Some Kind of Miracle (26 page)

“Number one,” he said, extending one finger: “She works alone. She gets up and sings the songs without you. Elton John doesn’t have Tim Rice on the stage with him when he performs. Tim Rice is in the audience or watching Elton on TV. That’s where you’ll be. Number two: She gets two-thirds of the money, not half, because she’s the composer/performer. You’re just the lyrics. Number three: When we start making our album, I got ideas for the titles, and Harry whatever-his-name-is bows to my creative input or we find someone else to do the arrangements, et cetera. Our first album should be called
On the Sunny Side of the Street.
With a gorgeous picture of her on the cover. I’ve been talking to photographers all week about how to make her look skinnier.”

“Louie, you’re an idiot,” Dahlia said. “But that’s good, because it proves to me that some things never change.”

“Hey, you want to be a smart-ass? I happen to know that there are plenty of lyricists out of work who would die to work with her once they hear her incredible tunes.”

Dahlia shook her head. “You don’t have a clue,” she told him.

“What
you
don’t have a clue about is that there is no bond stronger than the one between a sister and a brother, since your parents decided to stop having children after you were born—which I don’t blame them for doing.” It was the same na-na-na-na-na voice he’d used when they were kids.

“Louie, why are you turning this good thing, your sister’s getting well, into something so bad?”

“Because some people only want to take advantage of her getting well for their own personal gain.”

“Boy, are you right! And I’m talking to one of those people right now,” Dahlia told him as she turned away. She could see Penny chatting with a woman who looked familiar, but she couldn’t remember why. Maybe it was because the woman was an old card-playing friend of her mother’s, but she couldn’t call up a name for her until Penny introduced her.

“You remember my Aunt Rita?” Penny asked Dahlia as the tight-lipped woman offered a bony hand. And as Dahlia looked into the woman’s eyes, she remembered Rita Horn too well, and all the bad memories suddenly flooded through her head. This was Norman Burns’s aunt. The one who’d hated the idea that Norman was wild for Sunny. Dahlia had forgotten until that moment that Louie’s wife, Penny, was the first cousin of Norman Burns. Arthur Miller, the love of Sunny’s life.

“I used to play canasta with your mother,” the old bitch said, and Dahlia felt her heart race as she remembered the way this woman had disapproved so powerfully of Norman’s relationship with Sunny. She wondered if Sunny retained any memory of the influence this nasty woman had probably had on her life. Dahlia’s stomach rumbled, and she headed toward the buffet table.

“She’s here!” Sunny called out happily, spotting Dahlia and running toward her to hug her. “Wait until
you see them, Dahl.” Then she called out, “Kassie. Robin. Come out here.”

Dahlia recognized the two little girls immediately from the pictures Louie had shown her. Now, as they emerged from a back bedroom, she could see that the white-haired one looked eerily like Sunny had as a child, and the other one was tiny and dark-haired and pale by comparison. “This is your cousin Dahlia,” Sunny announced, and the two girls walked to Dahlia and gave her one of those uncomfortable hugs children give when they’re forced into it.

“Okay!” Louie yelled out now, silencing the buzz of the crowd. “For those of you who haven’t ever heard my sister, Sunny, perform her songs, you’re in for a treat. She’s verging on the brink of major stardom, and now she’s gonna thrill you with a few of her fabulous tunes, so gather ’round.”

Dahlia was worried. Sunny was flushed, and her white bangs were wet and matted against her face. She smiled at the people around the piano, who cleared a path for her, and she sat down at the piano bench, staring at the keys for a long time. Dahlia felt engulfed by that same fear she used to have when they were kids, a panicky terror that Sunny might suddenly cave in and fall apart, but then Sunny played the opening chords of “What’s Happened to Me?”

“I wrote this song with my cousin Dahlia,” she said as she played, “who has been my collaborator since we were kids.” She sang the first few lines, and then they heard the screams.

“Ohhh, God! Help me! Ohhh!” There was a gur
gling cry of pain from a far corner of the room and then a loud thud, and Penny cried out, “Quick! Louie! Call the paramedics!” Sunny grabbed the girls from where they stood near the piano bench and ushered them into a back bedroom. Louie was on the telephone shouting his address into it. Dahlia stood at a distance from where Penny leaned over her Aunt Rita, trying to give the older woman CPR.

But by the time the paramedics arrived, Rita Horn was dead. Penny wept, and Louie made sure the girls and Sunny stayed out of the room until the paramedics removed the body. When she returned, Sunny looked panicky and on edge. She begged Dahlia, before she left for home, to promise she’d come to Rita Horn’s funeral with her, and even though Dahlia loathed the woman and certainly would never have gone otherwise, she promised, because she knew that if Sunny was going, she ought to be with her to get her through it.

The guests all clucked their tongues and hugged Penny sympathetically as they filed out the door, and when Penny was out of earshot, Dahlia heard Louie joke to one of the waiters who was just leaving, “Hey, didn’t I say my sister was gonna knock ’em dead?”

Mount Sinai Memorial Park glimmered in the bright California day. Sunny was babbling nervously as they walked toward the sanctuary. “This is my first funeral. I’m scared,” she said. “Will I have to do anything?”

“Yeah,” Louie said. “All the first-time people have to kiss the dead body.”

“Honey, quit scaring her,” Penny said. “No, you
don’t have to do anything, Sun. Louie’s gonna be a pallbearer. Those are the men who carry the box in and out of the hearse. That’s all. You’ll just sit with me and Dahlia.”

“Looks like we’re late,” Dahlia said.

The sanctuary was filled with friends and family of the deceased, and by the time the four of them were inside searching for seats, the rabbi was already standing at the podium eulogizing Rita Horn. She was an exceptional mother, aunt, grandmother, philanthropist, blah, blah, blah. Dahlia felt herself nodding off and trying hard to stay awake.

In the row just in front of the one in which she and Louie and Penny and Sunny sat, Dahlia spotted an older couple who had been friends with her parents. The man used to play poker with her dad. A number of people had nodded at Louie or shook his hand as he walked in, and Dahlia heard him whisper to Penny that they were customers of his from the hardware store. Now one of Rita’s daughters came to the podium to read a poem about her mother, and then another daughter told a few stories about her. The rabbi came back to the podium and recited some prayers in Hebrew, and then everyone stood and said the prayers in unison.

It all seemed to take forever, and Dahlia wasn’t even sure why she was here. Now a man from the mortuary stepped up to the podium, holding a three-by-five card from which he read, “Will the following gentlemen please remain after the others exit?” Dahlia was sorry she hadn’t come in her own car. Since Louie was a pallbearer, he’d have to go to the grave site, and this
would have been a great opportunity for her to slip out and go home.

“Brad Freeman, Sam Forbes, Lenny Kendall, Norman Burns…” read the man.

Sunny clutched Dahlia’s arm. “He’s here! Oh, my God, he’s here,” she whispered. “And I look so fat.”

Dahlia, whose mind had been drifting, didn’t understand why Sunny was frozen in her spot as the others started to move out of their row and head toward the exit.

“What?”

“He’s here! Norman is here, and he’s a pallbearer. That means we’ll see him.” She nodded toward the front of the funeral home, and both cousins craned their necks to look toward the coffin where the men were gathering, and there he was in the first row. Arthur Miller.

“Oh, God. We should sneak out and not let him see how fat I am,” Sunny whispered.

“You look great, Sun,” Dahlia whispered back. “And we can’t leave. Penny’s her niece, and Louie’s going to be a—”

“Louis Gordon,” said the man from the mortuary.

“See?” Dahlia said. “We’re stuck.”

“Maybe I can hide in the crowd,” Sunny said. There were beads of sweat on her forehead. She was wearing a black suit that Penny had lent her, and except for the top button on the skirt, which was open under the jacket, it fit her amazingly well, since she was much taller and slimmer than Penny. She looked beautiful.

“My luck, I’ll say hello and my skirt will fall down,”
she joked in a whisper as they walked up the aisle to the door.

“That’ll make him like you even more,” Dahlia said, and they both stifled giggles.

Now all the mourners stood outside on the grass in front of the sanctuary, and, in a moment, through the door came the serious-faced men bearing the coffin. Louie was in the front, and Norman was in the rear. He looked elegant in a black suit and a red tie, much more elegant than Dahlia remembered. Slowly and carefully the men slid the box containing Rita’s dead body into the hearse and dispersed to walk to the grave site. Norman, oblivious to Sunny’s tearful, longing gaze, walked a few yards ahead of them now, chatting with some of the other men.

Dahlia could feel Sunny vibrating with tension next to her. Surely this would have to turn out badly. He was a married man with grown children. He knew her history. What on earth could possibly happen today, all these years later?

“He didn’t see me,” Sunny said softly. “Or maybe he did see me and he can’t imagine that this fat old hag could be me, so it hasn’t clicked.”

“Will you stop talking about yourself that way?” Dahlia said as Penny caught up with the two of them. She was blowing her nose, and her eyes were swollen from crying. Well,
somebody
liked the old bitch, Dahlia thought.

“What a sad day,” Penny said. “I’m glad that so many people turned out for her. Everyone on my mother’s side. Even from out of town. I mean, I
haven’t seen my cousin Normie in ten years,” she said. “Since his wife died and I went to Florida for her funeral. Isn’t it sad that we only see family at funerals?”

Sunny grabbed Dahlia’s arm and turned pale. “His wife died,” she mouthed, and Dahlia nodded as Penny walked ahead and called out, “Normie?”

Norman Burns stopped and turned, and when he saw it was his cousin Penny calling him, he smiled warmly and walked over to hug her. As he did, he looked at Dahlia and smiled at her over Penny’s shoulder. Then he took his arms from around Penny and stood transfixed when he looked next to Dahlia and saw Sunny. Later, when she talked about it, Dahlia told Sunny she was certain that at that moment the earth stopped turning.

When Norman’s eyes met Sunny’s eyes, Dahlia saw expressions on both of their faces that said that all the years and the pain and the distance and the misery had melted away, and all that mattered was that they were in the same place at the same time, at last. And best of all, Dahlia said later, it was over Rita Horn’s dead body, exactly as she had requested those many years ago. The two star-crossed lovers gazed at each other for the first time in more than twenty-five years and fell into each other’s arms making sounds so primitive and joyous that Dahlia and Penny knew it would be good for the two of them to keep walking and allow Sunny and Norman to be alone with their moment.

Minutes later, when Dahlia and Penny had gotten close to the grave site, and the driver of the hearse had parked, and Louie and the other pallbearers were in
position to remove the coffin, Dahlia looked back to where Sunny and Norman stood, and they were still embracing. Dahlia could see Norman whispering into Sunny’s hair as he held her tightly. His eyes were closed, but tears were falling from them onto her, and it wasn’t until later that Sunny told Dahlia what he’d been repeating over and over:

“I will never let you go again. Never, never let you go again.”

I guess Louie was wrong, Dahlia mused to herself, grinning. There
is
a bond stronger than the one between sister and brother. The other pallbearers managed the coffin without Norman, because now he and Sunny were walking hand in hand, completely oblivious to where they were. And Penny and Dahlia stood very still, trying to overhear the bits of conversation that floated by them.

“After Celia died, I kept working in the practice I inherited from her father in Boca Raton, Florida. My girls are in college. I love golf. Ever played golf?” he asked her.

“You may not believe this,” Dahlia heard Sunny say, “but very few mental institutions have golf courses.” Then they both laughed.

“Maybe you’ll learn. You don’t have to play golf. What would you like to do if you could just do anything you wanted?” he asked.

“Be with you,” Dahlia heard her say.

Norman’s voice was choked with tears when he put his arm around her again and said, “We’ll make up for lost time.”

M
eetings, meetings, meetings,” Harry Brenner said. “I’ve got them hot and ready for the two of you all over town. Let’s get those cute tushes moving and start making some real dough. I even sent the demo over to Céline Dion’s people, and they’re interested in two of the songs. What in the hell are we waiting for?”

“Uh…that’s great news, Harry. We just need to get a few more songs finished,” Dahlia said, wondering how much longer she could go on stalling him while Sunny and Norman celebrated their reunion by seeing each other every night and burning up the phone lines between Louie’s house and Norman’s hotel room. Sunny didn’t care if Harry sent the demo to Céline Dion or Dion & the Belmonts. Norman was back in her life, and that was all she cared about, talked about, thought about.

Louie couldn’t stand it that the once-postponed love affair now had the power and the forward motion of a freight train. He could see that his plans and dreams of grandeur were threatening to go up in smoke, and it made him so desperate he even called Dahlia to report on Sunny’s behavior.

“You gotta help me here,” he whined. Norman was taking her out to lunches and dinners and feeding her like there was no tomorrow, and if she didn’t quit “porking out,” she wouldn’t be able to get into the slinky outfits Louie thought she should wear onstage. Sunny wanted to get her hair cut in some chic hairdo she’d seen in a magazine because she thought Norman would like the way it looked, but it was wrong for the image Louie wanted her to project on album covers.

“Last night she didn’t get in until two o’clock,” he said, sounding like some gossipy old biddy. “Do you know what that could do to her voice?
You’re
gonna have to talk some sense into her. And the capper is that you’d think at that hour she’d go up to sleep, but frigging Arthur Miller hangs around in the living room, and I can hear them laughing until God knows when. I finally put my robe on and acted like I was going into the kitchen for a glass of water so maybe he’d get his ass out of my house, and he finally took the hint.”

An hour after getting that phone call, Dahlia’s doorbell rang, and she opened it to find Sunny holding the Macy’s shopping bag, looking apologetic and asking, “Can I have my old room back?” There was a taxi waiting behind her. “I mean, I paid this guy, but he’s
waiting just in case you don’t want me here.” Dahlia looked at Sunny standing in the doorway, threw an arm around her, and walked her into the house.

Sunny looked shaky but happy. “Louie’s gonna have a shit fit.”

“We’ve survived Louie’s shit fits before,” Dahlia said, leading her into the kitchen, where she poured her a cup of coffee while Sunny chattered away nervously about Norman.

“He rented a Jaguar convertible from some rental place in Beverly Hills, and we drive around with the top down. He likes fancy restaurants, but I make him take me to Bob’s Big Boy because that’s where we used to go. You’ve got to help me with clothes. I need new clothes, and I never know what goes with what. I told him I was moving back in here, so he’s picking me up here tonight.” Then she sighed a happy sigh. “I love him, Dahl. I love him, and he loves me. Imagine.”

“I’m imagining, Sun, and I’m so happy for you. But we have to talk about something else for a few minutes,” Dahlia said, sitting at the table across from her. “It’s important. Harry’s been calling me every day. He says everyone in the music business wants us. He’d like us to come in and have a meeting with him on Wednesday at ten to strategize about our future.” Sunny didn’t react to that at all, except to avoid looking at Dahlia. “I’d be lying to you if I didn’t say I want us to keep on writing songs together,” Dahlia went on. “I mean, maybe we can keep doing it after you’re married. Long distance or something.”

Sunny looked into her coffee cup as if it were a fortune-telling eight ball and she were hoping some
answer was going to surface from it. Then she sighed, a big, shoulder-shrugging sigh. “Dahl, life is full of twists and turns. Who could have ever imagined that all these years would go by and then you’d come looking for me, and we’d be back together with a hit song and a commercial? And best of all, in my wildest dreams I never thought I’d get Norman back, but I did. Remember how my mother always used to say, ‘Man plans, God laughs’?”

Dahlia nodded. That used to be Aunt Ruthie’s favorite expression.

“I guess what I’m saying is, I don’t want to be Leiber and Stoller anymore. And I think the most fair thing for everyone is for me to retire before any more happens with us.”

Dahlia folded and unfolded the paper napkin in front of her as Sunny went on, surprised at how calm she felt at the news she knew would be coming sooner or later. Sunny looked a little jittery, but Dahlia decided it must be because of the anxiety around rushing away from Louie’s house. “I mean, as far as I’m concerned, you and Harry can do whatever you want with the songs we’ve written so far,” Sunny said. “But my fantasy of how the perfect life should be is different than yours. Mine is me sitting at a phone dressed in a white uniform saying, ‘Dr. Burns’s office. Can I help you?’”

Sunny’s fondest wish was coming true at last. The one she’d made on all those stars long ago. Dahlia knew that. With Sunny’s retirement, her own dreams might never come true, so she was surprised that she felt a lighthearted gladness about it all. “You want me
to tell Harry, or do you want to come to the meeting and tell him yourself?” she asked, pouring herself a cup of coffee, too.

“On Wednesday at ten, I’ll be in Joe Diamond’s office with Norm. Norm’s going back to Boca on Wednesday afternoon, and he wants me to plan a wedding and get ready to come there with him. I told him there’s so much about the way I am that he needs to understand before we get married, that he has to come with me to this appointment to meet the doctor who put me on this medication and let someone who knows about it explain it all to him. Dahl, I’m so afraid I’ll never be a good wife. So afraid that one day I’ll just lose it and not be able to handle life the way other people live it. Every day when I wake up, it’s iffy that I’m even going to get through to dinnertime. I don’t live one day at a time. I live one hour at a time. So it’s a tentative proposition. I can barely handle most of the stuff you’re so good at. Probably ’cause you’re so fearless.”

“Fearless?” Dahlia said, laughing and shaking her head.

“You are!” Sunny said.

“No way.”

“What are you afraid of?” Sunny demanded to know.

Dahlia could barely say the next words. “That I can’t write a decent song without you.”

Sunny emitted a puff of air though her lips in disapproval. “That’s completely wrong. You’ve done it. When I was still walking around drooling, you had a hit song,” she said, putting her hand over Dahlia’s.
Her nails were a shiny fuchsia. “But then you just lost your confidence for some dumb reason. Maybe it’s because you got all turned around by the money and forgot you knew how to do the work. Dahl, when we were kids, there used to be a picture in your house of you learning how to ride my old bike.”

Dahlia smiled in amazement. Wasn’t it rich to have someone so close that you shared a history, shared a frame of reference down to something as specific as remembering an old family photograph? “Remember the one I mean?” Sunny asked.

“Of course,” Dahlia said. “I was just thinking about it the other day.”

“Remember how your adorable mother let you go so you could realize you had the stuff to balance the bike on your own? Well, that’s all I’m doing. I’m letting go of the bike, Dahl. And I’m so happy to be doing it, because I have the confidence that you won’t fall or crash. You have to go tell Harry that you’re great with or without me.”

Dahlia used the side of her right hand to push along a pile of crumbs that were still on the table from the toast she’d eaten at breakfast, and then she swept them into her left hand and stood to take them to the sink. But her sudden interest in the crumbs was just an excuse to walk away and not let Sunny see the tears she was fighting. Not that Sunny couldn’t tell.

“Dahlia Gordon, this is your cousin speaking,” Sunny went on. “Your first and best friend in the world. When everyone else gave up on me, you gave me a life. As far as I’m concerned, there isn’t anything you can’t do.”

Dahlia turned, and now she said words she never thought she’d be able to utter. “I gave you a life for selfish reasons.”

“I’ll never believe that,” Sunny said, walking to her. “I think you waited until you had the power to take care of me, and then you goddamn did it.”

“No,” Dahlia said. But Sunny put her hand up and gently covered Dahlia’s mouth to stop any more objections.

“Yes,” Sunny said. “Now, come and help me with my makeup. I can never quite get it right lately. I’ll bring everything out here.” Within minutes she’d created a makeshift dressing table with all her cosmetics set out across the coffee table.

“Let’s do this,” Sunny said. “You make me up tonight for my date. Just as if I were a movie star and you were my makeup lady. Teach me about eyeliner. I don’t remember how to do it anymore.”

Dahlia got into the game, doing Sunny’s makeup the way she remembered Sunny liked to do it herself. She was using the eyeliner pencil and talking Sunny through the steps. “You need to keep the liner very sharp,” Dahlia said. “And then come up like this from under the lashes, and that way the line becomes very thin and very close to the top of the lashes. Then try putting some loose powder on the lashes, and that’ll give the mascara something to hold on to.”

“You’re wonderful,” Sunny said, looking at Dahlia. “Thank you for doing this.” But Dahlia couldn’t help noticing that something was very wrong with the look on Sunny’s face, a pallor that was unusual, and the blusher she applied couldn’t conceal it.

When the makeup was finished, Sunny said she had to get dressed, and she swept up the bottles and jars and brushes and hurried into her room. Dahlia could hear her opening drawers and closet doors, probably unpacking and trying on outfit after outfit, like a teenager getting ready for her date. She didn’t emerge until the doorbell rang and it was Norman. Dahlia watched Norman take her in the same way he had when they were dating twenty-five years before.

But Dahlia noticed there was something unsteady about Sunny’s walk and something odd in the way her voice quavered when she called back, “Don’t wait up,” that made Dahlia worry. Louie had promised when Sunny came to live with him that he would be the pill monitor, making certain Sunny took a pill every morning. Surely, Dahlia thought, he must have given her one that morning.

After Dahlia heard Norman’s car pull away, she sat down at the piano. Sunny was going to make a life with her great love at last. And Gordon and Gordon were through. “There isn’t anything I can’t do,” Dahlia said aloud to the empty room. Then she composed the music and wrote the lyrics to a song she called “I Had the Secret All Along.” And when she finished, she was sure it was the best song she’d ever written. Exhausted, she put on her pajamas and climbed into bed.

The shaky walk, Sunny’s asking her to put on her makeup for her in the living room. There was only one reason for her to do that. She had never once looked in the mirror to check on what Dahlia was doing. She couldn’t look in the mirror, because the stu
dio audience was back. Sunny must have stopped taking the pills. After a while Dahlia fell asleep. She had a dream that she was back in school and sitting in a class where the professor was talking in a raised voice, but she opened her eyes to hear Norman’s raised voice in her living room.

“What am I supposed to do? Pretend I didn’t have a life?”

“No. Not pretend,” Dahlia heard Sunny say in a choked voice. The bedroom door was ajar, and Dahlia slid into her robe and moved toward the door, standing just inside where she could barely see the two of them. Sunny was collapsed on the sofa, and Norman was pacing. Dahlia thought Sunny had stopped smoking, so she was surprised to see her puffing away on a cigarette.

“Not pretend.” Sunny’s lip was quivering, and her jaw was moving back and forth. “But when you always talk about my wife, my girls, my wife, my girls—and all I ever wanted from the day we met was to be your wife and have your children—it hurts me, Norman. So I can’t help that it cuts through me and…”

“And what? I can’t change that I had a wife, a life, two daughters.”

“Yes, yes. I know. And I had nothing. Nobody. So every time you say that, it just emphasizes that I lost twenty-five years of everything—of loving, of feeling. But most of all twenty-five years of you being
my
husband,
my
lover, the father of
my children.
”

“Sunny, I got cheated out of that, too. I never stopped wishing it were you. But after a while that kind of thinking can make you—”

“Crazy? Say it. Crazy!”

“Stop this. I didn’t say that word. Sunny, I had to go on. I had to make it all right. It was more than all right. And I don’t ever want to feel guilty that I created two amazing children.”

“Three.”

“Jennifer and Samantha.”

“And the baby I had to get rid of, Norman. Because even though we loved each other and I wanted to tell you, my parents and my aunt and uncle decided that because of the medications I was taking, it might have been dangerous to have a baby, so they made me not tell you.”

Dahlia could see Norman look as though she’d slapped his face, and after a moment he sank to the sofa next to Sunny.

“That was a mistake. Not telling me was a mistake. I could have gone with you,” he said. “Or married you. Or…”

Dahlia remembered now, the little snatches of conversation she’d overheard from her parents, and she put the sleeve of her terry-cloth robe up to cover her eyes while she cried.

“I wanted to, but my mother said it would make you feel guilty, as if you owed me something or as if I planned it to trap you. And then, if you stayed with me out of guilt, you would hate me. I’m sorry I listened to her.”

“We would have had a twenty-five-year-old together,” Norman said. “You should have told me.”