Til the Real Thing Comes Along (38 page)

“Welcome back, honeybunch,” Patsy told her.

Stanley called her late in the day to say that Patsy was offering her the job of head writer. The pay was substantial. The
work would be killing. But she would handle it. R.J. remembered a time when she went with Dinah to see a play. They had seats
close to the back of the theater, and
R.J., who had recently suspected that she was becoming a little nearsighted, noticed that all the actors looked blurry to
her. Dinah was wearing a pair of glasses and R.J., just out of curiosity, had reached over and removed them from Dinah’s face,
put them on her own, and looked at the stage, which suddenly moved into sharp focus. Now, in one day, here she was—employed,
and mad about a man. Funny how the world looked better to her. In much sharper focus.

Working draft: possible opening dialogue for Patsy and Freddy Reunion show.

FREDDY

Well, darlin’. Here we are. Together again at last. America’s sweethearts. And I for one would like to say right out in front
of everybody that I’m thrilled to be back here with my baby, because frankly, honey, when you had your own show, I was worried
about you. I mean, without ol’ Freddy and that special way I have of deliverin’ them straight lines, to tell you the truth,
sweet thing, you were dyin’ on the vine.

PATSY

I knew you’d come crawlin’ back.

FREDDY

And I am sure that the whole country is out there lookin’ in, happy that Patsy and Freddy are back together. Provin’ one thing.

PATSY

That they know a good joke when they see one?

FREDDY

That you and me belong together, Pats. That we’re America’s favorite couple. Why, when I walk down
the street with you, no matter where we are, I always hear someone sayin’, “My God, would you get a look at the two of
them,”

PATSY

Honey, I hear people say that when I walk down the street
alone.

FREDDY

Boy, you are tough. I don’t get it. Why would a pretty little gal like you think she has to be tough?

PATSY

Oh, I guess on accounta I think the world is a pretty tough place. There’s war and bombs and homicides, not to mention the
worst of it. Eighteen-year-old girls.

FREDDY

Ahh, sugar. I told you I’m through philanderin’. Are you still bein’ hard on that gal?

PATSY

It ain’t
my
bein’ hard on her that we’re worried about.

(Forget it
…
network censor will cancel taping if this is even in the first draft.)

I
t was as if neither of them had ever had a romance before. As if they had invented the idea. Every time they were together,
hope raced through R.J. Hope she had been certain she no longer had. In spite of her new job with Patsy and Freddy and all
her responsibilities with Jeffie, and Manuela’s absence, and David’s demanding schedule, every day held the charged excitement
that David compared to Christmas morning.

“I’ll have to take your word for it—Chanuka was never that exciting for me,” R.J. said.

Sometimes they would send sweet love notes back and forth between their offices. And even when she came home after what could
sometimes be a fourteen-hour workday, he would cook a wonderful meal for her at her house or his apartment. They spent many
Sundays picnicking at the beach with JefiBe, and came exhausted back to R.J.’s to make barbecued burgers in the backyard.
David took Jeffie, to play golf at his dub, and Jeffie took David to play Donkey Kong and Pole Position at the arcade, and
one Sunday they all went soaring in gliders near the desert And one afternoon, David took Jeffie to the Planes of Fame Museum
at Chino airport. Dear God, R.J. prayed, please don’t let all the goodness just be part of love’s first blush. Don’t let it
go away or turn bad, the way the others did.

She tried to get herself to eqioy each day ami not worry.
And when he stops seeing you because he’s marrying the latest twenty-two-year-old debittante--Dinah’s
words were never
far from her mind. Sometimes she would look in the mirror at a few more way hairs or another line that appeared under one
of her eyes, and have to look away because the fear would start to rise that something could happen to take David away from
her. As if he’d turn to her and say, “You’re
how
old? Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t hear that part. I’ve got to be going now.”

Sometimes the difference between their ages was the subject that could send them into gales of laughter. One night he came
over and was telling her about a meeting he’d had that day with a man who worked for the company. The man’s name was Bob Smith.

“Was Howdy there too?” she asked, joking.

“Pardon?”

“Howdy Doody. Buffalo Bob Smith and Howdy Doody,” she said.

He looked at her blankly. He had no idea in the world who Howdy Doody was.

“Who is he?”

“Never mind.”

“Who
is
he?” he asked, coming closer, about to pounce and tickle her into telling.

“Never,” she squealed, laughing.

“Who?” He held her close and chewed on her neck.

“He’s a guy I used to know who had red hair and freckles just like you, but it’s okay—I like you better.”

“Oldies but goodies,” he said one day when they were on their way to the beach and he was turning the radio dial. “Not unlike
yourself, my love.”

Frankie Valli singing, “You’re just too good to be true, can’t take my eyes off of you.”

“I was getting married that year.”

“I wasn’t even shaving yet”

“Many a tear has to fall, but it’s all in the game.”

“Ooh, this is old. I had my first kiss,” R.J. said, remembering.

“I’m only sorry it wasn’t from me,” David said, “but I was busy learning to tie my shoes.”

“No!” she squealed.

“Okay, so I’ll admit I was a little slow for my age.”

“Isn’t it amazing that I saw your mother before you did?” she asked. “I mean on the screen, before you were even born. She
was so beautiful.”

“Lily,” he said. “I still dream about her sometimes. I’m not sure if it’s because I remember her or because I’ve seen her
movies so often over the years.”

“I loved
Woman on the Run.”

“That used to be my favorite,” he said, “but some of the others are even better.” Then he scowled. “I’ve been trying to get
them together. Make a reel of them, and for various reasons I haven’t been able to. Goddamned movie studios these days change
executives so often, by the time I get a guy to dear it, he’s out.”

They both laughed.

“Doesn’t it bother you that every time you go to the polls to vote, I do, too, and my vote cancels yours out?” she asked him
one night. It worried her a lot. “I mean, our ideas about things are so different. And people break up over ideas.”

“Nah, they break up over money and sex,” he said, a teasing glint in his eye. “When it comes to those, we’re doing just fine.”

She laughed.

“Besides,” he added, “I think the fact that your politics need some work will be a great challenge to my gifts as an educator.”
He grinned.

“There is no way you are changing
my
mind or my politics,” she said.

“How about this way?” he asked, pulling her dose and Chomping on her ear until she shrieked.

“David!”

“Admit that you voted for Nixon,” he teased.

“Never,” she laughed, jumping out of bed. He got up and chased after her. “No.”

Finally they collapsed together on the living room floor.

One night after he’d made dinner for her at his apartment and then made love to her in front of the fireplace, she told him:
“You know, when you grow up on Sandra Dee, no matter what happens in your life to tell you different, and no matter how often
you tell your friends you think love doesn’t exist, and no matter how often you read
The Cinderella Complex,
somewhere in the back of your mind and heart you always believe a love like this will come along. And when you’re thirty-two,
you live on stories about women who met the man of their dreams at thirty-five.
And when you’re thirty-five, you weep over articles about women who finally found a soulmate at forty,”

“And when you’re an over-the-hill old bag of nearly thirty-eight?” David asked, nuzzling her cheek.

“You meet David and say, ‘Sandra Dee, eat your heart out,’” she said. Then she looked at him. Sometimes his beautiful face
was so filled with unabashed appreciation for her, it made her want to throw her arms around his neck and say, “Let’s freeze
time. Let’s never lose these feelings. Never let the disappointments make us bitter, or the sameness make us bored. We have
to always remember the way we feel now—which is lonesome when the other one leaves the room.”

It thrilled her when he laughed at her dumb jokes and her stories about her childhood, and the self-jabbing remarks she made
about how if they stayed together he’d soon be wheeling her into the sun at the old folks’ home. And he loved to see her shake
her head in amazement when he told her the stories about his own childhood. The tragic death of Lily, and the way he ran away
after her death, and the years he spent traveling all over the world with his father. He had never once yet invited her to
meet his father. And it wasn’t because Rand Malcolm wasn’t around. Many nights when she had to work, or had the instinct that
she and Jeffie needed a night alone, David would say, “I’ll miss you, but I’ll get a bite at the club with Dad.”

One weekend Jeffie asked if he could spend the night at Matt Wallace’s. R.J. said yes, and after she told David, he showed
up with an overnight bag.

“Why should Jeffie be the only one who gets to stay overnight with a friend?”

R.J. threw her arms around him. It was their first chance to linger in bed since their trip to Big Sur.

In the morning she awakened wrapped in his arms.

“You stay right there while I get the paper,” David said.

The minute he was out of the room R.J. rushed into the bathroom, brushed her teeth, brushed her hair, and slapped on a little
blusher. By the time she got back to the bedroom, David was reclining there engrossed in an article in the paper. She opened
the
Calendar
section, turned a page, and heard him say, half to himself, half-aloud: “How
about this?” When she looked over his shoulder she saw a picture of a handsome older man.
RAINBOW PAPER CHIEF RAND MALCOLM NOT RUN-OF-THE-MILL GUY.
Every now and then David would chuckle over something he read.

R.J. read along with him. She knew very little about his father. Just the gossipy things people had said about him. Now she
read his irascible point of view about politics and social issues and shook her head. My God. Everything Rand Malcolm believed
was the opposite of everything she believed, had been brought up to believe. Knew was right. He loathed environmentalists.
He thought the ERA was unimportant. He believed gun control, a cause to which Jeffie had donated part of his allowance every
week since Arthur’s death, was “a stupid little issue.” R.J. was aghast. She was about to say something when the phone rang.
She answered it.

“Don’t read this morning’s paper,” said a voice. It was Dinah.

“Too late,” R.J. told her.

“Didn’t I tell you? If that man finds out about you, it’s going to be—”

“Dinah,” R.J. said, trying to sound jovial, “David’s here and we’re about to have—”

“Sex?” Dinah asked. “Sorry.”

“Breakfast,” R.J. said, “but I accept your apology.”

“Hi, Dinah,” David said to the air, still reading the article as R.J. hung up. “What’d she say?” he asked.

“Based on her reading of the article, that I’m not the first on your father’s list of women best suited for you.”

“True,” he said, not looking up.

She stood there and looked at his intense, beautiful face as he read.

“And what about Pop Rabinowitz?” he asked. “If he were still around, would he and Rifke be bragging to the family about your
finding me? A Republican and a goy?”

She smiled and moved close to him on the bed. Her bed. It was fun to have him there.

“Absolutely not,” she confessed. “They would have…” Francie and Avery. It had been a long time since she’d thought about them,
but now they stood hand in hand in her mind’s eye, and the memory of the hysteria that surrounded their marriage so long ago
did too. “They would have been very upset,” she told him.

“I’ll make breakfast,” he said.

While he was in the kitchen cooking, she reread the entire article. This can’t work, she thought. We’re from two different
planets and—She interrupted her own thought. Dr. Peale, she thought, Dr. Peale. In spite of all the negatives… Dr. Peale.

The night Manuela came back they all had a special celebration. Manuela made a big home-cooked late supper for them, because
R.J. didn’t get home from work until nearly ten. Later, when Jeffie went off to sleep and R.J. and David sat outside hand
in hand looking at the lights of the Valley, she said to him: “Even if you wake up one day and ask yourself
What am I doing with that old bag?—
these have been the best months of my life.”

And David said, “Even if
you
wake up and say
How am I going to get rid of this kid?
—me too.” And they kissed. David stood to go, and R.J. put her hand on his sleeve.

It was their policy for him not to spend the night when Jeffie was at home. Not to have Jeffie find him there in the morning.
Too confusing for the boy, they both agreed. Now R.J. wished they’d never made that policy. She needed to have him next to
her all night. To have him tell her how much he cared. The word
love
had never been spoken. As if they both knew that saying it had the power to change everything. Make it too serious. Serious
could hurt.

He ruffled her hair and was gone. R.J. sat watching the lights of the Valley for a little while longer, then stood, and on
her way to her room she stopped to peek in at Jeffie.

“I like him, Mom,” Jeffie said, not asleep after all.