Resilience

by Jessie Close

  Valli and I dutifully enrolled for classes that fall, but neither of us was interested in high school. We began skipping classes; instead we would go to the beach, get high on pot, and meet boys. We would get up each morning, put on bikinis, and walk down Temescal Canyon Road to the ocean.

  Driving is close to breathing in Southern California. I wanted my license so that I could be independent of my now-pregnant sister and her husband. Tina hired a private driving instructor, who arrived in a yellow sports car with a stick shift, which I had requested; I wanted to know how to drive anything and everything. For someone twice my age, he was cute. During our third or fourth lesson, he asked me if I could get him some weed. The next time he showed up, we drove to his office and got high. He tried to put his arms around me, but I pushed him away and we went on with our lesson stoned. Welcome to California in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

  There was a window in my new bedroom that I crawled out of a lot after Tina and Diarmid went to bed. The driveway at their one-story bungalow sloped down to the street, so I would release the brake of the boxy Datsun that my parents had bought for me long-distance and let the car glide down to the street with its driver’s-side door open. Once there, I would crank the engine. Tina and Diarmid never heard me driving away.

  Even though I was only attending classes at school periodically, the times when I did go were torture to me. I hated the noise, the confusion, and the thousands of kids crowded in the halls. The school demanded that I take driver’s ed, even though I already had my license. The instructor gave us numbers from his seating chart. He called on me one day without using my name, only my number. Filled with teen outrage, I slammed my books on my desk, stood up, and started for the door. I never went back. I felt so small, so insignificant; a person of no value. Being a number was just too much.

  Not long after that I overheard Tina talking on the phone to my mother. Tina had put a blanket over her head to muffle what she was saying, but it wasn’t difficult for me to figure it out. Tina was worried that a truant officer was going to knock on her door. Here we go again, I thought. The problem child was acting up. Only this time it was Tina who was frustrated by my antics.

  It turned out that Tina’s worries were unfounded. No one at school missed me.

  VIGNETTE NUMBER TWO

  by Glenn Close

  For years we were a fractured family, widely dispersed and infrequently in touch. The farthest apart we ever were—and for the longest time—was nearly 6,400 miles, the distance between Greenwich and the Democratic Republic of Congo—then Zaire—where my parents lived for sixteen years. Each of my three siblings lived with them at various times, but I never did, although I did have a couple of long visits. For five years, right out of high school, I was with a singing group called Up with People, organized by MRA in order to reach a younger generation. After five years of living out of a suitcase, I finally rebelled and applied to the College of William and Mary. From college, I went straight to New York City and began my career. For years after our parents moved back to the States, when I addressed a letter to them, I would have to stop myself from automatically writing “B. P. [Boîte Postale] 1197, Kinshasa, Zaire.”

  The connection to our parents was tenuous at best. Love was fading ink on thin blue stationery. My siblings and I were living out our individual lives, mostly away from any kind of family life. I always counted myself lucky that I knew what I wanted to do. The burning desire to be an actress gave my life purpose and direction.

  From that unhappy, fractured time, there is one image that is seared into my heart. Jessie was living at the house in Greenwich with Suza, our grandmother’s beloved cook. Jess’s shadow was Rocket, her fabulous Shetland sheepdog. She must have been living there because it was from there that I received a call. Who from? Suza? Or maybe it was Tweedie, a retired nurse who had worked with our father in the Congo. Anyway, I was on the road with Up with People, singing my little brainwashed heart out, trying to save the world, when I received a call saying that Jessie was not in a good way and I should come home. Our parents were far away, in Zaire. So I asked for a meeting with the Up with People leaders and got permission to go home to see what was going on.

  The painful image in my mind is of Jessie, sobbing uncontrollably in my arms. We are clasped together on her bed in her room with the strawberry wallpaper. She is terrified because she has lost her virginity and is totally alone with the grief and guilt. I remember that she was fifteen. I stroke her hair and hold her until the jagged sobs subside. We talked. I don’t know what was said. I was a twenty-year-old virgin, and I had absolutely no knowledge of sex. I had kissed maybe three boys in my life. And I was caught in Up with People, spouting platitude after platitude with impressive sincerity and belief. So that’s what I probably did in my pitiful ignorance, holding Jessie in my arms. I must have been somewhat comforting, because I was family and I had come home for her sake. Did we talk about birth control? Did I suggest she see a gynecologist? I hope I did. We certainly clung to each other, because that is my strongest image. And I’m sure that loyal and loving Rocket, Jessie’s dog, was right there with us on the bed.

  The appalling thing was that I didn’t stay long. I didn’t call back the leaders and say I needed to stay with my sister, that she needed me more than they did, which was the truth. And I had no tools to recognize another truth for the both of us—the truth that I needed Jessie as much as she needed me. I left and went back on the road, sworn to secrecy by my distraught little sister.

  Then I learned a terrible lesson. When one has basically substituted a group with a mission for one’s family, the leaders of that group become substitute parents—dictating the group-family’s culture—sometimes subversively seducing, other times outwardly exhorting everyone to please their leaders, obey the rules, and be completely committed to the mission. One is always thinking of ways to get in their good favor so one will be seen as a leader in her own right and a valued member of that bogus family. In my desperation to please, when I returned to the group, I went straight to the wife of the leader and, as if I were applying for some kind of service badge, told her about Jessie—told her everything, so she would think I was the brave one, the caring one. I broke my promise. Speaking of Jessie’s shame somehow shone a brighter light on my goodness, on what had become my appallingly skewed sense of morality. It was a despicable betrayal, and as I write this, my heart is palpitating with mortification and remorse. Afterward, I was sickened by what I’d done and deeply ashamed. It was the beginning of my desperate need to escape from the clutches of the group and start a real life. However, the image of my little sister, again alone, weeping, with no family around to ease her pain—that is seared into my brain forever.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Valli dropped out of school and began taking acting lessons. We rebelled against everyone and everything. One night while we were speeding down Santa Monica Boulevard, I reached over and grabbed the steering wheel of Valli’s car, causing us to swerve across several lanes of oncoming traffic. Valli freaked out.

  “Don’t ever do that again!” she screamed. “You could have killed us!”

  I didn’t care. I was pushing the limits.

  The two of us drove to Sunset Boulevard looking for pot. Two cute teenage girls wearing tank tops and shorty-shorts hitting the Strip was like two flies nose-diving into a spiderweb. A pimp hustled over to us as soon as we parked at the curb.

  “What you two fine ladies looking to get tonight?” he asked.

  “We’re trying to score some weed,” I declared.

  Breaking into a grin, he said, “Follow me.”

  We fell behind him like children dancing after the Pied Piper. When we reached the seedy building where he lived, Valli slipped into his apartment, but I hesitated at the doorway, keeping our exit options open.

  “Ain’t you coming in?” he asked.

  I shook my head, indicating no.

  He frowned, then disappeared into a bedroom. When he emerged, he wa
s holding a shoe box full of brightly colored pills and Baggies of grass.

  “Let’s party,” he said. “Come on in.”

  “We gotta go,” I said, suddenly afraid.

  We bought some weed then bolted for the car, both of us convinced that we were lucky to escape unharmed yet proud that we’d pulled off our little caper.

  One day Valli stood on the sidewalk outside Tina’s house and called up to me: she wanted to introduce me to a boy. As soon as I saw Brad Sobel, I knew he was trouble. Brad was a dead ringer for Charles Manson, whose photo was in all the papers. In August of 1969, Manson’s followers had committed the Tate and LaBianca murders. Brad had stringy dark brown hair and a scraggly beard. But the real clincher was his Rasputin eyes—yellow-brown, like those of a predator. Like Manson’s, they seemed to look right through you.

  Valli had a crush on Brad, but as soon as he saw me, he lost all interest in her. She was a knockout, with her Hollywood father’s brown Mexican skin and black hair. But I was a California girl with long blond hair that hung well below my waist. A legitimate modeling agency had begun to recruit me.

  By this time, I understood that my looks gave me an advantage. I was learning how to flirt with and manipulate boys. A couple of beers or a joint could turn me into both a flirt and the life of the party. Yet underneath that confident facade, I was still a frightened and lonely girl who felt abandoned and unworthy of love.

  Somehow Brad sensed that. He was quick to tell me exactly what I wanted—and needed—to hear. I’d never met anyone like him. He was everything my parents hated and everything MRA preached against—and that added to his appeal. A cocky rebel, Brad flaunted his antiauthority, antiestablishment, counterculture attitude.

  Not long after we met, Brad and I were walking down a street when he spotted an elderly woman out for an afternoon stroll.

  Running up to her, Brad screamed, “You’re going to die soon! You’re going to die ’cause you’re old!”

  After letting out a frightening laugh, he calmly turned away from the terrified woman and walked back over to me.

  Brad turned me onto Seconal, also known as reds, and amphetamines, which we called cross whites or speed. I was willing to try anything, and Brad used me as his private guinea pig. The speed got us high. The reds brought us down. Brad liked getting high while having sex.

  Valli didn’t come around as much after Brad and I hooked up. I didn’t realize she was angry because I had stolen her boyfriend. It probably wouldn’t have mattered. Although Brad was only a year older than I was, he soon was dominating my life. He talked me out of signing with the modeling agency that wanted me. No one but Brad was going to have me.

  Brad had been adopted as a baby by a doctor and his wife and had grown up in an affluent home. He’d been an impossible child to control. Many years later I would look up the word psychopath and decide that it described Brad perfectly. But at age sixteen, I mistook his need to control me for love.

  When Tina had her baby, my mom came from Africa to see her first grandchild. With Brad’s help, I had built a damning case against Mom and Dad.

  To snub my mother, I decided to stay at Brad’s house once during her long-awaited visit.

  She telephoned me there. “Jessie, you need to come home. It’s getting late.”

  My heart was pounding, but I’d watched and heard how Brad treated his parents, and I channeled his attitude.

  “I’m not coming home,” I declared.

  “What?” Her irritation instantly became anger. “You’re only sixteen, and you’re not spending the night with that boy.”

  If I hadn’t met Brad, I wouldn’t have had the gall to disobey her, but I did.

  “I hate you!” I replied, years of resentment sweeping up inside me. “If loving me means you have to come see me, then don’t love me anymore!”

  My mother was silent and then said, “Okay, if that’s how you feel.”

  I slammed down the receiver, and Brad gave me a smug look. I was empty inside; I wanted my mother to love me, but not like this. It seemed she was never there. I put on a triumphant face for Brad, but inside I was ashamed and felt guilty about what I said to Mom.

  I received a monthly stipend from a trust fund set up by Grandmother Moore. I’d been getting it ever since my parents had cut me loose. When I mentioned it to Brad, he decided my allowance would be enough to allow the two of us to move in together.

  During the summer of 1970, my parents sent word from Africa that they wanted me to visit them there. I wouldn’t go, I told them, unless I could bring Brad along. Mom and Dad reluctantly agreed, so Brad got a passport and we boarded a flight to Kinshasa.

  Mom tried to find something about Brad that she liked, but there was nothing about him that my father found redeeming. I relished their disappointment. I was rubbing their faces in my new independence. Hey, you rejected me. Now I reject you. It was childish, but it felt good.

  Before flying to Africa, I’d told Brad about a scary experience that I’d had going through customs. It happened in Paris, where agents had removed everything from my luggage, even taking my tampons apart, searching for drugs. Because of that story, we hadn’t risked bringing any drugs with us. I thought maybe we could find something in my father’s clinic, but he’d moved it out of their master bedroom into a locked building a short drive away. We waited until my parents left us alone, then we ransacked the house. Brad found Dad’s bush kit, which he used when flying into the field, and discovered several morphine syrettes. He stole them all. I was scared, but Brad assured me that morphine would make me feel wonderful, so I let him shoot me up with a syringe in my thigh. I didn’t know it, but a morphine overdose can cause asphyxiation, and when I began having trouble breathing, I felt as if my heart were slowing and it was going to stop. I began counting my heartbeats, convinced that if I stopped counting, I would die. It was horrible. The next morning I told Brad that I wasn’t going to ever take morphine again. He just laughed.

  After that, we got a driver who worked at the American embassy to score us weed. He arrived in an embassy car, American flag fluttering, and delivered it to us. He gave us so much that we made it into cigars, wrapping it in blue airmail paper. My parents didn’t recognize the smell or that we were high. They were so clueless.

  A few days after we’d settled in, I told Mom that Brad and I were going to use my trust fund to live together when we returned to Los Angeles.

  “No: absolutely not!” she announced.

  I knew my mother well enough to recognize the set of her jaw, the thinning of her lips. There was no arguing with her. She told my father, and they decided it would be better if Brad and I got married—immediately—in Africa rather than face the embarrassment of the two of us living together in sin and my possibly getting pregnant. That’s how some people thought in 1970.

  Perhaps this was also an answer to the eternal question of what to do with Jessie.

  I thought they might be bluffing, trying reverse psychology. If that was their strategy, it backfired.

  “Okay,” I told them. “We’ll get married.”

  Brad liked the idea, probably more because of my trust fund than because of me.

  I was turning seventeen on July 17, so it was decided I would get married ten days after that. Because of my father’s lofty position and his friendship with President Mobutu, my wedding was quickly becoming an event. One of Mobutu’s top generals, General Bumba, volunteered to give “the daughter of Dr. Close” a wedding reception like none that had ever been seen before. Before I knew what was happening, I was shown a guest list of several hundred strangers.

  I started to panic. This was happening too fast. Moving in with Brad had seemed like a good idea. It would get me out of Tina’s house and on my own. Marrying him was entirely different. Didn’t these people realize I was still a teenager?!

  There was something else about marrying Brad that frightened me. He liked sex, which was fine, but he liked it wherever and whenever he wanted it, which was da
ily. What I wanted, or whether I was even interested, didn’t matter. If I complained, he seemed to want it even more and would force himself on me anyway. One night in the living room in the Congo, Brad forced himself on me. I was so scared that my parents would walk in that I had to grit my teeth. I simply waited for him to finish.

  As my wedding day approached, I began having third and fourth thoughts. I wasn’t certain how I was going to get out of this mess, but I wanted out. The answer, I decided, was to swallow a bottle of muscle relaxers I found in my parents’ bathroom cupboard.

  I took them in my bedroom and waited. I began feeling weird and started thinking about Greenwich and Rocky and my horses and how all those things that I loved were gone and how my life was in the toilet. But then I thought of my mother’s face and I got scared. I didn’t want her to find me dead, so I forced myself up and off the bed and made my way to her bedroom.

  “I just swallowed a bottle of pills,” I told her.

  She jumped into action, driving me to Dad’s clinic, where he pumped my stomach, an especially painful procedure. He didn’t seem angry but was clearly concerned, even loving. When he finished, he put me in a private room to recover, and when a Belgian nurse came to check on me, I began sobbing.

  “I have something to tell you,” I blubbered. “But please don’t tell my parents.”

  She promised, so I blurted out: “I don’t want to get married. I don’t want to marry Brad. I’m scared of him.”

  The nurse and everyone else in the president’s camp knew about my wedding. After she left, I felt better. Surely she would do exactly what I’d made her promise not to do—tell my parents. They would force me to call off the wedding. I would be saved.

  My dad came in to see me a few minutes later and decided it was okay for me to go home. Mom was waiting outside. When we got home, they escorted me into their bedroom so we could talk without Brad listening. Ah, I thought. The nurse told them. I started to relax.