The Stork Club (41 page)

Ruthie gripped the cold porcelain sink hard, and felt her whole body trembling with anger. "What did you mean about the muffins?"

"Well, after he heard that Davis Bergman died, and everyone knows that Davis and Shelly used to be . . . Then she gestured with a kind of hands-apart shrug, meaning she didn't know what word to use for what Davis and Shelly were to each other.

"Lovers. They were lovers . . . go on," Ruthie said.

"Well, it totally freaked him out. Because he knows
you and Shelly live in the same house, and you make those muffins all the time, and you
know
how health-conscious Zev is, so . . ."

"So now he's campaigning to dump us?"

"Not you. Shelly."

"There's no such thing as that. We're a team, and he can't fuckin' do this. It's discrimination. I'm calling a lawyer."

"Oh, shit," Morticia said. "You bring a lawyer into this and I'll be dead meat. He'll know it was me. I have too much information."

The white face got even whiter as Ruthie took her hands and looked into her eyes. "Alice," she said. "Shelly and I have a child to raise, too. I can't let that vicious, bigoted little man destroy our family the way I've seen him do to other people. I won't hurt you in any way. I promise. But I guaranfuckin'tee you, I'm not going to sit by and let Zev Ryder pull down our lives."

There was a rehearsal at two o'clock. When Ruthie got downstairs, her assistant handed her a pile of phone messages. One of them was from Shelly. It said he wouldn't be at the rehearsal. He had to leave abruptly to go to a doctor's appointment. In the studio she slid into the back row of seats, and when Zev Ryder saw her sitting alone she felt him looking over at her while she sat making notes on the script in an effort to avoid him. And that night when she got home and Shelly was sick with a flu which the doctor informed him would probably keep him at home for a week, she knew Ryder would use the absence as a reason to get rid of them without pay.

She kicked her shoes off wearily and brought Shelly some soup, fed and played with Sid and bathed him, and heard Shelly calling to her from his room.

"Let me see the new pages," he said.

"Don't worry about the pages, I've got that covered."

"The doctor says I'm going to be stuck in bed for a while, but there's no reason why I can't write my stuff from here." Ruthie gave him this week's script. It was true he could write from bed, and the changes Shelly made that night before he fell asleep were better than any of the other writers could do in a week's worth of meetings. But the flu was one that left him bedridden for two weeks, at the end of which, on a Friday, he got a call from Morticia saying, "Mr. Ryder wishes me to tell you that because of your protracted absences, you're no longer on the staff of the show."

"The filthy little turkey didn't even have the balls to do it himself," Ruthie said.

"I've been out of the office a lot, Ru. He can prove it. But you can't quit. He'll destroy you if you do. You have to hang in for the baby's medical insurance and the weekly paycheck. Promise me you'll keep going in until we figure out what to do."

Bright red rage made her want to scream. There's no fucking way I'll keep working for that monster! But she looked at Sid, now climbing all over his daddy, and she said, "Yeah, okay. I promise."

On Monday the nanny didn't show up and Shelly was too weak to get out of bed, so Ruthie packed up Sid and took him with her to work. The baby had been to the studio often enough for her to know that if she put him in the portable playpen in a corner with just the right toys, he would amuse himself with the pound-a-peg or the "Sesame Street" pop-up, and except for an occasional loud squeal would be less disruptive of the meetings than most of the writers themselves.

Today Ruthie sat at the head of the table near the playpen, and she could tell by how shockingly quiet it was that everybody knew everything, or more accu
rately, everybody knew something. She was going to have to clear up the story now, before any of the rumors went any further.

"Guys," she said, "Shelly doesn't have AIDS."

"Oooops," Arnie Fishmann said as he knocked over his Styrofoam coffee cup and the tan liquid made a large puddle on his yellow lined legal pad and then seeped off it onto the conference room table. Three of the other writers stood and gathered napkins from the coffee cart and mopped up the spillage. Ruthie waited until all the wet napkins were in the wastebasket before she went on. "He's HIV-positive, but he doesn't have AIDS. He's very vulnerable, but please God, he'll go on for a long time."

This group of clowns has a gag line for everything, she thought, but for some reason, they're acting like humans for a change. "You can't catch it by working for him, by laughing with him, or by peeing in the same urinal. I don't have it, Sid doesn't have it, and as you all know he is Shelly's biological child, and we both drink from his glasses and use his towels and hug him and kiss him all day and night.

"But the point is Zev Ryder fired him. He says he fired him because he's been out and doesn't do the work. You all know what I know and what Zev knows, which is that Shelly can phone it in funnier than all of us in the room can make it even when we work until midnight. This is homophobia. This is discrimination. I intend to get a lawyer and sue that son of a bitch and bring him down for hurting the career of my partner and my best friend and my son's father. And I can't do it unless you fellows are prepared to stand up and talk not just about Shelly's contribution to the show but about Zev's dangerous and damning condemnation of him. Of us. And his horrible treatment in general of every one of us—the women on the staff who get sexually
harassed by him, the writers who are spiritually annihilated on a regular basis. Because you have to know that an attack like this on one of us is really an attack on all of us and that next week it could be you, Fishie, or you, Jerry, for whatever reason he can think of. So please say you'll stand behind us and help us fight this man, and kick his ass the way he's been kicking all of ours for so long."

No one looked at her or spoke. Even Sid was quiet in the playpen. The only sound in the room was the sound of Arnie Fishmann lifting and dropping and lifting and dropping a pencil, which plunked repeatedly on the conference room table. Somebody sighed, one of them cleared his throat, and after a few minutes Ruthie got the message. They were all too chickenshit, too threatened to put their asses on the line for a friend.

"Okay, fellahs," Ruthie said, wishing she had the strength to throw the table over on them. "Let's write something funny."

36

T
ODAY I THINK we need to talk a little bit more about support systems," Barbara said to the parents, all of whom were now wearing the Stork Club sweatshirts brought in by Ruthie and Shelly.

"Why does that expression, 'support system,' always make me think of an underwire bra?" Rick asked.

"Because, as usual, your mind is in your groin," Judith said, laughing.

"There are people in your lives who are going to enhance your children's worlds, families with other children their age, Mommy and Me groups you can attend regularly at schools or temples and churches in your neighborhoods. Try to branch out and find people who are dealing with the same developmental issues you are, and whose children will love having play dates with yours.

"I also recommend that you stay in touch with and visit your families, and have them visit you. The more
people there are for these children to love, the better. Ruthie and Shelly, you're lucky you have all your parents still alive and well. Get them out here to visit Sid, and take him back to be with them."

"You haven't met our parents or you couldn't have used the word 'lucky' in reference to any of them," Shelly joked.

"Oh, I don't know. They did raise the two of you, so they must have some good qualities," Barbara said.

"You're right," Shelly said, serious now. "Our families would love to be with Sid."

"What about you, Judith?"

"I have friends from work, and particularly my friends Jerra and Tom, who don't have any kids. They love it when I bring the girls by. It makes their own family feel bigger when they include us in their celebrations."

Barbara looked at Lainie. "Our situation is pretty screwed up right now because we're still living apart, but my mother and Rose have a very nice relationship. She takes care of her some evenings when I go to class or to the gym, and I like knowing they're together. I always feel when I pick Rose up at her house that the two of them are better for having spent the time together. I also have my friends Sharon from school and Carin from work, and they're a lot closer to Rose than my sisters-in-law. Her so-called real family."

"My sisters have been pretty busy lately," Mitch said defensively, "but sometimes Rose gets to be with her cousins, and I think family is real important.'' Without looking at her, Barbara could feel Lainie's tension from across the room.

"Well, we've learned by virtue of this group that we have a new definition of that word," Barbara said. "A family is what and who you make it. And that's why I think it's healthy to widen the circle of people who love
the children, so they feel they have many ways to turn for affection and warmth."

"You know, I was always so proud of the fact that Shelly and I are so self-sufficient, didn't need anybody, but now I think you're right. It's important for the kids that we expand their worlds," Ruthie said.

Barbara looked at Rick. "What about you, Rick?"

"My uncle Bobo has been everything to me, and the other person who's been an incredible support to me is the widow of my best friend. She's completely unlike anyone I've ever known. A great mother to her own kids and a kind of wise aunt to David, so that's been very worthwhile, and her sons are like nephews to me.

"Anyway," he said, his thoughts slipping away to all the sweet things Patty had done for him and for David, "she's been a fine friend to me and I really respect the way she takes the time to—" That was the moment when he looked around the room and saw that all of the others were smiling knowingly at him, and he stopped short. "What's so funny?" No one answered, they just continued to grin. "Why is every person in this room wearing a dopey grin?''

"You're in love with her," Judith said, and when Rick flushed purple the others erupted like schoolchildren. "It's completely obvious to every one of us."

"Oh, please," he said. "I think very highly of her. Very highly, and I've known her since she was a kid. I mean, my best friend was her . . . " Rick stopped then to think about it, and he was obviously rattled. "Let's go on to somebody else," he said to Barbara, who picked up the ball by looking around at the others.

"The point is to try to find people the children can count on to be positive forces in their lives." There was a big silence in the room, punctuated only by the happy sounds from the play yard, until Rick spoke, this time to himself, but out loud.

"Maybe I am," he said, and a titter of laughter filled the room. "I mean, I'll be goddamned. Maybe I'm in love with Patty."

After the group he walked with David to the car, thinking he should call Patty and tell her. But he was sure she would laugh and hang up, or say, "If this is your way of trying to get me into bed, dream on." Or maybe she'd say that she wanted him too.

On the second day of shooting his new film he crouched next to the big double bed on the set, having a quiet conversation with his two stars, while the crew waited patiently behind the scenes. Over and over he talked to the two formidable talents facing each other, their heads on the satin-covered pillows, and told them the back story of what their characters had been through to get to this moment.

Shooting scenes out-of-sequence was a necessary evil, but he was going to make it work by talking them into the heat of the moment. For a long hushed time he waxed poetic about how hungry the characters must be for each other, how they were finally to be consummating their love of so many years. It was the kind of moment he was famous for capturing better than any other director in the business. And it was the close personal work he did with the actors just before the cameras rolled that was the key.

He'd been lulling them into the mood for nearly an hour, telling his erotic story, but timing was everything and he could tell by the way they were looking at each other now that they were ready to go at it. He knew that it was time for him to stand ever so slowly and steal away out of the shot, behind the camera, and softly say "Action."

It worked. The passion between them during the shooting of the scene was powerful. Rick felt elated
when he called, "Cut and print it!" Now, right now, he should shoot the close-ups, get them set up while the mood was thick and sultry. But just as he was about to do that, he looked around and saw Andrea enter through the heavy studio door. He knew when he saw her there that something was wrong. He always cautioned her not to come down and disturb him unless there was an emergency with David. Only his son had the power to call everything in his life to a halt. "What's wrong?" he asked.

"Doreen Cobb," she said, coming closer and handing him a yellow Post-it with a phone number written on it. "She called from a phone booth. She sounds awful. I told her I'd do my best to get you to call her as soon as possible. She was pretty shook up so I'm not sure, but it sounded like she said she was at Port Authority in New York."

The thought of that child in a den of horror like the bus station in New York City sickened him. If she'd run away as far as New York, she had to be leaving something pretty bad. As bad as he feared. He motioned for his first AD to come over and said, "Call a break. Ten minutes. Fifteen tops. I have to make an emergency phone call."

The young man looked at Rick as if to say, How can you sacrifice the momentum of the shoot to go and make a phone call? But Rick was already out the door, heading to his trailer. The minute he was inside he dialed the New York City area code and the number Andrea gave him. It only rang once.

"I'm sorry," Doreen's very shaky voice said instead of hello.