Ben Stein's DiarylRequiem for an Army Wife
Stein, Benjamin J.
Requiem for an Army Wife by Benjamin J. Stein Friday Ring, ring, ring. At about ten to eight, as I was sleeping, listening to the wonderful sound of my boy laughing in my dreams, I was awakened by...
...It's the exact same room where, on June 23, 1968, my ushers and best man waited before my wedding...
...Of all the people in the living room, guess who was the only one crying...
...There wasn't any, but there was Tang...
...And don't wanna hear your East Coast snores, 'Bout my long-lasting Nixon man, Of whom I am a righteous fan...
...He jumped on them and did cannonballs, and they all loved him...
...Denman used to serve it and tell me that it was what the astronauts drank...
...What a waste of time for both of us...
...Denman had to lie low in a marsh in Vietnam, trying to ambush some Vietcong who never came by, at least he had company...
...Or have you looked far out to sea, So our sufferin' you wouldn't see, And thought about your sons so fly, While we pine and suffer and die...
...He's fascinating, but I certainly don't hate him, any more than I would hate a typhoon...
...That's not even close...
...You have to get it for me...
...About protecting us...
...Col...
...Monday B ack to New York, to the studios of Comedy Central in the HBO Building on East 23rd...
...Then she started to look at her mother's jewelry, and at her poems from Pi Phi, her sorority at Stevens College before theend of World War II...
...It's mid-August and actually cold...
...Alex sat next to me, occasionally crying, mostly struggling with Tommy, whom we had brought along Benjamin J. Stein is a writer, lawyer, economist, and actor living in Malibu, California...
...If you don't think that this is a class system, try flying coach some sweet day...
...Army wives, army wives, hurrah for the Army wives . . . Where would we be without them, wives who tend the hearth and raise the kids while the husbands are off fighting in Germany and Vietnam...
...He said that he did not know exactly what she had died of...
...Of course...
...They all seem to think I have a personal grudge against the guy...
...Later in the afternoon, I took Mr...
...I was 23, and very nervous indeed...
...171 57...
...I love Pat, and he's been a pal, but he's easy to make fun of...
...This is now...
...More angry words from defenders of Milken...
...Ben should be a professional mourner," Alex suggested...
...Photos of Fort Bliss, El Paso, Leavenworth, Ansbach, Frankfurt, Alexandria, Arlington, Saigon...
...When Col...
...In coach...
...Saturday All day long, friends and neighbors came to offer condolences to Col...
...There's something endearing about the guy...
...It's especially cold here at the Chapel at Fort Myer, Virginia, right next to Arlington National Cemetery...
...n Little Rock, it was dark...
...But I didn't even get to say good-bye," she said...
...Perfect to the swimming pool at Eden Isle...
...I get to react to Pat Buchanan's and Ronald Reagan's speeches...
...My host, a genius of humor, Al Franken, looked on in frank amazement, and so do I even as I remember it...
...A neighbor who brought chicken...
...God help us, poor creatures who have to live in real life, where time passes...
...When I watch him, I just get the feeling that everything will turn out all right in the end...
...We're not going to any parties at the Bethesda Naval Hospital Officers' Club...
...Denman's condo, cicadas electrified the night...
...Back to the Little Rock Airport, for a flight to Washington...
...Perhaps 'The Old Rugged Cross,' " I suggested helpfully...
...I figured it was probably Citicorp calling about my car lease bill, so why bother racing upstairs for the call...
...I called home and got a message that a stooge of the Milken army was going to write something mean about me in his little magazine...
...For the life of me, I don't get why he's always making fun of lesbians, though...
...A beautiful manicurist came and played with Tommy...
...He read a book about sharks and then fell asleep...
...just to show us that there is continuity in life...
...It wasn't easy...
...That was then...
...Never mind the twenty-five murders per weekend in Los Angeles...
...One of my own favorites...
...I was thin, then...
...Trust Ben to remember everything...
...Never mind the homeless covering the sidewalk outside the studio...
...In the evening, we had barbecue and talked about the passage of time...
...That was one of Mother's favorites...
...About how Mrs...
...That's how we'll do it, Daddy," he said...
...Give us a thought every once in a while, My chile is your chile, no man is an isle...
...So were various pals from childhood...
...The weather is per-The American Spectator November 1992fect, and he's in ecstasy at how often he can kick it by me...
...Every seat was filled, mostly with people in bad moods...
...The only way I could bear to speak was to keep reminding myself that I was an actor, someone who could act as if he weren't crying...
...Wednesday B oo-hoo-hoo...
...The minister looked at the list thoughtfully...
...What is so funny about being a lesbian, after all...
...Little me...
...The amazing thing is that not one of them looked crazy...
...Sometimes it went under the table and he crawled for it, and sometimes it went on top of the filing cabinet and I reached for it...
...Again, friendly, kind-looking men and women and children...
...My last night at Comedy Central I said my few funny lines, made up a rap about Bush, and sang it: Yo, Bush, funky white President man, Have you done the best you can, To help the people in the street, Without houses like yours so neat, Have you helped our kids today, Or have you looked the other way, While we are starvin' and dyin', And you're in Abe Lincoln's bed, lyin...
...How can you dare to diss my Milhous man about his shoes, When just hearin' it give me serious blues...
...Yes, you are, Daddy," he said...
...Inside, we tossed around a midget football...
...Sometimes, in fact about every two minutes when I'm with him, I have to pick him up and kiss him for a minute or two...
...I called Col...
...Frantic calls to Zuma Travel, frantic packing, frantic instructions to my assistant, and then we were off on American Airlines to Little Rock via Dallas...
...They played with him in the pool while I read proofs of my latest book...
...That's right...
...Denman back...
...I couldn't get up before the machine answered it, so I went back to sleep...
...Then coach again...
...No usher or best man is going to be waiting to tie tin cans to my car...
...I also made up a rap directed to Al when he made cruel fun of my idol, Richard Nixon, repeating the wicked canard that Nixon used to walk on the beach at San Clemente in wing-tips: Yo, Al Franken, funky New York Comedy man, How much do you even know about Malibu sand...
...My speech was a tear-jerker, though...
...A doctor who had attended the late Mrs...
...As I admired their regular features, even smiles, and open faces, a family of ratty-looking people with warped, ratty features walked by...
...It was at least fifteen years old...
...This is not the beginning of anything for the living except a long period of missing a mother, a wife, a mother-in-law, a friend...
...It's sad, too, because this is the exact same spot where Alex and I were married twenty-four years ago, and now we're here for a service for Mrs...
...Then ask for vintage champagne in First...
...My brother-in-law 55 56 was best man...
...Distinguished Service Cross...
...Denman asked in his plaintive, widower's voice...
...We were so young...
...I can't reach that yet, Daddy," he says...
...The minister made more notes...
...More The American Spectator November 1992 than that, almost a force of nature...
...This happens to us...
...This is my big night for comedy convention coverage...
...This is a funeral...
...No bridesmaids with cleavage will be flirting with the ushers...
...When I checked my messages, the first one was from my father-in-law, calling to say that my mother-in-law, Norma Jean Denman Warmack, originally of Idabel, Oklahoma, and more recently of Heber Springs, Arkansas, had died that morning in her sleep...
...Funky Al Franken, delicatessen lovin' man, I happen to live above Malibu sand...
...Denman had died that morning...
...Denman, in his dress whites, looked also great...
...About how she loved her catalogues...
...Then we had a big party and Alex and I went for our honeymoon in Rehoboth Beach, which used to be a lot nicer than it is now...
...It fell to me to call my erstwhile wife's housekeeper, have her awaken Alex, and then tell her the news...
...No more kissing, please...
...I can tell you this for sure, That on my wonderful Zuma shore, The deffest folks wear wing-tip boards...
...Good-bye, Mrs...
...The American Spectator November 1992 Monday No need to guess who gave the eulogy at Mrs...
...I'm sorry," I tell him, "but I can't help it...
...Among people like you...
...I've been taking Tommy to the Malibu Riding and Tennis Club for two years now, twice a week, and no one ever plays with him there except me...
...Perhaps Psalm 91," I offered...
...Denman was asleep in bed at the house of his friends...
...Wednesday 1 t's raining in Washington, D.C...
...Denman...
...Superstar quality...
...Reagan makes me think everything's going to be all right...
...The preacher, likewise an Army brat, with stories of his own father's life in Army blue...
...By the time we got to Eden Isle, a glamorous residential community on a large lake forty miles north of Little Rock, it was midnight...
...They tried to recall her favorite hymns and psalms...
...I recognized the wife from Hollywood...
...I was wrong...
...And perhaps 'Rock of Ages,' " I added...
...The air was damp with the kind of humidity we do not know in glorious Los Angeles...
...Oh, yes...
...A driver of a van hired in Heber Springs drove us through the Arkansas night to Heber, through empty streets...
...I got back to my hotel and there was a fax waiting for me from my assistant...
...About how she taught her daughters to be proud of being Army girls...
...Denman looked nice, too, as Linda Fairstein, celebrity D.A., escorted her to her seat...
...Try asking a flight attendant in coach for something like a glass of orange juice...
...Alex came down the aisle looking so beautiful in her white gown that I thought I would pass out...
...When I told her, she cried...
...Maybe she was just worn out," Col...
...Her husband is a foreign film director...
...Another neighbor, also a doctor, with hilarious tales about a small town Southern medical practice...
...Denman's arthritis...
...Denman in his little living room...
...Try to survive her overwhelming smile...
...Monday B ack home at last, Tommy and I are kicking a huge beach ball at each other...
...The father and my erstwhile wife talked about how Mrs...
...No more kissing," he says...
...We went to his condo and looked at the room where Mrs...
...At least you got to spend your life among people who were kind...
...Sometimes though, he kicks it up into the bushes...
...Then try flying First Class...
...Never mind the inability of young Americans to read and write, not to mention add and subtract...
...Duncan Kennedy was an usher...
...This is the most amazing thing of all: time, which is a solid wall of fact, concrete at the moment, passes and is gone forever...
...I went into the kitchen looking for orange juice...
...Bronze Star, Vietnam...
...I read some of the mountain of citations and memorials that Col...
...Denman used to look so happy when she took a trick at bridge—she was a killer at the game...
...It reminded me of how Mrs...
...How can that be, when every person you see on the street in Beverly Hills looks just the opposite...
...Denman, who will be interred next door...
...At about ten to eight, as I was sleeping, listening to the wonderful sound of my boy laughing in my dreams, I was awakened by the telephone...
...I stood in the receiving line and about 200 incredibly polite men and women, mostly retired, passed through and told me how much they were moved by my talk...
...54 The American Spectator November 1992 "Yes," Alex said...
...I think of him as the objective correlative of a number of distasteful social and historical currents...
...I hardly even see him as an individual, although of course he is...
...She had suffered excruciating pain for years from osteoarthritis, and now she was gone...
...Denman had won...
...The air- port was packed...
...Anyway, it's my job...
...I'm not that fat," I said...
...You'll reach for the high stuff and I'll get the low stuff,'cause you're big and fat and I'm little and thin...
...A family with beautiful children came and played with Tommy...
...We didn't have time to use our fabulous AAdvantage Miles to get into First Class, so we were all three in coach...
...I was crying like a faucet stuck on open...
...Exactly," Alex said...
...Silver Star near Zeitlin, Germany...
...Try to survive her basilisk stare...
...People who seem to be part of the very fabric of earth die, and only memories are left...
...What was that Psalm that Mother read when I was in Vietnam...
...There were two middle-aged women there, teachers from Memphis, and they loved my boy...
...Alex and I let him sleep...
...Maybe you should talk about the time Mother arranged for all of the families in the battalion to be evacuated to Marseilles in 1956 when we thought we were going to war during the Hungarian uprising...
...Denman and Alex and her sister Dale had to hear that their father's quarters in Saigon had been blown up by sappers in 1964, and they had to stay up all night in terror all by themselves...
...We waited in a small waiting room off the chapel...
...He's hardly a human being at all, but rather a force of the tides of history and sociology and political science...
...Denman would have wanted the ceremony to go...
...Outside, on the golf course next to Col...
...Ha ha ha...
...Denman's memorial service at the First Presbyterian Church of Heber Springs, which is set in a lovely grove of pines...
...I also liked Reagan's speech...
...I was going to see her next week, and now I can't ever say good-bye...
...Denman said...
...No, forget all of that...
...Alex started to read prayers that her mother had kept near her invalid bed...
...That's why I'm called Daddy...
...The only horrible-looking people at the airport, and they had to be from L.A...
Vol. 25 • November 1992 • No. 11
