“You finally figured that out, huh? Well, look at it this way. With Penny’s eyesight she probably didn’t realize it wasn’t you till it was too late.”
He pursed his lips.
“Rocky?”
“You’ll pardon me, you son of a bitch, if that doesn’t make me feel any better.”
“Sorry.”
“Sorry and laughing, sure. Anyhow, it’s not all Sukey’s fault. Penny’s moved in and out so often I should install a turnstile. Charge admission.”
“Offer to sell her a season pass.”
“You misunderstand. She’s gone. You know, I thought the one advantage of marrying a simple woman was that I’d be able to understand her.”
“You think Penny’s simple?”
“Not dumb. Just not complicated. I thought.”
“You were wrong. She’s plenty complicated.”
“Tell me more.”
“Uh-uh. I’m drunk. I’m liable to say things I don’t mean.”
“Fair enough. Educate me some other way, Professor. Tell me about your wife.”
“She’s not simple either.”
“No kidding. Tell me — tell me what the two of you talk about. It’s late. You’re in the living room. What happens next?”
“Depends.”
“You love her?”
“Yes. I do. Did I forget to tell you that’s important in a marriage?”
“There’s always been plenty of love in my marriage, kid. It’s just that me and the missus have lousy aim. Okay: so you’re in the living room. She’s sitting in her chair. You’re on the sofa. You look at her. What do you think?”
“Mostly, I think it would be nice to crawl across the room on my hands and knees and sit by her feet.”
“Jesus. Well, that’s you. I don’t kowtow to women.”
“You just kowtow with money. You just throw money at the problem. Anyhow, I don’t want to crawl across the floor to kowtow, I don’t think.”
“Then what?”
“I don’t know. It’s a big room. I think maybe I just want to get across it.”
“Walk.”
“I want to get across it without her asking me where I’m going, and would I get her something while I’m up, and is it time for bed already? I want to get from one side of the room to the other without her noticing.”
“Yeah, but what do you want to do once you get to the other side?”
“I don’t know. Sit there. Put my hand on her ankle.” (Put my hand on her ankle, and feel that tendon at the back of her heel, as subtly lined as a run in a stocking. Put my head in her lap.)
“You just want attention, old dog.”
“No. I mean: no. It’s like I want to be near her without her really noticing. Sneak across the room. Put my head on her lap. Maybe she pushes her hand through what’s left of my hair, but she doesn’t even look up from her book. Like she’s used to me being there.”
“Like you’re a dog.”
“Have it your way. Maybe. A good dog. A loved dog.”
“Yeah. Sure.” He stroked his cigar as though he was Aladdin, thinking carefully before he summoned the genie. “That’d be okay.”
I’m Light on Your Feet
Rocky discovered Jessica’s sweet tooth, and liked to try to stuff her full as a piñata. Usually he succeeded: his taste in chocolates, said Jessica, was nothing short of genius, and even during the war managed huge smuggled boxes of European bonbons.
Wasn’t it unseemly for a man other than her husband to supply her with candy?
So I’d top him: I’d build her a candy box of her own, a music box: a dance studio. I hired some set guys from the studio to design and build it at the far end of the back lawn. I told Jessica I was working on a game room, a place for Rock and me to play cards and smoke. The way I figured it, the studio was for her solitary dancing pleasure; I would be her audience. I really was thinking of a music box, my mother’s, where the celluloid ballerina who lived inside sprang up only when someone wanted to see her twirl.
The set guys got fancy: dramatic masks above the entrance, a mirror trimmed in painted velvet ribbon. I took her to it when they were done.
She walked over the threshold. For thirty seconds, I think, she wondered what kind of clubhouse this was. Then she figured it out, and kissed me. “Oh, Mose,” she said. “This is a wonderful place for lessons.”
I managed not to say, “For what?” (Sometimes I had to work not to be a straight man, not to say every little thing that crossed my mind so that my comic could respond to it.) I looked at the wood floors, the blond untouched barres. “That’s what I thought.”
She inspected the mirror, the small dressing room at the back, the latticed Swiss-style windows, the bathroom, the record player and radio. Her brother, Joseph, still lived in their house; otherwise I’d have paid to have certain details of her old studio (the fireplace, the peach-colored flame-shaped lighting sconces) flown in.
“Wonderful,” she said again. “The barres are too high, but other than that. Easy to fix.” She sat down in the middle of the floor. Her stomach — she was six months pregnant — hid the angles of her crossed legs. She asked if I would leave.
“Sure,” I said. I tried to make it a question.
When I got back to the house, I heard the music. I hadn’t bought any records for the player; she must have snapped on the radio. From the kitchen I could see only one small slice of a studio window, and realized that if I had wanted to watch her, I’d built the place badly. You couldn’t see anything from here, just Jessie occasionally spinning into view and out again. She must have danced through commercials, Ballet Pepsodent, Ballet Lucky Strike. A mistake, I thought: I’d given her something that would keep her from me. That’s the kind of guy I was. She was so happy, and I, kept from her happiness, was miserable.
Soon enough, Jessica offered lessons. In Des Moines, a dance lesson with her was glamorous. Not that she worked to make it so: still, she was the only Bohemian her students ever met, a single woman in leotards, forbidden jazz on the gramophone. A professional dancer, here in our city. You knew you’d never be one yourself, but for an hour a week you could pretend. Then you’d go back to your parents, or husband, or wife. You wouldn’t even tell them how much you’d loved your time in the Ninth Street studio.
But in Hollywood, professional dancers were common as bedbugs. Who hadn’t danced professionally? See that woman crossing the street? She scissored her legs in the two-o’clock spot in a Busby Berkeley kaleidoscope, and she was nothing special. Well, that was the point, to look like all the other girls angling identically for the camera that came in overhead on a crane. From below in the front row, a mother might see a certain turn of ankle. But to everyone else, you looked like the girl on either side, and how would you ever become a star that way? So you took more lessons, while privately assuming you were better than your teacher.
Even the children — Jessica’s specialty — were not impressed. They took dance lessons as a matter of course, even though most of them hated to. They were the children of the rich and famous, and they had one woman who cooked them breakfast and another who buttoned their coats and another who helped them correct their turnout and posture and faulty rhythm. All the world was hired help, wasn’t it? Jess would have taught adults, but they generally studied with people more directly connected to a studio. If I’d been a musical star, they might have signed up with my wife so they could dance loudly, hoping I was hungry for discoveries. Years later she got choreography work in television, and loved it. “All that time with those awful, awful, awful children!” she said. “What a waste!” But it was good for us, like eating loaf after loaf of lousy bread — you pick up some tips on how to get your own dough to rise.