Authors: Jerry Stiller
After my mother died, the last semblance of our family disappeared. My father, who managed to pay every doctor bill and hang on until the end, was free at last. We were all on our own. The question of who was to care for Maxine was left unanswered. When my father remarried, there was a problem with caring for her. I requested the guardianship of my sister, and my father agreed. When our theater schedule made it no longer possible for Anne and me to take care of Maxine, she spent the following years living with different members of the family, each doing their best to maintain their life as well as hers.
Sandra Zemel, my first cousin, extended herself to take care of Maxine, as did my sister Doreen and her husband, Joe, and Arnie and his wife, Linda. When she was old enough, Maxine started working as a waitress at a restaurant in Greenwich Village. She had already lost several jobs because of anti-social behavior. Soon there were problems at the new restaurant. She got into fights with customers. “She had become difficult,” they said, and they let her go. At the age of nineteen, after several
such incidents, Maxine was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic. I learned that she had taken LSD. From then on she performed in her own world, on her own stage, in her own mind.
Each week she’d arrive from the adult home in Coney Island. I would give her spending money each week and order lunch. She’d smoke a cigarette and tell me that Roddy McDowall and Sammy Davis, Jr. were staying with her and Tanta Faiga and Tanta Chaila where she lived. Jumbled reality. Sometimes she’d take the money and immediately take someone she met on the street to lunch. She’d then need more money for cigarettes before the week was over. We’d give it to her.
The doorbell to the office rang twice in quick succession.
It’s her ring
, I thought.
“Come on in, Maxine,” Arnie Duncan said. She gave him a big hug. “Are you my brother, Arnie?”
“Of course, Maxine.”
Then she hugged me. “I love you, Jerry,” she said.
Her lips were cracked because of the medicine. At forty-three years old, she looked twenty-six. Mental illness seems to slow the aging process. Actors have to fight to stay this way, I told myself. She wore jeans, a polyester shirt, and boots. She was always clean. She must have showered every day. Some part of her cared.
“Can I have some coffee?”
“Sure,” I said.
“I take it black. Jerry, are you my father?”
She knows I’m not, but it zings me.
She pointed to her boots. “Sammy Davis gave me his boots,” she said.
“They’re nice,” I said. I didn’t pause or question.
“It’s a mixed marriage,” she said, quoting lines from some of our routines and laughing, knowing she’s making me laugh when she says them.
I would tell myself she’s not really sick; she is just fantasizing a little too much. I kept thinking this would all change. She would someday behave normally. If she did, it would change my entire life. I’d be taller. I could smile more. I could go out onstage with less on my shoulders before each performance.
“I love you, Jerry,” Maxine would say as she headed out the door and back to Coney Island.
“Your sister’s a hoot,” Arnie would say. “You gotta give her a part in a show.”
For a decade our secretary, Arnie Duncan, was an important part of our lives. His presence in the office and his gentle manner, contained in his lanky 6-foot-3-inch frame, were everyday reminders that Anne and I were some kind of corporate entity. His “Good morning, Stiller and Meara,” backed up by the testimonials on the walls, were daily reassurance that we did indeed belong in the world of stars, superstars, and mini-stars.
More important to us was his sensitivity to our immediate needs—our instantaneous flip-flops in making decisions, our family responsibilities, all the rest of it. He accepted these as if they were the facts of life. His sense of humor and flexibility helped us to survive and stay human.
Every routine we had ever written was stored somewhere in the office. I had little idea where—I was too busy to keep track. If I needed an old
Sullivan
routine, I’d yell, “Where is it, Arnie?”
“I’ll get it for you,” he’d respond.
“I’ll get it, just tell me where.”
“I’ll get it,” he’d repeat.
“Why won’t you tell me where things are?”
Without missing a beat, he’d answer, “If you knew where everything was, then you’d know where everything was and then you wouldn’t really need me, would you? There would be nothing for me to do.”
I wanted to kill him for it, but it made perfect sense. As the saying goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I never knew where things were, but I gave it up to God. Things were working out.
Arnie Duncan and I had first met as undergraduates at Syracuse University when I was directing that student revue called
Long Live Love
. He walked in and auditioned. He sounded like Billy Eckstine, minus the vibrato. He was good and he was cast.
Some twenty years after graduation I ran into him on the street, and he told me he was no longer the office manager for the Edward Marks music-publishing company. He needed a job. Anne and I, being a nightclub act, worked out of our apartment. I said, “Well, if you ever do need me, I’m there for you.”
Once we had our office we hired him. I had always loved him back at school. I pictured Arnie turning our office into a computerized comedy corporation, with sketches and punch lines at our, or his, fingertips.
On a typical day the phone would ring.
“Stiller and Meara,” Arnie would coo, just like a bird. “Yes, I’m their
secretary. My name is Arnie. Yes, I’m black.” They hired a black guy, he’s telling whoever it is on the other end of the line; it’s implicit in his tone. He’s too social, I’d tell myself. Get to what they want.
But people liked talking to him. Strangers talked with him as if they’d known him all their lives—and he’d never seen any of them, nor they him. What did they talk about? He was very elegant.
It’s very European
, I’d tell myself. This place was turning into Grand Hotel.
One day the phone rang and Arnie picked up.
“Stiller and Meara, can I help you? I’ll see if Mr. Stiller’s in…. Are you in, Jerry,” he said to me.
“Who is it?”
“Bob Kelly, from United Van Lines in St. Louis.”
“Tell him I’m not in.”
“He said he’s not in, Bob.”
Then Arnie turned to me and, without covering the mouthpiece of the phone, said, “Bob said, can you call him when you get in?”
“Tell him yes.”
“He said yes, Bob.”
You would expect people to be highly offended by a conversation like that, but they weren’t when Arnie was on the line. This happened a lot. But if the phone rang and I answered it, the caller would say, “Where’s Arnie?”
“Oh, he’ll be back in a minute,” I’d mumble.
“I love that guy,” the caller would remark.
“How come?” I’d ask.
“He’s great on the phone. He’s so nice. Where’d you find him?”
I’d never realized the telephone could be so important to relationships. “If you ever decide to let him go, I want him,” people would say. Suddenly I was some genius who had found a jewel in life’s sandbox. I enjoyed the unearned praise—but now I could no longer fault Arnie for not putting “Mr.” or “Ms.” in front of proper names on envelopes addressed to celebrity friends.
“It’s Mr. Frank Langella, Arnie. Please type it again.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s proper to address him as ‘Mister.’”
“He’s important enough to know who he is already,” Arnie would answer. Retyping the envelope, he’d say, “Do you want me to save the stamp?”
“Of course,” I’d say, and he’d laugh.
His logic was such that I understood it completely, and denied it wholly.
“Here, Arnie, retype this—a commercial for the Amalgamated Bank.” I’d hand it to him and walk away, knowing he’d read it as he retyped it. Would he like it?
I heard him laugh.
“What are you laughing at?”
“This line breaks me up,” he’d say, repeating it. “It’s great. Only I’d have it at the end instead of the middle.”
“It’s that funny, huh? Anne, Arnie loves my Amalgamated commercial!”
“I’m writing one myself,” she’d answer.
“Tell her my commercial’s funny, Arnie.”
“Jerry’s is really funny, Anne,” he would say to oblige me.
“Want to read it?” I’d ask her.
“I’ll read it later. Leave me alone, I’m busy,” she’d say.
“Okay. Arnie, I’ll do it over with that punch line at the end…. Oh, by the way, you misspelled ‘commercial.’ It’s not ‘commerical.’”
“Sorry. You’re the speller around here. My spelling’s terrible,” he’d say.
“But don’t you proofread?”
“Yes, I do, but even when I proofread it, it still comes out wrong.”
“You’ve got a dictionary right there.”
“That’s unabridged, and it’s so
big
.”
I wanted to die. His spelling was getting better, I had to admit, but the word “commercial” always came out “commerical.”
I stopped kvetching. Funny punch lines are more important than typos, I told myself. And if I needed something, I could call him at home at midnight and he’d do it for me. But most important, Arnie loved working for us—he had become a part of our family.
While we were in California in 1985 to discuss a possible CBS series with producer Mort Lachman, we found out Arnie was not well.
“I can’t sit at home,” he said. “I’ll come to the office and lie down. I can take phone calls and relay any messages.”
“Fine with us. Rest. Don’t feel obligated to do anything.”
He’d been diagnosed with lung cancer. We arrived back in New York after a week of talks with CBS.
“What’s the series about?” Arnie asked.
“Two people, Anne and myself, married, living in a New York apartment on the West Side. They have two grown kids and a thirteen-year-old. I’m a deputy mayor. I see myself roaming the city streets, checking broken parking meters, closing open fire hydrants, saving New York City’s water supply, and a myriad of other tasks. A job which could lead to some wonderful story lines.”
“Let me type up your outline. But I have to take an hour first to get through the radiation treatment.”
“How often do you go?”
“Every day,” Arnie said. “Except weekends.”
“What do they do?” I asked.
“They lay you down on a table and hit you with X-rays. Next week they tell me if it’s doing any good.”
“How do you feel? Are you eating?”
“I ate some Chinese food today.”
“Good,” I said.
“I’m going down to Florida next week to see my sister,” Arnie said. “It’s my vacation. Or do you need me?”
“It would be good for you to go,” we said. “How do you feel right now? Do you want to go home?”
“I’d rather be here … if it doesn’t get you down.”
It was always a squeeze before Christmas. I’d go pick out items that had to be individually engraved. Whom did we forget?
“We have to send cards,” I said.
“No,” Anne would say. “No Christmas cards. Let’s make it a rule.”
“But I love to get cards. Why shouldn’t I send them?”
“You’re Jewish. Why do you have to send cards? You must’ve been sick as a kid.”
“I never received any presents. So I love to give them and receive them, because I’m still a kid.”
“Let him do it,” Arnie said.
Arnie would patiently address our Christmas cards to friends and keep it a secret from Anne.
By now Arnie had even stopped going to Knicks games.
“Why?” I asked.
“I hate to see them lose.”
It was the year Patrick Ewing arrived, and Cartwright, Cummings, and
Bernard King were all out with injuries. Arnie was super-critical when it came to basketball. At the Garden or watching the tube, he would let out his feelings when a play was not executed well enough. He had his pet players and the guys he disliked. He owned a season ticket to the Knicks home games and so did I. We’d talk between halves, about the plays, the players. At the end of the game, we’d leave the Garden happy.
A week after he flew to Florida, he came back to New York in a wheelchair. We took him to Doctors’ Hospital. He started to sink.
“Jerry, don’t let them give me bad blood,” he said. He died December 13, 1985, at the age of sixty-one. It was six weeks from the day he told us he was ill.
That night I saw him in a dream. I was in a jazz club in Greenwich Village, maybe the Vanguard. I looked out of the basement window and saw Arnie’s feet. As I looked closer, I could see him staring in silently through that window at the woman jazz singer. He suddenly entered the club, said nothing to me, which was uncharacteristic, and went directly to the singer. He whispered something in her ear and then left.
The dream frightened me, and I woke myself up.
In my dream, he was mad at me. I had never seen Arnie angry before. Why was he mad? I could not bear the thought. How could he die? How could he leave us? Our office wasn’t even our office. It was his, and he was still running it.
I told myself that Arnie had only decided to take some time off and would be back. I could not mourn anyone who had not left my consciousness. I would still feel upset with him when I couldn’t find something in the office. He was still there for me, always and forever, and he knew it.
The funeral was to be held at a funeral home in Harlem. As I prepared for the service, I remembered the name of the song he’d sung in
Long Live Love
, the school show. Arnie had put a bunch of tapes of the show on a shelf somewhere in the office. I reached for a box at random, looked at the label—and there it was, “The Things I Miss Most,” written by Ross Miller. I played it. Arnie’s voice, much higher than I remembered: “The things I miss most are just the little things / the flowers in springtime / the birds on the wing …”
God, they’ll cry at this tomorrow
, I thought,
unless I make it funny
.
I went to the Audio Department—the studio where Anne and I
recorded our commercials—and got the engineer, Gene Coleman, to clean up the tape that Leo Bloom had recorded in 1948.
The chapel was full. The service was scheduled for 11:15
A.M
. Friends—white, black, women, men—relatives, people I had never seen or known, filled every row. There were actors, house managers, musicians, artists, writers, DJs, a policeman, and members of the African-American Society, of which Arnie had been president. A black woman walked to the organ and played a gospel-blues rendition of “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” She played and sang it with meaning.