Best to Laugh: A Novel (26 page)

44

“
P
ERFECT,”
said Madame Pepper, admiring the old pink taffeta gown I’d found in a used clothing store on Vermont Avenue and a cardboard tiara I made out of a cereal box.

The old seer wore the same shawl over her copper-colored beaded dress, and we left the complex with a giddiness reserved for those seizing the New Year while the rest of the world—at least Los Angeles—slept.

It was our third annual stroll down Hollywood Boulevard, and I was happy to usher in a year already full of promise.

But Madame Pepper’s mood, I soon surmised, had not risen to the heights of my own.

“Are you all right?” I asked as we crossed La Brea and entered the boulevard’s commercial section.

“
All right
is relative term,” she said. The hand she had tucked in the crook of my arm was spotted and veiny.

“Why don’t you,” I said, trying to dismiss the thought that the tough old bird seemed fragile, “define it as it’s relative to you?”

“My friend Polly’s moving. I have always lived next door to Polly.”

“Don’t worry—we’ve got all sorts of plans. Melvin’s lawyer friend is helping us and he says he’s going to tie up the owners with injunctions, and then we’re going to petition the city council to have Peyton Hall declared a historical landmark and—”

“—bah,” said Madame Pepper, with a wave of her hand. “Won’t happen.”

I didn’t know if that was a prediction borne of intuition or pessimism; either way, I didn’t like how it made me feel.

“Where is she moving to?” I asked.

Madame Pepper’s sigh was heavy. “The Motion Picture Home! Polly’s going to move in with a bunch of old people!”

“Well, she is old, isn’t she?”

“Only four years older than I!” Madame’s gruff expression warned me not to say anything, but after a moment her features softened into a smile.

“That is the thing, Candy; despite all evidence to the contrary, I am young. Inside I am nineteen years old and full of life, and yet every time I look in mirror, I wonder, who is this impostor?” She chuckled. “Zo, I don’t look in mirrors much.”

The skirts of our party dresses swished along the granite.

Dawn had arrived, a rosy loveliness rising from the edges of the eastern sky, and if a bus had deposited an actress from Abilene or a dancer from Dubuque on Hollywood Boulevard at this hopeful pink moment, how could they not think, “Yes, of course; this is where dreams will come true.”

“How is your grandmother?” asked Madame Pepper companionably.

“Good,” I said. “Sven’s got a little cabin in northern Minnesota, and they went up there for Christmas.”

“Brrr,” said Madame Pepper. “That does not sound so inviting.”

“Grandma said it was really cozy. She said they sat in front of the fireplace reading to one another from the stack of
Reader’s Digest Condensed Books
Sven’s got up there. And they saw the northern lights twice!”

Madame Pepper stopped, clutching my arm. “The northern lights! Oh, Candy, have you ever seen them?”

I shook my head.

“They are . . . a marvel. I saw them when I was a young girl, fifteen years old. We had taken a trip way up to Finland to visit an uncle who’d emigrated there.” Madame’s hand pressed against her chest. “Candy, the sky was alive with color—greens and violets and pinks! My uncle, a scientist, explained what we were seeing, but my ears closed to his voice, thinking, ‘This is beauty and mystery so far beyond your words of science.’ I thought just because there are explanations for things does not mean we really understand them.”

We swung our held hands.

“And then that night, the wolves cry. Howling into that cold, Finnish night and Sophie was scared and I am a little, too, but I make my voice sound deep and know-it-all like my uncle’s and tell my sister not to be afraid, that she should feel lucky, because she gets the privilege of listening to wolves telling jokes.”

“Wolves telling jokes?”

“That is just what Sophie said. After each wolf howl I would laugh and say, ‘Oh, that’s a good one’ or ‘Oh, I never heard that one before,’ and then Sophie gets into act, and as the wolves are crying we laugh ourselves to sleep.”

“What a nice way to fall asleep.”

Madame Pepper squeezed my hand. “It was.”

Seeing the tall man shuffling toward us, his eyes fixed straight ahead, Madame Pepper reached into the cavern of her dress bodice and pulled out a folded bill.

“You’re up early, Slim,” she said, holding it out to him. He didn’t break his stride as his fingers closed around the money.

We didn’t get all the way to Vine; we thought Ivar was a good enough turnaround point, and on our way back a few people had come out of their nighttime hiding places to begin their first morning of the New Year.

An agitated, bearded man pushing a shopping cart passed us, muttering something about Beelzebub being alive and well and working as an upholsterer in Boise, Idaho.

“Another reason to love Hollywood Boulevard,” said Madame Pepper, as we passed him, giggling. “Where else could you learn of the current career and location of Beelzebub?”

A
N
ACTRESS
NAMED
G
WEN
C
LARK
who had starred as the second lead in a ’60s sitcom about a veterinary clinic was hired to play Gwen McGillicutty, the befuddled, upper-crust director of
The Sorta Late Show,
and Harry Jansen, a big, brawny guy, got the part of my sidekick, Harry Chest. The other regulars included Mac Mork, the stoned cameraman, and Rose Williams, a new comic I had met, who played the depressed makeup girl, Rose Blush.

At the first read-through of the finished script, a constant thrum of excitement coursed through my body, so much so that I would fold my arms across my chest just to keep myself planted in my chair. The laughs were full and frequent, especially when we got to the parts we’d marked improvisational.

“So tell the audience a little bit about yourself, Harry,” I said, during one of our improvised couch chats.

Examining his fingernails, Harry said casually, “Well, you know, Candy, I was quite the big man on campus. I was first in my class at Harvard.”

“You went to Harvard?”

“Yeah, baby.” With his fingers entwined, Harry stretched out his arms and cracked his knuckles. “Harvard Barber College. It’s in Pomona.”

Gwen was great at playing the addled, out-of-her league director Gwen and was no slouch as an improviser, either.

“Mac,” she said to the cameraman, “you can come to work stoned, or you can come to work not stoned, but you can’t do both.”

“Whatever,” said Mac.

After the actors left, we writers conferred with Melanie and Claire.

“So the monologue changes every day,” said Claire, reading from her notes.

“Yeah,” said Mike. “We’ll change things just to keep it topical.”

“We’ll have set pieces,” I said. “For instance, Rose will also play the zoo expert, Mac’ll be the playboy actor, and Gwen’ll be the tone-deaf torch singer.”

“Yeah, and we’ll all act in the commercials,” said Mike.

“We think it’ll be fun for the audience to see us playing different roles,” I said. “Plus it’s cheaper than hiring a bunch of actors.”

“Cheaper,” said Melanie. “I like that. This is going to be so fun.”

She wasn’t going to hear a dissenting voice from any of us.

A
FTER
THE
RUN-THROUGH,
I was walking back from the bathroom when a hummingbird collided with the back of my shoulder.

“What the hell?” I muttered, wondering what had torpedoed me, figuring the likelihood of a hummingbird attack in a theater was fairly slim.

Looking behind me, I found an airplane fashioned out of a piece of cardboard, its nose slightly damaged from its impact with my deltoid. It was fine and sharply folded, but it wasn’t its sleek construction that got my heart pumping, but the message scrawled on it.

“Dinner . . . and?”

Mike appeared from the corner he had ducked behind after launching the aircraft. He stared at me and I stared at him.

“What about Kristin?” I asked, finally.

Mike shrugged. “
Kirsten
and I broke up.”

“You did?”

“I moved out. Into an apartment two blocks from the Formosa.”

“I love the Formosa,” I said, feeling a little light-headed. “Maybe we could go there for dinner.”

“And . . . and like I said, my apartment’s two blocks away. We could have dessert there.”

45

“
C
ANDY!”
came the less-than-dulcet tones of my cousin’s voice over the telephone. “What’s this Grandma says about a ‘talk show show’?”

“I’m in a show about a talk show. It’s opening in two weeks.”

“Where at?” asked Charlotte, the way an investigative detective might question a suspect she’d rather slap.

“At the Swan Theater.”

“The Swan Theater? I saw James Taylor there!”

There was a long pause, and in it I imagined her exhaling out of her nostrils smoke that had nothing to do with a cigarette.

“So how’ve you been?” I said, figuring as long as she called me, we might as well converse.

“I’ve been just fine,” she said, her voice clipped. “I’ve got a callback tomorrow for a hairspray commercial.”

“Congratulations. I hope you get it.”

“You do not! You never want me to get anything!”

Other than left field, I had no idea where this sentiment came from and had no response, which was fine, as Charlotte wasn’t done talking.

“Why is everything going so good for you? Why do I have to struggle when things just fall into your lap?”

I slumped on the couch as if my spine had suddenly dissolved.

“Things just . . . fall into my lap?”

“Of course they do! You’re the one who’s always been Grandma’s pet! You’re the one who she spent so much time with! Who got to live with her—”

“
Because my parents died!
”

Charlotte’s words fell over mine. “Who could never do any wrong in her eyes! Even when you were a big druggie, it was always ‘Candy this’ and ‘Candy that,’ and now it’s ‘Candy’s got a big show she’s putting on!’ And you know what really pisses me off? I’m the reason you’re in Hol
lywood! I’m the one who gave you my apartment! Do you think any of this would have happened to you if I hadn’t given you my apartment?”

My heart forgot its regular rhythm and was galloping like a spooked horse.

“First of all, I wasn’t a big druggie—I just smoked a lot of pot, okay? And secondly, you didn’t give me your apartment. I sublet it, remember? As a favor to you!”

“Hah! I can’t believe it! I sublet it to you as a favor!”

“Hah!” I said, mimicking her. “You don’t do favors unless they benefit you!”

“You just can never thank me, can you? Is it because you’ve always been jealous of me? Well, guess what: I can’t help it that I’m what you’ve always wanted to be! I can’t help the way I look, can’t help that I’m blonde and blue-eyed!”

My heart was now Sea Biscuit, straining for the finish line.

“Don’t you mean
bland
? Bland and blue-eyed?”

I heard a gasp and then a click, and dropping the receiver in its cradle I promptly burst into tears. When the phone rang again, I snatched it up, ready to hear Charlotte’s apology, ready to offer mine.

“Hello?” I said, my voice hopeful, even through its thickness.

“Candy? What’s the matter?”

It wasn’t Charlotte, unless she was very good at impersonations.

“Oh, Mike!” I said, “I just had a terrible conversation with my cousin!”

“Is your grandmother all right?”

“My grandmother? No, not that kind of terrible—everything’s fine with my grandmother. It’s just that she—” My last words bobbed on the wave of a sob.

“Candy, I can hardly understand you,” said Mike. “I’m coming over, okay? We’ll take a walk, okay?”

I sniffed. “Okay.”

“
E
VEN
THOUGH
WE
DON’T
EXACTLY
GET
ALONG,”
I said, after having recounted the entire phone conversation, “we still love each other. Or so I thought. I mean, we’re cousins! We grew up together!”

Mike pulled me closer to him as two young women trotted by us on horseback. We were up in Bronson Canyon, in an area that had been the location of many shot-in-L.A. Westerns, hiking up a path toward stories-high rock outcroppings.

“But I didn’t know that she hated me!”

“I don’t think she hates you, Candy. Sounds to me like she’s jealous of you.”

“You haven’t seen my cousin.”

“I’ve seen her picture in your apartment.”

“And you don’t think she’s beautiful?”

“Not like you.”

“That’s a good one.” My laugh was bitter. “I’m a lot of things, but beautiful is not one of them.”

Dropping my hand, Mike enveloped me in his arms.

“You are beautiful, Candy. You have the most lovely mouth.” He kissed it. “And the cutest nose.” He kissed it. “And the most beautiful, soulful eyes.” He kissed my right eyebrow, then my left, and when he was finished he stepped back, holding me at arm’s length, appraising me. “You have the shiniest hair I’ve ever seen, and the most perfect body ever assembled. In one word, well, two: you’re beautiful.”

I had to laugh. “No, I’m not. But thank you.”

“Yes, you are. And you’re welcome.”

A man sporting a crew cut, tennis shoes, and stretchy shorts that looked like underpants approached us, his face, pate, and bare chest slick with sweat.

“That’s an attractive look,” I whispered as he raced by, his breathing laborious chuffs. “One you should think about.”

“Good idea. Forget the tuxedo—on opening night I’ll wear a Speedo and my old purple Keds.”

“Opening night,” I said, my voice dreamy. “I can’t wait.”

We walked farther, my hand in Mike’s back pocket, his in mine.

“Charlotte’s right about the apartment, though,” I said. “If she hadn’t come out here, and then needed a subletter, where would I be? Would I ever have done stand-up? Be ready to open a show that has my name in the title? No! I’d still be at the pie shop, asking if you’d like to try today’s feature.”

“I would, thanks. With whipped cream. But come on, Candy. You kept up the rent on your cousin’s apartment and then took over the lease, and for that you’re going to give her credit for your whole career? Give me a break! And quit asking yourself those stupid questions. ‘What if I would have done this?’ ‘What if I hadn’t done that?’ The thing with those what ifs is, you’ll never know. Don’t waste your time with them.”

“Thanks, doc,” I said, pinching his butt.

“Hey, I charge extra for that.”

I took a big inhale, loving that in the middle of Hollywood the air could smell of nature, of dirt and weeds . . . and of horse manure.

“Yikes,” I said, sidestepping the freshly dropped briquettes.

We walked in the cooling air, as shadows spilled over the surfaces of the rocks.

“I wish my mom could see the show,” I said softly.

“I know you do, Candy. But maybe she can.”

“You believe that?”

Mike shrugged. “I might. Who knows? You forget my grandfather was a Lutheran minister.”

“The one who puts on his boxers first and then his tie?”

“No, the Lutheran minister one. He usually wore a clerical collar.”

“So you believe in Heaven?”

“Absolutely. But in my heaven, after the angels have put in their time playing harp all day, they get to relax a little. They climb off their clouds and head to the nearby peanut gallery, where they drink beer and get rowdy, waiting for the next good act on Earth to take their shot at entertaining them.”

“Oh, great. So now I’m picturing my mom heckling me from on high.”

“Not heckling. Laughing. Applauding. Yelling at all the other angels to shut up, ‘cause my daughter’s on!’”

“No, she wouldn’t say it like that.” Demonstrating how my mother would tell a group of boisterous angels to put a lid on it, I said, “Prease, prease, no talk! Candy on! My daughter Candy on!”

“What would your dad say?” said Mike.

“Oh. Oh . . . I don’t know.”

“He’d probably say, ‘Yeah! That’s my girl!’”

“I don’t think so,” I said, my throat thickening.

“You don’t think so, but you don’t know.”

Mike bumped my hip with his, but it wasn’t until we’d walked for a while that I bumped his hip back. I was surprised at the wave of sadness that had washed over me—not at its strength but its lack thereof. It was like standing under a shower that had always released a torrent of water and now only mustered a trickle.

I hooked my finger through Mike’s belt loop and he did the same to mine, and we continued sauntering down the road where Hopalong Cassidy and Gene Autry had in days gone by sauntered.