Temporary Insanity

by Leslie Carroll

  Chapter 18

  “It’s a grandmother’s prerogative to be eternally loving, eternally supportive, nurturing, and always on your side,” I began, a bit unsteadily.

  “Anyone who ever met Grandma Finnegan knew that her generosity of spirit was nothing short of remarkable. My Grandpa Danny, truly a legendary showman, became a man of mythical stature in Gram’s mind. The truth was he was all too mortal; and even after he disappeared on her one night, forever leaving her to raise their two kids on her own, she still couldn’t bring herself to speak ill of him.”

  I was struck with a recollection. “Sometimes, in the wee hours of the morning, I awaken and hear her talking to him as though he’s right there in her bedroom, filling him in on the latest family gossip, telling him how proud he would have been that their granddaughter went into show business. Of course, when I hear my name, I become even more curious, so I tiptoe down the hall and strain to overhear her side of the conversation. I don’t think Gram knows I’ve ever listened in. If she does, she’s never mentioned it.” I thought of those moments as private, almost sacred for her. To one day confess my eavesdropping seemed a violation.

  I looked at Joey Moriarty and the rest of the production staff. They were still paying attention, and Joey was leaning forward in his chair. He nodded at me, wordlessly asking me to continue.

  “Grandpa Danny was a saint, no matter what he did, but when it came to politics, Gram was certainly opinionated, and she never gave a damn whether her views were popular ones. Apparently she’d voted for Eugene V. Debs every time he ran, and if she thought someone was a ‘rat bastard’—her favorite expression of derision—she didn’t hesitate to tell him so, straight to his face, even though there was usually a TV set and several thousand miles between Gram and the object of her scorn.

  “When it came to my choice of men—and bosses—she had a unique perspective. I was a little girl when she made up the ‘name game’ to amuse me. She would analyze someone’s personality based on their surname and tell me how my fortunes would rise or sink with them, depending on her assessment. Until very recently, she had an uncanny ability to call every shot correctly.” I remembered her coming up blank on Tony DiCarlo’s name, and how much I regretted not having the benefit of her loopy brand of wisdom at the time.

  Another memory made me chuckle. “A few years ago, Gram was mugged on a street corner on upper Broadway, after going grocery shopping. She wasn’t badly hurt, thank God, but her purse was snatched. Even though she was annoyed to have to go through the hassle of canceling her charge plates, when it came to the loose change and forty-some-odd dollars that had been in her wallet, she didn’t rail against her assailant or run to the cops. She simply sighed and said to me, ‘It’s all right; he must have needed it more than I did.’”

  I realized, as I spoke, that I was no longer acting. Or trying to please the people sitting and watching me. Or trying to second-guess what they wanted to hear me say or how they expected me to express it. The circumstances had become very real to me. There was no distance between myself and the situation. The true, unscripted recollections came to me unbidden, the words forming themselves on my tongue.

  “To know Grandma Finnegan was to adore her,” I continued. “She was the most vibrant, fun-loving, mischievous woman I’ve ever known. And a marvelous raconteur. She told extraordinary stories about the golden days of vaudeville, of the famous and influential personalities with whom she rubbed shoulders: how she entertained Albert Einstein in her dressing room one night after a performance; how Fiorello LaGuardia, back when he was only a congressman, had once sent her a bouquet of American Beauty roses on an opening night; and the time she’d spurned the amorous advances of David Belasco, even though it meant not getting hired for a role. I have no way of knowing if these anecdotes were true, or whether they were meant to be metaphorical, allegorical, or even cautionary tales. But I didn’t care. She believed them; and therefore, so did I.”

  By now I had ceased any attempts to keep my voice even, my emotions in check. I didn’t censor my tears, but let them roll down my cheeks, splattering onto my lapels. “Grandly, exuberantly theatrical, passionate about people and politics, Gram expressed herself freely. She believed in following the dictates of your heart and the promptings of your soul, and possessed the wondrous childlike qualities that grown-ups often resent in other adults because they have long since forsaken those colorful cloaks for the gray mantles of drab workaday drudgery.”

  I paused for a moment, because I was having trouble getting the words out of my mouth without sobbing. I had completely lost control of my audition, indeed forgotten that’s what I was there for. The room was silent.

  “Gram always encouraged me to express my best self and not to waste energy worrying about others’ opinions of my choices in life. She inspired me to paint and write poetry, to sing, dance…and ironically, this woman who’d run off to become a showgirl when she was still an adolescent, never finishing high school, passed on to her granddaughter a thirst for education and a passion for literature.

  “She possessed a tremendous willingness to marvel at the wonders of life, biting into it with the relish one reserves for a ripe and juicy peach on a sweltering afternoon in July. She taught me never to forget the primacy of passion, and she even coached me on how to please a man. ‘Dance for him,’ she urged. ‘Dance naked.’”

  Bereft of a handkerchief, I wiped my nose, rather inelegantly, with the back of my hand. “If a life of good friendships, affection, love, and good deeds is a kind of immortality, then I like to think that Gram is still with us today, and that her legacies eternally endure.”

  I finished talking and stood there on the stage at the Macdougal Street Theatre an utter basket case. I was sniffling, my eyes were red and swollen from weeping, and I couldn’t find a tissue anywhere. “Well,” I said, taking a breath and looking for a way to lighten up the mood. “I certainly embarrassed the hell out of myself up there just now, didn’t I?”

  Joey Moriarty knitted his brow and brought his hands up to his face in an expression of deep concentration. “No. No, you didn’t.”

  I stepped off the stage and picked up my purse. No one seemed to know quite what to say next. “So…thank you,” I said, having a rough time segueing into audition situation mode. “For letting me come in today.”

  Joey stood up and shook my hand. “That was very strong work, Alice. You did what I asked you to and really threw yourself into it. It was very unselfconscious. I liked that.” He turned to the producers and stage manager, who nodded in agreement. “So, we’ll be in touch.”

  That’s a very generic thing for a director to tell a performer. Still, I felt I had done the best I could, indeed given it everything I had. I walked up the stairs toward the back of the house and the exit, still sniffling, rifling though my purse for a tissue.

  “Jesus, what did they do to you in there?” remarked the actor who was waiting to audition next. “I thought this show was a comedy!”

  “It is,” I said, using my fingers to wipe my eyes. “They’re very nice, by the way. So have fun. I did.”

  The actor gave me a strange look and went inside the theater.

  I left the building and went out to the street to call Gram. I wanted to tell her how the audition went, as I’d promised to do, but I got the answering machine instead. She told me she’d be home by now, so she must have decided to run some errands after her hair appointment. I punched in the code to retrieve any messages from the machine. Three message units had been used. I listened to the first call.

  “Alice, it’s your Uncle Erwin. Look, what the hell were you trying to do to me this afternoon? Who told you to act? After you left, the defendant’s attorney called for a mistrial.” He was yelling into the phone and I felt like I was being eviscerated by the answering machine. I wanted to call him and shout back that Rosa had predicted he’d lose the trial anyway. In four relatively terse sentences, he’d manage to snatch away all the satisfaction I’d felt u
pon leaving the theater. It was hard to process anything right now, because my mind and body needed time to readjust. The only way I can begin to describe my post-audition sensation is that I felt sort of “fuzzy,” as though I had entered another realm, and, like an astronaut returning to the earth’s atmosphere, needed to decompress.

  The answering machine beeped, indicating the end of the first message and the beginning of the next. It was a hang-up. The machine beeped again.

  “Oh, Christ. Shit,” the voice on the other end muttered. Uncle Erwin, take two. “Alice, where the heck are you? I need to talk with you right away. Call me.”

  What, so you can berate me directly and blame me for screwing up your trial? I’ll see you at work in the morning anyway. You can chew me out then, when at least I’ll be getting paid to hear it.

  I erased the messages. In any event, I wasn’t about to call my uncle from the street. I got home, found the mail was still in the box, and the apartment was dark. Gram was still out. The answering machine was blinking again, so I played the tape. A third message from Uncle Earwax. He sounded agitated.

  What else is new?

  “Look, Alice, I’m not going to talk to your answering machine. Will you call me right away? It’s Uncle Erwin…in case you didn’t know.”

  Fine.

  I reached him at home. He dispensed with any niceties and cut right to the chase. “Alice, your grandmother was taken to the hospital this afternoon.”

  I felt suddenly hollow, as though my internal organs had plummeted to the floor. “What happened?” I asked him.

  “She collapsed on the street after leaving the hairdresser. Someone called an ambulance and they took her over to Mount Sinai. Where did you go after you left the courthouse? I tried to reach you a couple of times.”

  My heart was thumping at a million beats a minute. I just wanted to get off the phone with him and go see Gram. “I told you, I had an audition,” I said, tense, exasperated, and scared. “For an Off-Broadway show called Grandma Finnegan’s Wake.”

  “That’s appropriate,” he muttered.

  “What?” His reply didn’t really register. “Where is she? In the ER?”

  My uncle didn’t respond.

  “Just tell me what part of the hospital she’s in and I’ll grab a cab and head over there.”

  It was the spring of hope…

  There was silence on the other end of the line. Finally, Uncle Erwin spoke. “She’s in the morgue, Alice.”

  It was the winter of despair…

  “They tried to revive her in the ER, but she didn’t make it. She died at five-eleven this evening.”

  My…

  “My…”

  Gram. Died. At. 5:11.

  “She…died?”

  It was the epoch of belief…

  “I’m sorry, Alice.”

  The exact minute her watch had stopped.

  It was the epoch of incredulity…

  “How…They called you?”

  “The social worker from the hospital tried to call you but when she got the answering machine she didn’t want to leave a message. So she called your parents in Florida and your father called me. He wanted me to try to reach you as soon as possible.”

  “Why didn’t Mom and Dad call me?” Were they nuts?

  “They didn’t want to tell you on the machine, either, and they were afraid that if they asked you to call them, it would seem ominous.”

  “It was ominous, for chrissakes! Gram died. Look, can I go see her?”

  “I assume so. If you want to,” my uncle said. “Do you want me to go with you?”

  “No,” I said, my voice hollow. “Thank you. I want to go alone.” I hung up the phone and stood by the window. How many times since we’d been roommates had I preceded Gram home? Maybe no more than a handful, but I knew, each of those times, that I would hear her keys in the locks and feel relief that she’d arrived safely.

  I wouldn’t hear that jangle anymore.

  I wandered numbly from room to room, touching things that were Gram’s…a lavender silk camisole that still retained the scent of rosewater and of her soft skin…her favorite strand of pearls, at first cool to the touch, then warming in my hand…an acrylic cardigan—smelling ever so slightly of camphor—that she would wear to ward off the chill from the air conditioner. I found a single strand of gray-blond hair trapped in the pilled fuzz of the sweater and wrapped it around my finger, then held the sweater to my chest and collapsed on the edge of Gram’s bed in a flood of tears, my body shaking with loud, unchecked sobs and gut-wrenching paincalling out to God to answer a question for which there is no palatable reply.

  In time, I could accept that there was comfort to be taken, solace to be found, in knowing that Gram had lived an enriching and enriched existence, that she had touched many lives in myriad wonderful ways, and that she did know how much she was beloved. But I had never before experienced death so closely, so personally. My initial responses on losing Gram were not born of rationally based consolation. I felt anger.

  Abandonment.

  Fear.

  The phone rang and I figured I might as well answer it, although I had no desire to talk to anyone. There were tears in my voice. “Hello?”

  “Is…is this Alice Finnegan?”

  “Yes…” I said hesitantly. I thought it was a telemarketer. They always call at dinnertime. “Look, this isn’t a good time—”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Alice. It’s Joey Moriarty—the director of Grandma Finnegan’s Wake.”

  “Ohh.”

  “I just wanted to tell you myself that we made our casting decisions…and we’d like you to take over the role of Fionulla Finnegan.”

  It was the best of times…

  I was a bit stunned.

  “Alice? Are you there?”

  “Yes…I’m here. Ummm. Yes. I mean, yes, I accept the part. I’m sorry…I’m not processing things very well right now. You see…I just got home a little while ago…I…I just found out that my grandmother—who I was telling you about today—died this evening.”

  It was the worst of times…

  “While I was at the audition, actually. So, I…”

  “Oh, God,” Joey said quietly. “I’m so sorry. Do you want to call me later, then, to talk about the logistics of things?”

  “Yes. I think that would be a good idea,” I said, jotting Joey’s phone number on the back of a Chinese take-out menu.

  I arrived at the hospital, identified myself as Gram’s next of kin, and was shown to the morgue. The attendant made a discreet exit and left me alone with Gram. The person—was she still a “person” if she wasn’t breathing?—on the slab before my eyes was Gram…and she wasn’t. The frail, small body looked familiar, but the spirit was gone. I wondered aloud if that’s what people meant when they believed that at the moment of death, one’s soul flew out of the corporeal being. Her blue-gray eyes rimmed with brown would never admire another sunset, never watch another newscast, never gaze in perennial wonder upon the changing leaves in Central Park, never read another poem.

  Did she know I was there in the room with her? I took a step toward her. Then another. She wouldn’t have liked the way she smelled. Like chemicals. “Well, at least your hair looks good,” I whispered to her. I was curious and wanted to touch her skin, but actually doing it seemed too creepy. Good thing you moisturized this morning, I thought bitterly. “You know, I used to love your surprises, Gram, but this is a bit too much.” I wanted to make her laugh. I wanted her to make me laugh.

  “I was offered an Off-Broadway job today. In the show that you said had a terrible name for a comedy…Grandma Finnegan’s Wake. You didn’t realize how true that was. Or maybe you did.” As I gazed at her unseeing eyes, I remembered something. “You know the very last thing you said to me this morning?” I wished she could have replied. “When I told you I was going off to that audition, you told me to ‘knock ’em dead.’ It’s just a figure of speech, Gram. You should know that better than anyone
. You weren’t supposed to go off and do it yourself!”

  I turned away. I couldn’t look at her anymore; it hurt too much. “You promised to come to my opening night if I got the part. Remember?” I felt betrayed, regressing thirty years to the petulant little girl who awakened Christmas morning to discover that Barbie’s dream house was not, in fact, under the tree. “You promised.”

  The morgue attendant came over to me and gently placed his hand on my wrist. “You about ready to go?”

  I regarded him with my tear-stained face and puffy eyelids and nodded. “I guess so,” I whispered. “I mean, I can’t…change anything.” I couldn’t continue to look at Gram’s body. Yet, I couldn’t bring myself to say goodbye, because I knew that after I turned around and walked out of that strange, cold, impersonal room, I would never see her again. “I…my grandmother wanted to be cremated,” I quietly said to the attendant. “So just tell me what I have to do.”

  I went home and lit a candle, which I placed on Gram’s dresser. It was the only illumination in the apartment. I sat in the green velvet slipper chair by her empty bed and watched the flame flicker and dance throughout the night until my sleepy head felt as heavy as my heart.

  The following day was a Saturday, so I didn’t need to ask Uncle Earwax for the day off, although I doubt even he would have begrudged me the time. After wandering aimlessly around the apartment for half the morning, I picked up the phone and returned Joey Moriarty’s phone call. “Next Sunday’s matinee is the last performance for the old guard,” he told me, “and the new cast members will debut in the Tuesday night show. So, we’ll need you to attend the next few performances in your street clothes and shadow the actress who’s currently playing FiFi.”

  “Shadow?” I asked, unfamiliar with the term.

  “You are an actress, aren’t you?” Joey replied.

  “Yeahhhh.” Where was he going with this?

  “So, haven’t you ever waited tables or tended bar? That’s what they call it when a new person comes in to train for a job. It’s how you learn the ropes-—from trailing the person you’re taking over for.”