Lois gasped. “I could never do that, Mickey!”
“All right, all right, forget it.”
I was dizzy. At this point I was still trying to write songs, convinced I hadn’t been a one hit wonder with a follow-up record that tanked. Maybe I’d write a new song that would burn up the charts, and put another fortune in my pocket. How about “You’re Havin’ My Baby?” Nah, Paul Anka had already beaten me to it….
Her eyes softened. “I want to marry you, Mickey.”
“You do?”
“Don’t you want to marry me?”
I swallowed. “I never really thought about it, Lois. We’re pretty young.”
“Well, now we have to think about it, don’t we?”
“I guess.”
“Will you marry me, Mickey?”
I swear to God she asked me just like that, flat on her back, naked in my bed, her hand snug around my suddenly hardening cock.
Why did I go firm in a situation so horrifying? The prospect of a shotgun wedding should have made me shrivel, not swell, so what was the explanation for it?
I don’t know. Being twenty was part of it, I guess, twenty and lonely and terrified of the abyss I was facing in the wake of the TV show disaster.
“Yeah, Lois, I’ll marry you,” I replied, and we went at it like wildcats. That very night we drove to Las Vegas and got married at a chapel by a preacher in a lime-green tuxedo who looked like a faker but turned out to be absolutely legitimate, as I learned six months later when Lois served me with divorce papers.
The marriage was real. The pregnancy was another matter. Lois claimed to have miscarried a few months into it, but I don’t remember any change in her figure or morning sickness or any behavior you could call even remotely motherly from this woman who insisted that smoking a little pot every night was good for the fetus because it relaxed the mother.
At that point I was worth about half a million dollars, and when the fairly uncomplicated divorce proceedings were over (no prenup, so the fifty-fifty California law applied) my lawyer took me aside.
“We’re off the clock now, kid, so this is free advice you can take or leave.” He put a pudgy hand on my shoulder to cushion the blow. “Next time a girl tells you she’s pregnant, get her to piss into a cup. And be there when she pisses into the cup.”
My parents met Lois exactly once, right after we were married. I flew them over for a visit and my mother spent a long weekend sniffing the air for marijuana smoke I’d tried my best to Air Wick away. She cringed when Lois called her “Mom,” and my father kept asking about the TV show.
I lied to them, told them I had another pilot in the works. I lied to them again when I told them I loved Lois, and I thought I was lying one more time when my mother cornered me to ask point-blank if Lois was pregnant.
“No way, Mom!”
Anyway, I had to sell my condo to share my assets with my ex. That was painful, but not nearly as painful as something Lois said to me when we parted for the last time on the courthouse steps. It was a brilliantly sunny Los Angeles day, the kind of all-penetrating sun you have to squint against even if you’re looking at the ground. Lois grabbed my hand and pulled me close, not for affection but for scrutiny. She lowered her sunglasses to peer into my eyes, this woman I’d known for less than a year who’d just cut a deal worth a quarter of a million dollars.
Honest to God, I was expecting her to thank me for my generosity, but instead her eyes narrowed and her lips went rubbery in that pre-crying state I’d come to know.
“You never did love me, did you, Mickey?”
I hesitated, which was in fact almost as much of an answer as Lois would need. She had half my money, and now she was after a whole truth. So I gave it to her, right between the eyes.
I shook my head. “Not the way a man’s supposed to love a wife, Lois.”
It felt good to say it, but only for as long as it took to say it. Her eyes twitched with the pain of it, but I also knew she was tough. She took a deep breath, a fighter’s breath.
“Do you want to know if I loved you?”
“Do you want to tell me?”
“I did. I do.”
“You do?”
“Yeah, damn you, I do.” Her eyes brimmed with real tears, not the kind she had to summon up on camera.
The smoggy heat was getting to me. I giggled with a weird giddiness. “Lois. Let’s try to remember what happened here. You filed for divorce against me.”
“Yes, I did. Because I knew you’d never divorce me. You’d already left me emotionally, but you never would have left the house.”
“Funny you should mention the house. I have to sell it now, as you probably know.”
But Lois didn’t hear those words. She jabbed her forefinger at my chest. “Don’t you ever do this to another woman.”
“Do what? Split my assets?”
“Don’t promise her a future when you’re stuck in the past.”
My heart was hammering. Lois wasn’t stupid, but her intelligence was a kind of organic thing, and words weren’t always her best friends. This observation was a rare thing, almost a lyric from a country-western song. I wondered if she’d heard it someplace or if she came up with it herself, but before I could wonder too long, Lois asked, almost casually, “What’s her name?”
I sighed, felt my shoulders slump. I had to tell her. I owed her that much.
“Lynn.”
I trembled at the sound of my own voice. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d spoken her name aloud. I felt as if I were violating a gravesite, just speaking her name.
Lois was breathing hard. “Is she prettier than me?”
I sighed with weariness and impatience over her refusal to let me and herself off the fucking hook.
Prettier? Jesus Christ, it wasn’t a question of measure. Lynn was all alone in my mind. There was Lynn, and then there was everybody else.
But try and explain that to your brand-new ex-wife.
“No, she was not prettier than you.”
“Where is she? Back in New York?”
“I have no idea. She ran away from home when she was a kid.”
“How dramatic.”
“As a matter of fact, it was pretty damn dramatic.”
“You love her.”
“I did, yes.”
“No, you mean you do. You still do.”
I rubbed my face, spoke through the forest of my fingers. “We’ve been divorced for twenty minutes now, Lois. Why are we even talking about this?”
“Because it’s all over and I realize I never even knew you, Mickey. God! What are you, man? An actor? A singer? A songwriter? Or maybe you’re just a lost soul.”
“That last one, yeah. That sounds about right.”
“Make jokes. But I want you to understand that I am not a joke.” She was practically bawling, and shoved the sunglasses back over her eyes. “I have to know all this stuff before I can get rid of you, Mickey. I have to know why you couldn’t look me in the eye after we made love. So now I know, okay? Thank you. Thank you. We’re done now, Mickey. I know it wasn’t my fault. I was competing with a ghost, and ghosts always win.”
She turned and walked off to her car. I sat on the courthouse steps and watched this normally graceful girl staggering with a clumsiness brought on by fury, and when she got in her car she roared off at such high speed I was sure she’d kill herself and maybe a few other people before she could get home to the hotel I’d been ordered to pay for by the City of Angels.
Two months later the sale of my condo went through and I sent Lois a check for two hundred and fifty thousand bucks.
I never resented her for taking me for half. Without that money, Lois wouldn’t even have been in the game to get a second husband. A desperate woman never gets anywhere in Los Angeles.
Funny, though, how Lois got the wheelbarrow full of money that I’d promised Lynn. And now I was back pushing a lawn mower for a living.
Three hundred and twenty bucks a week, before
taxes. It would take me a hundred years to fill up a wheelbarrow, even if the bills were all singles, even if I could live that long.
CHAPTER EIGHT
My return to the first job I’d ever had. Oh, baby.
You forget what it’s like to be out there under the sun, damn near forty years old, pushing a roaring machine that’s belching gasoline fumes right into your face.
Mow the grass, trim the edges, a quick pass of a tilling rake over the flower beds, and boom, load everything back onto the truck (a backbreaking task in itself) and race to the next lawn.
No fancy work from the J. P. Flynn landscaping crew. We were the McDonald’s of gardening, knocking off the lawns like so many Happy Meals.
By ten in the morning there was a delicious ache in my knees and a weariness I hadn’t known since I’d last done this job. At the sound of Flynn’s shrill fingers-in-the-mouth whistle I all but wept with joy, and my mouth actually watered. How Pavlovian of me to remember this was the way he made himself heard above the roar of the mowers to call the crew in for a coffee break.
At this point in the morning we were cutting the grass at a big Great Neck estate, a long, sloping front lawn divided exactly in half by a slate path. I had less than half of my side cut, while the other guy on the crew had three-quarters of his side done.
He was a big, square, earnest ox of an eighteen-year-old named Patrick Wagner, and I knew I’d be dead before the end of the day if I tried to keep up with him. We joined Flynn under the shade of an oak tree, where he handed me a Styrofoam cup of coffee.
“Light with two sugars, right?”
“I can’t believe you remembered.”
“Hey, Mickey.” He winked. “I’m not just a pretty face.” He passed a bottle of bright red fluid to Patrick.
“Gatorade for Patrick.”
“Thank you, Mr. Flynn.”
“Can’t let the star athlete get dehydrated, huh?” Flynn laughed at the sight of Patrick blushing. “Patrick here is gonna play football for Purdue this fall. Tell him, Patrick.”
“You already did, Mr. Flynn,” Patrick replied softly.
“No kiddin’, Mick, he’s on a full scholarship.”
I hoisted my coffee cup to this kid who had to have been the most famous Little Necker since…well, since me. “Congratulations, Patrick.”
“Forty grand a year he’s savin’ his old man. Great country, ain’t it, Patrick?”
Patrick shrugged, clearly embarrassed by Flynn’s buildup. Now it all made sense—the bulging biceps, the tree-trunk thighs, even the blond crew-cut that made his protuberant ears seem to stick out even more. I was trying to keep up with Captain Marvel.
“Yeah, he’s workin’ for me this summer to keep in shape for football. Doesn’t even want to get paid.”
“That’s not quite true, Mr. Flynn.”
Flynn spread his arms, a look of mock shock on his face. “Whaddya need money for? You got a free ride comin’ to ya!”
Patrick swallowed. “Well, not completely.” He began ticking things off on his blunt fingers. “I have to pay for my books, plus plane tickets whenever I want to come home from Indiana—”
Flynn howled with laughter, reaching over to slap my knee. “You believe this kid, Mick? He actually takes me seriously! A month workin’ for me now, and he still takes me seriously. Patrick, Patrick, you gotta wise up, or this world’ll swallow you right up.”
Flynn stretched, yawned, and stood up. Now as before, it was the signal for his men to return to work. Patrick and I rose to our feet like a pair of altar boys at the sound of the bells.
“All right, Patrick, get back behind that mower!” Flynn barked. “Pretend it’s a tackling sled.”
On the walk to the mowers I felt I had to speak up.
“I’m sorry I’m a little slow here, Patrick. You have to give me a few days to get used to this work again.”
“Mr. Flynn said you were the best man he ever had.”
I was both startled and touched to hear it. It had been a long time since anyone had said I was the best at anything.
“He really said that?”
“Yes.”
“Well, maybe I was until you got here, Patrick.”
At the lunch break I went into a sandwich shop on Northern Boulevard to pick up three meatball heroes. It was a narrow little place, basically a tunnel with a window. A chubby smiling Italian guy in a soiled apron took my order, his few remaining hairs slicked straight back.
“Ayyyy, Mickey, is thatchoo?”
I looked long and hard before I recognized Enrico Boccabella, the onetime leader of the pack at Ponti’s Pizza.
“What do you say, Rico?”
“Not much.” He jerked his chin toward Flynn’s double-parked truck. “You back with Flynn?”
“For a while.”
“Wow. Bad luck?”
“Some.”
“Well, you got your health, that’s the main thing, thank God.”
What the hell would he know about my health? He slapped meatballs onto Italian bread. “Hey. Look at my Wall O’ Fame.”
I looked. Framed photos of Italian stars such as Frank Sinatra, Robert De Niro, and Al Pacino adorned the wall, along with one of me.
“How ’bout that, huh? Hey, do me a favor, Mick, take it down and sign it.”
There’s nothing worse than signing an autograph twenty years after you last did anything autograph-worthy, so I tried to get out of it.
“Jeez, Rico, you got it all framed up and everything.”
“Ayyy, just sign the glass. I got a Magic Marker.”
He gave it to me. I took my photo down and wiped off the grit and grease with a paper napkin before writing “To Rico, Best Wishes, Mickey DeFalco.”
I hung it back on the wall.
“That oughta bring the customers in, huh?” Rico chuckled. He finished wrapping the heroes, took the money and shook my hand. “Hey, God bless you, Mickey, good to have you back.”
Back in the truck Flynn filled me in.
“Rico did five years for breakin’ and enterin’. Came out all holy, like one of those born-again Christians. Makes a good sandwich, though.”
From that day on, I brought my lunch from home.
The workday at last came to an end. Despite the gloves I’d worn, I had bleeding blisters on both hands. The back of my neck burned from the sun and there was a weird clicking sound in my left knee as I walked home, as if a bit of cartilage was loose in there. Patrick walked with me part of the way, and suddenly remembered something.
“Hey, Mr. Flynn said you wrote a really great song.”
“Ah, it was a long time ago.”
“Mr. Flynn said it was a hit.”
“Like I said, a long time ago. Before you were born.”
“That is so cool! Could I hear it some time?”
“I doubt it’s in the stores anymore.”
“But you must have a copy!”
“Actually, Patrick, I don’t.”
“Can I get it on YouTube?”
“What’s that?”
“The Internet.”
“I’m an old-timer, kid. I don’t know shit about computers.”
When we got to the street where Patrick turned to go home, he shook my hand and said it was a pleasure to be working with me.
“See you tomorrow, Patrick. Get some rest.”
“Actually, I’m going for a three-mile jog now. Have to keep my legs limber for football.”
If I’d had any strength left I might have taken a swing at him.
Dinner was served at six-thirty in the DeFalco house. My mother liked to watch the six o’clock news before we sat to eat. The mayhem and lunacy of the world gave her an appetite, and she gave a running commentary on whatever was being reported.
“God help him,” she’d say if the story was about somebody who needed a kidney transplant.
“God bless him,” she’d say about the sibling who was donating a kidney.
“God forgive him,” she’d s
ay at the sight of a murder suspect being led away in handcuffs.
Each plea to God earned an eye-roll from my old man.
“Can we sit and eat before God gets annoyed with all your coaching?” he’d ask.
On that night, we were watching the news when a story came on about the sinking of a cruise ship off the California coast. There was footage of people in lifeboats rowing toward a Coast Guard cutter. Then there was stock footage of the cruise ship itself, a sleek vessel with the words Barca D’Amore in swirly script along its side.
The words meant “Love Boat.” I guess it sounded a lot less corny in Italian.
I sat up straight. The anchorman went on about how four passengers were still missing in the wake of the mysterious sinking, which had apparently been caused by an engine explosion.
My mother was staring at me. “You’re smiling,” she said in wonder. “What in the world are you smiling about?”
“I’m not smiling!”
“I’m looking at you, and you are smiling at a story about four dead people!”
“Missing,” my father corrected. “They’re missing, they’re not dead.”
“They’re probably dead, and our son seems to think that’s funny!”
“I don’t think it’s funny, Mom.”
“Maybe he’s smiling about something else,” my father suggested.
It was time to put an end to it.
“I worked on that cruise ship once,” I blurted.
They both stared at me. My mother went pale.
“Oh my God,” she said, crossing herself, “you could have been killed!”
“Mom. This was more than a year ago.”
“Oh my God, my God!”
“Donna,” my father said, “he’s sitting here in the living room, alive and well and dry. Calm the hell down.”
My mother got up and hugged me. “Thank God you weren’t on that ship!” she cried, refusing to let go.
My father didn’t consider my survival of the Barca D’Amore sinking nearly as miraculous.
“What the hell were you doin’ on that ship, Mick?”
“Playing the piano,” I said. “Matter of fact, it was my last professional gig.”
“No kiddin’? How’s the pay for somethin’ like that?”
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