Master of Ceremonies by Joel Grey

Author:Joel Grey
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781250057242
Publisher: Flatiron Books

I wept with joy and disbelief that our little girl—Jennifer—was in my arms. Now we will be happy, I thought. Everything is just right.

CHAPTER EIGHT

At 3:00 A.M. the phone next to the bed in our apartment on First Avenue started ringing. I had come in from LA for three days in late March of 1960 to play a date in the Catskills (always a dependable source of some quick cash) and gone to sleep early, knowing that the show tomorrow at Brown’s Hotel in Loch Sheldrake would go late. Irritated, I picked up the receiver, hearing from afar the operator saying something about a collect call, before I hung it back up.

A few seconds later, it was ringing again. A little more awake this time, I heard Maury Lazarus, our friend and new obstetrician, his voice a tad testy, saying to the operator, “Tell him his wife just had a baby and that he should accept the call.”

That couldn’t be. When I had left Jo, in high spirits, less than twenty-four hours earlier, our baby hadn’t been due for another six weeks. I couldn’t bear the idea of missing the birth, and, even worse, the possibility that again something had gone wrong.

We had lost our infant son a little more than a year earlier, and Jo and I didn’t speak about it often. We were both too sad. A few months after it happened, I had to travel to England, and when I was there I decided she needed a distraction—in the form of a puppy. I know it was silly, but we needed cheering up. I had planned to surprise Jo with it upon my return. I had heard that the best Yorkshire terriers were bred by a Mrs. Ethel Mundy, and an English pal drove me way out into the country to her house in Wallington Surrey. When I rang the bell, twenty tiny Yorkies went berserk, yapping until Mrs. Mundy commanded, “That’ll be sufficient.” Immediate silence followed—it was very funny. I left with a three-month-old I named Alfie. (The night before I had seen the brilliant actor Alfie Lynch perform in Oh, What a Lovely War! at the Theater Royal Stratford East.)

Other than Alfie and our other Yorkie, Pablo, there was little that Jo and I found to love after we lost our son. We were shattered, and because the hole was so large that nothing could fill it, we sadly took it out on each other. So the grief, which had momentarily connected us in that Florida hotel room, began to tear us apart.

There were many silent fights and petty squabbles. We couldn’t agree on the simplest things, such as where to go to dinner or if we should go visit friends in the country for the weekend. In every decision or discussion I was looking for signs of accusation on her part. I spent so much time blaming myself, and taking full responsibility for everything that happened, that my guilt informed every aspect of our lives.

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