Brando, Songs My Mother Taught Me

  “Why don’t we go upstairs and fuck?” She answered, “Why not? Let’s go!”

  That was the beginning and the end of the seduction.

  Weonna was born only about a hundred miles from my birthplace. She had written a little, done some acting, modeled for a while, made some money in real estate. She was an extraordinary piece of construction, with white skin, soft, natural blond hair, freckles, a lot of moles, green eyes, and a voice with the slightest hint of an Irish accent, a hand-me-down from her mother, who was from Ireland. She made me laugh harder than any woman I’ve ever known. She was quick to understand and laughed at me a lot, too. Like my mother and grandmother, she had a sense of the absurd, thought the outrageous and imposed no limits on her imagination. She was amusing, witty, intelligent, eccentric. But she was also troubled. She distrusted people, drank too much and occasionally used drugs—not hard drugs, but pills. It was spasmodic; she would use them awhile, then swear off them, be clean for a while, then start again, and I’d have to take her to a hospital because it was the only place where she could stop. Still, we had a lot of fun together, and even now I often laugh at what we laughed at then.

  One night I took Weonna on a mission to steal a stack of pipe, and before the night was over, she nearly had a heart attack. Not far from where I lived in California, a large parcel of land owned by the Teamsters’ Union had remained undeveloped for years while contractors erected houses all around it; and if I didn’t feel like going to sleep yet, sometimes I’d drive over there in my Jeep and cruise around the property with my lights out for the fun of it. One day construction crews arrived, set up equipment on the property and started work on what looked like a big development. But after a while, everything stopped abruptly and the workers left, leaving behind stacks of building materials, including a pile of three-inch irrigation pipe. I was doing some work on my house and needed some pipe, so I took Weonna to the site at about two A.M., hooked up my Jeep’s winch to several pieces of pipe and began reeling it in. Within a few minutes, a helicopter was overhead sweeping a bright spotlight back and forth across the construction site. I dropped my pipe wrench, and when the wavering cone of light settled on the Jeep, I waved frantically to it, as if to say, “Please come down here, I need help.”

  I had no idea what I was going to say to the cops, but it was the first thing I could think of. Then an amplified voice boomed out of the sky: “Stay where you are. Do not move. You are under police surveillance.”

  I kept waving and smiling like a stranded sailor who has been spotted by a passing ship after spending half his life on a desert island. A minute or two later, a police car with flashing lights skidded to a stop about fifty feet from us.

  Among the problems I had to deal with was the fact that the cable from the winch on my Jeep was still attached to the stack of pipe. I whispered to Weonna, “Whatever I say, agree with me. Agree with me when I tell them what happened. We’re going to have to tell a few lies.”

  “I’m not lying,” she said. “You’re the one who got us into this, and I’m not going to be part of it.”

  I thought her disloyalty unbecoming, but I didn’t get a chance to argue with her, for just as I was about to say something, the police car hit us with a spotlight and neither of us could see anything. I tried to put a look of happy relief on my face and hollered, “Thank God you found us! I thought we’d be here all night.”

  When they saw that a woman was with me it apparently eased the cops’ sense of alarm, and one of them approached the Jeep. I thanked him profusely and said, “I took a wrong turn on Mulholland and ended up out here in the boondocks and got stuck in the sand. I tried to use the winch by tying up to that stack of pipe to see if I could bootstrap myself out, but the wheels kept spinning. Would you call a tow truck to get us out of here? I’d be very grateful.”

  All the while, I was hoping he wouldn’t look at the ground, because if had he would have realized that no one could get stuck in a quarter inch of sand. He started walking back to the police car to call a tow truck, but before he’d taken four steps, I said, “Wait a minute, Officer. Before you call, maybe I should try it one more time.”

  I started the Jeep, pressed the throttle all the way to the floor until the engine roared like a threshing machine at harvest time, then put it in gear and let out the clutch very slowly with one foot still firmly on the brake. The Jeep shook, shuddered, rocked and slowly started to move as I let out the clutch. After I’d driven a few feet, I got out and told the officer, “I think I made it. Boy, that was lucky. Thanks a lot, I really appreciate your help. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t come.”

  He accepted my thanks and drove away. I followed him back to the road and we went in opposite directions on Mulholland Drive while Weonna’s cold silence let me know what she thought of me. I was feeling really pleased with myself until in my mirror I saw the police car do a U-turn and start coming after us. Oh, shit, I thought, he’s figured it out.

  The car raced up behind us with its flashing lights and I stopped. By now Weonna was bug-eyed, almost shaking. One of the policemen came over to my window with a flashlight and said, “You know, Mr. Brando, my wife would never forgive me for not getting your autograph.”

  “Why, sure, Officer,” I said, wanting to kiss him, “do you have a pen and a piece of paper?”

  51

  MOST OF MY LIFE, I was a very jealous person, but I tried hard to hide it. I was afraid that if someone knew I was jealous, he or she would use it against me. I’m different now; I’ve realized that jealousy is a pointless, wasteful emotion I can’t afford, but it wasn’t easy for me to give up the emotions of a lifetime.

  Weonna was as jealous and mistrustful as I was, and the other women in my life made her angry—sometimes, though not always, with justification. Late one night, before I installed barbed wire and an electrified security fence around my house, we were awakened by a noise and saw a woman standing at the foot of the bed.

  “Who are you? What do you want?” I asked, holding the covers up around my neck like ZaSu Pitts in an old movie.

  “Who am I?” she responded. “Who is she?”

  She pointed her finger at Weonna, who was as startled as I was. I couldn’t collect my thoughts and kept saying, “Who are you? What do you want? Who are you?”

  “What do you mean, who am I? I suppose you’re just saying that because you don’t want her to know who I am.”

  Weonna was starting to look at me suspiciously.

  “Look,” I said, “I don’t know who you are or what you’re doing here.”

  “I suppose you didn’t see me at the bus stop this afternoon.”

  “What bus stop?”

  “What bus stop?” She laughed sarcastically.

  “Look, you’re going to have to get out of my house right now.”

  “I’m not going anyplace,” she said. “You’re getting rid of her, that’s what’s going to happen.”

  “Okay, I’m calling the police.”

  Weonna got out of bed shaking her head in disgust; she thought that I knew the woman. I grabbed her and said, “Wait a minute, Weonna … wait one minute. I don’t know this woman. I’ve never seen her before in my life.”

  Then the bed jiggled and I turned back and saw that the woman had stripped off her clothes and slipped naked into bed beside me.

  “Would you get out of here?” I said. “Now. How dare you?”

  I was mustering the most theatrical show of vocal force and righteous indignation that I could manage at that hour of the night, but Weonna said wearily, “Never mind, I’ll go. There’s no sense getting excited, I understand. I’ll go.”

  “Weonna, Weonna … I do not … I …” I was as tongue-tied as if I’d been hit over the head with a skillet by a linebacker. Finally I managed to pick up the phone beside the bed, wave it at Weonna to show her I was serious, and said, “I’m going to call the police, who will come here and remove this woman. You have to believe me.”

 
I reached over and pushed the naked body out of my bed. She fell halfway to the floor as I said, “Get out of here,” then dialed the police station, told the desk officer that someone had broken into my house and wouldn’t leave, and asked him to send a policeman to take her away.

  In five minutes, a patrol car arrived with two policemen. “Do you want to press charges?” one asked as they escorted the woman out of the bedroom after she’d put her clothes on.

  “No,” I said, “just take her away.”

  I spent the next fifteen minutes insisting to Weonna that I didn’t know the woman. Her response was an ever-so-slight curl of her lips denoting suspicion and disbelief, as if the incident confirmed her conviction that I was unfaithful and a masterful liar and manipulator. I couldn’t blame her because in those days that’s exactly what I was. Still, I finally managed to calm her down and we drifted back to sleep. We were snuggled together an hour later when we heard another noise and woke up simultaneously to find that the woman was back in the room, her face ablaze with anger. She glared at Weonna and said, “Haven’t you gotten rid of her yet?”

  I said, “Look, we’re not going through this again. I’m going to call the police, and this time you’re going to go to jail; this time I’m going to press charges. Do you understand?”

  I dialed the police department and talked to the same sergeant I’d spoken to the first time. “Excuse me, Officer, this is Marlon Brando calling again. The woman you took off the property is back and she’s annoying me, so please come and get her.” I was stuttering and stammering like Edward Everett Horton.

  Very slowly and with deliberation, the policeman said, “Mr. Brando, we have a lot of things to do tonight; we’re having a pretty busy night. A lot of things that we have to deal with are really serious, and coming and getting women out of your house is not one of them.”

  I put a stern look on my face, glanced at the woman and said, “All right, Officer, thank you very much. Thank you,” and hung up the phone.

  “They’ll be here in twelve minutes,” I said. “Now this time you’re going to jail. I will press charges, you should know that, and you’ll go to jail for at least a year.”

  At that the woman ran out of the room and I never saw her again.

  Another time, Weonna and I were in bed when she woke me with a hard poke in the ribs. Startled, I was about to complain when she mouthed, “There’s someone in the house.”

  “How do you know?”

  Weonna had extraordinary hearing. She shook her head to indicate that she knew she was right. I got out of bed and went to a closet to get a shotgun I used to keep in the house; then, naked, I walked into the hall, unclear what I was looking for or what I would do if I found it. I remember thinking, You’re naked, Marlon, and what’s going to happen if they see you like this? They’re not going to take you very seriously. I certainly wouldn’t take a naked guy seriously if I was a burglar.

  I walked down the hall into the living room, still gripped by this thought, but couldn’t find anybody, so I returned to the bedroom with my shotgun and told Weonna that the coast seemed clear. She looked at me with a frightened expression and mouthed, “They’re in the bathroom …”

  In the bathroom I found an attractive young woman hiding behind the door. The sliding glass door to the deck was open, and she had come through it. I pointed the gun at her and said, “As quietly and quickly as you can, lie down and put your face in the rug—now.” She started to say something, but I said, “Do as I tell you.” She followed orders and went down on the floor and pressed her face into the carpet. Her purse was in her hand and I said, “Push your purse toward me very gently,” which she did. I opened it and looked through her wallet, which was very neat. I found a Screen Actors Guild card and said, “Are you an actress?”

  The woman, whose nose and mouth were buried in the carpet, mumbled a muffled, “Yes.”

  “What are you doing in my bathroom at three A.M.?”

  Still mumbling, she answered “I thought you might have some work for me.”

  “This is probably the least likely place to find work,” I said. “What you’ve chosen to do is highly inefficient and very unprofessional. Stand up. Here’s your purse and there’s the door. Don’t ever come back here again and don’t ever, for your own welfare, do this to anybody else because it’s dangerous.”

  I don’t know if she ever found a job in the movies.

  Those two weren’t the only women who have shown up at my doorstep. The lure of celebrity does strange things to people. One woman camped outside my house in the rain for three days while a young Tahitian boy named Alphonse was visiting me. Because of an accident at birth, one of Alphonse’s feet had turned inward, and I had arranged for him to come with his grandmother to Los Angeles to have corrective surgery. Actually she was not his real grandmother, but an elderly woman who looked after him and whom he called grandmother. One day she told me a woman was waiting outside to see me. I told her I wasn’t expecting anybody, and that I made it a rule never to talk to strangers who showed up at my door. But I looked out the window with my binoculars and, sure enough, there was a woman standing in the driveway. Deciding that she was another nut, I told Grandmother that I didn’t want to see her. Three days later, despite a tremendous rainstorm, the woman hadn’t moved, and by now Alphonse’s grandmother was very upset. She didn’t understand it; she had never seen anything like it and pleaded with me, “Please let her in, she must be very cold and wet. I want to give her some food.”

  Grandmother was so compassionate that I knew I had to do something, so I went outside and spoke to the woman. She was very striking-looking, a mulatto in her early thirties who spoke with a clipped British accent. Her clothes were wet and she was chilled, so I invited her into the den at one end of my bedroom where a fire was blazing. Grandmother gave her a blanket and a cup of coffee, and as she warmed herself, she told me her story. After seeing One-Eyed Jacks, she said she had gone to a cafe and ordered a cup of coffee. While she was sipping it, she said she saw the reflection of her eyes in the coffee, then a reflection of my eyes—her eyes changed to mine as she was looking into the coffee—and thereafter she saw my eyes everywhere she went and believed that some kind of spirit had turned her into me. She told me all this in a very formal and dignified way.

  I asked where she was from and she said, “I was born in New York City.”

  “Where?”

  “Harlem.”

  “Then how is it that you speak with a British accent? Have you been living in England?”

  “No, I’ve never been there.”

  “Have you been around English-speaking people?”

  “My boyfriend is from England.”

  Apparently she was affecting his accent, and she did it so well that she could have probably gotten a job as an announcer with the BBC. She said that she had come to my house under orders from her psychiatrist. After she told him she was me, he advised her to see me in the flesh and then she would know she was wrong.

  “It must have taken a lot of courage to do this,” I said. “As you can plainly see, I am not you, I am somebody else; I’m a different person. For some reason, you needed to imagine that I was you.”

  At first she was disbelieving and confused, but slowly she began to relax. She was quite attractive, and for a moment or two I had evil fantasies, since my bed was only a few steps away. But I’d grown up a smidgen by then and chased such thoughts out of my mind, and eventually she left. I gave her my phone number and she called several times afterward, usually frantically, when she’d had a relapse and again thought she was me, so her psychiatrist would advise her to call me to confirm that it wasn’t true. She also called after she read that I was in the hospital, and I assured her that I was all right and that she didn’t have anything to worry about.

  These calls went on for years and years, then gradually tapered off. The last one was several years ago, and now she was speaking with a German accent. I asked her, “Have you got a new boyfriend?
”

  “Yes.”

  “Is he German?”

  “Yes, how did you know?”

  For several years I saw Weonna off and on and we loved a lot and fought a lot. She was a tough woman and gave as good as she got. She had an unerring sense of how to prick my insecurities and jealousies, and we had ferocious fights. I suppose neither of us was willing or able to change our ways. At our last meeting we stood toe-to-toe and really destroyed each other emotionally. It was a grisly collision: Weonna, to get back at me because she said I had hurt her, had seduced one of my sons. I didn’t explode. I simply realized that it was over, and that there was no possibility of anything between us again. After what she did, it was impossible to patch it up. I reassured my boy that he should not feel guilty, that what happened had been a maneuver by her to stick a dagger in my heart, and that he had no reason to feel any remorse.

  For about five years, I didn’t see Weonna, though I thought about her often and from time to time heard news about her: she had moved to New Mexico, had given up acting, had done well in real estate and had entered law school. Then I heard that she had moved back to Los Angeles and that someone had seen her at a party. I suspected our paths would cross and I wondered with some excitement what would happen if they did. When I saw her at a party at a friend’s home, my stomach jumped as if I’d been punched in the gut by a heavyweight. I screwed up my courage, went over, put my hands around her softly and said, “I’m very glad to see you, Weonna.” She blushed, gave me her telephone number and we started talking on the phone again. She was as funny as ever, and to me there’s nothing in this world as seductive, or that gives me such a sense of life, as laughing. It’s medicinal.

  Most of the women in my life have been women of color, like Ermi: Latin American, Caribbean, Indian, Pakistani, Chinese, Japanese. Weonna was the exception, an Irish potato, and unlike the others we had a lot in common because we grew up in the same part of the country, spoke the same cultural language, had similar histories, liked the same jokes—and fought the same way.