A Conversation with the Mann (32 page)

For a tick or two, nothing. Sid tried to talk. The effort he put into it no different than lifting boulders. Sheer force of
will was the only thing that got words out of his mouth.

He said: “They couldn't find you back at Mrs. Shaw's, so they told me. I wanted to wait until after … I know how much tonight
means to you, but… They called from New York. Your father …” Sid trailed off there. That was it. That was all the more he
could stand to give me. And truth was, it was all the more I needed to hear.

Dead.

For a while, for lack of knowing what to say, neither of us said anything.

My father was dead.

Then, from Sid: “If you want me to talk to Jack …”

“No.”

“He'll understand. It's your father.”

“Sid, I'm opening tonight. I'm going up. The show must go on, and that jazz. My father's dead, so what?”

Like he'd taken a rock to the head; that's the kind of stunned Sid looked.

“Yeah, so what? You ever see him around? You ever see him come out and support? You ever even seen him, Sid? He died, it's
sad, but it's the same kind of sad as if some other Charlie I never knew got hit by a car crossing the street. I can't not
do my act every time somebody who doesn't matter dies.”

And with that I was convinced: My father didn't matter. I didn't care.

Sid didn't say anything about it. Sid just stared at me … stared at me….

Sid left.

Eventually the house filled and it got to be show time and I went on, stepping back into that waiting void.

I had a good set.

I had a good set for the first three minutes of my six and a half. Then I got to the bits on my pop being a drunk. I fell
apart. I didn't break down and cry, I didn't go fetal or anything. I just announced onstage that my father had died, which
pretty much brought the laughs to a stop. Talking about real-live dead people in a comedy show tends to do that. There were
a couple of titters, people who figured I must be doing the setup for one hell of a punch line.

I wasn't. What I was was real suddenly on a guilt binge that wouldn't shake. I went on about how my father was never there
for me, how he abused me, how I will always believe he killed my mother. It wasn't like opening night in Vegas I wanted to
rap about any of that, but my grief was a groove that I couldn't pull out of. I was nose-diving for the ground kamikaze-style.
The whole ugly scene lasted a minute. Less than. But less than a minute of that kind of crazy talk was enough to smack the
smiles off any crowd. For the next hundred twenty seconds I worked hard as ever, tried to grab the people back and leave something
resembling an audience more than a wake for Eddie to face. I did it. Barely. I got offstage to confused and smattered clapping.

Jack was furious—me not only bombing on my opening night, but turning his joint into a morgue—until Sid pulled him aside,
told him the bits I'd done on my father weren't bits. He was dead for real. It didn't take any of the heat out of Jack, but
what was he going to do? He knew if Frank found out he was giving me trouble because my pop had passed, he would get what
he gave me in spades.

While Sid and Jack made peace, I sat, sick and getting sicker by the second. Feelings I'd been trying to shove aside were
hitting me hard. Feelings I wanted nothing to do with. Regret and remorse and sorrow and …

And what I wanted, what I needed was to drink or gamble or lose myself in Las Vegas, in the swamp of all the sin it had to
offer. But the situation of the day prescribed that I sit backstage in my dressing room far from the lily whites. Sit, or
go back to Westside.

I thought about calling Tommy.

She'd been busy. I'd been busy. It'd been a while, not long, but too long, since we'd last talked. I knew just hearing her
voice would make things if not all right, at least better.

I wanted to call Tommy.

But Tommy was working on her record. In my frame of mind I was afraid of what kind of crazy emotions might come spilling out
of me over the telephone. And after a week, two weeks—more than that—of not speaking with her, then hitting her with the news
of my father, breaking down to her the way I'd done onstage—weak and weeping—what would that do to her? What would that do
to her when she was trying to put together the biggest break of her career? When I'd done everything I could to get her to
Detroit, why should I burden her with my craziness?

“Because she's your girl,” Sid told me. “And when people love each other, they share with each other, their pain and their
strength.”

Sid was going eloquent, the truth he spoke earned at the expense of his own loss.

Backstage, through the walls, I could hear Eddie swell to the end of “Cindy, Oh Cindy.” I could hear the audience applaud,
whistle. He had gotten them back. He had used whatever magic he owned to make a room full of strangers love him.

Quietly, mostly to myself: “So many times I wanted him dead. I mean it. Not just that I wished some badness on him. I wanted
my father to die. But now …”

“I know you must feel awful as hell, Jackie, but that'll pass. You've got to know, you've got to believe, wherever your father
is now, he knows you love him. He knows, and he forgives you.”

My head rose. I looked at Sid, gave a hollow laugh at his misunderstanding. “You're reading me wrong. All those times I wanted
him dead, and he's got to wait until opening night in Vegas to finally do it. That son of a bitch. Dead, and he's still messing
with me.”

I
RONIC
. T
RITE
. Don't know which. Ironic, trite, me thinking Pop had waited until my opening night in Vegas to die. I gave him too much
credit. He couldn't've been that slick if Hollywood'd written the script.The way it was: Years of drug abuse had weakened
him. He had a … a seizure that hit him same as a stroke, left him mute and immobile. It took days—puddled silent, motionless
on the floor of the apartment—for Pop to slowly, agonizingly, starve to death. Days more before his body was found. The reek
of decay the only thing that made his passing even noticeable. From OD to discovery was over a week's time altogether. Over
one week's time. Opening night in Vegas wasn't when he'd died, just when I got the word he was no longer alive.

Between Sid and Jack they were able to come up with an act to cover my remaining days on the bill. There wasn't much hard
about finding someone who wanted to work two weeks at the Sands.

Nothing but a sack of mixed-up emotions, Sid got me back to New York. Grandma Mae, as she'd done years earlier with my mother,
took care of most of the funeral arrangements, which, different than when I buried my mom, included finding enough mourners
to give my father the semblance of having mattered to anyone. Mae put the word out she was cooking up a spread for the after-interment
meal. That got bodies into the church.

The casket was closed. I didn't want to see my father. I didn't think anyone else cared to see him. I knew no one wanted to
see his hands, fingers scraped raw to the bone from uselessly, feebly clawing at the floorboards for help as, day by day,
he died.

Sid brought Fran by the services. The way he told it, she insisted on coming. She gave condolences. Despite knowing what kind
of man Pop was, Frances came off as being truly sad, truly sincere.

Taking my hand, squeezing it: “It's all right, Jackie.”

I knew she wasn't talking about my father. I knew she was talking about me being absent from her Sullivan shot. And in those
few words, “It's all right, Jackie,” she told me that no matter what I'd done, no matter what I'd done to her, nothing had
changed for us. Just as before, same as always, she was my friend.

T
HE
F
RANKS
—Sinatra and Costello—had heard about my father passing. After my performance at the Sands, they couldn't help but get the
word. Both sent over wreaths to the funeral, some cash to cover any expenses I had.

Frank—Sinatra—phoned up with sympathy and support. We talked some, me hardly believing he would have time to waste on me.
But he didn't seem to be rushing me off the phone: How you doing kid great I gotta go. Getting past my father, he talked leisurely,
asked me what I had going on. I told him that in a couple of weeks time Sid had me booked into Slapsie Maxie's, my first ever
show on the coast, that town west of Vegas where all the idiots lived.

Frank laughed at that. He gave me congrats, told me Maxie's was a hot joint—the audience most times peppered with industry
types. A good show there could really break things for me. He added, as I would be in Hollywood anyway, I should run over
to Ciro's and check out Smoky.

“Smoky?”

“Sammy. He's headlining with the trio. Kid puts on a swinger of a show.”

I told Frank that would be great but had heard when Sammy did shows they were strictly SRO. Getting in was as good as impossible.

“Don't you worry about it, pallie. You just make sure you get yourself over to Ciro's.”

Frank had spoken.

C
ONTRARY TO MOST PEOPLE
who'd just buried family, hot on the heels of my father's funeral I turned into Charlie Party. I made the rounds to every
club and nightspot, every hole that offered some combo of music or liquor or any other legal distraction. I filled every minute
of the day with dance and drink, because when I left a minute open, it was the minute I thought of Pop and the thoughts were
lousy.

It wasn't fair.

He hurt me. He degraded me. I didn't care he was dead. I had no reason to care he was dead … and I felt wrong for it. Guilt
is what they called it. It seeped through me, and bop and booze did nothing to sop it away.

Get out.

I had to get out. Out of the old apartment I'd been in too long, out of Harlem. Out of the life I used to know. I found some
new digs, Midtown digs, quick as I could and packed my belongings. My essentials and nothing more. No mementos. No keepsakes.
No nothing of my father's. All that got sent to the garbage man. No more baggage slowing me down. I'd buried my father and
now I wanted to bury my past in the next hole over.

The day prior to me moving out. Some last-minute boxing-up getting done. Li'l Mo came 'round the apartment. Not having made
the funeral, it had been a good few years since I'd seen him, the last time being when I'd quit the moving company and he
gave me looks and attitude like I'd been making a play for his sister.

I opened the door and there he was. He looked different. More than just the years. He looked serious. Very serious, but not
as if over one thing in particular. He looked as if seriousness were just an emotion he carried 'round with him constantly,
same as a watch or a wallet.

I smiled when I saw him, and he sort of did the same. We hugged awkwardly and passed back and forth remarks about how good
the other looked.

I invited Li'l Mo in.

He accepted.

Then we kind of stood around for a moment or more. That quick we ran out of things to say to each other.

It was nutty. We were not more than five, six feet apart, but it might as well have been a mile. The two of us were traveling
in different directions in life and picking up speed, and all the glad-handing in the world couldn't cover that in a short
span of time we'd become not much more than just two guys who used to know each other. Strangers with familiar faces.

I thanked Li'l Mo for the sympathy arrangement he'd sent.

“I was sorry when I heard,” he said. “Your old man was a—”

“Bastard?”

He smiled a little, genuine this time. “Still, ain't never nothing easy about losing folk.”

I shrugged to that, not wanting to get into my complicated and double-minded feelings concerning my father.

Instead: “So, what's going on with you?”

“Got a job at the
Times
.”

“The
Times
? That's terrific.” I dialed up my enthusiasm. “That's perfect for you. You've always been a sharp brother, always had a head
on you. That's sure to be the kind of gig where you could—”

“I load papers onto the trucks.” Li'l Mo was flat and even about it. He didn't say it like what he did was a bad thing. He
most certainly didn't say it like the job was any good.