This Time Together Read online

Page 15


  Friends would phone, and Ruth would answer, “The Wilshire House, how may I help you?”

  The reply would be, “Is she home?”

  Jody, Carrie, and Erin.

  COURTESY OF CAROL BURNETT

  Mine would be the only apartment lit up at night.

  When I got into the elevator, it was always an express.

  The parking attendants fought over who would open my car door, just so they could have something to do.

  Chauncey was always asking me if my pilot light and faucets were okay because, like the valets, he didn’t have much to do, either.

  In a peculiar way, we were a family of sorts.

  The following Christmas the girls and I spent two weeks in Honolulu. When I returned, Chauncey was helping me with my luggage, and as we got into the express elevator he said, “It’s sure good to have you back, Miz B. Ya know, the old place just wasn’t the same without you.”

  We lived there like that for one whole year.

  When other people started moving in, we moved out. That was purely a coincidence, but it always struck me as funny.

  Body by Jake

  At age fourteen my daughter Erin was attending a rather progressive school in Santa Monica, California. It struck me as progressive because the students were encouraged to call their teachers by their first names, the classes allowed a lot of cross talk, and there was no particular dress code. I’m not sure, but I think the kids sometimes went barefoot. Being a product of high school in the 1950s, I always felt it was a little too casual.

  I attended a parent-teacher meeting where I was introduced to the very good-looking headmaster (by our first names). I aired my reservations to him, probably sounding slightly prudish, and he assured me that my fears were unfounded, although he added that I wasn’t the only parent who had expressed those concerns. He also asked if I would be willing to help host a banquet they held every fall. I told him to be sure to call me when the time was nearer, as I wasn’t sure of my schedule.

  The school seemed to have it pretty much together curriculum-wise, and Erin was happy there, so after a while I felt a little better. I attended some of the school plays. The acting was what you’d expect from a group of junior high school kids, yet I couldn’t get over how grown-up these teenagers looked onstage. They spared no makeup, but happily they were up on how to apply it, thanks to the media and fashion magazines. I took a friend to one of the student musicals, and his comment was, “They look divorced.”

  Still, Erin’s grades remained pretty good and she continued to enjoy going to school with a lot of kids she had grown up with, so who was I to cause problems?

  A few weeks later, I decided I needed to work on my fitness. Hating to exercise on my own, I knew I needed help to get me jump-started. There was a trainer in LA famous for making house calls and getting people off their behinds. His name was Jake, and his company was called Body by Jake. A few of my friends had hired him as their trainer and swore by him. So I called his office and left my phone number, my name, and a message asking if he might make some time for me and arrange a workout schedule.

  A few days later, my phone rang.

  “Hello?”

  “Carol?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Jake.”

  “Hi, Jake. So what are we going to do about my body?”

  There was a slight pause, and then “Excuse me?”

  “You have to help me out here, Jake. My body needs major attention!”

  I heard him clear his throat, followed by a longer pause. It was then that the penny dropped. I realized I was talking to Erin’s headmaster, whose first name also happened to be … you guessed it!

  I started to attempt to explain the mix-up to Jake the headmaster but found myself starting to howl with laughter. He said he’d call back later.

  He never did.

  Dating

  It felt weird to even think of dating again at my age: forty-nine! It was even harder after I started dating, because I reverted to being a teenager whenever someone called to ask me out. I even grew a few zits just thinking about it. I was quite simply out of practice. I was much more comfortable going out with friends, or taking one of my girls—or all three—with me to a function. But I knew I had to stay with it or I could wind up being a hermit, and worse, liking it.

  So one night I had dinner in Beverly Hills with a very nice and attractive man whom I had known for a while in a professional capacity. The evening was pleasant enough but slightly strained. There were l-o-n-g pauses in the conversation. I was beginning to regret having accepted the invitation. We really didn’t have that much in common. As he was driving me home, all I could think about was: What if he expects me to invite him in? Do I offer him a drink? What’ll we talk about? How long would he stay? What if he wants a goodnight kiss?

  I was beginning to feel a small anxiety attack coming on. As we were pulling up to my front door I said: “Thanks so much! Don’t bother to stop. Just slow down and I’ll jump out here.” I hit the ground running, whirled around, smiled, and waved goodbye. Just another benefit of a body by Jake.

  Marlon Brando

  In the mid-eighties I spent some time in New York, writing a memoir for my daughters about growing up. I stayed at the Wyndham Hotel. The Wyndham was known as the actors’ hotel, since lots of people appearing in Broadway shows chose the warmth and coziness of the Wyndham over more modern hotels. Some folks, like Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy, made it their permanent New York City residence. The rooms had Old World charm. The bathrooms were the size of a postage stamp, and sometimes the water pressure and temperature left a lot to be desired. The telephone system was antiquated: a switchboard, Rose the operator, and a desk.

  Sometimes you’d have to wait several minutes before Rose could get around to your call. But the staff—and owners Suzanne and John Mados—more than made up for any shortcomings. If it was cold outside, the elevator operator, Mohammed, would always make sure I had the right kind of clothing on before he would let me out in the lobby. “Please go back and put on a warmer coat, Miss Burnett, it’s pretty cold out there today.” It was like living in a big boardinghouse where everybody looked out for each other.

  On this day I had been out all afternoon and was looking forward to spending a quiet evening in my room. Rose handed me some messages on little pink slips.

  “You got one there from Marlon Brando.”

  “What?”

  “Yep. Brando.”

  I looked at the message: “Marlon Brando would like to talk to you. Please call.” There was a Los Angeles number.

  I said, “This has to be some kind of joke. I don’t know Marlon Brando”—though I’d love to.

  “Nope. No joke. Recognized the voice.”

  All the way up in the elevator I stared at the message slip. Marlon Brando? If this isn’t a joke of some kind, what on earth would he want with me?

  I threw my purse on the bed, sat down, and picked up the phone without removing my coat.

  Rose picked up. “Got it.” She was already dialing his number.

  It was three hours earlier in California—2:15 P.M., to be exact.

  He picked up on the first ring. “Hello?”

  “Mr. Brando?”

  “Who’s this?”

  No mistaking that voice. “Hi. It’s Carol Burnett. You left a message for me to call?”

  “Yeah, your agent told me how to find you. Thanks for calling back.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Where’d you get your chin?”

  “My chin?”

  “Yeah, where’d ya get it? I remember reading the interview you gave about it—was it in People?”

  He’s calling about my chin.

  “You see, my wife’s sister has a weak chin and wants to fix it. Where’d you get yours done?”

  “In Honolulu … about two years ago.”

  “Did it hurt?”

  “No. Not really.”

  “They have to break your jaw?�
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  “Not in my case. He only added three millimeters—”

  “Hang on. Lemme get a pencil.”

  I heard him walking away and opening a drawer. Omigod, I’m talking to Marlon Brando. He came back to the phone. “Mind giving me the doctor’s name and number?”

  Now I had to walk away and open a drawer. I found my address book and went back into the bedroom and sat back down on the bed. I still had on my coat. Suddenly I got the urge to go to the bathroom. I gave him the necessary information. I had to repeat it a couple of times so he could get it right. I also had to pee.

  He thanked me, and then said, “So, did you have fun all those years?”

  “You mean our television show?”

  “Yeah. You guys had a lot to learn every week. What kind of schedule were you on?”

  I told him what our schedule was, and he seemed pretty impressed that our working hours were decent. He asked about the costuming. “Some of those outfits were pretty amazing.”

  I explained that Bob Mackie was the genius behind every piece of clothing we wore.

  “Did he come up with that Gone With the Wind getup?”

  “Yep. He sure did!” I was starting to squirm. The urge hadn’t passed. I started eyeing the bathroom door.

  Then he got on the subject of comedy. “So, how much different is it, doing it in front of an audience instead of a single camera on a movie set? It’s gotta affect your timing, right?”

  I couldn’t believe it. Marlon Brando was asking me about comedy technique. I stood up and started pacing around the foot of the bed. By this time I was perspiring. My poor bladder was begging, pleading for relief. The bathroom was only a few short feet away. Would the phone cord be long enough to reach? And even if it did reach, would he hear what I was doing?

  It didn’t reach, so that took care of that. It was back to pacing and sweating. I didn’t have the nerve to share my plight with him. What if he hung up?

  “So, how’d you guys do it week after week?”

  I mean, how often do you get a call from someone like him? To me, this was momentous, gargantuan … something I’d tell my grandchildren someday. (“Let me tell you the story about how Marlon Brando asked me about my thoughts on comedy.”)

  The subject somehow switched to our childhoods. He talked about his upbringing and asked about mine. He was telling me personal stories, stories that he said he wanted to write about someday. Amazing revelations. I told him I was halfway through a memoir, and he asked me how I’d gotten started. Here he was opening up to me, asking me all these questions, and I had to pee.

  The time passed slowly. I was in heaven and hell at the same time.

  I looked at the clock. We had been talking for over an hour.

  I thought I’d go out of my mind. If this went on much longer, I would quite simply explode and be dead. Finally: “Mr. Brando?”

  “Marlon.”

  “Thank you … uh … gosh, I’m sorry, but my other phone line is lit up and I’m expecting a call from my daughter.”

  “Oh, sure. Well, thanks so much.”

  “Thank you! And I hope it works out with your sister-in-law’s chin.”

  We hung up, and I just made it.

  The phone started to ring while I was still in the bathroom. It kept ringing. When I finally picked it up, Rose said, “What other line?”

  Mr. Computer

  When I was writing One More Time back in 1985, I was afraid I’d miss the deadline that the book publisher, Random House, had given me. I had fallen way behind. The problem was that I had started writing in longhand on yellow legal pads and then I’d copy the pages onto a typewriter. Several times I would look at a finished typewritten page and wish I could move some paragraphs and sentences around to see if they would read better. So I’d get out the old scissors and paste, manually cutting out the paragraphs or sentences I wanted to move and pasting them elsewhere. Sometimes an hour or more would go by and I’d still be fiddling with that one sticky page. At that rate I knew I’d never finish.

  A friend suggested a computer. That way I could move words, sentences, and paragraphs around in a matter of seconds and not waste so much time.

  A COMPUTER? ME? Dear Lord, no. I couldn’t possibly! I just wasn’t mechanically inclined. But after a lot more cutting and pasting, I realized I’d have to bite the bullet.

  That same friend recommended the computer store she’d bought hers from: Friendly Computers, in Santa Monica. I was comforted by the name, but walking into the store was somewhat daunting. Surrounded by all those machines and screens made me feel like I was in the middle of some kind of spaceship. I was about to run out the door when a little girl approached me.

  “Can I help you?”

  Close up she wasn’t a little girl, just a young woman who looked like a twelve-year-old.

  “Um … I … I …” I finally got up the courage and blurted out, “I’m afraid I need a computer, but I don’t know what kind.”

  “Do you know what you need it for?”

  “I’m trying to write a book.”

  I wound up buying this large thing that came not only with a detailed (and utterly confusing) instruction book, which had some very nice drawings in it, but also with a series of hour-long one-on-one instruction sessions given by the little girl, whose name turned out to be Beth.

  We set a date for delivery and I left the store feeling like a dinosaur.

  The delivery date came, and I found myself dreading the bing-bong of my doorbell….

  Bing-bong.

  I opened the door and there was Beth, completely hidden behind the large thing she was holding. All I could see was her feet. I showed her to my desk, and she said it would take a few minutes to set everything up (including a printer with rolls of sprocket-feed paper that came with the whole shebang). She was done in no time.

  Raring to go, she said, “Okay! C’mon, sit down. Let’s get going!”

  “Uh, Beth, would you like a glass of water? Do you need to go to the bathroom or something? Are you hungry?”

  Smiling, she shook her head, patted my chair, and sweetly said, “Sit.”

  I sat and stared at the blank screen. I was scared. I mean scared.

  “Beth, I’m going to say something now that might sound a little silly to you, but here goes … I know absolutely nothing about computers, so please treat me as if I’m a three-year-old in a sandbox.”

  “That’s not silly at all. Are you ready?”

  I gulped and nodded.

  She began to explain, pointing at and patting the machine as she spoke. “Now, this is Mr. Computer. When we want Mr. Computer to light up, what do we do? Why, we press Mr. On Button. When we want Mr. Computer to go night-night, we press Mr. Off Button.”

  And so it went. The hour flew by, and when it was over, I was able to type and move sentences and paragraphs all over the place like a pro. We set another instruction date, and as I showed her to the door I said, “Beth, you’re not only the best teacher I’ve ever had, but you’re hands down the funniest.”

  A couple of weeks later I was typing and printing away when the printer started going screwy on me. Paper was flying all over the place. I didn’t know what to do, so I got out the instruction manual and looked up “Troubleshooting.” I turned to the page and there was a lovely pencil sketch of a woman dealing with the printer, telling me to first undo the “papar sepelator.” I looked all over for the papar sepelator and couldn’t for the life of me locate it. It was late and I didn’t want to bother Beth, but I had no choice. Besides, she had given me her home number, saying she was like a doctor—I could call her anytime if there was an emergency.

  “Beth, it’s Carol. I’m sorry to call you so late, but …”

  “What’s the emergency?”

  I explained the situation, and she told me exactly what to do to fix it.

  Before we hung up, I asked her what and where the papar sepelator was.

  “Have you been looking at the owner’s manual?” />
  “Yes, and I couldn’t find the papar sepelator.”

  She laughed and said that unless I was in love with the artist’s sketches, I should toss the book.

  “Why? What’s wrong with it?”

  “It was printed in Japan and translated from Japanese into English. There’s no such thing as a papar sepelator in the printer.”

  I didn’t get it.

  She repeated it. “Translated from Japanese into English. Think about it.”

  I finally got it: PA-PAR SEP-E-LA-TOR = PA-PER SEP-A-RA-TOR.

  I thanked her and we hung up. I pressed Mr. Off Button, got into bed, and laughed myself to sleep.

  Beverly Sills

  “Bubbles.” It was the perfect nickname for her. I used to say that if there was ever a power outage, I’d want to be with Beverly Sills because her smile could light up the room. And that laugh of hers was like no other, either; it reminded me of bells and wind chimes. Years earlier I had seen Mike Wallace interview Beverly Sills on 60 Minutes, and I fell in love with that personality of hers on the spot, saying to myself, “I have to meet this amazing woman someday.”

  Beverly Sills’s glorious soprano voice had taken her to the highest pinnacles an opera singer can reach. Her private life was another matter. Though she had a good solid marriage with her husband, Peter Greenough, their son, Bucky, was born severely impaired, and was institutionalized at a very young age. Their beautiful daughter, Muffy, was born deaf. Neither one of Beverly’s children ever had the thrill of hearing their mother sing. The irony was not to be believed, but there it was.

  During the 60 Minutes interview, Mike Wallace brought up the subject of her children and asked Beverly how, with all this tragedy, she always seemed to be so happy. She replied that she wasn’t necessarily happy, but that she always tried to be cheerful.

  Beverly Sills and me singing the blues on the Metropolitan Opera stage.