Walking with the Muses

by Pat Cleveland

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  For my mother, Lady Bird the Artist, for the gift of life.

  And for my husband, Paul van Ravenstein, and our children, Noel and Anna.

  When you wish upon a star, your dreams come true.

  —Jiminy Cricket in Disney’s Pinocchio

  (Leigh Harline and Ned Washington)

  prologue

  DREAM LOVER

  Born smack in the middle of the middle of the twentieth century (June 1950), I’m like millions of other baby boomers in that some of my most formative experiences have occurred inside a darkened movie theater. Like falling in love for the first time.

  At some point around my sixth birthday, my mom began taking me to matinees at the RKO 86th Street Theatre, a slightly musty old movie palace roughly eleven blocks due south of our tenement apartment on the edge of Spanish Harlem. There, warm and toasty in winter and blessedly cool in New York’s steamy summers, the two of us would sit, arms entwined, sharing popcorn and Raisinets, and stare transfixed at the big screen through hours of previews and double features (two movies for a buck—seventy-five cents for Mom and a quarter for my child’s ticket). Whatever new fare Hollywood served up, Mom and I would be there most Saturday afternoons to devour it.

  For me, the only child of a single mother, male role models were in short supply, so my template for the ideal man was forged right there on that screen. Charlton Heston. Rock Hudson. Tony Curtis. And then one day a movie star came along who wiped all the others off the map: Warren Beatty. Mom and I went to see Splendor in the Grass the week it was released in October 1961. I didn’t know it then, but our days of blissful moviegoing—just Mom and me, together in the dark—were nearing their end because she’d recently married a soldier from Georgia who would radically curtail her outings. I was eleven and Warren, who was making his screen debut in the male lead, was twenty-four. From the moment he appeared on-screen, as the rich Kansas high school football star Bud Stamper who’s in love with the town’s good girl, Deanie Loomis (played by an incandescent Natalie Wood), I was a goner. I couldn’t have explained the effect he had on me—I was only eleven, after all, and until then I’d never experienced that thrill of pure longing for the opposite sex—but I knew instantly: We were destined to be together. Later that day, at home in my bedroom, I daydreamed freely. Patricia Beatty. Mrs. Warren Beatty. I tried out the name in my mouth a few times. I practiced writing it in my fanciest script. It was meant to be.

  Imagine, then, the inner frenzy that descended when, fourteen years later, I spotted Warren in the flesh at the opening of an exhibition of photographs by Richard Avedon at a tony Fifty-Seventh Street gallery, an event attended by a who’s who of prominent New Yorkers ranging from Andy Warhol to Norman Mailer. By then I had traveled all over the world as a model, met more boldface names than I could count (and bedded a few of them), and become friends with some of the most creative people of the time (including Warhol, who ended up being one of my wingmen that night). But when Warren Beatty walks in, even the most blasé girl in the world gets weak in the knees—not that I was that girl, anyway. I instantly reverted to the eleven-year-old from Spanish Harlem crushing on the movie star.

  As it turned out, my feeble preadolescent fantasies never even came close to conjuring the awesomeness that was Warren. The actual man was so much more beautiful, more sensitive, more talented, more intelligent, more . . . well, good in bed than the dream lover who’d lived in my imagination. Our on-and-off affair, which lasted six years in all, was an unforgettable chapter in my life—a life that’s been filled with despair and triumph, sickness and health, heartbreak and joy, lust and true love, and loads and loads of fun.

  chapter 1

  EXILE ON MAIN STREET

  Me at nine months on a good hair day, 1951.

  My mother drew pictures of me before I was born. The pregnancy was an accident, and as was her habit from the time she was a small child, Mom turned to art and her own imagination to escape an unpleasant reality: At twenty-three, she was about to become a single mother. (Her lover, Johnny Johnston, had gone back to his home country of Sweden after his visa expired, without even knowing I was about to show up on the planet.) Mom had just purchased a ticket to Paris on the Queen Mary. When she realized she was pregnant, she gave the ticket to her older sister, my glamorous Auntie Helen, a dancer who’d been living with Mom in an apartment on East 100th Street that functioned as a kind of nighttime salon for the African-American creative class in New York City.

  As Auntie Helen danced her way across the Atlantic, my mom, alone in her apartment, drew picture after picture of the baby whom, ready or not, she would soon welcome into her life. On June 23, 1950, she felt the first pangs of labor. She dressed up in her best high heels and a satin maternity dress she’d sewn for herself and walked halfway across the Queensboro Bridge to a little elevator that took her to Welfare Island (as Roosevelt Island was then called), a sliver of land that was home to the city’s “charity hospital.” The hospital complex had been designed by James Renwick, Jr., the architect of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, in a grand neo-Gothic style, but it had been allowed to fall into disrepair, and the surrounding buildings were abandoned and being used by the fire department as a practice location for firefighters to learn their trade. So my first glimpse of the world—into which, Mom always told me, I came barreling feetfirst—was this glorious ruin just outside the hospital’s windows.

  A week later, with me, Patricia Lee Ann Cleveland, in her arms, Mom put on those same high heels and took me home to the 100th Street apartment. The place was so old that one day, while I was asleep in my crib, the ceiling over my head started to crumble. Luckily, Mom whisked me away moments before the whole thing caved in. A few weeks later, a rat jumped into the crib to get milk from my bottle. Mom managed to kill the rat, but that was the last straw. She moved a few blocks south, to a high-rise on Lexington Avenue, on the edge of Spanish Harlem.

  I wasn’t yet two when my father came back to America. He found out where my mom was living and paid us a visit. Mom dressed the two of us in our nicest outfits, and in walked a tall, handsome, long-limbed blond man carrying a can of Carnation evaporated milk (a request from my mother). He kissed my mom, looked at me, and sat down on the sofa. My mom placed me on his knee for the first and last time, saying, “This is your father.” All I remember were his starched white collar, his deep blue satin tie, and his incredibly long legs, a physical characteristic he bequeathed to me. He handed me back to my mom and they chatted for a few minutes. Then he stood up and was gone forever.

  Later, Mom told me he’d gotten married in Sweden soon after leaving New York, and that he’d come back only to tell her he had a son. From that day forward, my mom knew she was on her own when it came to raising me.

  Mom continued the jobs she’d been doing—painting neckties that looked like regular ties from the front but inside featured naked women in the style of Vargas pinups; decorating store windows; and designing subway billboards—but her earning potential was limited by the racial discrimination of the era. She was forced to take drastic measures. When I turned two, my mother sent me to live with her brother, Randolph, out in western Michigan—in other words, in the middle of nowhere—in a little house he’d built by hand. My uncle, a World War II air force officer, and his wife, a stern former WAC (Women’s Army Corps), had no children of their own yet, so they agreed to take me in until my
mom saved up enough money to get on her feet. My uncle loved children; my aunt, less so. Nevertheless, these two provided me with my earliest experience of family life.

  At first things were tolerable, but once my aunt and uncle had a baby boy of their own, my honeymoon (such as it was) was unequivocally over. On the coldest days of winter, my aunt would lock me out of the house and let me back in only when she heard my uncle’s car pulling up the gravel-covered driveway. That crunching sound was my salvation. Once, Uncle Randolph came home early from hunting squirrel—my aunt made it into stew, which, not knowing any better, I thought was delicious—and found me shivering at the front door. He and my aunt had a big fight, and I heard her scream, “I didn’t want her here! She’s not your child, but you love her more than your own son!” My uncle never buckled, though. He was kindhearted and funny, constantly telling me jokes and calling me his little buddy. “We’re going to be happy, okay?” he’d whisper in my ear. He always said we had a deal to be happy. And he hugged me—something my aunt never once did.

  I turned three with no fanfare: no birthday party, cards, or presents. Of course, I was too young to know what I was missing. And in hindsight I realize that plenty of kids had less. Relatively speaking, I was one of the lucky ones. I did get presents the following Christmas, when a man from New York (who departed as quickly as he arrived) brought me two wrapped parcels: a tricycle and a miniature toy stove. I didn’t understand what they meant or who had given them to me.

  That summer Uncle Randolph took me with him to visit his uncle, my grandfather Albert’s brother. My great-uncle Rep was a real American Indian, a Cherokee, who lived in the woods in a log cabin that looked lifted out of a cowboy movie. The only furnishings were a black potbellied stove, a wooden soapbox, a rocking chair, and a World War I army cot. Because Uncle Rep wore a bowler hat with an eagle feather sticking up at the back, I called him Eagle Feather. He smelled of tobacco that he smoked from a homemade corncob pipe, and he’d sit in the rocking chair and talk about President Roosevelt and tell hunting stories while pointing to the black bear and giant moose heads mounted on the walls and the uncannily lifelike stuffed squirrels, bats, and chipmunks scattered around the room. (I later found out that he was a professional taxidermist.)

  I loved these outings; they were my only escape from endless drudgery. My auntie treated me like a servant, insisting that I make all the beds, complete with hospital corners. I tried my best with my tiny three-year-old hands, but she wanted perfection. As soon as a bed was made, she’d bounce a coin on the sheets to make sure they were sufficiently tight. If they weren’t, she’d smack me across the hands and I’d have to make the bed again, by myself. She learned her bed-making technique in the Women’s Army Corps and she wanted to make sure I got the lesson. I did; to this day, every bed I make has crisp hospital corners.

  For dinner, she’d cook frozen peas. If I didn’t eat them all, she’d smack me hard on the back of the head. If I cried, she’d stuff the peas in my mouth, saying, “You’re nothing but trouble. I can’t wait till your mother comes to take you back.”

  My mother? My pre-Michigan memories were murky. I thought she was my mother. So I’d sit there, confused, my mouth filled with peas, scared to death that if I didn’t chew and swallow, she’d hit me again. Uncle Randolph had no idea that she was treating me this way, since he worked long hours at a Ford factory, building trucks on an assembly line.

  Easter Sunday 1954 was a special day for us because my uncle was going to sing in the church chorus; I loved crooning along. I got up early, ate my fried sausages, and went to brush my teeth and comb my hair for church. As I climbed on the bathroom stool, I noticed myself in the mirror for what seemed like the first time. At three and a half, I found my reflection amusing and started making funny faces at myself. Then I saw a hairbrush and had a pretty good time running it through my hair until the brush got tangled up in my fluffy curls.

  My aunt came in to see what was holding me up and immediately hit me across the back before grabbing a pair of nail scissors and lopping off all my curls. “It’s because of you, missy, that I’m late for church,” she said. “So there—you have no more hair to brush.” She yanked me by the arm toward the door. I broke away, but she caught me, spanked me, and dressed me roughly, twisting my arms and neck, then dragged me down the hall to the living room. Sore and hurting, I started to sob. “Shut up, shut up!” she shrieked. “Who wants you?”

  In the living room, my uncle was holding a big package. “Honestly, Randolph,” my aunt said, “sometimes I think you care more about your sister’s child than you do your own.” Then she stormed out of the room.

  “God’s watching you,” he called after her. “Do unto others . . .” Then he turned to me and said, “Don’t worry about her, little buddy. We have to forgive her.”

  I hugged my uncle around the leg while he wiped my tears away with his handkerchief. He showed me the package—a big box wrapped in brown paper and tied with a string—and said, “This is for you.” The box was almost as big as I was, and we opened it together.

  As we tore off the outer wrapping, my pain disappeared. I saw something so beautiful it took my breath away: soft pink tissue paper. I thought that was the present until my uncle pulled out something from under the paper, and in that joyous moment, I swear, my lifelong love of fashion was born. He held up a pink ruffled dress, made of three layers of transparent organza, with tiny golden stars printed on the fabric. He dug deeper into the tissue paper and found a pair of black patent-leather Mary Janes, with tiny pearl buttons on the strap, and two small white gloves. Such pretty clothes! I started giggling with pure delight.

  “This is all for you. It’s from your mother.”

  Those words again: your mother. At that point, the concept of a mother was as unreal and magical to me as Santa Claus or the Good Witch. My uncle handed me the dress and said, “A little star dress for a little star, so you can shine bright.” Then he hugged me and added, “You can wear this to Sunday school today.”

  My aunt threw a fit—we were already late, I was already dressed—but my uncle won the day. “She should wear it,” he said firmly. “It’s Easter Sunday.”

  With a fed-up look, Auntie snatched the dress from my uncle. “Don’t just stand there, Randolph,” she said. “Get your son while I dress her again.”

  My old dress got stuck over my head as Auntie jerked on it to take it off. “Help!” I cried.

  “Quiet! ” Auntie hissed. “Your mother should be dressing you, not me. But no, she’s in New York, doing whatever she wants, while I’m stuck with you. She should be sending money instead of fancy dresses.”

  One hot June day, I was taking a nap in the room where my little cousin and I slept in twin beds. The sounds of woodpeckers and insects and busy forest animals drifted into the room. Everything seemed to be buzzing. Most kids hate naptime, but I liked it because it was a chance to daydream and let my mind wander. I watched a fly dancing in circles around the ceiling, and I felt alive: For the first time I recognized that this was summer. It was like hearing music. I had just turned four.

  Then the door of the room opened. I expected my aunt to be angry because I wasn’t asleep, but she was ever so nice—not her usual self at all. “There’s someone here to see you,” she announced before leaving the room. In a moment, the door opened again and a very pretty lady entered. She was tall and slender, with bobbed hair. She wore large gold hoop earrings, an off-the-shoulder puffed-sleeve blouse, and a horsehair skirt with lots of petticoats underneath. Her tiny waist was cinched with a wide belt, and on her feet were high-heeled sandals. I’d never seen anyone dressed so stylishly. As she beamed me a smile and walked toward me, I noticed the poodle motif on her skirt.

  “Doggie?” I said, pointing. Without saying a word, she held out her skirt and let me touch the felt poodles, with their red sequin eyes and little gold chains as collars. I was entranced by this angel who had come to visit me.

  She sat with me, and I touc
hed her. She didn’t get angry, like my aunt would have. And then she hugged me, wrapping me in the scent of rose perfume. As we broke the embrace, she asked, “Do you know who I am?” I looked down shyly and shook my head. She held my little hands in her long, slender ones, and I noticed the charm bracelet she wore. I withdrew my hands from hers in order to play with the charms. And she let me. “I’m someone who loves you very much,” she said. “And I want you to come live with me.” I stared at her, the charm between my fingers forgotten. “Do you know I’m your mommy?”

  And suddenly I did know. I knew from her hug. I knew because I had asked God for a beautiful mommy, and now here she was.

  My mom stood up, and my aunt walked in. What a contrast! There was the nice, glamorous female on one side and the mean, plain one on the other. When I looked at the glamorous one, she stretched her arms out to me. I flew into them like a lost bird.

  chapter 2

  A ROSE IN SPANISH HARLEM

  My mom, Lady Bird Cleveland, at nineteen, in New York City, 1945.

  My mother, Lady Bird Cleveland, was born on July 24, 1926, to Nannie Edwards from North Carolina and Albert Cleveland from Georgia. The family lived in Cornelia, Georgia, in a house that’s still standing today. Nannie, whom I know only through stories, was born in 1893, three years before Plessy vs. Ferguson made “separate but equal” the law of the land; thirty years after the Emancipation Proclamation; and 274 years after the first Africans were brought to Jamestown, Virginia, as de facto slaves (at that time, slavery as an institution didn’t exist, so technically, they were indentured servants). Nannie’s parents were born into slavery, and she didn’t fare much better. Her family was separated, as slave families often were, and she grew up with no relatives except her sister, Leanna, who became a Sunday school teacher in St. Louis, where she taught a local girl named Josephine Baker to sing and play the piano. Leanna encouraged young Josephine to go into show business as a ticket out of town.