The File on Bobby Darin, Chapter 25

Chapter 25

The truncated Casino Royal engagement was behind them.  Charlie was driving Bobby, Blauner and the musicians back home.  This was the first time they had not completed a scheduled run in a nightclub, and Dick was feeling a little uneasy about it.  He did not like to leave unfinished business.  If Bobby was at all bothered by the outcome, he gave no sign.  Typically, Bobby was already preparing for a future assignment.  In the back seat of the Cadillac, he had the score for Lazy River spread out on his lap.  Dick sighed inwardly to see this.

Dick and Bobby had been trading the developing arrangement for Lazy River back and forth for months now, each making notes and counter-notes to one another.  It was a song Darin hoped to record at his next studio session.  This arrangement had been one slow and difficult birth.  Dick had more than once been about to give up in frustration on this song, but Bobby counseled patience.  They would get it eventually, Bobby told him, and it would be worth the effort.  Sometimes a new song could be written in 20 minutes; sometimes the arrangement of an old standard would come much more slowly.  Bobby’s mastery of musical notation was fairly crude, so he would write in the margins descriptions of what he wanted in the score.  When he was bored, he would sometimes draw pairs of feet on the quarter notes, making them look like a procession of cartoon characters marching across the page.  Dick looked over his shoulder, shaking his head in disapproval.  “Bobby, this arrangement is not going to work, it’s all over the map!  You start out with guitars and end with those blaring horns.  It’s as though this arrangement doesn’t know what it wants to be.” 

This discussion was part of a larger debate that Dick and Bobby had been having about Bobby’s goals; who did he want to be, Al Jolson, Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles?  This was a mostly one-sided debate, however, as Darin could only rarely be found taking advice from anyone about his musical choices. 

“And that spoken bit you want to do, Dick continued, “’I ain’t going your way, get outta my way,’ that’s so, I don’t know what, it’s like you’re flipping off the listener, Bobby.”

Bobby simply laughed.  “Don’t you worry about the listeners, they will know who I’m flipping off, and it sure isn’t them.”  Darin shut the score, closed his eyes and sang a few lines in a voice that was polished to a high sheen.  He tapped out the beat on his lap with his hands as he sang the Hoagy Carmichael standard.

When he finished singing, Bobby turned to Dick and said, “I don’t want to be any of them, Jolson, Sinatra, or Charles.  I want to be the best Bobby Darin that I can possibly be!”

“Okay, you win,” Dick said, “go get ‘em, tiger.”

The Cadillac sped on toward home with Bobby, Dick and Ronnie laughing and talking all the way.  Charlie Maffia would be glad to get back to Nina, who had been looking a bit agitated when he left her for this Washington gig.  Charlie would check in on her before departing to Italy.  This would not have occurred to Bobby, unless he knew that Nina was physically ill.  Nina was his sister, a grown woman, and accustomed to looking after herself.  The whole family looked out for Bobby.  This was the way it had always been since the time of his first attack of rheumatic fever. 

Watching over Bobby had been an easier job for Charlie before Bobby began traveling the country, and now the world, to be an entertainer.  He did not know that at this time, back in her home in Lake Hiawatha, Nina was actually glad not to see Bobby.  She needed some time to recover from her recent tussle with the gossip hounds, and she would be glad when the spotlight followed Bobby to Italy and left her to a quiet routine with the children at home.  She stood over her kitchen sink, watching the children play in the back yard.  Summer would soon become fall.  It was at this time of year that she had met Bobby’s father.  She had gone walking with him away from their neighborhood in Harlem, away from prying eyes.  He had won her heart by making her laugh, she remembered.  She heard his laugh in Bobby’s when he would smile slyly, tuck in his chin and chuckle in a low voice.  Summer had turned into fall, and Bobby had been conceived as the brown and golden leaves had torn themselves from the tree branches and gone chasing down the city streets.

Every summer going into fall, Nina replayed in her mind those events of twenty-five years ago.  She could not make herself think of the day when she would be compelled to tell Bobby even part of the truth.  She hoped that day might be put off for as long as possible.  She prayed that Bobby would love her and forgive her for what she would say to him on the day that she hoped would never come.  Luckily for Nina, some minor deity was sparing her from the knowledge of what Bobby’s reaction would be when she told him as much as she was willing to tell.  As she looked out over the kitchen sink to her children playing, it seemed possible to put off any picture of that evil day looming somewhere in the future.  Charlie would stop at home briefly before accompanying Bobby to Italy, and Nina told herself that all would be well.  Polly had confirmed it; stick to the lie, and all would be well. 

Continued in the next chapter

ID: 1474317   (Rated: ASR) The File on Bobby Darin, Chapter 26  Two Goodbyes by Gisele