It occurred to me I should explain how I got tricked into being a father.
You know the saying, “Sometimes bad things happen to good people”? Well, I can pretty much guarantee you, they wrote that for me. How else to explain losing four grand on my 2005 “Best Actress” pick, or the caterer dropping a molten s’more on my chinchilla throw, or the baba ghanoush lady giving birth under my chocolate fountain? All these bad things converged at the worst Oscars party I ever gave. This may have been five years ago but my chinchilla is forever besmirched and I’m still waiting for the baba lady to pick up her kid.
My caterer, a retired French actress named Cecile, begged me to keep the newborn for two days until the baba lady could return for it. The lady had been hiding her pregnancy from her family and now had to arrange for the child’s adoption. Only the lady never returned. After repeated calls to Cecile, in which I threatened to mail the kid back to her--book rate--I got the lowdown. The woman, she said, had given a fake name when Cecile hired her and had now disappeared.
“Not my problem,” I said. “You come get this creature. I’ve changed this kid eleven times. I’m almost all out of dinner napkins.”
“Why, Monsieur,” said Cecile, “How you amuse! Why not simply keep her? Everybody’s adopting nowadays. She must be adorable, n’est-ce pas? Fatherhood will be a marvelous experience for you and Myron. I suggest you get a baby bottle and some formula and then paint your guest room a girly shade of rouge coquette. Perhaps you’ll start thinking of somebody other than yourself?"
I put the kid in the car. Beverly Hills City Hall was nearby, on Rexford, and that’s where I’d redeem it. Then I’d take my finder’s fee and skip over to Cartier for a little reward. But as I barreled down Santa Monica Boulevard, the baby started crying up a storm. I pulled the car over and, when I reached into the laundry basket to reposition the bottle at her lips, she took hold of my finger with her tiny brown hand.
“What!” I said.
She gave me a look that said, “You’re not really going to turn me in, like a poker chip, are you?”
“Don’t try that,” I said. “We haven’t bonded, so it won’t make any difference. You don’t even have a name. City Hall will send you wherever it is they send helpless orphans and…” Oh. Orphans, I thought. Now there’s an ugly word. My only experience of orphans was the musical “Oliver!” and it wasn’t very pretty, mainly due to it being a shabby, Catholic school production in Pittsburgh, financed by bake sales. I played Oliver during my first encounter with angel dust and, the next day, found myself in a state-run facility for the young and the restless.
“Maaaaa,” said the little brown and pink creature, with a hopeful smile. “Meeeehhehhh.”
“Let go of my finger,” I said. “I’ll be needing that hand to drive.” But she fixed her peepers on me and kept with the baby sounds. “Alright, alright,” I said . “I’ll bring you home if you if you can answer three questions correctly. If you miss any, it’s hello City Hall. Understood?”
The baby kicked her blankets aside joyously, bubbles forming between her lips.
“Question number one,” I said. “Who won Best Supporting Actress in 1979 for ‘Deer Hunter’?”
The little radish face looked up at me and squinted. “Meh-Merrrryl,” it said.
“Can I get a last name?” I said, but as you know, there is only one Meryl. Everybody knows that. “Alright,” I said. “Who won Best Actress in 1982 for ’Sophie’s Choice’?”
The creature rolled her head back and forth and, after some incoherent burbling, said, “Merrrryl!”
I felt my Cartier bonanza slipping from my grasp and yet something made me press onward. I asked the only question that would come to my lips, the only one that made any sense.
“Okay then,” I said. “Who is the most versatile film actor in America today, hands-down the best overall--”
“Merrryl, Merrrryl, Merrrrrryl!” she babbled, victoriously, wisely and with unimpeachable good taste, paddling her feet and squeezing my finger as if her future enrollment at Yale Drama School depended on it, which it did.
Well, nobody would have known. Nobody would have called foul, had I reneged on my promise. But a deal was a deal and if I didn’t make good, this kid’s first break would have been a lousy one, a bad thing happening to a potentially good person--who could say? So I pulled a U-turn. “Meryl, huh?” I said, firing up a Camel, then tossing it out the window. “Guess what we’re gonna call you, little lady.”
The sun was beginning to set and a string of traffic lights flickered yellow, daring me to get across town before the shops all closed. I stepped on the gas. “Hold on, kid. We’re gonna need some brushes and rollers and paint pans and a fifth of Wild Turkey and a couple gallons of--Jesus, Meryl, what do they call that color?”
“La rouge coquette.”
“Huh?”
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