The Wednesday Sisters(102)
The five of us on national television, and only Linda with her hair combed.
Johnny was looking at the photograph again himself, pointing to one of us in the photo and saying, “Haven't I seen this woman somewhere before?” He looked to Brett. “Is this the other friend—the other Wednesday Sister—who's already published a novel? Maybe I've seen her book?”
“Frankie?” Brett said. “No, Frankie is the other blonde, the one in the glasses. That one is Linda.”
“Linda,” Johnny repeated.
“She's the lovely blonde in the third row who liked your monologue when no one else did.”
“Ouch!” Johnny said, again with a comic face, while the band played a few spontaneous notes of “Tea for Two.” “Are you Wednesday Sisters this brutal when you critique each other's work?” Johnny asked.
Brett smiled what Kath calls “a big ol' smile” whenever she tells the story, and you could tell she was thinking, “When in doubt, tell the truth.”
“Let's just say that monologue wouldn't have made it beyond the picnic table,” she said.
Johnny laughed and laughed. “They're all here, all of the Wednesday Sisters?” he asked, and the next thing you know, he was inviting us all to come up onstage, and Brett was pointing to us, saying, “They're right there.”
The camera panned to us: no stage makeup like Brett had, and you can see if you watch the tape how flustered we look: Us? our faces say. And we stood—I don't even remember this part, us sliding out into the aisle, although obviously we did, you can see us there on the film. I don't remember slipping my glasses off or tripping on my way up the stairs, either, though you can see that on the clip, too. The first thing I do remember—and even this did not seem the least bit real—is standing there in front of Johnny, who'd gotten up to welcome us, as had Brett.
Standing there on the Carson show, the most watched talk show on television, wearing a wig that hadn't looked great to start with and was now slightly askew.
That flustered even Johnny. You can see in his eyes on the film that he wanted to reach up and straighten it. Every time I watch the clip I want to straighten it myself, but as I stood on that stage I had no idea the thing had shifted when I'd tripped. I was too busy trying not to look out at the fuzzy blur of colors that was the audience, sure that if I did, my knees would rattle even more and I'd collapse.
Brett reached one hand toward her hair, but then stopped at one of those wonderful globe earrings and smiled easily. “This is Ally Tantry. Kath Montgomery. Linda Mason,” she said, indicating each in turn. “And this is Frankie O'Mara. M. F. O'Mara. Her novel, Michelangelo's Ghost, is terrific.”
“Michelangelo's Ghost,” Johnny repeated. “I like that title, don't you, Ed?” he said, and Ed said he did, he liked that, Michelangelo's Ghost. And me half thinking, My title mentioned not once but three times on The Tonight Show! and half trying to determine if Linda was really shooting me a funny look or if it was just that I couldn't quite see without my glasses.
“And the book is even better than the title,” Brett said. Then to the audience, “If you haven't read it yet, you should get up from your seat right now and rush out to your local bookstore to buy a copy.”
Johnny faked leaving, heading toward the curtain for a moment before turning back to us.
Then Linda, suddenly reaching toward me, said, “Frankie's real hair looks better anyway,” and before I knew what she was doing, she'd pulled off my wig. There was a startled Oh! in her eyes, one that echoed the intake of breath throughout the audience as she stood with the long, smooth strawberry-blond length of my wig in her hand.
She looked down at it, then back to me, to the funny arc of my ears, to my eyes and nose and lips and high, high forehead unsoftened by the drape of all that dead protein (which even on the most humid days, I'd seen the moment I'd shaved it off, had been beautiful).
“Frankie!” Linda said, looking confusedly from the wig in her hand to my bald, bald head. “You didn't—?”
The audience exhaled a stir of Oh my Gods and What in the worlds as Linda, too stunned to think to hand the wig back to me, and I, too mortified to move, just stood there.
Sweet Jesus, my mother, watching from her couch at home, reportedly said.
Somehow, I managed the smallest little bit of smile (a nice smile, really; you can see it on the clip). “I'm afraid I did,” I said. Or croaked, actually, to tell the truth.
“Lordy, Lordy, life sure doesn't give us all the practice we need,” Kath murmured, the What is happening here? expression in her big brown eyes in her big-chinned face working its way into a big, self-conscious smile. I felt her hand taking mine, her palm as damp as my own. Then heard the audience again as Kath slipped off her brunette curls.