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 Chapter 2 "Anne: Act Two" Read along with Jerry! Click here to hear this excerpt from the Grammy(R)-nominated book on tape from BDD Audio. In the spring of 1953 life took another twist. I was walking on West 40th Street in Manhattan when I bumped into Anne Meara, whom I hadn’t seen since we were in Longley’s absconding with silverware. "I want you to meet my father," she said. “He works in this building right here. I’d met alot of girls, for better or worse, but none had asked me to meet their father. We walked into the offices of the American Radiator Company, across from the New York Public Library. How did she get me here? You meet a girl in theater, you don't need to meet her father. "This is Big Ed," Anne said, introducing me. "He's the stock-transfer agent for the American Radiator and Standard Sanitary Company. They make the church seat. My father calles it the best seat in the house." I was with the daughter of a man whose company made toilet seats. I was getting a lot of background, considering I'd just met Anne a couple of weeks back. "Jerry's an actor," Anne said, introducing me to Big Ed, who at that moment was talking to another big man with a handsome Irish face and the deepest of blue eyes. "Are you in any show right now, Jerry?" Big Ed asked, breaking away momentarily. I suddenly felt he knew me. "No, not right now." "This is Tom Brennan," Anne's father said. "Tom, this is Jerry -what's your last name?" "Stiller," I said. Tom Brennan was close to Ed's age. He seemed in perfect condition, as if he skipped rope all day at the New York Athletic Club. "Tom's with Robert Hall clothes." Ed said. An Irishman in the clothing business. It struck me as funny. They went back to talking. My presence seemed to animate them. They were each six inches taller than me -- the kind of guys you'd one day remember seeing at the bar at Toots Shor's, the tough Irish who survived the streets of New York and made it in business or politics. Was I just one of the many strays whom Anne, a young actress also trying to make it in New York, introduced every so often to her father to prove that she was a good girl who didn't fool around? I could feel them looking through me. In my mind I could hear: "What the hell is she doing with a guy like that? He's three inches shorter than she is. He's got to be Jewish. They're all Jewish in show business. Is she sleeping with him?" "How about some lunch?" Ed said. "Tom's leaving." "We've got to be going too," Anne said. "We've got some appointments." "Keep making the rounds," Ed said to us, "and maybe we can all have lunch someday." "Okay, Pop. So long, Uncle Tom," Anne said, as she and I headed for Broadway. She's just legitimized our relationship with her father, I figured. I felt a little uneasy, as if I'd just become a member of her family. She never asked permission. There was nothing wrong with it, except that I felt a bit now as if I was under some kind of surveillance. God, what if I tried to sleep with her? This meeting could be a kind of warning, I thought. A deterrent. "So Tom Brennan is your uncle?" "No, he's my father's best friend, and he just got fired. He wanted to hit his ex-boss, and Dad talked him out of it. Tom used to box," Anne said. Yeah, oranges, I thought. A joke I couldn't use at this moment. "Your father's a big guy," I said. "He's five-eleven." "He seems much taller," I said. "That's because he talks loud. He's got a punctured eardrum. It kept him from going overseas in the First World War." History seemed to be pouring out as we approached Broadway. "I hate making rounds," Anne said. "I love making rounds," I said, suddenly feeling superior to her. There were, I thought, two breeds of actors among the unknowns who tramped the streets looking for work: those who could knock on a door, and those who couldn't. Those who couldn't, no matter how talented, seemed destined for obscurity. I couldn't understand what it was that stopped any actor from saying: "I'm looking for work." "What do you do all day?" I asked her. "Sleep mostly," she said. "How do you pay the rent?" "I get jobs. I worked at Best & Co. for three days. I got fired for not being helpful to some woman who complained. I was an usher at the Trans-Lux newsreel theater." "Didn't that drive you crazy?" "It never got boring. They changed the newsreels every day. They caught me smoking a cigarette and fired me. I ushered at the Shubert, the second balcony. You know how steep that is?" she asked with a laugh. "I finally turned in my flashlight because I got so dizzy. It was so high you could get a nosebleed. I worked for an answering service, too. I took messages for Cliff Robertson," she said. The list went on. She's funny, I thought. Maybe we could do an act. "I ushered at the Ballet de Paris at the Hellinger. I'd come in early and watch Roland Petit warm up every night. The last job I had was testing detergent in a research laboratory. You had to dip each hand in a different detergent. One was harsh and made it red, the other was soft. See, this hand is still red." "Yeah," I said, unable to see the red. "How do you pay the rent?" I asked again. "I've got two roommates . . . I got to run," Anne said. "So do I." "See you again sometime." She disappeared into the Times Square crowd. I headed uptown to my room on West 89th Street, which I had moved into. It was on the top floor of a brownstone, with just enough space for a single bed, a dresser, a table, and a floor lamp. It had a small bathroom. The skylight was the best feature. The landlord said Gershwin had lived in this room. I could see Gershwin writing Porgy and Bess on that very table. But I could also feel the loneliness for the first time in my life. I never thought I would experience it. I was alone in New York. Except for the army and college, I'd lived here all my life. I always thought the city was mine. It was, when I could dream. But it was different now. I was out of the army, out of school, out of work. I was shifting from dream to reality. I could no longer fantasize to Gordon Jenkins's musical tribute to New York City. I was no longer living at home, telling my parents: "Someday I'm going to . . . " This was someday. It had arrived and I was empty. I had nothing except what was in my head. Alone in the room, I thought of this girl I'd met. She liked me. I'd never met a woman who just liked me. There didn't seem to be any game-playing. What happened that day was so spontaneous. I didn't trust it. What else would I have done today if I hadn't run into her? Does everything in life follow a plan? This girl has no plans. Nothing can really happen for her, I thought, as I dozed and finally fell fully asleep. Several days later I was sitting at the Cromwell drugstore, sipping coffee. Anne came over to sit with me. "I'm in a play!" she said. “I play a bird, an egret. We open down in the Village at the Theatre de Lys." "What play?" I asked. She was laughing, alive, excited. "Which Way Is Home? Three one-acts." She seemed to be telling everyone at the Cromwell. "That's wonderful, great," I said, trying to match her enthusiasm. "Who's in it?" "Nobody famous. Jerry Anspacher. An Irish actor, Milo O'Shea. It's the Touring Players. Peg Murray is the producer. It's Off-Broadway, and I play this bird. Will you come to see me?" "Yeah, sure," I said. "John, John," she said, hugging John Marley. "John, I'm in a show." "Great," Marley said. "I stayed with John and Stanya at their apartment when I first came here from Rockville Center," Anne explained to me. She seemed to be kissing everyone in the place. Why did she have to do that? So much affection. She seems to love everybody equally. What does that make me? I felt a twinge of anxiety. Was it jealousy, or was I just being possessive? I had no proprietary rights to her affections. How do you tell someone whom to hug or not hug? It worried me. Was I actually beginning to like her? I didn't like the way she showered all this affection. It made me suspicious. If she liked everyone, then I was just like everyone. One night soon afterward Anne invited me over for dinner. Her ground floor apartment nestled in a yard between Jones and Cornelia streets in Greenwich Village. There was no sunlight. Up the street was Zampieri's Bakery, where every morning the smell of fresh bread would awaken the neighborhood. “You cook? I asked. “Yeah, she said. “I make spaghetti. For the first time I noticed the walls were frescoed, plastered and painted over in light blue, with little squiggles. “What are those little things sticking to the plaster? “That’s the spaghetti. I throw it against the wall. It sticks if it’s al dente. During the following weeks we spent many nights together. On some nights her roommates were present, and we just talked. On others, when we were alone, she'd often read. "What do you read?" I asked. "Plays," she said. "Poetry. You don't like to read?" "It's not that," I said. "I just don't seem to have the time." "Didn't your mother ever read to you?" "No, but I remember her taking me to the library and having me read Black Beauty . It was her way to teach me-I didn’t know she couldn’t read. She came to America when she was sixteen and learned English by going to night school." "My mom read to me a lot. She was a schoolteacher," Anne said. "I feel guilty when I read. I don't ever remember ever finishing a book." "Why do you feel guilty?" "It's like I'm wasting my time. I should be doing something, like making money." "Don't you enjoy reading?" she said. "I guess so. I started reading Dostoyevski, The Brothers Karamazov. I'm doing a play from it in some basement with Steve Gravers, Arthur Storch, and Stefan Gierasch. Do you know them?" "They're good actors," Anne said. "Yeah, I know. I play Smerdyakov, the idiot brother who's an epileptic." "Is that why you're reading the novel?" "Yeah, I guess so." "What's it about?" she asked. I started to explain, and mentioned a town in the book called Obodorsk. Anne started to laugh. "That sounds funny," she said. “I’ll be right back. Anne disappeared into the bedroom. I picked up a copy of The Robayait Omar Kahayan, that was lying on the table and started reading: “A loaf of bread, a jug of wine and thou... When Anne reappeared she was wearing a pink flannel nightgown and holding a glass of milk. A glass of milk at a time like this. "It's warm," she said, offering me the glass. She was angelic. The flannel nightie suddenly seemed erotic. I looked at her face. This wasn’t the way I had envisioned it. She's an actress , I thought. This is supposed to be a torrid affair, and I'm getting a warm glass of milk. I took a sip, mostly to satisfy her, and handed the glass back. "I like milk." she said. I stood quietly, waiting for something to happen. "My roommates are gone," she said, taking me by the hand. Was this really happening? This was bland, milky-white sex. I think she loves me, I was telling myself. Is it possible any woman could love me, someone besides my mother? What could she see in me? I'm an unemployed actor. She has never seen me on stage, and yet she likes me enough to want to go to bed with me. Maybe I am something. I noticed the ridges on the green chenille bedspread. An old table lamp on the night table threw off the only light in the room. The glass of milk was still in her hand. She placed it on the night table. We looked at each other for a moment. I hesitated before daring to touch her. Her eyes told me it was all right to do something, so I took both her hands. Like two automatons, we slowly perched on the edge of the bed. I heard a squeak. It seemed like the bed would collapse if our full weight were on it. We both sensed the comedic possibilities of this moment. Our bodies slid lengthwise onto the bed, as if testing it. The bed didn't collapse. Then we pushed back with the palms of our hands till our backs touched the cold wall. I turned to kiss Anne, who was at least two inches taller than me, even in bed. "You have soft lips," she said to me, "and I love your hands." I had never heard anyone say anything so endearing to me in all my life. It was funny how words could turn me on. Moments later, we were making love. The bed squeaked. Whatever guilt I may have had seemed dissipated by the funny sounds that filled the apartment as we desperately tried to create romance to the accompaniment of noisy bedsprings. Despite all this, we salvaged some joy in our first intimacy. We looked at each other, I said: Obodorsk. Anne laughed, we turned out the lights, and made love once again. From that night, everytime I mentioned the name “Obodorsk, Anne and I made love. We were sleeping together without being married. It was what actors and actresses did. It made you mature. In theater, anything goes, I thought. It didn't matter if it wasn’t legal. As a matter of fact it was more fun when it’s illegal, very Hollywood. But I’m also feeling like a cad, taking advantage of a poor innocent girl. But I was so lonely, a killer loneliness that Anne’s presence changed. Copyright © 2000 by Jerry Stiller View archives |
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