Best to Laugh: A Novel

  “I wish you’d have let me change.”

  “Why? You are cold?”

  “No.” My robe was belted tight and the rising sun was doing its job to warm me. “No, I would have liked to dress for the . . . specialness of the occasion.”

  Madame’s smile was sly. “I am thinking walking down Hollywood Boulevard in swimsuit is special enough.”

  “All right, then.” Letting go of her hand, I took off my robe and draped it over my arm, so that I was indeed walking down Hollywood Boulevard in my special-enough swimsuit.

  With my shoulders back and head held high, I strutted down the Walk of Fame as if it were my personal runway. Madame Pepper began to issue forth her peculiar little snorts, and the more she laughed the more I turned up the performance, tossing my robe to her so that I could leap and dance around the stars unencumbered. To be jumping around and shimmying on Hollywood Boulevard in my faded old swim-team suit made me feel wildly liberated and wildly addled; I was like a newly defected ballerina from the Bolshoi who’d gotten kicked in the head during a pas de deux.

  Across the street, near the closed-up newsstand, a stooped man pushing a shopping cart paused in his collection of cans and bottles to offer a loud, shrill wolf whistle.

  Inspired by my newfound fan, I wished Buster Keaton a Happy New Year and did a cartwheel right over his pink, black, and gold star.

  Madame Pepper cackled as I greeted the various stars I danced by.

  “Happy New Year, Nat King Cole! Happy New Year, John Barrymore! Happy New Year, Licia Albanese, whoever you are!”

  We crossed the street and standing on a star, I struck a glamorous, you-may-photograph-me-now pose.

  “Happy New Year, Betty Grable!”

  “I danced with her at the USO Club,” shouted the shopping cart man. “Her and Evelyn Keyes!”

  “Happy New Year, Evelyn Keyes!”

  A woman folding up the cardboard that had served as her mattress looked up from the recessed corner of a storefront.

  “And Virginia Mayo!” she said, her smile revealing only three teeth whose tenancy along her gum line didn’t look to be long lasting. “I was her stand-in back in the day. We were the exact same size.”

  “Happy New Year, Virginia Mayo!”

  I could have continued offering up best wishes to all the stars lining the street, but when a police car turned on to the Boulevard from Cahuenga, Madame Pepper handed me my robe.

  “Who knows what is considered creating a public nuisance these days,” she said.

  BY EIGHT O’CLOCK THAT MORNING, I was in cool, chlorinated water, amusing myself in the pool I had all to myself. I turned backward somersaults, raced against (and always beat) imaginary opponents and walked on my hands in the shallow end. When I pulled myself out of the water, I collapsed onto a chaise longue and, offering myself up to the pale morning sun, dozed off. Seconds, minutes, or hours later, I heard a voice ask, “Why are you smiling?”

  “Ed!” I said, opening my eyes. “An nou fericit!”

  “On new what?”

  “It’s Happy New Year in Romanian. Madame Pepper taught it to me.”

  “Well, Happy New Year in Romanian to you, too.” The aluminum legs of the chaise longue scraped as he pulled it close to mine.

  I had seen him briefly when I was making Christmas cookie deliveries, but he was no longer a poolside regular, trying to unload his bottles of YaZoo to unsuspecting tenants and reading one of his conspiracy books.

  Giving him the once-over, I asked, “Have you lost weight?”

  He patted his firmer belly. “I’ve been doing sit-ups.”

  “You are in love.”

  “Last night Sharla made me dinner,” said Ed, stretching out on the chaise. “She said she’d been invited to a dozen parties—she counted—but she didn’t want to share me with anyone on New Year’s Eve.”

  “Wow,” I said, and watched Ed’s pink skin get pinker.

  “I know what you’re thinking: will wonders never cease? And the answer is: I sure hope not.”

  In her funny, tiptoe walk, June entered the pool area, a cigarette clamped in her mouth, her little white dog with its brown tears peeking out of its tote bag.

  “Ed, don’t take offense at this—”

  “—whenever people say that, I know that’s exactly what I’m going to take.”

  “It’s just that the two of you seem so different.”

  “Tell me about it,” said Ed, shrugging. “But different can be really good.”

  “You’re right . . . but do you feel—”

  “—out of my league? Hell, yes, how could I not? I’ve been stood up by everyone from a keypunch operator, to a claims adjuster, to a woman I know for a fact had a shoplifting record—and now I’m going out with a real-live Hollywood actress?” He rolled up his towel in a cylinder and propped it behind his neck. “That a guy like me is with someone like Sharla . . . well, go figure.”

  “She’s the lucky one.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Ed unconvincingly.

  We both settled back in our chairs, faces lifted to the sun like flowers.

  Minutes passed and then Ed said, “So why’d you have such a blissed-out smile on your face, Candy?”

  I considered his question for a long moment.

  “I’m just really glad to be here.”

  “I’m glad you’re here, too.”

  “I stayed up late last night baking a cake. I’m going to have a big piece of it for lunch.

  “Not your famous yellow cake with fudge frosting?”

  “None other.”

  “I’m not doing anything for lunch,” said Ed.

  “You are now.”

  Part II

  30

  MAEVE PICKED AN ODD PLACE to lecture me on the need to get tough and go on a “comedy regime.”

  “Like when you were swimming for your high school team, you’d practice every day, right? Do a certain amount of laps, some sprints, try to better your times, apply yourself daily to the goal of doing your best at the next meet.”

  I could only giggle.

  “Really, Candy,” said Maeve, examining the padded cups of a red lace bra, “if I called myself a weightlifter but only lifted weights now and then, what kind of weightlifter do you think I’d be?”

  Again I giggled.

  “The thing is, Candy, if you’re going to do something—do it.”

  The saleswoman smiled at us from across the room, risking a crack in her plastered orange makeup. She had to be at least in her fifties and yet “low” would have been a modest description of the neckline of the skintight sweater that plunged past her sternum, exposing as much of her pushed-up orangey breasts that could be exposed in a public place that wasn’t a strip joint.

  Another giggle thrummed up my throat; I’d been practically vibrating with them since we’d stepped out of the hurly-burly of Hollywood Boulevard and inside Fredrick’s of Hollywood, as quiet and lushly appointed as an off-hours New Orleans bordello.

  “You really buy your underwear here?” I’d whispered.

  “Not all of it, but some.”

  “But it’s so . . .” I looked around at Barbie doll-shaped mannequins wearing black corsets, push-up bras, satin girdles, and lacy garter belts. “Weird.”

  “It is not,” said Maeve. “It’s sexy. And I like to wear sexy, pretty things next to my skin—what’s wrong with that?”

  “I don’t know . . . I guess I never saw the need.”

  “So you’re a white bra and cotton panties girl?”

  “Eww, Maeve, don’t say panties. I hate that word.”

  A contingent of Japanese tourists pressed through the door, oohing, ahhing, and—yes—giggling as they gaped and pointed at the feathered peignoirs, the negligees with peek-a-boo cut-outs.

  It was when Maeve was narrowing down her bra selection that the pep talk began.

  “It’s like this, Candy: I work out two hours a day. I’ve got several very specific routines that work different parts of my
body. I keep track of my reps. I eat foods that’ll help me burn fat and add muscle. I do things on a daily basis that help me achieve the goals I’ve set. What do you do?”

  “You know I’ve been—”

  “Mother’s told me that when she was starting out, she’d visit at least one casting and talent agency a day—sometimes the same ones she’d been to the day before—and every night she and her girlfriend Anne would get all dolled up and go to nightclubs to see and be seen by the Hollywood big shots.” In the direction of the saleswoman, she waved a hand clutching the red lace bra and a sheer beige one. “I’d like to try these on, please.” She turned to me. “And while I do, I want you to seriously think, step by step, what you’re going to do to best reach your goals.”

  I held up a black G-string with ruffles.

  “Wear this onstage?”

  1/9/79

  Dear Cal,

  Maeve’s right, of course; Madame Pepper’s right. I’ve dipped my toes in the comedy waters, have even plunged in a few times, but haven’t stayed in, plugging away, lap after lap after lap. I have failed to be serious about being funny. So here’s my schedule that I swear on a stack of comedy albums I’m going to stick to:

  Get Up—Swim

  Work on act, i.e., Write! Write! Write!

  Perform at least three times a week, without fail, and then refine by writing about each performance; what worked, what didn’t, what the crowd was like, etc.

  And finally: Stop being a baby!

  Zelda had a three-week position for me at a record company in Century City, but that I had already worked at Beat Street made it easy to turn down.

  “I’m on a month-long sabbatical,” I said impulsively. “To concentrate on my comedy career.”

  “Well, let me know if and when you want to supplement the joke telling with some actual cash,” said the temp agent.

  I kept to my write-perform-and-refine goals, getting on stage at least twice, and usually three times a week at the Natural Fudge, Pickles, and a North Hollywood bar called Wally’s. The audiences were never big (one night at Pickles, I stood before seven people and two of them were Maeve and Solange), but constancy had sprouted my confidence and it grew with each performance.

  As valuable and needed as the open mikes at these places were to beginning comedians, they were like small towns, burgs, compared to the dazzling capitol cities that were the Comedy Store and the Improv, and every comic’s goal was to impress the cities’ mayors, Mitzi Shore and Budd Friedman. The action was at these two clubs, where casting agents and managers went trolling for clients, where there were whispers as reverent as prayer: “The Carson people are here!” Even Amateur Night at the Comedy Store felt special; most of the comedians wore jeans, and yet it seemed we were all dressed up.

  Yes, we. After a grand total of eleven performances on the B side, I had signed up and was waiting to play the A side, the Comedy Store, and standing in the back of the room, watching one five-minute act after another, I reminded myself that I had just as much right to be there as than anyone. (Judging from the caliber of this particular evening’s talent, a definite right.)

  When the emcee finally said, “And now let’s give a hand to Candy Ohi” (!), I allowed myself three seconds of frozen terror before barreling through the audience like a locomotive, my secret power mantra providing a chuga-chug-chug forward momentum.

  Onstage, the emcee gave me a pat on the back before exiting and there I was, standing with a black curtain behind me and the Comedy Store audience in front of me, although onstage I couldn’t see anyone past the front row.

  “Hey, everyone, how’re you doing?” I said this nervously, and wrung my hands, as if I had a confession to make. I looked to the left and to the right, and to the left and right again, making them wait. Finally I spoke. “Okay, why don’t we just get this out in the open. I know you’re all aware that there’s something different about me.” (Here I took a long beat, nodding slowly.) “Yes, I am double-jointed.” I held my fingers up, bending them at the top knuckle and heard a couple of laughs.

  “It’s been rough—it’s hard when there are so few people like you; when you’re always in the minority—when you’re only valued for a simple party trick.”

  There were a few more laughs but a loud voice trampled through them.

  “Confucius say, ‘You’re not funny!’”

  A hush filled the room and I felt a pinch of panic, but determined not to let it spread I forced myself to smile and turned to focus my attention on the source of the voice, a guy who all evening had been heckling comics.

  “Really? Because your girlfriend says you are. Funny, that is. Or to quote her, ‘hilarious.’ At least in the bedroom.”

  There were some Oooohs, a few laughs, and a shouted, “You tell him, girl!”

  I smiled at the heckler, as if he were a welcomed guest.

  “I take it, sir, you’re making an observation about the way I look?”

  “Damn straight,” he said. “I’ve never seen a Chink chick do comedy before.”

  “And I’ve never seen a Neanderthal sit up straight and drink out of a straw . . . but life’s strange that way.”

  There were one or two laughs and then, like popcorn heating, two, three, four more.

  “You’re . . . you—” sputtered the heckler.

  “How did you get here, anyway?” I asked. “Did you turn left on Sunset when the rest of the hunters and gatherers in your pack made a right toward the grasslands of Griffith Park?”

  Ladies and gents, the ripple of laughter grew into a wave and I floated on top of it.

  Knowing my grandmother wouldn’t appreciate the gory details of my lying bruised and bloodied onstage after a comic bomb, my letters home describing my performances had been on the censored and rose-colored side. But now, now that I had experienced my first big success in front of a full house, I called her the next morning, even before I made my coffee.

  “Candy?” she said, and after I assured her there was no emergency, I explained how I’d killed at the Comedy Store.

  “Oh, kid! Killed is good, right?”

  “Killed is great. Especially considering the heckler I had.”

  “Why would anyone want to heckle you?”

  “Because that’s what they do. They drink too much, or they want to be onstage themselves but aren’t, so they try to get laughs sitting in the audience.”

  “Well, I don’t go for that at all!”

  I could picture my grandmother, grabbing the collar of some drunken wise guy and warning him, “One more peep and I’ll give you a knuckle sandwich!”

  “And guess what else, Grandma? You know how Charlotte uses Fields as a stage name? I decided to use one, too.”

  “So you’re . . . Candy Fields?”

  “No, Ohi. Candy Ohi.”

  “Kandiyohi like the county?”

  I laughed, knowing she’d understand the reference. “And for mom.”

  “I like it,” she said softly.

  Reliving the entire evening for her, I told her the nice things the emcee and some other comics had said, and how an audience member had tugged at my sleeve and asked me when I’d be appearing next.

  The silence that followed was long enough that I had to ask my grandmother if she was all right.

  “I’m just so proud, Candy. Candy Ohi.”

  “Thanks, Grandma. My friends think—”

  “—oh, honey, I’m sorry, I’ve got to go.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “It’s just that I’m sitting by the window and I see my company’s here.”

  I asked if Mrs. Clark, her next-door neighbor was coming over for coffee.

  “No,” said my grandmother with a little giggle. “Alice’s brother Sven.”

  After my father died, and I had permanently moved in with my grandmother, she’d rented the upper apartment to a woman named Alice O’Rourke.

  “Sven O’Rourke?”

  “O’Rourke was Alice’s married name. S
ven’s last name is Hanson.”

  “Grandma! Details, please.”

  “Well, after you left, Alice started inviting me up for a couple of her Friday night pinochle games, and, well—” another giggle adorned her words—“Sven and I sort of hit it off.”

  “You and Sven sort of hit it off?!”

  “Yes, and I invited him over for coffee this morning, and he’s coming up the walk with—well, they’re all wrapped up, but I can tell they’re flowers! Gotta run—love you!”

  After hearing the hang-up click, I admit to the clichéd gesture of holding the receiver out and puzzling over it like a cave man who’d stumbled upon it while out stalking Mastodons.

  Did my grandmother have a boyfriend?

  Wow. I didn’t know whose news trumped whose.

  1/24/79

  Dear Cal,

  The creep who went on before me must hate women because his act was just one ugly, gross line after another (and no, none was funny, at least to all sentient beings in the audience). When I got onstage I said, “I believe in evolution, but it’s not true that all of us descended from apes. Some obviously are the spawn of jackasses . . .” (Big Laugh.)

  2/4/79

  Dear Cal,

  Okay, spent the morning writing nothing but political material. Here’s an example: “There’s trouble at Camp David—things were going fine until Anwar Sadat pushed Menachem Begin out of the canoe and Menachem retaliated by short-sheeting Anwar’s bunk. Jimmy the counselor is threatening to ban them from the Friday night belly dance and gefilte fish fry.”

  2/8/79

  Dear Cal,

  Solange brought Neil to Pickles to watch my act. He left right after I was on to go see a band, but before he did, he said if Beat Street ever did comedy albums he’d sign me! The likelihood of that is pretty nil, but still!

  2/18/79

  Dear Cal,

  First time at the Improv—and had a good, bomb-free five minutes! Besides me, the only other woman was PJ Rand, who I saw the first time I went to the Comedy Store. She’s really funny and we sort of formed a mutual-admiration society.