The Dick Gibson Show (24 page)

J
ACK
P
ATTERSON
: Because all you have to do is say the word and I’ll get the hell out of here.

B
ERNIE
P
ERK
: Come on. Jack. Dick isn’t saying anything like that.

M
EL
S
ON
: Of course not.

P
EPPER
S
TEEP
: And they say women are temperamental.

J
ACK
P
ATTERSON
:
Don’t
give me any of that cant, you.

P
EPPER
S
TEEP
: Well, I beg your pardon, I’m sure.

J
ACK
P
ATTERSON
: Big charm school operator. Charming.

B
ERNIE
P
ERK
: Please, everybody.

J
ACK
P
ATTERSON
: Because
that’s
how the hostility built up. Cant. Cant and crud. I think this is Jack Patterson’s farewell appearance on these shows. Either you get the goofs who think all the world has to do is sit around listening to how they were carved out of wood by elves in the forest, or quick-buck artists like the Dr. Behr-Bleibtreau here who make their pile out of positive thinking or some other such claptrap. Nothing
real
happens. You’ve got the extremists on the one hand and the self-taught, gift-from-the- sea people on the other. I’m thirty-eight years old. I’m a Ph.D. from Harvard.
Harvard!
And all I am is an Associate Professor at Hartford Community College. Oh, God.

D
ICK
: Ladies and gentlemen—a commercial.

He got up and walked around the long table to where Jack Patterson was sitting, his forehead pressing against the microphone in front of him. “Jack, are you okay? Are you? Are you feeling all right?”

“I think the man’s having a nervous breakdown,” Pepper Steep said.

“Give him room.”

“Is he all right? Should we call his wife?”

“Annette, was Jack unwell this evening?”

“Why are you all picking on him?”

“Oh boy, two of a kind.”

Only Behr-Bleibtreau’s people remained seated. The others had all come up to the table.

“I’ll have to ask the guests in the audience to take their seats.”

Sitting modestly in his place, Behr-Bleibtreau stared placidly at Jack’s slumped figure.

“We’re on again. We’re on the air.”

“What’s going to happen about Jack?”

“Shh.”

“Well, we can’t just do nothing. Isn’t it dangerous for him to be touching a live microphone like that?”

“Shh,” Mel Son said, “be quiet.”

D
ICK
: Uh—Dr. Behr-Bleibtreau?

B
EHR
-B
LEIBTREAU
: Yes?

D
ICK
: I was wondering …

B
EHR
-B
LEIBTREAU
: … if I could develop the point I was making about determination?

D
ICK
: Yes.

B
EHR
-B
LEIBTREAU
: I think our friend Patterson here could do that even more effectively than I.

B
ERNIE
P
ERK
: Perhaps
I
might. I’ve been rather deeply involved with the fluoridation campaign here in New England. The average person doesn’t realize it, but there’s an awful lot of money spent by the anti-fluoridation people on this. Those of us who favor a program of caries prevention, and who have nothing like the funds of those who oppose it, sometimes wonder—

J
ACK
P
ATTERSON
: It’s okay, Bernie. I can handle this.

M
EL
S
ON
: Perhaps Dr. Behr-Bleibtreau—

J
ACK
P
ATTERSON
: No, Mel, really, I’m fine. I apologize to our audience and our guest as well as to the rest of you for flying off the handle like that. Why don’t we put it down to a bad kipper? I only hope I haven’t embarrassed Annette.

P
EPPER
S
TEEP
: Uh oh.

D
ICK
: I think we ought to—

B
EHR
-B
LEIBTREAU
: I would be interested in exploring what Dr. Patterson meant before when he spoke disparagingly about autodidacts.

J
ACK
P
ATTERSON
: Well, I’m afraid I have to stand by that. Dr. Behr-Bleibtreau. It takes all kinds, and we get all kinds.

B
ERNIE
P
ERK
: That’s true.

P
EPPER
S
TEEP
: Tell him about the memory expert.

J
ACK
P
ATTERSON
: I’ll tell him about Laverne Luftig. Do you remember Laverne Luftig, Bernie? Were you on that show?

B
ERNIE
P
ERK
: No, I don’t think so.

J
ACK
P
ATTERSON
: You do, Dick.

D
ICK
: The child star.

J
ACK
P
ATTERSON
: That’s the one.

B
ERNIE
P
ERK
: I couldn’t have been on that night or I’d remember.

M
EL
S
ON
: That’s right, I played her record a few times.

B
EHR
-B
LEIBTREAU
: Go on, Jack.

J
ACK
P
ATTERSON
: Well, as Dick says, she was a child star—not an actress, a
singer.
And not a star, I guess, just someone who cut a few records. The thing about this little girl, though, was that she wrote her own material.

B
ERNIE
P
ERK
: Does she sing under another name?

J
ACK
P
ATTERSON
: No.

B
ERNIE
P
ERK
: I don’t think I ever heard her.

J
ACK
P
ATTERSON
: Well, you mightn’t have done. She was just starting out in the business, and to tell you the truth I don’t really know what’s happened to her.

M
EL
S
ON
: “The Orphan’s Song.”

J
ACK
P
ATTERSON
: Yes. That’s how she came to be on Dick’s program.

D
ICK
: I got a call from New Jersey, and was told that Laverne was going to be in Hartford. They played the record for me right on the phone, and when I learned the kid was only ten and a half years old I said she could come on the program.

J
ACK
P
ATTERSON
: Then Dick had some trouble or something—

D
ICK
: There’d been a fire in my apartment.

J
ACK
P
ATTERSON
:—and couldn’t meet her the day she came in. He asked if I’d go down to the train and pick her up. This was on a Thursday and I didn’t have any classes. Anyway, I agreed to go down to the terminal. I’d been on the show often enough by then so I could fill her in on anything she needed to know, or what she might expect from the panel.

D
ICK
: This program is unrehearsed, so I don’t usually do that, but this was a little girl. I wasn’t even sure she could stay up all night.

J
ACK
P
ATTERSON
: Have you been to the Hartford railroad station, Professor Behr-Bleibtreau?

B
EHR
-B
LEIBTREAU
: No, Jackie.

J
ACK
P
ATTERSON
: It’s very difficult to find a place to park down there. There’s a lot of reconstruction going on, everything’s all broken up. I asked one of my students—Miss Tabisco; you know her, Annette—if she’d come down with me and sit in the car while I went into the station. If a cop asked her to move she could drive around the block till we came out.

B
EHR
-B
LEIBTREAU
: Someone in this studio is carrying a gun.

J
ACK
P
ATTERSON
: I don’t know what I was expecting, possibly a Shirley Temple type—you know, all dimples and ante-bellum curls. Anyway, when the train from New York arrived I didn’t see the little girl anywhere. I stood right on the platform when the passengers came out of the train, but I suppose I must have missed her. I had just decided to have her paged when this very strange- looking little girl came up and asked if I were Mr. Gibson.

I say she was strange-looking, but I don’t really mean
that
exactly. It was summer, so of course she wore no coat. One could see that she was … well, that she was a child. Still, her face, all beauty and bone and intelligence, was all that it would ever be. The face of a woman, you see, with less baby fat on it than Annette’s. Most kids in show business—particularly if their acts are adult, if they’re singers, say, or they play the drums— dress like children, and the reason they look so awful is that their clothes are costumes. I mean, they’re not dressed like children so much as dressed
up
as children. Or they go the other way. You’ve seen the kid tap dancers with their top hats and canes. This little girl was different, though. I don’t recall what she was wearing, but there wasn’t any … well, there wasn’t any
starch
in it. I didn’t see petticoats. When she went up the stairs I didn’t see underwear.

I suppose another reason I may not have noticed her was that instinctively I had been looking for her mother, some stage-aunt or stage grown-up, but she’d come alone.

“No, honey,” I told her, “Mr. Gibson couldn’t come, and he sent me to look after you. I’m Professor Patterson.” I asked if she’d brought luggage, and she told me that all she had was the overnight bag she was carrying. When I reached out to take it she said she could manage.

We went to the car. Which was gone. I figured a cop had made Miss Tabisco drive it around the block, and I stood in the street so she’d be sure to see me when she came past. We waited about seven minutes, and I found myself explaining about the parking arrangements—as one would to an adult, you see. I apologized for the snag, but though she didn’t say anything and was very polite, I sensed she was annoyed. Finally Miss Tabisco arrived on foot to tell us that the car had been towed away. She’d tried to explain I’d only be in the station a few minutes. “Trains are late,” the tow man said; the space was needed for the mail trucks. She said she’d drive around the block, but the fellow told her he’d already been called out by the cops. It’s a racket. She could see he meant business, that if she stayed with the car she’d just be towed off in it. The man gave her a card where the car could be picked up.

“Well, this
is
a damn nuisance,” I said. “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” I told the girl.

B
EHR
-B
LEIBTREAU
: Which girl? Miss Tabisco? Laverne?

J
ACK
P
ATTERSON
: Oh, I’m sorry.
Laverne.
Miss Tabisco gave me the card and I saw that the garage was all the way across town. When I mentioned this, Laverne looked at her watch. “Listen,” she said, “I feel pretty grubby after that train ride. I think I’ll just get into a cab and go to my hotel.”

“Well, I can’t just let you go off by yourself like this,” I said.

“Look, really,” she said, “don’t bother. You’d better go and reclaim your car. They charge for storage after the first hour. I’ll manage. Perhaps I’ll see you afterward. I see the taxi stand.”