So Patrick was gone on vacation. A dozen people arrived at the farmhouse. And Brenda brought two women I'd never met, Bonnie and Molly, both of them already swooning from the ghost energy they felt there. Every few steps, they stopped, swaying on their feet and grasping for a chair or railing to keep from falling to the floor. Okay, all my friends were swaying a little. But for the sane ones it was the red wine. We all sat around the dining room table, a couple lighted candles in the center, and the psychics went to work.
First they turned to my friend Ina. Ina's German and sensible. Her idea of expressing emotion is to light another cigarette. These mediums, Bonnie and Molly, they'd never met Ina before this moment, but they took turns telling her how a woman's spirit was beside her. The woman was named «Margaret» and was showering Ina with tiny blue flowers. Forget-me-nots, they said. And suddenly Ina put down her cigarette and started to cry.
Ina's mother had died of cancer several years earlier. Her mother's name was Margaret, and every year Ina sprinkled forget-me-not seeds on her grave because they'd been her mother's favorite flower. Ina and I have been friends for twenty years, and these are details even I didn't know. Ina never talks about her dead mother, and now she's weeping and asking for more red wine.
Having reduced my friend to a mess, Bonnie and Molly turned to me.
They said a man was near me, standing just over my shoulder. He was, they both agreed, my murdered father.
Oh, please. My father. Here, let's just take a little break from the nonsense.
Anyone could know the details of my father's death. The strange, ironic circle. When he was four years old, his own father had shot his mother, then stalked my father around the house, trying to shoot him. My dad's first memories are of hiding under a bed, hearing his father call and seeing his heavy boots walk past, the smoking barrel of the rifle hanging near the floor. While he hid, his father eventually shot himself. Then, my dad spent his life running from the scene. My siblings also say he spent his life trying to find his mother by marrying woman after woman. Always divorcing and remarrying. He'd been divorced from my mother for twenty years when he saw a personals advertisement in the newspaper. He started dating the author of the ad, not knowing she had a violent ex-husband. Coming home from their third date, they were surprised by the ex-husband, who shot them both in the woman's house. That was in April of 1999.
Really, these details have been published everywhere. The whole mess has gone to trial, and the murderer is sentenced to death. Bonnie and Molly needed no special gifts to know any of this.
But still they persisted. They said my father was very sorry for something he'd done to me when I was four years old. He knew it was cruel, but it was the only way he could think to teach me a lesson. He was a very young man at the time and didn't realize he was going too far. Bonnie and Molly, they held hands and said they saw me as a small boy, kneeling beside a chopping block. My father was standing over me, holding something wooden.
"It's a stick," they said, then, "No, it's not. It's an ax…"
The rest of my friends were quiet, Ina's weeping had shushed their giggling.
Bonnie and Molly said, "You're four years old, and you're deciding something very important. It's something that will shape the rest of your life…"
They described my father sharpening his ax and said, "You're about to be…" they paused, then said, "dismembered?"
Ina's still over there sobbing. The silly cow. I pour another glass of wine and drink it. I pour another. I tell Bonnie and Molly, our guides to the ghost world, to please tell me more. I smirk and say, "No, really, this is fascinating."
Then they say, "Your father is very happy now. He's happier now than he ever was in his life on earth."
Oh, isn't that always the case? A little scrap of comfort for the bereaved. Bonnie and Molly are just the same sort who have preyed on grieving people throughout history. At best they're misguided, deluded fools. At worst, manipulative monsters.
What I don't tell them is, when I was four years old, I slipped a metal washer around my finger. It was too tight to remove, and I waited until my finger was swollen and purple before I asked my father for help. We'd always been told not to put rubber bands or anything tight around our fingers or we'd get gangrene and those bits would rot and fall off. My dad said we'd have to cut the finger off, and spent the afternoon washing my hand and sharpening the ax. The whole time, he also lectured me about taking responsibility for my own actions. He said that if I was going to do stupid things, I should be ready to pay the price.
That whole afternoon, I listened. There was no drama, no tears or panic. In my four-year-old mind, my father was doing me a favor. It would hurt, chopping off my fat, purple finger, but it would be better than the weeks of letting it rot.
I knelt beside the chopping block, where I'd seen so many chickens meet a similar fate, and put out my hand. If anything, I was wildly grateful for my father's help, and resolved never to blame other people for stupid things I'd done.
My father swung the ax, and of course he missed. We went inside, and he used soap and water to remove the washer.
It's a story I'd almost forgotten. Almost forgotten, because I'd never told it to anyone, never re-remembered it by saying it aloud for anyone's reaction. Because I knew other people wouldn't understand the lesson. All they'd see is my father's actions and label it cruelty. God forbid telling my mother-she'd explode with righteous rage. Like my father's earliest memories of the shooting, that day with the ax is my oldest memory, and for thirty-six years it has been my secret. And my father's. And now these silly women, Bonnie and Molly, are telling it to me and all my drunken friends.
No way was I going to give them the satisfaction. While Ina sobbed, I drank more wine. I smiled and shrugged, saying it was all very interesting prattle, nevertheless it was nonsense. A few minutes later, one of the women fell to the floor, ill, and asked for help getting to her car. The party broke up, and Ina and I stayed behind to finish the wine and get blotto.
It was disappointing, really, that stupid party. Watching my friends take this nonsense so seriously. "The lady" never did appear, but Patrick will still call me to complain about his silly ghost problems. Brenda will still shudder and go pale before she announces her goofy premonitions. As far as Bonnie and Molly go, they were very lucky. It was a trick of some kind. Now everyone around me will stay just slightly deluded.
I can't explain Bonnie and Molly's little magic trick, but there's so much in the world I can't explain.
The night my father was killed, hundreds of miles away, my mother had a dream. She said my father knocked at her door, begging her to hide him. In her dream, he'd been shot in the side-later, the coroner would confirm this-and was trying to escape from a man with a gun. Instead of hiding him, my mother told him he'd brought nothing but shame and pain to his children, and she shut the door in his face.
That same night one of my sisters dreamt she was walking through the desert where we grew up. She was walking beside our father, telling him she was sorry they'd grown apart and not spoken recently. In her dream he stopped her and said the past didn't matter anymore. Our father told her he was very happy and she should be also.
That night he died, I didn't have any dream. No one came to me in my sleep to say goodbye.
A week later, the police called me to say they had a dead body and asked if I would come help identify it.
Oh, I'd love to believe in an invisible world. It would undermine all the suffering and pressure of the physical world. But it would also negate the value of the money I have in the bank, my decent house and all my hard work. All our problems and all our blessings could be readily dismissed because they'd be no more real than plot events in a book or movie. An invisible, eternal world would render this world an illusion.
Really, the spirit world is like pedophilia or necrophilia. I have no experience with it, so I am completely unable to take it seriously. It will always seem like a joke.
There are no g
hosts.
But if there are, my dad should damn well tell me himself.
In Her Own Words
"One time," Juliette Lewis says, "I wanted to get to know someone better by writing down questions to him…" She says, "These questions are more telling about me than anything I could write in a diary."
Juliette says this on an antique sofa in a rented house in the Hollywood Hills, a very white and vertical, a very Getty Museum house-stark modern but full of her antique furniture-a house she's renting with her husband, Steve Berra, until they can move into their new home near Studio City. She's holding a handwritten list she's just found, and reads:
"Did you ever stab someone or cut them intentionally with a sharp object?"
She reads: "Do you like asparagus?"
She reads: "Do you have a middle name?"
She drinks chai. She doesn't watch television. She loves playing cards, King's Corner or Kings Around the Corner. She uses that fancy new toilet paper, Cottonelle, which feels like you're using a cashmere sweater. In the basement is Steve's severed head-a very realistic replica left over from a skateboard video and made by the same team that made Juliette's pregnant stomach for the movie The Way of the Gun.
From the list, Juliette reads: "Do cats frustrate you as pets, or do you admire their independence?"
Over the past twenty-four hours, she's talked about her family, her father (Geoffrey Lewis), her career, the Scientology thing, getting married, and writing songs. The songs are important because after years of being scripted, these are her words now.
Juliette's mother, Glenis Batley, says, "Okay, this is the great story."
This over breakfast in Los Angeles. Glenis drinks lots of coffee and has lots of red hair and is still the lovely woman who once modeled for an old photograph Juliette has framed at home.
Glenis says, "I got pregnant, and I was on this incredible diet that was absolutely pure, but I didn't really want anyone around. I noticed the contractions were five minutes apart so I called, and I got this one doctor that I didn't want, and he said that he'd be there right away. He said, 'Whatever you do, don't push. So I went and I sort of reclined, and along comes the next contraction, and I get this irresistible urge to push, and I think, 'One little push won't hurt. So she's born. And she's very noisy. Anyway, I'm holding this infant, and I nearly drop her, and now she's really sure that I don't know what I'm doing, so she's crying. And it's the first light of morning, and the doves are cooing, and up to then I hadn't known what her name was… Juliette!"
She says, "I decided to spell it the French way because the tragedy sucks."
From her list, Juliette reads: "Did you ever break a guy's nose?"
She reads: "Would you say you won more fights than you've lost?"
In her kitchen, grinding coffee beans, Juliette says, "When I was growing up, what influenced me were all these musicals. Like Fame. That was my dream. If I could have a school where they just sing and dance. So, Fame and Flashdance and Grease. Did you ever see the movie Hair? I was sobbing. That's a musical that kills me."
She says, "I was going to be a singer first. Before being an actress, I was going to sing. And I always thought I'd maybe act on the side. I always thought of musicals. Singing and dancing. I want to sing still, so I wrote songs with a friend who's a musician. The biggest fun thing is it's my words.
"The only break that I got was that my dad had me meet this small agency. Say hello. The big problem for actors starting out is getting the agent. Agents want you to have a SAG card, but you can't get your SAG card unless you have an agent putting you up for work. It's a catch-22. So my dad got me into an agent's office, but I still had to audition. I did a reading, and they had to see something in me.
"If you met me when I was younger, I was really quiet. I did a TV show once and people were asking my agent, 'Is she okay? She seems really down. It was just your typical teenage crap. Just because I don't smile at everyone and ask them how they're doing, I have to be sad?"
From her list, sitting on an antique sofa, Juliette reads: "Was there a time when you were mystified by the workings of your penis?"
She reads: "Do you look more like your mother or father?"
The tape recorder goes on and on, listening.
She says, "Even at eighteen I'd go, 'Where is the hidden rule book that says I have to be made up? Because they'd have this chair and all this makeup. I was, like, 'Can't we just take a picture? That's why all my magazines from earlier are not made up and they're not raw. They're in-between, and what shaped me is what they called the 'alternative girl' or the 'kookie girl' because I couldn't vamp up at the drop of a hat.
"When I was younger, they'd have a rack of clothing I'd never wear… They'd have a makeup person… And I'm supposed to represent myself? It was like this weird thing. I'd always wanted to be like my male predecessors, like Brando or De Niro. You take a man, and you just document him in a picture.
"What you exude, your sexuality is just a part of oneself. So a manufactured sex appeal which includes an open mouth and lip gloss and bright colors, this is this American porn sex appeal which has nothing to do with sex. It's like blowup dolls. I could do that, very easily. It's not like I can't. It's just never been my objective.
"Now I realize you're selling things," Juliette says. "So you basically become a rack."
She reads: "Did you date an older woman that you'd consider an older woman, and what did she teach you?"
"What's the first image you have of the female body?"
She asks: "Does the respect factor drop when a woman has breast implants?"
Juliette says, "I had two dreams about De Niro when I was working with him. I think it was all in anticipation of this scene. Because this, in my head, was the big scene. In one dream, we were underwater in a pool and we'd come up for air. He'd go underwater, and I'd go underwater, and we'd glide past each other deliberately, like kids would play in a pool when they like each other. Like a flirtation. But I woke up from that dream, and I had a crush on him.
"In that scene, the little tango dance between our characters, all I knew was he was supposed to walk up to me, and then say, 'Danielle, can I put my arm around you? He's supposed to kiss me in the script, but all Scorsese said was, 'Bob's going to do something. Just go with the scene.
"Before that scene, I knew we were going to film the kiss part. I had just eaten lunch. It was catfish or something, and I was, like, 'Should I rinse my mouth out? But I didn't want to, because that would let him know I thought about it. I don't want to act like I thought about the kiss. You're damned if you do and damned if you don't. So I didn't. I didn't do mouthwash. And then I get to the set, and Bob is right near me, and I smell mouthwash. And then it dawned on me in that moment-I felt like such a little kid-because I thought, 'He's being professional. He's being considerate of me. He's being courteous. But by then it was too late to go back to the trailer. I don't know if I was offensive or not.
"When you watch it, that's the first take. We did it twice. He puts the thumb on my lips. It's very intense because we're only this far from each other, and I'm looking right at him. He starts to put the thumb in my mouth, and she moves it away. And then he persists, and she allows it. And people after that kept talking about the sexuality and burgeoning sexuality at that age, and I never looked at it that way. I looked at it as, before he did the thumb thing he was listening to her, he was validating her in a way that her parents weren't, and then he did this sexual thing. But what you see in my eyes is, after she sucks the thumb and it gets pulled out, she's looking at him like, 'Was that good? Did you like that? It's a pleasing thing."
She says, "His thumb was very clean."
She reads: "Did you go to sleep-away summer camp? (Because some of my greatest childhood memories are from summer camp.)"
She reads: "Do you like roller coasters?"
Steve Berra says, "A long time ago, I was on tour, skateboarding, and I bought Kalifornia at this gas station. I remember trying to imitate a lau
gh that she did in one of her scenes. It had blown me away. Just this one little laugh the character Adele did. It was so natural and truthful, and I remember trying for ten minutes to laugh however she did it. I didn't know her. I couldn't figure out how the hell this person was so good."
A video copy of the movie is playing in their living room, and Juliette laughs, pointing out all the lines she just ad-libbed in the moment.
Juliette says, "On the page, my little character, Adele, had maybe a sentence here and there in a scene. So I met with Dominic Sena and was really taken with his energy and his vision for the movie. He was very enthusiastic. So basically he let me create that character. Ninety percent of what I do in that movie I made up there. That was like a turning point for me, acting-wise, because I had to really come to the table with something, really invent something. To me, my first official character. That little Adele character."
She reads: "What do you imagine happens to someone after the body dies? And do you believe that you are a spirit with a body or just a brain?"
Then, "The follow-up question is: How do you explain Mozart writing symphonies at seven? (Because I think that's a prime example of creative ability being spirit-generated.)"
Juliette says, "When you have good actors to work with, you guys just sort of create this alternate universe of pretended reality. It's the unexplainable. I just think it's magic. It's pure belief. My security blanket is the camera. I know the camera's universe. It's capturing only this much. I have a certain security or certainty that I can execute stuff in that space. It's the condensed reality of the camera.
Stranger Than Fiction (True Stories) Page 11