Father Knows Less

by Lee Kalcheim

  SAM

  Okay.

  GABE

  What do the English call an English muffin?

  CHAPTER FOUR

  TRAVELING: GETTING AWAY FROM YOU KNOW WHERE

  You would think that, if one wanted to get away from an anxious experience, one would go to a beach somewhere and just relax. Maybe even leave the kids with grandparents and just melt away. But I didn’t need to relax in a way that would allow my brain to relive the intensity of the last month. I didn’t want obscurely funny punch lines rolling around in my head. I didn’t want to be wondering if the rewrites on the rewrites on the rewrites had been … right. I didn’t want to be wondering if the postal clerk from Encino who kept dozing at the screening was tired from watching an extra inning Dodger game or was bored to tears at Something Wilder. I wanted to be in another world.

  We had friends in Brussels and London who had never seen the boys. And we wanted to show the boys to them and introduce Sam and Gabe to the world outside New York and Hollywood. A place that our civilization came from. We’d promised we’d take them to London, to Paddington station, where the great Paddington Bear was found and named and written about in one of their favorite books. That sealed the deal.

  Friends cautioned us, “They’re four. Their too young. The trip won’t mean anything to them.” “They’re four going on forty,” we said. “They’ll get it.”

  But we forgot the “schlepping” part. Four-year-olds can’t fly without car seats. Four year olds can’t travel without strollers. Because we had twins, we had to take our double stroller. It’s heavy! But we packed as economically as we could, making sure to include a collection of trains and planes and cars and stuffed animals for the boys. As the 747 rose up off the tarmac at JFK, the boys clutched their little Paddington bears to their chests, in their car seats, and Julia and I were too excited to even wonder if this was a good idea. It was a great idea.

  Brussels. We stopped to see my old college friend and his wife, Tom and Irene, who lived in a house that had been an old inn—complete with a stream and a wonderful creaky old water wheel—the antithesis of Hollywood! They plied us with Belgian chocolates, and we slept in late, under our huge, downy bed covers. Then off we went to Austerlitz to see the battlefield where Napoleon had lost the battle of Waterloo. On the drive there I tried to fill the boys in on what little I knew about Napoleon.

  “Well … he was very short,” I said.

  “Is that good for a general?”

  “Well, yes! It gave him an advantage over other generals because he was so short that they kept firing over his head. Never hit him!”

  “Dadoo, didn’t he sit up on a horse?”

  “Yes. Yes, of course. And when you see paintings of him you’ll see he always has one hand inside his jacket.”

  “Why?”

  “Uh … In an earlier battle. I think he lost a glove.”

  Fortunately at the battlefield, they had real information.

  Rested and chocolated, we trained to Paris. Kids love trains, and these were trains! The TVGs. The long-nosed, sleek, super-fast pan-European trains. As the boys settled into their seats, they couldn’t sit still.

  “This train goes over a hundred miles an hour!”

  “It does not.”

  “It does too.”

  “Who says so?”

  “Dadoo told me.”

  “Dadoo’s just joking. Dadoo always jokes.”

  “Mommy told me too.”

  “Oh, well … maybe it’s true.”

  The boys sat wide-eyed as the train pulled out of the station. The boys leaned over to each other every minute.

  “How fast do you think we’re going now?”

  Gabe turned to me, “Dadoo, it doesn’t seem very fast.”

  “Just you wait,” I countered. Finally, past the outskirts of Brussels, the train accelerated. The scenery outside was a blur. Sam leaned to Gabe and whispered, “I think Dadoo was right. This is really fast.” The respect I’d lost over Napoleon I gained back over the TGV!

  In Paris, to our cabdriver’s dismay, we piled all of our luggage, and the car seats, and the stroller into the pint sized Citroen. Surly, unhappy that he’d been burdened with American tourists and all of their worldly belongings, he grumbled as I sat in the front seat, forcing him to put his little leather pocketbook, his newspapers, and his carton of Galois on his lap. I instructed him in my best high school French where we were going. He stared at me as if I had addressed him Arabic.

  “Pardon?”

  “Nous voulons … aller a la Hotel Saxe Residence.”

  “Saxe Residence? Non! Ou est la?”

  “Uh … a … Neuf … Villa de Saxe.”

  Gabriel spoke up from under the luggage stuffed around him in the back.

  “Dadoo, are you trying to speak French?”

  “I am speaking French.”

  “Maybe Mommy should try.”

  After much backing and filling and circling in the seventh arrondisment, we found the hotel, at the end of an alley. A charmingly quiet alley. With an elevator so small it took us seven separate trips to get all our luggage up to the room.

  While the boys played with their train set on the bed in their room of a very small two room suite, we spread the Paris map out on the bed and planned our stay. The going was difficult. Well not difficult—just physically trying. We took only public transportation. What’s more fun than a subway? The Metro. It’s odd the details that fascinate kids.

  “Mommy, Dadoo, these subways are so quiet.”

  “That’s because their cars have rubber tires.”

  Gabe pondered this for a moment. He was used to the clackity-loud New York subways. “It’s too quiet for a subway.” Once inside the car, they showed a palpable thrill, as they squirmed into their seats. They loved riding the subway in New York. Sometimes they insisted we take one even if we were only going one stop away. And they would ride in the first car and look ahead at the track. On the Metro, they noticed that, when the doors were about to close, a funny horn sounded. And when you wanted to get out at your stop, you had to unlatch the door! These are great discoveries for a kid. There is no experience quite like unlatching your own subway door on a Paris Metro, stepping out into a spanking clean station, then turning to watch the cars … move off silently into the tunnel. But carrying a double stroller up and down and up and down metro steps took its toll on my forearms. They ached. But we were glad to have the stroller when the guys began to wind down toward the end of the day. At the Musée D’Orsay, Gabe crawled into the stroller and slept, while Sam, with his last bit of energy, ran up and down the marble floors, sliding and laughing as he went. But they took it in. A few years later, when we were back in Paris, at the same museum, we “lost” Gabriel. And as I ran frantically back through the rooms of impressionist paintings, anxiously looking for him, I finally found him, just standing … just standing and staring at a Renoir painting of a nude in dappled sunlight that both of us had said we’d liked when we’d seen it on that first trip. I just stood and watched him watching.

  We don’t know how much they “get.” We just don’t know. And when they give back, they give back like this—standing in front of painting that you both love, like a doctoral student studying it for his Ph.D., like a smitten young artist seeing Renoir for the first time, like a boy finding something he and his dad had fallen in love with and finds he is now able to gaze at again for as long as he wants, while his dad looks on, tingles going up his spine.

  And on to London. Our friends in London, Jeanne and Dermott and their son Josh, lived in Peckham. Peckham is located in Southwest London. It is famous because, during the blitz, when the German planes were finished bombing central London and were flying back to Germany, to lighten their load, they dropped their unused bombs … on Peckham.

  It has recovered nicely, and its streets with rows of narrow cozy little houses are a bargain for Londoners in search of a home of their own at a reasonable price. Our friends own a lovely
little house, and we were delighted to stay there—for several reasons. We got to see more of them. We got to sit in their garden for tea. And we got to take Brit Rail—the train—into central London!

  “Here it comes. This one’s going to Victoria Station. Who is Victoria station named after?”

  “Queen Victoria!”

  “No. It’s named after Herbert J. Station!”

  Requisite groans all around. The boys had heard that joke since they were toddlers as we crossed the Pulaski Skyway going to Philadelphia and I told them it was named after Herbert J. Skyway. Who was the Eiffel Tower named after boys?

  “Herbert J. Tower!”

  “Right!”

  Energized by the half-hour train ride into London, the boys ran through Victoria Station to the street to gaze at the funny square-shaped taxi cabs and the double-decker buses. We crossed into the Royal Mews and on to Buckingham Palace.

  “Jump in the stroller guys. We’ve got to hurry to get there for the changing of the guard.”

  “What do they change into?”

  “They don’t change into anything. They change.”

  “They change their underwear.”

  “Oh Mom-my!”

  After the guards changed we crossed into Green Park and rolled down Piccadilly Street into Piccadilly Circus and down to Trafalgar Square. We pointed to the statue in the center of the square.

  “That statue is of Admiral Nelson. He defeated Napoleon at the battle of Trafalgar.”

  “Napoleon lost again?”

  “Yes, well … his navy. And Nelson lost his life in the battle. Became a national hero. Now, look carefully at the statue. Notice something strange?”

  “The pigeons really like it.”

  “Nelson only has one arm,” I said, “He lost it at the battle of Santa Cruz.”

  “Did they ever find it?”

  “Booooooooooooo!”

  Long days at The National Gallery, a visit to Paddington Station to find the locker where Paddington Bear was found.

  “How do you know it’s this locker?”

  “I remember from the book.”

  “It didn’t say in the book we read.”

  “Yes, but Dadoo probably read an earlier version.”

  On to a boat trip up the Thames to Greenwich to see the Cutty Sark and the Clock Museum and then of course to … The Tower! We were aghast to find that the tour guide at the Tower loved scaring kids with all the grisly details of the untimely ends of famous Brits.

  “After the rebellion, they cut off the ’eads of the conspirators and they put ’em all in a row along London Bridge … on top of long stakes … squishy side down!” I blanched. The boys didn’t bat an eye. It was exciting. At the souvenir shop, we bought a pocket edition of the British Kings and Queens. An illustration of each monarch and brief description of his or her reign. Once the boys learned to read, they devoured it. They had been to the land that these rulers ruled. They’d heard tales of their cruelty and their cunning. They had seen the palace where, since the nineteenth century, they had lived in resplendent luxury. They had seen the tower where some had been consigned to ignoble fates. And by the time he was eight, Gabe had memorized the royal line and would, with some urging, proudly recite it and correct us if we faltered.

  “No, Elizabeth did not succeed her father Henry the Eighth. First came his son, Edward the Sixth who died when he was twenty. Then came “Bloody Mary,” a Catholic, who succumbed to cancer after spending her short reign beheading Protestants and then came Elizabeth. She was third in line, but ruled longer than anyone until Victoria.”

  “Yes, but was she happy?”

  “Oh, Dadooo!”

  All from a little book. From the souvenir shop. You never know.

  We boarded the plane for New York. Not knowing if the show had been picked up. Or where we would be living. But I did know, I did learn that if you travel with your children—from the moment they are conscious that they are seeing something new and different, you will see something new and different, because you will see it all through their eyes.

  Message from Barnet Kellman on my answering machine when we got home:

  BARNET

  The good news is, the show’s picked up. We’re on the fall schedule. The bad news is we’re on Saturday night at 8:00. When no one’s home. But, if we can do better than expected, maybe they’ll move us. Or maybe like All in the Family, we’ll make people stay home on Saturday night to watch us. Oh, and the network wants to replace Gene’s wife. And make a few other changes. They want the twins to be Siamese twins. Just kidding. How was London? You know the old joke, “Why did the Siamese Twins move to London? So the other one could drive.” Ba dump bump! Come out ASAP. You’ll need to rent a house. Congratulations. It’s all uphill from here.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  RETURN TO LA LA LAND

  Never rent a house from an ex-hippie, wealthy, Jewish weightlifter. Especially one with expensive tastes. What did I know? He was polite when he showed me the house. He was naked from the waist up, all the better to display his tattoo—a large Jewish star with the words “Never Again” scrolled beneath it. A political statement on his pect. His salt-and-pepper pony tail hung down his spine. He wore an earring. Small. Tasteful. He led me through the house, pointing out only the valuable things.

  “This inlaid end table is the only one of its kind in the Western Hemisphere. This is a Navajo peace pipe. I smoke it once a year to honor my father’s death.”

  “You’re father was a Navajo?”

  “No, he was a garment worker. He made shirts on Seventh Avenue.”

  “I see, then he was fond of Navajos?”

  “He never met a Navajo. He was Jewish. He only knew Jews and the Puerto Rican boy who delivered lunch. He never made more than six thousand dollars a year. When he died I was making a million six.”

  I still didn’t understand the Navajo connection, but my host plowed on.

  “He left me two hundred and sixty dollars in his will. I bought the pipe with it.”

  I still didn’t get it, but it didn’t seem worth pursuing. He was on to the next object of value.

  “This rug is worth fifty thousand dollars.”

  “Uhhh, maybe you should store that. We have four-year-old boys. They’re very clean. Very neat, but they might spill something.”

  “No problem. It’s a tough rug. It can take it.”

  “But …”

  “If you don’t love these things, don’t rent the house.”

  “I love them, I just don’t want to hurt them.”

  “If you love them you won’t hurt them.”

  Okaaay. Now what do I do? In his diffident hippie way he was saying, “It’s all cool man. You love the house. It’ll all be cool. Mi casa est su casa.”

  Fine, I thought. I can be cool. I hadn’t really ever been cool. But if it meant renting this neat house, I could be cool. I rented it. A year later when we moved out, I had to go to small claims court because “Mr. Cool” had kept my deposit because he claimed my kids had drawn on his wall. Didn’t touch his valuable rug. Or smoke his Navajo pipe. Drew on the wall. My kids never drew on the wall. In fact the spot where he pointed out some faint marks was too high for my kids to reach. They had never drawn on a wall in our Massachusetts house. Or New York apartment. Why would they do it in Mr. Cool’s pristine house? In a spot they couldn’t reach? Waiting to go to trial, we realized that we would have to wait half a day. We settled out of court. In the parking lot. And Mr. Cool kept enough of my money to buy another valuable knick knack for his home. No wonder he made a million six last year.

  But before that happened, we indulged in the house. The master bed bathroom was larger than my first New York apartment. The walk-in closet was large enough not only to walk in, but to hold a decent sized party in. The living room had nothing but white couches in it. Perfect for four year olds.

  “Not on the couch! No chocolate on the couch!”

  And the pool was black. Everything in L.A.
was black. The cars. The office furniture. The T-shirts under the leather jackets. Except us. We were white. And wet behind the ears.

  Su casa est mi casa.

  I had found a home away from home and called Julia and told her to pack up and come out.

  “What’s it like?”

  “It’s great. It’s … very L.A.”

  “Is that good or bad?”

  “Well, if you’re living here, you should get the feeling that you’re really living here.”

  “But you don’t really want to live there.”

  “Right, but since we have to live here, I thought, why not live here in a place that really reeks of here.” If you can hear a double take over the phone, I heard Julia do one.

  “Tell me something you love about the house.”

  “Uhhhh, well … They have a rosemary bush. We can stuff chickens for a hundred years.”

  As it turned out, Julia and the boys loved the house. It was suitably funky. A black pool (of course). And a kumquat tree. If the show folded, we could always write The Kumquat Cook Book. Favorite recipe: Rosemary stuffed chicken with kumquat sauce. And it gave rise to family “knock knock” jokes.

  “Knock Knock.

  “Who’s there?”

  “Kumquat.”

  “Kumquat who?”

  “I love you—kumquat may!”

  Back in the land of “professional” comedy, Barnet and I met with network honchos to go over their notes on the pilot. The NBCers had read the questionnaires filled out at the screening replete with remarks such as: Love him hated her. Love her hated him. They need a dog. The friend isn’t handsome enough. 86 the Friend. Etc. Etc. Based on both the audience survey and network sagacity, as Barnet had informed me, Gene’s wife from the pilot was replaced by another actress. Because they wanted teenagers to watch the show, a teenage next -door neighbor was added as a regular character. Because they wanted “ethnic diversity,” a black plumber was added for the new first episode. And even though the pilot was good enough for the network to order it for series, massive rewrites were demanded.