The Stork Club (27 page)

Two days later, he arrived at the hospital with the baby nurse to take David home. The law stated that in order to prove abandonment, Doreen couldn't leave the hospital and go to the same place as the baby, so Andrea came to the hospital that morning to take Doreen back to the apartment in the Valley where they'd lived together before the hemorrhaging.

In the parking circle at Cedars, before Annie placed the baby in the infant seat, a pale Doreen kissed the little pink boy, and Rick could see the tension in her face. But when Rick hugged her doughy little body, she lost all control and shook with sadness as the sobs took over.

"I don't know if," she began, then sobbed another sob, "I don't know if I'll miss my baby more . . . or if . . . I'll miss you most of all." She sniffled and he held her very tightly, this little round cherub of a girl.
"Promise me one very important thing," she said, looking up at him.

"Name it."

"That you'll read to him. He's used to it now, because he's heard lots of stories. I left all the children's books at your house. They're in the nursery in the closet."

"I'll do it," he said.

"He's all set, Mr. Reisman," Annie said quietly.

Rick, Doreen, Annie, and Andrea all peeked into the backseat at sweet little sleeping David, dressed in a pale yellow going-home suit that Bea Cobb had crocheted for him and mailed from Kansas two weeks before.

"Well, then, I guess we shouldn't keep him waiting," Rick said. He gave Doreen a last hug and helped her into the passenger seat of Andrea's car, and stood next to Annie, the nurse, waving as Andrea drove off into the hot California day.

For weeks he awakened with the first sounds of the stirring baby, then followed Annie from room to room, watching her techniques. He insisted that she, in turn, watch him critically when he fed or burped or bathed or changed David, to make certain he was well versed in every aspect of his son's needs.

And to keep the promise he'd made to Doreen, he held the tiny little bundle of boy on his lap and read from the books Doreen had left for him.
The Runaway Bunny
and
Little Bear, Make Way for Ducklings
and
The Little Red Hen
. Sometimes both he and the baby would lie on their backs while Rick held the book above them and the baby looked up at the colorful pictures, kicking his feet and waving his arms wildly.

There were a few other actors interested in the part for which he had lost Robert Redford. There were other projects that were looking promising, and soon his schedule was filled with back-to-back meetings. But he
always made sure to return early in the evening to be there in time for David's dinner. Annie would put the little guy in his infant seat on the kitchen table, and Rick would spoon some of the newly permitted rice cereal in, then watch most of it dribble out. When David smiled, Rick would laugh out loud. Many times Rick would be feeding the baby and on the phone at the same time, in order to justify rushing home so early in the day. That way he could do business and tend to the baby simultaneously.

And of course there were his visits to Bobo.

"Look who's a father, I can't believe it," Bobo said. Two of the old man's women friends were with him, gathered around Rick and the little baby in the dining room of the lodge at the Motion Picture Home. Rick held the bottle expertly and watched his son chug down ounce after ounce of Similac.

"I fed you a bottle just like that," Bobo said to Rick, "only you weren't
that
cute." The old man laughed and jabbed Essie Baylis, Harvey Feldman's aunt.

"My Harvey got you that baby?" the old woman asked. Every time Rick looked at Harvey Feldman's old aunt, he couldn't get it out of his head that she'd once been a Busby Berkeley girl. He would try to sort out the features of her face that must have been pretty then, and to imagine her as young, wearing one of those silly costumes.

"That's right," Rick told her.

"He's a genius." The old woman smiled.

"How come you're not married?" Stella Green, Essie's friend, a tiny woman who walked with the help of an aluminum walker, asked Rick. Stella had worked as a secretary to Jack Warner for years.

"Don't get him started," Bobo told her. "He's not married because he's a schmuck."

Stella Green nodded as if she understood. Rick laughed.

"Uncle B., I've got a son now, why do I need a wife?"

"I'll have the soup," Bobo said to a passing waitress, then pulled out a chair and sat. "Essie darling, you want maybe a cup of soup? How about you, Stella?" The two women demurred and said their good-byes to Rick and the baby, who smiled a little at them around his bottle, which made both of the women happy.

"Who do you have at home taking care of the little
pisher
?" Bobo asked Rick, peering closely at David. "Every week he gains five pounds. Look at the size of that guy. Hiya, bruiser. Say, Hiya, Uncle Bobo. You can call me Grandpa, you know. I wouldn't charge you extra if you call me Grandpa." Rick loved to watch Bobo with the baby.

"What do you hear from the little girl?" Bobo asked Rick, suddenly serious-faced.

"Not a word. It was part of our agreement. When she's ready to go back to Kansas, she'll call me and I'll send her off. She doesn't want to see David though. Maybe never."

"Who can blame her, the poor kid?" Bobo
tsk
ed. "If I was a younger man, believe me, I'd go and find the son of a bitch who made her that way and go and kill him. Oy, is she a good kid. A tough cookie."

David had drained the entire bottle.

"Give him here," Bobo said. "I'll get a burp out of him. Won't I, slugger?"

Tenderly Bobo placed the baby's stomach against his own shoulder and patted, patted, patted the tiny back with his arthritic hand.

"He might need a little Dr. Brown's celery tonic, which always does it for me."

"And me." Rick laughed.

David didn't need it. His burp filled the room, and the waitress, who had just put the soup bowl down in front of Bobo, applauded the wonderful accomplishment.

"I got a way with kids," Bobo told her. "Not like this guy here. He has a way with broads. But me, kids love me. When this baby gets a little bigger, I'll teach him how to play Go Fish and Spit in the Ocean.'' David was asleep on Bobo's shoulder. Rick used the camera he always had with him these days to take a picture of the two of them.

On the morning David turned six months old, Andrea called. "I wanted to say happy birthday to David, and to tell you that Doreen is ready to go back to Kansas. She's lost all the weight, a miracle since she's been working at Mrs. Field's Cookies for the last few months. She says she feels good, and would like to leave on Monday. Do you want me to arrange a flight for her?"

Rick and Doreen hadn't spoken since they parted at the hospital. Keeping the silence was their tacit agreement that there were no recriminations for either of them.

"I'll do it. If it's all right with her though, I'd like her to leave on Monday night. There's somewhere I'd like to take her on Monday afternoon."

"I'll tell her. And just in case you were curious, she hasn't said a thing about the baby. Even in the wee hours when we sit around in our pajamas and talk about our deepest feelings. Mostly she's been telling me about her mother and how much she misses her, and how worried she gets about her older married sister, Trish, and her kids. Apparently the brother-in-law Don is kind of a bad guy. Anyway, Doreen's got her strength back
and she talks to her mom nearly every day. Sometimes they even pray together on the phone."

"I miss her," Rick said. "And I'll miss her even more knowing she's so far away."

"Me too. She was a breath of fresh air around the strangling bullshit of this town."

Rick got off the freeway at the Vine Street exit and drove south, and when Doreen, who had been silent for nearly the entire ride, saw the marquee of the Merv Griffin Theater, she let out a hoot.

"Oh my God. 'Jeopardy!' Look, there, that's where they do 'Jeopardy!' My 'Jeopardy!' The Alex Trebek 'Jeopardy!' "

Rick made a right turn into the parking lot.

Doreen opened the window of the Mercedes and stuck her face out. "We're stopping. We're parking! Are we going to . . . are the other people in those cars going to see 'Jeopardy!'? I can't believe it." Rick's smiling face had the answer.

"We are. Oh, we are. Oh thank you. Thank you."

She was literally bouncing up and down in her seat, and the second they were parked, she threw the car door open and ran ahead of him to the front of the theater. There was a very long line of people waiting, and she ran back to Rick, seized his arm with her tiny hand, and said, "C'mon, let's get in line."

"It's okay," he said, "don't worry," and moved her instead toward the front door where a blue-blazered page was waiting.

"I'm Richard Reisman," he said to the page, feeling Doreen's excitement by the way her hand, which was now holding his, couldn't remain still. "We're guests of Mr. Griffin."

The page pulled a folded sheet of paper out of his
inside jacket pocket, opened it, read something from it, and gestured for Rick and Doreen to follow. They walked through the cool building and then the page pushed open a heavy studio door. Doreen gasped when there in real life was the familiar set she'd seen on television for so long. There were two seats closed off by masking-tape ribbons right in the center of the first row. As the page led Doreen and Rick toward them, Rick could hear Doreen making tiny sounds of joy in her throat.

The page removed the masking tape so they could be seated and said, "We'll be shooting two shows while you're here, and then three more later this afternoon."

"Two shows!" Doreen said excitedly, then elbowed Rick. "We get to see two." As the page turned to go she said, "Um, sir," and he turned back to look at her.

"Is Mr. Trebek here?"

"Oh sure."

Doreen gave out with a little yelp of pleasure. Within seconds of the page's departure, the studio doors opened and hordes of people flooded in to be seated. The studio became a buzzing hive of activity and excitement, all of it reflected in Doreen's eyes. The camera crew assembled, and an announcer named Johnny Gilbert did the warm-up, but it wasn't until the entrance of Alex Trebek when Doreen moved to the edge of her seat, never taking her eyes from him, her face lit with excitement.

When Trebek moved toward the audience, she pounded Rick's arm. "A sheet of paper. Ohh, why didn't I bring a sheet of—" Rick pulled a piece of blank white
From the desk of Rick Reisman
notepaper from one of his pockets and a pen from another and handed it to Doreen, who had already leapt to her feet and was thrusting the paper into the face of the handsome Alex Trebek, who smiled at her.

"Please," she said. "Can you make it out to 'Bea Cobb, who is the best mother in the world'?"

"If I say that,
my
mom will get jealous," Trebek joked.

"Ahh, she won't find out," Doreen said, and then gave him a smile with just a little hint of flirtatiousness.

"You're right," he said, handed her back the signed paper, and was on to the next fan, as Doreen clutched the paper to her heart and choked out a thank you.

"My mom's gonna freak out," she said, sitting back down in her seat, alternately looking at the message then clutching it against her chest. She held it that way during the entire taping and in the car on the way back to Andrea's. When it was time to say good-bye, it amazed him that she hadn't said one word about the baby.

"Call me collect if you ever need anything," he said.

"Maybe just a picture of David. For Christmas?" she said and asked at the same time.

"You've got it," he promised.

22

L
AINIE felt herself being awakened by the sensation of Mitch fondling her, waking her with his hands all over her body, his tongue moving slowly down her body. She must have fallen asleep while they were watching television in bed, and Mitch had stayed awake. Maybe something on television had made him feel sexy. No, Mitch always felt sexy. Mitch, delicious Mitch, wanting her.

"Mmm, baby," he said. "I love you. How I love you, my baby—"

And the phone rang.

"The machine . . . " Mitch said. "The machine will get it." He was inside her now and very hot. "The machine'll pick up," he managed.

The phone rang again, and again. Maybe it was . . .

"Jackie's phone," Mitch said, finishing Lainie's thought.

But then the ringing stopped. Mitch sighed with relief
and then he was kissing her and pressing his hard chest into her breasts and then he was up on his knees, pulling her legs up on either side of him, spreading her legs high around him, pushing deeper into her so she could feel him all the way at the small of her back. "Oh, God, Mitch, Oh, God . . ." But the phone rang again and broke the moment, and a frustrated Mitch collapsed on her and reached out for the receiver.

"Oh, God, Mitch," Lainie heard a voice on the phone cry. "Oh, God."

"Jackie."

"I'm in labor, and I hurt so much. Oh, God."

"Did you call the doctor?" Mitch asked, climbing off Lainie and sitting at the edge of the bed to talk to Jackie. Lainie could see how nervous he was.

"Yeah, yeah, and Chuck Meyer too. They're both meeting me at the hospital."

"What about the car and driver?" Mitch was holding the phone loosely to his ear, and Lainie, whose pelvis was still ringing from the abruptness of his wrenching himself out of her, could hear every word Jackie said.

"Did you call for the car?"

"It's on the way, but Mitch, please, I know I said I wouldn't do this, only I forgot how much this hurts and how scary it is to do it alone, and I don't have anybody else to call. I know we decided you shouldn't be there, but I'm begging you. You've got to do this, please say you'll meet me at the hospital. I mean, Jesus Christ, it's
your
baby too. I can't do this with some lawyer I hardly know and a limo driver I never saw before. I need you there."

"I'll be there," Mitch said. "Stay calm, Jackie. Will you? Promise me you will?" he asked her in a very gentle voice.