I'll Cry Tomorrrow Page 20

THERE HAD BEEN nothing in the newspapers when I had been incarcerated in Bloomingdale’s, and there was no mention of my release in June, 1946. Katie was living in Long Island with Ann. Edna was out of town: I went to live in the two-room kitchenette apartment to which she had moved on the 11th floor of London Terrace, at Ninth Avenue and 23rd Street. I had a place to stay, but the old anxieties crashed down on me. I needed money, and I had my pride. I had to pay my debts. My bills at Bloomingdale’s had run between $600 and $700 a month. They had been taken care of by Edna, Minna, and Milton Merkin, Ann’s husband, who appointed themselves a committee to raise money from other friends for my expenses.

  I was 34 years old. I had earned over a million dollars in my career. Now, one day out of Bloomingdale’s, all I owned in the world were my Bible, the sleeping tablets Dr. Head gave me, and $2.50 in cash. So far as clothes, I had a pair of worn white golf shoes, a couple of skirts and blouses, and a $17 coat Katie had brought up to Bloomingdale’s for me.

  What first? I telephoned Katie, and she managed to come into town for the day. She suggested that I call Milton Berle, but I was too ashamed. Instead, we telephoned his mother and Sandra immediately took me backstage at the Carnival, the Broadway nightclub where Milton was breaking all records. Milton was one of the very few who knew where I had been, for Katie had confided in Sandra.

  “Look, kid,” he said encouragingly. “A star is always a star, no matter what happens to her. You’ll be back on top again. Keep rehearsing with Helen Stevens and drop over and see Bobby Kroll. He’s a good song arranger. Tell him I said to whip up a few numbers for you.”

  I could not bring myself to ask Milton for money. It was a hard decision, but I turned to the judge. On the telephone he was cool. He was busy—but, oh, all right. He’d see me next day in Lindy’s.

  My heart sank. I knew how I looked. I put on a skirt and blouse, my little coat, borrowed a hat from Edna’s closet, and in my white golf shoes, set off for Lindy’s. When I glanced into a mirror on the way, I saw a grotesque caricature of myself.

  I sidled into the restaurant. A few minutes later Ben strolled in. He stared at me—and laughed. “You look like a peasant,” were his first words. “You certainly got fat.” He took the cigar out of his mouth and looked me over. ‘You’ll have to get some dresses, that’s for sure.”

  His words completely undermined the calm I thought I had achieved. “Ben,” I said, my pride utterly deflated, “I must have $25 a week until I find some work.”

  He thought for a moment. “Well, I’ll give you $25 now and we’ll see what you need later. I’ve got a lot of expenses right now.”

  He counted two tens and a five into my hand. I felt the perspiration trickle down my back. I had never asked anyone for anything: now I was taking handouts.

  My first stop was the Brill Building, the song writer’s mecca, to pick up sheet music I saw two familiar faces. One turned away. The other said, “Getting music? You going to work again? Are you kidding?” I turned on my heel, picked up my music and, on the way out, bought a newspaper. There was an item in a Broadway column and it read: “An ex-singing star, a drunk, is being backed by Milton Berle on the comeback trail.”

  Oh, my God, I thought. Now everyone will know!

  How could I walk up Broadway again and meet the faces I had to meet? How was I to go on living?

  I took a bus home. Opposite my apartment building was a liquor store. I went in and bought a pint of brandy.

  In the apartment I poured myself a drink. I let it stand for a moment, watching it The brandy was mahogany colored. I put the glass to my mouth and let the brandy go down my throat—my first drink in six months.

  It flowed, warm nectar, warm life itself, down my throat, into my stomach, spreading warmth throughout my body. No pain, no choking—only a lovely, warm, reassuring glow.

  I was not alone any more.

  I sat, savoring it.

  Slowly, my hands firm, my fingers sure as a surgeon’s, I poured a second drink. My body tingled all over, as though I’d bathed in champagne.

  I rose to my feet, and waved my hands gracefully, and began to dance in time to the great warm beating heart of the universe. I sang, “La-de-da-de-da.” Oh, this is wonderful! I don’t really feel the effects at all, not the slightest To drink is to die? He was trying to frighten me. I feel no ill effects. I danced slowly about the room, from window to window, at each one pulling down a shade, all in time to the music in my soul. In the half-dark, I sank into a chair. I took a slow, leisurely third drink, and let it steal its way through the wondrous universe that was myself.

  Suddenly, an imp of fear tugged sharply at my brain. The bottle is almost empty. What will I do? Will the old thing happen? Will I get panicky if there is no more? Will I get the horrors after these few drinks wear off?

  Feverishly I rushed downstairs and bought a second bottle. All during the night, as I drank, I poured water into it, lest panic overtake me if I saw an empty bottle. I knew I was deceiving myself. I knew this was the beginning of the end.

  I awoke in panic next morning. I would need alcohol I had failed. But I must fight it. Perhaps I could manage on light wine and beer. But fits of anxiety seized me; with darkness, I knew, stark terror would assail me.

  I thought of Katie. Why should we be separated? How bad could a mother be for a daughter, or a daughter for a mother? I telephoned her. Could I come to see her? “Baby,” she said happily, “our thoughts must have crossed. I was just going to call you to come up here because Ann and Milton have gone away for the weekend.”

  Anns home was an hour and a half distant. I thought of the strange faces at Pennsylvania Station, the train ride, the ordeal of seeing Katie…Would she know I had been drinking? I grew nervous. A couple of straight shots of bourbon would soothe my nerves, and a package of mints would camouflage my breath. But the couple of drinks became three, and four, and five, and finally I had finished an entire fifth of bourbon; and when I descended the steps to the train, I had another pint concealed in my suitcase.

  I stared at the tracks. Ought I jump in front of the incoming train? Why am I going to Long Island? To show my mother how utterly rotten I am? But I knew she’d want me even this way, rather than dead…. The train roared into the station, and I was still on the platform.

  I could not find a seat in the hot, crowded car. The combination of July heat and alcohol drenched me in perspiration: my clothes stuck to me; I reeked so strongly of liquor that people turned their faces away from me. In shame I tried to hold my head down so that my breath would not offend, but I felt I was smothering. I suffered, and the ride was interminable.

  I was drunk when I arrived. I walked down a long street. Katie was on the porch, waving as I came near. “Lilly, Lilly!” she called out. I began reeling up the steps. Then she understood. The blood drained from her face. She put out her hand against the porch pillar for support “Oh, my God—” she began. She guided me into the house.

  Later, after the words and after the tears, she found a bathing suit for me and took me onto the beach and I lay there, as in the long ago in Havana, in a drunken stupor on the hot sand. Through my paralyzed mind, like an endless record with the needle caught, the words droned relentlessly: you’ve only a pint, a pint, a pint, for the whole weekend, you’ve only a pint, a pint…

  Back in the house, I passed out, after several hours. I awoke in the middle of the night. Katie was asleep. I searched for liquor. There must be some in the house. Katie had undoubtedly hidden it. I came upon several cans of warm beer hidden on a top shelf in the kitchen cupboard. I drank them on the spot. Then I waited for daylight and the liquor stores to open, walked into town, bought several small bottles, and hid them about my room. I remained in the room all weekend. From time to time Katie ventured in, trying to conceal the fact that she had been weeping. “Why don’t you try to come out and eat something?” she begged. “Please, baby.”

  I could not.

  Monday morning Ann returned. White-faced with anger an
d helplessness, she gave me $20. “Here’s some money for your purse,” she said. “Now you better go. We’re sending you back to New York. You know Sam and Stell Krepps—they’ll drive you right to your door.”

  In the car I no longer felt shame. Panic and desperation had taken over. I told Sam, “If you don’t want me to kill myself tonight, you’ll stop at the first liquor store and let me buy a quart of gin.” I knew I would have the horrors—I was caught in the terrible chain reaction. My body demanded liquor now. Each small drink only triggered an irresistible need for more.

  Reluctantly, out of pity, Sam stopped the car and I got the gin. During the drive to New York I held it on my lap like a baby until I was left off in front of my apartment building.

  Next day, carefully and logically I planned a drunk to end all drunks. With Ann’s $20 I bought all the liquor I could—bourbon, brandy, Scotch and gin. This drunk would be all out, full-circle, complete: and in my own good time. I would kill myself at last I wanted to saturate my body with alcohol. It was my life to take, if I wanted to take it; and all by myself I yearned to feel this indescribable luxury, this beautiful, orgiastic, perfect crescendo ending in my suicide. All by myself—I the star, I the victim, I the audience, I the critic.

  I undressed. I got into fresh pajamas and a bathrobe. I drew the blinds so that daylight would not hurt my eyes. How cozy you could make it for yourself when you were bidding the whole wretched, indifferent, bewildering’ world goodbye!

  I dug into my trunk and brought out my scrapbooks: the records of my life insurance and annuity policies which strangers would collect when my death became known; my bank-books, cancelled, but still proof of what had been; my photographs and family snapshots and letters, all that remained after Mark’s rampage. I threw everything on the floor. “There’s my life,” I said aloud.

  I sat down in the midst of it, arranging myself gracefully as though I were posing for Paramount publicity. A bottle was beside me, and a full glass of liquor in my hand. I began looking through the records of the life of Lillian Roth.

  What had I been, and what was I now? Who were the men who loved me so, and where were they now? The men who had taken my body, my spirit, my dignity, who had stripped me of all security? I drank: “Here’s to my past loves.” I flipped through the pages of my scrapbook. A review caught my eye: LILLIAN ROTH STEALS VAGABOND KING. Oh, Lillian, weren’t you wonderful! Wonderful! A scene-stealer! If they could only see you in this scene, now!… How would you like to go to Hollywood, Lillian?…Don’t you think, Mr. Lubitsch, this is a super-production? Oh, I beg your pardon, I mean Mr. DeMille. I drank, filled my glass again, and drank. You must be careful those eyes don’t get you into trouble, Miss Roth.…. I thought, I can hardly see out of them now. My drink tastes salty…Am I crying? Yes, cry, Lillian. Be maudlin. I wept.

  No, I could not blame anyone. I—I was the one to blame. I had it—I threw it away.

  I thought of Minna. But I could not call her. What could she do? What could anyone do? And was there anybody I knew to whom I had not given pain?

  All through the day I drank, keeping to my room. But when twilight came, the liquor had not done its work. Instead of exhilaration, I felt dragged out and depressed. Perhaps a sleep, and I’ll start over again. I swallowed a couple of yellow jackets, and presently I floated out into time and space….

  I was on the couch and someone was shaking me, shouting into my ear. “What is it?” I moaned. “Oh,” she cried, her voice high and shrill, as if from a great distance. “You gave me such a scare. I thought you were dead!” It was Bernice Janney, a friend of Katie’s, who had dropped by.

  “Oh, please let me be,” I wanted to beg her. “I’ve taken sleeping pills. I can’t come out of it.” But the words caught in my throat. I was paralyzed. She managed to shake me into consciousness and got me up finally, and helped me dress, and like a sleepwalker, I was led into a restaurant I could hardly keep my head up. “You must get some food in you,” she insisted. I ordered two martinis. “Lillian, don’t” Bernice pleaded. “If you don’t want to drink yours, I will,” I said. I drank her martini, and mine, and ordered two more. I refused to eat. Bernice sat opposite me, repeating helplessly under her breath, “Lillian, what are you doing to yourself!”

  I said, “Look, Bernice, let me alone. I’m no good. Don’t you understand? I’m just no good.” She tried to comfort me. “You get a decent night’s sleep and you’ll be all right.” I humored her. “O. K. Bernice, I’ll sleep.”

  She took me back to my door and kissed me. “Try to take care of yourself, dear,” she urged me. I bolted the door, struggled back into pajamas and bathrobe, and began to drink. I knew how to die—like Helen Morgan, that beautiful, talented, tragic woman. What a great she was! Watch the greats, Daddy always used to say. I watched her through her short life. Now, watch me…Too bad no audience would see me at my best I drank whiskey and water, rye and water, gin and water, because everybody knows that water makes liquor hit your blood stream quicker. I blacked out, and came to again, and blacked out, and came to again.

  David was suddenly in my mind, and I wept You can’t blame this on him, Lillian. You weren’t such a good girl, you know. Actually, you cheated on David. You took a chance when you went out with Robin Hood. You took plenty of chances.

  Each time I came to, it was in fear and terror, awakening to awful reality. You were in a hospital. You were treated by doctors and psychiatrists. You were discharged. And now you’re drunk again. Lillian, you’re nothing. You’re less than nothing. There’s nothing to you, or about you, worth saving.

  I blacked out.

  I came shudderingly to my senses.

  I had no idea how much time had elapsed. A fit of trembling seized me. I curled up tightly on the floor, tensing every muscle in a mighty effort to stop my shaking. Something fluttered—I saw it out of the corner of my eye. There was something on the wall. I felt my hair raise. O God, help me! There was that spider as big as a rat. This is imagination, Lillian. Hold on to yourself. It will go away. It did before. It’s a hallucination. You know it. Hold tight…I squeezed my eyes shut. My stomach turned, for it was in my eyes, imprinted in the red haze behind my eyelids. Then the spider slowly faded away, and I stared incredulously as three faces slowly came into focus—inhuman faces with sticky hair, with fangs for teeth, with scraggly black beards, with obscenely white eye sockets. Bloody and wraithlike, they materialized themselves like visions from a shroud. They floated nearer—and in their center, the grinning, moonfaced man from the Admiration Cigar ad.

  I shrieked and scrambled madly to my feet. I rushed into the bathroom and slammed the door, resting against it as I gasped for breath. My heart hammered in my ears. I shut my eyes into a lurid red fog. Slowly I opened them: the faces were gone. I turned to open the door— and the faces were oozing like smoke out of the tile wall! I whirled one way, then the other—where I turned, they were. I reeled out of the bathroom and threw myself under the bed, to hide.

  Oh, God! Bugs—were these the bugs my mother brushed off us in that hotel room in that long ago? It was beyond endurance. I scratched wildly. Bugs were crawling over me—no, not bugs, spiders! Million-legged insects swarmed over me. I slapped, and tore at my skin. I rolled closer to the wall, but they spilled over the edge of the bed, down my neck, over my arms and legs. I lashed out at them, kicked at them. I crawled out from under the bed into the closet, and pulled the door shut and clung in the blessed darkness to the clothing that hung there. But the spiders came scurrying under the door after me, a black writhing swarm that covered the floor and began climbing upon me. I banged the door open and pushed past the spiders, screaming.

  Only liquor would stop it. I managed to gulp a drink down, then retched; tried another, and finally kept it down. One minute, two, three—I grew calm. Then, absolute silence, save for the frantic pounding in my ears. I was all alone. I was a tiny pinpoint of intense throbbing light rushing away into vast distances, growing smaller like a star dwindling away to
nothing, a tiny throb in the vast quietude, a void in the heart of a vacuum.

  All sound had vanished, save only a soft, infinitely gentle tolling of bells far away.

  Sometime in the night, pawing about the floor, I found my Bible. The 91st Psalm went through my brain. His truth shall be thy shield and buckler…But where is He now, I thought. Oh, God, help me! Oh, God, what shall I do? I waited, but there was no sign—no answer. For He shall give His angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. Where is He? Where are the angels? There isn’t anybody here. I looked around carefully. Absolutely no one here.

  Perhaps it means real angels. Perhaps I must jump out of the window and die and through death meet the angels.

  Oh, God, I said. It says, He shall call upon Me and I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble: I will deliver him. But God, I am calling on You, I don’t blame You if You don’t answer. If I could spend six months in an institution and still wind up a drunk, what good am I even to You? You gave me every chance. I’m rotten. I’ve disappointed what God there is, if there is a God. Doesn’t the Bible say, no evil shall befall you? But evil has befallen me, and pestilence is all around me, and I am in darkness. Oh God, where are You?

  I cried for myself, and went off into a strange half-world, awake and yet not awake. I lay like a somnambulist. Far off thousands of violins were playing, “I’ve got the world on a string,” over and over. “Got the world on the string, world on a string.” The same few bars, over and over. I used to sing that song. The violins faded away and as if by signal, the radio commentators took over, speaking frantically, their words running together in their eagerness to warn us, “The Japs are invading! They’re coming across!” I lurched to my radio. It was off. I pulled out the plug, but the babel of voices continued, in all accents, cultured British, and twangy American, and guttural German….

  Dear God, this is what put me in Bloomingdale’s! I tore my hair, I banged at my ears, I put my head under the cold water tap in the bathroom, but the voices, now soft as a babble, were like an endless undertone. I wrapped a towel about my head, and staggered back to the bed, and fell across it.