B000FC0RL0 EBOK (42 page)

“How old am I, Jerry? Am I a hundred?” he asked.

I didn’t want to tell him that he was over a hundred years old.

“I feel young,” he said. “How old am I? Eighty? Am I eighty?”

“Don’t you know?” I asked softly.

“I feel like a kid. I drink a lot of milk. I drink a lot of milk,” my father repeated. “How old am I, Jerry?”

“Where were you born, Deddy?” I asked. We had no birth certificate for my father.

“Two-fifty-three Stanton Street,” he replied, clear as a bell.

That was only blocks away from where I got the hell beat out of me by Ralphie Stolzman.

My father was the oldest of ten brothers and sisters. They lived with my grandparents in a six-room railroad flat on the Lower East Side. Where did ten kids sleep? How did they eat? How did his parents pay the rent? My father never mentioned his upbringing, not a word. I wanted to hear about it from him. I wanted to connect, to hear his stories.

“I played baseball in Hamilton Fish Park,” he said.

“What position?”

“Third base.”

“Were you good?”

“Yeah, I was good. My father used to smack me because I wore out the soles on my shoes. I loved baseball. I played all day. They had to come get me out of the park.”

“Did you work?”

“Yeah, sure, I delivered tuxedos on Canal Street.”

“That’s a long walk from Stanton Street, Deddy. How did you get there?”

“I walked. On Saturdays I would sometimes take the Third Avenue El.”

“Did you have a girlfriend?” I said, knowing I was stepping on dangerous ground. Was I wondering if he’d been a crazy, horny kid?

He laughed, but never answered. I didn’t pursue the question. “Who were your favorite comedians?” I asked.

“The Avon Comedy Four—Smith and Dale,” he replied.

I’d seen them myself at Loew’s State many times. I could almost do their lines. “Are you the doctor?” Joe Smith would say. Henry Dale would answer, “I’m the doctor,” and Joe Smith would say, “I’m dubious.” I started to do their lines. My father laughed.

“You remember?” he said.

“You took me,” I said.

“Did I?”

“Yeah. You took me a lot of places. You took me to a circus in Brooklyn. It was in a tent on Flatlands Avenue.” I remembered the day he sneaked us under a tent flap. I knew I hadn’t made this up. “Do you remember?” I asked.

“No.”

It was like a door slamming shut in my face.

“Do you remember taking me to Yankee Stadium?” It was the day Lou Gehrig made that speech thanking everybody.

“I can’t remember,” my father said.

“Do you remember Dexter Park? You took me to see the Bushwicks playing the House of David at night. The House of David players all had beards. When we got there it started to rain and we all went home.” I knew I hadn’t made this up.

“I can’t remember,” he said.

Was it me fantasizing? I knew my father had taken me to these places when I was a kid. He must have loved me. He’s a hundred years old, but he had to remember something. The reason for his silence suddenly hit me. I remembered Ursula saying that on the day of the wedding, she and my mother got out of the cab, but my father refused. I know now forty years later he was angry that day because I had married Anne. And he was still angry.

There was a Hebrew National Delicatessen near the retirement hotel. I would drive him there, and my father would order matzoh-ball soup. The owners knew us by now, and always treated us royally. After the soup I ordered a corned-beef sandwich that I split with Deddy. After we finished eating I’d drive him back to the hotel and help him back to his room. He had photographs of Anne, myself, Ben and Amy, an old 8 x10 glossy of Anne and me, Ben on a seesaw, Amy on a swing. It was a connection to us. Marsha had given up on him. Would I give up on Anne or she on me? I wondered. Who knows. What if one of us is disabled, crippled? It happens. Willie and Bella never got divorced. They were married over thirty years, stuck it out. Anne and I have been married almost forty-seven years; I hear the ticking.

I put my father to bed. He lay on his side. I didn’t want to leave, so I lay down beside him. I put my hand on his back, rubbed it, and nestled next to him. When he was asleep, I figured I’d leave. His eyes were now closed. Quietly I got out of bed. I got to the door.

“Jerry,” he whispered.

“What?”

“When are you coming back?”

“I’m going to L.A.” There was a silence.

“You’re in a show. Well, you gotta work.”

“Yeah. It’s called
Seinfeld
.”

“You’ll call me?” he whispered.

“Yeah.”

“Jerry?”

“Yeah.”

“Come here.” I walked over to the bed. His eyes opened. He looked up at me. “You did good.”

What?

“You did good, Jerry.” His eyes closed and he was fast asleep.

I kissed him and left.

I was in Los Angeles shooting a new show,
King of Queens
, when I received a call from Anne one night.

“Your father is in the hospital. They took him from the home. You’d better get here.”

I hung up, called the producer, and told him I had to go back to New York to be with my father.

“We’ll shoot your scenes in the morning and you can leave at noon,” he said.

I learned my scenes that night and shot them the next day without an audience. As I was ready to leave for the airport Anne called again.

“Your father died at nine this morning.” Just as I had finished shooting.

When asked what his headstone should read, I said, “Never a Faker.”

O
ne afternoon in 1985, during the run of
Hurlyburly
, Anne and I and Ben were sitting in Mike Nichols’s office at his town house in the East 80s. We were there for a reading of Anne’s play
Victims
, and we were the first to arrive other than Sid Armus. Sid was dressed in white Calvin Klein overalls, a strange getup for a sixty-year-old man. He had a circular Band-Aid over his left upper lip.

“What happened to your lip, Sidney?”

“Acting,” he says.

He’s an Actor’s Studio member. It was his preparation, of course. I’m not psychic, but I knew this. He was to read the role of the father, who’s recovering from a stroke, he told me.

Olympia Dukakis, Joanna Gleason, Ken Welsh, and Ruth Uhle, actors invited by Mike, arrived on the scene. John Mahoney, just nominated for a Tony, would read Joel. We were awaiting Sam Cohn, who represents Anne, myself, and Mike, as well as Meryl Streep, Dianne Wiest, and lots of other people. Sam has been called the world’s top agent. He’d read
Victims
and called Anne to say how much he loved it.
Victims
had been on Mike’s dance card for almost a year. I’d been at home one night when he called.

“I read Anne’s play. Don’t you think it’s great?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “what do you think?”

“It’s the funniest thing I ever read.”

“Why don’t you call Anne in Nantucket and tell her,” I said.

“Give me the number.”

Anne was in bed when his call came at 9:30
P.M.

“I want to have a reading of it,” Mike said.

“Who do you think should play Joel?” Anne asked.

“I’d like to do it with Elaine May.”

Anne called to tell me. I was elated, surprised, and relieved. My reservations about the play—Anne’s first—suddenly disappeared. I turned on a dime. My reticence in expressing all-out enthusiasm for
Victims
had hurt Anne. When Nichols not only expressed interest but said he also wanted to play my role, I felt like a fool. I remembered the schmuck joke that had been going around.

The wife, after thirty-five years of marriage, wakes up one night calling her husband a schmuck. He looks at her in dismay.

“Why?” he asks.

“Because you
are
a schmuck,” she tells him. “You are a world-class schmuck. You’re the quintessential schmuck. Schmuck City! Schmuck to the
nth
power! If they had a contest today for the world’s biggest schmuck, you’d come in second!”

“Why second?” he asks, somewhat bewildered.

“Because you’re a schmuck,” she tells him.

“It’s you, the part is you,” Anne said. “Can’t you see it?”

She was right. The part was me.

But, I didn’t tell her I was fearful of taking the responsibility for pulling it off or that I felt the tenor of the play was too abrasive. I could never confront Anne with my feelings. Rather than confront, I played it safe and was noncommittal.

Mike arrived. On the table in the living room office were sandwiches along with cookies and coffee. He was dressed in a blue suit with a yellow silk tie and looked informally elegant, like a visitor in his own home. He was giving the event some credence. Mike does not overpower you with his theatrical intelligence yet you know it’s there. His commitment to the reading was apparent.

During the successful run of
Hurlyburly
, I once asked Mike what he feared most about the business. “That it might never happen again,” he answered without hesitation.

Sam Cohn arrived. I sat on Cohn’s left. The reading began. Sid Armus, playing the old man, was now wearing a white jacket over his overalls. It was on backwards. Whatever he was up to as the character was discreetly ignored by everyone. He was funny.

The reaction to the play was stunning. Nichols was in tears laughing. Sam Cohn was laughing. John Mahoney’s reading captured Joel. His gravelly voice is musical. His delivery never stretches for a laugh. He’s an Irish Joel. So what’s wrong with that? The reading was over. Sam Cohn said, “It’s a great play.” Ben, who had been sitting in the background all this time, said, “I loved it, Mom.”

“I want to talk,” Mike said. “Let me say good-bye to everyone.”

Sam Cohn told Anne, “We’ll be talking,” and left.

Mike said, “Let’s sit down.”

We arranged ourselves on the couch. He said, “I want you to know I’ll never be able to look at
Long Day’s Journey into Night
the same way. There are silences in it. We have to know that and not feel some need to think of it as anything else. It’s not O’Neill or Neil Simon.” It’s
O’Neil Simon
but no one says it. The meeting ended. Mike tried to make
Victims
a theatrical reality, but it never got further than the great read we had in his office.

On June 16, 1987, I was at the Symphony Space Theater on the Upper West Side. The theater was filling up with West Siders hungry for a literary banquet. The neighborhood was jumpin’ with Joyce. In the lobby the literati mixed with the not-too-literati. On stage, scores of Broadway and Off-Broadway actors were reading aloud from James Joyce’s
Ulysses
as if it were the Torah. From midnight to 3
A.M.
Anne was to climax the whole event by reading the Molly Bloom soliloquy that ends this great novel.

I pressed my way backstage to the Green Room, which was filled with people from Charles Kuralt’s
Sunday Morning
CBS show, lugging cameras, lighting equipment, and electrical hookups.

A woman grabbed my arm and asked, “Are you reading tonight?”

“I’m not Irish,” I told her.

“Half of them up there aren’t. You’ve got my permission,” she said, and disappeared into the crowd. I ran into Malachy McCourt, whose liberal viewpoints made him a controversial radio talk-show host in the ‘70s. His brother Frank (this was a dozen years before
Angela’s Ashes
), along with Carroll O’Connor, a young Brian Dennehy, the Clancys, Tommy Makem, Dermott McNamara, Pauline Flanagan, and Helena Carroll, are the Irish cultural connection in America. Anne might have been part of that crowd, but she took another route.

“I didn’t get here in time to hear you tonight, Malachy. I was saving myself for Anne.”

“I understand, Jerrrry,” the brogue bursting through. Malachy had the good grace to forgive me.

I passed a table heaped with exotic cheeses, cold cuts, Irish soda bread, and jugs of wine. Someone offered me an Irish whiskey. I figured I’d need it to fortify me for the three-hour soliloquy.

It was Anne’s turn tonight to pay homage to her background.

The Molly Bloom reverie has no punctuation. When read with no meaning, the Irish lilt can easily lull the senses. Joyce is a somnambulist’s dream. Anne and director Isaiah Sheffer had created a makeshift variorum: a road map with stops and pauses along the way—something Joyce, for whatever reason, chose not to do. Anne and Isaiah had opted for clarity. That day, she and I had been up since 6
A.M.
It was the same day we received the Orson Welles Imagery Award from the Radio Advertising Bureau. What a segue.

I’d just poured myself a shot of Bushmill’s and a glass of Guinness Stout—a boilermaker—when Anne spotted me.

“There you are. You got here.”

“Of course I got here. You wanted me here, didn’t you?”

It turns me on when I see her onstage, all alone. Tonight she would be up there alone. I’m her audience. If she’s great, is it because of me? I want to think so.

“I’m glad you made it.” She kissed me. “This may not go three hours,” she said. “It could go faster.”

“Take your time,” I told her.

She knows you can’t milk an audience’s generosity. You’re only there with their permission.

The lights went up. Isaiah Sheffer, who resembles a learned Talmudist, walked to the apron and introduced Anne. Larry Josephson, the National Public Radio producer, humorously warned the audience that what they would be hearing might be construed as erotic. Keep the children away from the radio.

Anne entered in a blue, flowered cotton dress that cloaked her youthful figure. It was an artful disguise. How lucky I am to have a beautiful wife. I imagined my Tanta Faiga, my mother’s oldest sister, who kept
kashruth
and would never drink anything more than a glass of water when she visited our family during my childhood, saying to me, a now-grown Jerry, “You have a beautiful wife. Why don’t you smile?” I couldn’t
believe my Orthodox aunt was saying that. She was telling me it was okay to be passionate about a woman of another faith.