Dorothy on the Rocks (6 page)

The show goes fine, except when Helen trips over a little foot sticking out from the audience (totally unintentional, I'm sure) while doing her forest nymph
pas d'une,
which she does beautifully in a full body leotard appliquéd in velvet leaf patterns. Granted she was more nymphlike before she put on the extra weight, but she still manages to appear limber and otherworldly. Unfortunately
the trip causes her to lose her balance and plunge headfirst into the sea of first graders seated up front, but, thank goodness, no one is seriously injured. Helen finishes the show in spite of a limp, and the kids get a good laugh.

We stop at a McDonald's on our way back to the city. I order a fish sandwich and fries and a vanilla shake. We sit at a big table and gobble down our carbs and grease. I get out my cell and check my messages. I have three, but the main thing is knowing that my home phone is still in working order, meaning that after I left, Jack didn't go wild and pillage and burn the house down. There is even a message from my young prince. “Hey, babe, I love to love you. Talk soon. P.S. I made the bed and turned out the lights and took out the trash.” Geez, this guy is the bee's knees or else he has some sort of chemical imbalance.

A hand reaches in front of me. “Do you mind if I have a few of your fries?” Helen asks as she plucks a fistful off my tray. “I've got to ice my ankle the minute I get home. You know ankles can be very tricky,” she reaches over for a second handful, “and I got a callback to play the doctor in
Agnes of God.
She's a nervous character, very intense. I've got to lose five pounds before Tuesday. I'm going to do a juice fast starting tomorrow.”

I smile my most magnanimous smile, suddenly feeling pounds lighter and years younger myself. It's easy to be magnanimous when I have a young man making my bed and taking out my trash and telling me he loves to love me. It's very easy indeed.

“You can have the rest, Helen, I'm full,” I say as I push my tray in her direction, “and I think you'd be wonderful in
Agnes of God.
” And then I freeze in horror—Goodie is sitting on Helen's shoulder, munching on a french fry.

“See, Maggie, it feels good to be nice, doesn't it?” he says. I
look at him. I look at Helen. No reaction. Helen grabs another handful of fries.

“I love the way you're wearing your hair now. It's so much more flattering,” she says. Helen is a kung fu master of the backhanded compliment. She never gives you an inch without taking two back.

Goodie flutters his wings, swoops down, grabs another fry, and sails off. Helen finishes the rest and slurps the end of her Coke.

“Let's move out,” I hear Frank say, and we all head back to the parking lot.

“We've got a busy summer, Maggie. We should run through our schedule soon,” Dee-Honey says when she drops me off.

“Give me a call and we'll figure it out,” I say as I extract my makeup kit and bag from under the seat.

“Good, I've got some
Poppers
and some
Wizards
and
Cindys
on the Cape and something in West Virginia. I'll have to check the schedule. Oh, and a week at the Westbury Music Fair.”

“Hmmm, sounds great, but Dee, isn't there someone else who can do Dorothy?” I move in close so I can whisper in Dee's ear. “That stupid little girl heckled me the last time I did it.”

“Don't listen to that; those girls are just jealous because you are so pretty, and besides it takes a mature actress to really understand an ingénue.” Dee-Honey waves as she drives off, headed south on Broadway.
Poppers
is short for
Mr. Popper's Penguins
in which I play Janie Popper and have a dance solo during the big finale, “Mr. Popper's Penguins on Parade.” And, of course, the
Wizards
are the
Wizards
and the
Cindys
are the
Cinderellas,
in which, thankfully, I play an ugly stepsister and not the pretty little ingénue, and, since it doesn't look like I'll be doing a season of Shakespeare at Stratford-upon-Avon this summer, I guess I'll be on Cape Cod in pigtails and hoopskirts. And Dee's right. You
need some life experience to play an ingénue, at least an ingénue with any depth.

It's just four o'clock when I get home. Close enough to teatime. I pour myself a double scotch on the rocks and decide to tackle my laundry. I empty my hamper out on the floor and separate darks from whites, or rather off-whites, as I have never figured out the Clorox thing so my whites quickly go from sparkling to dingy, but that's okay with me. Perfectionism creates problems in some areas of my life, but laundry is not one of them. I stuff all the darks into the bottom of my laundry bag and the off-whites on top. I stand for a while looking at my bed. Should I strip it or not? I take a sip of scotch and consider the possibility.

It wouldn't be such a big question if my bedroom was large and spacious and my bed sat in the middle of the floor with only the headboard against a wall, but I live in the Big Apple where personalities and ambitions are large but apartments are small. My standard double Mattresses-Are-Us bed is wedged into one end of my tiny boudoir and enclosed by three walls, which makes stripping and remaking a real pain in the ass. But since I've had company for the last few nights, and hope for more, I decide I better go for it. I wrestle my sunshine yellow one-hundred-thread cottons off and shove them into the top of my laundry bag. I grab my detergent, pour some scotch into a to-go coffee cup, and put everything into my shopping cart and head off to the Soap N Suds on Columbus Avenue. When I get there I dump my clothes out of the bag into one of the wheelie laundry baskets and stash my shopping cart under the clothes-folding table. The place is more crowded than I expect and I have to wait for a machine. I sit in a plastic chair, my wheelie basket of dirty clothes at my side, and sip from my coffee cup, which gives me time to think about, or rather gnaw upon, recent events.

I'm a damn good Dorothy, and my Snow White is heartbreaking, particularly in the scene with the woodsman. I think I play that well. Kids are so mean nowadays. Disrespectful. I can' t stand them most of the time. Those little mean faces out there in the dark, judging me. My talent. Who are they anyway? They are a bunch of overprivileged seven- or eight-year-olds without a care in the world. Wait until they are out on their own in the big unforgiving world. I'd like to see that heckler soldiering her way through life. Damn that little shit. She was no Dorothy. She never would have gotten home to Kansas. She would have given up before she even left Munchkinland. I drain the last of my scotch from the cup. A machine opens up and I feed in the requisite quarters and I measure the detergent and pour it into the top compartment.

“Are those your clothes?” the man next to me asks.

“What?” I say.

“In the basket?” He points in front of me, and sure enough my laundry is still in the wheelie basket. I look at him and then at the basket and then at the front window of the machine which is washing away with soap and water but alas no clothes.

“Damn,” I say under my breath.

I feel so stupid. I consider telling the guy I'm a city sanitation inspector checking for faulty equipment, but instead I push my basket of clothes to another machine and try not to make eye contact. It's that little girl's fault. Damn her. I check my watch and go next door to the Firehouse Bar and Grill for a beer. I sit at one of the sidewalk tables and smoke a cigarette. The sun hits my face, and for a few minutes I let it work its magic—until I remember that the ultraviolet rays can cause all sorts of problems now that the ozone layer is so damaged. And who damaged that ozone layer? Beauticians. Everyone knows it is all that hairspray that did us in, which begs the eternal question: What price beauty?

I get home at six o'clock with my clean laundry. I have a message from Dick Andrews asking me if I'll walk Mr. Ed for him as neither he nor Sandy will be home until late, and a message from my agent about a couple of auditions. I'm starving. I open the refrigerator. There is cold pizza from the night before. I put a piece on a plate and get out a Rolling Rock and sit down at the table. I don't switch on the lights. The summer sun is turning the room a warm pink.

When I was a kid, I spent my summers by the pool at the country club sitting on beach blankets with my friends Ann and Jen. We played crazy eights and ate frozen Milky Ways that we bought at the concession stand. We stayed all afternoon and then rode our bikes home for supper. After dinner I would sometimes go back for a swim with my dad. He always bought a cup of coffee at the concession stand and let me drink half. He swam the length of the pool twice underwater, emerging red-faced and gasping for air. Then he would shake his head to the side and bounce on one foot to get the water out of his ear. We raced across the pool. I swam as fast as I could, and sometimes I would win, but only sometimes.

“Like in life,” my dad said. “You don't always win, but you must always try to do your best.”

I finish the pizza and decide to tackle the awkward task of putting the clean sheets on my bed. It's awkward because I sort of have to be in the bed to make it, and Bixby likes to pretend the
sheets are a fun house that he romps through as I try to smooth and straighten them into position. I get the last corner tucked and then coax Bixby out from the middle of the bed so I can smooth down the quilt. Then I lie down for a moment and close my eyes. I drift off until the phone rings. I let the machine pick up. It's Sidney from Don't Tell Mama wanting to confirm the dates he gave me.

“Sidney, Sidney I'm here,” I say grabbing the receiver. “I just walked in the door.”

“I'm calling to confirm those dates with you Maggie.”

“Right . . . yes.”

“The twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth?”

“Yes, of next month, isn't it?”

“Yes, dear,” Sidney says with annoyance creeping into his voice.

“Absolutely. It's perfect. Gives me enough time but not too much. In fact I was about to call you,” I lie like a rug.

“Good. Got to go. You're in the book. In ink, Maggie.”

“Great,” I say, but he is already off and running.

My digital clock on the radio next to the bed reads 8:05 in bright red numbers. Good grief, I slept for over an hour. I have to walk Mr. Ed. He will be so upset with me that I'm so late. And then I remember the dream I was having when the phone woke me.

It was my recurring dream. In it I'm getting ready to leave my house, and, when I open the door, I'm looking down into a deep abyss. I can't see the bottom. A rickety bridge spans the chasm, like the ones in the Tarzan movies, vines and a few planks of decaying wood. I grab hold of the vines and start to cross. I'm terrified but I keep moving, and just as I get to the other side I realize there is another bridge, but this one has snakes crawling on it. I gasp and wake up. This is, as I said, a recurring dream. My last therapist,
who moved all the way to Michigan to get away from me, told me it meant I was afraid to go out into the world. Well thanks. And to think I paid money for that profound analysis. Yes, I agreed, I see the world as a challenge full of scary things—now tell me something I don't know. Earn those seventy bucks an hour.

I find the keys for the Andrews' apartment. Mr. Ed is right by the door, waiting for relief.

“Where have you been?” he barks at me.

“I'm sorry, Mr. Ed. I fell asleep. Let's go. Where's your leash?”

Mr. Ed jumps up and down, his nose pointing in the direction of the kitchen counter. I grab the leash and off we go at a trot down the four flights of stairs. At the front door I clip on his leash. When we get to the street, Mr. Ed heads for the gutter and gratefully does his business. A smile of relief creeps across his doggie face.

“Let's walk over to the park, little fellow. I could use a heart to heart.” It's a warm evening and the sun is going down. Twilight, I think; it is twilight time. A jogger passes us as we enter the park on Eighty-fifth Street. His breathing is labored and steady. He slows down as he approaches us and glances at his watch. He's checking his time, grading his performance, logging his miles. Keeping track. It's important. I keep track of my calories, and I try to exercise three times a week, and I try to keep track of my cigarettes. I pat my pockets and realize I left without them. Just as well. I've got to quit smoking, I remind myself for the millionth time, but the thought of stopping makes me crave one. One cigarette and then I'll quit. And there it is, the whole damn merry-go-round, but my head feels groggy and only nicotine will set it right.

Mr. Ed is happily sniffing everything in sight. He sniffs the
ground and the leaves and the flowers and the dirt and the ants and the rocks and the occasional dog that passes and sometimes just the air. He perks his happy ears up and sniffs the breeze as it rushes past his black button nose. I try sniffing the air with my pink button nose but it doesn't make me as happy as it makes Mr. Ed. For dogs, things are simple. I envy that.

We walk over to the Delacorte Theater and sit down on one of the benches. The park is filled with flowering plants and trees. I look out over the Great Lawn where the baseball fields are a warm brick red and the grass is a grass, grass green, as Dylan Thomas might say. “Arf, arf, arf, arf?” Mr. Ed inquires as he hops up on the bench and settles in next to me.

“What's up, you ask? Well, not much,” I answer. “I booked a couple of dates at Don't Tell Mama, and I'm seeing this really nice guy, and I feel sad but happy but sad but happy all the time and it's making me crazy. Oh, and I've been hallucinating, or at least I think I'm hallucinating. You haven't seen a little pink or blue fairy flying around, have you?”