Meanwhile, Lisanne did everything she could to reclaim her health and spirits. She went to an obesity clinic at UCLA and drank protein powder packets each day. She chugged down potassium pills with sugarless Metamucil, morning and night. She lost thirty pounds in the first month. She did yoga, Pilates, and Gyrotonics, returning to her five-mile walks along the bluff. She lifted weights and submitted herself to the energetic meridian needlings of Dr. Yue-jin Feng. (The only thing she didn’t do was meditate.) She saw Calliope Krohn-Markowitz for talk therapy five hours a week in conjunction with cutting-edge palliative care provided by Chaunce Hespers, M.D., the renowned Camden Drive psychopharmacologist. All was relatively well with the world.
She emphatically knew who this baby was — a beauteous boy child, born of the union of Lisanne Emily McCadden and Robert Linden Sarsgaard.
“Did you hear what Jerry said just before Julius La Rosa came out?” said Robbie, poised before the campfire of the TV. “Lisanne, you didn’t hear? Maxine! Max, come on, you guys have to watch! Ed McMahon was announcing Julius La Rosa — Maxine, you know Julius La Rosa”—she nodded from her chair and said, “He’s of the where-are-they-now ilk”—“what they call a singer’s singer. Tony Bennett worships him. And if Bennett’s considered a ‘singer’s singer,’ I guess that means La Rosa’s a singer’s singer’s singer. Whew! That’s a tongue twister. Sinatra loved him too — Lisanne, you’re too young. But I happen to know my saloon singers, and La Rosa coulda been big as Frank. Right, Max? Hands down. But he was cantankerous. This guy pissed everybody off… Arthur Godfrey, Ed Sullivan, the mob guys. Everybody. So McMahon introduces him — this was just twenty minutes ago! — and Jerry says, ‘Is he still alive?’ And you know that had to hurt. Jerry, with that pumpkin face full of cortisone, like he should talk! The guy comes on and sings— beautifully— What’d he sing, Max? ‘Cat’s in the Cradle’? Beautiful. And I was never wild about that song — that’s Harry Chapin, a Brooklyn boy — but it was like we were hearing it for the first time, huh, Max. La Rosa was in a tux, that’s their thing, all those saloon guys, but handsome, like he was born in it”—Maxine said, “Very”—“and probably older than Jerry, if that’s possible! So, after he sings, Jerry looks in the camera with those crocodile tears and says, ‘It don’t get any better than that, folks’—and how if there’s a pantheon, the top guys would have to be Frank and Tony and Julius (he throws in Jack Jones only cause Jack’s coming on later), and you kind of get the feeling he means it but it’s too late! OK? He’s already made the Is he still alive? remark, and that’s the thing that makes me uncomfortable about Jerry”—“So why do you watch?” interjects Maxine, without expecting an answer, then says to Lisanne, “You can’t tear him away”—“A mean motherfucker, pardon my German. And that’s why if I was famous, I would never do that show”—“Fortunately, you will never have that problem,” said Maxine—“I don’t care how many sick kids you supposedly cure. And I don’t think they’ve cured one yet. But they will, and I’m not taking that away from him. But if you do go on that show, and I don’t give a hoot if you’re the Pope, Uncle Jerry is gonna take a crap on you sooner or later. He’ll take a giant shit on your head — pardon my French — that’s from Full Metal Jacket—great movie — Uncle Jerry will crap on your head and you’ll never know until it hits you.”
True West
THE PLAY OPENED in a ninety-nine-seat house for a run of twelve performances. Access Hollywood reported that scalped tickets were going for nineteen thousand dollars on eBay.
As the curtain fell on opening night, the crowd thundered, screamed, and wept. No one had ever seen anything like it or ever would. At the star’s insistence, the uncharacteristically tearful Jorgia Wilding emerged from the wings to join the cast in deep bows. That bittersweet mix of first and last hurrahs.
Though critics had been barred, many in the audience (culture vulture luminaries) posted Internet opinions — word of Web being that while Kit Lightfoot’s transcendent performance was at times halting, it was more haunting than anything else. Toward the end, representatives from a few national publications smuggled themselves past the box office, yet by the time their reviews ran (breathlessly) — the New York Observer headlined “Long Day’s Journey Into Lightfoot”—they sounded dated and glowingly apocryphal, for production had already triumphantly shuttered, having spiritedly entered the deathless annals of mythic theater lore.
Viv Wembley sent flowers.
The Leno Show
THE BAND PLAYS the Supertramp theme from World Without End as he comes out. The longest ovation in Leno’s history.
For the next five minutes, hoots, catcalls, coughs, and whatnot as the mob cathects then settles upon its collective seat.
“Wow,” says Jay. “I cannot tell you how happy I am — how happy the world is — that you’re back.”
Tsunamis, then tidewaters of applause. Kit humbly smiles and begins to respond — forced to give up, as the audience dam breaks. Awash again.
Second longest ovation in Leno’s history.
Kit’s jaw is clenched, his eyes wet. Bodysurfing the no-silence.
Jay, too, wipes away a tear. “I’m getting very emotional,” he says, sweetly shaking that ridiculous-sized chin. Slightly embarrassed, or playing at such. Now and then it’s OK to be unmanly.
Kit smiles and says nothing. Stop-starts, charmingly stymied. Audience, charmed too — way, way on his side. Still, though, he hasn’t said a word, and they’re kinda nervous about that….
How will he sound? All retardy?
Time now overdue for that first sentence moment—utterance to be reported the next day, the quip heard ‘round the world.
(That one-giant-leap-for-mankind moment.)
Finally, after a great sigh it comes:
“What a long, strange trip it’s been.”
Laughter, tears, ovation! The sentiment funny and true! And he sounds normal!
Just like they knew he would.
… more than anyone could have dreamed or hoped for.
Kiki had six writers spend two weeks brainstorming. Then Cela heard the Grateful Dead song on the radio — her suggestion. Kiki agreed. The writers’ picks were too jokey. This, the most real.
The crowd deftly replays his words in their heads, picking them clean for slurs, impediments, I Am Sam — type aftershocks.
Nothing!
(The collective Eye had already searched for skull craters beneath the chic, barely grown out buzz cut — none visible.)
“I just have one thing to ask,” says Kit.
They hang on his words. You could hear a pin drop.