I'll Cry Tomorrrow Page 11

  I went on the wagon. After all, I could stop drinking when I wanted to. On the third day, I found myself pacing back and forth in my apartment, crying out, “Why am I so nervous?” I bit my lips until they bled, trying to control my trembling body. “What is this?” I asked, in desperation. “I haven’t had anything to drink in forty hours. What’s happening to me? Maybe my mind’s giving way.” I threw myself into a chair and sat there, shaking. My skin began to itch with crawling things that weren’t there. I struck at my body, my thighs, my legs. I scratched until the blood came. I’m going mad, I thought. I’m going to burst right open. I can’t stand what I’m going through. In desperation I hurled myself against the spun-glass walls of our bedroom, raised my hands high against the wall and slid them hard across it, lacerating the palms, moaning with the pain. They oozed blood in a hundred places. Maybe the hurt would drive away the horror, the tingling, the panic, everything…

  I gave in. I took the drink I didn’t want to take.

  CHAPTER XIII

  THERE WERE some happy moments in the years with Ben. One of the brightest was when I rented and furnished a small apartment in the same building for my mother, so that we could be near each other; another, to see her joy when I surprised her on her birthday with a $10,000 check for a trip to the French Riviera.

  There was the thrill of returning to work in pictures. I was offered a part in “Take a Chance,” the movie version of a Broadway hit starring Ethel Merman. The film was to be made in Astoria. Ben was doubtful about the idea.

  “You don’t know what it will mean to me, Ben,” I pleaded. “I simply have to do something. And you know I never drink when I have things to do.”

  He agreed. I worked in the picture with old friends—Buddy Rogers, Jimmy Dunn, June Knight, Lillian Bond and Cliff Edwards. My big song numbers—”Come Up and See Me Sometimes” and “Eadie Was a Lady”—were hits. When the film opened in Washington, D. C, I went along to make a personal appearance, accompanied by Katie.

  For an entire week I was blissful. I drank nothing. I was away from Ben, I was with my mother, and we loved being together.

  We returned to New York.

  I let myself into our apartment. It was three p.m. I sat down and waited for the judge. I glanced through my mail, thumbed through a few magazines—and the old nervousness possessed me. I had no desire to drink, but I was bored, and I wanted to be gay and relaxed when Ben arrived: I wanted his eyes to light up when he saw me. I went into the bathroom and to the clothes hamper, where I kept my own liquor. Ben, by now, was marking off the amount remaining in our decanters on the sideboard, to check how much I drank.

  When he came in at 5:30, I was slumped in an easy chair, glassy-eyed.

  He stood over me. “Have you been like this all week?”

  “Honest to God, Ben, ask my mother,” I said thickly. “I only had a couple.”

  He took me into his arms. “Why did you do it, Lillian?”

  “I don’t know,” I sobbed. “I don’t know why I did it, I won’t do it again, I promise, I won’t.”

  “Maybe she ought to have something to occupy her mind,” said Joe Shalleck, bringing home several law books. “You’ve got a good brain, Lillian. There are only a few women lawyers. If you were smart, you’d take up law. With our help you’d finish high school and be practicing law before you’re thirty.”

  “Why should she do that?” Ben asked. “She’s a good wife, she’s a good hostess, and if she didn’t drink so much, she’d be a great help to me.”

  At times Joe defended me. “Ben, she really hasn’t had time to sow her wild oats. That’s why she drinks. If you’d drink with her and get gay, that would help.”

  Ben tried.

  “Lillian,” he would suggest, “let’s not drink anything until Saturday night. Then we’ll drink and you can get as high as you like.” Or, “Let’s spend Thursday night alone. Well drink a whole bottle of sparkling Burgundy together, just you and me.”

  That sounded fair. “Isn’t this nicer,” he would ask, settling down in his easy chair with his glass of wine, “than going out and causing talk by drinking too much?”

  But Ben did not realize that I was tortured. The slow drinking, the small amounts, only added fuel to the fire. I needed more, my body needed more. I kept jumping up, vanishing into the bathroom, taking a quick drink, and running back to chase it down with wine.

  Burgundy and Southern Comfort—to which I had now switched—produce a startling effect when mixed. After he finished his glass, Ben would look at me and exclaim, “You see, Lillian, actually you can’t drink. Two drinks and you’re woozy.”

  He tried other strategy. When we were ready to retire, he would say, “Would you like a little drink, baby, before you go to bed?”

  “I’d love it!” This was made to order for me. Now I could drink all I wanted without worrying about the odor of liquor on my breath.

  We had a drink or two together. Between drinks, I leaned over and kissed him. “Benjie, you’re really sweet” I said. “Let’s have a little music. Turn on the radio—I feel like hearing Cab Calloway.”

  We sat, drinking, leisurely listening to the music.

  “Now, darling, you get ready for bed and I’ll take a quick shower,” I said. “I’ll be out in a few minutes.”

  I vanished into the bathroom and reached for the bottle, meanwhile turning on the shower full strength.

  “Coming, dear?” This from the judge.

  “Coming.”

  The shower poured down, its steady thrum sounding a pleasant background accompaniment as I finished my bottle. Sometimes, in half an hour, I drank an entire fifth.

  “What takes you so long, darling?”

  “I’m making myself beautiful, Ben.” At the moment I was rinsing my mouth with Chanel No. 5. It burned terribly, but it made my lips smell sweet.

  When I emerged, Ben threw aside his newspapers. “You know,” he said, “you’re not the most beautiful girl in the world. You’re not the most brilliant girl in the world. But there must be something about you I like. Do you know that?”

  I laughed merrily, and ran to my husband.

  Ben’s routine when he returned from court in the afternoon was always the same. He came in, hung up his coat and hat, washed his hands, walked into the living room, and kissed me. But some afternoons I drank: and when he kissed me he knew it. Then he would walk away and sit down, looking straight ahead.

  Silence. I could not endure it.

  “I’m sorry, Ben,” I would say abjectedly.

  “All right. Let me know when dinner’s ready.” He buried his face in a newspaper.

  He was silent through dinner and in silence we returned to the living room. He sat down and again looked straight ahead.

  “Ben, I said I was sorry.”

  “I know.”

  “Why don’t you talk to me?”

  No answer.

  “Oh, Ben, please, I’m sorry. It won’t happen again. I’m just so nervous!”

  Silence.

  “Ben—let’s go to a movie.”

  Silence. Calmly he undressed, donned his robe, brought out the bridge table, and began dealing himself a game of solitaire.

  “Benjie—” I ventured tentatively.

  Still silence.

  Then it would happen. My jangling nerves would explode. “If this goes on I’ll kill myself,” I’d scream. “I can’t stand it. I can’t stand doing nothing. I’m going mad!”

  One night I raced into the bathroom, tore open the medicine cabinet, and swept an entire shelf of bottles crashing to the tile floor.

  No sound from Ben. I pushed open the bathroom door and peeked out. Methodically he was playing his game, placing a red ten on a black Jack.

  I grabbed a bottle of iodine and lifted it to my lips. “I’m dying,” I shrieked, “I’m dying.”

  Iodine causes a purple froth at the mouth. Ben glanced up, saw me, and quickly called the house physician. The latter examined me. “Not much went down, did i
t?” he asked, almost with a wink. I shook my head. “It burned too much,” I whispered to him.

  He told me to drink two glasses of milk and forget it.

  The second time I did a better job. While Ben lay in bed reading the Daily News—Columnist Ed Sullivan only a few days earlier had written of the “radiantly happy Judge Shallecks”—I nicked the veins of my wrist, gargled with iodine and emerged from the bedroom a frightening sight, frothing at the mouth, my hands stiff before me, my wrists dripping blood.

  “You’ll be sorry,” I gasped. “Oh, Ben!” I fell dramatically to the floor at the entrance of the bedroom.

  Ben continued reading. He did not even deign to look up. I scrambled to my feet like a madwoman and rushed at him, ripping off the covers and screaming, “You’re a brute. You have no heart. You don’t care if I die!” I worked myself into such a fit of hysterics that this time he cradled me in his arms. “All right,” he said. “All right, now.”

  I wept. “I don’t know why I do it, honest to God, Ben, I don’t know why I do it”

  I tried weekending at milk farms. On one occasion Milton’s mother, Sandra, accompanied me, and we took a room together. I tossed and turned all night.

  “What is the matter, Lillian?” Mrs. Berle asked, time and again.

  “I’m all right,” I said. But I got out of bed and opened the windows because I was hot, and then I was chilled and got out of bed and closed them again.

  In the morning the house physician dropped by. Mrs. Berle, he said, was concerned about me. I was a sick girl, she told him. How did I feel now?

  “Really?” I said. By this time my jitters had gone. “I had a restless night and so would you if you were as darned hungry as I was. I’m fine.”

  He looked at me for a moment, then leaned close. “If I were you, Mrs. Shalleck, when you get back to town you ought to tell Milton that his mother is a very nervous woman. She was really agitated this morning. She insisted you were ill.”

  “Oh, no,” I laughed. “I feel fine.”

  As a matter of fact, by the time I returned to New York, I felt fine. But when I came home, the judge was not there. Once again I had to wait for him. I went into the kitchen where my liquor was disguised in vinegar bottles, and drank myself into helplessness.

  Ben talked to me. “You’re sick, Lillian. You must see a doctor.” I agreed. The physician who examined me minced few words. Unless I stopped drinking, he warned, “you won’t live another five years”

  “Oh, Doctor, that can’t be,” I insisted. “I just drink to soothe my nerves. I have no aches or pains. Besides, I can always stop when I want to.”

  Later I was taken to a second physician. “Judge, she’s a high-strung girl,” he said. “Temperamental. Not enough to occupy her. Let her drink a few brandies now and then. They’ll relax her.”

  I switched to brandy. The doctor had said a few, but I overdid it. The brandy worked less quickly, yet it made my heart thump and gave me a sense of impending doom. I switched back to scotch, bourbon and gin.

  Among the judge’s friends, one of the most important was Jimmy Hines, political leader of Ben’s district, and a power in Tammany Hall. I had heard of him, of course, before I met Ben: I had agreed to appear at one of Jimmy’s benefits just before we were married. Later I read in the newspapers charges that he was the “Tammany Swagman,” but even after District Attorney Thomas Dewey sent him to jail for dealings with the notorious Dutch Schultz, I couldn’t believe him guilty. I had always found him kind and decent: he and his wife Geneva took part in my charity affairs, and Jimmy could rarely say no to anyone.

  Once I went to him with word that the Charlanna League had voted to appropriate money to be divided among the needy who couldn’t be helped by the city or were too proud to accept relief. Could he give me a list of those in his district? Or take the money and see that it was properly distributed?

  “You’ll have to find them for yourself, Lillian,” he said. “If I gave you a list or took the money, I might be accused of using your group for my own political purposes, and you’d be accused of abetting corruption!” He laughed, but he did not give me a list.

  The first time I actually heard Jimmy linked with Schultz was one bad morning when I was struggling with an agonizing hangover. The house phone rang. There were police reporters in the lobby, and could they be sent up?

  For a moment I was more stunned than befuddled. Police reporters? Had the doorman said “police reporters” or “police and reporters?” What had I to do with the police? Was this a hoax—someone trying to gain admittance? Were they kidnappers who knew I had money? Or holdup men? How could I escape, I thought frantically. They would come up the front elevator—I might flee down the service elevator … if it happened to be there when I dashed through the kitchen—

  On the other hand, if they were reporters, I had better let them up and treat them nicely. The press was powerful.

  My knees trembled, but I said with bravado, “Send them up.” Ill give them a drink, I thought Newspapermen like to drink. And I gulped down a few, for courage.

  The doorbell buzzed. My maid opened it, and suddenly nearly a dozen reporters and photographers, waving flashbulbs and cameras, were dashing into the room.

  “Where is he?” one demanded excitedly.

  “Who, the judge?” I stammered. I stood in the reception hall, one arm braced against the door jamb, barring them from the living room, like Jeanne Eagels in “The Letter.”

  “Look, Mrs. Shalleck,” one reporter snapped. “We know he’s here. Where’s Dutch?”

  For a moment the word didn’t register. “Dutch? Dutch who?” I pulled away from him, drawing the collar of my dressing gown tight around my throat, tossing my head defiantly, like Lenore Ulric in “Kiki.”

  Another reporter said in a quieter voice, “Dutch Schultz, Mrs. Shalleck. Didn’t you read Windbell this morning?”

  He showed me the clipping. Walter had asked: “What two brothers, legalites, and the show girl spouse of one of them are hiding Dutch Schultz in their penthouse apartment on 86th Street?”

  I became panicky. Two brothers? Legalites? 86th Street penthouse apartment? It all added up. Joe, a criminal lawyer, might defend people like Schultz. But Ben—how was he involved? And would he hide anyone like Dutch Schultz in our home?

  I telephoned the judge while the reporters rummaged through the apartment Ben talked to some of them on the phone. He told me later that he threatened libel suits if they connected the Shallecks any way with Schultz in print.

  After they left I was a bundle of nerves. I could picture all New York and Hollywood talking about Lillian Roth hiding a gangster in her apartment.

  The afternoon papers cleared it up. The showgirl whose picture appeared on page one wasn’t Lillian Roth, but Hope Dare, who lived in a penthouse on East 86th Street. Ours was West 86th Street One of the lawyers Winchell had in mind was Dixie Davis, Hope Dare’s boy friend. The Shallecks were innocent.

  Ben got home as early as he could. “What better reason could a woman in my position have to take a drink or two?” I cried. “I had to take it for my nerves.”

  Rabbi and Mrs. Stephen Wise, whom I had met through the Charlanna League, knew how much I wanted a baby. They called to tell us about a beautiful five-month-old baby girl, now in England, whose parents had died in Hitler’s concentration camps. Mrs. Wise later showed me a photograph, and I fell in love with the little girl. “If I could only adopt her,” I said. “I’d give her so much love—”

  Mrs. Wise put her arm around my shoulder. “We’ll try,” she said. “Perhaps we can make arrangements to bring the child over for you.”

  I was ecstatic. This was the answer: this would solve everything.

  In gratitude I threw an enormous “Drop In” party, with proceeds to go to the Wises’ favorite project, the Mrs. Stephen Wise Guest House for Refugee Doctors. To give the party a proper institutional air, I sent out invitations reading, “The Regina League invites you to a Charity Cocktail P
arty” There was no such league, but Regina was the name we were going to give our little adopted girl.

  The party was a brilliant success. Food came from Reuben’s and Lindy’s and Dave’s Blue Room; liquor from the White Horse and King’s Ransom people and Jack and Charlie of “21.” We received millinery, bags, shoes and gowns from Milgrim’s and other stores, and raffled them off. Sherman Billingsley brought some Stork Club regulars, and the guests were a rollcall of Broadway’s best-known personalities. I raised more than $5,000.

  Mrs. Wise kissed me. “I never dreamed that a little girl like you would be able to do all this in one afternoon!”

  Late that night Charlotte and Harry Ritz, who were leaving next morning for California to fill a picture contract, sat up with us far into the small hours, helping us celebrate. I had made the Wises happy, Katie was happy, Ben was happy. Regina was on her way.

  “There’s only one thing that I’m concerned about,” I said to Charlotte, as we sat about our little dinette. “Mrs. Wise tells me it may be four or five months before the baby comes over. What will I do with myself until then?”

  Charlotte was describing the house they had rented in California. “What time does your train leave?” I asked idly.

  Harry looked at his wristwatch. “Nine a.m.—five hours from now.”

  “You know,” I said dreamily, “I have a yen to get on that train with you. Everytime I hear a train whistle, I get an eerie, empty feeling—I want to go someplace, I don’t know where—”

  “Well, why don’t you?” Harry spoke up. “Come along with us.”

  “Yes, why don’t you?” Ben echoed. “You’ve been working hard. Katie and I will join you out there when my vacation begins. And if Regina arrives before then, we’ll send for you.”

  Without any great certainty as to what I felt in my heart, I began packing. Dawn was breaking. To be sure of whatever it was I wanted to be sure of, I tucked away five bottles of rye whiskey among my clothes.

  I did not know it, but my six unfulfilled years with Ben were coming to an end—empty witness to what might have been.