The last time I saw Judy was one of the best. Less than a month before she passed out of this life, I went to spend the weekend with her in Delmar. Judy and I have always joked around, and even under the shadow of her recent diagnosis, this weekend was no exception.
We sat around the dining table: Judy, Jenna, my 15-year-old daughter, Vaishali, and me. I don’t remember whose idea it was, but we decided to make a movie. Jobs were quickly assigned: Judy, myself, and Vaishali would be actors, and Jenna would stay behind the scenes as camerawoman.
What was our movie about? Nobody knew, and nobody cared. Jenna got the video rolling. Outside, the gray, upstate New York December put out a 40’s film noir vibe.
I fed Judy a line to get her going. “Okay, Gladys, let me get this straight. You were here all night alone. You’re sure?”
The mysterious ways of improvisation kicked in. Judy slipped easily into the persona of a wealthy heiress robbed of a prized cameo necklace. Long sigh, as she traveled deeper into the world of Gladys, considering her choices.
“Umm… ehh…” she started. “Well, there was a — no.” Her hand slapped the air. “Yes,” she declared. “I was alone.”
“Let’s rethink this, Gladys. What did you do, let’s say, after 5 p.m. dinner? Walk me through it.”
Judy’s actor eyes studied me, and the story machine in her head started chugging. Her hand went to her chin. “It started with me climbing the stairs,” she said. “Laboriously… climbing… stairs.”
We were gripped. If she’d been performing to a full house at Lincoln Center, she couldn’t have delivered her lines with more conviction. We weren’t just goofing around her dining room table — this was a gig.
Judy tilted her head back and examined the ceiling for inspiration. “I got to the top of the stairs –” She paused, a grimace on her face as she remembered the thing that had never happened, but, in her theatrical mind, had most certainly happened. She pointed upward. “I heard… a sound.”
She nodded at the memory, and cupped her ear, trying to hear the specific noise once more. “I wasn’t really sure what it was,” she went on, screwing up her face, “but in the background, I heard a faint –” Again, her features squinched as she brought us back to that fateful night, ” — scream.”
From behind the camera, Jenna let out a gasp.
“It was something like –” Judy’s face turned into a mask of terror. Her mouth opened wide. “Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!”
Vaishali looked around, unsure where Judy was heading. The scream wasn’t loud, but it sailed out of Judy’s mouth with just the right amount of eerie emotion, careening us all into Gladys’s heartstopping moment before modulating into a breathy slam of vocal brakes.
“Something like that,” Judy said, matter-of-fact as a postal clerk giving the price of a stamp.
We tried not to crack up, but Judy tapped her finger against her lips thoughtfully.
“What do you think?” she asked.
I nodded. “It sounds like it was a scream.”
“It was.”
“It was faint, though, the scream.”
“It was.”
“It was a faint…scream,” we both said at once.
Vaishali’s shoulders heaved with silent giggles. Jenna tried to keep the camera steady.
“The scream penetrated the actual core of me,” Judy said. Her hands curled into fists and her body swayed, her ears chilled by the sound of the nonexistent scream.
“You were penetrated,” I said.
Judy let out a big puff of air as she worked to hold in laughter. “Puh! Let us not…” she gave us a mischevious smile and lowered her voice, “…go there.”
This time, Jenna and Vaishali couldn’t stop their laughs, but I wasn’t going to let things derail, and neither was Judy.
“Gladys, I’m just trying to get to the bottom of this. I’ve been rated five stars by the Better Business Bureau for fifteen years –”
“Impressive,” Judy smirked.
“Try to stay focused, Gladys. What happened after the scream?”
“I stood at the top of the stairs, and I called out: WHO’S THERE?” Judy’s voice rose, booming through the house — and her mouth snapped shut.
She always knew how to milk a moment.
Then: “Nobody answered.” She leaned in to scrutinize me. “How do you read that, Detective…Cheese?”
Jenna and Vaishali guffawed into their hands.
“Call me Detective Cheese Please,” I said. “Cheese Please is my name.”
Judy nodded and picked up an imaginary pencil to jot down some notes. “How do you spell that?
“C…H…”
“C…H…” Judy repeated gravely. “E?”
“Gladys, never mind all that. I think someone is after you for your money. You obviously live in a very grand establishment here, with baubles lying around all over the place –”
“Baubles!” Judy tossed her hair and rolled her eyes; great wealth was inconsequential to a woman like Gladys. Jenna focused the camera lens on a plastic Christmas tree ornament.
“Do you have an alarm system? A security guard? A dog?”
“Nah,” Judy drawled. “Nah.” She leaned way over the table to pin me with a look. “But I do hear screams.”
“Gladys, I’m not pointing any fingers, but a woman of your means should have protection. You should have bodyguards. Maybe an electric fence. Spotlights. Because anyone can walk in here and take anything.”
Jenna’s lens zoomed in on a box of tea bags.
“Whoa.” Judy’s eyes widened, her imagination turning tea bags into diamonds. “What was I thinking? What can I do to rectify this?”
“What’s done is done. Is the cameo missing, or is it not missing?”
“I haven’t found it.”
“It must be missing.”
“Must be.”
“Where was the necklace before the scream?”
“Ah! Ah! Yes!” Judy leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest. At last, we were getting somewhere. She peered into the ether and began to conjure, her arms uncrossing to beckon the necklace back to us. Slowly, measured, the words came out: “I do believe it was in the far right drawer of the brown…what was it?” Even though Judy was struggling to find the right word, her focus as an actor never wavered. Her hands made the shape of something square and hulking. “It was in the brown thing.” She grinned at us, turning the whole hunt for words into a laugh.
“The brown thing.”
“Yes. The brown thing.”
“Was there a lock on the brown thing?”
“No.”
“Was there an alarm system on the brown thing?”
“No.”
“So, you’re telling me –”
“I think somebody probably has — ” Judy mimed someone picking a lock. “They –” she made a loud click sound with her tongue, ” — it.”
“So you just wily-nily put your priceless cameo necklace in a brown thing with no –”
Judy gave a knowing chuckle. “You’re right!”
“Gladys, this is no joke.”
“But it was leather covered!” she protested.
Jenna and Vaishali shrieked with laughter, but I was not letting Judy off the hook.
“Even more so! You left your priceless cameo necklace unguarded in a brown leather thing with a cheap lock!”
Vaishali snorted.
“What do you think Inspector?” I asked. Jenna swung the camera to focus on Vaishali. “This is my assistant, Inspector Cheese,” I explained to Judy. “We’re related.”
“Detective Cheese?” Judy swiveled around to look at Vaishali.
“No, I’m Inspector Cheese,” Vaishali clarified.
Judy consulted her imaginary notes. “So you’re Detective Cheese,” she pointed to me, “and you’re Inspector Cheese.” She nodded at Vaishali. “Got it. Inspector Cheese, and Detective Cheese. As in cheese –”
“Stop trying to distract us, Gladys. This is serious!”
Judy held up her hands in mock offense. “Okay, okay. Sorry, sorry.”
“There’s a leather brown thing that was broken into by a screamer, and a priceless cameo is somewhere out there!”
“But do we know,” Vaishali piped up, “that it was the screamer who took it?”
“Ah ha,” Judy nodded, impressed. “Good point. What do you think?”
Vaishali took a huge gulp of soda and did a spit take. Judy tried not to laugh.
“Lay off the sauce, Inspector Cheese!” I cried. “Your observations are very…”
“Astute,” Judy offered.
“Yes, but — ”
Judy was all business. “We need to focus,”
“Right. We’re on to something.”
“What if there were two?” Vaishali proposed.
Judy’s head whipped around, a guilty look on her face.
“Or three?” Vaishali mused. “What if… the screamer wasn’t even human?”
“Mmmm,” Judy murmured.
“What if the scream was a decoy scream? To distract you? A recording.”
Judy put a hand on her chin, thinking. “Ahh…. ah haaa. A recording.”
“Perhaps.”
“Perhaps.”
“Did the scream seem robotic to you? Did it seem canned?”
Judy pursed her lips as she tilted her head from side to side, considering.
“Was there emotion in the scream?”
“Oh yes.” Judy gave a decisive nod. “No question. No question.”
“Did it chill you to the marrow of your soul?”
“Nah,” Judy scoffed. “Nothing chills me.”
“Gladys, you’re a tough cookie.”
“I am.”
“On the phone,” I said, “I had other feelings for you.”
“Oh really?” Judy cocked her head, a surprised, coy look on her face, ready to flirt.
“I have to confess, your feminine vulnerability got to me.”
“No!”
“Did.”
“Oh, how did that happen?” she asked, her voice a little breathy.
“Gladys, you’re a wily one. I don’t know if I trust you anymore.”
“Wily?” Judy repeated, taking real offense.
“I think your marshmallow act is a big act,” I stated. “I think you may have stolen your own cameo, that’s what I think. Inspector Cheese, cuff her! Book her!”
“Whaaaat? Me?” Judy’s face registered injustice. “No! Impossible.” Her hand shooed us away. “Impossible!”
It was a quintessential Judy moment. We watched in silence as she leaned into the camera for the close-up, her eyes growing rounder as she implored the world to believe her, her mouth hanging a tiny bit open in shock. Her eyebrows arched, and my heart ached with joy. Together, we had made a little magic happen in Delmar that afternoon, and it was exactly the sort of experience that Judy lived for: creating something out of nothing with a group of fellow conspirators, spinning straw into gold. Light caught on that incredibly thick, silver hair of hers, shining brighter than any prized necklace, the red of her dining room wallpaper boosting the warmth of her rose-colored hoodie. She was the picture of innocence.
“Impossible,” she declared.