Dorothy on the Rocks (2 page)

“She's too big.” It's that kid in the front row again. “She's not a little girl. I want to go home.” The child bursts into tears and thankfully the lights go to black. Frank shoves the dead witch's feet onstage, pulls the back curtain across the traveler. I get up off the cellar door. Lights up and Eddie staggers out as the munch-kin, “W-w-wel-l-lcome to Mm-m-un-s-s-ch-kin-n-nland,” he slurs as Pauline sweeps onstage as Glenda the Good Witch in her long pink chiffon dress with hoopskirt and sequin trim, her magic
wand shimmering with glitter. The kid in the front row stops crying and leans forward, suddenly entranced.

“I'm Glenda, the Good Witch of the North,” Pauline says in her honey-buttered southern accent, and in spite of the irony, the show is finally rolling.

When Randall Kent, playing the Wizard, sends me back to Kansas, I start to cry my actress tears, because I don't want to leave the wonderful land of Oz, but the Wizard assures me he can get me back once a year for a visit. Pauline touches me with her wand and the lights flash. I click my heels and twirl round and round and end up on the cellar door again, back home in Kansas—and realize my actress tears are mixed with real tears because back here in this world I can't remember the name of the man I spent the night with, I'm wearing a gingham pinafore that doesn't fit, and I'm being heckled by a six-year-old. Who wouldn't rather stay in Oz?

“Good show,” Eddie says as I pass him on my way to the dressing room.

“Got any of your coffee left?” I ask. Eddie pours me a Styrofoam cupful and I down it.

“Oh, and sorry I kicked you during the munchkin dance but I got thrown by that damned heckler in the front row. I could have killed her.”

“Forget it,” Eddie says, taking a swig from his thermos. “There's always at least one of those when I do
Pinocchio
. Kids have no manners these days. They're all spoiled brats.”

I sit at the dressing room table and begin to remove my makeup. Frank switches on the overhead fluorescent lights. I look at myself in the mirror, with my pigtail wig and rouged cheeks, and recoil
in horror. I look frighteningly like Bette Davis in
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

“Turn off that overhead light, will you?” I snap to Frank.

“Aren't we sensitive?” Randall says from the other side of the room.

“My vision is weird today, and that fluorescent light makes my eyes flicker,” I say defensively.

After we change out of the costumes and pack up the props, we pile into the van and head back to New York. I'm in the front seat between Dee-Honey and Pauline.

“You always make such a lovely Dorothy, dear,” Pauline says, and pats my knee. “Just lovely.”

“Pauline, you're sweet, but I'm forty-one. I think my Dorothy days are over. Did you hear that girl in the front row?”

“She was a thoughtless urchin. No imagination. Look, Maggie dear, to a seventy-three-year-old, forty-one is still an ingénue, isn't that right Dee-Honey?”

“Oh my yes. You're practically a teenager.”

“Teenager,” Randall snorts from the backseat. “She's Lady Macbeth if she's a day.”

“You hush, Randall,” Pauline hisses. “You just hush.”

“Thanks,” I say to Pauline, then give her a kiss on the cheek. “And I think you're the real reason that Dorothy makes it back home and it's not the nasty old Wizard at all,” I say, nodding in Randall's direction. “It's Glenda's good wishes that get her back to Kansas.”

“I've always thought that,” Pauline says. “When I give her that final blessing with the wand, I envision Dorothy back home safe and sound. I'm glad you feel it.”

“I always do,” I say.

A few years ago Pauline and I were on tour together in
Freddie and his Magic Flute
. After too many shots of cheap scotch at the motel bar, I confided to her that I was depressed and feeling like nothing in my life had meaning. She took me by the shoulders and said, “Listen to me, Maggie, you have to go on no matter what, because you never know when something wonderful will happen.” Then she proceeded to tell me about the time, in a fit of despair, she decided to kill herself. It was a cold December day after Christmas. She opened the window of her apartment—a sixth-floor walk-up on West Forty-fifth Street (where she still lives)—and put on her best black cocktail dress (an Ann Roth design she had worn in a walk-on role with Jon Voight in
Midnight Cowboy
), along with her rhinestone earrings, four-inch stiletto heels, and black elbow-length satin gloves. Her plan was to get a running start and hurl herself out the window, down six stories, and onto the front page of the New York
Daily News
. But just as she was about to get up speed and go, the phone rang. It was a friend, and when she heard his voice she started to cry uncontrollably. The friend (a tall, dark, handsome mystery man is what Pauline leads you to believe) suggested dinner, and since Pauline was already dressed for it, according to legend, they went to the Rainbow Room, then spent the weekend at the Plaza Hotel drinking champagne and eating caviar. That's the official version; unofficially the word is (and Eddie Houser swears to it) Dee-Honey was the one on the other end of the phone who saved Pauline, and then had her admitted to Bellevue for an extended stay.

I look over at Pauline. She is busily crocheting, making hats and scarves for the homeless.

“You remember Mariah Stacky, don't you, Dee?” Pauline says.

“Yes, honey, I do. She went on tour with us to Tennessee with
Pied Piper
,” Dee says. “She was wonderful as the mayor's wife. Had a lovely soprano. She was the only one that could really hit the F-sharp in the ‘Rats, Rats, Rats' number.”

“I got a card from her. She's living in Phoenix. For her health, you know. Terrible asthma.”

“Really? Is she still married to that fire-eater?” Dee asks. “Remember he worked for Ringling?

“Yes, but he retired. Mariah said they're happy as clams on the half shell.”

“Clams on a half shell?” Eddie yelps from the backseat. “That is just like Mariah to think it would be a hoot to be a clam on the half shell.”

I lean my head back and close my eyes. Where are those ruby slippers when you really need them?

When I get home there is a phone message from Mr. Handsome: “Hey, Maggie Mae, how are you? Sorry I had to take off so early this morning. I had a great time and I want to see you again. How 'bout tonight? You're so great. I mean hot. You know what I mean. Call me. I'm at home and then I'm out, but I'll check my machine or you can call my cell. I'll be free around ten. How was the Dorothy thing? Call me.”

I replay the message four times, copying down the phone numbers. Did he mean hot as in exciting, or hot as in hot to touch? I suspect he had mistaken the heat of a pre-premenopausal hot flash for sizzling passion but what the hell. For me it was one of those blurry nights that return in moments of clarity, like freeze-frame pictures. I was sure I remembered that at some point he was wearing a garter belt and I was perched on his lap yelling giddyup. That could explain the bruise I noticed on my left thigh when I was struggling into my Dorothy tights. But what is his name? I can't remember it, or maybe I never knew it. And he didn't leave it in the message.

There is also a call from Charles: “Maggie, darling, where are you? It's Charles. My God, it's so hot and humid I'm sticking to myself. I just got back from Spain. Olé! And I'm dying to tell you all about it. How about dinner tonight? I'm footloose. My treat, darling. Just love to see you. Call me.”

Charles is the curator of a small art gallery in Tribeca. His taste is very noveau yet very upscale, meaning he knows what sells for big bucks and doesn't bother with fads. I wish I didn't bother with fads and that I could make big bucks, but my life has been one fad after another. There was the women's lib fad and the rock star fad and the downtown leather fad, the spiritual fad and the soybean diet fad and the Hampton fad, and now the too-much-scotch-not-enough-brain-cells-younger-man fad. And all of them ended up costing me, although what I'm not sure. At dinner that night Charles chats nonstop about Madrid and the matadors and the vino and the art.

“Maggie, dear, you should see my newest find. We agreed on a show at the gallery in the fall. He does acrylics mixed with crushed shells on linen. Amazing textures. And what a colorist! Like O'Keeffe. Pure, vibrant. And yet not overbearing. I think they'll sell like crazy. Very Hampton friendly. You should tell your friend Patty. I think she'd love them. Give me her address and I'll send her an invitation to the opening. You would not believe the place I stayed.”

Charles proceeds to wax poetic about the hotel and the gorgeous young man he had met in Santa Pola, a resort town on the coast of Spain that is apparently filled with gay men and nightclubs and nude sunbathing. As he talks my mind drifts off to a freeze-frame from last night. I am sure Mr. Handsome had a tattoo on his shoulder, and I am now trying to get it into focus. I
think it was some sort of religious symbol . . . or was it an animal? I'm sure it had several arms and legs, or at least what looked like legs. Maybe it was something Hindu.

“Maggie?” Charles snaps at me.

“Sorry?” I say, coming back to attention.

“Hello, earth to Maggie!” Charles says. “I was talking about my new artist.”

“I'm listening, acrylic on linen. I love it. Sounds very Mapplethorpe,” I say.

“What do you mean Mapplethorpe? God, Maggie, Mapplethorpe was a photographer. After all these years of my educating you about the art world, I would think you'd at least get the mediums right.”

“I can only try,” I say. “You have to admit I can pick out a Hockney from a lineup.”

“Hockney's easy, dear.” Charles smiles at me indulgently.

“Easy for you.” I smile back.

“And then in Barcelona,” Charles continues, “I met a wonderful glassblower. Amazing vases.” He hands me another stack of snapshots.

“He's gorgeous, Mags,” Charles says, chewing on his olive. “He told me the secret to good skin is hydration. He drinks two gallons of water a day. Can you imagine?”

“No.” I say. “I'd have to wear a catheter just to leave the house.”

“I think he must,” Charles says. “You know people will do anything these days to look young. Have you heard about sheep fat? If you put it in the blender with some sea salt and cucumbers it makes a wonderful restorative scrub and takes off years.”

“Really? I could have used some of that sheep fat this morning. I had to play Dorothy in
The Wizard of Oz
.”

“Maggie, you've got to start singing for real again. Get out of that damn pigtail and pinafore and do cabaret. Put on a silky black cocktail dress and sing Cole Porter.”

“I can barely get into the pinafore anymore, for Christ's sake. A little girl in the front row heckled me. Called me a
big lady
, which is code for old and fat. And the cellar door wouldn't spin. I practically had to get off and walk to the Land of Oz. I'm not the ingénue I used to be.”

“Oh, who is, darling?” Charles says, finishing off his martini. Then he gestures to the waiter for another round for both of us. Charles and I met years ago. He was living with my accompanist at the time, Goodwin Albert DePugh, better known as Goodie, the best piano player to ever come out of Lake Charles, Louisiana. We kicked ass in the East Village clubs doing our Miss Goodie Two Shoes and Maggie the Magnolia act for the extremely hip, the classy cool, and the “true believers,” as Goodie liked to call them. We were the “wildly addictive soul sisters with sass and brass,” said the
Village Voice
. “Funny and heartbreaking, with harmonies to die for.” Goodie was my best friend; I was Ethel to his Lucy, and he was Rhoda to my Mary.

When Goodie started to get sick, we all knew what it was. We knew it was the Big Sick. The Big Sick that no one could get away from in the eighties and early nineties. It was everywhere, and it was so devastating that no one wanted to look—certainly not me.

Sometimes during a rehearsal Goodie would start coughing and couldn't stop, and I would find some speck on the wall or crack in the floor to look at and will myself not to think until the coughing stopped and Goodie took a drink of water and said something about allergies. I would rub his back and try not to
think about the Big Sick; I'd tell myself that maybe it was just allergies. After all, the pollen count was high and the ozone layer was disappearing at an alarming rate. Charles got Goodie hooked up to some experimental program. Goodie started having lots of colonics, the theory being you could flush the poison out. Get rid of the fluids—pump in healthy stuff. Purify the body. But nothing worked, and Goodie got thinner and weaker and sicker, and finally it got so bad that there was no place to look and pretend it wasn't happening. Goodie's brother Joe came up from Texas to help out. He was a civil engineer and we hit it off and became a couple, much to Goodie's delight.

“You two were made for each other,” he would say with a smile. So Texas Joe and I fell in love while Goodie fell victim to his compromised immune system. By the time the lifesaving “cocktail” came on the scene, he was too far gone. Lousy timing for a guy with rhythm.

Charles and I are having dinner at Ernie's on Broadway. It's a big, airy place with windows that open onto the street. Air-conditioning is pouring out of overhead vents.

“They're cooling the whole damn world; their electric bill must be enormous,” Charles notes as he sips his second double martini with two olives, light on the vermouth. He is a slim man with close-cropped hair, a diamond earring, and an assumed patrician air.