“I might.” I played with a giant crystal paperweight on Tansy’s desk. It weighed about a billion pounds, though it looked like plain old glass to me. “Snap his head off, I mean. Okay. All right. I guess.”
“You’ll call?”
“I’ll call.”
He wrote down Rock’s new phone number on a piece of paper and slid it across the blotter.
So I did call, after several hours of approaching the phone in my den and then walking away. What could it hurt? I asked. Everything, I replied. A hotel operator answered the number. She put me through. He was in. I yanked the phone away from my ear to hang it up, and immediately brought it back, clonking myself in the temple. I cleared my throat.
The guy recognized even that. “Mose,” he said, “what’s wrong,” as though he was still the person I’d call in an emergency.
“Hey, Rock,” I said.
“What’s wrong,” he repeated.
“Nothing. Everything’s fine.” I cleared my throat again. I’d expected to ease into a casual conversation. “It’s just that I was over at Tansy’s office.”
“Yeah?” Rock said.
This was a stupid thing to do on the telephone. I should have had Tansy arrange a lunch. Even that might have been too much: I should have had Tansy tell Rock, “Mose hopes you’re okay.” We could have worked up from there.
“Well,” I said, “Tansy and I got to talking.”
“That’ll happen,” said Rocky.
“Yes, and — well, he was just saying it was a shame we broke up—”
“Professor,” said Rocky excitedly. I could hear him pacing in his hotel room. I wondered how swank or low a place it was. “You’re killing me here. Just tell me what you guys came up with. A movie? A TV special? Christ, I’m willing to start out with a benefit, even though I can tell you I could use some charity myself. I haven’t had steady work in—”
“Oh, God, Rock,” I said. “Nothing like that. I just wanted to see how you were. That’s all.”
“Ah!” he said. Then he fell silent. “Sure,” he said. “You could have told me. . ”
“I didn’t think you’d be home.”
“I’m not home,” he said. “I’m in a fucking hotel.” I listened to the background noise, trying to figure out what he was doing. I couldn’t hear anything. “No chance, huh?” he said.
The last time I’d talked to him on the phone, I was exactly here, staring at the bush outside my window. He’d been on the line doing what he was doing now, trying to talk me into work. I closed my eyes and rubbed my ear with the phone. “Later, maybe. I don’t know. A benefit, like you said. It’s just now—”
“Now you have work,” he said.
“Well, and the kids—”
“And you have work,” he said breezily. “Obligations. I understand. I got some projects too.”
“Tansy told me,” I said, though Tansy hadn’t. “But really. In a couple of years—”
“Keep me in mind,” said Rocky. “Later, kid.” He hung up the phone.
Carter and Sharp Go to Hell in a Handbasket
Who’s my favorite piggy-wig?
Who’s my favorite pig?
Who has such lovely pork chops
That she makes me flip my lid?
It’s Sadie Sow, it’s Sadie Sow,
I’m happy to report!
With a grunt and an oink and a grunt and an oink
And a grunt and an oink and a snort!
Voilà. Rocky had a regular job, without title billing: the host of The Sadie Sow Show. He’d probably had the offer when I called, and hoped I’d save him from it. Instead I’d driven him into the arms of a pig, a puppet operated by a temperamental man named Marcus; when Rocky made a slightly blue comment to Sadie, Marcus turned his wrist and Sadie turned her back. Still, it was a national show, and kids had always loved Rocky. He wore his striped shirt and changed hats every five minutes to suit the theme of the segment.
Gilda made me watch it with her. She was six, and had hardly any memories of Rocky at all, though the boys talked about him still. I kept thinking they’d grow out of it. (Later, when someone was trying to put together a documentary about the team, Jake described his childhood this way: “It was like having two fathers.” At first I though he meant me as both, the screen version and the at-home guy who acted the part, but then he said, “I was devastated when they broke up. It was like a divorce.”) Jessica made herself scarce when Sadie Sow was on. She wanted me to be the one who kept Gilda company.
At our house, Rocky laid ’em in the aisles, Gilda at least. Everything he did slayed her: kiss Sadie on the snout, pour a bucket of water over his head, fall down the stairs, sing, You must have been a beautiful piglet or I found a million-dollar piglet. The first time she called me to the sofa—“Here, Daddy,” she said, pointing to a cushion — I didn’t go right away. I stood at the back of the family room, and looked at Rocky on the TV screen. He’s in our furniture, I thought. I hadn’t seen him in two years. How had I avoided it? Now he wore a beret and his striped shirt, a narrow moustache, a broad French accent.
“Daddy, here,” said Gilda, pounding on the sofa. So I settled down, and she snuggled up to me. I told her I knew that guy pretty well, and she developed a whole new appreciation for her old man. You could have seen the show two ways: A. Rocky had been reduced to teaming up with a felt and cotton-batting pig. B. I had been easily replaced, by a felt and cotton-batting pig.
Despite everything, I vacillated between A and B.
Rock and I hadn’t announced our breakup. Nobody noticed for a while: in the early fifties we made only one movie a year, and the radio show had been canceled, and people weren’t so used to seeing us on TV that they noticed when we didn’t show up. TV Guide finally asked Rocky about it when he guested on the Texaco Star Theater in a semiserious role, and he made it sound like we’d just taken a breather from each other. “No dramatic story,” he said. “Working apart for a while, that’s all.”
I landed a couple of other movie roles playing fathers of teenagers — nothing as good as Greasepaint, but nothing as bad as the last few Carter and Sharp flicks. The rest of my time I spent at home with the kids, writing letters to my sisters, reading magazines and newspapers and books of history. I didn’t see much of my old friends, so when Neddy Jefferson invited me out to dinner at the Brown Derby, I said sure, even though I didn’t much like the place, being devoted to the less splashy Musso’s down the street.
“Dress up,” said Neddy. “Boys’ night out.”
“I always dress up,” I told him.
“Well,” said Neddy, “you’re in semiretirement. I just didn’t want you to show up in your bathrobe and carpet slippers. We’ll invite Tansy, hey? No wives.”
“Boys’ night out,” I assured him.
So I spiffed up and went to the Derby the next week and scanned the dining room for Neddy’s giant head. There it was in the corner, there was the rest of him underneath it, next to him tiny Tansy, and next to him: Rocky.
I stood, holding between two fingers the green plastic chip the coat-check girl had just dealt me. I could leave without redeeming it. The three of them conferred around a half-moon table, heads tilted toward the relish plate. They looked like something out of Lewis Carrolclass="underline" tall, short, fat, waiting for something unlikely to deliver a speech. A parker house roll, the pitcher of cream. Then Tansy glanced up, and waved me over. I gave a faint finger-wiggle in return, and he tried to reel me in. Neddy and Rocky lifted their chins.