Elizabeth McCracken - Niagara Falls All Over Again

How could Jessica forgive Rocky that easily? Now I understand: she felt sorry for him the same way (though she never would have said so) she felt sorry for herself. She saw a man at the end of a career, desperate to extend it. Physical comedians have performing lives as brief as ballerinas’. The very thing you do — falling down stairs, going en pointe — gives you arthritis, so you can no longer do the very thing you do. An aging singer is still gorgeous. She can’t hit all those familiar notes, but she reminds you of their lost beauty, and her new, narrow voice is as lovely as any ruin, the Venus de Milo, the Colosseum. What’s left is the same, just simpler.

But an old guy who flubs a pratfall only resembles the young guy he used to be in what he can’t do. A vague gesture toward funny is the opposite of funny. It’s cruel to laugh at a man that old, pretending to be that young.

A flexible straight man, though, can just move on. That much I knew, as I stood at the foot of the State House, flipping Gilda over again. We’d been Siamese twins, I’d often thought: our appeal was how utterly stuck together we were. I’d tried more than once over the past few years to run away, but every time I did, the other guy — Rocky, bending over at the waist to muscle me off my feet — ran me back.

Now I was free. Three weeks before, when I was smack in the middle of it, Carter and Sharp appeared to be all of Hollywood. One part of my career was over, but I could probably work. I wanted to. “Aren’t you dizzy?” I asked upside-down Gilda, and she nodded while laughing. I’d forgotten that was the point.

“Yeah,” I said to Jessica. “I’ll call Tansy when we get back.”

At home, there was a pile of communications from Rocky waiting for us, including one hand-marked FINAL NOTICE. I flung them in the trash. It looked like anger, but I knew the moment I read a single word, I’d be back in the act. Tearing them in half: that would be anger. I considered it.

“Mose,” said Jess.

I shook my head.

“You’ll forgive him,” she said, and I couldn’t tell if this was a prediction, a question, a command.

Jessica was right: Rocky did not go to the government with his information, though he did have to go to the government plenty, the Treasury Department instead of the Senate: he owed the IRS pretty big. Later I heard that he blamed a crooked accountant, but I think he balled it up himself. He was one of those guys so bad with money he wouldn’t trust a professional — how would he notice any funny dealings? He never invested in anything. He kept all his cash in his checking account.

I called Tansy when we got back. He alluded to Rock’s money problems, believing we were fighting over salaries again. I didn’t say otherwise. Rocky’s finances didn’t soften me at all: he wasn’t desperate for my company. The guy needed cash.

“But you’re finding him work?” I asked Tansy.

“Sure. Here and there. People want to see if he’s a team player. If he behaves himself, he’ll be fine.”

I said, “Then he’s in serious trouble.”

Greasepaint

My first post-Carter-and-Sharp break came two months after the fight. Johnny Atkinson invited me over to the bungalow he and Alan shared near Venice Beach. The place was crammed with memorabilia — Alan, who worked in the billing department of Bullock’s, was crazy about the movies. You’d think he’d had no idea of how they were made. Even the end tables were covered with signed head-shots of starlets and frilled china figurines of silent-movie actresses. The furniture had been arranged around the inventory, as though it, too, was part of a museum exhibition. For all I knew, it was, the coffee table a souvenir from Dark Victory, the cabinet from a corner of a Ma and Pa Kettle flick.

And there, in a Sydney Greenstreet peacock chair, wedged between end tables as though he was part of the collection, was Ripley Davidson, a movie director. A real movie director. Even though our pictures (at least early on) did great at the box office, for directors we were the minor leagues, what you did on your way up or down when you, too, were only B material. This guy had actually directed well-reviewed movies. He balanced a coffee cup on one knee, tried to put it on a table, but clonked it into a framed still of Pola Negri, and so brought it back to his knee. He was a tall man in his thirties. A youngster.

Turned out he was working on a drama about a bunch of vaudevillians and was looking for a few genuine articles. I was game. Johnny had talked me up.

I balanced on the arm of the sofa, which seemed like the most convenient spot. I held my breath. Directors had always hated Carter and Sharp, who had such scorn for order.

“So,” he said. “What did you do in vaude?”

“I was a straight man,” I answered, puzzled. Could he never have heard of me? The idea appalled, then cheered me.

“Oh, I thought Johnny said you did some other acts before. Acrobatics, maybe?”

“Dancing,” I whispered. I cleared my throat so I’d sound confident. “I was a song-and-dance man.”

“Yeah?” Davidson said, perking up. He set the coffee cup on the floor. “Were you any good?”

I said, “You should have seen me.”

Why had I even paused? That was how you got jobs in vaudeville: someone asked, “Can you?” and you answered, “Are you kidding me?” Many a trouper nearly drowned in a tank act or got thrown from a horse, doing what they’d sworn they were old hands at. The movie already had a double act, but they could use a hoofer, someone old enough to give advice to the young folks. At first I worried that I’d be playing an old-timer, a failed singer who died a never-was, but actually it was a pretty jaunty role, and not beyond my talents. Greasepaint, they called the picture. I played Cecil Dockery, song-and-dance man.

“You won’t mind not being the star?” Tansy asked me later, when I asked him to okay the deal. He drummed his fingers on the script. “It’s a good part, but not huge. One musical number.”

“Sign me up,” I said, and he did.

Be vigilant, I told myself. Don’t let the Professor’s mannerisms come creeping in. Don’t jump too high, or fidget, or become overly involved with your necktie. Don’t spoonerize or malaprop. Don’t keep looking to your right, for a fat little man ready with a punch line.

I didn’t. It was as though my fight with Rocky had burned out any sentiment or reliance I’d had on the Professor. Instead, I leaned on my bamboo cane like the swell I’d never been. The musical number was best: in-one, in front of the curtain, like Carter and Sharp in the old days, except I was allowed to cover the whole stage. My God, how had I endured it all those years, not moving? I posed patiently for stills, alone, rakish in my derby. I learned my dance steps overnight, and sang my song for hours around the house. I drove my family crazy. “Okay, Sinatra,” Jessica said once, and then the kids started calling me that. Sinatra, can I have five bucks? Sinatra, can I go to the movies?

The picture wasn’t a huge hit, but the critics who reviewed it always mentioned me as a minor revelation, someone they didn’t recognize till the credits rolled. I looked different enough — no mortarboard or specs, no oversized scowl. No hairpiece. No comic, who’d absorb all my light and work it over and then throw it out to the audience, like fish to trained seals, flashing, luminous, something else entirely. Something, I now believed, cheap.

Meanwhile, Rocky worked some, too, mostly on television. He tried his hand at straight parts on TV dramas, and showed up on variety shows, shooting pistols with Spike Jones, singing a duet with an annoyed Eddy Arnold. I didn’t watch him, but it was impossible not to hear some news, especially from my kids, who missed him. Jessica took them to see his first — and last — solo movie, Rock and Roll Rock . I spotted a publicity shot at Tansy’s office, Rock in a pompadour that looked like a black plastic mold. I groaned when I saw it.