When everyone was gone, Barbara and Dana piled the little chairs into a tower and pushed them into the corner. After Dana left, Barbara, who always prided herself on her ability to view these groups in a clinical way, sat on one of the small blue plastic chairs, and after she thought about everything that was said today, for some inexplicable reason she had a good cry.
27
A
RTIE WILSON, one of the network executives in comedy programming, told Shelly in passing that he was looking thin, and Shelly obsessed about it for hours. "Shel, he meant it as a compliment," Ruthie swore to him. "He knows we hate him because he made us take the clam joke out of the script last season because he thought it was suggestive. He was trying to be a charming network executive."
"Now there's an oxymoron if I've ever heard one."
"Don't you know by now that when someone in Hollywood says you're looking thin it's the ultimate flattery?"
The ten staff writers were like ten mental patients, each one with a different neurosis, each one with a unique style. Just before Ruthie and Shelly walked into the meeting with them Shelly would say, "Bring me the whip and the chair, it's time to tame the animals." It was said with love and recognition of the fact that he
and Ruthie were cut from the same cloth as those lunatics, but as producers it was their job to control the output, which meant keeping the writers and the writing focused.
They also felt that part of their job was to protect the writers, to keep them in good spirits and make the atmosphere at work as much fun as possible. Sometimes Ruthie even lovingly made and brought in muffins for their early-morning meetings. Unfortunately there was no way to protect the staff from Zev Ryder, the executive producer, who was always on everyone's case. He was the person with whom Ruthie assiduously avoided contact on those days when Shelly didn't make it in to work. If he somehow managed to find her, he was certain to harass her.
"Where's your funny half?" Ryder would ask her. Ruthie knew that behind their backs he called Ruthie and Shelly "the Dolly Sisters," and referred to some of their material as "sissy humor." He despised all of the writers and they all returned the sentiment. Nevertheless, in spite of him and thanks to Ruthie and Shelly's talent, the writing on the show was top-notch, but sometimes it was impossible to save the day from Zev Ryder's bad vibrations.
Like the morning that Jack Goldstein, a skinny wild-eyed Einstein-haired writer whose bizarre and hilarious ideas always read as if they were drug inspired, burst into Ryder's office. Ryder had pulled one of Goldstein's sketches from the script that morning, and the reason he gave for doing so was "not funny." Ryder was on the phone when Goldstein pulled the telephone out of his hand and hung it up, then leapt across the desk, grabbed Ryder tightly by the collar of his Ralph Lauren shirt, and breathed into his face.
"Say something funny! You're the executive producer of a comedy show. I defy you to say one funny
thing. One funny word and I won't kill you. A joke, a stolen joke, a quote from somebody else to show me you know what's funny." He was holding both sides of the collar in his big clenched fist, pulling Ryder's fat little neck together in a wad in his hand. Ryder's eyes were huge with shock. "You see, you can't do it, not even to save your worthless life. Because there's not a funny bone in your entire family, you bastard. Go on, goddamn you! Say something funny!"
Ryder's mouth was open and he was emitting strange little choking sounds and by now all of the other writers who had heard Goldstein screaming had gathered in the doorway of Zev Ryder's office to watch. Ryder was blue in the face. His eyes were starting to pop out and finally, seeing them all there, in a desperate plea he managed to say, "I'm dying. Please. I'm dying." At which point Goldstein threw him back in his chair, said, "All right. You got me.
That's
funny," and walked out of Ryder's office and, of course, off the show.
It had been more than a year, and Zev Ryder saw to it that though there was no doubt that Jack Goldstein was a comedy genius, he coudn't get a job anywhere in the business. And any time after that when Zev Ryder didn't like the script, he'd make some comment like "Look out, you pigs, because it's possible that Jack Goldstein needs someone to talk to while he stands in line at unemployment."
Today the group of writers had turned the conference room into a miniature golf course; Styrofoam cups with the bottoms ripped out were the holes, the golf balls were wadded-up tinfoil from the morning bagel delivery, and their pencils and pens were the clubs. When Ruthie and Shelly walked into the room to start the meeting, two of the guys were standing on the conference table arguing over a shot.
"People, let's get to work," Shelly said.
Ruthie pulled out a chair and sat and waited while everything from the grumbling about the ratio of onion bagels to pumpernickel bagels, to the condition of one of the guys' pancreas, to the jokes about somebody's pregnant wife finally stopped. She was just about to start talking about the show when Jerry Brenner, a forty-year-old fat little man who was once a stand-up comic, started telling a joke to his partner, Arnie Fishmann. But when he noticed the room was silent, he raised his voice to share it with all of them.
"A woman says to her friend, 'I don't know what to do. My husband just came home from a doctor's appointment. He told me the doctor said he either has AIDS or Alzheimer's, but he's not sure which one it is. I'm so worried. What should I do?' " There was a groan from someone and a chuckle of anticipation from someone else, and then somebody, Ruthie didn't look up so she didn't know who it was, uttered, "Good old Mr. Good-Taste Brenner."
"So the friend says, 'Here's what you do. You send him out to the supermarket. If he finds his way home, don't fuck him!' "
The roomful of writers offered the only kind of approval they allowed, which was never laughter, just a few snickers and a couple of grudging "That's funny"s, while Ruthie, who couldn't look at Shelly, felt decimated, and Shelly doodled on a yellow legal pad, hoping his discomfort didn't show.
It took a while for Shelly to reach Davis to tell him the news, but there was no answer at his home, not even an answering machine, and when he called Davis's law office, Davis's secretary told him, "Mr. Bergman is out of the office for a while. But he will be checking in. May I tell him who called?"
"Sheldon Milton," Shelly said.
"May I tell him what this is regarding?" she said.
"It's a personal call," Shelly said, glad he wasn't talking to Elise, the secretary who had worked for Davis when the two of them were together. After almost three weeks passed, Davis returned the call. He was cool and uncomfortable on the phone, and after Shelly said he needed to talk to him, they agreed to meet that day at lunchtime outside the L.A. County art museum, which was halfway between their offices.
"Isn't it odd," Shelly said to Ruthie later, "how you can worry and fear the way something's going to go, sure that it will be one way, and then it turns out to happen in a way you'd never even imagined?" In his fantasy he had been sure that he would tell Davis the news and Davis would become anxious and afraid for himself and his wife, Marsha. Maybe he would be accusatory or snide. But when Shelly walked up the steps to the stark grounds around the museum where the blazing hot Los Angeles day made the cement look glaringly white and he moved to the bench where Davis was sitting and Davis turned and looked into his eyes, it was clear to him that Davis had AIDS. And that he had been trying to figure out how he was going to tell Shelly.
"What about Ruthie and your son?" Davis asked after each of them had told the other their news.
"They've both been tested and they're fine."
A teacher led a group of children who walked in double file past the bench, and after some instructions from the teacher the giggling, fidgeting group disappeared through the front doors of the museum.
"Why didn't you call me, Davis?"
"Because I've only known for a few very numb days, and I wanted to pull myself together so I could tell you without falling apart. I haven't left the house since I heard. I haven't talked to anyone. Marsha was tested too and she's fine, but she's completely blown away.
You remember that she's been seeing a psychiatrist three days a week for years? Well, now she talks to him on the phone on the other four."
There was something funny about that statement that made them both laugh out loud. But then Davis turned serious. "She's afraid I'll lose my job at the firm if anyone finds out. That none of the clients will want to meet with me if they know. She was the one who dragged me in to be tested, after weeks of my having night sweats and high fevers. She'd been reading all about AIDS and obsessing about it and driving herself and me crazy. Just the type of person you like to have around when you're feeling too weak to lift your head," he said with that ironic half smile of his Shelly remembered. "So finally I went with her, and we both got tested."
Suddenly there was the sound of screeching brakes, and then the sound of crunching metal and shattering glass as one car rammed into another on Wilshire Boulevard. And from their distance, on the bench near the front entrance to the museum, both men turned and watched as the traffic piled up and the angry drivers emerged from a gray BMW and a red Jeep Cherokee to shout blame at each other. It sounded as if a woman from inside of one of the cars was yelling out to a man on the sidewalk to call an ambulance.
"What can I do for you, Davis?" Shelly asked, turning away from the accident. "Is there anything I can do?"
The brightness was gone from Davis's face, but inside the pained expression and the pallor of illness, Shelly still saw the pensive, intense bright man he had lived with and loved. So much that losing him had once seemed to be a reason for giving up his own life.
"Forgive me for the way I left you," Davis said.
"I did that a long time ago."
"It's funny," Davis said, "I had taken to thinking about the time that you and I were together as the best I'd spent in my life so far. Now I may have to think of it as the best time in my life."
"You've got lots of life left," Shelly said.
"It would be easier for Marsha if I didn't."
"I never thought I'd hear myself say this," Shelly said, "but fuck Marsha!"
They smiled at each other.
"I'll always love you," Davis said.
"I'll always love you too."
The screaming cry of an ambulance filled the air on Wilshire Boulevard, and Shelly turned to watch. Within seconds the ambulance had wedged itself into the street as near to the collision as it could get, and the two paramedics emerged, opened the passenger door of the BMW, and removed an injured bloody passenger. The driver of the car gestured angrily for the gawking people who had gathered to get out of the way. The paramedics moved the injured woman onto the gurney, which they slowly inserted into the ambulance, then they closed the double doors, scrambled inside, and pulled away. Their shrill siren pierced the day again and the traffic moved to the right to let the ambulance pass. When Shelly turned back to finish their conversation, Davis was gone.
A few nights later, baby Sid woke crying. His diaper was filled with a gray liquid stool that had seeped out all over the crib. After Ruthie changed him and the bed and scrubbed down the changing table, she rehydrated him with a bottle of water and got him back down to sleep. But just after she slid into her own bed, he wailed again and emitted another dark loose bowel movement.
Shelly, groggy with sleep, stood in the door of the
nursery where Ruthie removed Sid again from the crib, again to repeat the cleaning-up process. "What's wrong?" he asked.
"I know the doctors say he's fine and not to worry," she said, "but I always do anyway."
After she told him, they looked long at each other. They were both tired from their work schedules, feeling guilty for not spending more time with the baby. They stood next to the changing table where Sid, too ill to cry, lay watching as his mother and father hugged each other closely.
"He has a stomach bug. That's all," Shelly told her, rubbing her head tenderly. "And don't forget what Freud said."
"What did Freud say?" Ruthie asked, glad that she was still his straight man after all these years.
"Sometimes a poop is just a poop."
The stomach flu was gone the next day.
28
E
VERYONE WHO ATTENDED David Reisman's adoption ceremony melted when they saw the boy at the courthouse dressed in a pale blue seersucker suit and tennis shoes. The bright red hair Rick didn't have the heart to let any barber cut tumbled in curls all around David's handsome face. Downtown at the cold marble-halled courthouse Patty Fall, who had purchased the suit and dressed David in it that morning, shared the moment happily and brought both of her sons along to share it too. The judge, a man younger than Rick by a few years seemed bemused by the whole process. Sadly, Uncle Bobo was feeling too ill that day to come all the way downtown, so Mayer Fall, a USC film student who was planning to make a video of the event anyway, dedicated it to Bobo.
Everyone who appeared on camera was instructed by Mayer to say, "Hi, Uncle Bobo." Strangers in the courthouse were waving to Bobo via Mayer's camera.
Mayer got the uniformed guard to wave and say, "Hi there, Uncle Bobo," and of course so did Harvey Feldman, the lawyer, and in the middle of the proceedings even the court reporter and the judge raised a hand and waved to Uncle Bobo. David, as instructed, looked into the lens and said, "Unca Bobobobobo."
Afterward everyone went to the Falls' beach house for a late lunch, and as the perfect day was coming to an end, Rick and Patty, alone on the deck, looked out at the waves breaking and watched Mayer Fall, a grown man of twenty-one, playing in the sand with David.
"It's great to have a relationship with a baby, impossible to have one with a woman. Babies give you unconditional adoration. Babies don't expect you to buy them an engagement ring to prove that you care about them, and babies don't pout if you smile at another baby. To babies," Rick said, holding up his wineglass, and Patty Fall filled the glass with more wine as she shook her head knowingly.