Lost in the Funhouse_ The Life and Mind of Andy Kaufman - Bill Zehme [52]
He told no one, not a single soul. He went west and brought God with him and also his conga drum (maybe he would break into big-time show business while visiting) and saw the sights and goofed around with Sutton and drove Sutton’s roommates crazy when he stayed with them in Beachwood Canyon. “Andy had given up pot and we were all big pot smokers. So he’d say, ‘Can you put that out?’ We’d all be riding somewhere in a Volkswagen and they’d close the windows and start smoking pot, just to torture him. He’d be in the backseat and insist on opening the front window and sticking his head out so that he’d have the last laugh. They couldn’t stand him but Andy was so self-absorbed, he didn’t have the time to notice or to hate somebody back. He didn’t realize when people were bad-vibing him. It was his world and we were all scenery.” Sutton had formed a rhythm-and-blues band called Yes Indeed and Andy went along with them to a private gig at a home in Brentwood at which a woman rode in on an elephant and, at one point during the Yes Indeed set, he elected to wander up onto the stage and became Elvis and he sang “I Feel So Bad” and all of the jaded Hollywood partygoers stopped cold and watched. Said Sutton, “He just stole the show.”
The daughter arrived just before 6 A.M. on July 19 and she arrived amid hysteria, not the mother’s hysteria, but that of the mother’s parents and also that of the father’s parents, who had been notified of the stunning blessed event by the mother’s parents just after 6 A.M. on July 19. The day before—when nobody knew anything yet—Gloria was out paddleboating with friends and later that night went to a party and, while dancing, realized that her legs were moving farther and farther apart and knew labor had begun and went home and had her parents take her to the emergency room of North Shore Hospital, where the Acres finally learned that their daughter was not only pregnant but about to deliver a baby. The doctors noted Gloria’s size and first thought she was six months pregnant and about to abort until an attendant spotted a head crowning and concluded that an actual birth was under way. It was a girl—“Very white, very tiny, and she had this little fuzzy brown hair,” Gina Acre said—and Gloria decided to call her Laurel (“for victory”). The child was whisked to the nursery—her eighteen-year-old mother was discouraged from holding her, for fear of bonding, for fear of whatever was going to occur next. The Acres immediately and angrily phoned the Kaufmans; Stanley and Janice rushed to the hospital, apoplectic, astonished—“It was a shocker,” Stanley would remember—and pledged all financial assistance with hospital bills et cetera on behalf of their son, whose exact whereabouts they knew not. They visited with Gloria—Janice told her, “Andy can marry you!” and her mother yelped, “Waitaminute! She’s already made one mistake!”—but they did not see the baby. “We were told not to,” said Stanley. “And we didn’t.” And their hearts felt leaden and their blood boiled, so furious were they with Andy and they would apprise him of such in no uncertain terms if and when they heard from him out there on his cockamamie trip. And it was decided that Catholic Charities would oversee adoption procedures, but only after Gloria made sure the child was baptized. And later the next day the phone rang in her hospital room and it was Andy—who had learned of events in no uncertain terms—calling from Disneyland which, said Gloria, “was so appropriate.” “It was like ‘Hi!’ ‘Hi!’ I mean, it was okay. He was terribly sweet.” Two weeks later, she was permitted to see the baby at an interim foster home, was finally allowed to hold her, and shortly thereafter was able to have