David Wallace - Girl With Curious Hair

I laughed with the audience as Paul Shaffer did a go-figure from the bandstand.

"Doom," my husband transmitted from the office of a man whose subordinates fished without hooks and sat in exploding circles. I patted at the hair over my ear.

I said, "I'm forty, David. I turned forty just last week. I'm at the point now where I think I have to know what I am." I looked at him. "I have four kids. Do you know of many working commercial-television actresses with four kids?"

'There are actresses who have four kids," Letterman said. "Didn't we have a lovely and talented young lady with four kids on, recently, Paul?"

"Name ten actresses with four kids," Shaffer challenged.

Letterman did a pretend double-take at him. "Ten?"

"Meredith Baxter Birney?" Reese said.

"Meredith Baxter Birney," Letterman nodded. "And Loretta Swit has four kids, doesn't she, Paul?"

"Marion Ross?"

"I think Meredith Baxter Birney actually has five kids, in fact, Dave," said Paul Shaffer, leaning over his little organ's microphone. His large bald spot had a label on it that said BALD SPOT.

"I guess the point, gentlemen" — I interrupted them, smiling— "is that I've got kids who're already bigger stars than I. I've appeared in two feature films, total, in my whole career. Now that I'm forty, I'm realizing that with two films, but three pretty long series, my mark on this planet is probably not going to be made in features. David, I'm a television actress."

"You're a woman who acts in television," Letterman corrected, smiling.

"And now a woman in television commercials, too." I shrugged as if I just couldn't see what the big deal was.

Paul Shaffer, still leaning over his organ, played a small but very sweet happy-birthday tune for me.

Letterman had put another card between his teeth. "So what I think we're hearing you saying, then, is that you didn't think the wiener-commercial thing would hurt your career, is the explanation."

"Oh no, God, no, not at all," I laughed. "I didn't mean that at all. I mean this is my career, right? Isn't that what we were just talking about?"

Letterman rubbed his chin. He looked at the Sports coordinator. "So then fears such as… say maybe something like compromising your integrity, some, ah, art factor: not a factor in this decision, is what you're saying."

Ron was asking Rudy to let him have the remote transmitter a moment.

"But there were art factors," I said. "Ever try to emote with meat, David?" I looked around. "Any of you? To dispense mustard like you mean it?"

Letterman looked uncomfortable. The audience made odd occasional sounds: they couldn't tell whether to laugh. Ron was beginning to transmit to me in a very calm tone.

"To still look famished on the fifteenth frank?" I said as Letterman smiled and sipped at his mug. I shrugged. "Art all over the place in those commercials, David."

I barely heard Ron's little voice warning me to be aware of the danger of appearing at all defensive. For Letterman appeared suddenly diffident, reluctant about something. He looked stage-left, then at his index card, then at me. "It's just Edilyn I guess a cynic, such as maybe Paul over there" — Shaffer laughed—"might be tempted to ask you… I mean," he said, "with all those assets we just listed together, with you being quote unquote, ah, loaded. . and now this is just something someone like Paul gets curious about, certainly not our business," he felt uncomfortably at his collar; "this question then with all due respect of how any amount of money, even vast amounts, could get a talented, if not great then certainly we'd both agree acclaimed, and above all loaded actress… to emote with meat."

Either Ron or Rudy whispered Oh my God.

"To be famished for that umpteenth frank she's putting all that. . mustard on," Letterman said, his head tilted, looking me in what I distinctly remember as the right eye. "And this is something we'll certainly understand if you don't want to go into, I mean. . am I right Paul?"

He did look uncomfortable. As if he'd been put up to this last-minute. I was looking at him as if he were completely mad. Now that he'd gotten his silly question out I felt as if he and I had been having almost separate conversations since my appearance's start. I genuinely yawned.

"Just be honest," Ron was saying.

"Go ahead and tell him about the back taxes," Rudy whispered.

"Look," I said, smiling, "I think one of us hasn't been making themselves clear, here. So may I just be honest?"

Letterman was looking stage-left as if appealing to someone. I was sure he felt he'd gone too far, and his discomfort had quieted the audience like a death.

I smiled until my silence got his attention. I leaned toward him conspiratorially. After an uncertain pause he leaned over his desk toward me. I looked slowly from side to side. In a stage whisper I said "I did the wiener commercials for nothing."

I worked my eyebrows up and down.

Letterman's jaw dropped.

"For nothing," I said, "but art, fun, a few cases of hot dogs, and the feeling of a craft well plied."

"Oh, now, come now, really," Letterman said, leaning back and grabbing his head. He pretended to appeal to the studio audience: "Ladies and gentlemen…"

"A feeling I'm sure we all know well here." I smiled with my eyes closed. "In fact, I called them. I volunteered. Almost begged. You should have seen it. You should have been there. Not a pretty sight."

"What a kid," Paul Shaffer tossed in, pretending to wipe at an eye under his glasses. Letterman threw his index card at him, and the Sound man in his red sweater hit another pane of glass with his hammer. I heard Ron telling Rudy this was inspired. Letterman seemed now suddenly to be having the time of his life. He smiled; he said ha ha; his eyes came utterly alive; he looked like a very large toy. Everyone seemed to be having a ball. I touched my ear and heard my husband thanking Ron.

We talked and laughed for one or two minutes more about art and self-acceptance being inestimably more important than assets. The interview ended in a sort of explosion of good will. David Letterman made confetti out of a few of his body's labels. I was frankly sorry it was over. Letterman smiled warmly at me as we went to commercial.

It was then that I felt sure in my heart all the angst and conference, Rudy's own fear, had been without point. Because, when we cut to that commercial message, David Letterman was still the same way. The director, in his cardigan, sawed at his throat with a finger, a cleverly photographed bumper filled all 6-A's monitors, the band got funky under Shaffer's direction, and the cameras' lights went dark. Letterman's shoulders sagged; he leaned tiredly across his obviously cheap desk and mopped at his forehead with a ratty-looking tissue from his yachting jacket's pocket. He smiled from the depths of himself and said it was really grotesquely nice having me on, that the audience was cetainly getting the very most for its entertainment dollar tonight, that he hoped for her sake my daughter Lynnette had even one half the stage presence I had, and that if he'd known what a thoroughly engaging guest I'd be, he himself would have moved molehills to have me on long before this.

"He really said that," I told my husband later in the NBC car. "He said 'grotesquely nice,' 'entertainment dollar,' and that I was an engaging guest. And no one was listening."

Ron had gotten a driver and gone ahead to pick up Charmian and would meet us at the River Cafe, where the four of us try to go whenever Rudy and I are able to get into town. I looked at our own driver, up ahead, through the panel; his hat was off, his hair close-clipped, his whole head as still as a photo.