Tom Hanks - Uncommon Type - Some Stories

“Let’s think about this for a moment,” Bob said. “Over more tea.” He removed the deli tray to the kitchen and lit another big match for the burner. “I’d get out more Oreos but then we’d just eat them.”

“Think about what?” Sue studied her new professional call sheet. She liked herself more because of what Bobby had typed.

“Have you ever thought of changing your name?”

“My real name is Susan Noreen Gliebe. I’ve always been just Sue.”

“Joan Crawford had always been Lucy LeSueur. Leroy Scherer was called Junior till he became Rock Hudson. You ever hear of Frannie Gumm?”

“Who?”

Bob sang the opening lines of “Over the Rainbow.”

“Judy Garland?”

“ Pal of Frances lacks the panache of friend of Dorothy, doesn’t it?”

“My parents will be disappointed if I don’t use my real name.”

“Disappointing your parents is the first thing to do when you come to New York.” When the kettle sounded off, Bob refilled the teapot sitting beside the Royal. “And say you make it big on the Great White Way—which you will. Do you really want to see that name in lights: Sue Gliebe?”

Sue blushed, not out of embarrassment at such praise, but because, deep inside her, she knew she had a future as an actress. She wanted to be big. Yes, as big as Frances Gumm.

Bobby poured more tea in both cups. “And how do you pronounce that? ‘Gleeb’? ‘Glee-bee’? ‘Glibe’?” He pantomimed a big, fake yawn. You know what Tammy Grimes’s stage name was? Tammy Grimes.” He fake-yawned even wider.

“How about…Susan Noreen?” Sue could imagine that name up in lights, no problem.

Bob flicked the paper in the Royal typewriter, snapping the new résumé with his finger. “This is a birth certificate for the new Sue. If you could go back in time and pick a brand-new name for yourself and your ma and pa, what would that name be? Elizabeth St. John? Marilyn Conner-Bradley? Holly Woodandvine?”

“I can call myself something like that ?”

“We’ll check with the union, but yes. Who do you want to be, titmouse?”

Sue held her tea. There was a name she’d once dreamed of having, in junior high school, when she sang in a folk group for her chapter of Young Life. Everyone was making up groovy names like Rainbow Spiritchaser. She came up with hers, imagining the name on the cover of her first LP.

“Joy Makepeace.” She said it out loud. Bobby’s face showed no reaction.

“Heap big trouble with that’um smoke signal,” he said, “unless you have some Native American DNA in the Gliebe bloodline.”

So it went as the afternoon wore on. Bobby came up with a constant stream of stage names, the best of which was Suzannah Woods, the worst being Cassandra O’Day. The Oreos had come back out and were now all eaten. Sue kept working the Joy angle. Joy Friendly. Joy Roarke. Joy Lovecraft.

“Joy Spilledmilk,” Bobby said.

Sue used the bathroom. Even Bob’s water closet was replete with estate-sale booty. She could not imagine why anyone would want a toy bowling set with Fred Flintstone tenpins, yet there they were.

When she came out, Bobby was holding a stack of vintage picture postcards from Paris. They had considered French names like Joan (of Arc), Yvette, Babette, and Bernadette, but none of those sang out.

“Hmm.” Bobby held one of the cards. He showed it to Sue. “The Rue Saint-Honoré. Pronounced ‘Honor-ray.’ That’s the masculine. The feminine has an extra e on the end and is pronounced the same. Honorée . Isn’t that lovely?”

“I’m not French.”

“We could try an Anglo-Saxon surname. Something simple, one syllable. Bates. Church. Smythe. Cooke.”

“None of those are good.” Sue flipped through the stack of old postcards—the Eiffel Tower. Notre Dame. Charles de Gaulle.

“Honorée Goode?” Bob repeated the name and liked the sound of it. “ E ’s on the ends of both.”

“They’d call me Honorée Goody Two-shoes.”

“No, they wouldn’t. Everyone pretends they speak French, mon petite teet-mouse . Honorée Goode is honestly good.” He reached over and pulled a black Princess-model phone off a bookshelf and dialed a number.

“I have a friend at Equity. They have a computer so no names get duplicated. Jane Fonda. Faye Dunaway. Raquel Welch. Taken!”

“Raquel Gliebe? My parents would have no problem with that.”

Bob was connected to his friend Mark. “Mark-y Mark-a-lot, Bob Roy. I know! It has? Not since she went out of town, on that cruise liner. It’s good money! Can you do me a little service? Check the database for a stage name. No, for one not taken. Last name Goode with an e on the end. First name Honorée.” He spelled it out. “With an accent or schwa or whatever on the first e . Sure, I’ll hold.”

“I don’t know, Bobby.” Sue was running the new name over and over again in her head.

“You can decide when you march into Equity with your first contract and a check for the dues. Then, you can be Sue Gliebe or Catwoman Zelkowitz. But I have to tell you…” Someone came on the phone, but it wasn’t Bob’s friend. “Yes, I am holding for Mark. Thank you.” He turned back to Sue. “I walked into that run-through of Brigadoon. Up there onstage was a girl playing Fiona who was going to have a career .”

Sue smiled and blushed. She was that Fiona. She had crushed that role, her first out of the chorus. Her Fiona had led to all the roles the ACLO had given her, had pushed her off to NYC, and had made her clean in Bob Roy’s kitchen tub.

“I loved that girl,” Bob said. “I loved that actress. She wasn’t some bitter leading lady pissed off that New York had had enough of her. Or a painted starlet doing Civic Light Opera because the distance and makeup hid the fact she was forty-three years old. That Fiona was no mutton. No, she was a local lamb, an Arizona gal who could hold the stage like a Barrymore, sing like Julie Andrews, with a set of boobs that set the boys a-flutter. If you had introduced yourself to me as Honorée Goode, I would have said, ‘Well, you certainly are!’ But no, you were Sue Gliebe. I thought, Sue Gliebe? That’s just not going to fly.”

Sue Gliebe felt warm inside. Bobby Roy was her biggest fan and she loved him. If he had been fifteen years younger, forty pounds lighter, and not a homosexual she would have spent the night in his bed. Maybe she would, regardless.

Mark came back on the phone. “Are you sure?” Bob asked. “That spelling, with the e ? Okay. Thanks, Marco. I will. Thursday? Why not! Bye!” He hung up the phone, tapping it with his running fingers, and said, “Big decision time, titmouse.”

Sue leaned back in her overstuffed chair. The rain had stopped outside. Her skin had been dried by the terry cloth of the robe and she smelled of delicate rosewater from the bath soap. The big radio was softly playing an orchestration of a nightclub standard, and, for the first time ever, New York City seemed like the place Sue Gliebe belonged…

HONORÉE GOODE (Miss Wentworth)—Ms. Goode trained at the Arizona Civic Light Opera. She was nominated for an Obie last year for her role as Kate Brunswick in Joe Runyan’s Backwater Blues. This marks her Broadway debut. She thanks her supportive parents and Robert Roy, Jr., for making it all possible.