One Last Lunch

by Erica Heller

  When I was a little kid, I watched Groucho’s TV quiz show, You Bet Your Life, religiously. I liked the part when the fake bird flew in on a wire and gave out the prize for the secret word of the day. But what really made the show such a “do not miss” for me was Groucho and the cranky, unpredictable, and unrepressed put-downs he ad-libbed in front of millions of people every week.

  Groucho simply uttered whatever popped into his head. You could practically see the thought bubble forming above him as he spoke. The contestants weren’t faking their responses, either. They really were embarrassed. And amused. And sometimes even a little mad. The effect was subtle but unforgettable.

  Years later I was at a party and ran into a hardworking, not hugely successful actress I knew named Erin Fleming. She casually introduced me to her date—an old man with thick black glasses . . . and an unmistakable moustache. I don’t remember exactly where or when the encounter took place. But I’ll never forget what it felt like to experience Groucho in the flesh. And hear the voice I’d first heard when I was in my single digits.

  Groucho was clearly crazy about Erin. Why not? He was eighty, frail, and decidedly lonely. His particular brand of misanthropy may have endeared him to audiences, but it didn’t exactly make for close personal relationships. Erin was charming, gorgeous, and probably, I decided, infatuated with his fame, money, and exalted position in the show business pantheon. But she also seemed—to me, anyway—to have a real affection for the man. His family would come to heartily disagree. But that’s another story.

  I pretended not to be awestruck when he shook my hand, but I practically dropped my drink when Erin breezily asked me if it would be all right if Groucho gave me a call sometime. And then, like Brigadoon, they both disappeared into the night, and I was left standing alone wondering what the hell had just happened.

  Much to my surprise, the great Groucho called me a few days later to ask if I would be willing to replace him at an event he had agreed to host the following week. I was still trying to wrap my brain around the unimaginable concept of me replacing Groucho Marx at anything when Erin got on the phone to confirm the request: Groucho had indeed agreed to host an event at the esteemed Hillcrest Country Club and then realized he wasn’t up to it. For reasons I will never comprehend, she has told Groucho I would be the perfect replacement, and he deeply hopes I will be able make it.

  I take a deep breath.

  I want to scream, “Ask George Burns. Ask Milton Berle. I’m sure Morty Gunty would be happy to do it,” but I carefully explain to Erin that I am hardly qualified to replace the most revered comic genius in the world at anything. And even if I were, when the audience hears an unknown character actor like me is replacing Groucho, they will throw bricks at me.

  She seems so genuinely crushed by my response that I tell her I will think about it, hang up the phone, spend twenty-four hours feeling horribly guilty, wait another twenty-four hours to make it look as though I am seriously considering it, and then call Erin back to say I can’t do it. I have suddenly booked a commercial in Toronto. And that’s the last I ever see or hear from either one of them.

  The entire Balaban/Groucho “experience” lasted less than a week and occupied a scant ten minutes. And yet the event occupies a much larger seat in the balcony of my brain than it has any right to. How many times do we get to meet one of our heroes in the flesh? And how many of those times do they ask us to help them out of a jam?

  I have been mulling over this brief and perplexing encounter for decades. In the litany of regrets I recite to myself when it’s late at night and I’m sitting in an airport waiting for a much-delayed flight, Groucho never fails to make a brief appearance.

  It would be a relief to have my imaginary lunch with Groucho. I’d get to ask him about his friendships with T. S. Eliot and Carl Sandburg. Did they think it was funny when he insulted them? Did he take them to Lindy’s? How did they meet in the first place? Did they all belong to the same temple group?

  We’d talk about Margaret Dumont and whether or not she really didn’t know the movies they did together were comedies. Or whether Bob Hope really kept Groucho waiting for an hour when he first appeared on Hope’s radio program and Groucho got so mad that he needled Hope mercilessly and was so funny that he ended up landing his own insult-filled quiz show that lasted for thirteen years?

  I’d finally get a chance to tell Groucho that the theatres in Chicago where he and his brothers performed their vaudeville act were built by my family after they fled Russia at the turn of the last century and ended up in America. I would tell Groucho that his mom, Minnie, had been pals with my grandmother Gussie. I’d ask if he remembers what my grandmother was like. I’ve always wanted to know more about her.

  I’d reminisce with Groucho about the time I auditioned for a voice-over for Chico’s daughter Maxine Marx, a successful casting director, and we talked about the old days in Chicago. She told me about the time she was standing backstage with George S. Kaufman, watching her dad and his brothers perform one of Kaufman’s new plays, when Kaufman suddenly pointed at the stage and whispered excitedly to Maxine, “My God, my God! They just said one of my lines!”

  I’d really like to know if Groucho ended up hosting that Hillcrest event or if he managed to find some braver soul than I to take the bullet for him.

  H. L. Mencken wrote, “A legend is a lie that has attained the dignity of age.” H. L. Mencken was right. The lesson I learned from my decades-old encounter still resonates. Legends don’t necessarily seem like legends when they hold still long enough for you to get a good look at them.

  In person, my legend couldn’t have been less funny, special, or memorable if he tried. In fact, he bore an uncanny resemblance to a good third of the adult male population of the building I grew up on Chicago’s North Side. They, too, came equipped with cigars, bushy eyebrows, and a heavy dose of sarcasm.

  And yet it’s precisely that unquantifiable, illusive dissonance between the legend and the person behind it that so tantalizes us.

  There will be no surprises at my imaginary Lindy’s lunch. And no disappointments. The matzoh balls will be hard as rocks. The chicken soup as cold as ice. The waiters will, of course, refuse to even acknowledge Groucho’s presence until he puts out his ever-present cigar. They’ll grunt disapprovingly when he orders his beloved banana shortcake. And when the check finally arrives after an unconscionably long wait, Groucho will have conveniently forgotten his wallet, aim his perfectly timed shrug in my direction, and say more with his eternally ironic smile and half-raised eyebrows than a thousand well-chosen words ever could.

  Bob Balaban has been an actor for more than a hundred years. He sometimes directs and produces. Previous literary endeavors include a bestselling series of children’s books called McGrowl and a memoir about the making of Close Encounters of the Third Kind called Spielberg, Truffaut, and Me. He currently resides in Bridgehampton, New York, where he’s contemplating what to do with the next hundred years.

  — 33 —

  “Going into a restaurant, opening a menu, perusing it, and ordering whatever the body could digest was always a wonder to my brother and me.”

  MALACHY McCOURT (BROTHER) AND FRANK McCOURT

  Well, wouldn’t you know it, my brother Frank visited me last night. He just wriggles his way into my dreams sometimes, after I partake of certain spicy foods late at night, or doze off, reading something just too bloody boring. Last night I was guilty on both counts, which was practically an invitation for Frank to come and visit. Still, just how he creeps in, I’ll never know.

  May I tell you about the dream? In it, it was lunchtime and present were Terry Moran, Pat Mulligan, Sean Carberry, and myself, Malachy McCourt. Someone suggested we ought to do this lunch on a regular basis. Then came the whens and the when nots. One can’t do it on Monday, other can’t do it on Wednesday, and so on. I said let’s do it every first Friday because though we were all collapsed Catholics, we knew that the church said if you went to Mass and rece
ived communion for nine first Fridays you were assured of a priest when your death was nigh. I proposed that if you did nine of our Fridays, you would not die without a bartender in attendance. The motion was carried, and thus the First Friday Club came into existence in March 1973.

  There is still a vestige of it in existence.

  With me the only founder still attending.

  Until he retired from teaching at Stuyvesant High School, my brother Frank could not attend, but he did start after retirement. And a very great addition he was, too. Over the years, our venue was Eamonn Doran’s Saloon on Second Avenue, and we were often graced with some saintly celebrated folk like Pete Hamill, Jimmy Breslin, Dennis Smith, James T. Farrell, William Kennedy, the various Irish ambassadors and consuls. It was a largely Irish male gang until Mary Higgins Clark, Mary Karr, Mary Tierney, Marcia Rock, and Mary Breasted Smyth founded a rival group calling themselves the Legion of Mary. Catholics will know this one.

  They assembled on the opposite side of Eamonn’s and would have nothing to do with our crowd. One time the writer Peggy Noonan outraged the women by insisting on sitting with the men. She, of course, is a Republican.

  There was an element of the Algonquin Round Table in our gatherings as the wit flowed as freely as the Guinness and savage sarcasm was not unknown.

  It was at a First Friday that the following exchange took place between my brother Frank and my friend Mary Breasted Smyth.

  Mary: What are you doing now that you are retired, Frank?

  Frank: I am getting the miserable childhood down on paper. Finding the voice was elusive, but now it’s coming along.

  Mary: May I have a look, as I know an agent or two?

  Frank: Certainly! I have about a hundred pages!

  Mary: Let’s go.

  Now, I can’t vouch for the veracity of this story, but I heard Mary took Frank’s pages to an agent, who glanced at it and tossed it back to her with the comment that he did not think anyone would be interested in a book written by an unknown teacher about a miserable childhood in an obscure town in Ireland.

  Mary took it to another agent, Molly Friedrich, who leapt on it and hand-carried it to Nan Graham at Scribner, and not for the first time, the First Friday lunch club gave birth to a book.

  As I said, I don’t know for certain that was the sequence, but true or not, it does illustrate the triumph of great writing over stupidity and cupidity.

  And I became Frank McCourt’s brother, and he was never again Malachy McCourt’s brother. Even in my dream, he had a rapscallion’s twinkle in his eye, and in conversation there was, as usual, the quips, rejoinders, and comebacks that Frank was noted for, particularly as people could never get past his deadpan delivery. In the dream, he was so vivid, so real, so close to me, he could easily have kicked my grizzled, doddery, superannuated arse.

  There were many times over the years that we broke bread, commiserated, laughed, remembered.

  It was as a result of imitating our Limerick teachers, neighbors, and clergy at various mealtimes. Frank said we should write it all up as a play; we did, and thus the play A Couple of Blaguards was born and is still being performed.

  We no longer said grace before meals anymore, which was mandatory in the old days.

  Bless us, O Lord,

  In these thy gifts

  Which of thy bounty

  We are bound to receive

  Through Christ our Lord

  Amen

  We did joke about having on the table that which was missing when we were children, namely food. Frank said we had had a balanced diet, a liquid and a solid, namely tea and bread. Sometimes in childhood we got to share an egg. You have no idea how carefully the mother was watched as she sliced a hard-boiled egg into four equal pieces for us. Likewise, bread was also sliced with surgeon-like precision, and crumbs were quickly grabbed and scooped up into the gob.

  Going into a restaurant, opening a menu, perusing it, and ordering whatever the body could digest was always a wonder to my brother and me. When the two of us lunched, it was at a diner near Stuyvesant High School, while Frank was still teaching there. Between riotous chuckles and mostly salty anecdotes and reminiscences, we would happily stuff burgers into our gobs (Frank’s was always bunless; he had that gluten nonsense), and plates heaped high with lumpy, leaden mashed potatoes. My drink of choice was tea, while Frank was known to toss back a beer or two.

  I never tired of his company. My brother was one of the most eloquent human beings ever to have been born. He could hold forth on a huge variety of subjects with humor, satire, and exaltation of language and clever speech. He was not interested in proper English, nor was he always grammatically correct, though he taught English and felt that colorful speech was important.

  It’s possible that he was the only high school teacher in New York City who never went to high school and did not have a high school diploma.

  Generally speaking, we had no agenda when we met. When he was living with his first wife—the War Department, as I dubbed her—his life was more miserable than our childhood. There were no cell phones in those days but she always managed to track Frank down, and the waiters would have to take long, abusive messages before they came and got him to the phone. She disliked me, so he could never admit he was meeting me, but she always knew and berated him for wasting his time with me, or else she couldn’t find the dust pan, or something else like did he mail the ConEd bill, or where’s the toothpaste and other nasty, pointless forms of lunchus interruptus.

  We did chat about the doings of the two younger McCourts, Mike and Alphie, what they were not doing right, getting involved in ill-advised ventures, with some solemn older-brother headshaking. Then there was our mother, Angela, still here on holiday, after twenty years, having weight problems and smoking, which she eventually stopped, but not early enough to avoid that dastardly emphysema.

  Then the subjects were our children and their doings and undoings.

  Frank’s only child, his daughter, Maggie, absconded and joined a loony group of aimless young people meandering around the United States following a band, and they called themselves Dead Heads. A more appropriate appellation was never invented. It was a terrible insult to actual dead people, however, as there is more life in those dead folk.

  But there they go yelping, screaming, gyrating, and boasting about the number of times they have seen the Grateful Dead onstage, still not knowing the amount of money they have been conned out of.

  I had five offspring to discuss, two from a previous legal entanglement; two with Diana, my always present beloved; and one stepchild who is severely autistic. There were enough of them to cause various concerns, but none of them were off in cuckoo pursuit, flinging money at a disguised capitalistic enterprise known as rock.

  To my relief, Frank took a permanent leave of absence from his awful alliance with the War Department but leaped into another alliance with a woman who put the powder into her nose rather than on it. That did not last too long. Then he met the light of his life, Ellen, married again, and lived happily ever after. She encouraged him to write, unlike the War Department, who disparaged him at every turn. Finally, with Ellen, Angela’s Ashes emerged.

  My last breaking of bread with brother Frank was at his bedside in the hospice, the marvelous visiting nurse service in New York City.

  He had that Irish skin that welcomes melanoma, which hit him on the knee and rampaged through his body, finally landing in the brain and depriving him of hearing, so we had to write down every word to him. And this is the part that creeps into every dream that Frank sneaks into. One day he was having soup and I was into a tuna sandwich when Alphie’s wife, Lynn, arrived, clumping noisily on the two canes she had to use. Frank saw her and said loudly: It was very quiet in here until you arrived, the usual Frank sort of welcome, though he couldn’t even hear the clumping of her canes. We laughed, of course.

  Then he asked Lynn: When would you like to die?

  Lynn wrote: January seems like a good mont
h.

  Frank: Why January?

  Lynn wrote: I would have gotten all my Christmas gifts.

  I wrote: When would you like to die?

  Frank: February!

  I wrote: The ground is frozen, making it hard to dig graves.

  Frank: Let the Israelis do it.

  We all laughed. I don’t even know what he meant—I suppose that they were rugged, strapping, and unflagging—but it sounded funny. That was indeed the last laugh and the last lunch. We were sitting in the little living room adjacent to the bedroom when Frank slipped into a coma, chatting quietly, when we heard a very loud sigh and that was Frank letting go of his last breath. It was July 19, 2009, at 3:03 p.m. That was the end of my dear brother Frank McCourt but the beginning of his frequent nightly forays into my deepest, darkest sleep. A place where he is always most welcome.

  Malachy McCourt is or has been an actor, a saloon keeper, a gubernatorial candidate, and an author/writer husband to his wife, Diana, for fifty-four years, father to five, grandfather to eight. His most recent book is Death Need Not Be Fatal.

  — 34 —

  “I miss her ceaselessly. And in the rare moments when I forget to miss her, it’s simply because I’m not paying attention.”

  RICK MOODY (BROTHER) AND MEREDITH MOODY

  QUESTIONNAIRE

  1. Name

  Rick Moody

  2. Occupation

  Writer

  3. Who would you choose to have lunch with?

  My sister, Meredith.

  4. Describe your past relationship with this person.

  My sister was: a complex person, capable of being short-tempered, self-destructive, sad; my sister was: incredibly short, barely over five feet, with a mischievous smile and bottled-blond locks; my sister was: notable for her exuberant and sunny personality, always up for a party, or a concert, or a beer, or a long hang at the beach.