Everybody Loves Somebody (16 page)

She tried moving in a purposeful way, as if she’d stepped out for some ingredient her granny needed for her baking, an egg,
some flour, and was only going to the A&P so hadn’t bothered to put on her coat. Though she wanted to run, she didn’t go faster
than a fast walk, which meant she was going along slowly enough for her mama to catch up before she crossed the street. Her
own mama, who was suddenly there, grabbing her, hugging her, asking, “What we gonna do now, baby? What we gonna do?” Stuck
inside the circle of her mama’s squeezing arms, the Queen of Sheba didn’t even try to think up an answer.

Y
ip.

Yip.

Yip.

This is a tape of Harold Linder. Brilliant young Harold. I want Harold to be the star of my show. Listen:

Yip.

Yip.

His brilliance lies in his uninhibited love of his own voice. It doesn’t matter to him what he says. To speak aloud is everything.
No, not quite everything. To speak aloud in front of an audience is everything. This is my discovery.

Yip. Yadderyipip. Yadderyipiphipippityhiphop.

Yip.

Yip.

Charlie looks forward to a tempting meal. Oh, Charlie. Yip. Oh, Charlie. Yip. Hap. Haphop. Do you like soup, Charlie? Yip.
Soup, Charlie? Yip.

Yip.

Yip.

I found him in Bellevue, where I’d gone to see Mr. Jack Dawes, the leading man in my last production. Jack had been hospitalized
after he was found wandering along Madison Avenue
in puris naturalibus
. Uncased, as it were, and obviously enjoying the attention. I’d received an anonymous phone call alerting me to the fact
that another member of my company required immediate medical attention. As I expected, the reporters were waiting outside
the hospital armed with cameras, pens, and their ubiquitous notepads when I arrived. They are always ready to publicize a
celebrity’s embarrassment. They have built their careers upon such exposure, and those of us in the limelight must accept
it as a sort of tax upon our fame. Which is not to say that one must lose all dignity at such moments. As I stepped from the
taxicab I raised my hand as though preparing to make a speech, then I strode solidly, full of purpose, toward the entrance
and into the lobby.

After signing the necessary papers to commit Jack Dawes for forty-eight hours, I took a stroll along the corridors of the
locked ward. That’s where I met young Harold, who was leaning against a wall and yipping.

Yip.

Yip.

Yadderyipyip.

The clarity of the sound, even amidst the hubbub of insanity, impressed me, and I stopped to listen. At the time I believed
he was unaware of me watching him, but now I understand how important it is for Harold to have an audience. No one can be
a spectator to his performance without Harold’s tacit permission.

Yadderyip. Yadderyip. Oh, Charlie. Poor Charlie. Do you want something to eat, Charlie?

Yip.

Yip.

Yip.

This boy is not mad, I told the doctors. They disagreed and named his disorder, one of those tangled Latin names that always
seems to celebrate exaggeration. I asked to take Harold along home with me, but the doctors said I would need his mother’s
permission. So I called her, Mrs. Linder, and asked if I might borrow her son. She refused, of course. Then I told her who
I was, but as it turned out she was one of the few people in the city who had never heard of me.

“Mrs. Linder, I want Harold in my play,” I explained. That interested her.

“What would he do?” she asked.

“I want him in my show,” I said.

“But what would he do?”

“I don’t know. Whatever he wants to do. Whatever comes naturally to him.”

She said she’d think about it and call me back. A few minutes later the pay phone rang, and it was Mrs. Linder, who during
the interim must have called some acquaintance of hers, who warned her against me. “No,” she said. “Under no circumstances
will I permit you to put my son on stage.” I tried to convince her to lend me Harold for a two-week trial period, but she
refused. I assured her that I was no circus impresario. I was a famous theater director, a modern artist, and I could make
her son famous. Rich, too. Still she said no.

Charlie looks forward to a tempting meal. Soup, Charlie. Oh, soup, Charlie. Oh, steak, Charlie. Oh, corn, Charlie. Oh, butteryip,
yip. Butteryoyip, oh butteryoh, ow, ohwa, ohwa, ohwa.

I’m certain that a production with Harold at its center would be a wild success. It’s the seduction of shame again. The potential
for embarrassment is great when lines haven’t been memorized and rehearsed. Imagine the twelve-year-old boy standing in the
circle of a spotlight on a bare stage—no painted background, none of my extravagant props or music, only Harold and his voice.
The show’s suspense would be predicated upon his composure. Should he lose it, the spectacle would become the kind of event
that takes its place in theater history: “I was there the night that boy...” whatever. The possibilities for failure are limitless.

Suspense is essential to all performance, from symphonic music to vaudeville. Without the element of suspense, Harold seems
to most people no more than an insane creature capable only of babbling on and on. But put the boy on stage, and mere babbling
would turn into artful improvisation. It is not just for my own sake that I want to make Harold a star. I am concerned about
the boy and want to save him from a lifetime wasted inside institutions. Besides, Harold enjoys having an audience—I could
tell as much right there in the hospital while I watched him. He pretended not to notice me, but I knew he was grateful for
the attention.

Yip.

Yadderyipyip. Oh, Charlie. Do you want something to eat, Charlie?

The first time I applauded him I detected the barest ripple of a startle, a slight tremor in his arms, a twitch of his jaw.
I stopped clapping and waited for the boy to continue, but he stared past me at the peeling white wall. Imagine a silence
so powerful that you can feel it wrapped around your body—and just beyond, the clamor of other patients. If I’d had any doubt
about the boy’s remarkable ability, I lost it during that nearly endless silence. And then, the burst of sound:

Yip.

Yadderyipyip. Yadderyipyip.

The fact that Harold cannot carry a tune makes him even more unique. Mrs. Linder and the doctors look upon the boy as a malfunctioning
machine and keep trying to tinker with the gears and cogs of his mind. But I know that the boy is perfect. In the corridor
at Bellevue I recognized in his voice the precise expression of my own artistic ambition. It felt as though he were calling
to me out of my past, a voice rising with the night mist from the estuary bordering our estate.

Yip.Yadderyipyip.

A strange seabird calling a warning, splitting the silence into halves, the voice of the bird separating past from present
and defining the space of my solitude.

Poor Charlie. Do you want soup, Charlie? Soup, Charlie? Steak, Charlie?

H
OW TEMPTING IT IS
to twist my life into a dramatic tale of suffering in order to explain my dark art. But I might as well come out with it
and admit that I’ve had more than my fair share of privileges. As a boy I was treated, along with my older brother, to all
the pomp and rigorous training befitting the sons of a man who had made millions in the insurance business. I grew up in a
stone mansion on sixty rolling acres overlooking Long Island Sound. My brother and I had nannies and tutors and chauffeurs
protecting us from the world. We attended a small Jesuit day school. Through those early years my happiness was as solid and
encompassing as the house, and I believed that the same was true for my brother, though I couldn’t be sure. He was an athletic
boy, handsome in a puckish way, an apt enough student but a dull companion to my young mind. He and I were strangers to each
other not because of any perceptible dislike but simply because we had such different interests. When we weren’t studying,
he’d go for a swim or gallop his pony, Turl, along the beach; I preferred to occupy myself indoors.

Our home had a library with paneled oak, a splendid living room with a period Adams mantel, three kitchens, and two dining
rooms, one of which we used only on holidays. A circular staircase led up from the reception hall to the second floor. The
master bedroom was painted a light peach with ivory trim, and the master bath had coralline tile and Tang red fixtures. My
own bedroom had buff walls and a bay window with a leather built-in seat. I liked to sit there for hours, reading and watching
the color of the sound change from silver to a satiny black as the afternoon wore on.

I have no disclosures to make about unloving parents or sadistic priests who whipped knowledge into their stubborn pupils.
My teachers, most of them tending toward the plump, were more inclined to whip cream into peaks for their cranberry cobblers
than to whip the tender buttocks of young boys. And my parents were like children themselves, dazed by their ingenuity, for
their wealth seemed to them something they’d accumulated while out on a Sunday stroll—a pocketful of pebbles and seashells
and feathers and gold. And though my father outlived both his eldest son and his wife, even in his last months he could be
seen shaking his head in disbelief at his fortune as he walked around the grounds of his estate, his Stetson sennit at a tilt
to shade his eyes against the sun. Life had stunned him from the start—and for this, more than for the privileges, I am grateful.

I inherited from both my parents a sense of wonder and so have devoted myself to sharing that wonder with others. How indifferent
we quickly become if we’re not careful. Nothing kills interest like routine, day in and day out spent measuring percentages
or hauling trash or teaching young girls how to type, and then at night an hour of the Wayne King Orchestra or maybe a boxing
match broadcast live from the Bronx Coliseum. The tedium of competition. No, I am not a sportsman. Neither do I take any pleasure
in the dance orchestras that lull their listeners to sleep. I prefer long periods of silence punctuated by unexpected sound.

Yip! Yip!

My dear Harold, so strange and wonderful. With the boy as my star, I would be able to shake my audience out of the slumber
of routine once and for all. People know that they shouldn’t come to my theater if they want to be reassured that all is right
with the world—they can go to the movies for that. My shows are never reassuring. They are as jolting as the modern world,
as full of surprises. Harold would be my consummate theatrical surprise.

Poor Charlie. Are you hungry, Charlie? Do you want something to eat, Charlie? Strawberry short-Charlie-cake, Charlie, strawberry
shortcake, Charlie, if you please, oh please oh please.

Yip.

Such is the force of a vital personality unimpeded by social consciousness.

Yip.

An individual, alone but not lonely.

Yip.

If I had half his ego I would be satisfied. The critics complain that my art is marred by my vanity, that I lack discretion,
that I’ll put anything and anyone into my productions because I’m too vain to subject myself to aesthetic discipline. My last
show,
Garden City,
which featured Jack Dawes, along with two dozen amateur clowns, a marionette troupe, and fifty retired chorus girls, was
nicknamed
Garbage Dump.
This wounded me—proof that I’m not vain enough, not compared to young Harold, who exists only as a performer, never stepping
outside the role to consider the value of his art. How I envy the boy. He wants an audience, but he cares nothing about the
impression he makes—just like a bird that calls out for no other reason than to be heard.

Oh, Charlie. Charlie looks forward to a tempting meal. Wait, Charlie, I’ve got something for you, Charlie, soup, Charlie,
steak, Charlie, strawberry oh...

His voice is so completely expressive that any word, any sound, is revealing. He could count from one to one thousand, and
the audience would be mesmerized. Yes, I like to imagine this: Harold counting aloud, one, two, three, four, and so on. It
would take three hours, and after Harold finished counting, he would remain silent for as long as ten minutes. He would just
stand there in the spotlight, his body pressing against the empty space behind him, and then, at last, he would utter a single
yip.

Yip.

If you’ve ever blown a gentle breath into the face of a dog and heard the animal gasp, then you’ll know how the audience would
react when Harold yipped that final yip. Spot off, and my treasure would once again be hidden in darkness.

Brilliant, yes? I’m sure any skeptic would be quickly converted and would forget the hows and whys and wherewithals of Harold’s
speech, for all that matters is the boy’s acrobatic voice and his admirable self-sufficiency.

Yadderyip. Yap yap yap.

I knew what I was hearing in the corridor in Bellevue: it was the sound of a solitary creature calling out to the world and
expecting no answer, like that strange seabird I heard one night when I was a child. Alone in my buff-colored room with its
red-leather-upholstered window seat—

Yip.

Yip.

Poor Charlie. Yip. Do you want soup, Charlie? Yip. Soup, Charlie?

Strange sounds—you’ll hear them in the dead of night, on any night, if you listen carefully.

Yip.

Just as I heard the seabird on that summer night when I was ten years old. Not gull, not tern or cormorant. An albatross?
No. A great auk? No. A loon or grebe or piping plover? No, no, no. It was a sound I’d never heard before, and when I looked
out my window to find the bird I saw nothing but the shrugging forms of boulders and the iron-colored water. I slept, finally,
and awoke the next day to the news of my brother’s accidental death by drowning.