Tale 30

Plus the Fact I Married Queen Bee

personal gift to Fred Waring from one of 20^th-century America’s

most famous and revered cartoonists Milton Caniff

two years after Waring’s stroke

and two years before Waring died at age 84, 7/29/84[1]

The Fred Waring in the mirror started his next song before Bill spoke again. A plaintive violin played. A harmonious glee club entered a cappella:

The thrill is gone!!...

(harp:) ar-peggio-eggio-eggio...

The fact was, as Dr. Lorenzo realized many years later: his interviewee had begun, several stories back, a complete history of his entire relationship with Fred Waring, from earliest days to recent, in chronological order, except when interrupted and distracted by mj or Betty Ann, whereupon he would digress a bit, always to return to his strict chronology. Each tale focused on a critical, nodal point in the development of the relationship, which started out as a two-way working relationship, and ended up years later as a three-way relationship that was more personal in nature, involving Betty Ann. Bill was building toward something.

It was hard to understand at the time, though, because Bill announced neither goal nor method. The atmosphere of fog and resulting slumber, in fact, looking back, may have been part of Bill’s bag of tricks for roping in and initiating a tenderfoot.    

"Now with Fred," Bill said without ado, "I'll tell you something, he didn't even know where I lived.” Bill rowed hell-bent. He was perspiring noticeably. "Until I was going with Betty Ann. And I only had this little shack over here. Fred had no idea where I lived till Mark brought 'im here that day. In his mind I probably had some nice cottage or home up here, and he saw that shacky cottage."

...The thrill is gone!!...

(ar-peggio-eggio-eggio...)...

Bill skipped the finer aspects and cut a backwash to churn up everything, mj included, who was still lost in the brine. "I said, 'I want a car, if we're gonna do this, I want a car, company car, my car.' Ya know, and I laid the rules down what I wanted, and I got it." He sipped and looked away, thinking.

"And you've had that ever since," mj said, doggy-paddling to keep up. "Except recently he stopped using your ideas."

"No. Like this year,[2] 'America I Hear You Singing,' I was the one who went to him and set that off, made the program book and all. It isn't a matter of not using ideas."

...I can see it in your eyes, I can hear it in your sighs...

Bill stiffened and lurched in his seat. "Fred has suddenly wanted to put me in my place. He has started to try to treat me like he treats the others. And I won't take it. And it's getting worse an' worse. I mean, he tells a Ray Schroeder off in front of people, and he just crawls off in a hole!"

The Pennsylvanians were a sea of emotion:

Feel your touch... and re-a-lize...

The thrill is gone...

A harp thrummed. The girls aa-aa-aahed...

"Murray Luth came into a rehearsal in New York, and I saw this. Murray was his manager, and he came in this rehearsal, and Fred turned around and said, 'What're you doin' here’?

"Murray said, 'I just came over to make sure everything was all-right’.

"Fred said, 'We don't need you, we only have talented people here’.[3]

"And Murray crawled.

"And I don't crawl that way, and I'm not ever about to crawl for anybody. It's not good for your own welfare. Ego.

“Self-esteem,” mj helped.

“And I think what is happening now is,” Bill nodded in agreement, “Fred is trying very very hard –...," Bill paused, eyeing Betty Ann in the kitchen. "Plus the fact I married Queen Bee, yaknow."

"That's somehow important," mj reacted without a thought.

"Oh, it's very important." Bill's eyebrows grew heavy. "Y'see with Fred, any girl in that organization, in his fantasy, even in his fantasy they are his 'girls', nobody's. I think that's one of the things about the marriage. I think he fantasizes that they see him as a great being.

"And now Betty Ann marries me, right?" Bill's eyes widened. "That means maybe she sees me as a great being or something."

The Pennsylvanians oohed, and a tenor belted it.

The nights are coooohld! For love is oooohld... Ooo-ooo-oooo...

"Mm huh." The plot of the book was congealing a bit, and it made mj nervous and melancholy.

Betty Ann approached the table next to Bill's chair. She rummaged through a drawer.

…Ooo-oooo-ooooo...

Love was grand when love was new oooooo,

Birds were sing-ing, skies were blue ooooo,

Now it won't ap-peal to you.... Hmm!mmmmmmmmmmmm...

Bill glanced up, watching her. "Ahmm... He doesn't want her to think that. He wants to put me down in her eyes. And it's hurting us, her and me. That so, Bett?"

"Eaooh," she mumbled. It sounded like 'maybe'.

Bill seemed irritated. "What are ya lookin' for?"

She mumbled. "I'm tryin' to find –..."

Mj stared at the Sears recorder and drifted away again. The meat of the matter lay before him as big as the Queen Bee Mary, but he lost sight of it again, just that fast.

Years later, working over the material, the Dr. put it this way: one of the main reasons Bill had to leave Fred, was to put an end to the insufferable three-way relationship. He had to end a curse that, like a Stymphalian bird, ate human beings alive. Simple people all over the world called it jealousy or envy. Fred was envious of Bill’s new special relationship with Betty Ann, who for years had been Fred’s most precious star and friend (and confidant). But for some unknown and as yet unanalyzed reason, every time all night long that mj remembered this crucial point it would slip away from him again in a minute, and soon be forgotten again utterly, and he would find himself in an impenetrable slumbering fog all over again. It was very strange, this phenomenon, and neither he nor the pundits ever explained it over the years. Obviously, as even the Dr. agreed years later, this attempt of his at psychotherapy should have been supervised by an analyst with more experience in ‘transference’ and ‘countertransference’ phenomena, and with an ability to probe the Dr.’s own not-very-conscious ‘oedipal’ issues, maybe, if he had any.

The men of the glee club worried in unison. Strings played pizzicati.

The thriiihll (pick! pick!) is gooohne! (pick! pick!)

This iiihs (pick! pick!) the eeehnd!...— [4]