Vivian In Red (13 page)

I spend the next weeks dutifully going around to apartments around the city, and sometimes borrowing Uncle Paul’s town car to motor out to the suburbs, visiting with those who had a touchstone with the past. When I can blot out the strange circumstances, I can almost enjoy these interviews.

Then someone will make a remark, like how very much I looked like my grandfather, and it crashes back over my head.

Uncle Paul was right about one thing: there is an advantage to my family name. Everyone is forthcoming to Milo’s granddaughter, telling anecdotes and sharing remembrances, and digging out old photos. In talking with a frizzy-haired twenty-three-year-old about her grandfather, they forget that their words will be typed up in a manuscript and printed thousands of times. That’s always when the good stuff shows up.

On a late August day when a cool wind whips up some early withered leaves amidst the usual street trash blowing around, I take the subway to SoHo, to meet the son of my grandfather’s old songwriting partner. He might help me solve a mystery of sorts: why Grampa Milo stopped writing after his one huge hit show, to devote himself entirely to producing. He always said it was a matter of not ever being able to capture lightning in a bottle again, and not wanting to follow up his best work with a flop. That was the Milo Short line on the issue, and I’d never had the opportunity—in fact, never had the urge—to pry before.

The subway crowd spits me onto the sidewalk, and I consult my scrawled directions to the loft apartment of Jerry Allen, son of Grampa Milo’s long ago composing collaborator, Bernard Allen. Jerry’s building is a former cast iron factory now built into trendy loft apartments.

Jerry himself answers the door, a pink silk scarf draping casually over the shoulders of his unremarkable white dress shirt. “Well, if it isn’t the Short family scion, do come in.”

“Hardly a scion, and hello, it’s nice to see you again.”

“I’m not sure how I can help you exactly since I’m not my dad, but I will do my best to assume his persona while we speak. Which means I should be two and a half sheets to the wind and wobbling on the piano bench right about now. But I’m trying to cut back on my drinking while the sun is up, so we’ll have to fake it, what do you say?”

“I say that suits me fine. Great place, here.” The ceilings are high, the wood floors gleaming, and two walls of windows drown the room in sunlight.

He waves his hand as if to dismiss its existence. “Eh, it’s not bad. My partner prefers it down here, but I’m old-fashioned and mostly just old, and I’d rather live uptown. … Have a seat over there, if you would.”

He points to a modern white couch that looks like it’s folded from stiff paper, but is surprisingly comfortable when I perch on the edge of its pristine surface.

“Tea?”

“Sure,” I answer, just to give myself a minute to organize my thoughts, though I’m afraid to stain the couch with tea. I always accept when a beverage is offered at an interview. It makes a pleasant bridge into the business of the day, and it creates a small domestic bond, if only for a few minutes.

There’s a grand piano near the window, and I am drawn to the photographs propped on its glossy surface. As I grow closer, I can see that rather than the show-off celebrity photos I would have imagined—Liza Minnelli, Patti LuPone—they are all intimate candid shots of friends and family.

And there’s Grampa Milo, looking his usual dapper and gregarious self. In the picture, he’s laughing, a three-quarter view of a great guffaw, standing next to Bernard Allen and a large broad-shouldered woman who might be Mrs. Allen; I’m guessing the picture is from the ’50s or so. He looks comfortably middle-aged here, fortyish, with merry crinkles by his eyes and only the faintest glints of gray in his hair. The dapper look, I know, is entirely a function of his clothing, which was always finely made from the day he could afford it. Coming from a family of tailors, he knows the value of a good suit. But without the suit, if one should happen to catch a glance of him, he’s actually a funny-looking fellow with features a bit large for his face and his hair never quite behaving, no matter how often he has it trimmed.

“Ah. You’ve seen my gallery, there. I’ll get you a copy of that picture.”

“Oh, that would be wonderful, thank you.”

We get through the usual pleasantries, Jerry asking after Grampa and promising to visit, then we move back to the couch and chair.

Jerry is all charming host, but he’s stiff and won’t look me in the eye.

My recorder has got plenty of batteries and a fresh tape. With that in mind, I put away my notebook and pen, and angle toward him like we’re two pals having a nice chat. He relaxes right off, as I figured he would, once I put the pen and pad away.

Jerry is telling some story about his dad that had little to do with Grampa Milo, but I’ve got nothing else to do this afternoon, and I’m in no hurry. In a lull, though, with Jerry gazing out over his piano, but not focused anywhere in particular, I blurt my question.

“Why did they stop writing? Together, I mean?”

“Well, my dad drank himself to death, one reason.”

I blink hard, and shift on the couch.

“I meant before that. There were many years before that.” Poor Bernie Allen. He could never get back the success of his one big hit, try as he might. Hollywood ate him alive and he fled back to New York, where he wrote flop after flop for the stage.

Jerry doesn’t answer, and goes to his little rolling bar cart. “You want something?”

I shake my head and purse my lips to keep from filling the empty silence. That’s one of the few tricks I’ve picked up: don’t fill the silence. Let your source do it.

“You’re going to sweat this out of me, eh?”

I laugh, but it comes out high-pitched and nervously girlish.

Jerry shrugs, walking back with the ice clinking in his amber drink. “I don’t know for sure. But something happened way back then, I’m sure of it. Something between your grandfather and my dad that made them both quit. I mean, they could have found other writers if they didn’t want to work together. Look at Richard Rodgers, going from Larry Hart to Hammerstein, and he did okay. It happened all the time. Except maybe for the Gershwins, God bless ’em. But that’s brothers, and there’s not much that can break up brothers, short of a brain hemorrhage, and hell even then, Ira kept writing.” He raises his glass, toasting the poor young George Gershwin, cut down in his prime.

“So you think it was a breakup, then. Not just that Milo didn’t want to write anymore.”

“Who doesn’t want to have a second success? You know any baseball players that quit after winning one World Series? Any opera divas who decide one perfect aria is enough? It makes no sense.”

“But that’s what he always said.”

“I know that’s what he said. But I don’t believe him.”

“Are you saying he’s lying?”

At this Jerry settles back in his chair, crosses one knee over the other, and looks at me wearily, down his aquiline nose. “Are you writing a book, or are you writing an ode to his greatness?”

I flinch away from the judgment in Jerry’s expression.

“Hey, look, I didn’t mean to sound so tough. I know he’s sick, and you love him, hell, we all do. Everyone loves Milo. And they should. Even my dad never stopped being his friend, even though they couldn’t work together, but listen, if you’re going to write a book you have to hear it all, not just what makes you feel good. And now I’m treating you like a child. Your dad, rest his soul, would probably kick me in the keister.”

I glance at my dad’s watch on my wrist with its big, friendly numbers that he never had to squint at, even when he wasn’t wearing his glasses. “He’d probably agree.”

“So, you want to hear my theory, or what?”

“That depends. You going to fix me a drink after all?”

“Now you’re talking, toots.”

At this I laugh. “Toots? Really?”

“I was watching some old movies and maybe the lingo is in my head. Your call made me feel nostalgic. Some of Dad’s Hollywood stuff wasn’t so bad, really. He just couldn’t take it out there, the way they acted like songwriters—the songs themselves—were nothing.”

“Grampa didn’t like it there, either, I remember. I think he only went once, and didn’t even finish the movie.”

“Well, and he had that sick sister. That didn’t make it any easier. If they had to hurry back for a problem, can you imagine? Days on a train.” Jerry walked back with the drink. “Cheers to the bygone days of Allen-Short.”

I raise my glass again. “Tell me what you remember, then. Tell me what you think.”

Jerry takes a long pull of his drink and plunks it down. “Okay. I’m a rambler, so bear with me.

“After
The High Hat
, my God, were they flying. I was only a pipsqueak then, but I remember my father coming in late from these parties where he was schmoozing all the famous people. I remember moving uptown, and crying because I was going to miss my friends down the block. My mother used to tell me all the time how my father would twirl through the door, right through the door like frigging Balanchine, grab her by the waist and spin her around to music only in his head. But then Milo only wanted to produce other shows, instead of writing their own, and as you well know he was pretty damn good at sniffing out a hit. Somehow he just knew, as the great ones always do. Anyway, as I got older, I saw my dad around home more and more, but it was like he grew into the piano. He was sitting there when I left for school, and sitting there when I got home, his ashtray overflowing and a bottle beside him growing more and more empty. The angle of the sun when I got home used to light up those bottles and for a while I thought it was pretty, because I didn’t really get what was happening.

“So, now I’ve never told this story before, so listen up. Get your notebook back out. I was, what, sixteen years old, I guess, when I told the teacher I had a headache and left school early. I was always a rotten student. My mom was out shopping, and the other kids were still at school. And I come in the door, and without even really noticing, I was whistling ‘Love Me, I Guess.’ You know it, obviously. That song had legs; people kept recording it for years. My dad hollered at me. I couldn’t believe it. My dad was nothing like a yeller, ever. But he hollered at me to ‘quit whistling that goddamn tune’ and said ‘that goddamn Short cut me loose and let me drift and it’s all his fault.’

“I was scared, I tell you. I froze right in the middle of the room. He hadn’t shaved, and he smelled bad. I don’t think he’d bathed in a long time. He was so puffy, too, and looked sorta yellow. Now I know it was his liver giving out, but I didn’t understand then. I’d never heard him talk bad about Milo before, so that made me stick around, instead of running back out the door or hiding in my room. So then he tells me, ‘It was all because of that broad. She ruined Milo and ruined everything. She made him nuts and ruined him and that ruined me. Look how ruined I am!’ He banged the keyboard then with his left hand, and these deep, booming clashing notes came out, and seemed to startle him as much as me. It was like he suddenly remembered who exactly I was, who he was talking to. He shook his head, real slow, and started plinking out notes like he did all day, every day, all the time, looking for a song that would never come.”

I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. “Then what?”

“Nothing what. I scooted away to my room, and put on an Elvis record and tried to pretend I hadn’t heard a thing. Two weeks later he was dead.”

“I’m sorry.”

“That was years ago, of course, but thank you.”

“I wonder who that could have been? The ‘broad’?” The old-fashioned word feels strange in my mouth. Grampa Milo always said Grandma Bee was his first and only love. It was family legend, affirmed at every anniversary, every time someone else got married, anytime weddings came up in conversation, for that matter.

“That I don’t know. But you’re literally writing the book, so I hope you can figure it out. I’ve always wondered, all these years.”

“Why didn’t you ask him, ever? My grandpa, I mean.”

“Well, I was a kid, wasn’t I? I was just some kid and I wasn’t about to go grill the famous impresario about why he’d let some broad ruin his writing and drive my dad to his early death. Then I got older and I still wondered, sure, but what did it matter then? My dad was gone, and honestly, he picked up his own bottles.” Jerry waggles his drink and the dregs slosh. “Same as I do my glasses.”