Til the Real Thing Comes Along (4 page)

“If it makes you feel any better, just recall if you will that my twins
did
have a father at their bat mitzvah. A father and his bimbo girlfriend, not to mention my ex-mother-in-law, the queen of Shaker
Heights, who told the rabbi behind my back that I was a—”

The door to R.J.’s office was kicked open as if it were a drug bust. It was the way Harry Elfand always entered a room. He
looked at her tear-stained face and the phone in her hand and said, “Ahhh, shit. See what happens when ya hire broads? Insteada
workin’ they sit on the phone all day cryin’. If you didn’t write such good fuckin’ jokes, I’d fire your ass.”

“I think I’d better call you back,” R.J. choked into the phone, and hung up.

“I came in ta tell ya Patsy’s sick today. She won’t be comin’ in for a day or two, so just write whatever you think works
and that’ll do it,” Harry said without looking at her.

“Okay,” R.J. said, and took a Kleenex and blew her nose.

Harry Elfand started out the door; then for some reason he turned back, and this time he did look at R.J.—with the gentlest
look she had ever seen on his fat unshaven face. Harry had been a comedy writer for so many years that he liked to say about
himself, “I wrote jokes for Caesar. And I’m not talkin’ Sid here. I’m talkin’ Julius.” He had enough money so that he only
had to work now for the fun of it.
Joey’s Place
, a situation comedy he’d created, had been on the air for seven years and then sold into syndication for millions of dollars.
Harry loved the fact that everyone in the business knew that. And he also loved the fact that everyone thought of him as a
curmudgeon. But every now and
then, albeit rarely, he’d let some sweetness shine through. Now he spoke in a voice R.J. knew he meant as sympathetic, though
it resembled a bad imitation of Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski.

“Hey. You gonna live through this or what?”

“Sure,” she said, “I’ll live through it.”

“Atta girl,” Elfand said. He started to close the door behind himself as he left, but turned back one last time. “Hey, I don’t
want to put the pressure on,” he added, “but it better be hilarious.” And he was gone.

R.J. sighed, blew her nose again, put a piece of paper in the typewriter, and began to write.

Garden of Eden. Have Patsy dressed, or in this case undressed, as Eve. Marty Feldman is Adam. Adam tells Eve he wants to date
other people. Eve reminds him there are no other people. He is stunned. He realizes that’s probably why the song is called
“Tea for Two.” And why he’s never been in a ménage à trois? (No. Program practices will get you for that one.) Wait! Here’s
an idea. Eve notices that Adam is missing a second rib, which makes her think he has a woman on the side. (Maybe it’s not
too late to go back and get your teaching credentials.)

“Darlin’, when Freddy broke up with me I’d like ta kill myself,” Patsy said. She was lying on the floor, on her left side,
doing leg lifts. Leaning forward so her famous enormous breasts grazed the floor. Her long white-blond mane of hair was pulled
back and caught in a ponytail holder at the top of her head. “Couldn’t leave the house for cryin’. Couldn’t sing a goddamned
note. Now look at me. Shit, I’m beatin’ guys away with a stick. So will you. It probably don’t feel like it now, but I guarantee
you’re gonna be just fine.”

“Thanks, Pats,” R.J. answered.

“Hell, I know lotsa guys. I could set you right up with any one of ’em in no time flat.”

“That’s okay,” R.J. said. Patsy Dugan’s fix-ups. R.J.
shuddered inwardly at the thought. After Patsy’s husband, singing partner, and mentor, Freddy Gaines, walked out on her for
an eighteen-year-old, giving the
National Enquirer
enough fodder for at least half a dozen issues, Patsy bravely went back on the air to do what used to be
Patsy and Freddy’s Good Time Hour
alone. No one thought she could handle it. It was common knowledge that Freddy’s quips and the way that he teased Patsy about
her body, followed by her smart-mouth retorts, were the charm of the show. But Patsy “done fooled ’em all,” as she would say,
grinning when the producers read her the ratings each week. And once the show was on its feet, she was determined to make
a hit of her personal life too. That was harder. She’d been with Freddy Gaines since she was sixteen. Now she was thirty-six
and she didn’t know the first thing about how to behave with a man. And besides… who was going to ask her out? She was the
biggest superstar on television. You didn’t just call a woman like that and say: “Hey. Feel like goin’ out for a pizza?”

Although there were a few men who tried. R.J. had met the latest crop of Patsy’s dates as they hung around the dressing room
at the tapings. Brick, a New Wave musician with a kelly-green streak through his otherwise royal-blue hair. Ricky, a young,
skinny stand-up comic Patsy had met one night at The Comedy Store. Ricky was deadpan and nervous and he was always sweating.

“Isn’t he cute?” Patsy would ask everyone on the set about Ricky. “Can’t we find a spot for him on the show?”

“Adorable,” Harry Elfand would say, smiling a toothy smile at Patsy; then he’d turn to the writers and announce while making
a face,
“kenst brechn,”
which was Yiddish for “I could throw up,” and the writers would try not to laugh so that Patsy wouldn’t know that Harry was
making fun of her and her latest love. Behind her back Harry’s routines about Patsy’s boyfriend the clothing designer of dubious
sexual identity, and her boyfriend the constantly sauced and on-the-decline movie actor, and her boyfriend the lawyer with
Mafia connections, filled the writers’ room with nearly as much raucous laughter as there was cigar smoke. And that was a
lot.

“I’m not going to be ready to meet anyone for a long long time. I just hurt too much,” R.J. told Patsy, not only to avoid
the possibility of Patsy trying to find a man for her,
but because it was true. Her depression didn’t seem to want to go away. She had taken to wearing very large very dark glasses
to work because they covered everything on her face but the red nose she had blown nearly to smithereens during the past weeks.
Exercise classes weren’t helping, and throwing herself into her work wasn’t helping and neither were any of the other prescriptions
for behavior she got from the stack of self-help books she devoured night after night. How to recover from a lost love. But
the lost love wasn’t Michael Rappaport. It was still Arthur, her late husband. Maybe because it had ended so tragically and
they had never had a chance to make everything right.

R.J. and Arthur had been fighting for weeks. She had walked around with a filter of pain over her eyes and ears and heart,
and was certain he was doing the same. No pleasures, not even her son’s smiles and hugs, could lighten the weight of knowing
that the marriage was fighting for its life, and losing. Maybe if she got away for a few days, went to stay with some cousins
in New York. Had a chance to think about everything. There are certain decisions we make which are only historical in retrospect.
Like the decision R.J. had made after she’d packed her suitcase, when she decided that she ought to take Jeffie with her.

“He has lots of cousins there,” she announced to Arthur. “They never get to see him. He’d only have to miss a few days of
school.” She realized that her tone was defensive because she was certain that Arthur would say it was a bad idea. Disagree
with her. The two of them seemed to be on the opposite side of every issue lately. Even what to have for dinner.

“Yes, take him,” Arthur said, never looking up from the work he was doing. “It’s better for me to be home alone this weekend.”

Those words would replay themselves endlessly in her head.
Better for me to be alone.
For months afterward in dreams she saw that moment, except sometimes in the dreams what he said was: “Yes, take him. I’m
going to be murdered this weekend, and I’d rather my son wasn’t there to watch.”

A few days in New York. Every night she had called Arthur. She missed him. Missed the old days when they were secure and smug
about their love for each other. Now the phone calls between them were cold, businesslike, to
pass information, news about their son. Except for that night. Saturday. It was ten
P.M.
in New York. Everyone in her cousin Mimi’s apartment was preparing for sleep. Jeffie was already dreaming away in the guest
room, where R.J. would go as soon as she tried to reach…

“Arthur?” she said.

“Arj, hi.” Something was different in the sound of his voice; the usual coldness was only half there, maybe even less than
half. There was a flutter of hope in her chest. “I tried calling you today,” he said. “No one was—”

“A matinee. I took Jeffie to see
A Chorus Line.
“

“I was cleaning out my desk and found the letter you wrote to me the night Jeffie was born,” he said.

She inhaled, wondering what he would say next, and as she exhaled a quick breath, tears rushed to her eyes.

And? she thought. And?

“Arj, I love you,” he said. “I need you and we can’t go on like this. Whatever it is that’s tearing us apart we’ll fix, we’ll
solve. We have to. I don’t want any other life than the one we had before things started to go bad for us.”

Her tears fell into the little holes on the telephone receiver and she wiped them off, then moved her tongue back and forth
across her upper lip to catch the other drops as they fell.

“Arj?”

“I’m here,” she sniffed.

“The second you get home I want us to sit down, be together, and figure out how we got off the track, and how to get back
on. How to get back where we were.”

“Oh, Arthur, my love,” she said. “Thank God for you. Thank God you’re saying all of this. I’ve been so lonely for you and
for our love… I felt so… deprived. I’ll do anything. I’ll quit working if you want me to stay home.”

Maybe that would save them, she had thought. She knew how much Arthur hated her working. Writing at home had been acceptable.
But taking a full-time job? Out of the question. When she was first offered the job on Patsy’s show, he was furious. Full
time? What about my son? What about my meals? She’d rushed out and found Manuela, and had begged him not to let it become
an issue between them. His acceptance had always been grudging at best. “If it will make us better, I’ll quit,” she’d said
to Arthur that night on the phone from New York. Even
though she didn’t want to choose, she loved him much more than the job.

“Don’t say that, Arj,” he told her in a voice filled with more understanding than she’d ever heard from him. “I know you love
your work. I know how good it makes you feel. You don’t have to quit. We just have to work it out. I think we can. Don’t you?”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “I want to.” Thank God. Thank God. Thank God. RJ.’s cousin Mimi walked into the kitchen, saw RJ.’s tearful
face, pulled a Kleenex from the pocket of her bathrobe, handed it to R.J., and walked out.

“Get some sleep, honey,” Arthur said. “I love you.”

There are certain decisions we make which are only historical in retrospect, R.J. thought again. She had been uncertain that
night as to whether or not to call Arthur. As if maybe her constant calling was a bother to him. That was frequently the way
it felt.

That night the house in Los Angeles was robbed by four young men. Two black and two white. All were armed. Arthur was awakened
by the noise of them kicking in the back door. They took three hundred dollars in cash, two cameras, a watch, and Arthur Misner’s
life.

Certain decisions we make are only historical in retrospect. If she hadn’t decided to take Jeffie, hadn’t honored that last-minute
thought, he might be gone too. She thanked heaven every day for her precious son, who needed her to help him with his homework
and wanted her to cheer for him at Saturday soccer games, and who grinned from ear to ear when she pulled up in her old Mustang
to pick him up at Hebrew school. And she was grateful for how much he reminded her of Arthur. That would have to be enough
for her.

“Well,” Patsy said, sitting up and rolling over onto her left side, her eyes never leaving her own reflection in the rehearsal
hall mirrors. “I’ll keep an eye out for you just in case. But ya better tell me what yer kinky fer.”

“Pardon?”

“I mean what do they have to be? Short? Tall? Young? Old? Jocks?”

“You mean my type?”

“Yeah,” Patsy said, then shook her head at her reflection and thought out loud, “goddamned inner thighs are goin’ fast.”

Now she got up on her hands and knees and was thrusting her bent leg to the side, like a dog at a fire hydrant. R.J. watched
her do a few more knee lifts, then caught sight of herself in the mirror, sitting in the back of the rehearsal hall wearing
the same jeans and black turtleneck she’d worn all through college, a sure sign she wasn’t at her best. Jesus, was she so
needy to be understood that she’d been pouring out her heart to this travesty of womanhood who couldn’t possibly understand?
Or could she? Maybe R.J. was being unfair. Maybe underneath it all she and Patsy really were alike. After all, the real reason
Harry Elfand had hired R.J. to write
The Patsy Dugan Sunshine Hour
was because Patsy wanted at least one writer on the staff who had “a woman’s point of view.” Maybe all women had similar
needs when it came to what they wanted in a man.

“Personally,” Patsy began—the thigh lifts must have been difficult, because her words were accompanied by labored breaths—“all
I care about is if they got great big dicks.”

R.J. watched herself in the rehearsal hall mirror as she picked up her purse next to the folding chair where she was sitting
and then got to her feet.

“Yeah, well… I left the new material over on the table with your stuff, Pats,” she said. “I’ll be in my office if you want
to go over it”

“Thanks, babes,” Patsy said. “Jes remember what my daddy sez. They can kill ya, but they can’t eat ya.” Certain that meant
something obscene, too, R.J. kept walking.

Dinah loved that story when R.J. told it to her on the phone later that evening. R.J. could tell by the way she made her tell
it over again that Dinah was memorizing every detail of it so she could tell the story at parties.