Cheat and Charmer (69 page)

She decides to check. Putting on her bathrobe and her slippers, she quietly eases her way down the back stairs. It is still deep darkness, and she can see stars. She opens the creaking wooden gate that separates the front of the house from the back and moves into the driveway.

The garage door is open. No sign of the Caddy.

Now, where is he? she wonders again.

It isn’t like him not to be back by now, and she can’t go back to sleep. So, wrapping the bathrobe tightly around her fifty-six-year-old frame, she goes out to the mailbox and leans down to pick up the
Los Angeles Times
, wrapped in wet plastic. Then she goes back to the house. She might as well wait up for him.

The water is on the boil, the kettle just beginning to whistle. She’s turning toward the sports section and is about to light the first Camel of the day when the phone rings.

Oh, these movie people, she says to herself as she reaches for the receiver. Sooner or later, they always gets into trouble.

E
verything was in turmoil at the Laskers’. Jake, home from the hospital the day before, was propped up in bed against a backrest and joyously ordering everyone around. Gussie and Dinah kept running up and down the stairs, nearly colliding with each other as they outdid themselves carrying a steady load of trays to the patient, who was permitted only toast and weak tea or boiled chicken and wedges of iceberg lettuce or sliced melon and melba toast—and nothing else. Every few minutes, either the phone rang or the doorbell chimed, with the children doing their share of escorting the never-ending parade of visitors, as well as huge bouquets, telegrams, and baskets of fruit, upstairs to their parents’ bedroom.

Not only had Jake had a heart attack but he’d broken two ribs and was in great pain, for which he was taking a strong narcotic that made him giddy with euphoria. Peter, Lorna, and Coco brought friends, who asked him to pull up his pajama top and display the truly magnificent purple and green bruise that, even after two weeks, was still the size of an eighteen-inch pizza. It was dramatic evidence that his big belly, into which the steering wheel had slammed when the Cadillac crashed into an old juniper tree on the edge of the Palisades polo grounds, had saved his life. Grown-up visitors sat across from Jake on Dinah’s bed and listened in wonder to the tale of his miraculous brush with death. They too were shown the bruise, and regaled with his quest in the night for the perfect pastrami sandwich, the ecstatic fulfillment of that goal, the blissful start for home, and then the plunge into pain and oblivion. He had awakened, he said, in an oxygen tent at Cedars, with the terrible feeling that he was still alive, that the car
had been wrecked beyond salvation, and that he would have to go on with his show.

At five-thirty, after the visitors had left, Jake’s cardiologist, Justin Brody, showed up to check on his patient’s progress. Dinah told Gussie, Dorshka, and Veevi, who were present, to stay while the doctor, who had become very fond of his new patient, listened to his heart, and they paid close attention as he repeated what he’d said in the hospital, namely, that Jake had almost died, that the scarring at the back of his left ventricle, though minor at this point, would be permanent, that he had been abusing his health with the cumulative effects of overwork, lack of sleep, and suicidal eating habits, that if his broken ribs had pierced his lungs or oxygen-deprived heart he would have bled to death within seconds.

“Well, Uncle J.,” Veevi purred. “No more midnight snacks for you!”

“I done told you, Mr. Lasker, that you was liable to get yourself killed,” said Gussie.

“You damn f-f-f-fool! You’re lucky to be alive!” Dinah said, handing the doctor a cup of coffee and a large slice of the chocolate cake Dorshka had brought over and that Jake now longingly followed with his eyes. “You know, dear,” Dinah said, grinning broadly, “I kept thinking night after night, when you went out on those drives, that you must be having an affair. Little did I know you were going down on a pastrami sandwich!”

The doctor threw his head back and laughed so hard that he began choking on his cake. While Dorshka pounded his back, Dinah ran to the bathroom for a glass of water. “Justy, dear, are you all right?” she said.

The doctor loosened his tie. “You guys better take out laugh insurance in case someone dies in your house,” he answered, daubing his eyes with his handkerchief. “Wait till I tell my nurses what you said.”

“Tell me, Justy. When can I have sex again?” Jake asked, looking mischievously at Dinah and pointedly ignoring Veevi. “And, more important, will it kill me?”

Everyone laughed, including Veevi, who, Jake noted, was smiling at the tall, dapper physician in her loveliest, most beguiling way.

“Actually,” he began, “the research that’s been done on this very topic shows that one act of sexual intercourse with a familiar partner in a longstanding relationship—your wife, for instance—is the equivalent of running around a city block and is not only
not
harmful but very good for the heart.”

“Oh, great,” said Dinah. “The old d-d-d-donkey ride.”

“But,” he added, giggling in a most unscientific way, “with anyone new, or if you engage in any unusual practices—you know, like ‘going down on a pastrami sandwich’ ”—he was laughing uncontrollably again—“you’d better call me first.”

“What’re you going to say?” quipped Jake. “ ‘Okay, but hold the mustard’?”

Justin Brody winked at him. “I’m a very discreet guy, Jake. And I want you alive for the opening of that show. Do me a favor. Stay away from Jewish food for a while—say, six months. Sex—well, give that a couple of weeks, and then do whatever comes naturally. Then come into the office. I’ll check you out, and if everything’s fine and you’ve lost weight and you’re exercising regularly, then once in a while you can go to the deli.”

“But I’m going to New York!” said Jake. “That’s like sentencing me to death row. The theater’s five minutes from the Stage Delicatessen!”

Dorshka, glad of the change in subject, asked why he was going to New York, and Jake and Dinah excitedly took turns explaining that
My Grandfather’s Saloon
was going full steam ahead—rehearsals were scheduled for the summer, out-of-town tryouts in the early fall, and then the opening, in November, at the Breckinridge Theater. The minute Justy Brody gave the word, Jake would fly East, where Dinah and the kids were going to join him for the summer.

“Well, bravo and well done, and all that,” Veevi said. “You must be pleased.” Only Jake could hear the edge in her words.

“If you behave yourself,” said the doctor, accepting a second piece of cake, “and start taking walks and stop eating like a kamikaze pilot, you can leave in six weeks. Until then, no work at all, strict bed rest, and no aggravation.”

“Did you hear that?” said Dinah sharply.

“Hear it?” Jake said. “I’ve been dying for a little heart attack for the last ten years. First real rest I’ve had in ages.”

“Joking aside, Jake,” said Dr. Brody, coming up to the bedside and clasping Jake’s hand and shoulder. “You’re forty-three, and you’ve had your first heart attack. Make it your last. There are easier ways to go on vacation.”

“When you’re in love, the whole world’s Jewish,” Jake sang out in a codeine-induced non sequitur, followed by a loving grin at the doctor.

“You got yourself a real handful here, Dinah,” the doctor said, leaning over and kissing Jake on the forehead.

Dr. Brody turned, noticed Veevi looking at him with interest, brushed cake crumbs from his shirtfront, and went downstairs, followed by Dorshka, Dinah, and Gussie. Dinah consulted with him about the days ahead; Gussie was given strict orders to wrap up all the pies and cakes people had brought over and take them home with her for her church socials; Dorshka went to round up the children for dinner.

Upstairs, Jake and Veevi found themselves alone. His face radiant with benevolence, his hand on his chest by his ribs, he looked at her in silence as the warm spring air blew in through the windows.

“Well, Uncle J.,” she said, amused, scornful, her voice full of the memories and assumptions of recent months. “I know I’ve had a certain effect on various characters, but I’ve never killed anyone before!”

“Seems I’m still alive, actually. So I wouldn’t give yourself too much credit yet.” He frowned. “How are you, Vee?”

“Fine.”

He winced, remembering their last exchange.

“Did Dinah tell you about New York? I mean, about our going there for the summer?”

“No. She’s been too busy playing Florence Nightingale.”

“Don’t, Vee. She’s been an angel. Look—”

“Don’t say it. Not necessary.”

“Anyway, the deal’s set.”

“That’s hardly surprising. You always get what you want, don’t you? Isn’t that ‘the iron law’ around here?”

“I’m a comedy guy, Vee. Always will be.”

“And a pastrami-sandwich guy, too.”

“Look,” he said. “Nothing’s going to change. You still have your job, if you want it. You’re still part of this family. That’s forever.”

“Oh, shut up, Jake,” she said with a light laugh. “You always think everything has to be spelled out. It doesn’t. There’s nothing drearier than an explanation.”

He took a deep breath and made a face. The codeine was wearing off. She looked so bitterly intelligent, so determined not to be a bore, that he didn’t want it to be over. But the ribs on his left side were throbbing, and he couldn’t get comfortable, and all he wanted was to be free of pain.

“Listen, honey, could you just get me a glass of water so I can take an Empirin and codeine?”

“Natch.” She got up, moved to the bedside with her usual quick grace,
and poured him a glass of water. He could smell her perfume and remembered her body. But he did not feel desire, and this both surprised and disconcerted him.

As he swallowed the pill, she stood there, her arms folded, looking down at him. For a moment, he half considered reaching out and touching her arm. “I’m sorry, baby,” he said. “It was killing me.”

“Evidently.”

He drew the covers up to his nose, aware that he looked silly but wanting Veevi to see him completely as himself. He wanted her to find him lovable and endearing, but not to be in love with him (if indeed she ever had been, which he now doubted). “You’re brave, kiddo,” he said.

“I am? What makes you say that?”

“No explanations, remember?”

“Agreed.”

As she stood looking at him, he closed his eyes and half dozed, waiting for the lifting tide of relief, musing on how she had peed on Peter, how Peter, Dinah had told him, had felt suffocated under her body in that bed. Damn it, he did love her, he told himself. Loved her for just that—for betraying all that gargantuan hunger she otherwise pretended not to have. She was reckless and even vicious, but, like a rattler curled up along the desert road, she struck only when she had to, and she fought, in her own way, for herself. Like him, she wanted everything from life, and she hated losing what she’d had. Opening his eyes, he held out his hand and she took it. “You’re one helluva dame,” he said.

“I think you’re looped on this stuff,” she said, holding up the vial of pills.

Again, he dozed. Nothing need be said. They were in-laws again, no more and no less.

She watched him for a while and then went back to her armchair, where she settled herself and began thumbing through
Holiday
magazine.

Dinah returned fifteen minutes later and whispered to her sister, “Is he asleep?”

Veevi nodded.

“Let’s go downstairs,” Dinah suggested, “and have a drink.”

“Don’t go!” Jake cried out. “Stay here! I love falling asleep with you girls around me. Go ahead and talk. I love it. I love falling asleep to the sound of your voices.”

“Shh. Go to sleep,” Dinah said. “We’ll st-st-st-stay.”

He drifted off to the sound of their whispers and the rustling of pages. He couldn’t know that Veevi was passing the
Holiday
over to Dinah, and pointing out to her an article about writers who regularly went to Klosters to ski during the winter. There was a photograph of Michael Albrecht; his fiancée, the young actress Odile Boisvert; the producer Willie Weil with Lady Fiona Berkeley; the director Hunt Crandell and his wife, Felicity; the author Ben Knight with his wife, Sylvia; and assorted other chic and attractive people Veevi knew. They were all gathered around a pot of fondue, at a big wooden trestle table, eating and talking.

As Jake’s chest rose and fell, and he lapsed into mighty snores, Veevi whispered stories about each one, and Dinah, who had come upstairs intending to tell her sister how helpful she had been and how she couldn’t have gotten through the past few weeks without her, understood that her words would have meant nothing, and that for Veevi, being here in Dinah’s house, living in Los Angeles, and helping out weren’t really life at all.