The alarm clock rings. The two men sit up — the fat man is wearing a top hat — and manage to bump heads. The top hat flies into the air with a champagne-cork pop.
In silence, they dress. The fat guy is wearing a full-length nightshirt with a ruffled front; a pair of tuxedo pants hang by their suspenders from one bedpost. What a good idea: first he finds his hat and puts it back on, then he drags one side of the suspenders to the other bedpost, and jumps from the foot of the bed into the trousers. The hat pops off, the suspenders ricochet onto his shoulders like slingshots. He finds a bow tie on an elastic string, snaps it around the collar of his nightshirt, his hat pops off, he dons it again, locates a pair of tails, struggles into them, loses the hat, picks it up, reaches in, finds an elastic string, which he snugs under his double chin as he lowers the hat on his head.
Meanwhile, the other guy is doing deep knee-bends, deep breathing exercises. His pajamas look silk but are actually an awful nylon. He gargles. He gargles. He tilts his head, not gargling, just thinking, then gargles again. He steps out of the room for five seconds and reenters in a tux and a mortarboard.
“Barry,” the thin man says, “it’s your big day.”
“I got cold feet,” says the little man.
“Let’s take a look.” The thin man drops to his friend’s feet, discovers a pair of bunny slippers, and takes them off angrily. Then he catches himself, and tries to warm the fat man’s toes with his hands. “Sit down, why dontcha? Here, sit down. Cold feet? You’re marrying a beautiful girl, a beautiful rich girl. With all that money you could buy a million pairs of shoes! You could buy me a million pairs of shoes! Don’t louse this up for me, Barry. I’ve been waiting forever for this wedding.” By now he’s practically throttling his friend’s feet. “After all I’ve done for you, and now this? Cold feet?”
“She is beautiful, isn’t she?”
“And rich!”
“Oh,” says the little fat man, “my mama told me never to marry for money. Only love.”
The thin man stands up. “Fair enough. You take the love. I’ll take the money.”
We never made a serious picture, but Marry Me, Barry was the silliest, giddy with its own jokes and costume changes and slamming doors. The war was over, and we could do whatever we wanted. I’ve always loved a wedding: Marry Me, Barry featured seven. Neddy Jefferson wrote it, our first flick made for just us alone, not an old script or a retread of an old script. Neddy even put in private jokes: Professor Mervin keeps betting Barry that he won’t get married again. (In real life, Rocky’d bet me a post-Penny three thousand dollars.) Soon Barry’s handing over bags of cash, sorrowfully, because every time he tries to marry the girl of his dreams — the poor-but-honest daughter of a greengrocer — he somehow ends up standing in front of an altar or a justice of the peace or, in one case, a movie of a justice of the peace, at his side a different bucktoothed harridan. At the end, of course, he finally weds his girl, who carries a bouquet of carrots. When she tosses them over her shoulder, I catch and share them with his third wife, the jilted pony.
Marry Me, Barry came out the first week of 1946, my favorite year ever. Rocky arrived at Jake’s second birthday party with a bottom-heavy dishwater-blond woman in a Chinese dress that made her look more Ming vase than Suzie Wong. “This is Lillian,” he said. Lillian cleared her throat and raised a set of eyebrows so plucked they looked like two columns of marching ants. Rocky slapped her shoulder. She cleared her throat again. “Oh!” said Rocky. “Of course. My current wife.” Current, Lillian mouthed to herself, and hooked her arm through his arm. He’d married the interior decorator he’d hired to spiff up his now obsolete bachelor pad. I put out my hand for my money, and Rock obliged.
The war was over, and Carter and Sharp — like everyone else — were out of uniform and full of optimism. I was a father in peacetime: I’d won the war for them, hadn’t I? A father of three — in May, we brought home our postwar boom baby, Betty. Okay, then: three kids, just right.
I loved my sons, no mistake, but I’d never longed for an heir. What I wanted was a girl baby, a baby girl, and that’s what we called her: the baby. Where’s the baby? How are you, baby? Hey, over there, you know who you are? The baby.
“I want one of those,” Rocky said, when he came to meet her, bringing with him a box of chocolates and a giant, scowling teddy bear that looked like Lon Chaney, Jr.
“Not this one.” The baby was cuddled into the crook of my arm. Already I’d decided we were each other’s favorite. She liked to slip her fingers between my shirt buttons, and she had a luxurious sigh when she was happy. In her crib, she’d sob; all she wanted was to be held, all the time, round the clock, and I obliged her. “Let her cry it out,” Jessie suggested. “Your mother’s heartless,” I told the baby, rescuing her from her misery.
I bought Jess a fur coat to celebrate. I hadn’t planned to: I’d just gone to the Wilshire Bullock’s, looking for a present, and I was assured that any woman’s dearest wish was a fur. “Really?” I said.
“Sir,” said the salesgirl. That was all she said, but she made it sound significant.
Who knew? I was out of the habit of women, so maybe I’d once known this fact and forgotten. The salesgirl offered me a pink-upholstered chair, and then she had other girls — models? store employees? aspiring actresses who’d happened by and heard I was there? — don the coats in the dressing room and then parade in front of my chair. Well, I’d have to shop for women’s clothing more often. Who knew the merchandise would have actual women in it? Pretty girls in fur coats, trying their best to act rich and privileged.
I knew, at least, that Jessica would not wear a full-length fur coat. She’d want something a little more eccentric, something you could use as a prop. Out came a blond girl in a short white coat, ermine, I think, though it could have been Samoyed.
“Let me see that one on a brunette,” I asked. So the girl turned around and left. They thought it more elegant not to let me see them put the furs on, and I couldn’t think of a way to ask without sounding filthy. They merely walked out of the dressing room as though they’d been born wearing fur, and opened one wing of the coat to display the satin lining: camel or black or silvery white. Just one wing: a woman in a fur coat did not fly, she was chauffered. I would have loved to have seen the blond girl take off that pale fur made of whatever unfortunate animal, careful not to let her ring snag the satin, and hand it over to the brunette, help her on with it, let the weight and the leftover warmth settle.
But I couldn’t ask. I just bought the coat.
When Jessica lifted the lid off the box, she said, “Oh, for God’s sake.”
“What?” I said.
She saw how she’d hurt my feelings, and said, softly, “A fur coat? We live in California. It’s summer.”
“So?”
“I can’t.” She pulled the coat from its box and laid it on her lap, as though it were a dead beloved pet. Several of them. She stroked the fur. My wife was not someone who made nice over unsuccessful gifts: she believed that was both dishonest and wasteful. “We’ll send it to Annie. Iowa winters are cold.” We’d visited Des Moines summers since the end of the war, and Jessie, an older sister herself, was particularly fond of the oldest Sharp girl.
“Do you recall how many sisters I have? If I send one to her, I have to send one to everybody.”
“Then return it,” she said. “The store will take it back.”