Dean and Me_ A Love Story - Jerry Lewis [107]
I couldn’t take my eyes off Dean after that. Staring across the restaurant, trying to get my mind around how much he had changed. A million images of the old days, when we were both kids, flashed through my brain.... Christ! Don’t get old, I thought.
What’s the alternative?
As we ate, I watched him eat. It’s a very strange thing to watch someone you know well eating alone. I tried my hardest not to be sad, but the feelings washed over me. One thing I did notice: Dean had an Old-Fashioned glass in front of him, and it sat there, full, for his whole meal. He never touched it.
Then, one day not long after that, I found—it both surprised me and didn’t surprise me at all—that I missed him. So I called him up. As simple as that.
“Hey, Paul—how ya doin’?” I said, bright and chipper.
“Hey, pally. How are you?”
“What, you forgot my fuckin’ name already?”
We had a few laughs, chatted for a few minutes. Nothing important—it was more about the music than the words. It was easy, and lovely, and it didn’t last one second more than it had to.
So every couple of weeks afterward, I called him again. It went on that way for four years.
Dean had seven children, and he loved them all dearly, but Dean Paul Martin Jr., his second son and his first child with Jeannie, was the apple of his eye. Dino, as they called him, truly was a golden boy. Blond like his mother, and sharing both his parents’ good looks, he was a talented musician (like my son Gary, he’d had a successful rock recording career in the mid-sixties) and a brilliant athlete—for a time he played tennis on the professional circuit. He also did some acting in the movies and on television; still, it wasn’t any picnic trying to succeed in that profession as Dean Martin’s son. In his mid-thirties, Dino was working hard to make his own way in the world.
And Dean admired the hell out of that. He could tolerate very few people, and he admired almost nobody, but God, he looked up to that boy. To top it off, Dino was a captain in the Air National Guard: He flew jet fighters every weekend. To Dean, who wasn’t crazy about air travel, that seemed amazingly brave.
On March 20, 1987, Dean Jr. was on maneuvers over the San Bernardino Mountains when his F4-C Phantom went off the radar screen. The wreckage of the plane was found five days later. Dino and his weapons officer had been flying into a blizzard in white-out conditions. When they lost radio contact with air-traffic control, they crashed into Mount Gorgonio.
I was playing at the Bally with Sammy when I heard about Dino’s death. I immediately flew to L.A. for the funeral. I walked into the back of the church at the beginning of the service, and I stayed there. Dean didn’t know I was present, and I didn’t want him to.
Afterward, I said to Sam, “Honey, it’s just a matter of time. Dean’s gone. That boy was the most important thing he had in his life.”
Early that evening, Greg Garrison, Dean’s television producer and a friend of both of ours, phoned to say that he’d seen me at the funeral and told Dean. Greg said that Dean was so touched that I’d been there. What he didn’t say, but what I understood, was how moved Dean had been that I’d come and gone in anonymity. Going unnoticed has never been my strong suit. But I felt it was a gesture I owed to both my partner and Dino.
Late that night, after my second show at Bally’s—it was about three A.M.—the phone in my dressing room rang. The voice on the line was instantly recognizable.
“Hey, Jer.”
In our phone relationship of the last few years, I’d always been the one to place the call. That was just the way it went with Dean, and I never minded, but this night was very different.
We talked for an hour. He cried, I cried. I said, “Life’s too short, my friend. This is one of those things that God hands us, and we have to somehow go on with our lives. That’s what Dino would have wanted.” I was trying to get him to see that he had to find a way to go forward. But all he kept saying was, “Jer,