But Enough About Me (16 page)

I told her about my encounter with a serene, relentlessly positive Tony Bennett, which took place in the home office of his New York apartment. I owned fifteen of his albums and had applauded wildly at many of his shows, so I was apprehensive. I would have been crushed if he had been brusque, or phony, or distant, or creepy, or depressed.

“Come in, come in,” he said, welcoming me with a beatific smile. He was drying a paintbrush with a cloth. “I was just painting. I usually wear a painting outfit and nice, cozy slippers.” I immediately lowered and softened my voice to match his. He bid me to have a seat and I sank into a cream-colored wraparound couch. I relaxed instantly. He put a drink in my hand as music played softly in the background and the late-winter sky darkened to a lavender gray. A fluffy white dog jumped into my lap as snow began to fall, softly, gently, outside.

I petted the snoozing dog as Tony reminisced warmly about Irving Berlin and “the great Jimmy Durante” and his admiration for the crisp professionalism of Johnny Carson and Merv Griffin, who always wore ties and had great house bands on their shows. Tony's every other word was “terrific” or “fantastic.” I wanted to spend the weekend drowsing on his couch. We could rent movies and play Scrabble, a bottle of Drambuie between us. After our interview, I told her, he sent me a bouquet of flowers, which I lovingly photographed.

“Well, he certainly sounds better than some of the hideous monsters that you interview,” said Tracy. “All those bad-mannered men.”

A week later, I met Tracy at the train station for our excursion to Melissa's house. Despite her long trip from Connecticut, her white shirt was free of wrinkles. Tracy always reminded me of a camellia: fresh and coolly pale. “I signed the card from the both of us,” she said, carrying a large present decorated with ribbons the color of sugar almonds.

“You knew I'd forget to bring a gift,” I said.

“Well…,” she said, waving her hand in a tactful way. “I know you're busy.”

Melissa's husband, Daniel, picked us up at the station in his maroon minivan. Daniel was a good-natured banker with a flat Chicago accent and a propensity to sling his arm around whoever was near, a large, eager-to-please golden retriever, right down to the shedding.

“How is Melissa feeling?” asked Tracy. Melissa had apparently been in labor for thirty hours.

“Oh, she's holding up great.” He laughed. “Tell you what, though, she was cursing me out in the delivery room. Tyler is a monster. A monster! He nearly split my wife in half!”

The traffic wasn't moving. “Let's go!” hollered Dan, pounding on his car horn, and the other cars jerked forward. Sometimes I love being with a giant, red-faced man.

I heard Tyler screaming as we pulled into the driveway. “Listen to the lungs on my little guy,” Daniel said happily.

“Melissa's in the living room,” he said, guiding us inside the house. “Wait until you see his hands,” he announced. “Huge hands, huge feet. You've got to feel his grip.” Every single new father in the Western world feels compelled to talk about his newborn's mighty grip and, if it's a male, his giant feet.

Melissa's sister, Sarah, grabbed my arm as I walked in the door. “Please don't freak out when you see her eyes,” she murmured. “I know you get queasy.” While Daniel disappeared to fire up the grill for barbecue, Sarah led me over to Melissa, who was wearing one of Daniel's tablecloth-sized T-shirts and smiling peacefully. The whites of her eyes were completely red.
“I know, it's bad,” she said cheerfully. “I was straining so hard that I guess I burst some blood vessels in my eyes.”

The volume of Tyler's hollering increased. “You got here right in time for Tyler's lunch,” she said, peeling back the baby blanket. “You can't believe how often he wants to nurse.” Oh yes I could. He was enormous and rubbery-looking.

“It's okay,” Melissa crooned, lifting up her T-shirt.

I watched as her boobs flopped out of her nursing bra. They had enormous brown nipples. I had seen her breasts many a time in high school as she changed outfits before parties, and they looked nothing like that. These nipples looked like molasses spice cookies. My hand involuntarily headed to my mouth before Tracy shot me a warning look. I caught myself and forced it back down to my side.

Melissa caught me gaping. “Funny, isn't it?” she said, smiling wryly. “Some people think that the dark color is so that the baby can find your breast more easily, because they can't see so well.”

I guess it is pretty funny when one of your body parts suddenly turns brown. Ha, ha!

She clamped Tyler onto one bosom and he began to gulp greedily, his translucent fingers pulsing softly like sea anemones.

Melissa's voice turned high and singsongy. “You're a hungry boy! Aren't ya! Aren't you a hungry, hungry boy! Yes, you are! Yes, you are! Sometimes you make my nipples bleed!” She grinned. “I can't tell you how your heart opens up when you have a child.” Her eyes moistened with hormonal tears. “I just—I just can't explain it.”

At that moment, Tyler's eyes swiveled toward me as he guzzled away. Then they narrowed. I tried for levity. “Don't worry,” I said to him, waving my can of diet soda that Daniel had given me. “I've got plenty to drink.” He continued to glare at me. Shouldn't he be tenderly gazing at his mother?

“Was it scary, being in labor so long?” I ventured.

Melissa smirked at me. “Look, you don't have to pretend like this is your thing. I know it isn't. But yes, by the end of it, I was begging the doctor to
end my life.” She shifted in her seat. “Ouch,” she said. “You know, they cut me. Down there. I have eighteen stitches.”

“And you have hemorrhoids,” her sister prompted.

“Oh, yes,” said Melissa, nodding vigorously. “Look out. Sometimes they don't go away for a year. It feels like you're constantly sitting on a pebble.”

“Mine took six months to go away,” said Sarah. They both looked at me expectantly. Was I supposed to share my own hemorrhoidal story?

Melissa brightened. “Hey, do you want to hold him?”

I must have looked alarmed because they both laughed. “Here,” she said, detaching Tyler and handing him over.

“I don't know if this is a good idea,” I began, but Melissa had already deposited him into my stiff arms.

“Be sure and support his neck because his head wobbles,” she said. I pictured his head lolling, and then his neck snapping as I watched helplessly.

Tyler stared placidly at me. He was actually very cute, with rosy cheeks and a sweetly protruding upper lip.

“Take a sniff of his head,” Melissa prompted. “It's the best baby smell.” I stayed locked into position.

“Look at how stilted she is,” she said to Tracy. I studied his face. Shouldn't I be aflow with tender feelings? And why was he sweating so much? It was as if he had just returned from the gym. Was that normal?

All three women were staring at me, so I felt like I should do something spontaneous to prove that I liked kids and wasn't a sociopath. I held him up over my head as I had seen people do in ads. He giggled and flapped his arms. It was sort of fun. I swung him up again.

“Blup,” he gurgled, and then a cascade of milk flowed into my face, with a few drips landing in my open, smiling mouth. Human milk. My friend Melissa's milk. Melissa and Tracy scrambled for a tissue, laughing. “Whoops,” said Melissa, doing what I thought was a very half-baked job of wiping my face.

I was still holding a squirming Tyler. Suddenly he went rigid. “Is everything okay?” I said, startled.

“Oh, sure,” said Melissa. “He probably just has gas. He's really gassy. Aren't ya! Aren't you the gassiest boy!”

Tyler's eyes focused on a far-off point above my shoulder. Then he vibrated for a good five or six minutes.
Pffffffffffft.
Then he went slack. I handed him back to Melissa.

Dan came in the kitchen, clutching a barbecue fork, a driving rain of sweat soaking his T-shirt. “Need more marinade,” he muttered.

I ran for their guest bathroom and Tracy followed.

“Forty-five minutes and we're out of here,” I said, splashing my face with water. “I will never get the taste of that milk out of my mouth. It was sweet, and warm.” I fought back a gag. “Spay me now.”

Tracy passed me a guest towel. “Listen, I know Melissa isn't the person you know right now,” she said. “But when you have a newborn, everything is just turned upside down.” She put her hands on my shoulders. “I'm still the same. Okay? I had three children. Remember?”

I sighed. “I just don't get it. I don't know why you would want your house to explode with plastic toys. And did you see Melissa's eye bags?” I shuddered. “And why does every new mother love to tell you about the gory details? What was Sarah saying about a mucous plug? That was a new one to me.”

She hesitated. “Well, it falls out of you before your water breaks,” she said.

I opened Melissa's medicine cabinet and rummaged around. Hm. Daniel suffered from jock itch, it would seem. And somebody had a buildup of excess earwax. I picked up a long tube. “What do you suppose this is for?”

Tracy calmly took it from my hands and put it back.

I faced her. “Why did you have kids?” I asked. I had never asked her before. I guess I just assumed that she would give me the same answer that my mother did, which went along the lines of
I didn't think about it too much, I just did it.

She smiled. “It sort of fit into my life plan,” she said. “I felt like I was
destined to get married, work, and then be a stay-at-home mom. I wasn't as career minded as you are and I'm very happy with that, settling into suburbia.” She shut the medicine cabinet. “I'll be honest, you do lose a lot of brain cells, that's one reason for not having kids.” She paused. “I've never considered myself to be one of those completely gushing over-the-top kinds of mothers, but without going all
Jerry Maguire
on you, there's a completeness to the picture. It's not for everyone. As Oprah says, being a stay-at-home mom is one of the hardest jobs in the world. But I really think you would be great at it.”

“No, I would not.”

“I wouldn't tell you that if I didn't mean it. You may not want to hear this, but you're incredibly old-fashioned.” She shrugged. “You believe in your family so strongly, and you generally had a wonderful childhood, which is the cornerstone of being a good parent.” I looked at her fondly. Tracy, whose taste ran to Lilly Pulitzer and Ann Taylor but never batted an eye during my heavy-eyeliner phase, who never drank anything stronger than a cosmopolitan but tried not to judge as I checked various drugs off of my to-do list. We trusted each other implicitly.

“Bur-gers!” we heard Daniel holler.

“Forty-five minutes and we're out,” I whispered to Tracy.

“An hour,” she countered as we pushed open the bathroom door.

If you are dispatched to a film or TV set and need to do a little sleuthing about your subject, forget the hair and makeup people. Yes, they love to gossip, but it's usually about everybody else, not the celebrity they are currently fussing over. Even if it's clear that they can't stand their charge, the most that you will get is eye-rolling, because painting a famous person's face can yield a day rate of thousands of dollars, and working on a set means a steady paycheck, so it doesn't behoove them to tell you anything.

Ditto the crew. They are usually loyal to “the talent” because they won't want to be blackballed for future work. They want to remain firmly in the union, and who can blame them? And film sets are so incestuous that loose lips will swiftly be discovered. Production assistants and interns will flee from you in terror, chauffeurs often have to sign confidentiality agreements, and the catering people are never alone because someone is always hanging around the craft services table.

You need someone nonunion. You need someone who is completely mercenary.

You'll be needing the van driver.

Usually on a television or film set there is a scraggly guy who ferries various items or people around in a van. Often he is a local who does not work on sets for a living. He is your man.

I learned this unsavory fact when I was sent to Wilmington, North Carolina, to the set of
Dawson's Creek
for a rendezvous with then-rising star Katie Holmes. I had spent the day with her and found her to be sweetly wholesome. She told me she had grown up completely sheltered and happily naive in Toledo, Ohio, in the protective shadow of her older brothers. She attended an all-girl Catholic school, where the nuns told her that sex means love to girls and love means sex to boys.

In normal circumstances I would have liked her (although she had a grating habit of pronouncing “especially”
ex-specially
), but
Rolling Stone
wasn't
Ladies' Home Journal.
The cover images that sold the most briskly were of half-naked starlets, and we were encouraged to inject as much sex, drugs, and rock and roll into the text as we could reasonably get away with. Racy, she was not. I left our first interview with mixed feelings. Why did I have to tart everyone up? On the other hand, our chat had not been compelling.

Afterward, a bored
Dawson's
rep showed me around the set, then pointed at a brown van that was parked on a road near the entrance. “He'll take you to your hotel,” he said.

A guy with a thin mustache and a tank top greeted me unsmilingly. He grunted, tossed his cigarette out the window, and turned on the ignition. Remembering my father's assertion that most unfriendly-looking people are actually shy, I cleared my throat.

“Not much action around here, huh?” I asked. He grinned.

“Nope,” he said. “Most days I just sit around, have a smoke. It ain't so bad.”

“How long have you been working here?” I said. After a while, I could ask questions on autopilot, and supply smooth follow-ups, without actually paying attention to what was said. It was all about modulation. Like a dog or a cat, I would snap into focus only if a voice abruptly raised or changed tone.

“About a month,” he said. “I'm done next week. Got some business to take care of in Winston-Salem.”

I nodded, gravely but sympathetically, as if I knew what he was talking about.

“Mind if I smoke?” he asked.

“No, go ahead.” I hated cigarette smoke but wanted to appear breezy and hip.

He sparked one up and chuckled. “The only action I saw was with that little girl Katie and Josh.” I sat up. That would be her costar, Joshua Jackson. Easy now. Clearly, he didn't know I was a reporter, but just assumed I was one of the many people who streamed in and out of the place. “They've been at it for a while, now.”

“Oh?” I said lightly.

“It's the worst-kept secret on the set,” he said. “Ask anybody.” A Grinchlike grin crept across my face and I restrained myself from giggling. Thank you, my good man, and best of luck with your endeavor in Winston-Salem!

The next day as Katie and I had coffee together, I told her that I learned from a well-placed source that she and Jackson were an item. My conscience pricked me when her soft smile died and she buried her head in her hands. She whimpered a confirmation. I got my story. Everybody wins! Well, sort of.

In the music world, the tour-bus driver can be another rich trove of information, provided that he is a mercenary hire for a band's summer tour and not a regular driver with a decade of loyal employment. During a trip to Boston to spend time on the tour bus with the now-forgotten band Days of the New, I chatted up the bus driver while the group was outside arguing with their manager.

“Do you always work with these guys?” I asked.

“Oh, no,” he said cheerfully. “It varies.” Aha. I put my notebook and tape recorder down, signaling that I was off duty.

I smiled eagerly, like a fan. “Who was the wildest group that you've ever driven?” I asked breathlessly.

He considered for a moment. “Well, the strangest thing I've heard lately is about that fellow from Alice in Chains. A buddy of mine told me about it, he's a driver, too. That fellow—”

“Layne Staley?” I prompted. “The lead singer?”

He rubbed his chin. “Yeah. Him. That fellow does a lot of drugs.”

“Right,” I said.

“Well, my buddy saw him recently, and says that the guy shot up a lot, and sometimes he used dirty needles. Got gangrene in both wrists. Had to have both hands amputated.”

My heart quickened as a familiar sensation flooded me—equal parts excitement and self-loathing at the discovery of a lurid story. “Are you sure about that?” I asked.

He swigged from his Styrofoam cup of coffee and allowed a small belch. “My buddy doesn't lie. He saw it with his own eyes.” He looked at me pointedly. “When's the last time you saw a photo of him?”

I scanned my mental archives. “I don't know,” I admitted. Staley hadn't been at any shows lately, but I assumed it was because of his drug jamboree, which was hardly a secret.

The bus driver shrugged. “That's because they want to keep it out of the papers. Although it's not like his career's over because he doesn't play guitar. I'm telling ya. The guy doesn't have any hands.”

The next morning I flew back to New York and hastened to the office. I threw my bag down and speed-walked over to the cubicle of my editor, Karen. She was in the midst of closing a story and was staring intently at the screen.

“Listen,” I said quietly. “I have it on good authority that Layne Staley
has no hands.
”

She squinted up at me as if I had a bug on my face. She had long ago become inured to most of my dramatic schemes but I could see she was curious. “What are you talking about?” she said. “I think I need a cigarette for this.” She grabbed a pack of smokes. “Come downstairs with me.”

I told her the story while she puffed furiously. Then she took me into the managing editor's office and made me repeat it. “Well,” he said. “If it's true, then you'll have to do a story on it. Let me just check with photo to see if there is anything recent on him.”

My heart leaped. Breaking news, and I was at the front lines! I trumpeted my report to a couple of the younger staffers, reveling in their satisfyingly shocked reaction, then walked purposefully back to my desk to commence my research.

Five minutes later, Karen dropped a photo of Layne Staley—both hands perfectly intact—on my desk.

“That was taken last week,” she said. I could see she was holding back laughter, but she softened when she saw my crestfallen face. “You shouldn't be so disappointed to learn that a person has hands,” she said. “It's good news, not bad news, that the poor guy isn't an amputee.”

Then I started to laugh, too. Although I wasn't laughing a week later when coworkers were still greeting me by hiding a hand in their sleeve and waving a cheery hello with their “stump.”