Crowned Heads (40 page)

“I know,” she said wistfully. “It’s because they want to.”

“Exactly. Here’s Peter Pan, he says, ‘Do you believe in fairies? Say quick that you believe! If you believe, clap your hands!’ Everybody claps. ‘Oh, thank you,’ says Peter, ‘thank you, thank you.’ And Tinkerbell lives. Except I didn’t believe in fairies, I believed in goblins. I had ’em. In my dreams—hundreds of goblins, every sort of creature you can imagine, or that I could. Most kids have bad dreams, I guess, but mine were all movie bad dreams. I used to wake up screaming. Auntie wouldn’t put the light on, said I had to outgrow it. Just fantasies, she said. Then in the daytime the bad dreams were gone, but there were other fantasies. I lived off them. It was easy. You can make the dustman believe in fairies and such. It was easier that way, d’you see? I got so I could make anybody believe anything. All I had to do was use my big eyes and my big smile and they’d believe anything.

“And I’d be crazy, mad as my own pa, to tell you that part wasn’t a lark. I loved it. There was another, bigger house, and another, and that even bigger, and they came and did it up like a magic fairyland place, and there’s my picture on everything in sight, and everybody’s loving me, and the President’s shaking my hand, and I’m meeting the Queen of England. If the world’s truly an oyster, I got the pearl. A whole string of them. That was a fairy-tale world out there, Nellie, darlin’, and I was the fairy-tale prince. I thought I would go on and on, and—”

“Live happily ever after?” She gave him a soft smile.

“Sure. Why not? When things get that good you always think they’re never going to end. People want you; it never occurs to you that they may stop wanting you. Papa Baer’s fat and kind and funny and you think, Papa Baer’s my friend, good old Papa Baer. But he wasn’t, you know. He was just fat and rich, and he wanted to be richer. Never saw a man who wanted to be as rich as he wanted to be. But you see, the thing was, it was all make-believe, and life isn’t that, there’s not much storybook in real life. But I never had to make a decision, never had to stand on my own two feet, never had to do anything except turn on the tears or the smile and do what they told me. Everywhere I looked things were pretty, things were fun, things were … good. I thought everything, everywhere in the whole wide world was like that. Everybody was saying, Oh, dear, Bobbitt’s growing up. I could see how scared they were. They didn’t want me to grow up; that meant the end of everything. It wasn’t just the studio; it was everybody everywhere. They wanted me to stay a boy. When I saw them frightened, it frightened me. I got the idea that somewhere, out beyond the world I was living in, there was another world—the true one, the real one—and I didn’t like it. I didn’t want to go there and see. It was like going through the Grimly Wood. I didn’t want to see that other world. But then I wasn’t a boy anymore, I was starting to become a man, and they didn’t want that. They gave me everything except the one thing I needed. I needed to know what that world was like. I needed to know what was really truly true. But I didn’t. Then one day it was all gone, everything, overnight. I wasn’t Bobbitt anymore, I was just Bob Ransome. It’s a terrible thing, Nell, to be wanted and then
not
to be wanted. I think it’s better not to have been wanted in the first place. It’s like being poor and then rich—better not be rich unless you’re going to stay rich. If you stay poor, you never know what it’s like, so maybe you don’t miss it.

“Well, I said to myself as they showed me the door, that was fun while it lasted. Now what’ll I do? But I found I couldn’t do anything, except what I’d done. Just the one thing. Only I couldn’t do it anymore. Everything had changed, including myself. I never really knew how to act, you know; whatever it was I did was just a natural sort of thing, and if Rags was dead I cried, or if every day was like my birthday I was happy and that was it. But afterward I didn’t know what to do. All my friends were grown up now, and they seemed to be getting along just fine—but not me. I still wanted to be a little boy.

“All I could do was sing a little and dance a little and perform imitations, and they put me in nightclubs, but I knew I was a freak, people weren’t coming to see me, they wanted to see Bobbitt, but there wasn’t any Bobbitt anymore. Bobbitt had grown up, so they went away again. Managers don’t pay you when the customers go away.”

“But now it’s different,” Nellie protested. “They want you. They’re asking for you. They’ve been looking for you, too. The newspapers, the television. You remember last year, in the park—the ‘Broadway Stars for Children’?” He remembered. She told him of the plan, that he was to headline this year’s benefit. “Bobbitt for the children, Robin. You always said you loved the children. You must do it. For them.”

He laughed. “It’s the same story, don’t you see? They don’t want me, they want Bobbitt. What they want is their yesterdays, their youth, whatever they remember from then that made them happy.”

“You can make them happy now.”

“Dear, dear Nell, what a dear girl you are. And a forgiving one. But—” He shook his head. “I don’t want to make them happy. I don’t want to make anybody happy. I just want to be let alone.” He shook the bear so the eyes twirled in its head. “I don’t want to be famous again. I don’t want to be anything, except Mr. Thingamabob and go to the park and tell stories to the kids. I love kids, Nell, they’re really marvelous. I tell them a tale or two, and they love it so, and I pass the hat and I make enough to get along on and that’s fine for me.” He gazed around the room. “All this is fine for me. The truth is, I like it here. Not much of a place, I know, and this”—jouncing the mattress—“is not a bed of roses, but it’s easier.”

“There’s always something easier than something else.” She had got up and now stood looking at him with determination. He recognized the Missy Priss tilt of the chin, the gesture of her hands planted on her hips. He drew farther back onto the bed corner as she moved purposefully across the room, first to one window, where she snapped up the shade, then to the second and the third. The rollers rattled and flopped with her forceful gesture. The sun streamed through the grimy panes, flooding the small place. Robin blinked in the blinding light, shielded his eyes against it, groped finally for his dark glasses and put them on.

“Stand up,” she ordered. He stood. She moved about the room, puffing her cheeks and blowing. Dust rose in clouds, their motes sifting into the beams of light, forming dark, murky rays. She took the teddy bear from him and gave it a shake. Dust flew in all directions. She blew along the shelves among the cups and breakfast bowls. She shook the dolls, the clothing. “Dust,” she muttered, “and more dust. Nothing but dust.” She turned to him. “Robin, is that what you’re going to do, live in dust the rest of your life? Because you’re afraid? Because if you don’t come out now, with me, that’s what you’ll do. And that’s what you’ll be.” She went and took him by the shoulders and gave him a good shake. “More dust.” Then she held him close and reached on tiptoe to kiss him. When she took her face away she was crying, and her voice trembled as she spoke.

“Listen to me, Robin, this is very important. You haven’t learned it, but it’s something you should know. Darling Robin, you can begin over again. People can. A new start. Everybody should get a second chance, no matter what they’ve done or haven’t done. Maybe not a third or a fourth, but at least a second. It’s the one thing people won’t be denied. Have your second chance, Robin. It’s there. Take it.”

“Take it?”

“Take it. Please take it. For me. For the children. For yourself.”

“I can’t, Nellie. It’s nice of you—of them—but I can’t. I just can’t seem to make anything work.”

He sat down again, staring at the buckled floor, his hands shoved deep in his pockets.

“Robin, do you remember?” she said quietly.

He looked over at her. “Remember what?”

“‘If only people wouldn’t put their hands in their pockets so much,’ said Missy Priss. ‘What should they do with them?’ asked Bobbitt. ‘Why,’ she laughed, ‘hold someone else’s. There’s the trick, the whole world holding hands and never letting go.’”

He nodded. “Sure, Nell—it’s a good line. Now you just go along and hold hands with all those folks and never let go.”

She went to him in a little murmuring rush and knelt and took his hand and squeezed it. “It’s your hand I don’t want to let go of. ‘We must love one another, that’s what we must do,’ said Missy Priss. That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Robin. We must just … love one another.” She kissed him. He gave her a half-hearted peck and tried to move away. She would not let him go.

“Robin?” she said again. “Robin?” He wouldn’t answer, only raised his head and looked around. It had been so long since he had seen sunlight in the room. It brought everything into sharp, ugly relief—the cracked plaster, the unmade bed, the clothes flung about. And the museum; Bobbittland. It was such a little room to hold all those things. Even now the dust that Nellie had shaken up still hung in the air.

He had picked up Nellie’s balloon, and sat staring at his own childish image on the front of the inflated rubber. The face looked so ridiculous. His face, but not his at all. Someone else’s. A long-ago face. A someone-who-used-to-be face. A yesterday face. He undid the string and let the balloon go and it zoomed around the room, deflating, zipping in crazy circles from corner to corner, growing smaller and smaller, until it fell beside his chair. He reached and picked it up, stretched the rubber out on his knee. He couldn’t make anything of the shrunken face; it was hardly even there. Then he began blowing the balloon up. He blew and blew and it got bigger and bigger, bigger than it had been before. Every now and again he would stop blowing and hold it out, watching the face grow larger, the Bobbitt smile stretching bigger and bigger. He blew some more, looked again.
Bobbitt’s smile is a yard wide.
He stretched his own lips in a parody of the smile, then blew some more. And blew. And blew. Larger and larger the balloon got, and wider the smile. Until there was a loud pop and he held only the exploded pieces of rubber, then they slipped from his fingers to the floor. “Everybody gets a second chance,” he murmured. When he looked at her again he was smiling his own smile.

“What’ll we sing for ’em, Nell?”

“Oh, my dear. Then you will?”

“I guess … I can try. I guess I could go chasin’ rabbits, couldn’t I?”

She nodded. “Yes, yes, we’ll go chasin’ rabbits together.”

“But I’ll tell you this, Nell—when I get up on that stage, you know what it’s goin’ to be.”

“What?”

“‘Hokum and Bunkum and Bluff.’”

“Oh, my dear. Shall I tell you what it’s going to be?” She took his hand and gave it a squeeze. “It’s going to be ‘For Old Times’ Sake.’”

The evening was still and warm. At the east end of the Sheep Meadow stood the open-air stage erected for “Broadway Stars for Children.” People had been gathering since early afternoon, staking out places on the ground, spreading their blankets, setting down their picnic baskets. Some had brought tablecloths, which they laid out, with glasses for wine, and candles or little lanterns. It was a special evening. Everybody felt it, everyone was waiting. They were in a holiday mood. Children were everywhere. They, too, waited, eagerly but quietly. The sun dropped, the breeze drifted across the meadow, while people sat in the purple dusk. Overhead the luminous sky was hung with trembling stars as they came out, one by one, then seemingly all together. Over on the side streets off Central Park West, windows were open where old women leaned thin elbows on bed pillows between cans of wilted philodendron, craning to see. They were waiting, too; after all, the show was free, was for everybody. That was part of the fun of living in New York.

Backstage, things moved quietly, orderly. The musicians were getting their instruments from their cases, ready to go onstage. The performers stood in groups, waiting for the overture. The women were gowned and jeweled, the men wore black tie and dinner jacket. In her Missy Priss costume, Nellie primped her side curls in a mirror, waiting for Robin. Rehearsal, which had gone on all afternoon, had been the usual havoc; how they were to pull a show off remained to be seen. She was worried. Robin had been nervous working with the orchestra, had trouble deciding on his key, had thrown out all the suggestions the arranger and orchestra leader had made. Everyone had been kind and friendly toward him, had bent over backward to make him feel at home, to welcome him back into the acting fraternity, but he had kept aloof, was cold and even temperamental, until the others began avoiding him, stood around criticizing his work. He’d even whistled in the dressing room, the worst luck in the world for actors. In the end he’d almost bowed out altogether, and even now Nellie wasn’t sure he’d show up.

The orchestra moved onstage, then the conductor, and the overture began in the darkness, then the lights came up, a huge bank of them set out in the center of the meadow, hitting the stage full face, then Bobby Morse, acting as master of ceremonies, got ready for his entrance.

“Break a leg, kid,” Gwen Verdon told him.

Out he went and did his introductory comic spot, which had the audience laughing right away. He listed the names of the stars they were about to see, and Nellie took heart from the cheers that rose when Bobbitt’s name was announced.

The actors from
The Wiz
opened the show with “Ease on Down the Road” and “Everybody Rejoice.” They were followed by Carol Channing, then Zero Mostel. Still Robin hadn’t appeared. Doug Henning went on and did his magic tricks; the kids ate it all up. After him came Beverly Sills, who sang her two numbers. Then Nellie heard her own name announced; she and Cyril Ritchard were doing a sketch from
Bobbitt and Alfie,
with Cyril playing Willie Marsh’s role as the butler. The lights went down, Nellie took her place in her rocker, her reticule in her lap, the lights went up, and Alfie came out in his butler’s costume. Nellie thought she’d never seen such an enormous audience; the faces melted back into the darkness for what seemed a mile. Microphones planted all along the stage apron picked up the dialogue and carried it out to the audience through giant banks of speakers on either side of the stage. “Where’s Bobbitt?” she heard a child near the front ask. Where indeed? Nellie wondered, glancing offstage, where the other actors were watching from the wings. Cyril Ritchard took her hand, she rose from her chair, the orchestra struck their musical cue, and they did “Hokum and Bunkum and Bluff” from
Bobbitt Royal.
The applause was very gratifying as they went off, passing Angela Lansbury, waiting to be introduced.