This Is My Life (16 page)

She didn't even answer him. She just kept watching as the man launched into one of Dottie's oldest routines. “I went to
the circus recently,” he was saying, “and I offered to buy the tent. They said fine, and asked if I wanted it wrapped. I said no, I'd
wear
it home!”

Erica's heart was thudding furiously. She swallowed what was left of her drink, and kept the ice in her mouth, biting down hard; it felt as though she were breaking rocks in a quarry inside her head. Most people were able to shake themselves free of their parents; most people could just get on a bus one day and disappear. But it was as though her mother was writing in the sky, sending Erica messages that she would see every time she tipped her face up to the sun. First there had been that awful commercial for women's clothing, and now this. Her mother had ceased being actively famous, and Erica had thought it was all over, but apparently Dottie Engels had a half-life—she stayed in the blood forever, you could not get her out. She was always there, with that wide, familiar face, and all those jokes that made you hate yourself because you were big too, made you feel that if you were fat you had better be funny.

“Honey, you're so
serious
,” Dottie used to say to Erica. “Lighten up a little, okay?” But Erica would shrug her mother off. At Bennington there had been a group of very heavy, purposeful women who spent all their time hunched around a table in a corner of the dining hall. They were deeply involved in the Women's Task Force and the Rape Crisis Hotline; they were what Dottie would have called “humorless.” Once, one of them approached Erica at the salad bar and thrust a petition at her. Erica scrawled her name quickly and slid her tray along the slats. She didn't want to be identified with them, not at all, and she hated herself for it. But just because she looked like them they thought she
was
like them: moon-faced and wounded and well-intentioned.

“Do you want to go?” Jordan whispered now, and they slipped from the bar just as the man onstage was pulling off his Dottie Engels wig and taking a bow.

—

T
he next day, something woke Erica up, lifted her from sleep. She was up before Jordan was awake, and before the first of his customers started arriving. She peered at him as she climbed from the loft; Jordan was a mouth breather, and when he slept he often looked as though he were pausing in the middle of a sentence.

Erica zipped up her old green ski jacket and walked downstairs. The morning was exceptionally cold, but she didn't mind. The wind rearranged her hair, blew some of it across her eyes. She marched across town to NYU and headed right for the psychology building. It had become as familiar to her as her own apartment building. She liked the sulphur smell here and the perceptible overlay of animal smell. Erica walked along the hall, peering into the small square windows. In one window a fist of light blossomed from a slide projector, then closed in on itself as the frame changed. Students sat in the dark, heads tilted upward at a screen which Erica could not see.

Several windows down she found Mitchell Block. He was sitting in a small room, and his broad back was to the door. Erica could see the young woman who faced him; she was definitely overweight, too, and sat with her hands in her lap. Her eyes, Erica noticed, never once raised up to meet his.

I
t stinks,” said the voice.

“What?”

“It stinks. No offense to you, of course, but it's just not funny.”

Opal had come home late one night, after a taping of
Rush Hour
, and found that her mother was waiting up for her. In the dark living room, all Opal could see was the orange point of a cigarette, but Dottie's voice was clear and surprising.

Opal slid her palm along the wall to turn on a light. Her mother was sitting on the couch in a kimono that Sy had given her, with a full ashtray before her on the coffee table. “I just find it a little sophomoric,” Dottie went on. “I may not be up on today's trends, granted, but I still know when something doesn't work. Did any of those writers ever see
Your Show of Shows
? Did any of them ever hear of Sid Caesar?” She paused. “Did any of them ever hear of me?”

Something stirred in Opal then, made her feel an uncoiling
of despair. The show was good; there was no question about that. The humor was uneven, and sometimes a joke was run into the ground, but most of the time there was a rhythm that kept the audience excited. The first sketch tonight had been about a support group for men with inadequacy problems, and the patients consisted of actors playing Sonny Bono, Ike Turner, and Tom Hayden. Later in the show there was a mini-musical called “Long Day's Journey into a Hard Day's Night,” in which the entire Tyrone family wore mop-head wigs and spoke O'Neill's lines in Liverpool accents. Sitting in the wings with Walt Green, the other college intern, Opal had realized how different this was from watching her mother perform. There wasn't so much at
stake
now; Opal wanted the show to do well, but her whole life wasn't standing onstage, and she didn't need to hold her breath when the houselights lowered.

Now she looked at her mother sitting on the couch, wrapped in a green kimono, her eyes small with exhaustion, and she wanted to lead her to bed like a drowsy child.

“Why don't you sit down awhile?” Dottie said, and Opal reluctantly agreed.

“Is it just me?” Dottie asked.

“Is what you?”

Dottie gestured. “Oh, this whole humor thing,” she said. “Not
getting
it. I feel as though I'm from another country—no, another planet—and I'm learning about the local customs. Opal, I just don't
see
. What happened to the old kind of comedy, where you stand on a stage and you talk to the audience conversationally? None of these pyrotechnics. Just a simple routine, maybe a little music to go along with it, a couple of impressions. Now the simplicity is lost.”

“I guess,” Opal said, “there are other things now. A variety.” But her voice was soft and not very believable. Dottie wasn't looking for consolation, she realized; tonight, Dottie just wanted to talk. Opal watched as her mother lit another cigarette and then held out the pack to Opal, which she had never done before. Usually Dottie complained terribly about the fact that Opal smoked. “Just because I have a disgusting habit doesn't mean that
you
should,” Dottie sometimes said. But now she was actually striking a match for Opal and holding it out to her, as if to say,
Oh, well; we're all going down
. Opal hesitated, then took a cigarette and leaned forward to meet the light.

“The first time I was on Carson,” Dottie began, “I was so nervous, the way everyone is their first time.”

Opal nodded, remembering how her mother had called from California the day of the show, and had run through her monologue long-distance while both girls listened on separate extensions.

“The hairstylist backstage was telling me little anecdotes about other people who had been on,” Dottie said, “except she kept calling them ‘antidotes.' When you finally get onstage, the lights are so hot that you sweat like a pig, but you're supposed to pretend that you're at this wonderful cocktail party. If that was really a party, I would have left in five minutes and hosed myself down. But I just had to sit there, and after a while I got used to it, and they liked me, as you know. I was funny,” she said. “Not to blow my own horn, but I really think I was pretty funny.”

There was a sound from across the room. Opal looked up to find Sy standing in the doorway in his matching kimono. “
I
thought you were funny,” said Sy. “You certainly made
me
laugh back then.” He yawned, struggling to wake up.

“Where's that record?” Dottie suddenly asked. “You know, the one we were listening to just the other day.” She stood up slowly, steadying herself, and walked across the room to the shelf of record albums. She flipped through them for a minute until she found what she wanted; it was the first record Dottie had ever made, a live concert album entitled
Everything's Coming Up Dottie
. She slipped the record from its sleeve. The record was deeply scarred from use, but it was unmistakably Dottie's voice that blazed through the rooms.

“Dot, the neighbors will call the police,” Sy said, but he sat down to listen.

Opal watched her mother's face, saw the pleasure Dottie was taking from this, her lips moving silently to accompany each spoken word.

“You know,” Dottie was saying on the record, “I've been asked to be on
Hollywood Squares
. I only hope they don't put me on the top row, because the whole thing would collapse!” There was a wave of laughter. When it ended, Dottie went on. “The bags under my eyes are so heavy,” she said, “I even had the delivery boy carry them home for me the other day!” Another wave, and then some applause. “You like that?” the younger Dottie said. “I'm glad, because there's plenty more where that came from.”

When the record ended, Dottie's eyes were shining. “Well, ladies, I guess we should turn in,” Sy quickly said. “I've enjoyed this trip down memory lane, but I, for one, need my beauty sleep.”

Opal watched as Sy held out his hand to Dottie. After they had gone, Opal stayed up for a while. She picked up
Everything's Coming Up Dottie
. The cover art depicted a field of huge
sunflowers, but in the center of each flower was a photograph of her mother's face. Opal wondered what it would be like to go from being everywhere—from populating an entire field—to occupying one small space. Her mother was physically larger than ever, but there were no longer multiple images of her wherever Opal looked. Right now Dottie and Sy were getting ready for sleep—taking off their kimonos and climbing into bed. Opal imagined them sleeping together—sleeping, not making love—their bodies shifting to accommodate each other, changing shape throughout the night like sand dunes.

Next to Opal on the couch was the crossword puzzle Sy had been working on that day; she picked it up and saw that all the squares had been filled in. When she looked more closely, though, she realized that several answers made no sense. Sy had filled in words just to have the satisfaction of completing the grid. She glanced up at the clues.
Author Anaïs
, read 24 Across, and Sy had filled in
Pin. Anaïs Pin
; it almost made Opal cry out. Sy was a decent man, and right now he was lying next to Dottie. “You make do with what you're given in this life,” Dottie used to say. “I'm no Twiggy, so I use my weight; I throw it around a little. Is that so bad?”

It was better, wasn't it, than what most people had? Back when they all lived in Jericho, Opal and Erica had had a code phrase for the times their mother cried. “Pink eyeshadow alert,” Erica would whisper, poking her head into the doorway of Opal's room. With Sy, there would be very little crying. Instead, there would only be peaceful sleeping, and Chinese meals that went on and on in a parade of silver dishes. Maybe it was sheer companionship that Dottie wanted; maybe after a certain point in life, that was enough.

Opal took for granted the fact that she would always have a knot of people around her. At Yale, she woke up to the sound of voices in the morning, and fell asleep to those same voices at night. But now, back in the apartment, the pitch had lowered, the voices were fewer; you had to fend for yourself here, make your own noise.

She realized that every day at work she inordinately looked forward to spending time with Walt Green. He had become her companion, her sidekick, the only person there she really spoke to. Opal spent much of her time at work at the Xerox machine or picking up props from a manufacturer downtown. She was treated well by Joel Macklin, the assistant director who had hired her, and largely ignored by most everyone else. A couple of the writers occasionally asked her how she was getting along, but there was a nervous, dislocated atmosphere in the studio that made extended interaction unlikely. The cast members kept away from everyone else and remained in quarantine down the hallway where their dressing rooms were. Sometimes Opal would see them slip back and forth between each other's rooms, like characters in a bedroom farce.

On Friday nights Opal sat in the wings with Walt, while all around them men and women in headphones cued each other for sound and lights. Once Opal watched one of the cast members, a wiseguy named Stevie Confino, preparing to go onstage. He stood only a foot away from her, and she watched as he exhaled a few hard, short breaths and faked a small feint to the left, like a boxer about to duck through the ropes and into the ring. Opal thought of her mother, pictured her standing backstage, blotting her lipstick and waiting anxiously for a cue.

At lunch hour, she and Walt went off by themselves to a
coffee shop on Seventh Avenue. Walt was a junior at Columbia who had taken a year off from school to work at the show. He spoke freely about the job in a way that impressed Opal, made her relax. He also asked her questions about herself, seemed to want her to talk. When he told a joke, she laughed without the self-consciousness she usually felt when she was being set up.

“What do you get,” Walt asked, “when you cross a Mafioso with a semiotics expert?”

“What?” said Opal.

Walt smiled. “An offer you can't understand.”

Opal laughed and lit a cigarette. “That's great,” she said.

“Too arcane for the show, though,” said Walt. “I tried it out on the writers. No go.” He shook his head. “So, have you figured out the way things are around the set?” he asked. “I'll steer you in the direction of the people who are worth knowing, and keep you away from the ones who will make your life a living hell.”

Opal smiled. “Thanks,” she said. “You like it here, though, right?” she asked.

“Well, yes,” said Walt. “Depends who's asking. You and I are strictly
serf
material, of course, but you really get to see a lot of things. It's kind of an education.”

“What kinds of things?” Opal asked.

“Well, for one thing,” said Walt, “have you noticed the way some of the cast take five-minute breaks about every
fifteen
minutes? Guess what's going on in the bathroom? But they make a lot of money; they can afford it. Unlike some of us, they have salaries.” He paused. “Not that I would spend my salary on cocaine. I don't know,” he went on. “My parents think I'm crazy to want to work in comedy. They think it's a really depressing world. It's gotten so
I don't tell them things. It's like that Billie Holiday song goes: ‘Don't explain.' But I've always wanted to work in comedy.”

“What do you mean, always?” Opal asked.

“Ever since
The Dick Van Dyke Show
,” Walt said. “I used to fantasize about sitting around that office all day, goofing around and coming up with ideas. Having lunch every day with Morey Amsterdam and Rose Marie.”

“Poor Rose Marie,” Opal said. “Unable to find a man. Forever single!” she said.

Walt smiled. He was attractive; there was something persistent and fierce about him. He was like a little muscle, Opal thought.

“What about you?” he asked. “Do you actually want to do something in this ‘depressing line of work,' as my father would say?”

“I don't know what I want to do,” Opal said. “I've grown up around all this; my mother's a comedian.”

“Oh?” said Walt. “Anyone I'd know?”

She told him, and realized that as she spoke, her face was quickly heating up, as though she had confessed something intensely private.

Walt squinted. “
Really
,” he said. “That's amazing. But you're so . . . petite. I didn't make the connection.”

“We don't look alike,” Opal said quickly.

“Do you look like your father?” he asked.

Opal shrugged. “I'm not sure,” she said, and her voice dropped away.

“I'm sorry,” said Walt. “I didn't mean to pry.”

“You didn't,” said Opal. “I'm just weird about certain things.”

“Everybody is,” said Walt. “Everybody has a
theme
. You talk to somebody awhile, and you realize they have one particular
thing that rules them. The best you can do is a variation on the theme, but that's about it.” He shook his head. There was a protracted silence, and Opal became tense, wondering what he would say next.

But all he did was lift his wrist to look at the time. “We'd better go,” he said. “They may not pay us anything, but they want us back in time.” They walked back to Rockefeller Center, where flags were flicking and slapping in a strong wind, and Walt took her arm. For a moment Opal felt as though she and Walt had important jobs, as though they were U.N. delegates returning from lunch. She thought of her father and wondered if her face had given too much away when Walt asked her about him. Was her father her “theme”? She really couldn't be sure. It seemed impossible to extricate Norm Engels from this whirling family. She thought about turning to Walt and trying to explain further, but suddenly they were pushing through the heavy glass of the revolving door, and the time had passed.