Leaving Home

by Anne Edwards

  I scooted the dogs out of the way and we sat down, Nick in the chair, me on the couch facing him, the front door left open so that we could hear his friend when he came up the stairs to our hallway. That was about a half hour later and by then Nick had regained his composure, although a hangdog look haunted his large dark brown eyes.

  The next morning there was a note under my door which read: “Dear Anne—I never knew a neighbor could also be such a good friend. Thank you, Nick.”

  My life was filled with its own confusion. Rod was still very much a presence, the flame still bright. There is a sense of renewal in a fresh relationship, the chance to start over once again. Down deep it is difficult to believe this, for there is always too much back baggage to carry with you. Rod and I each had personal issues to work out and neither of us pressed the other for a quick resolution. My relationship to Rod—now defined in my head as “the other woman”—was previously unknown to me, and one to which I was not adapting well. I had always been so moralistic about such alliances, had taken a strong feminist stand. There was nothing equal about being the other woman—the word “other” trumped it. Nor was it for his betrayed wife, who I was sure knew nothing about us. I did not believe that Rod had actually lied to me in the beginning, just twisted the truth. He and Carol were obviously having some difficulties. He had said they were separated. And neither of us at that time realized we were spiraling on fast track into an affair. Sex played its part. But the danger was our natural compatibility, how comfortable we were with each other, our shared understanding of the creative process. I believed that, against my better judgment, I was in love with him. He conveyed the same message to me.

  On days when both of us were fairly free, he would collect me in Excalibur and we would head for the ocean. We knew every small restaurant on the patch of the Pacific Coast Highway from Santa Monica to a few miles past Malibu. Sometimes, but not always, we would spend an afternoon or an evening at the house in Malibu. I called it the mystery house. Rod (under oath, he stressed) never revealed to me who owned it, only that the owner, a single friend and colleague, was in Europe making films and pending final divorce dictates was leaving it empty. It was furnished in what I call “beach style”—lots of bamboo and white upholstery. The front windows where the living room and master bedroom were situated had floor-to-ceiling windows looking out to a deck and sand and sea. A housekeeper came in once a week but almost all personal belongings had been removed. I say “almost” because on the bedroom bureau was a photograph in a silver frame of a lovely little girl of nine or ten. The owner’s daughter. That picture haunted me. Why had he left it? Where was that child? The story mind in me could not let it go.

  I never saw evidence of anyone else using the house, and the housekeeper did keep small edibles and drinks for us in the refrigerator. We inhabited it when we were there. Moved freely through it. Spent afternoons or evenings on the deck looking out at the vast sea to the horizon. When the weather was good, night was the most beautiful. Just us and the stars and the sound of the water rising and falling onto the sand and then ebbing into silence. We spoke two or three times a day when we did not have a meeting planned. What we never discussed was the elephant in the room. This could not last forever. Either an end or a resolution had to come. We were both married with children, although in my case my children were grown and Leon’s distance and my insistence that we were definitely to view this as a separation, was less inhibiting. Considering my long absence, I did not expect Leon to remain celibate. I am not sure what his expectations were of me. But I knew I could not publicly flaunt an affair, nor be dishonest to him. There was no way I wanted him to find out through an outside source who might have seen Rod and me together. I wrote him that I was seeing someone but did not say who it was. I added that it was a caring relationship but that I was not sure it would ever go any further, which was the truth. He did not acknowledge the information, ignored it completely, but his letters immediately changed from sarcastic missiles to ones of hope for our reconciliation. (“Don’t forget the good times we have shared, the help we have been to each other,” he wrote in May ’68, “the reawakening to a sexual unity.”)

  Rod’s status was a different matter. Away from LA, in Chicago and New York, we had just been two people fresh with love, learning what we could about each other. We still were infatuated with each other. But, once we returned to Los Angeles, our relationship had taken on a clandestine aura. If we did meet in the city, a member of Rod’s staff was present and his attitude was friendly and yet detached. The first time this occurred I informed Rod that this was not my style and found it demeaning. Why meet anywhere that we could not be ourselves? I understood his need not to bring undue pain to Carol, especially if he was unsure of where we were heading. He was apologetic, the gentle touch, a kiss on my eyelids. “Look, you owe me nothing but honesty,” I told him. “I should think that you owe Carol that as well.”

  “I can’t leave Carol right now,” he replied.

  “And I never have, nor never shall, ask you to do so. I did believe, mistakenly, it seems, that you had made a decision otherwise before we met.” I suggested we stop seeing each other for a time. The next day he called to arrange a private evening in Malibu.

  There was no doubt now in my mind that Rod, although strongly attracted to me, still loved Carol. It is possible that someone can love two people at the same time, but when there is a history and children involved, the outcome is loaded. I had appeared in his life at a time when he had experienced great changes. Although critically successful in his pre-Hollywood years when he was gaining a reputation as a writer of fine television dramas, he had not earned a great sum of money. Then Hollywood called, and in the past few years he was transformed by his own unique talent into one of the very few celebrity writer-producers, recognized in public, lauded by his peers, and rich beyond anything he might have imagined for himself. Carol had shared those earlier, tougher years with him even before his good fortune in New York and he was fully conscious of her contribution as a mother and as a helpmate to him in his career. Indeed, I admired and respected him for this. Yet, here I was in a situation that I had vowed I would never enter into, that I believed was demeaning, for me, for any woman. However, I did not want to make a decision or usher him into one that either of us might regret, for in many ways we were good for each other both creatively and in supplying what was apparently currently missing from both our lives.

  What saw us through this period were the demands of our current projects, his more multiple and complicated than mine, but no less engaging. The book I was writing—a political thriller set in Paris during the recent student riots—had been contracted as the first novel of a three-book deal for Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, my new publishers (a switch made, because Thomas Wallace, who had bought The Survivors for Holt, Rinehart and Winston, had taken over as editor in chief for C, M & G). My protagonist was a famous Russian ballet dancer whose defection in Paris coincides with the protests. The character was loosely based on Rudolf Nureyev who, in 1961, had defected at Le Bourget Airport in Paris with the help of the French police and then gone on to dance with a Parisian ballet company. The story’s background required mounds (and months) of research to ensure as much accuracy as possible. I also had to brush up on my French, which had never been good and would never get better! All in all—not an easy load. Jay was a godsend. He seemed to know when to be available and when to get so involved that I didn’t know he was in the apartment. He was a terrific sounding board, and—as I had a homosexual character in my story—he was able to tell me when I had it right and when I had it wrong.

  For the first time in my life, money was not an issue, which helped because Cathy would be entering university in a year’s time. Michael had been on a full scholarship at Berkeley but was about to start a career, he hoped, in some facet of the political arena. His eyes were set on becoming a member of senator Robert F. Kennedy’s staff. Kennedy was presently campaigning to win the Democratic no
mination for president. Earlier, when Lyndon Johnson made his stunning announcement that he would not run for another term, vice president Hubert Humphrey had entered the race along with senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota. Senator Kennedy had not declared his candidacy until mid-March. As the brother of the country’s assassinated past president, John F. Kennedy, he had national sympathy in his favor. But his political objectives were not viewed kindly by Wall Street and the business world as he stood on a ticket of both racial and economic justice, nonaggression in foreign policy, and decentralization of power and social equality. Only forty-two, his youth, debating skills, and passion had quickly won him the popular support of young voters. His speeches were lively and laced with a brash candor. Michael (still not old enough to vote) believed strongly in Kennedy’s ideals, and he and his peers and cobelievers were, after all, the future. I could not help but feel that Kennedy’s nomination and election were essential to our country—most especially because it looked as if Richard Nixon would be the Republican candidate. I respected the two other Democratic candidates, but I did not think either of those men had the ability or smarts to win against Richard Nixon, who was bound to use every dirty trick in the book to overcome his opponent.

  I had a vivid memory of Nixon on the campaign trail in 1952 when he was Dwight Eisenhower’s vice presidential running mate, for this was the last election I had voted in before leaving home for my unexpected long residency in England. I also recalled his disingenuous televised “Checkers” speech to rebut charges that he had taken payoffs from California businessmen during his term in office. Checkers was the name of a cute cocker spaniel (who shared the camera with him) presented to the Nixons for their daughters: the message being that gifts given to him by men seeking his patronage had nothing to do with graft but were extended in true friendship. Sure! Going further back—there had been his disgraceful vicious denigration of Helen Gahagan Douglas when she ran against him for a Senate seat.

  The Republicans had the long, costly war in Vietnam, for which they blamed Lyndon Johnson, as a weapon. But Robert Kennedy had become connected to his countryman’s pain—blacks, Latinos, returning veterans, the farmworkers who were vastly underpaid, and young people who needed financial help to gain a college education. Among liberals, a great fear had lodged itself. Robert Kennedy represented a last hope for the nation they so loved. His momentum was in high gear when he arrived in Los Angeles in early June having just won the California Democratic Primary, a crucial defeat for his closest Democratic contender, Eugene McCarthy. It looked like nothing could stop his bid for the nomination.

  In the early dawn of June 5, the sun not yet fully up, my bedside telephone rang. It was Michael to tell me, in a voice near to breaking, that Robert Kennedy was dead. Around midnight of the previous evening he had been shot in the head at close range as he made his way from the Ambassador Hotel Ballroom (where he had addressed many hundreds of his supporters), through a crowded passageway with employees and what was assumed to be a pack of devoted fans, to the hotel kitchens to greet the serving staff. Upon being hit, he had fallen immediately to the floor, blood streaming from his wound, and had been taken by ambulance to the hospital. A short time later Robert Kennedy was pronounced dead. The assassin was a twenty-four-year-old Palestinian, Sirhan Sirhan, who might or might not have shot him due to his support of Israel, or was just a crazy person.

  The country was once again in mourning for a man who offered great ideals, who died too early to see his dreams become reality. (“Let the dream not die,” Robert Kennedy’s one surviving brother, Ted Kennedy, said at his funeral.) Michael had lost his hopeful leader but was asked to be the aide to former New York congressman Charles Goodell, chosen by that state’s Republican governor, Nelson A. Rockefeller, to fill Robert Kennedy’s Senate seat. Michael was not sure how good a fit this was, for Goodell was a Republican, although he had been considered pretty much a liberal and he was a strong advocate in a withdrawal from Vietnam. (As a senator, while Michael worked for him, Goodell’s liberal views came to the fore. After serving out Kennedy’s unfinished term, he would gain the nomination of both the Liberal and the Republican Parties in the next senatorial election, a first in Washington politics.)

  I had given Michael money as a graduation gift to buy a car. He purchased a shiny red two-passenger British MG coupe sports car, in which he crammed his belongings into the small space behind the seats and in the minuscule trunk, and took off by himself to drive cross-country—king of the road—to his new life in Washington, DC. That car would prove to be a bonding agent for Michael and the senator—for Goodell did not drive, and he and Michael zoomed about DC and over highways together in his little two-seater for several years while Michael honed up his skills as a speechwriter and campaign manager.

  One morning Jay came up from his office to my bedroom-cum-office.

  “You said no interruptions or phone calls but . . .”

  “But what?”

  “There is a man calling from Florida. It’s about your father. . . .”

  “He’s had an accident?”

  “The man is a jeweler. I think you better speak to him.”

  Jay left and I picked up my line. It turned out that my father was buying a $2,000 diamond engagement ring and had informed the store owner that I would pay the bill, as I was in charge of his finances. This was difficult for me to process. An engagement ring? Two thousand dollars! And I was in charge of my father’s finances? Well, I did, indeed, send my father a monthly amount to help cover his expenses, for he was not well enough to go back on the road (or ever would be). He also had a monthly Social Security check and a small stipend from the Veterans. That was the extent of his income. Although my father and I seldom spoke, I thought I might have heard from my aunt Bea (who seemed to know more than I did) if he had a serious lady friend. At first I thought it was a scam and said so. The jeweler was indignant and put my father on the line.

  There was that bravado in his voice. “How are you, darling! [no pause as he continued] Yes, I have met a wonderful woman and we want to get engaged and to do it properly. She is a very fine lady,” he assured me.

  “If you want to get married, I certainly will not stand in your way,” I replied. “But I will in no way pay for a diamond engagement ring when you could not even pay for my mother’s funeral! The answer is no!” I was immediately sorry I had mentioned the last, but anger and resentment were building inside me.

  He kept talking, repeating what a fine lady she was and how he knew I would be pleased to welcome her into the family.

  “The answer is no,” I repeated and hung up.

  A half hour later, the “fine lady” was on the telephone. She hardly had finished a greeting when she began berating me. How could I treat my father this way? A man who had taken such good care of me throughout my life and who had trusted me with his sizeable fortune for me to invest for him, and now would not let him have access to it! She had a high-pitched Boston accent. “You, dear lady, have been lied to,” I finally managed when she took a breath. “I know my father can be charming and convincing, but he has zilch. He has certainly not supported me throughout my life. He has been a compulsive gambler. Probably, he still is. We don’t talk much.” I then told her the amount I sent him every month and said if she still wanted to marry him, I would not stop the payments, but unless he was ill and needed special care I could not be counted on for a penny more. “I am sure that you are the liar—and a bitch!” she shouted into the phone, and then the fine lady hung up.

  The short end of it was that they never got engaged or married and my father, when he called or wrote, never mentioned the incident to me again.

  Returning to Los Angeles after so many years had taken some acclimation and compromise on my part. I adjusted well to the physical changes (as one had to do with any major city in the world after an absence of nearly twenty years)—the luxury tower apartment houses stretching along Wilshire Boulevard to Santa Monica, the citification of Westwood Villa
ge, which was still just a college conclave when I departed, and the massive glass-and-mirrored corporate buildings standing butt to butt that had replaced the once vast back lots of MGM and 20th Century-Fox studios, the area newly christened Century City. The era of the giant movie lots with their replicas of ghost towns, Paris streets, London’s creepy alleyways, and other fantasy-inspired foreign lands had vanished as films were now shot largely on location, audiences able with the huge growth in travel to have seen the real McCoy so that mock-up imitations cheapened the appearance of the film. Movie stars no longer reigned supreme, their big-screen allure diminished with the advent of television. The city had been unwrapped of its earlier glamour.

  Still, the sun shone down benevolently on its worshipers as it always had. The Hollywood sign had not been pried from its position on the Hollywood Hills, and Beverly Hills and the surrounding upscale area seemed almost untouched, certainly unaware of the battlefield east Los Angeles—only twenty miles away—had become with gang clashes between Latinos, blacks, and the lawmen who seemed to beat and shoot before full knowledge of a crime was known.

  I had lived in gentrified Beverly Hills for most of my youth, my small life centering on a corner that was now occupied by the modern, much-expanded Chasen’s. There had been a family “scandal” in the mid-1940s that had altered the close relationships between my uncle Dave and his siblings. Not that familial love was gone. It was aplenty. But he had a new home which no one came to. Here is the reason told to me by Marion, who had been told firsthand by my aunt Theo, neither of whom were given to exaggeration.

  One afternoon when the kitchen workers in Chasen’s were preparing for the dinner guests and the restaurant was closed, my aunt Theo decided she wanted to talk to her husband about something and crossed from the small bungalow behind where I had lived with them as a child and which was still their home, and entered by the rear kitchen restaurant door.