Some Kind of Miracle (11 page)

“Stay by My Side,’ same as the title of your movie. Remember? Why?”

“Ahhh, jeez. I told Pepper to call you yesterday to tell you. We had a meeting with the studio suits yesterday, and we decided to change the title of the movie, so we don’t need that song anymore. Now it’s called
Hurry, Tomorrow
, and we’ve got Bob Dylan recording on Friday.”

No! Goddamn this business. How could this happen? Marty said he loved her song. Twenty-four hours ago it was perfect. Now even Louie couldn’t make this deal work for her. And she would be back to massaging obnoxious men like Marty, probably forever. Not to mention the fact that it was because of the damned song that she’d gone through this nightmare with Sunny, who was already dressed and had gone into the kitchen, where she was taking everything out of the pantry and making random piles of groceries on the kitchen floor for some inexplicable reason.

“So, kiddo, now that you’re out of the music business, am I gonna see you tonight or not?” Marty whined. “I can’t handle working with people who cancel.”

“This is the first time I’ve canceled in three years.”

“Yeah, but still…”

“Look, Marty, I have to take my sick cousin down to San Diego,” she said, realizing the absurdity of looking for sympathy from the devil himself. Now Sunny was pulling paper bags out of the recycling bin and putting the cans she’d pulled out of the pantry into them, singing “Stay by My Side” at the top of her voice.

“Yeah, well, you’d better drive back by eight tonight, or I’m finding a new masseuse,” Marty said, slamming down the phone.

Getting back by eight meant she’d have to leave right away, and she wasn’t even dressed. “Sunny, step on it, and I’ll take you out for breakfast.”

“I want to take a shower,” Sunny said out of nowhere.

“No time. Besides, you’re already dressed.”

“I need a shower.”

Dahlia looked at Sunny standing there in front of what were now three bags of groceries, wearing the same clothes from yesterday, hair flying, and she wanted to cry.

“What are you doing with the groceries, Sun?”

“Giving them to poor people,” Sunny said. “But first I have to take a shower. I take one every morning. Sometimes I take one with Mr. Belzer.”

More than I wanted to know, Dahlia thought.

“He lives at the Sea View, too. And we agree it’s important to be clean.” This was it. No reason to keep Sunny here. The song they’d written together could go back into a drawer somewhere now that Marty Melman didn’t need it anymore, and Dahlia would take Sunny back to that dive in San Diego, where she’d continue to create brilliant songs that nobody would ever hear.

At least, Dahlia thought, I should give the poor woman a nice send-off. If Sunny wanted a shower, Dahlia should bring her a fresh, clean towel and some shower gel and let her luxuriate till Dahlia was ready to leave. She remembered the long baths and showers Sunny had always loved as a girl, in the high-ceilinged bathroom where little Dahlia sat on the lid of the toilet to keep her company, while Sunny, taking
advantage of the acoustics of the echoey old room would sing Leiber and Stoller songs and songs by Dahlia and Sunny in her big-belt voice until there was no hot water left.

“Want a Jacuzzi?” Dahlia asked her now, not even sure if the old plumbing in the big tub still worked.

“What do they taste like?” Sunny asked, looking at her seriously.

“It’s not food. It’s a kind of bathtub. You sit in water and it bubbles. I have a real old one that the people who lived here before put into the other bathroom, and it sounds like we’re grinding wheat when you turn it on.”

Sunny’s eyes filled with light, and she let out a chuckle. It was the first time Dahlia had heard her laugh since they were kids. It wasn’t nearly that big belly laugh she used to have, but there was something about the sound of it now, coming out of this version of Sunny, that sent a rush of feeling through Dahlia. Screw Marty Melman. I don’t know if I’ll ever see this woman again, but she is my flesh and blood. She has suffered so much in her life, and I have this brief window of time where I can introduce her to something she’ll love, so what the hell.

“I’ll run the tub,” Dahlia said.

In the bathroom she spilled a little bath gel into the water, checked the temperature, and turned to find a naked Sunny grinning behind her. “Here you go,” Dahlia said, and she held Sunny’s arm to help her in. “Now I’m going to switch on the jets. Ready?” Dahlia asked.

“Ready.”

Sunny shrieked happily as the unearthly racket of the Jacuzzi kicked in. And Dahlia went and took the clothes from the top of the hamper where Sunny had dropped them. Underwear, overalls, a T-shirt—she put them into the washing machine and turned it on. She had left the bathroom door open, and now she walked past to see the bubbles rising all around a happy Sunny, who was singing “la, la, la,” to the tune of that great song “What’s Happened to Me?” But not just singing it. Wailing it in an eat-your-heart-out belting voice.

While Dahlia waited, surrounded by the clatter of the washing machine in one room and the roar of the Jacuzzi in another, she sat at the piano, playing the song the way she saw Sunny play it. Then, picking up her pen, she jotted down some lyrics, and after a few minutes, she felt a sensation come over her that she hadn’t had in far too long, the feeling that she was taking dictation and some greater force was guiding her hand as she wrote lyrics to Sunny’s tune. The lyrics were about losing control and falling apart, a kind of inner monologue she imagined Sunny must have had with herself at some point.

Dahlia was sure as she wrote them down hastily that the words were poignant and emotional and could have been mistaken for a love song about the way love can drive you mad. She was glad the sound of the Jacuzzi was so loud, because after she finished her first pass at the lyric, she played Sunny’s tune softly, singing her lyrics along with it. And she already knew, as she heard herself sing it through for the first time, that it was good and smart and strong.

Of course, unless something changed drastically to get Sunny to change her mind, it was another song she’d never be able to sell.

Denny’s on Ventura Boulevard looked the same as it did in the days when Dahlia had gone there with her parents as a little girl. If she was going to stop somewhere for breakfast, looking as wiped out as she did, it was the perfect place, since there was no chance she’d bump into anyone she knew. Yes, she thought, sliding into one side of a booth and watching Sunny slide into the other, it was the same old funky Denny’s, and nobody looked twice at Sunny, because at least half the people in there looked as scorched as she did. Sunny was starting to get a little wild-eyed and couldn’t seem to focus on the menu. Her jaw was moving back and forth, and every now and then, she would turn her neck in a funny way so Dahlia could hear it crack.

“You need your meds, don’t you?” Dahlia asked her.

“Hate my meds,” she said, picking up a salt shaker, pouring salt in her hand, and then licking it up.

“You hungry?”

“Need cigarettes. Need a smoke so bad.”

“Have to smoke outside,” a waitress with baggy eyes and yellow hair said as she stopped to put a glass of water at each of their places.

“Don’t have any cigarettes,” Sunny said nervously.

The waitress produced a pack from under her apron and held it out to her. Sunny pulled out three cigarettes, and for a second Dahlia worried that she was going to put all three in her mouth, but she slid two into the front pocket of her overalls and jabbed the
third one into her mouth. Then the waitress gave her a book of matches.

“You can keep ’em,” she said.

“Okay if we order before you go outside?” Dahlia asked as Sunny stood.

But Sunny didn’t answer, just moved toward the outside door, so Dahlia asked the waitress to bring two orders of scrambled eggs with hash browns.

Nightmare, nightmare, nightmare, Dahlia thought watching Sunny through the window, afraid she could pull another stunt like yesterday’s episode in the jungle gym. But so far she seemed okay out there puffing away, watching the traffic go by.

“Is that Dahlia Gordon, the foxy babe of my dreams?” she heard someone say, and she turned quickly, wondering who in the hell she knew who could possibly be in Denny’s in the middle of the morning. No! she thought when she saw who it was, and she made a quick move with her hand to straighten her hair. Grinning down at her was Harry Brenner, the arranger who had worked on her song for Naomi Judd. Dahlia stood to get a big, warm hug from long, lean Harry, whose bright blue eyes gleamed at her from a tired face. “Where you been, good-lookin’?” he asked.

“Oh, I’m around,” she said, praying Sunny would stay outside sucking on that cigarette for a long time, maybe even move on to the other two cigarettes so she wouldn’t walk in here and embarrass Dahlia in the middle of this moment with Harry. Dahlia could never tell Harry what she was doing now. He was still
working all the time, on big stuff. She saw his name on lots of CDs by major performers.

“Got any more songs as good as the one I worked on with you?”

“Oh, probably. I mean, I’ve got a few new ones I’m working on.”

“So send ’em to me, gorgeous! I’m out there every day conducting and arranging,” he said. “I know Faith Hill is cutting a new CD. Needs a big, soaring song. Bring me something, babe. Here’s my number,” he said, extracting a card from his wallet and handing it to her. Then he hugged her again, and when he walked away, she was still engulfed with the scent of his cologne, one of those long-ago scents her dad used to wear. Maybe it was Aqua Velva.

As Harry reached the door, she watched him hold it open for the person who was entering, and it was Sunny. Harry didn’t even blink at the sight of the way her Day-Glo hair stuck up all over her head. Why would he? He was in the music business, he’d seen it all, Dahlia thought, chuckling to herself. Faith Hill, she thought. What song did she have for Faith Hill?

The smell of cigarettes wafted from Sunny’s clothes and hair as she sat back down in the booth. “Hungry,” she said as she opened a sugar packet and poured a little pile of sugar onto the table, then opened another and poured that out, and then another, creating a small white mountain range across the table, until their eggs arrived. By the time Dahlia had poured a puddle of ketchup on to her own plate, Sunny’s plate was practically empty.

“Need another smoke,” she said, standing and hurrying back outside. Dahlia was glad to have a minute alone to go off on her fantasy of what it would be like to bring Harry Brenner some of her songs. She remembered the recording studio Brenner owned out in Van Nuys and the other one that he’d built right at his own house. Maybe that’s where they would meet when she brought him her songs. She’d sit down at the piano and play him some of her new stuff. “Don’t Make Me Laugh”—of course, she had to finish that—and maybe…what else? She’d spend tomorrow at the piano, and by the end of the day she’d call him, just be kind of casual and offhanded, and say, “Hey, maybe I’ll pop by.”

The waitress was standing over her with the check.

“That woman your sister?” she asked Dahlia, gesturing with a nod in the direction of Sunny, who was still outside the window puffing away.

“Cousin,” Dahlia said.

The waitress shook her head and grimaced. “I have a sister like her,” she said. “Not that it’s for me to judge—only God can do that—but sometimes I think gals like them would be better off dead. No point to their lives. She’s got as much going for her as those potatoes you just ate. Only at least somebody enjoyed the potatoes.”

Sunny, with a last puff of smoke still coming out of her mouth, pushed open the door to the restaurant and entered as the waitress walked away with a sigh. Dahlia left enough cash on the table to cover the check and the tip. Then she headed toward Sunny, and to
gether they exited, walking in the hot morning sun toward the van. Dahlia opened the passenger door for Sunny and boosted her into the seat, feeling a wave of relief that this was about to be the end of this dumb situation she’d created for herself. She’d return Sunny to the Sea View, hurry back to massage the obnoxious Marty, and starting tomorrow she’d concentrate on her songs.

Parked next to her van was a shiny black Lincoln Town Car with black windows. As she opened the door on the driver’s side of the van to get in, she heard the hiss of the window rolling down on the Lincoln. It was Harry Brenner. He was sitting in the back of the big shiny car, obviously having been driven by a chauffeur to Denny’s. He was holding a cell phone to his ear, into which Dahlia heard him say, “Hang a sec, will ya?” Then he leaned out the window and smiled at Dahlia, who tried frantically to think of an excuse to give him about why she was driving this embarrassing old junker.

“Dahlia, sweetie,” he said, smiling a big smile that showed off a row of newly porcelain-veneered teeth. “Don’t forget to call me.”

Forget to call him? What a joke. How could she even face him after he saw her looking so badly, then climbing into this crummy vehicle. In Hollywood the car you drove told people everything they needed to know about your life. It was way more important than clothes. If you walked around in jeans and a T-shirt, it might be because that was your fashion statement, meaning you were too cool to think about clothes. But
a bad car was a dead giveaway about who you were in the business, and this trash-can-on-wheels had just given
her
away. Now Harry would know she was desperate and feel sorry for her. That gave her even more reason to have to dazzle him with her songs.

D
ahlia liked to drive with the radio on a jazz station, and today Sunny hummed along with the songs. “Love jazz,” she muttered every now and then. “Need Marlboros,” she said loudly when Dahlia stopped for gas. After Dahlia put the gasoline hose in the tank of the van, she ran into the convenience store and bought a few packs of Marlboros and a throwaway lighter and eyed the Hershey’s Kisses. Aunt Ruthie always had a bowl of Hershey’s Kisses on the piano in her house. Sunny used to say, “Have some Kisses,” and then pelt Dahlia with them.

“Better than those wet ones you give all the guys,” Dahlia would say, devouring the little pointed candies.

“Got you these,” Dahlia said, handing Sunny a bag of the Kisses and the cigarettes, hoping to see a flicker of remembrance on Sunny’s face about their old joke, but there wasn’t one. Dahlia couldn’t stand the smell
of cigarette smoke and the way it tainted the air in the van, but she had to do anything she could to keep Sunny calm. The poor woman had been without her medication for a whole day, and maybe more if she’d pocketed that dose Grover was dispensing yesterday. Okay, Dahlia thought, I’ll keep my mouth shut about the cigarettes.

Leaving the windows open in the van was the only way she could handle the smoke, but when she drove on the freeway, the hot ashes flew off the cigarettes and all around their faces as Sunny puffed. After a while Dahlia gave up and closed the windows and pushed a button on the dashboard, which was supposed to pull in fresh air, but it wasn’t working properly, and within seconds she was overwhelmed by the smoke.

By the time they arrived at the Sea View, she was nauseous and depressed. She wanted to lean against the steering wheel and sob. It had all gone so horribly. She should have listened to that little creep Louie. Now she looked over at Sunny, who toyed with the cigarette box that was already nearly empty.

“I’ll walk you up,” Dahlia said as she slid out the door of the van and hurried around to help Sunny down from the passenger seat. Sunny moved quickly up the steps of the Sea View, and Dahlia followed. In the living room, some of the residents sat in front of the TV watching what looked like an A&E biography of Princess Diana. None of them even glanced over at Sunny or Dahlia when they came in. Zombie time, Dahlia thought. Grover the zombie maker must have just left. In her head she had rehearsed what she was
going to say to Sunny when they parted, and she hurried to the stairs, where Sunny, not interested in formalities, already had her foot on the bottom step when Dahlia stopped her.

“Sunny,” she said, and Sunny turned. “I’m glad I finally had a chance to see you again. I hope you’ll take good care of yourself. I’ll go by the hardware store and see Louie and tell him how well you seem to be doing, and if you’d like me to, I’ll come back and see you again soon.” That made her feel better about just dumping Sunny back here. They’d both had a nice, albeit brief, reunion. No harm, no foul is what Seth would say here. And maybe Dahlia actually would find herself in San Diego some time in the future and pop in to see Sunny. Sunny showed no emotion, just turned and walked up the steps.

Dahlia sighed a sigh of finality and turned to go, wondering why, after making that very thoughtful speech, she had that odd feeling of tightness in her throat. Maybe it was because while she was standing there making the speech, all of those times she and Sunny had been forced to say good-bye to one another as kids flashed through her mind, and she remembered how she always used to feel so helpless when the adults tore Sunny away to put her in one mental hospital or another. No, not now, she thought, knowing she couldn’t let herself go all sappy and fall apart. She needed to get out of there as fast as she could. She turned toward the door and nearly collided with Santa Claus. He smiled a friendly smile, then clucked his tongue.

“You know you shouldn’t say things like that to
her,” he said. No, she couldn’t handle this. Who in the hell was this guy to tell her what to do, with that all-knowing look on his face?

“Like what?” Dahlia asked, annoyed that he was making any of this his business.

“That you’ll come back soon.”

Dahlia forced a tight smile and walked past him, but he followed her to the door. “I mean, the reality is that more than likely you’re not going to come back, and certainly not soon. But once you tell someone like her that kind of thing, she’ll live on it. She’ll spend the next year chewing our ears off about what she’s gonna wear the day you come and where you’re gonna take her that day and how close you are to her and how she’s holding on to the hope that maybe you’ll take her out of here forever. And then none of us will get any rest, because it’s all she’ll talk about. I know because that’s what happened when her brother came—what was it? Four years ago? Maybe just three. Brought his kids and everything. Left here telling her that once a month they were coming back. But they never did. Not even once. She remembers, though, and she’s still waiting. I think she marks the days off on her calendar.”

“I’m not like her brother,” Dahlia said. “I’ll be back.”

Santa Claus smiled patronizingly. “I’ve been through it with my own family,” he said, “and I know how it works.”

She was relieved at the sound of the ringing doorbell and the sight of the UPS man in the doorway holding a package.

“Need a signature for this,” he said to Santa Claus, who signed his name to a form on a clipboard as Dahlia hurried out the door and down the steps to her van.

Driving back to L.A., she couldn’t stop thinking about Sunny sitting at the piano that morning. All the tunes were great, but the one she called “What’s Happened to Me?” was a drop-dead hit if Dahlia had ever heard one. Now Dahlia sang the lyrics that she wrote while Sunny was in the Jacuzzi, using Sunny’s hook that was so perfectly right for the tune.

Outside Marty Melman’s house, she took a deep breath. What she wanted to do was run in and scream at Victor the houseman to tell Mr. Melman to go to hell and then to jump back into the van and floor it out of there. But she was desperate for the check. The hundred bucks meant too much to her meager budget, so she’d have to put on her I’m-just-here-to-serve face and get it over with.

As she hurried through the kitchen past the usual starlet apprentices who were chopping red and green peppers in Marty’s kitchen, she could smell onions sautéing. Upstairs she opened the bedroom door and headed straight for the closet to take out the massage table so she could get this over with. Somehow tonight the table seemed heavier than ever. After she tugged it, pulled it into the room, and set it up, spreading out the Porthault sheets that Marty’s maid always left for her to use under and over Marty, she walked into his bathroom to wash her hands.

My God, I need to get myself together, she thought, stopping to peer at her face. It looked unusually puffy
in the mirror, suddenly making the family resemblance to Sunny very apparent. What’s happened to me? The lyric danced through her mind again as she heard a closet door open and close, and after a minute she heard Marty padding toward the bathroom.

“Hey,” he said, as he walked in naked, getting a devilish little grin on his big fat face. Then he sashayed over to where Dahlia was standing at the sink and stood very close behind her, rubbing his naked front against her back.

“Marty…” she said, starting to protest, when he screwed up his face.

“Ugh. You stink of cigarettes,” he said. “When’d you start smoking?”

“I didn’t. My cousin was in my car for two and a half hours, and she was smoking.”

“You’re not touchin’
me
smelling like that. Either strip down and take a shower or go home.”

Good-bye, hundred bucks. There was no chance she was getting into his shower, and even if she did, her clothes still reeked of cigarettes. He was the one who’d insisted she rush right over to massage him after San Diego. Of course, reminding him of that wasn’t going to make him give her the hundred dollars she needed so badly. He’d send her away without paying her and not think twice about it.

“Hey, I got an idea,” Marty said, leering. “Why don’t you take a nice hot shower, then massage me naked?” Dahlia walked out of the bathroom, down the hall, and through the kitchen to where Victor was chatting and laughing with two pretty young girls.

“That was fast,” Victor said as Dahlia walked out
the door to the van. When she opened it, the thick smell of stale cigarettes still hung inside.

In the van she finally allowed the tears of frustration to roll down her face. What in the hell was she going to do for money? She couldn’t even count on Seth for anything extra. By the time he made his hefty child-support payments, he was in the same sinking boat. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose and drove out of Marty’s driveway and down to Sunset, where she stopped for the red light at Hilgard, trying not to scream. Finally she promised herself out loud, “I will sell my songs this month. I will call Harry Brenner in the morning, and I will make an appointment, and I will stay up all night tonight and every night pushing ahead on my songs until I get them to work, and I will sell those fucking songs.” Then she realized she had left the windows open in order to air the car out, and a bald man in a BMW convertible with the top down was looking up at her and smiling.

“Good luck,” he said, just before the light changed and he drove away.

When she pulled into the carport and didn’t see Seth’s car, she remembered he was working late, and she was relieved. It would be a nice, quiet time for her to get some work done. No conversations. No television, no interruptions, no editorial comments like the ones he sometimes made. Remarks like, “That tune sounds like a steal from Barry Manilow” or “I don’t get where the melody is in that one.” After she’d been working on some tune all day, she didn’t need him or anyone making judgments on her work.

She wasn’t hungry, but knew she should eat some
thing, so she went to the freezer and pulled out a tropical-flavor Popsicle, strawberry-banana, took a few bites while she sat on the piano bench, and looked over the music she’d written out. Finally she set the unfinished Popsicle on a coaster and played her song “Don’t Make Me Laugh.” Not bad, she thought after she breezed through it. The bridge was a little clunky, but she could smooth it out. Maybe. It was a love song about the way she always fell for men who were funny and how a man should be aware that he risked having her fall for him if he made her laugh.

Okay, so it was a little more of a cabaret song than a pop song. Somebody like Billy Joel could get away with it, not an unknown like her. But maybe Harry Brenner could think of a singer who would record it. It had an offbeat melody she liked a lot. It was definitely one of the songs she would play for Harry, and he would know exactly the right singer for it. What other songs of hers would he like?

“What’s Happened to Me?” Her inner DJ was playing Sunny’s melody along with Dahlia’s lyric in her brain. “No,” she said out loud. Too bad that’s Sunny’s tune, she thought, shuffling through her own unfinished songs and scrawling changes on them, trying and retrying the melodies, reworking lines of lyrics that hadn’t worked for her earlier.

“What’s Happened to Me?” That soaring bridge. That wailing tune. She wished it would stop haunting her. After a while she pulled out the rhyming dictionary and worked on “Don’t Make Me Laugh,” changing some of the rhymes that felt stilted. It was work she should have done a long time ago but never could
get into. Now her own songs were finally starting to come together. Now they really worked.

The jangling of the phone made her look up for the first time and realize that it was dark outside, and for an instant she was startled. Then she smiled. These songs she’d written were going to put her back into the business. When she heard Seth’s voice on the phone, she babbled at him excitedly.

“I did it. I sat here for hours, and I finished. I actually finished, and the songs are really good.”

“Great, honey,” he said. Then, after a short beat, he asked, “Any messages for me?” There was no excitement in his voice, just his usual, even, everyday tone. Completely lacking the giddiness she hoped he’d share. She had imagined he’d give her the big reaction she wanted, full of the possibility that maybe this meeting where she’d bring these songs to Harry Brenner would be the one that would change her life.

She knew that Seth’s even tone meant he wanted her to understand that he was going to stay grounded and not get caught up in one of her foolish dreams of glory again. That he was the same if she had a hit song and became some big-deal songwriter or stayed a masseuse eternally. Screw him. She’d call Harry Brenner first thing in the morning.

“No messages,” she told him.

“I’ll be home late,” he said.

“Don’t wake me,” she said, and placed the phone in the cradle.