Best to Laugh: A Novel

  “Sharla and I have tomorrow off,” explained Taryn. “But Derek’s got to shoot some action scenes out in Simi Valley and Jon’ll be jumping out of a burning barn.”

  “I’m a stuntman,” said the wavy-haired guy helpfully.

  After their departure, Taryn called for her maid to open another bottle of champagne and suggested it was time to get back into the hot tub.

  “Maeve, get suits for everyone, and I promise Sharla and I will keep ours on.”

  Ed and I looked at each other.

  “Uh, I’ve got to work tomorrow,” I said.

  “And I’ve got to teach,” he said.

  “I’ll write you both notes,” said the actress. “Now, Mother of God, please, prove to me that youth isn’t wasted on the young.”

  CLIMBING INTO THE HOT TUB, I could see the embarrassment on Ed’s face. He was tall and lanky but slightly flabby, and he crossed his arms, trying to cover the soft roll above his waistline. When he sank neck-deep into the water, relief calmed his features.

  “So, Ted,” said Sharla, “you’re a teacher?”

  “Uh, it’s Ed. And yes, yes I am.”

  “No kidding,” said Sharla, leaning toward him and I saw Ed’s Adam’s apple bulge as he swallowed. “What do you teach?”

  “All kinds of things, but mostly history. Geography sometimes. Occasionally English. Once, art. I don’t like to remember that class.” He looked at me panicked, silently pleading to help him.

  I smiled gamely at Sharla. “He’s a substitute.”

  “And a fine one, I’m sure,” said Taryn. “But we simply must talk about you now, Maeve. You say you came in fourth place?”

  “Third,” said Maeve.

  “And she was robbed,” I said. “If the whole thing wasn’t rigged, she would have won Valley Vixen.”

  Maeve’s big jaw pulled down as she tried to hide her smile.

  “She sure had the best-looking legs of all of them,” said Ed, and pleasure washed over Maeve’s face.

  “Gee, I wonder who she gets those from?” said Taryn in a baby voice, lifting a leg out of the water and toward the sky.

  “I don’t know, Maeve,” said Sharla in the same cutesy voice. “I think I could give you some competition, too.”

  She offered one of her legs up for view, and the two stars of Summit Hill spent a long moment pointing their toes and rotating their ankles this way and that.

  “Anyway, Mother,” said Maeve, “it wasn’t first prize, but I didn’t expect to be in the top three at all, so it was quite an honor.”

  Both women drew their legs back into the hot, churning water.

  “I’m sure it was, sweetie. You know I would have been there if I could have.” Taryn arranged her features into a look of concern and said, “I just didn’t want to cause a stir. All eyes should have been on you tonight.”

  “Or Bonnie the Buff,” I added, making Maeve laugh.

  “Do you like girls like Maeve?” Sharla asked Ed. “Or do you prefer your women a little . . . softer?”

  The heat and steam were making all of our faces red, but Ed’s took the color to a whole new level.

  “I . . . uh—”

  “—Ed,” said Taryn, coming to his rescue. “Would you be a good boy and pour me some more champagne?”

  “Me, too!” said Sharla, as Ed reached for the bottle chilling in the bucket.

  Leaning back, I averted my eyes from the stars in the hot tub and looked up at the stars in the sky, or where they would have been if not obscured by haze and the lights of the city. Turning my head to the left, I saw a kidney-shaped pool illuminated by lamps that were nestled in the gardens and lining the stone paths. Turning my head right, I saw fat lemons hanging from a tree just feet away and limes from another, and the smell of citrus mingled with eucalyptus and what had become my favorite smell—night blooming jasmine. If Minneapolis’s unofficial expression was brrr, Los Angeles’s had to be ahhh (with a little smog-induced cough at the end).

  “So Candy,” said Taryn, butting into my reverie, “how’s the comedy career going?”

  I tried not to flinch, not prepared to tell anyone outside my inner circle about my inauspicious debut.

  “I am dying to do a romantic comedy,” said Sharla saving me. “Summit Hill’s great, but it’s so serious. I want to do something a little frothy.” She did a little shimmy, in Ed’s direction.

  “My second movie was a comedy,” said Taryn. “FiFi’s Collar—any of you see it?”

  She pushed her lower lip out in a child’s pout when only Maeve nodded.

  “It was actually quite good. I played Lizette, the French neighbor of a couple who had this crazy poodle named FiFi; my costars were Jean-Paul—”

  “—that’s my goal,” Sharla said, “to do a comedy during hiatus.” She leaned into Ed again, this time more aggressively, smooshing one breast against his arm. “Don’t you think I’d be good in a comedy, Eddie?”

  I surveyed my friend, on whose pink and sweating face was an odd mix of glee, lust, and horror.

  “I, uh—”

  “—and my fourth movie; yeah, I think it was my fourth,” said Taryn, counting on her fingers, “my fourth movie was a comedy called Herr Professor and Christine. I was nominated for a Golden Globe award by the way, playing Christine’s best friend, Cookie. We shot it in Munich of all places—that’s where I met Maeve’s father—at the Hofbräuhaus! He had just come from Yale and was working on his doctorate and—”

  “—my agent says there’s no reason I couldn’t be the next Lucille Ball,” said Sharla. “I mean we both have red hair, well, mine’s auburn, and—”

  “—I met Desi Arnaz once,” said Taryn. “This was when he was still married to Lucille, and oh my God, the charm that oozed out of that man—”

  “—do you like I Love Lucy?” Sharla asked Ed. “My mother and I did, but my dad said it was stupid—he much preferred shows like Car 54 and—”

  “—is anyone hungry?” asked Taryn. “Because I can have Verna make some sandwiches and—”

  “—I’ve got to go home,” said Sharla, slowly rising out of the steaming water. “Eduardo, can I give you a lift?

  Ed’s eyes bulged at the invitation.

  “But I came with—”

  Sharla posed, water dripping off the camera-ready curves of her body.

  “I’ll be waiting in the driveway,” she said. “In the baby blue T-Bird convertible.”

  “SO YOU THINK LIL’ MISS Arizona and Ed will get it on tonight?” asked Maeve, tossing our swimsuits into the dryer of the fanciest laundry room I’d ever been in.

  “Is that what she was? Miss Arizona?”

  Maeve shrugged. “Some state that begins with an A.”

  “Asslandia,” I offered. “And no, I think Ed only went home with her because he was too much of gentleman to say no.”

  We laughed. It had been Taryn and not Maeve who had been in a bad mood after the actress and substitute teacher left, announcing she had a sudden headache and was going to bed.

  She didn’t even bother seeing us out, which, according to her daughter, wasn’t atypical.

  “I love her,” Maeve said. A soft whirr sounded as she turned on the dryer. “But she can be a little temperamental—especially when she doesn’t get what she wants.”

  “What do you suppose she wanted?”

  “Oh, more attention, probably. Or someone to assure her that she’s just as attractive as Sharla West—even though she’s old enough to be her mother. Sheesh. Did you notice how they had to outdo one another—how our presence was sort of immaterial to them?”

  “Ed’s wasn’t to Sharla.”

  Now in the car, making our way down the windy road, I asked my friend, “Come on, didn’t it bother you when he left with her?”

  Chuckling, Maeve expertly negotiated a hairpin turn.

  “What, do you think I’m jealous?”

  “Well, you like him, don’t you?”

  “I’d go out with him, sure. But Ed’s conv
inced me that’s not going to happen, so I guess I’ll have to settle for having him as a friend. From watching my mother, believe me: I’ve learned the danger of hanging on when it’s time to let go.”

  Gasping, Maeve braked hard, holding her arm out to protect me from making contact with the windshield, even as I was wearing my seat belt.

  Her headlights shone on a yellow lab racing across the narrow road, pursued by a terrier, and we watched them disappear into a yard, yapping and barking.

  “Lot of bitches out tonight,” mused Maeve.

  Her joke surprised both of us, and we laughed all the way down the hill.

  23

  11/9/78

  Dear Cal,

  While my “bombing” wasn’t exactly lethal, a week and a half’s gone by and I still feel like I’m picking shrapnel out of my heart. That dead air after my laugh lines, that sense of scrambled panic—uh, I’ll have the root canal instead, please. The roar of confidence that had gotten me onstage is now a feeble little meow, and I seriously wonder when and if I’ll have the guts to get on stage again.

  “CANDY, YOU’RE KIDDING ME, RIGHT?” said Solange when I confessed as much to her. “You don’t strike me as that big a baby.”

  “I’m not a baby, Solange, it’s—”

  “—you are if you don’t get back on stage. Everybody bombs, Candy. That’s the nature of show business. That’s the nature of everything.” Sitting on the blue futon, she leaned forward and picked a copy of Radio & Records off the reception area coffee table. “Look at that,” she said, flinging the magazine at me. “Brass Jar, a Beat Street band, on the cover.”

  “I know they’re on the cover, Solange.” The particular issue had been greeted with much fanfare in the office.

  “But what you don’t know is I saw them last year at the Whiskey. Where people were booing them. Where a few bottles were thrown. Where they bombed.” Her smile was of the told-you-so variety. “And now they’ve got a hit album and they’re on the cover of Radio & Records.”

  “Well, that’s great, but—”

  Solange snapped open a copy of Billboard.

  “And you should read this story about Timber Line. It took them ten years and two lead singers before they got a record deal.” I ducked as she hurled the magazine at me. “So I’m not really interested in excuses.”

  THE problem, I thought as I skated east on Hollywood Boulevard, was that once I finally got on a stage, I was certain I could do nothing but succeed. That sounds vain, dumb, and ill advised, but to go from my old life to my new one had demanded that I take a huge leap of faith. Which I had done . . . without considering the consequences of a crash.

  Stop it, I scolded myself. Solange was right: Everybody bombs once in a while—it’s the nature of show biz.

  Hot winds rattled the halyard of the pole in front of the bank, and the fabric of the flag shook and snapped as if it were in the hands of an angry laundress.

  “They’re the Santa Anas,” June had informed me when I helped chase down her bratty dog. “That’s what Binky’s trying to run from, the spookiest winds in the world! They’re blamed for everything from sparking fires to inspiring serial killers.”

  Hot and sweaty when I got to the bank, I switched my skates with the shoes I had in my backpack and got into the short line at Lincoln Savings, idly wondering how long I could go without tapping my game show savings.

  An angry voice intruded on my reverie.

  “Well, that’s bullshit! Something’s got to be off on your end!”

  There was a whispered request asking that the aggrieved customer keep his voice down.

  “Why should I when you can’t perform simple math? Now let me speak to the bank manager!”

  At the end of the counter, behind the far window, I could see the chagrined face of the young teller facing the irate customer, who, by voice and dapper suit, I recognized was Francis Flover.

  “Don’t just sit there like a peon—get me the goddamned manager!”

  I was shocked; this was not the vocabulary or manner of the kindly, gracious man I knew.

  “Sounds like someone’s not so happy with his interest rate,” said the guy ahead of me in line.

  The woman ahead of him chortled.

  “Or maybe he didn’t get his free toaster when he opened up a savings account.”

  As the two customers yukked it up, I turned around and left.

  There were several big concrete planters on the small plaza the bank shared with the Toy Tiger, and I sat on the edge of one, still needing to cash my paycheck but wanting to avoid the embarrassment of Francis seeing me. It was the second strange incident I’d witnessed relating to him, the first taking place the previous weekend.

  I had just gotten my mail and was climbing the stairs to my apartment when Melvin Slyke’s door opened.

  “Dad, it’s not just using your car—that man’s going to run you out of house and home!”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” said my neighbor. “It’s just pocket change, Nancy. Pocket change!”

  “But he’s got a really big pocket!”

  “Nancy, sweetheart, I appreciate you coming over, but please, it’s not your place to tell me how to spend my money.”

  “But it’s my business to protect you from a shark like Flover!”

  Melvin Slyke’s daughter stepped onto the small landing just as I slipped unobtrusively—or tried to—into my apartment.

  “Thanks for coming over, honey,” I heard Melvin say and seconds after I heard his daughter galumph down the steps, there was a knock at my door.

  “Sorry you had to hear that,” said Melvin.

  I shrugged, not knowing exactly what to say.

  “Nancy had no right to say those things and I wish you hadn’t heard them. Here’s the thing. Francis has seen better days—who hasn’t?—and if I can pay him for the odd little job that doesn’t hurt his pride, what’s the harm in that?”

  “No harm.”

  “Exactly. And if I want to take him out for dinner now and again or lend him my car, what’s the problem?”

  “That little silver sports car is yours?”

  Melvin wiggled his bushy eyebrows.

  “You probably pegged me as a sedan type, right?”

  NOW FRANCIS FLOVER PUSHED OPEN the bank door as if he had a personal enmity toward it. While he wasn’t quite stomping, he was a long way from skipping, and when the hot wind picked up the vent of his suit jacket, he swatted it down.

  There was a tour bus in the intersection and as Francis crossed the street, I wanted to shout, “Hey, there’s a piece of Hollywood history right in front of you!” but of course I didn’t, there being enough nuts shouting things on the Boulevard as it was.

  What had set him off like that? I realized everyone had their bad days, but Francis was a consummate gentleman, one who called a teller “Miss” and not “peon.”

  Seeing this side of him, I felt bad—bad for him and bad for me. I didn’t like being disappointed by someone I wanted to look up to.

  5/1/72

  Dear Cal,

  My sixteenth birthday! . . . . and I spent part of it bawling my head off!

  “Who knows what makes people tick?” Grandma asked me after Dad stormed out of the house. “If a mother can’t even figure out her own son, how can she figure out anybody?”

  I think she was trying to comfort me, but sorry Grandma—I’M NOT COMFORTED! I haven’t even been sixteen for a whole day, and I feel like I’m about thirty-five—old and worn out and so sad!

  The night had started off with such promise. Dad had taken the night off—imagine that!—and Grandma was giddy as she served the birthday dinner she insisted on making. As the three of us shook salt and pepper on our limp unseasoned green beans and sawed away at our well-done steaks, we laughed and joked, acting uncharacteristically like a loving family.

  My grandmother had allowed me to make and frost my own cake, but she’d insisted on decorating it, writing in a pink-gel icing, “Happy Sweet 16t
h!” When it was presented to me, ablaze with candles, I thought, It is, it is! and when my dad slid a little box across the table, my heart thrummed.

  I untied the ribbon slowly, prolonging the sweet moment, even as I wanted to rip at it like a dog smelling a bone wrapped inside butcher paper.

  Opening the box, I’m fairly certain that the thrumming—and my heart—stopped.

  “Oh, Dad,” I said, picking up the silver locket nestled in the cotton batting. Its thin chain ran between my fingers like a long silver tear. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Open it up,” said my dad, his voice rusty.

  With my thumbnail, I pushed open the locket’s clasp and seeing the lovely smiling face of my mother, I burst into tears.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake!” he said.

  His words were a slap and I howled my hurt.

  “Arne,” said Grandma softly, “Arne, it’s just that—” but my dad wasn’t interested in my grandmother’s explanation, and he barreled into the living room. A moment later we heard the front door slam.

  I found myself at a strange junction, a place where humiliation, sorrow, and anger met, and my tears dried in that hot, choked place. I didn’t understand my own wild reaction at seeing my mother’s picture, and I sure didn’t understand the reaction of my father.

  “What a jerk!” I said, practically spitting. “What’s the matter with him?”

  “Candy,” said my grandmother softly, “he’s just—”

  “—a total jerk! He barely ever mentions mom’s name to me, and then he gives me this locket with her picture in it, and I’m not supposed to be a little floored?”

  “You’re right, he did overreact.” My grandmother’s head was not so much shaking as vibrating. “And I honestly don’t know what’s the matter with him.” She picked up the necklace’s chain, sprawled on the table like a silver spill, and rubbed her thumb against the locket. “But I think he was scared . . . scared by your reaction.”

  “I don’t care! He should have at least tried to make me feel better!”

  “If it would do any good, I’d bust him in the snoot,” said my grandmother and her words, her prescription for dealing with my father was so inane, so futile, that we couldn’t help it, we laughed.