A Conversation with the Mann (26 page)

I hopped a cab. A twenty wagged in front of the driver got me to Queens in record-busting time. My legs busted a few more
records getting me to Tommy's gate when I heard a call made for her flight to board.

I spotted her talking with Lamont. As I came up I caught a little of their conversation: “Demo … image … packaging …”

Lamont looked over, saw me. I heard: “Shit.”

Tommy was all light and smiles as she flew into my arms. “I knew you'd come.”

In an instant we were holding, hugging, kissing. Feeling good. Feeling all right. Feeling, at least, a lot of emotion. Some
of Tommy's emotion, flowing from her eyes, soaked through my shirt and wet my chest. Tears so warm I felt them from one side
of me through to the other.

“I don't want to go.”

“What are you talking?”

“I don't want to leave you.”

“You're not … It's just for a while.” I went into my cheer-up bits. “Why are you making a scene? You're going to Detroit,
that's all. It's only a balloon ride away. You have to go.”

“Why? So I can be a big star? So I can make lots of money?” My own words spat back at me. They burned like acid.

I tried using reason to wear Tommy down: “You've got a chance, a real chance at things. After all the time you put in trying
to get your music heard, somebody hands you your first big break and you want to throw it all away?”

One more time her flight got called.

“What I want is something that's real, that means something.”

“I'm always going to be here for you. Doesn't get more real than that. We have time.”

“Do you know that, Jackie?”

I didn't know that. I didn't know what I was doing, what I was saying. I didn't know anything except that I loved Tommy enough
that I wasn't about to let her throw her career away over … over me.

“What am I supposed to do?” I asked her.

“Tell me to stay.”

I hesitated. I said: “I love you.”

She said it again, she pleaded: “Tell me to stay.”

Tell her to stay? I could barely open my mouth to talk, and when I did all I could say, repeat: “We'll have time.”

After the shortest of minutes Tommy withdrew from me. She went to Lamont, exchanged words. She looked back to me, gave a quick
wave—as if anything longer would have put her at risk of more breaking down—headed out a door and across the tarmac, up some
stairs into her airliner.

Lamont came over to me.

“I know it must hurt—”

“Get on that plane.”

“But it's for the best.”

“Just get on the plane.”

Lamont did that. He got on the plane and pretty soon the stairs got taken away and the door was closed. The Super Connie got
backed from where it was parked, it taxied, then sat up at the end of a runway, waiting there for me to do … something.

I did nothing.

The plane sprinted down the runway, flew for Detroit.

I went home.

F
rances Kligman was no longer Frances Kligman. Frances Kligman was Frances Clark.

CBS, who loved her so much when they caught her in the Village, loved her a little more after brow-beating the girl into de-ethnisizing
her name.

I asked Sid about it.

He shrugged. “People don't mind watching Jews on TV, they just don't want to be reminded they're watching Jews on TV.”

Sid told me Fran went hellion when the suits tried to get her to go with Clark, said she didn't care who else had changed
their names, she didn't care how big they'd gotten with their new names. She was Frances Kligman, end of story.

It took a fifty-three-minute phone call from Dinah Shore to convince her changing her name wasn't the same as selling her
soul.

Other than that little blip, it was strictly good news for Fran. She had a new record on the way. With RCA this time. Chances
were it would land big.

CBS didn't care to take chances. They had plans for their new starlet. The suits had Fran hold off a month or so in releasing
the record. They wanted her to break it somewhere she'd get noticed. They wanted her to break it on the season premiere of
the Sullivan show.

Fran was in Los Angeles when she got the news and was beside herself with excitement. Why shouldn't she be? A new record on
the first show of a new season of Sullivan. Besides the fact she was a sensational talent, that kind of exposure guaranteed
Fran would be a hit. And the Monday after the Sunday she went on, Frances Clark would be a household name.

After she got the word, the first call she made from the coast was to me insisting that I be there with her at the broadcast.
Just like the old days. Just like back on Fourteenth Street.

I told her I wouldn't miss it for anything. Told her a bunch of times how happy I was for her.

We hung up.

From the other room my father yelled at me that he needed a fix.

A
RTHUR
M
ILLER HAD
M
ARILYN
M
ONROE.
The army had Elvis. I had my father.

I hated my father. There was no other way, no gentler way of saying things. I hated him, but I stayed with him. It was a nutty
kind of syndrome of abuse: It used to be his beatings, the fear of getting beat, that kept me close. Now that he was harmless
and pathetic, it was guilt. An unspoken oath to my mother made me feel guilty about leaving him to himself. I would care for
him for as long as he lived. And as long as he lived I would never be free.

How many ways are there for a drunk to die? How many ways are there for an addict to end his life? As many nights as I lulled
myself to sleep counting the means. The mundane: Drunk falls down. Drunk bangs his head. Drunk is too drunk to do anything
except lie there and bleed. The sensational: Dope fiend killed in hail of bullets as juice joint is raided by narcs. The simply
ironic: Boozer, user, loser—his heart gives out trying to climb stairs and he ends up in a heap where my mother ended up in
a heap years prior.

None of those things came to pass.

No matter how much the dope and liquor affected my father, it could not destroy him. He'd built himself a resistance. The
smoke, the pills: hazardless. Alcohol to him was the same as a tall glass of cool water. There was nothing for me to do but
sit and wait and wait and wait for him to no longer be.

How many ways are there for a drunk to die? How many ways are there for an addict to end his life?

As far as my pop was concerned, seemingly none.

Pulling myself from my rant, I apologized to Sid for having to sit through it. I'd come around his office to beat the chops,
and here I was going off on my dad—that stinking lush. That lousy, drunken son of a …

Again to Sid: “Sorry.”

Sid sat wordless for a couple of ticks. He squirmed some in the chair behind his desk. “There's something you should know,
Jackie. Something I should've told you first off …” He paused, took a look around the room, out the window. He didn't look
at me. “I had a, uh … There was a time when I drank a little too much. Little too much, little too often.”

I said: “Oh.” I said it with surprise, said it with curiosity. Mosdy I said it regretting I'd been talking about drunks dying
in front of him.

“Forget little. I was an alcoholic. Still am. That's the thing about it: Once you've got it for booze, it stays with you.”

Sid waited for me to say something.

I said nothing.

Sid said: “After Amy was … died, I fell apart for a while. You don't know how it hurt when she … You feel that way for a couple
of weeks, a few months, you get to where you don't want to feel anything. That's where the drink came in.” Absent of thought,
he brushed fingers across the top of his desk. “When I hear you talk about your father …”

“You're different from my pop,” I veah, but-ed. “That guy, the way he treated me—”

“You don't think I abused my share of people?”

Right then I didn't know what to think.

“Never hit anybody. Was never violent.”

“Well, then, you didn't—”

“There are all kinds of abuse. My brother, his wife; you should ask them how good I was to be around when I was soused. My
clients, the ones whose careers I was supposed to be handling when I was bent over a glass at noon.” His head dropped some.
“It's no accident I've got no acts to my name, and the ones I do have are—”

“Are what, Sid? 'Cause, remember, me and Fran are two of them.”

That got a little smile out of him.

From me, cautiously: “But you're cleaned up now. I mean, that's the thing; my pop just wants to stay in his bottle. You got
yourself clean … right?”

Sid nodded. “Had a relapse once. Other than that, I'm a good friend of Bill W's. I'm only telling you all this, Jackie, because
you should know. You should know that people aren't perfect. That I'm not… I'm telling you this because, knowing how you feel
about drunks …” For the first time since he started this run, Sid looked at me. “If you wanted to quit things …”

In the whole of my life, how many people had ever been so much as decent to me? Sid included, I didn't need all the fingers
of a hand to count them.

I twisted my wrist, read my watch. “I should get home to change.
We
” I stressed, “need to be at the Copa by six-thirty.”

T
HE
C
OPACABANA.
The Copa. The object of my devotion. Icon of its era: upscale class. Big money-style. You read about it, you heard about
it, but most workaday Americans would burn up a month's salary just paying for the cover, food, and drinks. And even if they
could scrape up the green, they'd find once they got to the Copa, they couldn't get into the Copa. Forget that the club wasn't
black friendly. Neither were the Stork, '21,' and most especially El Morocco. The Copa wasn't friendly to anyone who didn't
have dough or juice or some combo of the two. The Copacabana was progressive that way: It discriminated against everyone equally.