“I hate doing this show. It’s not worth the trouble. Dee-Honey has got to do something about this costume.”
“Helen, you’re lovely as the dearly departed mother and be thankful you don’t have to wear the Dorothy pinafore.”
“Why, Mags, you’re adorable in pinafores,” she says with a hint of snideness. It’s her way.
“Well at least this Snow White costume fits the whole way around,” I say.
“Yes, this one is much more flattering, the gingham makes you look . . .”
“All right, Helen, that’s enough.”
“Too angelic, I was going to say.”
“Uh, thanks, Helen.” I smile. “Your voice was to die for in the ballad today.”
“Really? I thought I was flat today. In the bridge.”
“Flat? You were dead on and your vibrato has never been sweeter.”
“Thanks, I do think I bring a kind of . . .” she trails off, waiting for me to supply the appropriate term of flattery.
“Delicacy?” I venture.
“Yes, delicacy. It’s tricky. You don’t want to be too melodramatic, but for goodness sake the woman is dying.”
“No, Helen, really, you do it just right. If you milked it anymore, it would be criminal.”
“What?” She turns as I am out the door and rushing down the hallway to the fire exit to get a few hits of nicotine. I need it. I’ve had a hard week and now I can’t stop thinking about Joe. About my Texas Joe. Damn him, damn him, damn him. Not that I thought it would work out for us. I knew we weren’t going to end up together as Mr. and Mrs. on El Ranchero Drive in Houston, Texas. But it never occurred to me that Joe would end up with anyone else either. I figured maybe after all was said and done we’d retire together to Sarasota, Florida, and take up golf.
“Mags, you’re on,” I hear hissed behind me. Frank’s head is poked out the stage door.
“Shit,” I push through the door and run onstage for my scene with the huntsman.
“What a beautiful forest,” I say, and then I hear that little girl.
“She’s smoking, Mommy.” And then I hear lots of muttering from the peanut gallery. Randall (as the huntsman) does exaggerated eye acting and I realize I am still holding a lit cigarette in my hand.
“Look at this, Mr. Huntsman,” I say, raising the cigarette for anyone who hasn’t yet noticed it. “Someone has been smoking in the forest, and we all know that is not good, is it?”
“No, Snow White,” Randall indulges me, “it’s not good.”
“Nobody should ever smoke these evil cigarettes,” I say. Frank is standing in the wings shaking his head. I continue: “I better take this over to the stream and drop it in so it won’t cause any harm.” I turn to exit and hear Randall.
“Oh, fair maiden, be sure to drop the dampened butt into a trash receptacle because thou must never litter either.”
“Yes, kind sir,” I say from the wings where Frank is ready with a half-drunk cup of coffee. I plunge the cigarette in and go back onstage.
“And now as I was saying, what a beautiful forest.” And we continue the scene without further incident.
“What the hell were you doing out there?” Randall snaps at me when we’re offstage.
“You can never have too many public service announcements about smoking,” I say with a wink.
“Maggie, wake up! You were smoking onstage as Snow White in front of five hundred children.”
“I was setting an example,” I yell after him. “It wasn’t my cigarette. I found it in the forest.”
Frank walks by me still shaking his head.
“What?” I say.
“That was definitely a first,” Frank says. “I give you credit for that. No one else has ever smoked as Snow White.”
“She wasn’t smoking,” I say at the top of my lungs. “She found it in the forest! The big bad wolf was smoking it.”
“Mags, there is not a big bad wolf in Snow White,” Frank says.
“Well there should be!” I say and stomp off to the dressing room.
I GET HOME LATE that afternoon and go straight to the kitchen and pour myself a tall scotch. So big deal Snow White is a smoker. Wait until they find out what else she does. I’ll save that for my next performance. The whole cast serenaded me back with a three-part arrangement of “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?” I check my message machine and find it empty. No one has called, not a soul, and especially not Jack. And why should he? We are hardly even friends. I mean, it’s not like I even know him well enough to miss him. Besides, he probably heard via the grapevine that Snow White is a smoker and a slut. Who cares? It’s just bad timing what with Texas Joe announcing his marriage. It would be nice to have a warm body nearby to absorb the shock. I go next door and knock on Sandy’s door. Maybe a neighborly chat will do the trick. “Hi, how are you?”
“Come on in.” Sandy opens the door.
“I wanted to see how Mr. Ed is doing.”
“He’s mending. He’s asleep in the bedroom.”
“The vet said he would sleep a lot.”
“Well, then he’s doing exactly what the doctor ordered. How are you doing?” She gestures to a chair. “Sit down. Can I make you a cup of coffee? I was about to have one.”
“You go ahead.” I indicate my glass of scotch. “I brought my own libation.” Sandy makes herself a cup of coffee and we sit and talk. She tells me all about her garden up at their country house in Ulster County. All about the tomatoes and the herbs and the hibiscus and her prizewinning rhubarb. Sandy and I aren’t really friends, but we are good neighbors. She gets my mail and feeds my cat when I’m gone, and I do the same for her. And now the other little thing is that her dog saved my life. Maybe someday Bixby will do as much for her. I can’t imagine the circumstances in which that would occur, but I’m sure if called into service Bixby will do his damnedest to deliver Sandy from harm.
When I get back to my apartment the message light is blinking on my answering machine and my heart almost stops. “It’s him, it’s him, it must be him,” the Vikki Carr classic plays over and over in my mind. I don’t listen to the message right away. I wait, get a beer out of the refrigerator, circle the phone a few times, then I hit the button.
“Maggie, I wonder if we could reschedule our session tomorrow? Could we do it from eleven to one instead of noon to two? Let me know. Oh, it’s Thomas. Call me.”
It’s my accompanist, not Prince Charming. “But it’s not him and then I die, again I die,” Vikki sings in my head. I look up Thomas’s number on my Rolodex. I dial and his machine picks up.
“Hi, it’s Maggie. Tomorrow at eleven will be fine.” I pour myself another scotch.
I can’t believe I have a club date coming up. I haven’t even contacted anyone. I haven’t sent out announcements to the throngs of people who have been holding their breath waiting for me to come out of retirement.
I open my cupboard and find a stack of publicity postcards left over from the last time I did a mailing to casting directors. I count out twenty-five and sit down at my desk. I tune in the Yankee game and then write out twenty-five notes with the show information. I go through my Rolodex and get addresses. It’s the old-fashioned way—no computer, no Xerox—just pen and ink and hand cramps. I get to the last card and write out Jack Eremus, and then realize I have no idea what his address is in Queens. But I remember the business card he gave me, and sure enough it’s stuffed in the D-E-F section of my Rolodex: AJ Auto Sales, 3120 Greenpoint Avenue, Long Island City, NY.
The Yankees are losing five to three to the Tigers in the bottom of the eighth inning when I finish addressing the cards, but Derek Jeter is on first and the top of the order is coming to bat. In baseball you have to hit the ball only 30 percent of the time to be a great hitter. That is a source of comfort to me when I’m playing this other game called life. Then Derek steals second, the second baseman drops the ball, and Derek slides into third, so it ain’t over yet.
THE NEXT MORNING I get to the p
ost office bright and early, buy thirty stamps, and mail off the postcards. I hold Jack’s aside, considering whether to put a lipstick kiss under my signature. Maybe not, I decide, maybe that’s not such a good idea. I do caress his name with my thumb before I put the card through the slot and head over to Central Park West to catch the C train downtown.
I get off on Twenty-third Street and stop at a Starbucks a block from Thomas’s studio. I treat myself to a grande skim latte and a chocolate chip scone. If I can’t have a boyfriend, at least, I can have sugar. And if I have enough sugar I probably won’t have to worry about a boyfriend ever again because I’ll be two hundred pounds and living in a trailer park outside of York, Pennsylvania, working in the home decor department at the local Wal-Mart. Not that there is anything wrong with that; in fact, it’s a rather pleasant fantasy I indulge in more than I’d like to admit. There is something so addictive and relentless about trying to “make it” in this great big city on the Hudson that on some days a job at Wal-Mart with profit sharing and a double-wide trailer with a patch of green around it feels like a trip to Maui. The session with Thomas goes pretty well.
“Slow down in the verse. I think you’re rushing it.”
“Really? I think it sounds too sentimental if it’s slow.”
“Your voice sounds great, really great. Let the audience enjoy it.”
“Does it?” I ask. “I’m not fishing for a compliment, honest. It’s just been such a long time since I’ve really sung that I was afraid maybe I’d lost it.”
“No.” Thomas smiles. “You certainly haven’t lost it. You’ve got it in spades. Now let’s go back to the verse.”
He starts to play and I sing it again, slowly, savoring every note. It feels so good to be singing again. It feels like my soul is wearing chiffon and dancing in the moonlight. I have two auditions in the afternoon. One is for an on-camera spot for Fleet Bank. I am the mother of two with a mortgage and station wagon and worry lines on my brow. I can do that and I do. The second is a radio voice-over for Toyota at five p.m. I finally get in to see the casting director about five forty-five. It’s June Enders. She’s pretty nice, but she’s never been a big fan of mine. I smile more than necessary and ask about her husband.
“He walked out five months ago.”
“Sorry,” I say wiping the now unnecessary smile off my stupid mug. I consider mentioning my own recent heartbreak, actually a doubleheader what with Joe getting married and Jack walking out, but it’s never good to upstage someone’s pain. We all like to feel special when we suffer.
“We celebrated our twentieth anniversary and the next week he left.”
“I’m so sorry. I remember when you got married. You were assistant casting director at B and D. Can’t believe that was twenty years ago, June. We were kids.”
“Yeah, I know. Thanks, Maggie.”
“Well, you look great,” I say and then realize I might be pushing it, but June smiles and I exit as quickly as I can.
I can’t believe I’ve known June for twenty years. I feel as old as dirt as I make my way down Seventh Avenue. I catch the number 1 train uptown at Twenty-third Street. It’s almost seven, not rush hour, but the train is still crammed with people. It seems like the subways are always crowded now. When I first moved to New York it was different. The subways were dirtier and there was more graffiti, but they weren’t as crowded. I loved getting on a subway car that was almost empty and hurtling through the underground tunnels of New York. Back then people smoked if the cars weren’t full. That seems very romantic to me now—to be on a subway smoking a cigarette and to be young. And that’s the real romance of it—not being on a subway car smoking, but being young.
Sitting across from me is a bland-looking man in his late forties with dirty blond hair. He’s wearing a beige nylon jacket with coffee stains down the front. He’s staring at me staring at him. He looks vaguely familiar, like maybe we dated way back when, or met at a party and smoked a joint together and discussed Nietzsche for a few hours. All I remember about Nietzsche is that he said God was dead, but he didn’t really mean God was dead or something like that, but now Nietzsche is dead and if he was wrong I bet Nietzsche had some explaining to do when he got to the pearly gates: “I am really, really sorry God, but I really, really thought you were dead.” A large black woman with dyed orange dreadlocks moves between Mr. Beige and me, straining to read the poster about the Harlem Museum above his head. She gets off at Fifty-ninth Street. Mr. Beige is starting to drool.
Someone a few seats down curses at a Macy’s shopping bag. The train stops in the tunnel between Seventy-ninth and Eighty-sixth Street. A garbled voice comes on the PA system saying something about a delay.
A man perched on a small pushcart comes rolling down the aisle. His body is severed at the waist. I give him a quarter and he rolls on. He is amazingly adept at maneuvering through the car. And there it is—evolution and adaptation—the human condition. We loose some gills, get some lungs, loose the tail, get better balance, start to walk, lose legs, get wheels. Get old, get wrinkles, and get cosmetic surgery.
NOTE TO SELF . . .
Find out if Botox can be self-administered.
The train starts to move again. Mr. Beige puts his fingers in his ears and barks like a Chihuahua, which illustrates evolution can work both ways.
We finally arrive at Eighty-sixth Street. I get off. I hate riding the local; it gives me too much time to think. I stop at Lou’s Deli for a beer. I walk over to Riverside Park and sit on a bench facing the New Jersey skyline. People are out walking their dogs. A golden retriever comes over and sits on my foot. I pat his head and he licks my hand, then his owner whistles and he trots off without a backward glance. Dogs are so fickle.
I sit and watch the sunset behind the New Jersey skyline. The world looks flat from here and only as big as I can see, like a giant finite piece of real estate. As I watch the sun set, I imagine it being lowered down on a system of pulleys by a beefy stagehand with a cigarette poking out of his mouth. Then the nighttime canvas is prepared. The stage manager cues “Night!” and the canvas is unfurled across the sky like it has been every night for millions of years.
There is no message from my young friend Jack on my phone machine when I get home. There is one from Brian O’Connor. We worked together in summer stock ten years ago. We did Boeing Boeing, a play about an airline pilot who dates lots of stewardesses, and on one fateful weekend he and the stewardesses all end up in the same apartment with about seven different doors. It’s a traditional farce. I played the Swedish “stew” who kept getting shoved into the bathroom while wearing a pair of men’s pajamas, just the top—no bottoms.
“Mags, It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World is playing at the Thalia tonight at 7:45. Do you want to join me? It’ll be fun,” he says. God, I could sure use some fun.
An hour later I’m sitting with Brian in the Thalia Theatre on Ninety-third Street. We’re sharing a large popcorn. And we have smuggled in some beers. The movie starts.
“This is great, isn’t it? They just don’t make movies like this anymore,” Brian whispers as the opening credits scroll across the screen.
“Yeah,” I agree, and settle down in my seat. The minute Jimmy Durante kicks the bucket down the hill and Ethel Merman climbs into the back of her son-in-law’s convertible I start crying uncontrollably and continue for the rest of the movie.
“It’s one of the best comedies of all time, and you were crying through the entire movie. That’s a symptom of something,” Brian says as we leave the theater.
“Do you think?” I say and hook my arm through his. Brian is a good friend. He’s the universal brother. He knows when to listen, and he knows when to put an arm around your shoulder and say, “Get over yourself.” He grew up in a large Irish Catholic family in Long Island.
We buy a couple more beers and a bag of Fritos and walk over to the war monument on Riverside Drive.
“Something is wrong with you,” Brian says, twisting the top off his beer b
ottle. “Slapstick comedy is funny. Your censors are off. You need help.”
“It struck me as so sad,” I say. “All those people looking so desperately for the hidden treasure.” We sit and drink our beer and munch our chips. The city night hums with traffic and snippets of passing conversations. Dogs bark, horns honk.
“I’m worried about you, Mags. That movie is funny, even Peter Falk is funny in it,” Brian says, finishing off the last of his beer. “Are you in therapy?”
“Not right now, I’m taking a break. My last therapist kept dozing off during my sessions and then she moved to Michigan.”
“Well, you need to talk to someone. Call mine. His name is George. He’s great. Tell him you cried through It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World — he’ll probably see you immediately. This is an emergency. Geez, Mags, it’s so funny and you cried and sniffled through the whole damn thing. I gotta run,” he says, checking his watch. “I’m meeting some friends downtown. Want to come along?”
“No, I think I’ll pass. Thanks, Brian.” I give him a hug.
“Call George—I’ll get you his phone number—and for Christ’s sake, get a grip.” I walk him to the subway stop on Eighty-sixth Street, we hug again and then Brian disappears down the stairwell.
I should call George. Brian is insightful about these things and, besides, there is a great deal of mental illness in his family so he knows the symptoms. I stop at the Dublin House and sit at the bar. I order a scotch on the rocks. The Dublin has a big old jukebox with the same tunes it’s had since 1979. I put in a quarter and select the Eagles’ “Tequila Sunrise.”
I sit back down at the bar.
“Another shot?” the bartender asks.
“Sure, hit me again,” I say.
“Put that on my tab.” A man at the end of the bar picks up his drink and approaches.
“Will you let me buy you a drink?” he asks.
“Sure, why not?”
“You look familiar. I’ve been sitting down there wondering where I know you from and then I realized you’re—”
“Nurse Mom—”
Dorothy on the Rocks Page 11