"Well, take it from me, that's not anywhere near what it's about. And when I leave here, you're probably going to say to yourself, That hick doesn't know a goddamned thing. But that's okay because I don't give a damn what you think. I'm telling you from a life of a whole lot of experience that raising a baby turns a person around in ways they didn't even know there were. Teaches you patience, humility, and the real meaning of pain. On top of that, a child makes you tell the truth, because they don't buy into any lies. And anyone can see in your scared and sad eyes, you've probably told a lot of those in your many long years."
This whole day felt surreal to Rick. And this was the strangest part of all. Being dressed down by this odd little woman who had his number in spades. He was sad and scared and wanting to adopt a baby for all the wrong reasons. But they were reasons which had been
compelling enough to get him all the way to this part of the process.
"So now," she said, "I'd like to have one more Coca-Cola, and after that, it'll be time to go check in at the gate."
Well, Rick thought, that dismissal is loud and clear. He tried to hide his disappointment. You knew your chances were low, he told himself, and it was an insane idea anyway so . . .
"What about you, Doreen? You want another cold drink too?" Bea asked.
"Yeah, okay," Doreen answered, and it was the first time Rick heard her voice. He sighed and stood to go and get another round for all of them. And while his back was turned, there must have been some moment that passed between mother and daughter during which the decision was made, because then the young girl said with a laugh in her voice, "But if I were you, I'd forget the beer and make it a diet drink. 'Cause you're going to have to shape up if you're planning to be a father."
19
O
NCE EVERY FOUR OR FIVE DAYS, Andrea would drive into the city from the Valley and when she did she would stop at Rick's house and drop off "the girl," which is how Bobo referred to Doreen. But despite the old man's
tsk
ing and shaking his head, and protesting at the "
misbegoss
of this crazy new world," Rick had already seen the grudging look of respect in the old man's eyes when Doreen beat him at gin rummy. Rick loved to observe the way Bobo got caught up in conversation with her when she asked him about his early film career. One at a time she had rented and watched each of the films Bobo and Rick's father, Jake, produced.
"The kid's a sponge," Andrea reported to Rick one day at the office. "She signed up for a literature course at Valley College, because my place is five blocks from there. I couldn't get past the syllabus for the class, and she's already halfway through the books. Not to mention that she's reading to the baby."
"How do you mean?"
"She read somewhere that if you talk to the fetus and sing to it, that makes it feel good, reassures it with the sound of your voice. Well, she said she's a lousy singer, so she went and got all these children's books out of the library, and every night she lies in bed, reading stories to her own stomach."
Rick liked the idea of Doreen's genes having reading and learning and especially cardsharking in them. There was something about counting down the months until the baby's arrival that forced life into him, enriched every choice he made, now that he knew he was making it not only for himself but for the baby as well. His baby. He was still eating more than he should, but not as frantically or as often. And more than a few times he would turn down a date in order to take Doreen to dinner, or say no to a visit from a woman to get the rest everyone told him he would need when the baby came.
"Harvey Feldman said I shouldn't ask you this," he said to Doreen at dinner one night at the Hamburger Hamlet. He had ordered a broiled chicken breast; Doreen had ordered the onion soup, a salad, a bacon cheeseburger, and a strawberry shake. She stopped in the middle of the sip of the strawberry shake and a little of the pink still bubbled in a line above her upper lip as she put her hand up and said, "Don't. Because I won't tell you anything about the father of this baby. And if you have to know, I'll go right back to Kansas and forget our deal. He was in good physical health and he was tall. That's all you get." She was serious, so he dropped it.
He had come to love his time together with her. She was confrontational and outspoken, a bright spot in his world, which was filled with the backstabbing politics and outsize egos of show business. A few times he took her with him to an invitation-only screening. On those
nights he would notice she would wear a little blusher on her already pink cheeks, and a tiny bit of mascara on her otherwise invisible blond eyelashes. And always, because of her years of watching television night and day, she recognized more of the faces in the audience than he did.
"Michael Keaton was there and Jack Nicholson," he heard her telling her mother on the phone one night. And then she let out a shriek of excitement.
The man who lived two doors down from Bobo in the lodge was Arnold Viner. Viner had been a studio publicist who had represented Rick's father and Bobo for years.
"It's right out of Sartre," Bobo said. "If anyone had asked me in nineteen thirty-nine to describe hell, I would have said living near Arnold Viner and being too old to run away every time he walked by." Bobo and Viner had had a fight in the early forties about an item that appeared in the paper, and they were still arguing about it ten minutes before they took Viner over to the adjacent hospital with a massive stroke. Bobo insisted on staying in the intensive care unit by his side.
It was a day on which Rick was visiting, so he stayed too. He sat in the waiting room, reading some scripts he had in his briefcase and making notes on them until a few hours had passed. When the machines stopped bleeping and the doctors came in to confirm that Viner had died, a red-eyed Bobo came out to the waiting room, and took Rick's hand.
"I sat in there because I knew his time was up," he said, "so I figured eventually the angel of death would come, and I could beg him to throw me into the deal and take me too. My luck, right? I fell asleep in the chair and missed the whole transaction." Rick put an arm around Bobo and walked him back to the lodge.
They hadn't reached the room yet when he heard his name being paged on the loudspeaker.
"Richard Reisman, telephone."
He took the call in Bobo's room. It was Andrea's voice.
"Doreen's bleeding. A lot. She called me at the office so I came right over. We tried to reach you all morning, but you weren't in Bobo's room. So I took her to the doctor. He said it's placenta previa. She has to stay in bed for the rest of the pregnancy. All the time, including her meals in bed too. She can get out briefly to go to the bathroom or shower. That's all. Listen, she's a doll, but I'm not exactly the nursy type, and I have to come to the office every day. What do I do?"
"Pack her up and move her to my house. The housekeeper's always there. Doreen can stay in the guest room and be tended to during the day. If that's not enough I'll get her a full-time nurse."
"We'll be at your place by the time you get home," Andrea promised.
Bleeding. Harvey Feldman, the lawyer, had forgotten to mention miscarriage, never discussed premature births or still-borns or any of the ways in which a pregnancy could end. And for some reason, losing the baby during the pregnancy was one of the possibilities that had never occurred to Rick. During all of this he had carried the vague feeling that somewhere in this seemingly unnatural set of circumstances was the potential for disaster, and maybe this was it. He stopped briefly at his office at Universal to pick up some scripts he needed to read, then hurried home.
He was relieved to see Doreen already settled in the bed and very chipper when he walked into the freshly painted yellow guest room. She had an apologetic expression on her face as she lay on the bed with her little feet propped up on a pile of pillows.
"My mom's gonna be real unhappy about this," she said.
"The bleeding?" he asked.
"No, my staying at your house. She doesn't think we should live together till after we're married." Then she made a face at him and laughed.
"Very funny," he said. "Did you call the school and tell them you were dropping out?"
"Yeah," she said sadly. "I'm going to do all the reading anyway. The trouble is there's not that much left, and I'm going to be stuck like this for a month."
He had walked directly from the garage into her room, so he was still carrying the pile of scripts he'd brought home to read. He dropped them on her bed with a thunk.
"Here," he said. "Read these for me. I have to start them over the weekend. You can tell me which ones are good and which are stinkers."
"Really?" she asked. "Are you kidding? You really want
me
to read the scripts that you might want to make into a movie? Me?"
"Sure," he said, sitting at the foot of the bed. "Would you do that for me?"
"For you, yes," she said, her little round pink face very serious, her blond lashes batting hard behind the glasses. "But keep in mind," she said, "if I'm critical, it's because I
am
a student of the classics."
"I'll certainly factor your literary background into my assessment of the critiques."
"Oh, thanks ever so," she said, assuming the haughtiest voice. Then she opened the blue cover of the top script and looked at the title page. "Well here's one that's bound to do wonders for your career. It's called
The Hand of Doom
. I think I'll start with this and work my way up."
He started toward the door. "
You
," he said, "are a piece of work."
"What's for dinner?" she asked.
"I'll ask Nellie," he said.
"Nellie went home early, her mother's sick," she told him.
The point was clear. Dinner was up to him.
"What do you like on your pizza?" he asked.
"You'd feed pizza to the woman whose body is nutritionally responsible for your child?"
"I'll make a salad," he mumbled grudgingly.
"Be sure to throw in some protein," she shouted after him.
Standing in the kitchen alone he chuckled, trying to imagine what the personality would be of the baby that came out of that girl. A feisty little pink-faced girl? A tough, smart-mouthed boy? Four more weeks and, God willing, he would be holding the little creature in his arms.
A few evenings later, Doreen, who had fallen asleep over one of Rick's scripts, was awakened by the sound of the doorbell. The doctor had told her she could go as far as the bathroom, and the front door wasn't much farther than that, so she figured it would be all right if she answered it. Whoever was at the door was making a big racket, loud, with the brass door knocker. Doreen couldn't find her own robe, but an old one of Rick's was hanging on the inside of the door, so she threw that one over her nightgown and hurried to see what was so urgent.
The woman who stood in the doorway was so gorgeous to look at, at least to Doreen, that she was certain this must be a movie star. It wasn't Candice Bergen, but she looked a lot like her.
"Is Mr. Reisman at home?"
"No he isn't," Doreen said.
"Do you expect him soon?"
Doreen nodded.
The woman moved forward, backing Doreen into the living room.
"I'll just wait here," she said, plopped down in a chair, picked up a magazine, and began leafing through it. "Tell you what," she said to Doreen without even looking up at her. "I'll have a scotch and water."
"Great," Doreen said, and was about to head back into her room to get back into bed when the blond woman said, "Make it for me, okay?"
Doreen looked at her and said, "Honey, I wouldn't know scotch if you cooked me in it. Make it yourself," and went back into her room. After a few minutes she could hear the woman talking loudly to someone, and she realized it must be into a telephone because there were no other voices out there. Uh-oh, she thought, what if she's making long-distance calls? What if Rick doesn't even know her and
I
let her into the house? I better keep an eye on her.
So she put the robe on again and walked back into the living room. When she got there, the woman was drinking some kind of alcohol in a glass she'd found in one of the cabinets and smoking a cigarette. The butt of a previous cigarette had already been put out on what Doreen recognized was one of Rick's good china plates, which this lady had obviously pulled out of the cabinet when she couldn't find an ashtray.
"I figured if I waited long enough, this asshole would come to his senses and call me, and then not one fucking word. I mean, it's such bullshit. So after a few weeks went by I called his office three times, and he never called me back. And that bitch secretary of his, that Andrea, kept saying, 'Sorry, Mona, he's so busy,' you know? Then I read in
Variety
that the studio dumped him.
"Well, you know what a softie I am. Right? I felt sorry for him, so I sent him a really sweet note that he
never answereo, and I called his house and left message after message on the fucking machine, and he still didn't call me back, and then I read in the
Hollywood Reporter
that he made a deal at Universal, so I sent him some flowers over there, and you think he calls me one time? Zippo. Not even a thank-you note from the rude little asshole. And Katy Biggard said she saw him on the beach in Malibu last week, and that he must be dying or something because he lost all this weight, and you know what a pig he's always been. You'd get sick if you saw him naked. Anyway, I got really worried about him and came running over here and this troll who works for him answers the door, and she wouldn't even make me a drink. I'll tell you, I'm just sick and tired of it. So listen—"
Doreen had heard enough. "This isn't an ashtray," she said, grabbing the plate away from Mona, who had been tamping out another cigarette and now dropped hot ashes onto her own hand and screamed. Doreen grabbed the phone away from Mona. "He is not an asshole or a pig," and slammed it into the phone cradle. "And Andrea is not a bitch." Then she grabbed the five-foot-nine Mona by the arm and steered her toward the door. "
I
am not a troll, and
you
," she said, opening the front door and shoving Mona out through it, "are not welcome here!"