The Telethon

The Griefs are leaking. Everyone is watching the telethon and the griefs are leaking. Everyone is giving to the telethon and sympathy is pouring. There is lump in the throat like heavy hail. Everyone is watching and giving to the telethon and the griefs are big business. The Helbros tote board can barely keep up. The griefs are pandemic. There is a perspiration of griefs, tears like a sad grease. He watches the telethon from his bed and is catching the griefs, coming down with the griefs, contaged, indisposed with sentiment.

Cornell Messenger watches the telethon almost every year. He has been with Jerry Lewis for seven or eight telethons now. He knows when the entertainer will take off his bow tie; he knows when he will cry. I know when I will, Messenger thinks.

It is astonishing how much money is being raised. He is positive all the other channels are dark. It is Labor Day weekend, but he is certain that even those off on picnics have seen some of it, that almost everyone has been touched, that this year's campaign will beat all the others. He expects Frank Sinatra to bring Dean Martin onto the show any minute now; he expects everyone to forgive his enemies, that there will be no enemies left. We are in armistice, Messenger thinks. Truce is legion, all hearts reconciled in the warm bath water of the griefs.

During the cutaway to the local station, he watches the children swarm in the shopping center. They tell their names to the Weather Lady and empty their jars and oatmeal boxes and coffee cans of cash into great plastic fish bowls.

The sums are staggering. Two grand from the firemen in Red Bud, Illinois, who have challenged the fire fighters of Mascoutah and Belleville and Alton and Edwardsville. This local has challenged that local; waitresses and cabdrivers have challenged other waitresses and cabdrivers to turn over their tips. He suspects that hookers have been turning tricks for Muscular Dystrophy.

He sees what is happening in the bistate area and multiplies that by what must be going on in the rest of the country. He thinks they will probably make it--the $25,000,000 Ed McMahon has predicted the telethon will take in. But there are only a few hours left. Will M.D. be licked in the poster kid's lifetime?

Messenger doesn't know what he thinks of Jerry Lewis. He suspects he is pretty thin-skinned, that he takes seriously his critics' charge that he's made his fortune mimicking crippled children, that for him, the telethon is only a sort of furious penance. It is as if--watch this now, this is tricky, he thinks--the Juggler of Our Lady, miming the prelapsarian absence of ordinary gravity, has come true, as everything is always coming true, the most current event incipient in the ancient, sleazy biologic sprawl. Something like that.

I guess he's OK, Messenger thinks. If only he will stop referring to them as his kids. He doesn't have to do that. Maybe he (concluded on page 222) Telethon (continued from page 103) doesn't know.

Jerry sweats griefs. His mood swings are terrific. He tummels and scolds, goes from the most calculated sincerity to the most abandoned woe. A guy who says he's the head of the Las Vegas sanitation workers presents him with a check for $27,000 and he thanks him, crying. Then, sober again, he davens his own introduction. The lights go down and, when the spotlight finds him, he's on a stool, singing My Kids. It's a wonderful song, powerful and sad. The music's better than the lyrics, but that's all right. The griefs are in it. The griefs are stunning, wonderful, thrilling. I'm sold, Messenger thinks, and calls for a kid to fetch his wallet from downstairs.

He'll phone in his pledge in front of the kid who brings his wallet up, reading the numbers off his MasterCard. He is setting an example. The example is that no one must ever be turned down.

He is surprised. He's been watching the telethon for seven or eight hours now, and in all that time, the St. Louis number has been superimposed on the bottom of the screen, alternating with the numbers of other communities in the bistate area, but he still doesn't know it and has to wait until the roster of towns completes itself and the St. Louis number comes back on. He calls from across the room, where he cannot read the number on the screen, and asks the kid to do it, first telling the 13-year-old dyslectic what to look for.

''S,'' Harve says uncertainly. ''T, L--''

''No, Harve, the number. You're spelling St. Louis. The number's what we want here. Jeanne, help him.''

His kid sister whispers the number to him and Harve brokenly begins to relay it back to him. Messenger checks the numbers she gives him against those he can find on the screen. Then the number goes off and Harve calls out numbers indiscriminately. He gives Messenger an Illinois exchange.

''Damn it, Jeanne, you give me the number.''

The delay has cost Muscular Dystrophy ten bucks. Grief leaks through Messenger's inconvenience. A cure for this scourge will forever be ten dollars behind itself.

The announcer is complaining that fewer than half the phones are ringing, that Kansas City, with less population, has already pledged $40,000 more than we have. Not that it's a contest, he says; the important thing is to get the job done, but he won't put his jacket on until we go over the top. It doesn't make any difference what happens nationally: we don't meet our goal, he won't wear his jacket. He's referring to a spectacularly loud jacket he wears only during M.D. campaigns. Messenger, who's been with the telethon for years, wants to see him put it on. It's a dumb ploy. Messenger knows that. So unprofessional that just by itself it explains why he's in St. Louis and Ed McMahon is out there in Vegas with Jerry and Frank and Dean: but no form of show business is alien to Messenger and he hopes he gets to see the announcer put on his sports coat.

His grown son picks up an extension.

''Get off,'' Messenger says. ''I'm making a call.''

''This will only take a minute.''

''So will this. Get off.''

''Jesus.''

Why don't they answer? He carries the phone as far as it will reach and sits down on the bed. It's true. Most of the volunteers have nothing to do. They know the camera is on them, and those who aren't actually speaking with callers try to look busy. They stare at the phones, make notes on pieces of paper. His son picks up the phone again, replaces it fiercely.

''Do you want to break the damn thing?'' Messenger shouts. ''What's wrong with you?''

There are three ranks of telephones, eight volunteers in each rank. Although he's never seen one, they remind him of a grand jury. The phone has rung perhaps 20 times.

''Jeanne, did you give me the right number?''

''72-2700.''

It's on the screen. Messenger hangs up and dials again. This time someone answers on the third ring.

''The bitch gave you the wrong number,'' Harve says.

''I did not,'' Jeanne says.

''That's baloney-o. That's shit,'' Harve says.

''Please,'' Messenger says.

He says his name to the volunteer and gives his address. Speaking slowly and clearly, he reads the dozen or so numbers off his charge card. He volunteers its expiration date, his voice low with dignity and reserve, the voice of a man with 11 months to go on his MasterCard.

''Are you going to give them three million dollars, Daddy?'' Harve asks.

Messenger frowns at him.

''What do you want to pledge, sir?''

''Twenty dollars,'' he says, splitting the difference between anger and conscience.

''Challenge your friends.'' his daughter says. ''Challenge the English department. Challenge everyone left-handed. Make her wave, Daddy.''

What the hell: he asks her if she will wave to his daughter and, remarkably, from the very center of the volunteers, a hand actually shoots up.

''Ooh,'' Jeanne says, ''she's pretty.''

''Dumb shit thinks she can see us,'' Harve says. ''Can she, Daddy?''

''Are you almost through?'' his other son asks on the extension. ''Mike wants me to find out when the movie starts.''

''Goddamn it,'' Messenger roars.

''Will the little boys walk now?'' Harve asks. ''Will they run and read?''

''Tell your brother I'm off the phone.''

Harve hangs back. ''What if there's a fire? How would the crippled children excape from a fire?''

''Escape, Harve,'' Messenger says.

''Excape,'' Harve says.

''There's not going to be any fire. Stop thinking about fire.'' The griefs are all about. The griefs are leaking. Harve's third-degree burned by them.

''They should take all the money and get the cripples fire stingishers.''

''Cut it out. Stop with the fucking fire shit.''

''They should.''

''Do what I tell you!''

His son leaves the bedroom, his fine blond hair suddenly incendiary as it catches the light from the window.

The horrors, the horrors, he thinks absently.

Once he's phoned in his pledge he loses interest. It's what always happens, but he takes a last look at the telethon before he dresses. The entertainers sweat griefs and plug records. It's all right. Messenger forgives them. This is only the world.

Of course they'll reach their goal, Messenger thinks. Everybody is watching the telethon. Besides, the fix is in. Eleventh-hour operetta is ready to put them over the top. Soft-drink, ballpoint-pen, timepiece, fast-food, 24-hour Mom-and-Pop shops, roller-skate and dancing-school cartels are already in the wings. An afflicted airline executive and a backyard-carnival representative stand by. Why, his own kids dropped three or four bucks at a neighbor kid's carnival two months before. Then what is the telethon for, anyway? TV time that Messenger's 20 bucks and the 50 or 60 the kids have raised and the perhaps half-dozen million or so of other private grievers all across the country may not even cover, make up? What is it for?

Why. the griefs, the griefs, of course--remotest mourning's thrill-a-minute patriotics, its brazen, spectacular top-hat, high-strutting, rim-shot sympathies.

''The horrors, the horrors, he thinks absently. Once he's phoned in his pledge he loses interest.''