Where Have You Gone, Mitzi Gaynor?

Where Have You Gone, Mitzi Gaynor?

The doorbell rang and Mitzi Gaynor sprang from her mistress’ lap and leapt about the living room.

“Mitzi. It’s just the door, girl,” May Jean Dolan said. “You ought to be used to it by now.” A wide grin worked its way across her face. “Look at her, dear,” she urged her husband.

Joe Dolan twisted a bony knuckle into the well of an eye. He glanced up from his puzzle with silent scorn, hooded after months of practice. Feigning interest in the Airedale puppy, he suppressed a yawn. It was a scene he had witnessed more than a few times. His life had become a dull, aching routine.

“You gonna get that, MJ?” he asked, frowning. “Or you gonna let the dog have a crack at it?”

May Jean stuck her tongue out at him, then gave him a queer look that said of course she’d get it. She always got it.

Joe ignored her. He swilled some lemonade and went back to his puzzle, needing a seven-letter word for spare time. That one’s easy, he thought, right up his alley. He wrote l-e-i-s-u-r-e in the little square boxes. It fit. Who said forced retirement had to be a drag? He’d received a modest separation package from work. He had his social security rolling in. Now he had his leisure time. Not bad for a guy with a tenth-grade education.

The panicky pooch quieted as May Jean scooped it up on her way to the door. Joe welcomed the subsequent peace.

“Good afternoon, ma’am,” a distinctly familiar voice said. “Is this the home of Joe Desperado Dolan?”

Joe’s pencil snapped. He knew that voice. It was…no, he thought. It couldn’t be. He looked at his wife. Her pimply face had paled and frozen to a stupid gape, with eyes and mouth wide. She backed away from the door, clutching the Airedale in one arm and pointing outside with the other. Nervous laughter percolated from her lips.

“Who is it, honey?” Joe asked, getting up to see for himself. He stopped as his feet riveted to the floor. It was him. The man who’d popped into his head the second he heard the voice. The man whose voice everybody knew. It was Edgar Manahan, the former co-star of the Late-Night Show starring Johnny Carson! The ‘Hereeeee’s Johnny’ man himself.

“Excuse me, sir—for a moment,” Manahan said to a wide-eyed Joe Dolan. He turned to say something to a man in a gray flannel suit, who in turn gestured to a younger, muscular man bracing an expensive-looking camera on his shoulder.

“Cut it, Benny,” the man in gray said. “Hold on a second. We’ll try a dry run.”

Joe could hardly believe it. Edgar Manahan was at his front door. The Edgar Manahan of late-night fame and television commercials.

Manahan turned back to face him. “Excuse me,” he said. “But the lady who answered the door, is she alright?”

“W-who?” Joe stammered. He looked at May Jean, who gave him a weak, nervous nod. “She—she’s fine, Mr. Manahan.”

“Good. That’s good then,” Manahan said. “Let’s get on with it, shall we?”

He plucked a couple of index cards from his pocket, scanned them briefly, then returned them to his jacket. “Now. Where were we? —Oh yes.” He cleared his throat. “Are you Joe Desperado Dolan, of 1-8-5 Salisbury Lane?"

Joe nodded stupidly, staring at his own house numbers to be sure. He gazed at Manahan, and then scanned the faces of the others. The man in gray stood off to the side, surveying the scene. Benny, the camera buff, stood back further, engrossed in his equipment. Then Joe got his first look at the fourth member of their team. And he wondered how he could’ve missed her, for instantly the thought was in his head. The single most beautiful sight my eyes have ever seen.

She was a buxom bombshell, wore a pair of stylish, rectangular specs, and had a golden mane that cascaded around her shoulders. Joe thought she was quite a lovely sight, but what impressed him the most was the way she held the check. The single most beautiful sight his eyes had ever seen.

In square footage, he thought it was probably the biggest check ever made. Size-wise, it was almost as big as the lady herself. Earlier she had stood with it turned inward, but now it was facing out toward him. Joe’s eyes widened. He couldn’t remember when his orbs had gotten such a workout. His name was printed on that check, in bold black letters. There were six zeros on it, too. He’d counted every one of them. And in front of those lovely round nothings was the big, fat number one.

“Congratulations, Joe Dolan,” Manahan was saying, “You’re Our Publisher Clearinghouse’s 1999 Grand Prize Winner!”

The words came out of dreamland. Joe thought he must be sleeping, lying in his den, listening to his television through a lazy haze. But this was real, and the real Edgar Manahan pumping his hand in congratulations was the proof.

Joe spun around to see if May Jean had caught the news. He didn’t see her at first, and thought, in his abrupt turn and the dizziness that followed, he had thrown off his equilibrium. He felt a steadying hand on his shoulder. It was Manahan.

Joe looked down. His wife had heard the news alright. She had, in fact, been floored by it. She had fainted, and Mitzi the Airedale was down on the floor next to her, applying a salvo of wet puppy licks to her face. Joe went quickly to his wife’s aid, out of his husbandly duties. Besides, he sometimes had to kiss that face.

The man in gray turned out to be in charge. Apparently, he had yet to have the fortune of capturing a usable, finished product (as he called it) on the first take. Joe heard the man say as much, under his breath, when he thought no one was listening.

“Let’s get with it, people,” flannel suit said. “Let’s get everyone back on their feet. Then we’ll try a live shoot. You know the drill.”

The drill, it turned out, took over two hours. Time enough for a crowd of onlookers to gather on Joe’s lawn. He could imagine the neighborhood grapevine in his head, abuzz with speculation. A shiny van with Publishers Clearinghouse on the side was parked in front of the Dolans…and Edgar Manahan is over there! The news had probably spread fast.

As for Manahan and his crew, Joe suspected he and his wife were probably the least camera-friendly subjects they had come across in some time. With his potbelly frame and balding head…and May Jean, with her mousy ways and laughing fits—they were the proverbial Woeful Willie and Nervous Nellie. May Jean frequently got the jitters and laughed so hard once it seemed she couldn’t stop. Joe had to walk her over to the couch and sit her down, patting her hand for several seconds. Manahan said the words “million-dollar winner” once, and Joe himself had cracked like a walnut in a hammer shop.

But they got through it somehow, and hours later, when the product was as close to perfection as it would get, Manahan and company wrapped everything up and left. The neighbors went home, a sense of normalcy returned to their home, and there was an autographed picture of Manahan in Joe’s den.

Mitzi Gaynor leapt in the air again. Dressed in a midriff-bearing top and red shorts, she danced and sang under the Red, White, and Blue. The movie was South Pacific, and the outfit Gaynor wore was risqué in 1958. It was May Jean’s favorite movie. She loved musicals, and Mitzi Gaynor was one of her favorite actresses. Now, as Nurse Nellie Forbush, Gaynor sang a number in celebration of the Fourth.

Joe remembered courting May Jean back in the day. People would remark that she resembled “that fiery young actress” Mitzi Gaynor. MJ wore her hair cropped and blond, the way the actress did. She was slender in those days, too, and the fact that she was attending nursing school at the time only added to her allure. Her friends often joked that she was their Nellie Forbush. South Pacific had been played dozens of times in their home. They never had children, and neither wanted to adopt, so May Jean lavished her doting on a host of screwball pets over the years. And she developed an affinity for naming them after some of the characters in that film.

There was the lame parakeet named Stewpot, who fell through the open door of its cage onto the kitchen linoleum—breaking its feathery neck. And the blind Angora cat she called Hammerstein, who kept bumping into the furniture. Hammie went through the doggie door once and never returned. It took May Jean months to recover from that one, and Joe had to nail the little door shut when his wife fell head over heels in love with the white, hand-sized Airedale pup at the local pet shop.

And now, while the real Mitzi Gaynor danced and twirled on the screen to her heart’s delight, Mitzi the Airedale rested lazily in her mistress’s lap.

After the excitement that day, Joe scolded himself for thinking life dull and routine. After that madness, it was he who suggested they watch the movie. It was nowhere near his favorite, but he knew the calming effect it would have on his wife. He reasoned that calming was what they needed most right then. They needed to take deep breaths to sooth their pounding hearts. Time to sort everything out would come later, tomorrow maybe. But tonight, they were taking their phone off the hook and barricading the door. Any knocking on their door that night would very well go unanswered.

They sat and watched South Pacific, and for the first time in his life Joe was into it. For a fleeting moment, he wondered what became of old Mitzi Gaynor, the actress who held such an uncanny sway over this wife through the years. He hadn’t heard anything about her lately in the news, on television, or from the magazines. He looked at May Jean sitting next to him, in time to catch the tear as it rolled down her cheek. For the first in years, he felt a lump in throat for her, and he reached for her hand. He even petted the sleeping little dog, something he once said he would never do in a million years. But a million dollars was worth a scratch.