Dancing in the Light (8 page)

“Well, I hope not,” said Simo. “She wouldn’t know what to do with this.”

“With what?” I asked, really becoming curious now.

My company manager, Michael Flowers, flanked by two policemen, guided me over to the huge stage-door elevator that was used for loading equipment into the theater.

“Why are you taking me this way?” I asked.

And with that, the elevator door opened. The crowd began to applaud. I turned to them. I didn’t know why they were applauding. Someone pointed behind me. I turned around.

Towering over me was a huge Indian elephant with her trainer from Ringling Brothers Circus beside her.

Lee Guber, the promoter for my show at the Gershwin, said, “You said the one thing you had never done was ride an elephant. Well, happy birthday! Here’s your chance.”

I quickly wiped my eyes, took a deep breath, entered the scene, and we were “on.” Lee was right. The night I had won the Academy Award, I was interviewed by Joel Siegel. He had concluded that I had done just about everything there was to do in my life and he wondered if there was anything I hadn’t done that he didn’t know about. It didn’t take me long. “Oh,” I said, “I’ve never ridden an elephant.”

So, here she was, along with several hundred people who were now going to watch me do it.

“What’s her name?” I asked the trainer.

“Tananya,” he said tenderly, as though she were his lumbering daughter.

I looked up into the huge pachyderm’s eyes. She blinked like the shutter of a low-speed camera. I
liked her immediately. She seemed kind. I had always loved elephants. I had elephant knickknacks, brought back from India, all over my apartment.

Tananya nuzzled me with her trunk and moved me into position. She clearly had the idea she was going to pick me up. The crowd roared. Then, before I realized what was happening, she scooped me up in her powerful trunk and held me aloft for all of Fifty-first Street to see. The people applauded. Tananya had a new performing partner. She gently returned me to earth and knelt down.

On my toes I reached for the flap of her ear and lifted it. “I think I have met you before,” I said into her ear. “But I can’t isolate which lifetime it was. It was either you or your great-great-grandmother. And if you guys have the memories everybody says you do, maybe you can remember when it was.”

She nuzzled me again with her trunk. The television cameras ground away.

“Well,” said the trainer. “How about a ride? That’s what we’re here for.”

With that, Tananya knelt lower and I realized why Sachi and Simo had wanted me to wear slacks.

Well, I picked up my knit skirt, grateful that I was wearing thick black panty hose, grabbed one of her ears gently, stepped as lightly as possible on the crook in her bent knee, and whipped my right leg over her massive head. I scrambled the rest of me to the top just as Tananya lurched to her feet. The crowd adored it and all I could think of was the Carmen Miranda shot that the TV cameras must have gotten. (There was a famous shot taken during the Second World War of Carmen Miranda out dancing one evening. She had evidently forgotten her underwear and the camera proved it. There were legions of soldiers who claimed that that shot, posted on their lockers, was what brought them back alive.)

Tananya proceeded to break into a fast, head-bobbing shuffle—the same rapid movement they use on stage; she knew damn well what this was all
about—and headed down Fifty-first Street with me hanging on to my birthday life for all I was worth. Several Russian cab drivers couldn’t believe what they were seeing. If for no other reason, it had been a good move for them to renounce the oppression of communism and try the bizarre expression of New York City.

Tananya and I were a hit. We could have taken our act on the road. I definitely understood why her other mistresses wore leotards, especially leotards which were beaded in the crotch.

We made several rounds of Fifty-first Street. I had a flash that Mother would be watching this on
Entertainment Tonight
from her hospital bed, and if anything would convince her that she had lived to see it all, it would be this.

Tananya finally came to a triumphant halt. She knelt down again, and then I saw the reason why … a huge chocolate birthday cake waited for me with candles lit and the crowd singing. I jumped from her back and blew out the candles, making a wish for Mother’s recovery as fast as I could. It wasn’t fast enough. Tananya nuzzled me out of the way, neatly scooped up half the birthday cake in her trunk, and did away with it in one fell swoop. I doubled over laughing.

Someone handed me a knife. I trimmed away the unevenness of her trunk-scoop and passed out the rest of the cake to the crowd.

Sachi was hugging herself with glee as we disappeared into the stage door.

There was only half an hour left for me to make up and warm up. But I had long since learned that having fun was more important than being prepared. It had been a painful lesson to learn, but I was much happier with the knowledge that living in the moment was everything.

When I walked out onto the stage, the audience yelled “Happy birthday,” and when the ovation stopped, I told them what had happened with the
elephant. Some of them had been on the street and were still eating the cake. Others, who never hung out around stage doors, realized what they had missed. One man yelled from the audience wondering why we hadn’t brought the elephant on stage. I said if he could have seen what happened in the freight elevator, he would realize that I wouldn’t have been able to dance on the stage for a week.

I did the show and had the time of my life. When it was over, I sat happily exhausted in my dressing room and called Dad.

“Hi, Monkey,” he said. “We saw you on television. You had yourself a big time, didn’t you?” He was laughing and spirited.

“How’s Mom, Daddy?” I asked.

He hesitated a moment. “I don’t know. We’ll see. I think she’s all right tonight. She’s asleep now.”

“Did she see me on the elephant?”

“Oh, yes. She had a big time watching you too.”

“What do you think, Daddy?”

“Well, Monkey, you know how I feel about this. I’m prepared for whatever happens. If she goes, I won’t be far behind.”

The celebration joy receded. It was such a contrast in two realities. He was really talking about the Big Moment.

“I think maybe your mother is not as prepared for the hereafter as I am. But since my experience I told you about, it’s fine with me. I’m just waiting for her.”

“Would it be okay with you if she died?” I asked, hardly believing that such a question had come out of me.

“Oh, sure,” he said. “We all have to go and it’s certainly getting to be that time for both of us. I’m not afraid for her. She’s worried about me, but she shouldn’t be. I’d be free to go, too, if she’d just go ahead and do it.”

I began to tell him something I had wanted to say for a long time.

“You know. Daddy, that when you both go we’ll be able to spend much more time together than we do now.”

“Oh, yes, Monkey. I know that.”

His agreement surprised me.

“I mean,” I went on, “that when you leave the body and become just a soul again, I will always know you’re there.”

“Yes, I know.”

“I mean, there won’t be this separation of cities and countries like there is now. When you’re on the other side and out of your body, you can talk to me all the time and I’ll hear it, because I really understand how that stuff works now.”

“Oh, yes,” he said, “I know. And I won’t have to wear these damn fool contraptions in my ears to hear you either. I know what you’re talking about. That’s why I’m not afraid.” Oh God, I wondered, did other fathers and daughters talk like this when death was near?

“Bodies are difficult to live in, right?” I asked.

“Very difficult,” he answered. “Especially when you know how it is to be out of one.”

“So, if she goes, don’t think you have to hang on to staying alive just for Warren and me.”

I heard him breathe an audible sigh of relief. “Monkey?” he asked, “if I could only believe that your brother feels this way, too, it sure would be easier on your mother and me.”

“Well,” I said, barely able to talk, “he’s a big boy too. You don’t have to worry. If you want to go—go ahead. Then you can help both of us from the other side. Maybe you’ll be one of those spiritual guides I talk to. You always did know more than you let on, you know. Why should it stop now?”

“That’s right,” he answered, needing to say nothing more.

“Right.”

“And you and Warren can save a lot of money on plane tickets. All you’ll have to do is close your eyes and we’ll be there. You can do your work anywhere in the world and we’ll be able to talk to you and see how you’re doing. It would be much better than this because we don’t see enough of you now.”

I couldn’t stand it anymore.

“Okay, Daddy,” I said, feeling my voice pinch into that raspy squeak. “I think I’d better go now. I’ll call you when I wake up.”

“Okay, Monkey,” he said. “Thank you. Tell me, did that pachyderm take a dump on the street or in that elevator?”

“In the elevator,” I answered. “She was trained to be polite in public, just like me.”

“Yes,” he said, “you always were right much of a lady. Were you glad you wore those black stockings?” He laughed that maddeningly teasing laugh of his, the laugh that also drove Mother crazy.

“Yes, I was glad,” I said to him, “but when you’re on top of the world like that, it really doesn’t matter what you have on.”

“Yeah, I reckon you were always a child of nature, weren’t you?”

“Bye, Daddy. I love you.”

“I love you too, Monkey. Happy birthday.”

We hung up. I dressed for a birthday dinner, but all the restaurants were closed. A group of us ended up bringing home delicatessen food, which Sachi arranged deliciously, but I was so done in by the implications of the day’s events that I eased upstairs and went to bed. It was all very well to be metaphysical in the abstract, but the personalization of the earth-plane reality when it came to my mom and dad got me right where I lived. I was exhausted and, above all things, I needed sleep. Before I shuttered down, I had time to be grateful for my fiftieth birthday and glad it wouldn’t happen again. This time.

Chapter 4

T
wo days after Mother went into the hospital, I took the Eastern shuttle and went to Virginia to visit her. Sachi had gone the day before on her way back to California. Neither Mom nor Dad wanted me to do anything that would jeopardize my time or health. “Wait until your day off,” Dad had said. But that was a week away. I felt I couldn’t.

As I walked into Mother’s hospital room, I found her in remarkably high spirits. Seeing her lying helplessly in bed had become a familiar sight to me over the last few years. I couldn’t help feeling that she was desperately trying to convey that life had become too trying for her. Yet she was always a favorite of the doctors and nurses and seemed to flourish and bloom with their attention. She cared much more about the well-being of the hard-working hospital attendants than she did about herself. “You go on now,” she said to a young blond nurse who had a husband waiting at home, “I’ll be fine. I can take care of things while you’re gone.” The nurse evidenced confusion because she knew her hours required her to stay anyway. Mother wanted the nurse to know that she shouldn’t spend any extra energy on her, though.

“These nurses are my real friends,” said Mother,
glowing from their attention as I walked into her room and leaned over to kiss her.

“Yeah, I’ll bet you have more friends in hospitals than anywhere else by now, don’t you?” I asked.

“Oh, no,” she answered. “I have friends everywhere.”

I sat down and took off the jacket of the raw-silk slack suit I was wearing.

“My goodness,” said Mother, “that’s a nice outfit. Where did you get that, Hong Kong?”

I explained it was from Canada and she said she loved to see me done up in clothes from around the world.

“You know, Shirl,” she said, “the trips you’ve given us are our most cherished memories. You said they would change our lives, and they certainly did. We sit together and go over them night after night, and when we read a book about one of the places we’ve been, or watch a TV program and recognize the scenery, it’s so much fun to know we’ve been there.”

I sat down beside her bed and prepared for an afternoon of happy reminiscing about her travels. But I did have a particular curiosity to explore her feelings about her trips.

“Mom,” I asked, “were you ever anywhere that you felt you had been before?”

“Oh, yes,” she said, “I’ve thought about that a lot. I think it was in the hills somewhere in Scotland. I knew the look of that place so well. I couldn’t understand it. I thought I had been there with your daddy. But he didn’t feel it was familiar at all. So I don’t know why, but I
knew
I had been there. It was the smell and the feel of the place. And when I was there, I was happy, very happy, but I can’t figure out
when.”

A nurse came in to check Mother’s heart monitor. She looked over at me casually and said, “Good morning,” and then said, “Oh, my God. I didn’t realize
you
were here.”

I laughed.

“Yes, this is my daughter, Shirley,” said Mother.

“Oh, my God,” said the nurse, “I’m a nervous wreck…. Well, we really love your mother. She takes as much care of us as we do of her.”

“Yes,” I said, “I can imagine.”

Mother looked up at her.

“Is my clot dissolving?” she asked with an almost girlish smile.

“It’s not one clot, Mrs. Beaty. It’s several clots and, yes, they are dissolving.”

“Can you see them dissolving?”

“Well, we take the CAT scans and that’s how we tell.”

“See?” said Mother. “The doctors don’t tell you anything.”

“Oh,” said the nurse, “the doctors will tell you everything if you ask.”

“Isn’t that nice,” said Mother. “You see, that’s why I love doctors.”

“Well,” said the nurse, feeling that she should leave, “I’ll let you two visit.”