Still Talking by Joan Rivers, Richard Meryman Read Free Book Online

have my wedding night off. He said, “Sure! Hey, you’re getting married. Just get me somebody comparable.” We said, “Fine.” He said, “Get me Woody Allen or Bill Cosby.”
    So I did two shows that night. My agent, Irvin Arthur, came down. Six months earlier he had told me to quit the business because I d never make it-but I stayed with him out of loyalty. Now, everybody thought he was my husband and congratulated him. Edgar had refused to come. “I’m not going to be a backstage husband,” he said. Famous last words.
     
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    EME
     
    DURING that first year of marriage to Edgar, his smart friends were having trouble matching in their heads this elegant intellectual with what, to them, was a lowly, uneducated standup comic. I was sure Anna Rosenberg thought he could have done much better. I acted like a mouse around her.
    Barbara Walters, who was then the hostess on the Today show and friendly with Edgar, said the first time she met me, “We never thought he’d marry somebody like you.”
    In fact, nobody had thought Edgar would even get married. He had been coddled for forty years by his mother, Frieda, and her housekeeper, Heddy, who cleaned for us daily and disapproved of Edgar even having a wife. She continued to do his laundry, but left mine in a heap on the floor.
    The main woman Edgar had ever had in his life-except for a six-year relationship with an actress-was his mother, who lived just down the hall in an old-lady apartment with sparse, heavy blond thirties furniture-memory furniture, bits and pieces from a grander time of life-some beautiful handmade lace, and lots of pictures of dead relatives. Everything was meticulously neat, as though ready for her to die in the next five minutes.
    Frieda was a short, heavy woman. Edgar had her stocky build and the same piercing dark eyes, heavy nose, and round face. She had just one close friend, a nurse she had met in the hospital. Frieda was so proud of this friendship, proud to say, “I’m going to the movies tonight with Mar33

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    jorie” and “Marjorie and I were shopping yesterday.” It was sad.
    Going from bachelor son to married man was a major adjustment for Edgar.
    For the first time there was another person interfering with his privacy.
    One night I discovered him taking a Valium. I said, “What is this?” He said, “I do it every night. I need my sleep.” I was shocked, I am vehemently opposed to taking any kind of drug. I hardly touch an aspirin.
    I said, “No, no, no, you cannot do that. You must stop.” I still don’t know if he ever did.
    We had another big fight when I wanted to lighten up his apartment, which was decorated in blacks and tans and brown leather. I suggested off-white, pale celadon, and pale, pale apricot. He said, “Never! This is the way I like it, and this is the way it’s going to be.” He told me all this macho stuff-“I am the man, and I will not help you with housework, and I will not help you cook and clean. None of it.” “Absolutely,” I told him. “You’re not expected to do anything.” Oh, shit, I thought, here we go. But I kept quiet.
    But Edgar wanted me to be happy. Within weeks, Heddy was working only for his mother, and he was scraping dishes and taking out the garbage. Edgar had to assert his CEO front because, like all men of his generation, he was insecure and needed to know he had an old-fashioned marriage in which he was the head of the family. Once I had said, “Okay, you’re the boss” and checked decisions and got permissions-he could relax-even though I actually ran the household. But I enjoyed hiring the help, worrying about the dry cleaning and laundry, planning the parties, arranging the flowers, being the woman of the house.
    Edgar was comfortable with those dynamics. His father was a mensch, and the powerhouse Frieda was actually in charge. Later, as executive producer of my Fox show, all Edgar really wanted was to hear Barry Diller say, “You’re the boss of the