Ham Read online

  Well, not really.

  I was there the day she met him. I was musically supervising her segment on the Michael Jackson: 30th Anniversary Celebration television special at Madison Square Garden, which was being produced by the Man Whose Name Shall Go Unmentioned. I don’t know what put me off first—the fact that he wore sunglasses indoors and at night or his boastful claims of having “the largest Shirley Temple paraphernalia collection in the world”—a feat for which I suspected there was little competition. Bottom line, the guy creeped me out and I told her so. But as the romance budded, my friend begged me to give him a chance.

  On Thanksgiving Day, Liza called to tell me he had proposed the previous evening.

  “Schmooli, I really want you to try to get close to him. I know he’s kind of quirky, but I need for you to accept him and try to love him.”

  Liza had suffered from brain encephalitis earlier in the year and I reminded her as such. “You’re still recovering. Is it possible that . . . you’re not yet in your right mind? Literally.”

  “Oh, who is, Schmool? All I know is he really seems to get me. And he’s funny.”

  “Funny?” I asked. “Or . . . funny?”

  “He’s our kind of funny.”

  I wasn’t sure that answered my question.

  “Please call him now and congratulate him,” she pleaded. “It means everything to me.”

  I did as I was asked and told him that I was “so, so happy” for them, mustering cheer in my voice against the dead eyes he couldn’t see.

  I had to admit that he did dote on her and had big plans. The kind of plans I knew she loved. So against every instinct in my body, I had no choice but to hope I was wrong about him. She seemed happy and that’s all I wanted for her. What any friend wants for a friend.

  A mere seven months after their collision, the who’s who of New York and old Hollywood showbiz were invited to assemble at the Marble Collegiate Church, at Fifth Avenue and Twenty-Ninth Street in Manhattan, for the nuptials. This was, no doubt, the first time the church entrance had been set up with such tight security, and the most eclectic guest list ever ambled through airport metal detectors and opened their pocketbooks for inspection. The enormous number of titanium hip replacements set off the detectors, which slowed the line considerably. Janet Leigh, Anthony Hopkins, Joan Collins, Kirk Douglas, Carol Channing, and Robert Goulet were there. In odd juxtaposition, so were Snoop Dogg, Donny Osmond, Martha Stewart, and Gloria Gaynor. In the same room. At the same time. I knew for a fact that Liza didn’t know most of these people or had met them only in passing.

  But then, she really only knew the groom in passing.

  She should have kept walking.

  I knew she had personally invited Lauren Bacall, Liz Smith, Mia Farrow, Cynthia McFadden, Mickey Rooney, Billy Stritch, and Gina Lollobrigida, but most of the others were acquaintances of the groom’s, PR invitations, or celebrities who had begged to be on the list. Like signing up to witness the launching of the Hindenburg.

  I forget sometimes that my friend Liza is, you know—Liza! Truth was that she would have been happy getting married in a private house with ten close friends, but the groom’s knack and desperate need for the spotlight had turned this into an epic extravaganza.

  I ran to a back room and found Liza, who seemed nervous. “Let’s sneak out of here and go to the movies,” I said. “No one will notice.”

  She laughed and then suddenly said, “What’s playing?” An odd doubt crept over her enormous brown eyes.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yes . . . I don’t know. That thing you said about recovering from brain encephalitis?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’ve recovered,” she said, dryly.

  “Oh, honey.”

  “But I’m here and this is happening and I’m gonna make it be okay.”

  I kissed her on the cheek and ran out to join my partner, Danny, nestling into our reserved third-row pew. Jane Russell soon squeezed in beside me. Then we had to squeeze over even more so Donald Trump could fit in. And he has wide hips.

  The church was stunning. The entire wall behind the altar was blanketed in white orchids, probably to cover a giant bleeding Jesus, which would have been a downer. We waited. We chatted. Danny and I looked around the room to see whom we’d missed. I stood and waved to much more famous friends who were seated farther back, to show them I was among the chosen.

  We continued to wait. For about an hour.

  Then the news arrived, whispered from person to person, pew to pew, like the telephone game: Elizabeth Taylor had forgotten her shoes and had arrived at the church in hotel house slippers. No one in her entourage of seventy-two had noticed: terry cloth—The Plaza, so we had to wait while some gay lackey schlepped up thirty blocks to retrieve her shoes. Finally Elizabeth was shoed, everyone was ready, and the music began.

  Then a familiar voice shouted, “Wait for me!” The music stopped as Diana Ross flitted down the aisle, her hair over three feet in diameter, tickling aisle-seated guests as she flounced her way to the second row to take a seat.

  The music resumed. The enormous wedding party entered from the downstage left and right wings, I mean aisles, and made their way to the platformed stage, I mean altar. Elizabeth Taylor was the co-matron of honor and was helped to her seat by the other co-, Marissa Berenson. The groom was escorted by Michael Jackson and his brother, Tito or Tootie or Toyota, I couldn’t know or keep up.

  The music abruptly stopped again—and then started up, louder, as everyone turned to the back of the church for the star’s, I mean bride’s, entrance. Traditionally, when a bride walks down the aisle at her wedding, the guests rise in her honor. When Liza entered at the back of the house, I mean church, the entire who’s who audience, I mean congregation, jumped to their feet and yelped and applauded like it was Carnegie Hall. They cheered, “Liza! Liza!” I was certain the orchestra was going to launch into “And the World Goes ’Round.” It was mayhem. Cindy Adams stood on top of Mickey Rooney and still couldn’t see.

  Liza was escorted by her longtime music director/drummer/father figure Bill “Pappy” Lavorgna, who was perhaps the only real “family” in the wedding party. She’d made a lot of entrances in her career, but as she glided down the aisle in a fitted white Bob Mackie gown, this was Liza at her most dazzling.

  Naturally, like at any wedding, all the attention should be paid to the bride and groom, so I tried, I tried, I tried tried tried not to stare at Michael, but I just couldn’t not. He was wearing a rigorously tailored black suit, festooned with velvet and sequined piping and a darling Peter Pan collar centered with a diamond brooch. His hair was flat-ironed into a flirty Marlo Thomas flip. His face couldn’t have been whiter if he’d been an Irishman locked in a windowless basement his entire life.

  I’d met Michael on several previous occasions since the mid-eighties and he’d become less and less human each time—not only in appearance but in manner. His very person. The man was on his own planet: Michael Planet. His eyes, darkly lined in black, remained closed throughout the service and his head bobbed and wobbled from side to side to the rhythm of a music no one else could hear. Occasionally, he would titter to himself at an internal joke, showing his teeth, just a shade less white than his face, and raise his shoulders like a five-year-old girl who’d just said the word “penis” for the first time.

  On the other side of the altar sat Elizabeth Taylor. She was wearing an ensemble that made me think she’d looked in her closet that morning and said, “What shall I wear? . . . Everything!” But she was still Liz Taylor and somehow it worked on her, down to the veiled black tulled and feathered hat, set slightly askew on her head.

  Or was she tilting to one side?

  I’d also met Elizabeth on many occasions since the eighties and I truly adored and admired her as an actor, humanitarian, and one of the great purveyors of nasty, nasty dirty jokes. But she was clearly exhausted from the trauma of the shoe ordeal, and when the priest requested we lower o
ur heads in prayer, she did. And she never came back up.

  She. Never. Came. Back. Up.

  She remained slumped, ever leaning to the left, threatening to topple onto the floor at any moment. Even unconscious, she created a sense of mystic tension—like when you lean too far back on the hind legs of a chair and there is that split second when you don’t know if you’re going to fall backward or forward. It was like she, and we, were living there for thirty minutes.

  Between Michael’s Planet and Liz’s teetering, it was impossible to fully engage in the ceremony.

  While we, mercifully, did not have to rise and sit numerous times like at some Catholic services, which would have been impossible for a third of the congregation and annoying to the rest, we were required to pray frequently. And every time—every time—Jane Russell heard the words “Please bow your heads in prayer,” she viewed it as an opportunity to reapply her lipstick. Stuffed in her slot, glued shoulder to shoulder between me and Donald Trump, the only movable part of her body was her arms from the elbows down. Like a crab, she plucked the lipstick and mirror from her bag and, unable to raise her upper arms, hunched over and pooched her lips toward the ruby-red stuff while the priest gave thanks to God. I, personally, could not have been more grateful. After the fifth or sixth prayer, Jane’s lips could have served as a location device should it have been necessary to pinpoint the wedding from outer space.

  Finally the big moment arrived and it was time for the vows: Do you take this man? Do you take this woman? Do you promise to love, honor, and cherish? May I have the rings?

  Nothing.

  Michael was still listening to the music and comedy show in his head and Elizabeth was out cold. Marissa finally nudged Elizabeth, who woke with a start and a grunt. “Whaaa?” The bridesmaids gestured that it was time for the rings and Elizabeth, who was apparently the ring bearess, rose to the occasion. Or at least to an upright sitting position. She hefted her purse from beneath her chair and began to dig through it while we waited. She pulled out tissues, a compact, a prescription bottle, a Milky Way.

  Finally, she found the small black velvet box and went to open it but couldn’t quite figure out how. She pulled and pried with no success.

  “Michaaaaaael!,” she stage whispered in a coarse, breathy voice, as if she could go unnoticed and wasn’t Elizabeth Taylor calling for Michael Jackson at Liza Minnelli’s wedding in front of eight hundred and fifty people. “Michael, help me!”

  Michael’s eyes opened for the first time since he’d sat down and, Pavlovianly, he responded to the voice of his best-friend-in-need. Seeing that Liz was at her wits’ end in her rigorous struggle with the tiny box, he rose and walked past the groom and bride, across the altar, to assist her.

  No luck. Clearly this was not the kind of thing that either of these people did in their regular lives, where surely there must be servants more expert in such matters, because neither of them could figure out how to open a goddamn ring box.

  The crowd fell silent, thunder-struck. We wondered if this was what it was like all the time. Liza caught my eye and jerked her head in the direction of the commotion as if beckoning me to get up and help, and a honk of a laugh jumped from my throat before I could catch it, echoing in the hush. Danny hit me on the arm and Liza nearly burst out laughing herself. Finally, someone else stepped in, I don’t recall who—Tito, Guido, it could have been anyone. Shirley MacLaine. LL Cool J. How many megastars does it take to open a ring box?

  At last, the rings were exchanged, Liza and the groom did their I do’s, and the deed was done.

  Almost.

  Liza took his hands in hers, gazed into his beady eyes, and declared, “You don’t ever have to live life without me.” She could have added, “. . . and I will soon wish you dead, so that will work out just fine,” but it would be another month before she would fully come to that epiphany.

  “Can I kiss you, then?” he responded.

  And he went for her like he’d just come off a vegan diet and she was a Quarter Pounder with Cheese. His mouth widened and his swirling tongue was visible to the back pew as he chewed and chomped. I wondered if it was his first kiss, like when you’re twelve years old and you’re playing spin the bottle and you try to reenact what you’ve seen on TV.

  It was grotesque. And Liza knew it.

  She pulled back, and not wanting to humiliate her newest husband, smiled coyly at the crowd as if to say, “Isn’t he . . . committed?”

  The priest pronounced them husband and wife, and the audience erupted in an ovation reminiscent of, well . . . a Liza Minnelli concert. Having spent a life on the stage as the recipient of thousands of ovations, and, still trying to recover from the awkward mauling, Liza did what she knew to do to save the day. She grabbed the arm of her husband and costar and together they nodded at the crowd in gracious appreciation. House left—house right—then center. The applause crescendoed as they headed up the aisle. When she passed me, seemingly gleaming, our eyes locked and then she crossed hers, saying everything we both knew.

  Jane Russell had just applied her nineteenth layer of lipstick, which was now smeared beyond the margin of her mouth and dotted the end of her nose. She turned to me and said, in her gruff, smoker’s voice, “That’s show business, kid.”

  And it was.

  The reception was held at the Regent Wall Street Hotel and the newlyweds entered the ballroom in a spotlight as ex-Queen rocker Brian May sang “We Are The Champions.” Liza wore a sumptuous red sequined miniskirt, and the Man Whose Name Shall Go Unmentioned wore sunglasses. At his wedding reception.

  He wore sunglasses at his wedding reception.

  The party went on until very late. Carol Channing spent much of the evening on the dance floor boogie-oogie-oogie-ing with Snoop Dogg. By this time anything could’ve happened. I wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d announced their engagement.

  The Man Whose Name Shall Go Unmentioned and Liza received visitors and congratulations at their center table in front of the thirty-piece orchestra, as the music continued: the Doobie Brothers, Donny Osmond, Natalie Cole, me. The Man Whose Name Shall Go Unmentioned told me that they’d decided to adopt four children as soon as they got back from London, finished a satellite interview with Larry King, and wrapped up redecorating Liza’s apartment. Liza leaned behind him out of his view and, eyes wide, shook her head, “nooooooo!” And then Gloria Gaynor joined the orchestra and belted out “I Will Survive.” Coincidence? I thought not.

  Upon leaving the reception, we were all given heart-shaped boxes of chocolates with “Liza & The Man Whose Name Shall Go Unmentioned” printed on top, and cookies with a portrait of the newlyweds painted in icing. I tossed out the box of chocolates and I ate the cookie, beginning with his head.

  • • •

  It was evident in the following months that the marriage wouldn’t last, and over the next year it flared and sputtered, making the sinking of the Titanic look like a round of Milton Bradley’s Battleship. When the last Shirley Temple doll had been wrapped in tissue paper, boxed, and sent to cold storage, Liza emerged somehow better than before. And funnier. And we were even closer, once again bonded through our mutual teeth-gritting drive and the ability to shuffle off disappointment and put on a new show—both the literal and figurative kind. Always. No matter what.

  One night in the aftermath, when our normal was restored and we were propped up on her king-size bed—which always seemed bigger than king-size, probably due to the enormous amount of stuff that was always present: legal pad lists, DVDs, CDs, a boom box, faxes, Marlboro Lights, several working and nonworking lighters, a dozen working and nonworking pens and highlighters, an ashtray, three pairs of glasses, a mug of iced coffee, a cell phone, a box of tissues, a tray of dishes from dinner, four TV remotes, seventeen pillows, and a dog—Liza and I discussed the difference between regrets and mistakes. Neither of us had any regrets, really. Whatever got us here got us here. But we’d both made plenty of mistakes. God knows she’d been there through
mine. And what mattered, we said, was that those mistakes be acknowledged, so as not to be repeated.

  Suddenly, Liza smooshed a heap of the bed stuff to one side and asked me to sit on my haunches and face her, eye to eye. Then she made me raise my right hand and take an oath that if she should ever again fall for anyone remotely like the Man Whose Name Shall Go Unmentioned, that I would have her retested for encephalitis, lock her up with no Charles Aznavour records, bind her with a Halston scarf, and slap her until she regained her senses.

  That’s what friends are for.

  4. Odd Man In

  When I was three, I choked on an Oscar Meyer wiener and lost consciousness, turned blue, and was ambulanced to the hospital, where I apparently flatlined and then came back from the dead, according to my Memo, who swore that the doctor told her as such but kept it from my mother.

  At the very least, oxygen did not get to my brain for many minutes. I overheard the doctor say something to my parents about being lucky I wasn’t a vegetable. I wondered what kind—cauliflower, string bean, yam? But I got the idea when, for the next year, appointments were scrupulously scheduled and my hair was shaved into a burr so electrodes could be glued to my scalp to check for brain damage. I sat on the edge of a padded examination table and watched electronic waves jiggle and jaggle on the tiny black-and-white monitor, hoping I wasn’t retarded. For years, I wondered how I might have been different were it not for my tragic wiener incident: smarter maybe, quicker. Normal.

  Studying basic math in first grade, I couldn’t grasp the simple concept of even and odd numbers. For everyone else it was a breeze, ho-hummingly spouting the answers to Mrs. Ellis’s oral pop quiz:

  “Dee Dee, five?”

  “Odd!” Dee Dee chimed.

  “Teri, twelve?”

  “Even.”

  “Chris, seven?”

  Chris rolled his eyes. “Odd.”

  “Sam, three?”

  I sat frozen.

  “Sam, three?”

  Clearly this was rudimentary and I could sense judgment at my hesitation. But what made some numbers “odd”? What did they do to suffer such a label? Weren’t they just numbers like all the others? I fought my anxiety and pretended that I could see the oddness in what seemed ordinary. But I knew I had a fifty-fifty shot and, thankfully, guessed the right answer.