“What are you, mister, a wisenheimer?” she snapped, glaring at me.
“I am not.”
“Better not be. I got no use for them. Never have.” She shot a glance at Sarge, then down at Lulu. “Is she at least paper trained?”
Lulu snuffled indignantly. She definitely wanted a piece of the old biddy now. I shrugged and let her have her. I’d done all I could.
Slowly, Lulu stalked over to her, Bunny watching her every move disapprovingly. When she arrived at Bunny’s Reeboks she gave her The Treatment. First, the look—her saddest, most mournful face. A definite ten on the hankie meter. Second, a slight whimper, more a catch in the throat really. Third, her knockout punch—she rolled over onto her back, landing directly on Bunny’s feet with a soft plop, paws in the air, tail thumping. The little ham overplayed it this time, if you ask me. Possibly it was the surroundings. No matter. The Treatment never fails.
Bunny fell to her knees immediately. “Aw, I’m sorry, sweetheart. Bunny’s sorry, okay? She’s sorry.” She knelt there rubbing Lulu’s belly. To Lulu she said, “Such a little sweetheart.” To me she said, “Oy, yoy. What does she eat, dead fish?”
“Exclusively,” I replied. “They flop around if they’re still alive.”
“Have you thought about Milk Bones?” she asked. “I understand they’re very good for this sort of thing.”
“She won’t eat them.”
“Why not?”
“They’re for dogs.”
Bunny got up and finished tidying Badger’s room. “Sorry about all of this mess, Hoagy. I didn’t know we were having company until five minutes ago. At the last minute Matty tells me. Look at all of this, will you?” She scooped up a huge load of dirty T-shirts. “I’ll be up half the night washing it.” She carried it off to the living room and deposited it next to the front door to nowhere. Her purse was there.
I followed her. “You do his laundry?”
“You never stop being a mother,” she replied. “Not if your baby needs you.” She bustled over to the coffee table and started picking up the shoes and socks, humming.
I stood there a moment watching her. Then I turned to Sarge and said, “This is where he lives? He actually sleeps in Badger’s bed?”
She looked away uncomfortably. “I thought you knew.”
“I knew he was staying on the lot. I thought he had a suite of rooms or something.”
“He does, sort of.” She looked around at the sets. “Kind of strange though, I reckon.”
“You can forget the kind of. This is not good.” This was far from good. This was Dysfunction Junction. And welcome to it.
“He likes it here,” Sarge insisted. “Feels safe. The man’s hurting, like I told you.”
“You didn’t tell me how much. Nor did Shelley.”
“What did Shelley tell you?”
“That he’s tearing his hair out.”
“He is,” she affirmed. “Lookie, I got to leave you now. Shit to do. He’s in casting—be down in a minute. Just yell when you’re ready to leave for the hotel, okay?”
“Thanks for the lift—and the tour.” I looked around at the sets. “I think.”
She grinned at me. “No problem.” Then she yelled good-bye to Bunny and strode off into the darkness out beyond the lights, rump high, calf muscles rippling. A moment later the stage door slammed shut.
“Such a lovely girl,” observed Bunny, scooping wadded-up candy wrappers into a wastebasket. “Strong, smart, big-hearted. And carrying a torch for that bum. That convict. Poo.” She finished clearing the coffee table and wiped it off with a damp rag. “I usually make Matty a snack now. I’ll make you one, too. But you have to come help.”
“It’s a deal.”
The fridge in the Hayes’s kitchen was hooked up. Bunny pulled a carton of milk and a jar of Welch’s grape jelly from it. The Wonder bread and Skippy peanut butter, the chunky kind, were in the cupboard.
“You like crusts?” she asked. “Matt won’t eat his.”
“I will.”
“Good boy.”
“That’s what I tried to tell you.”
“Mothers have their own ways of finding these things out,” she said, going to work on the sandwiches.
Lulu ambled in after us and curled up under the kitchen table.
“Do you live here, too, Bunny?”
“Oh, heavens no. I have a place of my own.”
This I was glad to hear. “Whereabouts?”
“Bungalow C. The old writers’ court.”
“Oh.” Not that glad.
“I fixed it up real nice. Got my own Nordic Track, a washer-dryer combination. You’ll have to come visit me.” She cut my sandwich in half and put it on a plate and handed it to me. “Sit,” she commanded. I did. “You want Bosco in your milk?”
“No, thanks.” I bit into my sandwich. I hadn’t tasted Welch’s grape jelly since I was ten. It was so sweet I could practically feel the sugar dissolving my teeth.
She handed me my milk and sat across from me, watching me eat. “So you and Lulu go everywhere together, huh?”
“Like I said, we’re a team. For better or worse.”
“Have you considered an alternative form of companionship?”
“Such as?”
“A nice girl.”
“Tried it.”
She shook her index finger at me, her charm bracelet gonging. “You’re the one who’s always mixed up with Merilee Nash. Sure, I was just reading about you at the beauty parlor.”
“That’s me, all right.”
“So has she really dumped you for good this time?”
I sighed inwardly. “I’m really more interested in talking about Matthew and Pennyroyal.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Feh.”
“Feh?”
“I never liked her. Not from the get-go. It had nothing to do with her not being a Jewish girl, either. Religion has never been a big deal in our family. Not like with some families,” she added darkly, so darkly I couldn’t help but wonder about it. “I didn’t like her because she deceived him.”
“There’s deception in any relationship,” I observed. “Deception holds it together.”
“Trust holds it together,” Bunny argued, smacking the table with her little fist. “Marriage is a partnership. A man and a woman sharing together, building together. Matty and Penny, they never had that. She put a spell on him, is what she did. And poor Matty, he was helpless. He simply could not believe that someone that blond, that lovely—a cheerleader yet—would go out with him. And why shouldn’t she? Who wouldn’t go out with a nice Jewish boy who is bright and personable and worth four hundred million dollars?”
“Sounds good to me.”
“Not that I ever said anything. He deserved to be happy. And she made him happy, while it suited her. Made him a lovely home, a beautiful child. But all along she was deceiving him. As soon as she got what she wanted, she took off. Stole his child. Broke his heart. A snake, that’s what she is.”
“Your son-in-law would like to see them patch it up.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Sheldon’s worried about what’ll happen to the studio. That’s his job. Mine is to worry about Matty. And for what she’s doing to him—the publicity, the sleeping around, the ugliness—she should be punished, not welcomed back. She should be made to suffer like he is.”
“You don’t think she’s suffering?”
“I think she’s having the time of her little life,” Bunny snapped angrily. “Believe me—Pennyroyal Brim is not the person she pretends to be.”
“Who among us is?”
“But she’ll get hers,” Bunny vowed. “You’ll see. She’ll get it. She’ll do it to herself or someone will do it to her.”
“Which would you prefer?”
“All I want is to see my Matty happy again.” She peered across the table at me. “And you, Hoagy? What is it you want?”
“I’d like to learn as much as I can about his boyhood,” I replied. “
About his father—”
“What about him?” she demanded.
“Their relationship. I gather it wasn’t so terrific.”
She stuck out her lower lip, weighing this. “And what good will this do?”
“A lot of Matthew’s movies are about childhood. Yet audiences know very little about his own. They’re curious.” I sipped my milk. “It may also be good for him right now to do some looking back.”
She nodded, her eyes glinting at me. “If it means helping him, I’m all for it. But if it doesn’t …” She reached across the table and grabbed me by the wrist. She had a grip of iron. “You don’t want Bunny Wax for an enemy, mister. Believe me.”
“I believe you,” I assured her, watching the color drain from my hand.
She relaxed her grip. “Just so we understand each other,” she said, smiling.
“We do.”
“About what, Ma?”
We both looked up. Matthew was standing, or I should say lurking, there in the doorway.
One look at him and I knew just what Shelley and Sarge meant when they said that Matthew Wax was tearing his hair out.
Chapter 3
IT WAS QUITE SOME BALD PATCH. IT STARTED WHERE his forelock should have been and it wandered all the way over behind his right ear. He was down to bare white scalp in many spots. A few thin, reddish brown tufts still clung to life in others. The rest of his hair was shaggy and unkempt. He looked like a kid who’d used his haircut money to buy comic books and then tried doing it himself—with his mom’s pinking shears.
“Just so you understand each other about what, Ma?” he repeated, tugging nervously at his ravaged forelock with his fingers.
“Nothing, sweetheart,” she replied, gazing up at him with a mixture of pride and awe. And maybe some fear. “Here’s your friend. Say hello.”
He loped over to me and stuck out his hand. “Glad you could make it,” he exclaimed, as we shook. “Stewart, right?”
“Make it Hoagy.”
“As in Carmichael?”
“As in the cheese steak.”
“Hey, I love cheese steaks!” He grinned at me happily. “Especially with tons of onions and hot peppers. Man, they’re great!”
“That they are.”
If this was Matthew Wax down, I didn’t think I wanted to be around him when he was up. He was a bundle of energy—an eager, boisterous, overgrown kid. He was uncommonly tall, seven or eight inches over six feet, and gawky of build, like a teenager who hasn’t filled in yet. His shoulders were narrow, his arms skinny and unusually long, so long that his hands hung nearly down to his knees. They were surprisingly small, delicate hands, and the backs were covered with freckles. So was his face. His skin was fair, almost pasty. He had a rabbit nose, pink and busy, and a jaw you could shovel snow with. He had shaved recently but not well. He wore glasses, thick ones with wire frames that had broken at the hinge and been Scotch-taped together. The eyes behind them were earnest and bright. He wore a faded Bedford Falls T-shirt, old jeans that were three inches too short for him, and a new pair of Air Jordans. He had huge feet. They made him look like a Great Dane puppy. It really was hard to believe he was thirty-eight. So much of him was kid. I would have said happy kid, too, if it weren’t for his hair. His hair made him look positively haunted.
“Okay, okay, you’re Meat,” he announced.
“Am I?”
“That’s what I’m gonna call you—Meat.”
“I’ve been called worse things.”
“Can we have ’em for dinner tonight, Ma?” His fingers went up to his scalp again, worrying it like a gardener trying to pull out crabgrass.
“Have what, sweetheart?” she wondered.
Before he could answer, Lulu came out from under the table and yawned. She was feeling ignored.
Matthew wrinkled his rabbit nose at me, mystified.
“That aroma of the San Pedro docks at low tide is Lulu,” I explained.
He looked down. “Oh, wow! You have a basset hound!” He flopped to his knees and petted her, thrilled. “I love basset hounds! Love ’em!”
“She’s very sensitive,” Bunny informed her son. “So be nice.”
“Know who she looks just like?” he said, peering at her.
I nodded. “Streisand. Everyone says so.”
“Cleo. Remember The People’s Choice?”
“Vaguely,” I replied, not liking where this was going.
“It was a sitcom in the fifties, with Jackie Cooper. Cleo was his dog. She used to make comments about everything that was going on. She didn’t actually talk. It was more like we heard her thoughts. Lulu looks just like her.”
“How nice,” I said, watching her head swell even more.
“Mary Jane Croft was the actress who did her voice,” he added quickly, as if that was going to be my next question. “She played Clara Randolph on Ozzie and Harriet and Joan’s friend Helen on I Married Joan and Chester Riley’s sister, Cissy, on The Life of Riley. You into trivia?”
“These days, I’m happy just to remember my own name,” I confessed.
He sat back on his haunches, chuckling with delight over Lulu. “Hey, can she do any tricks?”
“I wouldn’t exactly call them tricks.”
Lulu threw back her head and started moaning loudly. She needs very little encouragement.
“Oy, yoy, what’s that?” asked Bunny, aghast.
“Her imitation of Roseanne Barr singing the National Anthem,” I replied. “Good girl, Lulu. You can stop now.”
She wasn’t done though. Not with a world-famous director as her captive audience. She covered her eyes with her paws now, hamming shamelessly.
Matthew frowned. “And that?”
“That would be Asta, whenever Nick and Nora started to get mushy. Okay, Lulu. You can—”
“Can she flap her ears straight up in the air like Cleo?” asked Matthew.
“Only if she’s in the process of falling from a very tall building. Which she may soon be, if she doesn’t behave herself.”
She grunted at me and went back under the table, peeved.
“What is it you wanted to have tonight, sweetheart?” Bunny asked Matthew.
“Cheese steaks,” he replied. “With lots of onions and hot peppers. Can we, Ma?”
“I’m making salmon patties,” she replied firmly. “And those Tater Tots you like. Now go eat your sandwich.”
“Sure, Ma.”
It was on the counter by the sink. She’d cut the crusts off for him. He loped over to it and began chomping, slumped there against the sink.
She watched him eat, crinkling her nose at every bite. I think she’d have chewed his food for him if she could have. “Don’t slouch,” she reminded him.
“Sure, Ma.” He stood straighter, grinning down at her fondly.
“And how many days have you been wearing that T-shirt?” she demanded, scowling up at him fiercely.
“Dunno,” he mumbled, reddening.
“I want you to take a bath, tonight,” Bunny ordered, shaking a finger at her towering manchild. “And change those jeans, too. You’ve been wearing them so long they could stand up by themselves.”
“Right, Ma.”
“Look at your nice friend here.” She glanced at me approvingly. “With his nice seersucker suit. Why, he’s fresh as a daisy.”
“I wouldn’t go quite that far,” I said.
“All right, I’m going,” she announced abruptly. “You two boys have business to discuss.” She went over to Matthew and held her face up to him. He bent over and kissed her on the forehead. “I’ll be back at six. Will you be joining us for dinner, Hoagy?” she asked, scurrying off toward the living room.
“Thanks, but I have to get settled in,” I replied. We followed her. Matthew immediately flopped onto the sofa, his big sneakered feet up on the coffee table.
Bunny whirled and barked, “Get those gunboats off the coffee table!” He obeyed. “I have to watch him like a hawk,” she clucked at me. “A
hawk!” Then she gathered up his dirty clothes and went bustling off into the darkness.
The second she was gone he put his feet right back up. And grabbed the radio controls for a toy car, a Lamborghini Countach that was parked on the floor by the TV. He flicked it on and sent it speeding around the set, watching it intently. I sat, watching him. He reminded me of a kid who has just been left with his new babysitter.
“It’s a prototype,” he explained, his eyes never leaving it. “I know the guy who makes ’em. He sends ’em to me.”
He sent it under the easy chair where I sat, then over toward the fireplace, where Lulu was. She didn’t like that. She thought it was an alien chasing her. She scampered over to me and crouched between my legs, trembling.
“Don’t mind Ma, Meat,” Matthew said, his eyes still on the car. “She means well.”
“I’m sure she does.”
We both sat there watching the car zip around, its high-pitched whine the only sound in that vast, airtight building. It was odd sitting there on that set, surrounded by all of that blackness. It felt as if the cameras were rolling and our dialogue was already scripted for us. It felt as if none of this was quite real. I never lost that feeling the whole time I worked with Matthew Wax. I was always waiting for someone to yell “Cut!”
“So tell me what you need, Meat,” Matthew said.
“Your attention, for starters.”
“You’ve got it,” he assured me, as the car zipped around the sofa and toward me.
I intercepted it with my foot and picked it up, its wheels spinning in midair.
“Hey, put that back!”
I had other plans. I hurled it as high and as far as I could out into the darkness beyond the set. It clattered on the pavement, then was silent.
“What did you do that for?” he cried, outraged.
“When we work, we work,” I said quietly.
He stared at me like I was a madman. I stared right back at him like I was a madman. I’m very good at that. It isn’t much of a stretch in my case.
He backed down first. “Okay, okay. I’m sorry. You’re right. We work.”
“Fine.”
Matthew cleared his throat. “I guess I’m just …” He lowered his chin to his chest and tugged at a lock of hair, jittery and at a loss for words. “I’m not used to giving interviews, I guess.”
The Boy Who Never Grew Up Page 6