Читать книгу I'll Love You When You're More Like Me - M.E. Kerr - Страница 10

4. Sabra St. Amour

After I left him standing on the beach, I walked back through the surf remembering this book an actor brought onto the set once. It was called All About Sex After Fifty. When you looked inside there was nothing but blank pages. I could write a book just like that called What I Know About Boys.

There was a time when we were all living in suburbia that I wrote a long love letter every day to Elvis Presley. I had his pictures plastered all over my walls, and I played his records so often even Mama complained. I went from Elvis to David Cassidy, and from David to John Davidson. After I started in daytime, I got a crush on an actor who played my father, and when his story-line ended, I lost so much weight Mama had to force cans of Metrecal down me on the set. . . . But none of it was ever real.

“You think it’s real,” Mama would tell me when I was down and dragging myself around, “but it’s like the difference between plastic and wood, honey. The real thing is wood. When it happens to you, you’ll know, because it’ll splinter, crack and burn. You just be patient.”

It’s a pretty ironic situation, when you consider that my new legal name means Saint of Love. The only date I’ve ever been on was one with another daytime actor arranged by Hometown’s publicity woman, for a Soap Opera Digest awards banquet. We never saw each other before or after the affair, though there were various items about our “romance” in the gossip columns. Most of what you read in gossip columns is sent in by a press agent, and a lot of it is just made up.

When I got back to our beach house, Mama was waiting for me out on the deck.

“I thought you were just going for a little walk?” Mama said.

“I was. I did.”

Mama looked at her watch, the face of which simulates the dashboard of the Porsche automobile, black with red hands and luminous white dots. The watch cost $325, which is cheap compared to some of Mama’s watches. Mama has a thing about watches and shoes: She buys them by the carload. She has shoes she’s never even worn, never even taken out of their boxes. When Mama was little she was the youngest of four girls, and she always wore shoes that had already been worn by one of her sisters. That explains her obsession with shoes. The watches are something else again. Maybe she had a compulsion to buy all of them because she looks at a watch constantly, trying to fit everything into our elaborate schedule: my classes at Manhattan School of Performing Arts; my acting lessons with Mrs. Chaykoffsky; my twice-a-week sessions with my shrink; my hair appointments and my fittings.

“Well you don’t have to worry about getting a sunburn anymore,” Mama said. When you do a soap, you have to worry about things like that. You can’t have a sunburn unless your storyline has you in a resort area, or it’s mentioned you were at the beach.

Mama wasn’t the type you told about meeting a boy at the beach. I think anybody’s mother would like the looks of Wally Witherspoon. A casting department would file him in the “All-American Boy-Next-Door” category, with his short, straight black hair; round, light blue eyes; longish thin nose and great wide white smile. But all Mama would think about if I told her we’d met was what was I doing striking up a conversation with a stranger! Hadn’t I ever heard of rape and murder?

Mama was the type who’d read every word in the Daily News about some young psycho, look up from her paper at me and say, “Here’s another one. All the neighbors say he was an angel, never missed Sunday school and adored his old mother, but he picked up a hatchet and committed bloody murder on an innocent girl he’d done God knows what to beforehand!”

My shrink warned me I was too dependent on Mama, but I wouldn’t be anything, including able to afford a shrink, if Mama didn’t watch out for me. Maybe I wouldn’t need a shrink if Mama let up, but I probably wouldn’t be an actress, either. Practically everyone on the show has a shrink, or was in analysis at one time or another. Mama says acting is a demanding profession, and it’s good to get out all the kinks so they don’t interfere with the discipline all actors need.

I don’t think I really miss a social life—I don’t know because I’ve never had one. But I would miss acting. I’ll miss being on Hometown, too, I can’t deny that. Once my ulcer quiets down, I’ll try for something besides daytime T.V. I’d like to try Broadway again, or act in a film.

Mama likes to tell me to hold myself dear while I’m young.

“They don’t make chastity belts anymore, Mama,” I tease her.

“I’m not talking just about that,” says Mama. “I’m talking about having a value on yourself, your whole self, not just what’s below your waist. You. Sabra St. Amour.”

“I don’t even know who I am,” I say.

Mama says, “You’re a first-class talent. Someday you’ll be a wife, and a mother, but before that day comes you’ll build yourself a good, big bank account so you’ll never have to depend on anyone for your security.”

After I changed out of my bathing suit, I put on a robe and got out the backgammon set. Mama and I have always relaxed together by playing games: Careers, Scrabble, Monopoly, Yahtzee—you name it. That summer it was backgammon. We played for a few hours every night before dinner.

“Not tonight,” Mama told me as I walked out onto the glassed-in sun porch overlooking the ocean. “Sit down, honey, and turn the tape down.”

Ethel Merman was singing Gypsy, which was a play about a stage mother. You’d think Mama would hate it, because it wasn’t a flattering picture of a stage mother. Rose, the main character, was a hard, driving woman who didn’t care if her kids were happy, so long as they were stars.

Mama happened to love the story, though sometimes she’d laugh and say, “How’d you like it if I was like her?”

When I wanted to get a rise out of her I’d say something like “Oh, is there any difference, Rose?” and she’d give me her famous raised eyebrow, or the finger which meant “up yours,” or a mock punch to my $5,000 all-caps mouth.

Mama doesn’t happen to be at all like Rose, but if I want to bug her I call her that.

I turned down Ethel and sat on the footstool of the chaise Mama was stretched out on.

Mama said, “I have a Reluctant Admission.”

“Ohmigawd, I thought we left Lamont behind us,” I said.

One of Lamont Orr’s off-off-off-Broadway flops was a musical called The Wind of Reluctant Admissions. He was hoping it would be another smash like the old hit The Fantasticks, but the critics hated it. One reviewer printed just one comment: “Zzzzzzzzzzzzz.” It was a stupid play about a mythical kingdom which would be periodically hit by a strong wind. Whenever the wind blew, the people made reluctant admissions about things they feared, or hated, or wanted, or couldn’t help.

“Reluctant Admission,” Mama persisted.

“What is it?” I said.

“We’re going out for dinner tonight.”

I didn’t fall off the footstool or anything because we went out for dinner about three nights a week. I just waited for Mama to continue. Beside her, on the table, there was a More still smoking, though she’d tried to put it out when I entered the room.

“Mama,” I said, “did it ever strike you that cigarettes have strange names lately? More and Now and Merit, as if we all need more cancer now, as if we merit it?” I didn’t put it as well as Wally Witherspoon had, but it didn’t matter, anyway, because Mama wasn’t really listening.

“We’re going to have a long talk about cigarettes soon,” said Mama. “We might even enroll in Smoke-enders. But right this minute I have some news for you. Fedora Foxe came all the way out here by seaplane just to see you. We better be on our guard.”

“She’s delivering my obituary in person, probably,” I said. I was trying to be funny about it, because neither Mama nor I were completely honest with each other when it came to our feelings about leaving Hometown. It wasn’t just the money, though Mama would have to resist any impulses to buy $325 watches for a while. It was the hole it would leave in our lives, and the forcing of certain decisions like should I go to college? would Mama keep our large apartment in The Dakota if I did? what would happen to our lives now with no more of the familiar running around to keep appointments and stay on schedule?

“There’s something in the wind when Fedora hops on a plane, Tootsie Roll,” Mama said. “Fedora hates flying.”

“Why are you so in awe of Fedora?” I said. I used to be. I remember when my knees would shake and my lower lip tremble around Fedora. After I became featured and “Tell me more” caught on, I began to realize Fedora needed me as much as I needed her. Mama said I should get that idea right out of my head, I could be replaced overnight, but Mama was talking from her experience. She’d married Sam, Sam, Superman in a weak moment when her role had been written right out of a Broadway show. It wasn’t that big a role, but I don’t think Mama ever recovered from the blow. Mama never felt really secure in her whole life; she still didn’t.

“I’m not in awe of her,” Mama said. “I’m terrified of her. She’s a manipulator.”

“How can she possibly manipulate us, Mama?”

“She can connive,” Mama said. “We have to be firm.”

“She’s just an old lady, Mama.”

“Some old lady!” Mama said. Mama fanned herself with a copy of Daytime TV. The air conditioning was on; it was actually on the frigid side on the sun porch, but Mama liked to fan herself in mock irritation the way grand ladies do in old Oscar Wilde plays.

“Okay, Miss Know-It-All,” Mama said, “don’t let anything faze you. But would you mind washing the sand out of your hair and getting into something elegant? We’ve got a seven-thirty date, and I’m impressed enough to want to be on time.”

“I’ll put on knee pads,” I said.

“Meaning what?” Mama said.

“Meaning shouldn’t we make our entrance on our knees with our eyes down?”

“What did I do to displease you, God?” Mama said, looking up at the ceiling. “Was it so bad I had to be saddled with this wiseacre kid?”

As I was going upstairs, Mama called after me, “Wear your nice new bracelet, honey. I want Fedora to see it.”