I'll Cry Tomorrrow Page 15

“You poor, sick, little Mommy,” he said, dabbing at his cuts with a handkerchief.

  “He’s going to be a little lamb,” I went on, “because if he makes any bruises on me he knows he’ll rot in jail. Isn’t that right, Mark?”

  He shook his head. “Boys, you should do something for her. She’s real sick!”

  “You don’t know how right you are!” I yelled. “I’m sick—sick to death. I don’t care what happens to me. Come on!”

  The three men escorted us downstairs and watched silently as he got into the car and I after him. “Now,” I said, “you take me everywhere I want to go. First, Hollywood and Vine.”

  When we got there, I said, “Do you remember how you tried to rip off my clothes here?” I slammed my bag against his head.

  “Oh, Mommy!” he groaned. “Why do you want to talk like that!”

  “That was one place. Now, drive up Hollywood Hills.” When we got there, I said, “Remember how you scared me, threatening you’d make me jump out of the car here? Well, move over in that seat. I’m going to drive down this hill I’m not afraid to die, you lousy son of a bitch, and you’re going straight to hell with me. I’m not jumping out of this car, but you’re going with me straight to hell!”

  I jammed the accelerator against the floorboard, and we began to roar down the hill. Mark pulled the brake sharply. The car skidded to a violent stop.

  “I knew you didn’t have the guts!” I screamed. “Now, get out! Get out! I’ll see you in court tomorrow.”

  I was crying—tears of rage and self-pity and hatred for this man who had degraded me. I cried for all that could have been, loathing myself for what I was, and what had brought me to this. When I reached home, I drank myself into oblivion.

  On the witness stand I told my story. Mark testified in his own behalf. “Judge, how can you believe her?” he asked, as a man bewildered because the truth is not self-evident. “Everyone knows she is a drunk. Why, she almost killed me last night.” And he exhibited his scars.

  The court commented on the incongruity of a man like Mark having to defend himself against me. My hospital X-rays and photographs did the rest. Mark was sentenced to six months.

  The judge summed it up: “You ought to get down on your knees to this lady because she permitted the charge to be reduced to simple assault, so that all I can give you is six months. You deserve the maximum of ten years. I can’t express my contempt for a man who beats a woman.”

  Mark looked over at me and laughed. “Mommy, I won’t be in there six months. I’ll still get you. Watch.”

  My marriage to Mark Harris was annulled on the ground that when I married him I had no cognizance of his criminal activities.

  CHAPTER XVII

  THE YEAR I had known Mark seemed one long nightmare. Now it was over. Where did I stand? How was I going to pick up the pieces? Katie pleaded with me to live with her. She was in Long Island, at the home of my sister Ann—little Ann who used to lament that she “never got anywhere in show business.” But Ann was married, her husband was loving and attentive, a baby was on the way, and life had taken on a sane, recognizable pattern for her. The other half of “The Roth Kids” was a drunken, thrice-married has-been.

  I didn’t want Katie to see what was happening to me. And Dad had remarried and was living quietly in Boston. I didn’t fit in there, either.

  There was nothing to do but remain alone. When I tried to cast up my accounts, I found that I still had some money left of my fortune—a few thousand dollars. I could still sing, but nobody was particularly eager to hear me. The bad dream was over. Now what?

  I cared for nothing, yet I had to go on. I was constantly ill. It was impossible to face daylight without sunglasses: light seared my eyes. I walked hurriedly on the street, peering fearfully over my shoulder in expectation that Mark would suddenly materialize from nowhere and bear down on me. If a friend waved at me, I ducked: I had no wish to see anyone, and took to slipping down side streets. I rarely went out before nightfall. Then I bought sufficient liquor to carry me through the night and following day. My bottle became my only friend. I talked to it at night. “What are people, what are friends?” I asked. “Only you console me.”

  But if I wanted to be able to continue to buy liquor, I had to continue to work. I managed to obtain bookings in Chicago, Oakland, and then Vancouver. After the tour I wired fare to Katie to join me in California.

  She came to live with me—a. little more tired, a little more apprehensive, the same questioning look in her eyes, but still with the same saving grace of humor.

  My thirty-first birthday was a month away when Dot Pondell, my make-up girl so many years ago, invited me to a party at her home and introduced me to Victor Engel. “You two ought to know each other,” she said. Victor seemed familiar from the first. There was a gaiety about him which I found attractive. I had not known such an outgoing personality since Fred Keating. And, like Fred he could make me laugh, and I needed laughter.

  When he took me to dinner, he watched silently while I drank. He never lectured me. In my high moments he thought me charming, and when I impersonated people for our friends, he applauded louder than the rest “You’re wonderful,” he would say. No one had said anything like that to me for a long time.

  Often I passed out when we returned from dinner, but there was no reproach. Instead, while I slept off my drunkenness—Victor was sure I would stop drinking sooner or later—he played gin rummy with Katie.

  I liked his solicitude for her. He treated her as if he were her son. It helped make up a little for me.

  They were engrossed in a card game one night when I stumbled out of my bedroom. I had suddenly become wide awake. “Daddy’s in trouble,” I said. “I know it.”

  My mother looked at me, compassion and despair struggling in her face. “Are you having another of your nightmares?”

  “No. It’s a premonition, Mom. I’m going to call him.”

  Although it was past midnight, I put through a call to Boston. It was refused by Arthur’s cousin, who undoubtedly conjectured that I was drunk. For a moment I was stopped: then I sent a wire. “Lillian needs operation, must contact Arthur.” I signed it “Katie.”

  A few hours later a reply came: my father was in Boston Hospital with a blood clot in his leg. Surgeons planned an amputation.

  I had to go to Boston, although I was in no physical condition to make the trip across the continent. Wearing dark glasses, and with two bottles of bourbon in my bag, I got aboard a plane and managed to get to Boston Hospital. Half a dozen relatives were there: without an exception, they turned away when I appeared. My father was a pitiable shadow of himself when I found him in a public ward.

  “Hello, sweetheart,” he said, but there was panic in his eyes. “Lillian, baby, for God’s sake, don’t let them cut off my leg.”

  But there was no other course.

  I made arrangements for a private room and private nurses. When Arthur came out of the ether, I was at his bedside. He grinned weakly. “You know I’m tough,” he whispered. “I’ll have myself a wooden leg and bounce out of here in no time.” Later in the day he begged huskily, “Do me a favor, Lillian. They’ve given me so much morphine my eyes are popping. Please get me a good bottle of brandy. It will be good for my heart—the doctor said so.”

  I bought him a fifth, and we drank together.

  I took a room in a small hotel. It was impossible for me to hold any food. I drank small amounts of liquor through the day, but it would not take effect. I sat by Arthur’s bed, sober-drunk. On the fourth day he woke from a drugged sleep and, apparently for the first time, saw me as I was. “For God’s sake, Lillian,” he exclaimed in despair, “Lillian, you could be a beautiful girl again, you could be on top of the world. For God’s sake, when are you going to leave that bottle alone! You’re dying— you need a bed next to me.” He groaned. “If I were only up! I can’t stand to see what you’re doing to yourself.”

  That afternoon the doctor informed me they must amputat
e again. When Dad was told later, he said, “Don’t worry, kiddie. I’ll be all right” He was silent for a moment. “I wish you’d try to get yourself booked at some club—maybe you’d go easier on that bottle.”

  Ann arrived, and we took turns keeping vigil at his bedside. We visited his shabby little apartment, and talked to his wife. The story of his life during the past few years was written on the walls of those dark, half-furnished rooms.

  He had refused, his wife said, to let me know about his financial reverses. They had had a few happy, prosperous years, but Arthur ‘still had visions of making that last big killing, and was unable to keep a job long enough to learn the names of his co-workers. His big deals never materialized—and all this during the period just preceding the wartime boom.

  They had lived in a large apartment at the beginning, later moving to smaller quarters, storing all but bare essentials. They had been unable to meet the small payments and the warehouse had taken possession of their furniture.

  I gave his wife several hundred dollars before I left Boston. “When you’re ready for that artificial leg, Daddy, I’ll take care of it,” I promised him. I paid his medical and hospital bills, prepaid his rent for several months, and took an upper berth back to California.

  At least, I had done one decent thing for my father.

  On the train I suffered acute abdominal pains. In Los Angeles Dr. Thomas once more examined me. I must have an operation. Mark’s blows, my drinking, internal inflammations dating back to the baby I had lost, all played a part.

  “Oh, my poor Lilly,” my mother said, trying not to cry, “everything happens to you—you’re not spared anything.”

  She still believed that my difficulties were due to others, not to me. “You were always used, used by everybody,” she wept.

  I signed a waiver absolving the hospital of responsibility, if the operation proved fatal, for my drinking, as Dr. Thomas told me, made me a bad surgical risk. When I awoke, he held my hand. “You’re tough, Lillian,” he said. “I never thought I’d pull you out of this one.”

  Next day he sat by my bed and talked earnestly to me.

  “I’ve told you often before that you must not drink. Now, you can’t drink. Do you understand? If you do, you may die”

  I thought, suppose I did? I have nothing behind me but shame, nothing before me but the gutter.

  “Vic,” I said, when he visited me, “the doctor says I need a tonic. Buy me some cherry brandy.” When friends called I made the same request. Some days I consumed more than a fifth of brandy. Dr. Thomas came into my room one night to find my callers playing cards while I lay tipsily in bed.

  His lips compressed. “Take her home,” he ordered. “We can’t handle her here.” Even he is giving me up, I thought. A day later I was wandering about my apartment hugging a bottle.

  Ann came out for a brief visit. There was a moment when Victor and I were alone. “Let’s fly to Nevada and get married,” he said. In my drunken state it seemed an excellent idea. Although I recall Victor’s proposal, and remember the flight, the wedding ceremony is a blank. I recall whimpering to myself while Victor lay beside me, I’ve done it again. I’ve done it again.

  We walked in on my mother. She was playing cards with a group of women. “Mother,” I announced, “I’m married.” The cards fell from her hands, and she stared at me, her eyes beginning to brim with tears. “Oh, Lillian,” she whispered. A lifetime of anguish was in those two words.

  Next day she and Ann were gone. The note my mother left read:

  “You’re married, and Ann and I are going back to New York. I have to do it this way, darling. I can’t stand to stay here and watch you kill yourself.”

  With Pearl Harbor, Victor was drafted. I wired an agent, who booked me into the Hurricane, a Broadway nightclub. Victor and I drove to New York, and there he bid me adieu in his soldier’s uniform.

  My opening night brought excellent reviews. Well, I thought, I can still make it. I must still be good. This deserves a celebration—just a drink or two. And wasn’t I alone, my husband gone off to the wars? More reason to try to forget. Waves of self-pity engulfed me. I made a far from pleasant record at the Hurricane the remainder of the week. The management spoke to me—the orchestra leader complained that I reeked of liquor. All I could think of was, why are they picking on me? Don’t they know I may never see my husband again?

  I was requested to leave the show after the first Week. Now I drank heavily to console myself. One morning before dawn I awoke and looked at tide wall. In the half-gloom of my room I saw a tremendous spider, big as a rat. I froze. I thought, that is a black-widow spider, and if it comes near me and bites me, I’ll die. I felt a gurgling in my throat and I passed out When I woke a little later, the spider was gone. I thought, I must have had a bad dream. But the next morning it was there again…

  Since Victor was taking his basic training at Camp Belvoir, Virginia, I got an engagement in nearby Washington, then arranged with the help of the camp’s morale officer to bring the troupe to Victor and his fellow-trainees. But at Belvoir I became violently ill, wracked by sharp, stabbing pains. The army doctors diagnosed it as colitis and a liver ailment—a polite way of saying that I suffered from acute alcoholism.

  I had to return to New York. I took a room by myself.

  Then I learned that Dad, too, was living alone, in Boston. He had separated from his wife. It was a strange thing, my father alone in a room, and I alone in a room. Suddenly I felt I had to talk to him.

  I telephoned him at midnight. There was no answer. I rang repeatedly, but not until 3 a.m. was I able to reach him. “Daddy,” I said, “I just can’t get you off my mind. Are you all right?”

  His voice came back: “Of course I am. You know, I’ve been thinking of you, too. How are you, baby? Have you given up that lousy booze?”

  “I’m all right, Daddy. I’ve got a little sore throat at the moment, but as soon as I can, I’m coming up to see you. You sure you’re all right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Well, where were you just a little while ago?”

  “I was right here, baby.”

  “I bet you’re drinking,” I said.

  “I bet you’re drinking,” he said.

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Well, I’m not—I swear I’m not.”

  I felt better when I hung up. At six o’clock in the morning the telephone rang. It was a man’s voice. “You don’t know me, Miss Roth. I have something to tell you. Your father is dead.”

  The hotel maid had found him slumped across a card table. He had been playing solitaire when he suffered the heart attack.

  I sat with a bottle. What else was there?

  CHAPTER XVIII

  ISPOKE DISTINCTLY.

  “I’m warning you. I know you’re broadcasting everything I’m thinking. Now, you stop it!”

  “Who is this?” demanded the bewildered voice at the other end of the line. I had dialed the radio station located atop our hotel.

  “You know very well who it is. I don’t have to tell you. You better stop, that’s all. Goodbye.”

  I had been aware of it my first day in Niagara Falls, for everything I touched vibrated. I exuded radio waves

  “You’re silly,” Victor laughed. “That’s the vibration from the Falls. Everyone knows that.”

  He couldn’t convince me. We had been in Niagara Falls since his discharge from the army a week earlier. I wanted no one to see or recognize me: Niagara Falls seemed as good a hideout as any.

  Victor had a job, selling dry goods, at $70 a week. Except for a few savings bonds, my funds—everything I had—were gone. I spent the days walking a German shepherd dog Victor had bought me, and testing my unusual ability to pick up and transmit electrical waves. Everywhere I felt the trembling. Everywhere I saw military men guarding the enormous power installations, watching me suspiciously as I passed. Suddenly I realized why. My dog is a German dog. They think I’m a Nazi spy.

  “Vic,”
I said a few nights later, “I’m electrified. Foreign agents think I know our defense secrets and they’ve wired our room to get my vibrations.”

  “Oh, Lil, will you lay off that stuff? I told you the Falls make everything shake. The only thing wrong with you is you drink too much.”

  I feared to look into our bureau mirror, because it might well be a diabolical machine planted there by Canadian Nazis to telecast my face to Berlin, where the secrets could be read through my eyes. I could not sleep. “Vic, the mattresses are wired. I’ll be electrocuted.”

  “Don’t be silly,” he said wearily. “Come over on my side.”

  “They’ll electrocute me on that side, too, Vic. Wherever I lie, my body will contact the electricity in the bed.”

  He sat up and looked at me.

  “Lil, you’re sick, you know that?”

  “How can you be so ridiculous? How can I be sick? I have no fever. What are you talking about?”

  “O. K. So you’re not sick. But if you ask me, I think you ought to go back to your mother in New York and I’ll go back to California.”

  “Oh, no. You’re not getting rid of me like that. The marriage service says in sickness and in health, but I’m not sick,” I repeated. “And how can she take care of me? I have no money for either of us. I can’t go back.”

  Victor punched his pillow and lay down again.

  The radio commentators described our soldiers trapped in the Pusan bridgehead. I knew it all a moment before they told me: I mapped it out on the floor for their benefit. Here was Asia: I indicated it with my left toe. I took a step. Here was Germany, under my right foot. Did they see it clearly? I asked, doing a grotesque hopscotch to indicate the swift march of events. For I understood it all, and with my vibrations I was in tune with top secret information.

  The commentators spoke even when my radio was turned off. Sometimes, in their eagerness, their faces materialized from the cloth mesh covering the loudspeaker, and, mouths working and eyes glistening, they advanced toward me. I backed up, frightened, but not too surprised. This was understandable to anyone who had read about the extra-sensory perception experiments at Duke University. I had always had premonitions, and what were premonitions but extra-sensory perception?