by Davis, Sammy
“Darling, that’s beautiful and you know I appreciate it, but let’s be honest, you didn’t go into this marriage thinking it was like Maryjane Smith marrying the boy next door.”
“Of course not.”
“How did you feel about people’s reactions to us?”
“Well, I can’t say I didn’t feel badly at the idea that people can feel what they do—but there was no point dwelling on it. I loved you, I intended to marry you, and that was that.”
“And you were able to just close the reactions out of your mind?”
“I tried to.” She lit a cigarette. “As long as we’re talking about it, frankly one thing I have felt badly about is that you feel you have to treat me as though I’m made out of glass, as though if somebody said something I’d just break apart.”
“May, if you’ve thought I was overprotecting you, why didn’t you say something?”
“Because I knew it was rotten for you to have to talk about it.”
“I had no idea you were so completely aware of it.”
“Once, after we were picketed in London, I thought maybe I would not marry you because it seemed almost a certainty that I’d ruin your career, and I understood its importance to you. That’s the only real fear I had.”
“Darling, if I never knew this before I know it now: if I walked out on a stage and there were only five people in the audience it wouldn’t be as important as knowing that you’re home waiting for me.”
There was a beautifully corny, full moon shining. I opened the door to the terrace and we stood at the rail, silently, together, absorbing the serenity and peacefulness of the early morning, enjoying the caress of breezes not yet warmed by a sun that was starting to break over an ocean rolling gently, quietly onto the deserted beach. I stood next to May experiencing the miracle of happiness and contentment a man can feel when he is aware that he can encircle his whole world within his two arms.
36
“Sammy … I’m having the pains …” I sat up in bed and turned on the light. Her eyes were closed. “I’m sorry to wake you up.”
I jumped out of bed and got the stop watch. “Here, time them.”
She pressed the starter button. When she stopped the watch it was at two minutes and thirty-two seconds. “The doctor said I should call him when they’re coming every seven minutes.”
“Oh God. Don’t move. Just keep timing them.” I’d kept Dr. Steinberg’s number handy for the last two weeks. His answering service asked if it was an emergency and he called me back within five minutes.
I hung up and helped her out of bed. “Which dress do you want?”
“My blue and white check Jax.”
I dashed for the closet, got it, and rushed back to the bedroom.
She was sitting at her make-up table. “You’ve got to be joking. You’re having labor pains every two minutes and you’re sitting there putting on eye-liner? I don’t believe it. I really don’t believe it.” I knew I shouldn’t upset her so I got busy checking the small bag of things I’d had ready, the camera, film, cigarettes. I called Jane and Burt in the Playhouse. “Sorry to wake you guys up but you’d better get up here. We’re going to the hospital.” I called Rudy’s room and woke him, too.
May was back in bed. “You know something? I think it was a false alarm.” She nodded, satisfied that she was right.
“Darling, the doctor must know what he’s talking about. He’s a doctor.” I tried to keep calm so I wouldn’t frighten her, yet I had to get her moving. “May, we dare not delay. If they’re coming every two and half minutes then it’s like you’re almost ready to give birth. If we don’t hurry it could happen in the car.”
“But what if it’s a false alarm?”
“It’s worth the risk. Please, May, it’s a long ride over there and you could be in agony if you wait much longer.”
“Sammy, if I go and then find it’s too early I’ll have to stay there alone for extra days. At least if they had a room for you like we wanted, but to be there without you for no reason …”
“No reason! Oh God.”
She gasped. “Wait a minute. It’s starting again. Okay, you win. Oh boy they hurt!” I handed her the dress and checked my watch. Six forty-five. At least we’d beat the morning traffic.
She wasn’t moving to get out of bed. “I think they went away again.” She smiled and nodded. “Yes, definitely.”
“Darling,” I leaned against the wall, gnashing my teeth, “please! You’re killing me.” Rudy came rushing upstairs buttoning his shirt as he reached our room. I waved my arms at him. “Don’t bother, Rudy. Go back to sleep, baby. Or better still, just boil some water.”
He asked, “Are the pains coming close together?”
I told him. “Only every two and a half minutes.”
“Whew. That’s too close.”
Jane and Burt came dashing in. I held up my hands. “Relax, fellas. It’s all off. She’s decided against it.”
May started moving off the bed. “Okay, I’ll go, but if I have to wait around there a week before anything happens—”
“Darling, let’s worry about that later, huh? Rudy, start the car, we’ll be out right away.”
Jane asked, “Aren’t you coming?”
I stared at her, incredulous. “Jane, what kind of a stupid question is that? No! I’m going to let my wife go to the hospital to have our baby without me. Are you out of your mind?”
She gave me one of those looks like she knew she was going to be in trouble. “Are you going like that?”
The three of them were struggling to keep straight faces. I was still in my pajamas. I shook my fist at them and ran for some clothes, feeling like a cartoon character. I was dressed in three minutes and we were ready to leave.
May said, “Let’s have a cup of coffee.”
Jane gasped. “Coffee? Now?”
I smiled broadly. “Of course. I should have thought of it myself. And crumpets. You’ll read about us in tomorrow’s papers: ‘the mother and child are doing fine, the father is dead.’ ”
But we sat in the living room, drinking coffee, like a bunch of lunatics.
May said, “Shouldn’t we tell Mama?”
“No. Let her sleep. Rudy can come back for her later.”
It was eight o’clock when I helped May into the front seat of the car. “Sit in the back with Jane and Burt, Rudy. I want to know that I drove my wife to the hospital.” I pulled out of the driveway and down the hill creeping along at fifteen miles an hour, trying to avoid bumps in the road.
“Maybe you’d better go a little faster, Sammy.”
“Oh, now you think maybe it’s not a false alarm?” I turned left on Sunset and stepped it up a little, trying to keep the car at an even speed.
May said, “Oh, boy,” and clenched her fists.
“Hold on, darling, we’re halfway there!”
She sounded angry, “Boy! If I’d known this was going to happen today I’d have had a hot fudge sundae last night. Now I’ll have to start dieting right away.” We stopped at a light and she opened the window and spoke to a woman waiting for a bus, “Hello, there! I’m having a baby.”
I blew three lights because the car in front of me was doing twenty miles an hour and I was afraid to weave in and out of lanes to pass him. “Just my luck to get behind an imbo in a Nash Rambler.” I pulled into the emergency arrival area of Cedars of Lebanon at eight-twenty and stopped as close to the door as I could. May pointed to a sign.
“We’re not parking, darling. Rudy’ll move it.” I helped her out of the car and we walked slowly to the front desk. A nurse was waiting for us. “Come with me, Mrs. Davis.”
“How about me?”
“I’m sorry, you’ll have to take care of some details down here and then you can wait in the Expectant Fathers Room.”
I hadn’t expected I’d have to leave her so soon. I held her face in my hands and kissed her forehead, the elevator doors closed and she was gone.
I was shown into a small waiting room outsi
de the maternity ward. “You can sit here until Mrs. Davis gives birth. I’m afraid no one but the fathers are permitted in here, though, so your friends will have to wait downstairs.”
I lit a cigarette and waited.
Dr. Steinberg came in. “May is in wonderful condition. It won’t be long. You’ll have only a few hours to wait.”
“But everything’s okay?”
“Everything’s fine. I’ll send someone out occasionally to keep you posted.”
I went downstairs and sat with Jane and Burt in the lobby. Rudy came in. “I just heard it on the radio in the car.”
We’d been there less than an hour. Somebody from the hospital must have called the station. “Baby, call Hugh Benson and make sure he knows and call Arthur and Jim and tell them.”
I went back upstairs to the waiting room and called my father.
“I’m on my way, Poppa.”
I hung up smiling at the excitement in his voice, happy that he could see this day. I dialed Will’s number. “Good morning, Massey. You’re about to become a grandfather.”
Frank would still be sleeping. I’ll wait until noon when he gets over to the set. Maybe the baby’ll be born by then.
A doctor came into the waiting room and told me everything was going along fine. I looked at my watch. An hour had passed. It was ten-thirty. I concentrated with all my strength, trying to reach May through telepathy.
Dr. Steinberg entered the room. A surgical mask covered all of his face but his eyes. I was afraid to speak. He took off the mask. He was smiling. “You’ve got a beautiful baby girl.” He was extending his hand to me. “May came through it beautifully. It was a very smooth, simple birth. I’ll send for you shortly.”
I sat down. I leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes, a montage of scenes swirling through my head. “How do you do? I’d like you to meet my wife and our daughter Tracey.” … “Why, yes, I just happen to have a picture here.” … “That’s our daughter there, the pretty one in the red convertible …” I saw her growing up and going to school and I panicked because I wouldn’t be able to help her with her homework … I saw her graduating from college at the head of her class and bringing her boy friend home for me to be jealous of … I was buying her things, walking hand in hand with her and May through Disneyland … standing on a stage singing my songs to her, throwing myself in front of a car to save her, and slipping into her room to kiss her good night every evening.
I hadn’t heard the nurse come in. She was holding out a surgical gown for me to change into. Pinned to it was a big, pink button which said, “It’s a Girl.”
May was smiling as she slept, as though she knew how much someone loved her. The nurse gestured for me to follow her again.
A man is not complete until he sees a baby he has made, and by the grace of God I stood there looking at mine, seeing her tiny face and hands, her whole delicate self.
I watched the nurse taking Tracey away until she was out of sight. I wasn’t ready to go downstairs and talk to people. I went into the waiting room and sat down near a window. I was comfortable in the belief that we were ready to help our child grow up, ready to impart everything we had learned the hard way, able to give her all the love and strength she might need—but I prayed that by the time our baby is grown she would not need all that strength, that she would live in a world of people who would not notice or care about a layer of skin. There were cracks in the wall, and they were widening, but will it happen fast enough? Are people willing to change? Are they willing yet to understand a child’s innocence?
I gazed out the window, grateful for the time in which I live, for the hope it contained, grateful for the talent I had been given and because of it the thought that perhaps I could have something to do with affecting the world so that some day my children, or maybe only my grandchildren, but some day somebody of mine would be able, finally, to stop fighting.
I knew that in the years to come we would hold our children’s hands, walk at their sides, guiding them, protecting them, preparing them for the day when we would have to let go of their hands and watch them step forward to win their own medals, to make their own mistakes, to experience and become all the things which combine to make a person his final, total self. I knew that whatever world tomorrow might contain our children would face it, ready, standing within it, saying words that I myself have said: “Good, bad, or indifferent, here I stand with my convictions, right or wrong, like me or don’t—I exist, I breathe, I live, I love, I make mistakes, I do some good; I have troubles and joys but here I am, my code is my code and it is responsible for the bad things I do as it is responsible for the good.”
I walked out into the hall and looked for a nurse. “Can I see my wife again?”
“But she’s sleeping.”
“That’s all right. Please, just for one minute.”
I stood beside May’s bed. Her face was turned toward me. She was asleep, still smiling. I knelt down beside her and put my hand on hers, “Darling, I know you can’t hear me and I’ll tell you this again but I wanted to say now how much I love you and thank you for everything you’ve given me. I’m going to build something good and strong and wonderful for us, and I’ll never let you down. I promise.” I stood up and kissed her beautiful face and vowed I’d never let anything take away that smile. Whatever problems and pain there had been for me in the past, they were only the measure of the serenity and happiness I experienced at that moment as I looked at my wife and thought of our daughter and the life that had so miraculously brought me to them. If this is what I have come to, then there is nothing I am or have done that I would change. Perhaps all the successes and the failures, all that I did, were necessary for me and for those I love so that now, after thirty-five years, this is really only the beginning.