Emma Who Saved My Life (7 page)

“Some people want to run the world. Some people want power, wealth, fame, influence. This is what I want. To every once in a while alter the New York Channel 6 TV schedule, little triumphs like that, played out before millions of people who don't know what's going on.”

“
Ahaaaa!
” said Susan, seizing upon us. “I've found you! No hiding from the Hostesse!” Lisa stirred in the beanbag chair, not able to wake up. “Lisa, Lisa, Lisa,” Susan said, shaking her, placing her hands on her shoulders, then her back, putting a firm hand on her thigh. “Time to get up, the party rolls on!”

Emma flicked off the TV.

“Oh was that
Lollipop?
I wish they'd put it on earlier,” said Susan. “I loved that show as a kid…”

Emma looked at me, raising one eyebrow.

“Billllll, baby,” Susan began.

Gil.

“Gillllll, baby,” Susan went on, “the evening's young. Lonely for the Midwest already? You Midwestern farmboys!”

Emma suggested we go to the roof and look at the city and Susan said she'd join us later, but fortunately she didn't. We left Lisa asleep on the beanbag chair, passed out. We took the creaking Death Elevator to the top floor, stepped out, wandered around in darkness, using Emma's cigarette lighter for guidance, found the fire door to the roof and then propped it open with a brick. You couldn't see much of the city because to the north was a taller building, the Empire State Building stuck up above it; to the south were the Twin Towers, lit up all night long.

“It costs more to turn the lights off and start the power flowing again the next morning,” said Emma, “so they just keep the lights on all night. I worked there once.”

Doing what?

“Well, before Baldo's, I worked temporary work, filing and typing and making coffee, playing secretary for $2.50 an hour. I get $2.75 at Baldo's which isn't much more but I can work all day and all night if I want. How are you going to get money?”

By working in the theater, I said, I hoped.

“Got a job lined up already?”

Not exactly.

Emma gave me a sympathetic look. “I'll have my Aunt Leonie back in Indianapolis say a novena for you.”

But I had a connection, I said, an ex-roommate of a drama instructor at Southwestern Illinois who was a casting director at an off-Broadway theater. I'll be working within the week!

“None of my theater friends like the theater very much,” Emma said. “In fact, I don't like my theater friends very much. You're not like most actors.”

Thanks. I think.

We went over to the edge of the roof to look down and then we decided we'd really enjoy throwing something off the roof, so we looked around for something to throw off the roof but there was nothing small and convenient to throw. We thought about climbing down the fire escape—High Adventure—and climbing into Susan's bedroom window … and then we thought of fifty reasons why that was a bad idea.

“I'm never having sex again. Did Lisa tell you that?” At this juncture, I figured Emma was officially drunk too.

No, I said, Lisa hadn't told me.

“I'm not. I've joined this Celibacy Support Group which meets down here in Soho.” Then she said the next thing in a rehearsed tone, so I figured she'd given the speech before: “One is persecuted these days for
not
having sex—if you're not engaging in orgies every night, you're obviously out of it.”

Yeah, I know what you mean. (Whose side am I on here?)

“I've certainly had enough bad Midwestern sex to last me a lifetime, in high school, at Purdue.”

(I was sort of hoping she was inexperienced and shy, which shows I was inexperienced and shy, I guess.)

“Nope,” she said, finishing off her cocktail. “That was my Sex Phase and it's over—I'm disgusted with the whole thing. Exchanging bodily fluids. Body parts. Viscosities.”

Viscosities?

“Lots of viscosities. Can't stand viscosities.”

A church in Little Italy rang the time.

“It'll be dawn soon,” Emma said, sighing, looking down into her empty plastic cocktail glass. “One drink in Emma and it's just True Confessions. One good reason for going back to sex would be to have something to confess when I get confessional. Hey, the glass.” I didn't understand. “Let's throw it over the side,” she said, and we ran to the edge of the roof and did it and it was excitement galore.

“Better take me downstairs before I pass out,” she said, steadying herself against me at the roof's edge.

Sure, I said, and I put my arm around her waist. Emma was always weird about being touched. You'd hold her arm and it would go limp; you'd hug her goodbye and she'd go strangely stiff—it was automatic, I don't think she was trying to do it. As we made it back to the elevator, staggering together, I stopped us both and looked at Emma in the moonlight—no, no it wasn't moonlight, it was streetlamp light, the collected nighttime neon haze that hangs over Manhattan, but Emma was still pretty in it. I got some class, I didn't maul her—I kissed her on the cheek.

She giggled, stepped back from me, folded her arms around herself. “I'm taller than you,” she said, laughing again.

Just by an inch or two.

“I mean I can't go with someone who … I mean I don't…”

Too short for you, huh?

She said softly, “I just better get back to the party, that's all.”

And we went back to the party, which was in its death throes. We went back to the TV room and as Emma flopped down on some cushions I was very authoritative about how to avoid a hangover, take two aspirin, drink lots of water … I passed out first though, I'm fairly sure.

The next morning was the definition of hangover.

I awaken. Where am I? I tick through the list: Oak Park, Southwestern Illinois's Stephen Douglas Hall, Grandma's house … Nope, nope, nope. Oh yeah: New York. I call Lisa's name.

“She's not here…” That was Emma's voice, subdued. I lifted my head slightly. Emma was watching the TV again.

This is the morning, right?

“Yes, it's the morning,” she said, turning to look at me. “I don't know who looks rougher, you or Nixon.”

Nixon was on the TV again, making a last statement, saying goodbye to the staff.

You know what my father was? He was a streetcar motorman first, and then he was a farmer, and then he had a lemon ranch. It was the poorest lemon ranch in California, I can assure you. He sold it before they found oil on it …

Pat was crying, Nixon was about to cry. Emma sat there snivelling too, reaching for the Kleenex. What was going on? I asked.

Emma turned around briefly. “It's his last press conference, and it's a killer. God, the man could work TV. Why didn't he use this material before he had to resign?”

Nobody will ever write a book, probably, about my mother … My mother was a saint. And I think of her, two boys dying of tuberculosis, nursing four others in order that she could take care of my older brother for three years in Arizona, and seeing each of them die, and when they died, it was like one of her own. Yes, she will have no books written about her …

It was sad.

“I've got a new theory about why we hate and love this man,” Emma said. “He's everybody's Uncle Richard. Uncle Richard with the carpet outlet or used-car dealership, the guy who got things working and yet always blew it, always screwed things up, went bust time and time again only to get back up and take it again. Oh look, that's it. I'm relieved, I thought he was going to break down and that would have been embarrassing.”

Commentator:…
The helicopter will take the former president to Andrews Air Force Base where he will fly to San Clemente, while the vice president, Gerald R. Ford, will be sworn into office by Chief Justice Burger …

I asked where everybody was.

“Most everyone's gone,” Emma said, passing me a bowl of greasy chips she had been munching. “Have some breakfast. The dip is great—only good thing at the party.” She slid a bowl of white dip over to me. I ate automatically. “Hungover?” Emma asked.

Yep.

“You know that famous chart we got in biology class of man evolving? Starts off on all fours and then through early man and ends up at Homo sapiens?” Yes. “Well I'm at Australopithecus about now. I expect modern man by this afternoon sometime.”

I said I wasn't going to be erect anytime soon.

“Ha ha, that's good. It's gonna be the Emma and Gil Show around the apartment I see.”

Gil and Emma Show, I corrected.

“Look, there he goes,” Emma said, looking back at Nixon going up the steps of the waiting helicopter. “Come on, Dickie baby, give it to me…” And then Nixon, his last gesture in office, gave America the victory sign, two outstretched arms, two Vs, Nixon of the Nixon Imitations. Emma shrieked with joy. “Oh he's a classic! Look at him, walking away from the mess he made! Oh I'm gonna miss him—we won't see his like again…”

And Nixon flew away.

We heard a stumbling, a plodding. It was Susan who in a moment peered around the corner of the partition. “God, I can hear you two in the bedroom. Ask me if I'm hungover. I'm hungover—don't ask. I don't know what I did last night. Did I disgrace myself, Em?”

“One hundred forty-two times, Sue.”

“Par for the course…” She turned to plod to the kitchen. “There are a lot of passed-out people in my bedroom and one might be dead. You'll help identify them, won't you Emma?”

Emma said sure.

“That dip's good isn't it?” she said, pointing to the bowl we'd nearly finished off. “All night long people were asking for my recipe. It's famous—I do it every time! Susan's famous
Cucumber Delight
!”

1975

IT'S 1975 and I didn't know
anything
before I moved to New York. Am I in Actors Equity? No. Does my
ŕ
esu
ḿ
e impress anybody, including my mother (“Come home son, come home…”)? No. I go door to door, theater to theater, look I'll do anything, I say. Well, so will 300,000 other struggling actors. Who do you know? I don't know anybody. My connection, the casting director guy, didn't work in theater anymore, as it turned out. You don't know the New York Struggling Experience unless you've been faced with: the Possibility of Having to Crawl Home. You opened your BIG MOUTH and now you have to crawl home, with your high-school class going: “Ha ha ha Gil, you loser—guess you couldn't DO IT,” followed by girlish, derisive laughter. No way. I was not going home. I might die on the streets of Manhattan sharing Ripple with the winos, but that's all right. I'm not going home. Discouraging as it was, heartbreaking and grinding and dispiriting as it was, I would continue to march to audition after audition.

The Time I went to the Audition from Another Planet:

“Hello people, my name is Ira Forrest and this production we're casting is
Experience 27.
” Ira Forrest was a middle-aged hippie, his thinning hair combed over his bald head. He had the beginnings of a potbelly which didn't prevent him from wearing a tight muscle T-shirt with
Experience 26
lettered across it. As he paced with his clipboard giving us his
ŕ
esu
ḿ
e, we noticed his assistant, this zitty, pale twenty-year-old (maybe) who was unhealthily emaciated, wearing shorts which exposed these hairy toothpick legs. “… And some of you have been, no doubt, following the
Experience
series which I've authored, and perhaps you've heard of my work with the Northwest Co-op Theater Consortium in Portland, Oregon…”

Nope.

“This is Ryke, my assistant, and his input will be invaluable in our selection today.” Ryke stiffened his neck as we observed him.

“You're wondering, I suppose,” Ira said laughing slightly, “why all of you are together out here on the stage. We're not going to audition one by one—that's old, that's regressive theater. We're going to go through a series of exercises and through my observations—”

Ryke cleared his throat.

“Through
our
observations, we will make our selection. But first two cardinal rules of this process. One, this is
not
competitive. Yes, some people will get a part, others will not”—and here he raised his voice until it filled the hall—“but that is not, NOT to say that you don't have
worth,
have value, have talent. I want that understood. All of you repeat after me: I have worth.”

We have worth.

“I have value.”

We have value.

“I have talent.”

Yeah yeah, we got talent. We also were told to shake the hand of the person beside us and introduce ourselves. I'm Gil. The woman beside me—good-looking, about my age—was Francine Jarvis.

“And the other cardinal rule of this process”—and here he seemed to melt, to look imploringly, vulnerably up at us—“is that I'm your friend. Yep. It's that simple. What we have here, yes, is an audition, but it's also the beginning of a long and sincere … friendship.”

“Geeeeez,” muttered Francine.

“Any questions?” yelled Ira.

Someone from the back row: “Uh, Mr. Director—”

“
Ira,
please. And if you see me on the street, I would hope you'd stop me and say hello Ira, because look people…” He almost choked up. “I'm here for
you.
My ideas are a conduit, a platform for
your
talents. I'm
nothing
without you.”

(“He's nothing anyway,” whispered Francine beside me.)

“You got that? Good,” he said, sitting down with his clipboard, having not answered whatever question the boy on the back row wanted to ask. “Now. We'll start with a teamwork exercise. You are…” And then the artistry of his idea carried him to his feet again. “… You are a pond. Close your eyes. Yes, right now, close your eyes. It's autumn. It's autumn in the woods, in the woods near a pond. Can you see it? Now all of you are the pond. Now I'm going to take these Styrofoam balls … Ryke, where are my Styrofoam balls? Have you seen my Styrofoam balls?”