Authors: Jerry Stiller
“I stayed with John and Stanya at their apartment when I first came here from Rockville Centre,” Anne explained to me.
She seemed to be kissing everyone in the place. Why did she have to do that? So much affection. She seemed to love everybody equally. What did that make me? I felt a twinge of anxiety. Was it jealousy, or was I just being possessive? I had no proprietary rights to her affections. How do you tell someone whom to hug or not hug? It worried me. Was I actually
beginning to like her? I didn’t like the way she showered all this affection. It made me suspicious. If she liked everyone, then I was just like everyone.
One night soon afterward Anne invited me over for dinner. Her ground-floor apartment nestled in a yard between Jones and Cornelia streets in Greenwich Village. There was no sunlight. Up the street was Zampieri’s Bakery, where every morning the smell of fresh bread would awaken the neighborhood.
“You cook?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “I make spaghetti.”
For the first time I noticed the walls were frescoed, plastered and painted over in light blue, with little squiggles.
“What are those little things sticking to the plaster?”
“That’s the spaghetti. I throw it against the wall. It sticks if it’s al dente.”
During the following weeks we spent many nights together. On some nights her roommates were present, and we just talked. On others, when we were alone, she’d often read.
“What do you read?” I asked.
“Plays,” she said. “Poetry. You don’t like to read?”
“It’s not that,” I said. “I just don’t seem to have the time.”
“Didn’t your mother ever read to you?”
“No, but I remember her taking me to the library and having me read
Black Beauty
. It was her way to teach me—I didn’t know she couldn’t read. She came to America when she was sixteen and learned English by going to night school.”
“My mom read to me a lot. She was a schoolteacher,” Anne said.
“I feel guilty when I read. I don’t ever remember ever finishing a book.”
“Why do you feel guilty?”
“It’s like I’m wasting my time. I should be doing something, like making money.”
“Don’t you enjoy reading?” she said.
“I guess so. I started reading Dostoyevsky,
The Brothers Karamazov
. I’m doing a play from it in some basement with Steve Gravers, Arthur Storch, and Stefan Gierasch. Do you know them?”
“They’re good actors,” Anne said.
“Yeah, I know. I play Smerdyakov, the idiot brother who’s an epileptic.”
“Is that why you’re reading the novel?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“What’s it about?” she asked.
I started to explain, and mentioned a town in the book called Obodorsk. Anne started to laugh.
“That sounds funny,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”
Anne disappeared into the bedroom. I picked up a copy of
The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám
that was lying on the table and started reading. “A loaf of bread, a jug of wine and thou …” When Anne reappeared she was wearing a pink flannel nightgown and holding a glass of milk. A glass of milk at a time like this.
“It’s warm,” she said, offering me the glass.
She was angelic. The flannel nightie suddenly seemed erotic. I looked at her face. This wasn’t the way I had envisioned it.
She’s an actress,
I thought.
This is supposed to be a torrid affair, and I’m getting a warm glass of milk.
I took a sip, mostly to satisfy her, and handed the glass back.
“I like milk,” she said.
I stood quietly, waiting for something to happen.
“My roommates are gone,” she said, taking me by the hand. Was this really happening? This was bland, milky-white sex.
I think she loves me,
I was telling myself. Is it possible any woman could love me, someone besides my mother? What could she see in me? I’m an unemployed actor. She has never seen me on stage, and yet she likes me enough to want to go to bed with me. Maybe I
am
something.
I noticed the ridges on the green chenille bedspread. An old table lamp on the night table threw off the only light in the room. The glass of milk was still in her hand. She placed it on the night table.
We looked at each other for a moment. I hesitated before daring to touch her. Her eyes told me it was all right to do something, so I took both her hands. Like two automatons, we slowly perched on the edge of the bed. I heard a squeak. It seemed like the bed would collapse if our full weight were on it. We both sensed the comedic possibilities of this moment. Our bodies slid lengthwise onto the bed, as if testing it. The bed didn’t collapse. Then we pushed back with the palms of our hands till our
backs touched the cold wall. I turned to kiss Anne, who was at least two inches taller than me, even in bed.
“You have soft lips,” she said to me, “and I love your hands.”
I had never heard anyone say anything so endearing to me in all my life. It was funny how words could turn me on. Moments later, we were making love.
The bed squeaked. Whatever guilt I may have had seemed dissipated by the funny sounds that filled the apartment as we desperately tried to create romance to the accompaniment of noisy bedsprings. Despite all this, we salvaged some joy in our first intimacy.
We looked at each other and I said, “Obodorsk.” Anne laughed, we turned out the lights, and made love once again. From that night, every time I mentioned the name “Obodorsk,” Anne and I made love.
We were sleeping together without being married. It was what actors and actresses did. It made you mature. In theater, anything goes, I thought. It didn’t matter whether it wasn’t legal. As a matter of fact, it was more fun because it was
illegal,
very Hollywood. But I was also feeling like a cad, taking advantage of a poor innocent girl. But I was so lonely, a killer loneliness that Anne’s presence changed.
One late evening I was sitting on the couch while Anne was making supper. Through the bars on one window in her apartment you could see into the courtyard. The lights from the other apartments illuminated a tree that stood in the red-tiled yard. Anne noticed a shadow running behind the tree.
“There he is,” she said.
“Who?” I said.
“The guy. He’s been coming here for weeks every night. He looks through the bars and hides behind the tree.”
“Where?” I said, pretending bravery.
“There,” she said pointing.
Sure enough, I could see a white-shirted figure peeking out from behind the tree.
“He scares the hell out of me,” she said.
Seeing a chance to show some manliness, I said, “I’ll get him.”
“Be careful,” Anne said.
Before allowing my own fear to take over, I ran out into the courtyard, straight to the tree, expecting to see some huge guy with a knife or a gun.
Instead a small wretch of a man in a white shirt pleaded, “Please, don’t hurt me! I’m sorry!”
His cowering was pathetic. He seemed ready to be beaten to a pulp.
“I tell you what,” I said, “pretend I’m beating you. Scream loud and get the hell out of here.”
“Yes, sir,” he said and started to scream. “And don’t ever show up here again,” I shouted as he disappeared into the night.
I re-entered the apartment. Anne looked at me with admiration.
“What happened?”
“I let him go,” I said, “I could’ve killed him. He’ll never bother you again.”
During those days, I’d come by often. We loved to take walks in the Village, past bookshops and the craft people selling their crazy jewelry. We were strolling down Cornelia Street just past the bakery when Anne said, “Listen, I’ve got to tell you something. I’ve got a job in summer stock out in Smithtown. I don’t think I’ll be able to see you too much this summer.”
I felt a sudden rush of loneliness. There was a warm feeling in my throat like someone hitting me, and I had to hold back the pain. What if I lost her? I saw her with someone else. It was like a changing wind I had no control over.
“Listen, we’ll write and we can phone each other,” she said.
She seemed sincere.
I decided to put on a good front. “It’s not as if this is over,” I said. “I’m up for Sitting Bull in a tour of
Annie Get Your Gun
. If I get it I’ll be out this summer too. Ten weeks altogether. I can call you.”
“Okay, we’ll keep in touch,” Anne said. But I wondered if this was the end of it.
A week later Anne started rehearsing at Smithtown, Long Island, and I was upstate in Binghamton playing Sitting Bull. I called her seven times and she called back three. We joked about spending our salaries on Ma Bell.
Six weeks later she said, “I’m finished in Smithtown. I can visit you.”
“You can?” I said, detecting a flutter in my heart. Was I actually in love? And did she still love me? It was Romeo and Juliet time. We were being kept apart by circumstances, and circumstances seemed to have intensified our feelings. I was thrilled. I was really in love.
At the Matunuck, Rhode Island’s Theatre by the Sea, producers Don Wolin and Harold Schiff gave me free room and board in an old New England house facing the ocean in return for performing in their cabaret adjoining the theater. I did my Italian soap opera routine every night after the regular show.
My landlady—I’ll call her Mrs. Grenfell—was close to eighty. Her beautiful gnarled face reminded me of a character out of
Great Expectations
. She informed me that I could stay in the one available room in her house.
“It’s my husband’s room,” she said. “All his things are still in place. So please don’t move anything. I hope you like to talk.”
“I don’t mind,” I said.
“We face the sea. We can have tea in the morning.”
“Do you mind if my wife comes up and spends a few days with us?” I asked.
“Are you married?” she said, with more than a hint of suspicion in her voice.
“Yes,” I said.
I knew she knew I was lying. But it didn’t seem to faze her.
“Come, I’ll show you to the room,” she said. “It was my husband’s,” she repeated. At the foot of the staircase was a plaster-of-paris dog. “That’s Creseus,” she told me with a smile. “He’s named after my husband,” she added, but gave no further explanation. “The room’s on the third floor. I’m one floor below you. You can go up by yourself. I’m sure you’ll like it.”
The room contained a four-poster bed, an oak dresser, and a matching mirror. It was huge. In the bathroom a mirrored cabinet perched over the porcelain sink. Opening the cabinet door, I saw a shaving mug, shaving brush, straight razor, some combs in a glass, and a dangling razor strap. Just above one of the shelves there was a four-inch square cut out of the wall, as if by a coping saw.
I spent an uneventful night in the room. The next morning I could hear Mrs. Grenfell preparing breakfast. When I finished dressing and went downstairs, she asked how I’d slept. “Fine,” I said.
“Come out on the deck,” she said. “There’s hot coffee, toast, and marmalade. Do you like cranberry juice? I’ll get it.”
“So you slept well?” she said as I sat, mesmerized at the sight of the waves crashing on the beach just a few yards away.
“I saw you in the play last night,” Mrs. Grenfell said, pouring coffee out of a pewter pot. “You were very good as that Indian. You didn’t overdo it. A lot of people would have overdone it.”
“Thank you.”
“Those Indian words that you use. Are they really Indian, or did you make them up?”
“You mean when I initiate Annie into the Sioux tribe? Those are real words,” I said.
“How do you know?”
“I got on the phone to an organization called ARROW. I mentioned I was an actor playing Sitting Bull and I wanted to know the meaning of
Ne-tro-wa key
. ‘Hold the phone,’ the person on the other end said, and then yelled, ‘Ma, what does Ne-tro-wa key mean?’”
Mrs. Grenfell laughed. “Did his mother know?”
“Yes. He explained that ARROW was an apartment in the Bronx, but they were members of the Sioux tribe and their apartment was an information bureau as well.”
Mrs. Grenfell looked at me and said, “Is your wife an actress?”
“Yes, she is.”
“When is she coming?”
“The day after tomorrow.”
“I’m anxious to meet her,” Mrs. Grenfell said, looking at my third finger, left hand, and seeing no wedding band.
I sipped some coffee and looked out at the Atlantic. “That’s beautiful out there,” I said after some silence. The silence seemed to be part of our conversation.
“Did you hear anything in the room last night?”
“No,” I said.
“Good. Then he likes you.”
What was she talking about? I didn’t ask her.
“Tell me, do you like Barry Gray?”
Her question took me by surprise. It seemed almost like an exam question. Barry Gray was a very thorny New York City radio talk show host of that era.
“I had no idea you heard him in Rhode Island,” I said.
“Oh, I get him all right.”
I could tell she did not particularly like Barry Gray.
“His program is on all night,” she said, “and I can’t stand the man.”
“Why not?” I asked hesitantly.
“He’s so opinionated.”
“Opinionated” was always a code word for being Jewish. I hoped she knew that I’m Jewish and didn’t say anything terrible.
“It has nothing to do with his being Jewish,” she said, as if reading my mind. “What do you like about him?” she asked, as if seeking some avenue of controversy we could explore together. “Do you really believe he’s being chased by Nazis?”
“I think so.”
“He sounds like he’s about to be gunned down every night. He’s always dodging around cars. Why does he always antagonize me?” she said.
“He’s controversial,” I said. “You seem to like him enough to listen.”
“Maybe you’re right,” she said.
“Thank you for breakfast.” I got up to leave.
“Be careful of Creseus,” she said. “He’s in touch with my late husband.”
Hoolie Woolie spirit guide stuff, I thought. And on that cryptic note I left to go to the theater to pick up my messages.
That night Anne arrived, a day earlier than I’d expected. Her arrival lifted me. She looked beautiful. Her smile was beautiful.