Ham (3 page)

On the other side of the altar sat Elizabeth Taylor. She was wearing an ensemble that made me think she'd looked in her closet that morning and said, “What shall I wear? . . . Everything!” But she was still Liz Taylor and somehow it worked on her, down to the veiled black tulled and feathered hat, set slightly askew on her head.

Or was she tilting to one side?

I'd also met Elizabeth on many occasions since the eighties and I truly adored and admired her as an actor, humanitarian, and one of the great purveyors of nasty, nasty dirty jokes. But she was clearly exhausted from the trauma of the shoe ordeal, and when the priest requested we lower our heads in prayer, she did. And she never came back up.

She. Never. Came. Back. Up.

She remained slumped, ever leaning to the left, threatening to topple onto the floor at any moment. Even unconscious, she created a sense of mystic tension—like when you lean too far back on the hind legs of a chair and there is that split second when you don't know if you're going to fall backward or forward. It was like she, and we, were living there for thirty minutes.

Between Michael's Planet and Liz's teetering, it was impossible to fully engage in the ceremony.

While we, mercifully, did not have to rise and sit numerous times like at some Catholic services, which would have been impossible for a third of the congregation and annoying to the rest, we were required to pray frequently. And every time—
every
time—Jane Russell heard the words “Please bow your heads in prayer,” she viewed it as an opportunity to reapply her lipstick. Stuffed in her slot, glued shoulder to shoulder between me and Donald Trump, the only movable part of her body was her arms from the elbows down. Like a crab, she plucked the lipstick and mirror from her bag and, unable to raise her upper arms, hunched over and pooched her lips toward the ruby-red stuff while the priest gave thanks to God. I, personally, could not have been more grateful. After the fifth or sixth prayer, Jane's lips could have served as a location device should it have been necessary to pinpoint the wedding from outer space.

Finally the big moment arrived and it was time for the vows:
Do you take this man? Do you take this woman? Do you promise to love, honor, and cherish? May I have the rings?

Nothing.

Michael was still listening to the music and comedy show in his head and Elizabeth was out cold. Marissa finally nudged Elizabeth, who woke with a start and a grunt. “Whaaa?” The bridesmaids gestured that it was time for the rings and Elizabeth, who was apparently the ring bearess, rose to the occasion. Or at least to an upright sitting position. She hefted her purse from beneath her chair and began to dig through it while we waited. She pulled out tissues, a compact, a prescription bottle, a Milky Way.

Finally, she found the small black velvet box and went to open it but couldn't quite figure out how. She pulled and pried with no success.

“Michaaaaaael!,” she stage whispered in a coarse, breathy voice, as if she could go unnoticed and wasn't Elizabeth Taylor calling for Michael Jackson at Liza Minnelli's wedding in front of eight hundred and fifty people. “Michael, help me!”

Michael's eyes opened for the first time since he'd sat down and, Pavlovianly, he responded to the voice of his best-friend-in-need. Seeing that Liz was at her wits' end in her rigorous struggle with the tiny box, he rose and walked past the groom and bride, across the altar, to assist her.

No luck. Clearly this was not the kind of thing that either of these people did in their regular lives, where surely there must be servants more expert in such matters, because neither of them could figure out how to open a goddamn ring box.

The crowd fell silent, thunder-struck. We wondered if this was what it was like
all
the time. Liza caught my eye and jerked her head in the direction of the commotion as if beckoning me to get up and help, and a honk of a laugh jumped from my throat before I could catch it, echoing in the hush. Danny hit me on the arm and Liza nearly burst out laughing herself. Finally, someone else stepped in, I don't recall who—Tito, Guido, it could have been anyone. Shirley MacLaine. LL Cool J. How many megastars does it take to open a ring box?

At last, the rings were exchanged, Liza and the groom did their I do's, and the deed was done.

Almost.

Liza took his hands in hers, gazed into his beady eyes, and declared, “You don't ever have to live life without me.” She could have added, “. . . and I will soon wish you dead, so that will work out just fine,” but it would be another month before she would fully come to that epiphany.

“Can I kiss you, then?” he responded.

And he went for her like he'd just come off a vegan diet and she was a Quarter Pounder with Cheese. His mouth widened and his swirling tongue was visible to the back pew as he chewed and chomped. I wondered if it was his first kiss, like when you're twelve years old and you're playing spin the bottle and you try to reenact what you've seen on TV.

It was grotesque. And Liza knew it.

She pulled back, and not wanting to humiliate her newest husband, smiled coyly at the crowd as if to say, “Isn't he . . . committed?”

The priest pronounced them husband and wife, and the audience erupted in an ovation reminiscent of, well . . . a Liza Minnelli concert. Having spent a life on the stage as the recipient of thousands of ovations, and, still trying to recover from the awkward mauling, Liza did what she knew to do to save the day. She grabbed the arm of her husband and costar and together they nodded at the crowd in gracious appreciation. House left—house right—then center. The applause crescendoed as they headed up the aisle. When she passed me, seemingly gleaming, our eyes locked and then she crossed hers, saying everything we both knew.

Jane Russell had just applied her nineteenth layer of lipstick, which was now smeared beyond the margin of her mouth and dotted the end of her nose. She turned to me and said, in her gruff, smoker's voice, “That's show business, kid.”

And it was.

The reception was held at the Regent Wall Street Hotel and the newlyweds entered the ballroom in a spotlight as ex-Queen rocker Brian May sang “We Are The Champions.” Liza wore a sumptuous red sequined miniskirt, and the Man Whose Name Shall Go Unmentioned wore sunglasses. At his wedding reception.

He wore sunglasses at his wedding reception.

The party went on until very late. Carol Channing spent much of the evening on the dance floor boogie-oogie-oogie-ing with Snoop Dogg. By this time anything could've happened. I wouldn't have been surprised if they'd announced their engagement.

The Man Whose Name Shall Go Unmentioned and Liza received visitors and congratulations at their center table in front of the thirty-piece orchestra, as the music continued: the Doobie Brothers, Donny Osmond, Natalie Cole, me. The Man Whose Name Shall Go Unmentioned told me that they'd decided to adopt four children as soon as they got back from London, finished a satellite interview with Larry King, and wrapped up redecorating Liza's apartment. Liza leaned behind him out of his view and, eyes wide, shook her head, “nooooooo!” And then Gloria Gaynor joined the orchestra and belted out “I Will Survive.” Coincidence? I thought not.

Upon leaving the reception, we were all given heart-shaped boxes of chocolates with “Liza & The Man Whose Name Shall Go Unmentioned” printed on top, and cookies with a portrait of the newlyweds painted in icing. I tossed out the box of chocolates and I ate the cookie, beginning with his head.

•  •  •

It was evident in the following months that the marriage wouldn't last, and over the next year it flared and sputtered, making the sinking of the
Titanic
look like a round of Milton Bradley's Battleship. When the last Shirley Temple doll had been wrapped in tissue paper, boxed, and sent to cold storage, Liza emerged somehow better than before. And funnier. And we were even closer, once again bonded through our mutual teeth-gritting drive and the ability to shuffle off disappointment and put on a new show—both the literal and figurative kind. Always. No matter what.

One night in the aftermath, when our normal was restored and we were propped up on her king-size bed—which always seemed bigger than king-size, probably due to the enormous amount of stuff that was always present: legal pad lists, DVDs, CDs, a boom box, faxes, Marlboro Lights, several working and nonworking lighters, a dozen working and nonworking pens and highlighters, an ashtray, three pairs of glasses, a mug of iced coffee, a cell phone, a box of tissues, a tray of dishes from dinner, four TV remotes, seventeen pillows, and a dog—Liza and I discussed the difference between regrets and mistakes. Neither of us had any regrets, really. Whatever got us here got us here. But we'd both made plenty of mistakes. God knows she'd been there through mine. And what mattered, we said, was that those mistakes be acknowledged, so as not to be repeated.

Suddenly, Liza smooshed a heap of the bed stuff to one side and asked me to sit on my haunches and face her, eye to eye. Then she made me raise my right hand and take an oath that if she should ever again fall for anyone remotely like the Man Whose Name Shall Go Unmentioned, that I would have her retested for encephalitis, lock her up with no Charles Aznavour records, bind her with a Halston scarf, and slap her until she regained her senses.

That's what friends are for.

When I was three, I choked on an Oscar Meyer wiener and lost consciousness, turned blue, and was ambulanced to the hospital, where I apparently flatlined and then came back from the dead, according to my Memo, who swore that the doctor told her as such but kept it from my mother.

At the very least, oxygen did not get to my brain for many minutes. I overheard the doctor say something to my parents about being lucky I wasn't a vegetable. I wondered what kind—cauliflower, string bean, yam? But I got the idea when, for the next year, appointments were scrupulously scheduled and my hair was shaved into a burr so electrodes could be glued to my scalp to check for brain damage. I sat on the edge of a padded examination table and watched electronic waves jiggle and jaggle on the tiny black-and-white monitor, hoping I wasn't retarded. For years, I wondered how I might have been different were it not for my tragic wiener incident: smarter maybe, quicker. Normal.

Studying basic math in first grade, I couldn't grasp the simple concept of even and odd numbers. For everyone else it was a breeze, ho-hummingly spouting the answers to Mrs. Ellis's oral pop quiz:

“Dee Dee, five?”

“Odd!” Dee Dee chimed.

“Teri, twelve?”

“Even.”

“Chris, seven?”

Chris rolled his eyes. “Odd.”

“Sam, three?”

I sat frozen.

“Sam, three?”

Clearly this was rudimentary and I could sense judgment at my hesitation. But what made some numbers “odd”? What did they do to suffer such a label? Weren't they just numbers like all the others? I fought my anxiety and pretended that I could see the oddness in what seemed ordinary. But I knew I had a fifty-fifty shot and, thankfully, guessed the right answer.

There would be a lot of guessing for years to come.

I suppose everyone looks back on childhood and remembers feeling odd and bizarre and deviant, misunderstood, and potentially involved in some cosmic galactic mishap that resulted in a baby exchange with a perfectly normal earth-child, who was just as bewildered on some faraway planet.

In truth, I wasn't all that different from the other kids. Except that I wanted to be Jewish and blind and sing like a fat black woman.

And I was “squirrelly.” But I didn't know what that meant yet.

I spent my wonderless years in the small town of Sand Springs, peculiarly named, as there was neither sand nor springs anywhere in the area. But the name “Red Clay Dirty River” doesn't roll off the tongue quite so trippingly. Sand Springs was a blue-collar, union-labeled, staunchly Democratic, religiously conservative burb, where everyone's parents worked at the steel mill or the glass plant or the box plant, and it was generally expected that our generation would, with pride, continue the tradition. It boasted the title “Industrial Capital of the Country”—home to more manufacturing plants per capita than anywhere else in the USA. All the pollution of a big city without a single perk.

I came from the sturdy stuff of American grass roots. My parents, Bill, pronounced “Bee-ill,” and Carolyn, pronounced “Care-lin” (all words in Oklahoma are pronounced with two syllables), both grew up in Cushing, Oklahoma, a town birthed in the oil boom of the 1920s that has been dying a lethargic death ever since.

My grandfather, Ira “Whitey” Harris, whom I called Paw Paw, had an easy bearing and an enviable hairline. He lived in a well-worn pair of overalls and smoked a pipe, toiling at an oil refinery, where he died of a heart attack when he was sixty and I was three. My grandmother, Floy May, whom I called Granny, was just under five feet tall and just under four feet around. She preferred bright red pantsuits, giving the impression, from a toddler's perspective, that a giant tomato was rolling toward you. She kept a picture of a very Caucasian Jesus on her living room wall and her gallstones in a baby food jar that hung from a pink ribbon on the bathroom doorframe. She would touch them, like a mezuzah, when she went in for her “BMs,” which were a favorite and frequent topic of conversation.

When I was left in Granny's care, she often secretly dressed me up in frilly aprons and fluffy house slippers and spouted terrifying tales about my father, all ending with his burning in hell because he used the Lord's name in vain. She would stoop down to me, nose to nose, the glint of her black, rhinestone-dotted, cat's-eye glasses adding a twinkle to her eye, and whisper, “The crows are gonna peck your daddy's eyes out!” I would invariably shriek with horror, which would cause her to let loose a crazy, high-pitched staccato cackle.