They were there because Herbie and Annie liked having them around. Another woman in the house, one that wasn’t her daughter or her mother, always worked out well for Annie. Another woman backed her up, saw her side of things, and she gave Annie additional ballast in the never-ending battle with the testosterone person. And Annie was secure enough to have another woman around—not only in her career and her position in the world, but secure in Herbie. She knew that although he’d flirt like crazy, sniffing up all those extra feminine pheromones that were flying around the house, his eye would always stay on the main chance. It was fun for her having Herbie jazzed like that, his balls clanging as he stalked around the house. So these girls were there for the juice really, extra household juice.
Candy went through every stage with them—jealousy, of course, sibling rivalry, rage—until she finally realized that they weren’t her competition. She was, and is, the daughter. The girls weren’t applying for that job. And she knew if she made a big issue and went to war with them, she would just get pushed further outside Herbie and Annie’s magic circle. So she accommodated. She didn’t like all of them—especially the New Age types who spouted inane jargon all the time—but some of them ended up being friends.
“Hi Mom,” says Candy as she walks in on them. “I brought quiche.” She holds her hand out to Olive. “I’m Candy. I’m the daughter.”
“Oh, wow.” Olive jumps up and shakes her hand. “I’m just… keeping your mom company. I’m Olive.”
“Where did you come from, Olive? No wait, let me guess; you’re an anesthesiologist; no, you’re an alternative oncologist who has a new… no, you’re too pretty. You… uh… you met Herbie somewhere and he wanted you to meet his wife. How am I doing?”
“I tend bar a few blocks from here. I met your father a couple of nights ago.”
“Oh my God. That is too perfect. I’m speechless. That is just… too perfect.”
“I’ll go,” says Olive quietly.
“No, don’t mind me. It’s just that I’ve… no, stay and have some quiche.”
“Olive’s a singer,” says Annie, watching the scene.
Ah, thinks Candy, another artiste. “Oh yeah?” she says, plumping herself down on the bed. “What kind of singer?”
Showered, shaved, and caffeinated to the gills, Herbie shows up at the hospital around nine with the laptop Annie told him to bring. She wants to catch up on her correspondence, take care of business. When he walks into the room, there’s Candy, Olive, and Annie sprawled on the bed picnicking on a bacon and tomato quiche that Candy bought at a fancy food store on Madison Avenue. All three girls look up at him like they know the face but can’t quite place it. Candy holds out the box with the uneaten crusts of the quiche they’ve been devouring.
“Perfect timing, Pops. We were just talking about fathers.”
Herbie turns back toward the door. “I have to get a haircut.”
“No, stay. Olive needs an agent. I called Maurice and he’s going to call Eliot James at William Morris as soon as they open. What time do agents get to work? Noon?”
Herbie finds himself, once again, behind the curve of the conversation. His mind is moving more along the lines of how does Annie feel; is she in any pain this morning; does she have any new thoughts about crossing into the great unknown— things like that.
“William Morris?”
“Maurice is very tight with Eliot James, who runs the place, doesn’t he?”
“I thought you and Maurice were breaking up.”
Candy gives him a look that says he understands nothing about life in sophisticated circles. “I imagine that’s what’s going to happen, yes. But we still live in the same house, you know. We’re adults and we’re very fond of each other. That didn’t change. And I’m sure he’d love to show Olive how powerful he is, given half a chance.”
“William Morris?” Herbie asks Annie, who, he must admit, looks perkier this morning.
“I don’t think she should go with them. She’d get lost there—no matter how powerful Eliot James is. I think we should call Jeffrey.”
Jeffrey Marshall has been Annie and Herbie’s agent since they were just starting out in the early seventies. He championed them—each of them individually—when no one else would give them the time of day. It was never easy handling a married couple; most agents won’t do it. Because if one of them is hot and the other not—a situation that repeated itself a hundred times over the years—you find yourself in the middle of a marital feud every time you call. But Jeffrey was always brilliantly diplomatic, reminding them that they weren’t in competition, that they each had their unique gifts and that their careers would progress in different ways. Annie, he said, would hit first—she was dazzlingly beautiful and exuded that unbeatable combination of innocence and wantonness that would catch the eye of every director in town. Herbie, he said, would take more time. He was an Everyman, a clown, and his career wouldn’t really take off until he was in his forties, at the earliest. He needed a little age, a little gravity, Jeffrey said, before the world would give him his due. In all this, he proved to be startlingly accurate.
In those days, most of the gay agents played it straight— suit and tie, the firm handshake, all sibilance banished from their speech. Jeffrey played the role perfectly. He was a handsome, elegant man-about-town, always with a beautiful woman on his arm at openings and parties. As charming as he was socially, he earned a reputation as shrewd negotiator with a killer instinct for getting clients the best deal. Over the years, as the world—well, certainly the New York theater world—became more open about things, Jeffrey’s true, extravagantly gay personality was able to emerge. Annie encouraged him from early on, supporting him to come out, to be himself, as she did with all her friends. Being who you really are is one of Annie’s great themes. And Jeffrey treasured her for that. Now he’s a foxy old queen who knows where all the bodies are buried from one end of the Broadway world to the other. He’s also in complete denial about Annie’s condition. Last week he called and said that he had something for her—a nice guest shot in a TV show—as soon as she’s feeling better.
“Jeffrey specializes in old, washed-up people,” says Herbie. “He wouldn’t know what to do with Olive.”
“That is so not true. He has a lot of young actors.”
“You do realize that I didn’t bring this up,” says Olive. “Your daughter is a very powerful person.”
Candy reaches over and squeezes Olive’s hand. Annie, who’s in the middle, touches both of them. They’ve bonded already, he thinks. They couldn’t have been together—the three of them—for more than an hour because there’s no way in hell that Candy got all the way uptown, shopped for a quiche and got over here before eight in the morning—so they’ve known each other an hour, tops. And they’re friends forever. He hasn’t made a new friend in forty years, he’s thinking—not a real bosombuddy kind of friend. Not the kind of friend he would recommend to his agent, for example. Maybe Maurice would qualify except that they move in such different worlds, on such different bank accounts; they end up dodging each other more than anything else. And when they do get together there’s a discomfort, like they’re both aware they’re trying to make something happen that’s not really there. The only friend he has—real, no-bullshit, everything-hanging-out friend—is Annie.
“What about your band?” he asks Olive. “Doesn’t your band have an agent?”
“She doesn’t have a band, Daddy. She just told you that to make fun of you. She does musicals and stuff. She’s a singer-actress.”
“She’s done a lot,” adds Annie. “Summer stock mostly, but also a show at Papermill Playhouse and… where else?”
“Goodspeed,” says Olive.
“Goodspeed does great stuff.”
Herbie nods and says that he’ll call Jeffrey. There’s another agent in the office—he can’t remember her name—who knows all about what’s happening with shows that use young people, which is about ninety-nine percent of what’s
being produced these days. Olive gives him her number and then puts her coat on.
“I’m out of here; this is family time.”
“You haven’t slept at all, have you?” asks Annie. Olive shakes her head and smiles.
“Thanks for staying the night with Mom,” says Candy. “That was great.”
Olive, emotion surging up in her face, jabs her finger into her chest as if to say that she got more out of it than Annie. That she was the lucky one. She hugs Candy and they hold each other for a while. Then she sits on the edge of Annie’s bed and takes her hand.
“I’ll come back, if that’s okay.”
Annie opens her arms and they have a gentle hug. Then Olive crosses to Herbie and offers her hand, which he takes.
“Thanks, Mr. Aaron,” she says. Herbie nods to her, feeling like the old dried-up piece of shit that he is. Mr. Aaron, my ass.
“She’s special, Herbie,” says Annie after Olive goes. “Jeffrey will be able to find work for her, you’ll see. She has a truly wonderful voice, and she’s drop-dead beautiful. She’ll work.”
Herbie nods. “There goes another good bartender.” He plugs in the computer, which picks up the hospital’s Wi-Fi signal, and he’s in business. Word has gotten out about Annie’s condition and the emails have been pouring in—not just friends and relatives, but cancer groups, hospitals, doctors, women all over the world who have had breast cancer and found hope in Annie’s story. After her first bout in the eighties, she went public when nobody was going public; she stood up and spoke out and helped bring breast cancer out of the closet. Then twenty-three years later it snuck in the back door and sucker-punched her when no one was looking.
“Read me from the emails, honey,” she says in a tired voice. Funny, he thinks, all the sparkle went out of her when Olive left.
“A lot of these don’t need an answer—like the hospitals and the cancer organizations—they’re all praying for you, thanking you for what you’ve done, shit like that.”
“That’s not shit, honey.”
“No, I didn’t mean shit; I meant stuff—you know—very nice stuff, but… you want me to read them all?”
“Forward them to me, Daddy, and I’ll print them out. Then Mom can look at them when she likes.”
“Read me the other ones—from our friends.”
And Herbie starts to read. There are lots of friends—actors mostly, spouses of actors. Thirty-five years makes for a lot of cast parties. The funny people write funny messages despite the gravity of the moment; funny is the only way they’ve ever been comfortable expressing the truth—and their jokes, their sly, ironic allusions hit the mark. Candy, Herbie and Annie laugh and cry, hugs all around. Not a dry seat in the house, thinks Herbie. The sincere people’s messages are breathtakingly sincere. With their hearts opened as wide as they can bear, they tell Annie how much they adore her and how much they’re feeling.
Herbie is sinking like a rock. Each letter—each word—is like a claw in his chest, pulling him down. But he reads well, with emotion and clarity, like the good actor he is.
Annie, on the other hand, is having a ball, eating it up with a spoon. She’s Tom Sawyer at the funeral. That she’s the reason all these brilliant people dug deeply into themselves and came up with pearls is heaven to her. Once again, she’s a Muse. Annie was always as much a Muse as anything else. Yes, great actress, mother, lover, wife, activist, feminist, yogist, meditatist, Pilatist—yes, great at all those things. But Muse is what she was born to do. Just hang out with her, you start looking at yourself again; you change something, you start something, you write a book, you lose twenty pounds. She doesn’t even have to say anything—although she usually does.
“Now here’s a strange one,” says Herbie. “I wasn’t even going to read it, but what the hell. From Bob, of course.”
“Uncle Bob?” asks Candy. Herbie nods.
“Oh, let’s hear from Uncle Bob,” says Annie and she snuggles down in the bed like a twelve-year-old.
Bob Frankel goes back to their earliest days in New York. Annie did a play with him—Off-Off Broadway in a basement on East Fifth Street and Bob was brilliant in the play. He’s a nervous actor; he’s always worrying over every moment, but there’s a terrifying honesty in all his work. He exposes himself in odd, funny ways and the audience can’t take their eyes off him. In the play with Annie, he stole the reviews and brought so much attention to the play it almost moved uptown. Herbie and Annie used to drink with him after the show—although Bob, a rabid health nut, didn’t really drink that much. Then Herbie got to know him better from the voice-over circuit, which was how they all supported themselves in those days. In between auditions or bookings, they would have lunch at one of those carts on Sixth Avenue—falafel or Thai food—and they’d philosophize. Bob always had an odd, often paranoid take on things and Herbie loved to provoke him and send him off on a rant. They’d argue merrily on the sidewalk for hours.
Bob was also blatantly in love with Annie. Head over heels. And he wanted to get to know Herbie so that he could find the secret—how could this guy get that girl? So Bob stuck around. They tried to fix him up once or twice, but he was—and is— too prickly for a relationship, and too needy at the same time —a great combination for seduction. They tried to add him to dinner parties but he was inevitably embarrassing, taking impossible, voluble positions on every issue, driving other guests into rages. But he never gave up courting Annie and Herbie— again it was that parental thing. He’d call the next day and sheepishly hint around about whether he had been obnoxious the night before and Annie would talk him down and then build him up again. While this gentle therapy was going on, Herbie would be pacing in the background, screaming, “Why does he have to behave like a fucking asshole all the time?” They put a lot of time and energy into Bob and ended up essentially adopting him. Yes, he’s an asshole, but he’s our asshole—like a puppy that never gets it right, that gets so excited when you come home it pees all over your shoe—eventually you learn to love him—kind of. Bob has been that kind of friend for more than thirty years.
“It’s very short,” says Herbie reading from the computer.
“Hi Darling, I just want you to know that you don’t have to worry about me. I’m okay. I’m handling this. Love, Bob.”
Candy falls back onto the bed like she’s been struck by lightning. “Oh thank God! I have been up nights, pacing the floor. What if Bob Frankel can’t handle this? Jesus, fucking Christ!”
“Everything happens to Bob,” adds Herbie, laughing.
“No, it’s great,” says Annie, who would laugh if she had the energy. “Bob is Bob and I wouldn’t want him any other way.”
“Here’s from Jim,” says Herbie, looking at the next email.
“Oh,” says Annie. “A poem?”
Jim is a poet. If you don’t have a friend who is a poet, you might start looking around, because it’s quite something to have.
“Yeah. It’s called ‘Five Charms In Praise of Bewilderment’:
1
After you leave for three days
I sit right down and start to write
About the finer elements of silence
Lying through my teeth
2
I have the vice
Of courting poems
Pathetic, I know.
I also like to watch Oprah
If no one is around to notice.
That’s right,
I court poems, I watch Oprah,
I even let out wordless sighs late at night,
And call them
My spring fields ploughed, my ready earth.
3
Sitting quietly at dusk, I’ll admit
My life goes like this:
Dark branches
Scratching the still darker window.
4
“How are you?”
I ask a woman at work.
“I have no idea,”
she replies,
sounding pleased with hersel
f
at the heartfeltness
of her bewilderment.
5
We don’t know,
can’t possibly know,
never have known,
never will know.
We just don’t know.
Three days later Annie dies. It’s shortly after midnight and Herbie is beside her on the bed. She’s in and out of consciousness and then suddenly Herbie gets a feeling in his spine like a buzzer went off. He puts his face next to hers and waits for breath and there is none. She’s still warm like Annie. She smells the same, but there’s no breath. He calls the nurse, who quickly affirms that Annie has passed. Herbie nods. The nurse waits for a moment, not knowing what he wants her to do.
“She’s still here,” he tells her. “Can you feel her?”
The nurse says that she’ll give him some space and leaves the room. Herbie takes Annie’s hand in his and holds it.
“You’re here,” he says. “You’re still here.”
She doesn’t deny it.
Over the years, they didn’t cling to each other; they were often separate. At parties, she’d go this way, he’d go that; but he always knew she was there. That’s what this feels like. She’s there.
He sits with her for a long time. At first he’s just content. He’s sitting with her; he’s fine. Then he smiles. He can’t stop smiling. He fills up with happiness that’s unlike any happiness he’s ever felt. It’s more. It’s euphoria. He feels like he’s touching the edge of eternity. He feels like he understands all the mysteries. She’s still here. This ecstatic state goes on… he knows not how long. It could be days. And then—suddenly, as if a switch went off—she’s not there. He has no sense of her next to him. He looks around. He can’t draw a breath. The silence bounces off the hard hospital surfaces. He touches Annie’s face and recoils. It’s not her. She’s gone. He has to leave. He can’t move.
After Annie (9781468300116) Page 4