One evening, Linda and Phil went out together to have dinner and to see the movie Fiddler on the Roof. On the way home, Linda stopped for gas, remembering only belatedly that the gas station attendant was someone whom she had dated. Knowing how intensely jealous Phil was and wanting to avoid a confrontation, she got out of the car to talk to the attendant because:
I didn’t want him sticking his head in the window and saying something that would make Phil angry. He was angry anyway because I got out of the car to talk to this guy and after I drove out of the gas station and back on the road, Phil suddenly reached over and grabbed the wheel of my car and steered it into the path of the oncoming traffic. I was terrified and fought with him for control of the car; at the last possible second I was able to pull it back to the right side of the road. We were near Phil’s apartment. I pulled up in front and, heart pounding, ordered him out of the car. He had a sling on his arm from having dislocated his shoulder a few weeks before. He grabbed my windpipe with his slinged hand and began punching me in the face with his free hand. We struggled again and I finally broke free and ordered him out of my car. I determined at that point that I wasn’t safe and wanted to have nothing further to do with him, at least not until there was someone else in his life on whom he could focus that terrible intensity.
Phil wrote to Linda afterward:
I have so much regretted the trouble between us, Linda, that caused the breakdown of our relationship. You are a dear, good, wild, funny, terrific person….
But later Phil told some of his acquaintances that the reason he and Linda broke up was that she attacked him. Phil’s account of the breakup to Tim was different still. He told Tim that Linda had led him on, and then when he proposed to her, she was angry because he’d “ruined” the nice relationship they’d had. He told Tim he’d struck her once in hurt and anger.
Phil’s collection of letters to Linda forms part of a manuscript of a book of his letters titled The Dark-Haired Girl. Following the letters to Linda, Phil records a dream: “TERRIBLE—a child, a naked baby in a frying pan, suffering. The child is on fire; flames surround it and it burns shiny red. It leaps into the ring of fire beneath the frying pan to escape; but it has made a mistake. It is now down below, in hell, in the flames themselves, from which it was trying to escape.”
Phil, Joel, and Tim met the women in the next apartment, Mary Lou Malone, Mary Wilson, and Cindy Stanlow. The night they met they went out on a date to see A Clockwork Orange. They became close friends.
Another new friend was K. W. Jeter, a young science fiction writer who had studied Phil’s works and revered Phil before he had even met him. But Phil’s fear of the FBI and CIA continued to haunt him. After an initial friendly period, Phil suddenly stopped speaking to K. W. Several years later when they had become friendly again, Phil told K. W. that he had dropped him because he believed that K. W. was an FBI informer.
TESSA BUSBY DICK
Linda was not the last of the dark-haired women whom Phil fell instantly in love with. In July, Phil started dating tall, slim twenty-seven-year-old Ginger Smith, whom he had met at the Westercon in Long Beach. Everyone was asked to wear a name tag, so Phil wore the name of an early obscure Amazing Stories writer. A month later Ginger planned a beach party, but the several groups who were planning to drive to the beach decided to go to someone’s house instead. Ginger had invited seventeen-year-old Tessa Busby. She knew Tessa because Tessa had been on the high-school bus Ginger drove.
Everyone was drinking Jack Daniel’s and Coke. Tim Powers was having a good time at the party when, “The next thing I noticed was that Phil was huddled with Tess on the couch and they were whispering and muttering to each other. I thought, ‘Wow. That’s quick. What happened here? I only just turned around and went for a beer.’”
Ginger wasn’t at all mad. Tim said that it almost seemed like a setup. Later, there were mysterious interpretations of exactly what happened that evening. That night Tessa moved in with Phil at Joel Stein’s apartment. Within a week the new couple had rented their own place across the hall from Joel’s place.
Phil, deliriously happy, was hopeful that a whole new life was starting for him. The first thing he did was go on a diet and put a big sign on the refrigerator saying, “He whom the Gods would destroy, they first make fat.” He was intensely involved with Tessa. Tim noted, “Phil and Tess were almost physically inseparable, even always leaning against each other.” Phil continually told all his friends how brilliant Tessa was. He made her his executive secretary. Soon after Phil had moved in with Tessa, he largely withdrew from his group of young friends.
Phil wrote, in an undated letter to Tessa: “Dark hair, fair skin, small bare feet, unaware, this girl, that he had gone off for a moment: she was oblivious to such minor matters … how much he needed her, how much she meant to him.
She filled the empty spaces that had, for most of his life, surrounded him…. With her nearby, his world perpetuated itself by its own strength and intrinsic reality. He knew that if he shut his eyes or turned his back it would still goon….”
Needy himself, Phil equally needed to be needed and seemed quite proud when he told Tim, “Tess has epilepsy. She had a psychomotor seizure last night. She has to take Dilantin and phenobarbitol. I have to take her to several doctors.” And another time, he said to Tim, “pleased as Punch,” “See that chip in the kitchen wall, Tim? Tess threw a knife in my direction.”
Phil wrote to a friend in Vancouver:
I’ve been happy here in Fullerton…. Tess is a little black-haired chick, exactly like I’m not supposed to get involved with (according to X-Kalay), eighteen, who writes (she’s sold an article already), pretty and bright. Tomboyish but sexy, small, talks weird, sort of straight, politically uncommitted, rides horses, has never traveled, wants to see Canada…. I love her with all my heart…. She’s the most emphatic person I’ve ever encountered: wise and gentle, but independent. And tactful…. I’m just now, with Tess, beginning to get my head back together.
Phil wrote his mother, Dorothy, about Tessa:
I have meant for some time to write you a good accurate letter about Tessa, whom I love so much and hope to spend the rest of my life with. But it is hard to describe her; she changes so much from day to day: she is warm but so elusive … as if I’ve imagined her out of my own head. You see, I wrote all three letters, the two supposedly from her and the one from me mentioning our activities…. Tessa is the girl I’ve searched for always and never found, never will find. On the other hand, perhaps Tessa is real … and it’s just my mental problems that cause me to believe I made her up….
There is some basic, overwhelming mystery about Tessa that I cannot get at…. Again and again I’ve come up with a theory to account for the strangeness about her, and each time she has, reluctantly, admitted that I’m right, that she has been lying to me and now I’ve found the truth. Again I come up with a theory, a better one…. A day later I figure out that that theory is false, too, and, under duress, she admits it…. We are living in a Philip K. Dick novel…. We are persons who have tried to think our way through life and now are falling back on feeling, on rage and love and grief and humor….
In 1975, Phil came up to Marin County for his divorce from Nancy. He brought Tessa with him to testify to his poor financial status. Phil’s old friend Kirsten Nelson met the couple at the airport. She said, “Tessa was a tough little girl. I was surprised that she couldn’t go to a bar, she was too young. Phil was in seventh heaven. Tessa was flattered that an older man, a famous writer, was paying her all this attention. I liked Tessa and thought she might be good for Phil, since she wasn’t timid or frightened and Phil seemed so much better.”
The only time Nancy ever saw Tessa was in court the day she got divorced from Philip. Tess had on a voluminous red coat and a strange hat. Nancy was so relieved that Philip was going to marry Tessa because she wouldn’t have to feel responsible for him anymore. She had felt very guilty about leaving him. Nancy greeted Philip i
n a friendly fashion, calling him by her old pet name for him, “Fuzzy.” Phil was affronted by this “inappropriate familiarity.” The court awarded Nancy $75 a month child support.
Tessa and Phil returned to Orange County. Tim was there “one of the times” Phil proposed to Tessa. A group had gone to Disneyland and planned to meet at five o’clock at the Carnation Cafe on Main Street. Tim’s account:
We were sitting at an outside table, Phil and Tess on that side of the table and me at the other, just finishing up some sandwiches we’d had and looking and wondering where the others were. Phil leaned over and said “Tess, will you marry me?” And I thought, “Oh God, I wish I wasn’t here…. let me back off.” So I sort of withdrew and as I did, I reached over and grabbed a pickle off Phil’s plate so I could munch on it and seem to be devoting my attention elsewhere. But, before Tess could answer, Phil says, “Powers, what are you doing with that pickle?” I said, “Well, you were done.” And he said, “No, I wasn’t done. I was saving it.” I said, “Oh sorry, here, have it.” And he said, “I don’t want it now, you’ve been chewing on it.” And I said, “Look, the waitress’ll give you another pickle.” He said, “I don’t want to bother the waitress about it, I just want to let you know that before you take somebody’s pickle off their plate, you ought to have the decency to ask.” By this time, the rest of the group had wandered up and Tessa, who had been hanging on the edge of her chair, never got a chance to answer. Evidently, he asked her another time when I wasn’t there to interfere.
Phil and Tessa rented an older three-bedroom house on Santa Isabel in Fullerton, a nice house, although not fancy, with a beamed living room, the glass wall of which looked out on an overgrown small backyard. Isa began coming down from Marin County to visit every three months. She played baseball with Phil and Tessa and their friends and had lots of fun. Tessa was nice to Isa and the two of them got along well.
Meanwhile, Phil was paid small sums for lecturing to Willis McNelly’s class at Cal State, Fullerton. He talked about his writing and about his life. Among his topics was the cruelty of one of his ex-wives who wouldn’t allow him to visit his child and his beloved stepchildren. While at the university, Phil met many young science fiction fans, aspiring young writers, and published writers and invited many of them over to his place.
Doris Sauter came over to Phil and Tessa’s house with her boyfriend, science fiction writer Norman Spinrad. She noted how quiet Tessa was: “Tessa sat and read and didn’t participate in the conversation.”
Writer Jim Blaylock met Phil the day Ray Bradbury spoke in Professor McNelly’s class. Jim was also invited over to the Fullerton house: “Somehow Phil had come into possession of a rifle but he was in such fear of it that he pitched it under the bed like it was a snake.”
I hadn’t been in touch with Phil since he went to Vancouver. The news about Phil’s marriage came to me in Point Reyes from an unexpected source. That summer, I had been surprised when I heard via the Point Reyes grapevine that Dorothy and her twin stepchildren Lynne and Neil had bought a house in Inverness just a few miles from where I lived. After wrestling with my feelings, I was prepared, when Dorothy phoned me, to forget the past. After this, Dorothy, Laura, and I saw each other on a regular basis. I was happy Laura was getting to know her grandmother, and Dorothy and I rediscovered a pleasant relationship. It was from Dorothy and Lynne that I learned that Phil had remarried a young girl. Disgustedly, I gathered all Phil’s letters, put them in the fireplace, and burned them. Then I gave all my copies of his novels away.
Dorothy only lived in Inverness for two years and then moved to a retirement home, the Redwoods, in Mill Valley, still fairly close. After being there a year she moved to Santa Rosa to be near Lynne, and we were no longer able to socialize with her because of the distance, but we kept in touch by phone.
It wasn’t long after Phil’s marriage that Laura and I began getting a whole new batch of letters. On July 9, he wrote Laura:
You might tell your mother that The Man in the High Castle is supposed to be republished here in the United States again, and it’s dedicated to her, although she didn’t like the dedication. I guess I could change it when the novel comes out again…. You might ask her if she wants me to. Love, Daddy
But he never spoke to me directly about this and I didn’t pay attention. Of course he wouldn’t change the dedication. Later my third daughter, Tandy, picked up a copy of The Man in the High Castle at a bookstore in order to show a friend Phil’s dedication to her mother. She was shocked to see that the novel was now dedicated to Tessa. I felt bad and, as usual, couldn’t believe that Phil would do such a thing, but perhaps he’d thought he’d asked me if I still wanted the dedication—and I hadn’t bothered to answer.
Phil was quite ill that summer. He had a bout of extreme hypertension and was hospitalized. Soon after this illness, Christopher Kenneth Dick was born on July 25, 1973. Phil was pleased; he had always wanted a boy.
That fall I ran into Nancy Hackett at the Oakland Coliseum at a huge church rally that we had both attended. We exchanged greetings and, perhaps because we were both in a special kind of environment, the conversation immediately moved into deeper matters. Nancy asked me to forgive her for getting involved with my husband and I told her, “I do forgive you, Nancy.” She lit up like a Christmas tree.
Phil hadn’t called me for a couple of years, but the next day he called me and said, “I understand you’ve forgiven Nancy,” and he paused hopefully. Yes, I had forgiven Nancy but I hadn’t forgiven him. Nevertheless, we had a long, friendly conversation. I gave him the news of our family. Hatte was in Israel doing graduate work in Arabic linguistics. I had visited her in June soon after my house had burnt halfway down. Tandy was hitchhiking through Europe. She would spend the winter skiing in Switzerland and working in a Swiss restaurant. Jayne had married, moved to Point Reyes, and was working with me in the jewelry business. She was pregnant and expecting twins. I had been elected the first woman warden of St. Columba’s mission church and was also president of the local West Marin planning group.
Long-term employees were running my jewelry business so that I could coach a team, including second daughter Jayne and fourth daughter Laura, in a new-to-the-United States sport, vaulting—a gymnastic dance of eight teenagers jumping on and off a cantering horse, better than anything at that time in the circus. Phil was delighted to hear all my news. Then the girls came to the phone and talked with Phil. Later we compared notes and they told me that Phil talked only jive talk to them. While talking to me he had been dignified and serious and brought a lot of religion into the conversation. From this time on Phil wrote or phoned about once a month. He also got in touch with Kleo and communicated with her regularly. When Norman Mini died, he sent Kleo money for funeral expenses.
In December 1973, Phil wrote me:
It was so nice to get a letter from you, and so gracious of you to write. And all the news is appreciated…. [Y]ou certainly seem to be doing wonderfully in your jewelry business, and if I talk in superlatives it is both because I mean what I say—which is fine—and because I now live, as you know, in the L.A. area. It does things to you; or as they say here, it does a number on your head. I’ll try to talk as real people do; if I fail, it’s due to a bad environment. Okay?
… [T]he air pollution has … done me dreadful harm, but don’t please worry, since we intend to leave and anyhow I was not nearly as sick this year as I was last; last year I almost died…. In fact, I saw Mr. Death standing in the corner of the bedroom. He wore a modern polyester suit and carried an attaché case, which he opened in order to show me a psychological test. I took the test, I had a temperature of 102, which is high, but I couldn’t breathe and was asphyxiating night after night. He informed me that, according to the results, I was completely insane and he would take me to a fine mental hospital, high in the wooded hills. I was delighted and agreed, with enthusiasm, to go with him. I felt completely relieved but fortunately someone came into the bedroom and Mr. Death
vanished….
You certainly do sound well, Anne, and full of life, creative and spiritual life—all kinds of life. Great, and again, thank you for writing and thank you for all the news. Incredible, Jayne grown up and married and about to have—what, two or three babies, possibly? You must let me know. And Tandy in Switzerland … incredible. I have trouble getting up to Trader Joe’s, our local store…. Remember Disneyland when we visited it? … Love, Phil.
I must have written him once but I felt more comfortable talking on the phone. Besides, I didn’t want to get letters with those “we’s” in them.
In March 1974, Phil had a mystical experience, which he describes in his novel VALIS. He called it his “pink light experience.” This epiphany was so important to him that he began writing a meditation about it late at night, much of it in longhand. The manuscript grew to be a million words by the time of his death and occupied two full-size file drawers. He called it The Exegesis. He also began writing a novel based on this experience and on his theological ideas, titled Valisystem A. A short time later he was hospitalized again for extreme high blood pressure, which, he told Tim Powers, he connected with his mystical experience.
In April 1974, Phil wrote Laura:
I’m still screwed up although … it was one of the better ecstatic delights of my life to talk to you on the phone…. But I owe the IRS thousands. So money is a problem (… [t]hey may seize my assets)…. I wear a crucifix always now—I feel God (or whatever His name is) saved me, although my blood pressure is still up a little.
In July, in a different mood, he wrote her:
I did not manage to force the Polish Government to pay me the royalty money they owe me, although they still intend to publish my novel Ubik this year…. I did not manage to force my agent who I’ve been with for 22 years to come through with the written assurances regarding the back royalties due me from Ace Books, so I fired him…. For months—almost three months—I’ve been having the same dream over and over again. Things in writing, important, are held up for me to read, but I can’t discern what is written. Within the last month it’s become this great huge thick book, which contains all the wisdom of the ages. Each night I keep trying to see what it is, to catch a glimpse of the title. Each night it becomes more clear. Finally I see what it is. It is a huge blue hardbound book just under 700 pages of tiny type called The Shadow of Blooming Grove. It is a biography of Warren G. Harding.
The Search for Philip K. Dick Page 20