Yes I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis, Jr. (69 page)

I started drinking as soon as I woke up, kept a glow going until after the last show and then drank hard until I could pass out and sleep. Then in a few hours I awoke to face another day and another night of waiting to learn the excitement’s dead and this is the night they stop showing up. But they kept coming back, filling the clubs, and the longer it dragged on the more menacing and depressing they were.

Sam Bramson was tremendously excited when he reached me by phone in Toronto. “The Eden Roc in Miami Beach has met your terms: $30,000 for ten days, suites for you and Will—and the doors
are open to everybody. I never believed it could happen. You’ve broken down a tremendous barrier.”

Big John came into my suite and I waited for him to react to the lavish ocean-front layout. “Sammy, I just come over from Miami—I dropped my clothes off at the Lord Calvert—and I figure you oughta know what’s happening.”

“Such as?”

“What they’re saying. Coupla guys I know caught me in the lobby and they said, ‘Howcum Sammy’s not stayin’ here? What’s he doin’ livin’ over there on the Beach?’ Then this other guy says, ‘You kiddin’? He thinks he can pass.’ ”

“What’d you tell ‘em?”

“Wasn’t much I
could
tell ‘em.” He shrugged. “Fact is you’re over here and all …”

“It’s always gotta be something, huh? Well, the next time anybody says anything, you tell them what I say. Tell them I’m living
free
in a suite that would cost anybody else eight hundred dollars a week! Tell them I’ve opened the door for them and if they haven’t got the guts to come over here then I don’t have the stomach to go over there.”

He nodded slowly and spoke quietly, “Sure, Sammy. Whatever you say. You’re the boss.” He stood up. “I’ll tell ‘em.”

I watched him walking away, knowing he was my friend, knowing they’d probably said worse than he’d passed on to me. “Baby, check me into the Lord Calvert. Take a nice suite there.”

“You gonna move?”

“No, dammit. Why the hell should I when I can live in the best hotel in town? But get the suite. It’ll keep up appearances.”

He nodded, pleased, protective. “You don’t need ‘em chewing you to pieces, boss.” He shrugged and left to take care of it. I knew it was a futile gesture, even patronizing, but it was worth it if I could stop even one guy from perpetuating the “He takes white pills” talk.

My suite at the Eden Roc was crowded with people who’d been to the opening. I walked over to Harry Mufson, the owner of the hotel. He was sitting with his wife and some friends. He said, “It was fabulous, Sammy. We’ll be packed for the entire run.”

“Thanks, Harry. And thank you for what you’ve done by bringing me down. I know how hard it was.”

I drifted into the crowd, wishing Will had come to the party or that my father had come in from the coast for the opening—someone who’d understand and look at me and say “Well, you did it.” I’d have given anything for somebody close who could appreciate the broken barrier, somebody who’d been with me along the way, somebody I could tell, “Yeah. We really did,” and we could be excited about it.

As we moved across the country the tapes were like an X-ray, giving a clear, unwavering verdict. I still had that helpless inability to reach through to the people, as though a thin rubber wall existed between us, and no matter how hard I tried to push myself through it, no matter how thin I stretched it, it was always there, separating us, making any real contact impossible.

I slept as late as I could to cut down the hours I had to sweat out every afternoon, wondering, is this the night they’ll stop coming?

Then, the ordeal of arriving at the club; the painfully casual question, “How’re the reservations?” the momentary relief at hearing “We’re sold out,” then the nauseating awareness that tomorrow is another day, and the over-riding absolute, that “tomorrow” would come in a week, in a month, in a year, that it was irreversible.

I checked into the Waldorf Towers instead of the Warwick. I closed the bedroom door so Arthur wouldn’t hear me and I called the Copacabana. “My name is Hawkins. I see that Sammy Davis is playing at your place and I’d like a table for two tonight …”

“I’m sorry, sir, we’re entirely sold out this evening.” I fell against the pillow, relieved.

It was five in the morning when I finally closed the door and looked around the suite. I walked through the dining room, down the long hallway, trying to appreciate the marble-fitted bathrooms and the beautiful antique furniture in the living room. There was frost on the window and I doodled with my finger trying to draw a house with a chimney and smoke coming out of it. I had a lousy feeling that all I ever did was sit in front of windows in hotel rooms waiting for people to wake up or waiting until I could sleep. I looked uptown, thinking about the long road to Park Avenue and 50th Street. We’d been hungry sometimes and frustrated always, but even if it had only been in a waiting room or the back seat of a car, at least we had slept. I tried to remember how terrible it had been up
there, but the thoughts of everything I’d hated and escaped were overwhelmed by the memory of something I’d never appreciated, never valued, something I could never feel again—there had always been the hope that tomorrow we’d be on the way up!

The opening at the Moulin Rouge was tremendous. Throughout the first week I kept watching the faces, waiting, half-hoping they’d finally look away from me and get it over with. But they wouldn’t. Night after night they jammed the club, pouring in en masse, prolonging the agony of the death vigil.

By the end of the second week I couldn’t stand to hang around the dressing room between shows or after, to hear what great business I was doing, to face the invasion of the back-slappers, loud, laughing, transparent and ugly: “How’s Loray?” … “Hey, the show was a gas.” … “Never saw you better. Man, what drama.” … “What business you’re doing!” … “For a second show—on a week night! Never saw anything like it.”

Their voices scraped my nerves raw. Whose dressing room will it be tomorrow? I pushed my way past them and left the club.

As I turned off Sunset and started climbing the hill to my house I could actually feel the atmosphere changing, softening, and as I made the turns near the top of the hill and saw the lights of Los Angeles miles away they seemed only peaceful and beautiful.

I pulled up in front of the house. I cut the motor, put out the lights and sat there in the dark. I could hear a dog barking, then an answer coming to him from another part of the hill. I listened to them; first one, then another, then a third joining in, like they were buddies. It was restful hearing sounds that had no meaning to me—no threat, no urgency.

I got out of the car and unlocked the front door. The racket hit me like a wet cloth in the face. My father was yelling at Peewee and the kids were crying. I leaned against the wall in the foyer. Their voices droned on, grinding each other to pieces. I’d recognize the sound of those arguments anywhere—the single overriding tone of discontent. It was ugly. Violently ugly. And the kids were right in the middle of it all, always being exposed to it, feeling all the pain and confusion that kids shouldn’t feel. I listened, saddened by the same old clashing and complaining, the knowledge that nobody was satisfied, nobody was happy, and it was costing a fortune to be keeping them like that. This is my godamned dream house. Is this
what I’ve accomplished? To have provided money for people who can’t live together in peace, who can’t be happy? To be perpetuating
this?
Maybe even to be causing it? It’s bad enough that
I
can’t be happy. But them, too?

I stepped forward to let them all see me but nobody stopped even long enough to say hello. I backed away and ran out of the house. As I started the engine of my car I knew what I was going to do. Why not? No matter how fast I ran I couldn’t get out from under the cloud that hovered over me. It kept chasing me, moving with me, always hanging over my head, and one day it was going to drop and smother me. Why wait? If I’m not doing
anybody
any good then why keep running? Who’ll miss me? Who’ll really give a damn? Why not go out while people think I’m still on top? Why suffer through more months, maybe even years, of sinking into oblivion, and then endure the rest of my life as a loser? Better to go out now.

The perfect spot was off the side of the cliff past Rising Glen where an eagle sits on top of the hill. There’s an empty space between the houses and a sheer drop of at least five hundred feet.

I was gunning the motor, roaring around curves at sixty miles an hour, then sixty-five, steadily pushing my foot down further, gripping the wheel with both hands, planning to hold tight to it as I went over the cliff, imagining the feeling of nothingness beneath me as I’d ride out the drop. The wheels were screeching around the curves. I pressed more gas into the engine until the pedal touched the floor and I kept it there, watching the road growing shorter ahead of me and the needle reaching just past seventy as I got to Rising Glen. I braced myself, turned the wheel sharp and held on.

The car stopped, like I’d hit a wall! I kept my foot on the gas, gunning and gunning and gunning the engine, I could hear the tires screaming over the roar but the car wouldn’t budge. It was as though a huge hand had reached out and was holding it, preventing it from going over.

When I opened the door the smell of burnt rubber gagged me. I turned on a flashlight. The transmission had snapped in half and was jammed into the ground like an anchor. The front wheels were sunk into the lip between the sidewalk and the dirt.

Let anyone hit this spot at any other time and it would positively fling them over the cliff. It had to.

God had had his arms around me again. Nothing else could have saved me.

An hour or so later I walked back to the house. There was a single night light on in the living room and my father was asleep on the couch. The kids were in bed and Mama and Peewee must have been in their rooms. I went to my own room and closed the door. I looked out the window at the lights of Los Angeles, then up at the sky. Dear God, I don’t know why you gave me another chance. I don’t know why you want me here or why you gave me this talent. And I know I haven’t used it the way you must have intended for me to use it. But I want to. Honestly I do. Please show me what to do. I know that I just seem to do all the wrong things. I know I must be a disappointment to you but I don’t want to be. I know I don’t pray except when I need you. Please forgive me. I can’t seem to do anything right. But I’ll never again question why you put me here, or try to leave here until you want to take me. I’ll try to live as I think you would want me to, and to do the things I think you want me to do. But please help me. Just once more. Please God, help me….

How had I come to love life so little as to want no more of it? What had I wanted and failed to find that had been more precious than life itself?

Each question drew a response too quick, too automatic to trust, and as I held them against the light of logic and fact they began opening like the petals of a carnivorous plant, revealing the skeleton of the phantasy in which I had tried to live.

I was the man who’d committed the monstrous indignity of becoming a star to become a man; who’d waited and worked, planning to surprise Hatred by proving I was its equal. I was the man who’d looked to the magic of stardom, to religion, to everything but the absolute of my own worth.

I was the man who’d missed the smiles of a thousand, obsessed by the sneer of one; who’d listened for drums and never heard the concerto; who’d focused on the faces of Hatred in close-up, a hundred times their size; who’d tried to find everything I desired by searching for everything I did not.

There had been no harm in the dream of a boy—until it hardened and fastened itself onto a man as a necessity, blinding, obstructing maturity, preventing re-evaluation. No white man could ever have been the enemy to me that I had been to myself: he was often guilty of unkindness and stupidity, but I had wasted my life
and my talent to win a victory over that stupidity. I was the man who’d opened the door and let Hatred come in, and presented my case to a madman.

I was the man who’d paid tribute to Hatred with every breath of my life.

Rabbi Nussbaum said, “ ‘It is difficult to make a man miserable while he feels worthy of himself and claims kinship to the great God who made him.’ ”

I smiled, “Lincoln.”

“Yes. Sammy, life is not designed for ‘no problems.’ But there are men who cringe from their problems and others who face them, as you have begun to do, looking toward the satisfaction of surmounting them. Look at the design of life. When a man makes a mistake, he loses what he had tried for but at least he gains wisdom. If he’s young and he breaks a bone it heals and becomes stronger than before. You’re still young, Sammy—”

“But, Rabbi, do you know how many mistakes I made?”

He smiled. “Imagine how wise you must be. Don’t dwell on your mistakes. Correct them. And don’t hold a grudge against them; they’ve taught you almost everything you know.

“Man is a thinking being. He has the power of reason. He can move into any shaped house he wishes to build. There are tools, helps, but he must do the building himself. If he works steadily toward his goal, eventually he accomplishes it.

“When a man sets about to construct a new home he gives great time and thought to how it will look, how long it will stand and how well it will serve him. He chooses woods from dozens of samples, he learns about various stones, he shops for the best of everything within his reach. Isn’t it sad that so few people take the same care in constructing their lives?”

I stretched out on a lounge alongside the swimming pool, feeling as though I’d come home after a long, hard war. I looked at the scar on the palm of my hand, the Star of David. It had faded and it would probably disappear someday but my need for Judaism was permanent and I was grateful now that I’d been prevented from rushing into it. I knew that the comfort and self-detachment it had already given me was only the beginning, and I was eager for it to develop slowly, but well. There was so much changing for me to do,
within me, but I felt ready and able to do it and somehow time was not so imperative. It didn’t matter how long it might take before I could approve of myself thoroughly, without reserve. All I wanted was to know that next year I was going to be better than I was last year.