Show Business Kills (23 page)

G
ood God.” Marly was laughing at Ellen’s story. “It’s true. The inmates really are running the asylum. That’s unbelievable.”

“But absolutely true,” Ellen said. “Which is why now when I deal with the jerkoffs at my studio, I remember that at any given
time, they may have had a visit to the booby hatch, and then everything they do makes sense to me.”

Rose nodded knowingly. “Can’t you see the board of directors, looking over the résumés of all the people who applied for the
job of studio boss, and finally one of them says, ‘Eureka! This guy’s perfect. He’ll understand the way we think! He’s been
locked up for being a paranoid schizophrenic.’”

“Jan’s coming out of recovery,” they heard Andy call to them. They turned to see him standing at the end of the hall gesturing
for them to come with him. Ellen put her shoes on, and they all hurried to follow Andy along the long hospital corridor.

Just as they stopped at the double door to the recovery room, it opened, and two hospital orderlies wheeled out a gurney,
which moved forward with a clanging bump over the
metal sill and into the corridor. As it came closer, they could see that Jan was on it.

She was unconscious, with a tube down her throat, and a nurse with a bellows was squeezing breath into her. Her head was bandaged,
and her face was purple with bruises. She was hooked up to IV fluid that hung from rolling poles on wheels, which the two
men wearing green surgical scrub suits moved forward next to the bed. The friends stood at fearful attention watching her
go by.

Rose felt a weakness in her thighs, and she was sure her knees were about to give out under her; Marly’s arm went around her
waist, as if Marly knew she would need steadying. Then Ellen moved closer to her, too. They held tightly to one another, watching
the odd float bearing their comatose friend as the men moved it through the door to the surgical ICU.

When the door closed behind Jan’s gurney, Andy took one of Marly’s hands in his, and Ellen’s hand in the other, while Rose
stood with her back leaning against him in their small circle, and he spoke quietly.

“The bullet damaged her lung, but that seems to be functioning normally with the tube in place. That nurse with the bellows
will hook her up to the ventilator and she’ll breathe on that for a while. There was also a collection of blood underneath
her skull that they were able to suction out. And her head is bandaged because they had to go in and cut through her skull
to get the blood out.

“She’s still unconscious, and it’ll be a matter of time before they know whether or not there was damage to her brain underneath
the pool of blood. There might be inflammation to the spinal cord where the bullet hit her. She hasn’t been
moving her legs, and there’s no way to know now if she’ll regain normal function. But they seem to be hopeful that she’ll
be conscious within the next few days.”

“When can we go in?” Marly asked.

“The nurses need to become familiar with her and stabilize her,” Andy said, “so I’d say it’ll be at least an hour until they’ll
let anybody in.”

“Is she going to survive this?” Rose asked. “What are they saying about her chances?”

Andy shook his head slightly. “In cases like this, it’s impossible to say.”

Marly couldn’t listen to any more. She had to walk away, hugging herself as she looked down the hospital corridor, her trembling
face struggling to hold in the tears of anger and sadness. She remembered when Jan’s sister, Julie, had tried talking Jan
out of adopting a baby at age forty-five because she was too old. She laughed about the way Jan had dismissed the warnings.

“Julie,” Jan said sweetly, “even if this little baby grows up and gets married as old as thirty, I’ll still be only seventy-five.
Young enough to dance at his wedding.” Now Janny might not dance at Joey’s wedding, or even walk down the aisle.

Maybe she wouldn’t even live until the morning, and then what would happen to the sweet little boy? Surely Jan had made some
kind of will, assigning Joey’s guardianship if anything happened to her. Marly tried to put the thought out of her mind that
there was even a small chance the custody of that angelic boy could go to her. She had wanted another baby so much when the
twins were still small, but the rise of
Billy’s mammoth career and the dissolution of her marriage had made that unrealistic.

Besides, Jan would have specified that everything she left behind, including Joey, go to her sister in Pennsylvania, Marly
thought. The sister who told her not to adopt the baby in the first place. She shivered when she realized she was already
writing Jan’s death sentence with those thoughts.

“Shouldn’t somebody be calling Julie?” she asked, turning back to the others.

“I have Julie’s number,” Rose said, paging through her Filofax, muttering to herself as pieces of paper flew out of it onto
the floor. “I know I had it here someplace, because last summer when Jan went back to see her, I talked to her a few times,
when she called to get medical advice from Andy, so I have the number… somewhere. Damn, I’m such a goddamned flake. I have
to find the number so I can call Julie and tell her. Oh, here it is. I’m going to call her.”

Andy put his hand on her arm. “Honey, I think you should probably wait a few hours. We’ll definitely know a lot more about
Janny’s condition by then. Why don’t you three go down and get something to eat?”

“He’s right,” Ellen said, “let’s try to get something downstairs.”

Rose felt too queasy to eat, but she hoped maybe food would calm the gnawing acid hole in her middle she was attributing to
terror. “I guess,” she said, and led the others to the elevators, which seemed to be taking forever to arrive, so she pushed
open the door to the stairwell, and Marly and Ellen followed. They walked single file, seven flights down the metal steps.

“I should have brought along the dinner I made for Girls’
Night,” Marly said when they opened the door to the basement floor and the greasy smell of the hospital cafeteria enveloped
them. In the low-ceilinged basement cafeteria there were only two other diners, some women at the far end who were chattering
loudly to one another, who were dressed up and bedecked with jewelry as if they were going to a party.

Rose was the first to take a plastic tray from a pile and slide it along the metal shelf that ran the length of the sparsely
stocked buffet. She chose a sticky-looking pasta salad under Saran Wrap, and a Diet Coke, hoping the caffeine would zap away
the sleepy feeling that often tugged at her when she felt afraid. She fought a yawn as she put the can on her tray.

Ellen put a tuna salad sandwich on her tray. Marly took a banana and some yogurt, then reached into the glass case where the
desserts were lined up and put her hand on a bowl of red Jell-O. “I think we all should have some of this,” she said, putting
a bowl of the shivering red cubes on each of their trays. “My treat. Maybe the taste of it will take me back to my childhood.”
But when they got to the table, she looked at the bowl on her tray and changed her mind. “I just remembered,” she said. “I
had a lousy childhood.”

They sat at the end of a long table, unwrapping and then picking at the barely edible food. The two women at the end of the
room seemed to be looking over at them now and gesturing and whispering, and Rose, who noticed their behavior, decided it
had to be because they recognized Marly. They were carrying their trays of dirty dishes to the conveyor belt now, and they
couldn’t resist stopping to stare. Then they approached the table with a tentative yet adoring look.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” one of them said to Marly. “But
I really wanted to tell you just how much we loved you in every episode of ‘Keeping Up with the Joneses.’ ”

Marly smiled. “Thank you so much,” she said.

“You are such a gifted comedienne. There hasn’t been anyone like you except for maybe Lucille Ball.”

Marly warmed to the lavish praise. “Oh, how nice of you to say that.”

“And we know it must not be easy to be so funny, under the circumstances of your life.” Marly stiffened. “We know you’re getting
divorced, but we want you to know we think it’s for the best. You got rid of him before he turned into a real pervert.”

“Poor you,” the other one said. “And your poor daughters. I saw the
Enquirer
today, and I am sure he’s guilty as sin, and I’m glad you’re not a part of his sick life anymore.”

Marly’s face was now frozen, and Rose could see she was trying to decide how to react.

“I wish I had something with me for you to sign,” the first woman said. “My daughter would be so thrilled to have your autograph.
You don’t by any chance have anything with you that you could give her with your name on it?”

“I don’t have anything,” Marly managed to say through clenched teeth.

The women exchanged a glance that said they didn’t believe her. “Yeah, well it would have been nice,” one of them said. “Too
bad.” And then both of the women turned to walk away, and as they did, one said in a confidential voice all of them could
hear, “She could have given you a deposit slip, a napkin, anything. But they think they’re too good to take the time with
you. Meanwhile, she hasn’t had a good part since that Jones show went off the air.”

Marly stood, and in the voice Rose remembered her using when she played Portia at Tech, she said to the exiting backs of the
two women, “I’m in this hospital because one of my best friends is near death. I’m hurting and frightened and trying very
hard to be polite, so it’s my fondest hope that you’ll do the same and turn around and apologize for your rudeness,” she said.
Ellen and Rose exchanged looks. Not knowing whether to stop her, to tell her to ignore the women’s obnoxious behavior, or
to laugh.

Both of the women turned, with scowls on their faces, and one said, “Apologize? Who do you think you are? You’re as bad as
that jerk you married.”

Rose remembered later that Marly had a smile on her face as she picked up a bowl of Jello-O from Rose’s tray, took a cube
and threw it at one of the women, and then another and another until she had to move on to the second bowl. It took the women
a few seconds to understand what was happening, then they looked down at their rhinestoned outfits with red blobs melting
and sliding down the front, and when they did, one of them got the Jello-O right in her hair. In horror she put her hand up
to her head and shrieked at Marly, “I hope you and your sex-maniac husband go to jail!”

“You Hollywood slut,” the other one shrieked as they both turned and ran out of the cafeteria, and Marly kept throwing with
the same good arm she used when she coached the twins’ softball games, until the last cube of Jell-O was gone.

“Way to go, Mrs. Jones,” one of the black food attendants hollered out to Marly, and in return she saluted him with a victorious
fist in the air. Ellen and Rose were still laughing when Marly wiped her hands off on a paper napkin. Rose
took her own napkin and cleaned up some of the Jell-O from the floor.

“Jan always says I’m too combative,” Marly said, helping her.

“How observant of Jan,” Ellen said.

“But what can I do? People like that think my life is their business, and it drives me wild. The plumber who comes to fix
my shower asks me about Billy’s girlfriends, and the dry cleaner wants to know how much I’m getting in the divorce settlement.
Women have stopped me on the street and said, ‘How could you let that adorable Billy go? He’s such a doll, I’ll take him any
day.’

“One day I actually shrieked at one of them who said that, ‘Oh, really? Well, when he wakes up in the middle of the night
and has to watch his own videotapes to make sure he’s alive, and other women mail him their recently worn underwear, which
he so sweetly shows you, and he sometimes sends his bodyguards when he’s too busy to pick up the kids… enjoy, baby!’

“They don’t know that he’s what Jung calls a
puer aeternus
, an eternal boy. Wearing his penis on his sleeve. No, I’ll bet even boys have a greater sense of responsibility, don’t they?
Didn’t Roger when he was a kid?” she asked Ellen. But before Ellen could answer, she laughed out loud at herself. “I am over
the top,” she said. “I haven’t thrown food at anyone since summer camp,” and she laughed a laugh that was a breath away from
tears.

“It’s good for you to let it all out,” Rose said.

“Her? Are you kidding?” Ellen said. “She lets it all out more than anyone I know. You and I are supposed to be the
emotional Jews, and she’s the one who’s always venting her rage.”

“You’re right,” Marly said. “I think I’ve been letting too much out. Always too big, too much, a complete reversal to the
pent-up good girl my parents tried to get me to be. Billy used to call me the unWASP. He said my temper was one of the things
that hurt our marriage. And I’m worried. Not only because of Billy, but two things happened within the last few months to
make me think I may have hurt what’s left of my career, too.”

  
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