Seeing his face as he hobbles toward Lupe`s entrance, you wouldn`t bet against the newly widowered Jack Sperling bursting into tears before he crosses the restaurant`s threshold.
His hobbling`s as much a mystery to Melanie, my wife of six years, his daughter for 27, as it is to me. Her look tells me so. He`s sustained injury to neither foot nor ankle nor knee that we know of, and yet we`re nearly ready to drape his arms across our shoulders, to play sympathetic linemen to his running-back-with-pulled-hamst ring.
He shouldn`t be hobbling, but his world has caved in on him. In the 11 days since his Marge was lowered into her ultimate resting place, no more than 45 consecutive minutes have passed without his reminding us of that. ”I feel like the world`s caved in on me,” he marvels over his untouched Grape Nuts in half-and-half in the morning. ”I feel like the world`s caved in on me,” he announces during the soap operas to which he devotes his afternoons in what has thus far been a disastrously unsuccessful campaign Not to Think About Her. ”I feel like the world`s caved in on me,” he remembers at the height of prime time. And a couple of headlines into ”World News Tonight.” And before going into the bathroom, whence we`re ostensibly unable to hear him sobbing, to sob until after David Letterman`s relinquished the airwaves.
He hobbles, I realize, to show onlookers out of the range of his voice that he feels as though the world`s caved in on him.
Maybe I`m being a little harsh. I know trying to adjust to life without Marge must be tough for him. For 28 years she alternately bullied and babied him, as it suited her, picked out their houses and the clothes he wore to office, church and get-together, prepared his dinner–peeled, boiled, otherwise overcooked and mashed it into the state of bland white tastelessness that he prefers. For two-score-and-eight years she ritually suffered visibly, but in silence, while he played Mr. Irrepressible, the life of every party, in public. And then, behind closed doors, ritually harangued him into a state of abjectest contrition for having flirted with salesgirls, buddied up to boxboys.
Still, I`ve never liked him. Diligent worker-out that I am, I`m offended by the roll of flab he wears around his waist. Yes, he`s 62. But so are other men I pass–and some of them only barely–on the jogging path. Worse, he has nothing to say, and invariably says it while eating, before he`s swallowed whatever his mouth`s full of, whatever tasteless bland whiteness. There was a time when I was intent on sparing Mel and my daughter, Ronette, any confusion about whether speaking in this way was acceptable, and I teased him about it. There was a time when my shins were black and blue from Melanie kicking them under the table.
In six years, he`s never asked me a personal question. And up until 15 days ago, he`s only mumbled a few begrudging syllables when I`ve asked him one, looked hopefully at Marge, and gone back to his tasteless bland white dinner while she`s filibustered in her customary merciless way.
I`d hoped that it would be easier after Ronette was born. Hoping that he might talk to me in a heartfelt way about our common fatherhood of daughters, I confided in him that I suffered grievous pangs of jealousy when strangers were able to make Ronette laugh. His denying that he`d ever experienced any such thing annoyed me, and my next question was loaded. Knowing that, in her wild adolescence, the police had more than once brought her home at 7 o`clock in the morning utterly incoherent from barbiturates and Bacardi, I asked if he hadn`t found some of Melanie`s behavior heartbreaking.
”Heartbreaking?” he`d repeated incredulously, and then hidden in his instant mashed potatoes, leaving Marge to assure me with a straight face that the only thing the adolescent Melanie had ever done to upset them was briefly date a man in his 30s.
Ten steps from the restaurant`s door, he has to stop. He`s frighteningly pale, and his expression is that of someone who`s just spotted The Reaper lurking in the shrubbery. He seems to be considering whether or not he should attempt a little cry before we go in.
A Hispanic family of five, comprising two parents in their late 20s and three children of pre-school age, emerge from the restaurant chattering in Spanish, of which I know enough to gather that they disliked the food. They wouldn`t make much of an audience, so Jack doesn`t perish of sadness there in his tracks.
If he was hobbling outside, it was nothing compared to what he does once we enter the place. Now his walk is that of a TV faith healer`s beneficiary, of one in the process of discovering that, after 22 years in a wheelchair, he can walk again, praise Jesus! A lot of diners look up from their meals at him. Is this what Marge would want, I ask him in my thoughts, for you to cause the father of your granddaughter such embarrassment?
Six months after we got out of the car, we finally arrive at our table and are surrounded by silence–diners around us aren`t sure it`s fitting to speak in the presence of someone clinging to life as precariously as the new widower seems to be.
There are two kinds of waitresses in Los Angeles. There are middle-aged ones (of all ages) who address their customers as Hon, have muscular calves and are really waitresses, and there are conspicuously pretty ones with unusual names who aren`t really waitresses at all–just ask them!–but actress/models biding their time (and keeping the rent paid) while they await the call from their agents that`ll change their lives.
”Hi,” says our waitress. ”I`m Stirling. How you doin` tonight?” No character roles for this one, boy. For this one, leads in teen slob movies aimed at the glands and wallets of adolescent boys. She has preposterously large blue eyes, is blond beyond reason, is really built. She won`t be here in a week. She may not have been offered the Moon, but she`ll surely have been offered the Hollywood Freeway, and will have resigned either because some producer has put her on his payroll or because she can`t bear the thought of another smooth talker with a lot of gold around his neck trying to convince her he`ll put her on his if she`ll just consent to their getting much better acquainted.
You`d never dream that Jack only moments ago felt that the world had caved in on him. For the first time since we buried Marge, he`s grinning. In fact, he is Mr. Irrepressible.
He already has Stirling`s hand. ”We`re super,” he assures her. ”How you doin`?”
Looking elsewhere, she affirms that she`s doin` good, and are we ready to order? Melanie is, and does. I am, and do. But Jack Sperling needs some advice.
”What do you recommend, Stir?” he asks. In his sexy-old-rascal mode, he feels stuffy addressing anyone by a name of more than one syllable. ”Hey,”
he says, ”I`ll bet there`s an interesting story behind your name.”
”Well, not that interesting,” she says, glancing at other tables in her domain. ”My dad`s an auto-racing freak. I`m named after Stirling Moss. And everything`s really good.” She gives her captured hand a slight tug that fails to free it. I notice the young Izod-polo-shirted patriarch at the next table watching her over the shoulder of his similarly Izod-polo-shirted wife. ”But what do you like?” Jack insists. ”I mean, just between the two of us.” It was my idea to take him out to dinner.
”Well,” she says, ”I guess the crab enchilada`s pretty good.” What she has in looks, she lacks in personality.
”The crab enchilada!” Jack exults. ”If it tastes half as good as you look, Stir, my taste buds are gonna have a field day.” My and Mel`s embarrassment overtakes our delight at his recovery.
”Thanks a lot,” the waitress says, as though bored with doing so, and once more tries gently to free her hand, once more in vain. The Izod-polo-shirted young patriarch isn`t just watching her now, but glowering.
”But you don`t know what we want to drink!” Jack chortles delightedly. ”How about if you surprise us with a bottle of whatever wine you like.”
”We don`t serve wine.”
The young patriarch gnashes his teeth.
”No wine. Why, that`s criminal. And you girls must get as dry as us customers, too. I tell you what, Stir–how about I bring a bottle of champagne over to your place after you get off?”
I`m about to point out to Jack that, if he doesn`t relinquish the poor girl`s hand, I`ll break his wrist, when he says, ”Just water, then,” and abruptly frees her. She hurries immediately to the young patriarch`s table.
”You know, we really would appreciate it if you could bring us our dinner,” he tells her, each syllable marinated in annoyance. ”I mean, we have been waiting quite a while here.”
”If you`re in such a hurry,” I hear a voice say, ”maybe you should have gone to a damn drive-through.” I`m horrified to recognize the voice as my father-in-law`s.
”And maybe you ought to mind your own damned business,” the young patriarch observes.
His wife turns approximately the same shade of red that Melanie turns. Each reaches for approximately the same part of her prospective combatant`s arm as each slides his chair backward. No hobbler now, Jack wants only to avenge his lady fair. Who desperately scans the restaurant`s sawdust-covered floor for a hole to disappear into.
Everyone`s placated. Stirling hurries away, returns a moment later with the young patriarch`s family`s dinners, serves them and disappears again.
As this is going on, Mel tells Jack how pleased she is to see him so full of spirit. Which is his cue, of course, to resume looking a couple of centuries older than his actual age and to assure her, ”I feel like the world`s caved in on me.”
I return to our table and come to hope, for the sake of future Lupe`s patrons, that Stirling hears from her agent soon–she really isn`t much of a waitress, and keeps us waiting interminably. We don`t chat. His own anguish is the only topic that interests Jack, and Mel and I would still feel funny about enjoying one another`s company while he suffers so. We fidget some more, our dinners remain unserved, and Jack excuses himself.
”God,” I say, ”he`s such a transparent old fraud.” Mel doesn`t disagree, but only wishes, for the jillionth time in the past two weeks, that I could try to be a little more understanding. Not that I would try–no, she`s come to despair of that–but that I could. And we used to get along so well.
Jack comes back and, seeing Stirling approach with our meals balanced on her forearms, makes a very big deal of clearing a space for his. ”You know, honey,” he says, ”I think you and me ought to get married. Know why?”
”No,” she admits, warily.
”No, no, of course you wouldn`t,” Jack realizes, and whacks himself softly in the forehead. ”Well, since my name`s Jack Sperling, if we got hitched, you`d be Stirling Sperling!” He wheezes in delight. Stirling only mumbles, ”Cute,” and smirks feebly. And flees.
When she returns with the check, Jack and Melanie fight for it. I`d bet my IRA that he doesn`t even have his wallet with him–to remember, after all, would be to appear not to be senseless with grief. But it gives him an excuse to grab Stirling`s hand while he allows Mel finally to persuade him to let me pay.
Stirling had better think in terms of making the world forget Christie Brinkley, rather than Meryl Streep, for she doesn`t come close to concealing her relief as we finally get up to leave. Imagining that she`s watching us, Jack doesn`t hobble until we reach the parking lot. On whose threshold he stops and announces that he`d better go back and use the restroom one last time. I try to figure out how I`ll amuse myself for the half-hour it`s apt to take him, but he returns in five minutes, looking strangely smug.
Far from letting on why, he reverts to his caved-in-on feeling and is silent the whole ride home.
He locks himself in the downstairs bathroom and turns on the water in the sink full blast. Very modest, he seems to imagine that Mel and I stand listening outside the door. I do no such thing, but instead sequester myself in the den and watch the Braves shut out the Padres. After the postgame interview with the winning pitcher, I crave a beer, and head for the kitchen. Jack`s there, looking at his watch and wearing the blue turtleneck sweater, double-breasted blazer, gold dogtags and wool bellbottoms Marge had him buy after she finally got wind of the mod craze in men`s fashions sometime around 1981. I can`t imagine his having gone to the trouble of putting his mod outfit on just to sit around feeling as though the world`s caved in on him. Seeing him sitting there like that, all dressed up with nowhere to go, I feel my heart soften. ”Hey,” I tell him, ”you look sharp.” And get only a scowl for my trouble.
I`m about to pry the top off a bottle of Bud when the phone rings. ”It`s Stirling,” she says nervously. I try to figure out what I may have left behind at Lupe`s–and dare to imagine that, having sensed my and Mel`s disharmony, she`s calling to suggest that we get together.
”Tell your father-in-law,” she says, ”that I had trouble getting my car started, but that I`m on my way now, and that the date`s still on.”
I leave the top on the bottle of Bud and pour myself something very much stiffer.
