become.’ ”

  I recognized the line from the poster Sabra on Hometown tacked on her wall when she arrived in Clear City. Maybe some of the other kids did, too, or maybe it was just the way she was coming off, like she was on a little ego trip all her own. She didn’t hear the snickers in the background. Her eyes were closed for a moment. She heard Myra Tuttle, who was standing in front of her say, “What a neat answer!” and Duffo Buttman’s “Hey!”

  But kids were beginning to exchange looks, you know the kind of looks I mean: the get her ones, and the ones of suppressed laughter with the hands cupping the mouths.

  There was still a crowd around her when a familiar perfume got through the pot fumes, and I heard the low chuckle, and my own na
me, softly.

  I turned and looked up at Lauralei Rabinowitz with Maury Posner.

  It was a scene from my richest fantasies: There I was with a superstar, there Lauralei was still with Maury Posner. But it was not turning out exactly as I’d seen it in my imagination, because a flood of intense, warm feelings for Lauralei Rabinowitz rushed past and smothered my victory, and I was beginning to worry about Sabra.

  “Did you bring Lauralei that beer?” said Maury, reaching down and taking the can from my hand.

  “He didn’t bring me that beer, I bet,” Lauralei said.

  “You can have that beer,” I said.

  Maury began drinking it, while I stood looking up at her, trying to fight off all the old symptoms of Rabinowitzitis. She leaned over to talk to me.

  “I guess you don’t think about me anymore,” she purred.

  “I think about you.”

  “Not anymore, I bet.”

  I glanced in Sabra’s direction. She was holding forth but no longer holding anyone’s full attention. The looks were beginning to spread.

  “I want to tell you something,” Lauralei Rabinowitz said.

  “Can you tell me later?”

  She gave me one of her smiles. “Can I tell you now?” She stuck one of her long fingers through the belt loop on my jeans. “Please?”

  “Certainly,” I said. “Absolutely,” I added.

  She leaned down even closer to me.” Hey,” she whispered.

  “Hey what?” I answered weakly, trying to keep an eye on Sabra, sinking a little more every second into my old disease. Lauralei’s soft, long black hair brushed my forehead.

  “Hey how come you brought a pain-in-the-ass to the party,” she said, “and how come your breath smells of onions?”

  On my way back to Sabra, I slipped a Tic Tac in my mouth and grabbed another can of beer from the pail of ice. Where was kindness in the world? I wondered, where was consideration, respect, goodness? I remembered a line from a Woody Allen book when the hero asked a girl where reality was and she said it was north. No, Harriet. Empty dreams are north. Reality is west. False hope are east, and I think Louisiana is south.

  I wanted to get Sabra away from the small crowd still hanging around her. Some of them were beginning to laugh openly; others were feeding her lines. I don’t think she got what was happening, but she sensed something was in the air. I took her off to the side and said, “They’re dancing out on the deck. Do you want to dance?”