What happened? Absolutely nothing. It was horrible. Someone told me later I was supposed to have boiled the stuff before I baked it, but I defy anyone to tell me that would have gotten me high. I'd have tried it, though.
What was effective and required less effort but was even more disgusting was the old Vicks inhaler cotton. I'd hammer open the Vicks plastic tubing, extracting the two-inch length of dense cotton saturated with propylhexedrine, a stimulant. I'd cut the cotton into small cubes and swallow them, gagging constantly, determined not to throw them up. God knows, I didn't want to spoil a good high. The recollection of trying to choke that cotton down has totally eclipsed any memory of what the high was like. Today, I can barely look at a Q-tip.
We were so broke. Even with our little jobs we lived like paupers--just enough money to buy some pills or pot. Finally, I was able to pull the money together to buy an old Borgward Isabella, a clunky German two-door sedan, from Jack's secretary for $100. That was more than it was worth, but I loved that car. Walking was cool, but driving was just so much better. We got to visit friends in the Valley! It had an iffy clutch and the engine wouldn't always turn over, so sometimes I'd take the bus to work, but I didn't mind. I was still a car owner. When the clutch went out altogether, it started gathering tickets, so we'd roll it up or down little Laurel Canyon a few feet every couple of days; I didn't want it to be pegged as an abandoned vehicle and get impounded. Of course, one day we forgot. My car was towed away and the cost was $100 to get it back, and who had that much money? Good-bye, Borgward. Oh, well.
Bob ran in the same crowd at Hollywood High as a lead guitarist and singer named Lowell George, who was in Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention band and went on to form Little Feat, a rock and blues band. Occasionally we'd go over to Lowell's place and a bunch of his musician friends would be there and Lowell would reach for his slide guitar or Fender Stratocaster. Bob would pull out his harmonica. I'd sing harmony, play the spoons or tambourine, and we'd make music for hours and hours because we could. It was great. It was crazy. I was eighteen, having fun, loving the music, loving the freedom and autonomy. Anything was possible.
Bob and I were out with our dealer, Larry, one evening and we wound up at his girlfriend Shirley's apartment at the Shoreham Towers above Sunset Boulevard. She had a beautiful place. She had furniture, not just crates or bricks and boards. There was a great view, white shag carpets, white sofas, white chairs, and lots of mirrors. Shirley was not a hippie; she lived a much ritzier lifestyle than any of our other friends. She was a working girl, a high-class hooker. Shirley, in my memory of her, stood apart because of her long legs, long flowing golden hair, and equally long, flowing diaphanous gowns.
Shirley was checking me out pretty thoroughly. She lit a joint, draped herself over the arm of her luxurious sofa, and told me (I think she purred) that I too could have a nice place like she did. She handed me the joint and said that I could come work for her. She said I could do better than the stupid Ontra Cafeteria. I'd be good working with her. She could teach me.
Oh. I'd be good? Shirley thinks I could be good? I could be marketable? Through the pot I was trying to decide if this were good work opportunity.
It was about this time that the cocaine came out. Larry offered me a line of white powder on a paper. "Have you tried this before?"
"Of course." Duh. Well, I'd certainly heard of cocaine.
"Cool. Try this."
Often wrong but never in doubt, I awkwardly leaned toward his outstretched hand, trying to figure my timing, and inadvertently snorted out onto the paper, sending a small cloud of cocaine powder up his shirtsleeve. It was around this time that Shirley withdrew her job offer. Which, I realized, I was seriously considering.
Unbelievably, cocaine never crossed my path again.
The following week, armed with the appreciation that my skills were wasted at the cafeteria, I found another job. A real job. A job that required me to think. I moved into a new, highly injudicious profession for me--I became an eighteen-year-old premiums adjuster at Washington Mutual. How I made it through their vetting process and got hired is lost to history. I had waist-length blond hair and looked about twelve.
I loved being in an office playing secretary. I loved typing. I loved filing. I loved having a desk and a stapler. I loved answering the phone "Premiums adjuster, Miss Baxter." I worked hard and considered myself a good employee, even though I didn't understand the first thing about insurance. I talked to lots of customers, most of whom were remarkably patient and friendly, but I doubt I was ever of any service to anybody.
After being employed there for a few weeks, I was on my way to work one Monday morning, after an entire weekend spent on acid. A bunch of us had been up all night and my friends were driving me to work in their beat-up red VW van that we called the Jellybean. Having a job that demanded more responsibility than counting plates, I had the maturity and foresight to be concerned about my condition. How in the world was I going to stay awake all day?
"Here, take some of these," a helpful buddy said, and handed me a jewelry box filled with pills, all different kinds and colors, none of them labeled. Maybe taking a handful of them wasn't the best idea.
I'm sitting at my adjuster's desk and staring at the file cabinets across the room. I know I have to get from here to there. But the cabinets have taken on a life of their own, keep shifting positions, vibrating and leaning sideways. When I finally get up from my desk to walk across the room, past my coworkers, my steps are measured and determined, and I am trying to tilt at the same angle as the tilting file cabinets. I am leaning very far to one side, as if on the deck of a listing ship.
The next thing I remember is waking up in the coffee break room, my arm draped over the shoulder of a coworker who was trying to rouse me by walking me around the room. Eventually my boss called me into his office and asked me for an explanation.
"Well you know, my grandmother died and I just stayed up all night," I told him in my best Shirley Temple voice. "I didn't know how I was going to stay awake so a friend of mine gave me this diet pill and I've never taken anything like that before and I had such a big reaction!"
My boss didn't deliberate. He said, "You're fired."
I was the only one making any money at the time. Without my paycheck, we couldn't afford the rent, as cheap as it was; Bob and I had to move out of Honey Drive. What a heartbreak. We loved that place. His mother, Melba, offered us the second bedroom in her small apartment but said her landlord would want us to be legally husband and wife before he could let us move in there. I suppose I loved Bob. We had a good time together. He was kind and he made me laugh. Why not get married?
So, on June 23, 1966, Bob and I asked two friends, Robin and Mike Steckler--that's it, just our two friends, no Bob's mother, no Whitney, no Jack, no one who, just months before, had been exhorting us to tie the knot--to meet us at a small Unitarian church in North Hollywood and we got married. It was not a dressy occasion; I think I wore a cotton sleeveless dress with a floral print. I'm not sure if we did anything to celebrate this momentous event. We might have gone to Der Wienerschnitzel.
Our reason for getting married was so flimsy that our new status shouldn't have changed anything, but in a lot of ways it did. I missed the freewheeling camaraderie of Laurel Canyon and Honey Drive. Now we were living in a two-bedroom apartment at least an hour's walk from Hollywood and our friends, with a mother-in-law. I liked her a lot ... she was very different from my mother. Melba was very loving, very attentive, sharp, and no-nonsense. She was also very kind to me. Whitney was a great cook guided by Gourmet magazine, but she never had the time to teach me anything. Melba was the one who showed me how to cook and plan a meal. Every time I make a light, flaky piecrust today, I can hear her patiently talking to me in her kitchen. "One part Crisco to three parts flour ..." "Don't overwork the dough, dear. That makes the crust tough."
Just after we moved in with his mom, Bob and I got together with Rick and Donna and a few other friends la
te one night at the Villa Valentino, a famous courtyard complex of historic Italianate apartments on Highland Avenue. We were drinking, lying around, smoking joints, listening to music, just like we used to in the canyon, and digging the romantic setting, when all of a sudden someone yelled, "It's the cops!" Within seconds we all sprinted out of the apartment, up the long driveway, and to the street. There in the pitch-black night, we were met by several police officers. Apparently, a neighbor had complained about the noise and the marijuana smoke billowing out the windows. (Remember, this was the mid-'60s. Marijuana use was still considered a heinous crime and people were tossed in jail for possession of tiny amounts.) "Are you the kids from the Villa Valentino apartments?" the cops inquired, blasting their flashlights into our eyes. Adamantly, we assured them that we were just taking in the night air.
Not buying our story, they herded us back into the apartment. Loudly and insistently protesting they had the wrong kids, that we'd never seen this room before, we were lined up against a wall and frisked like on the cop shows. In a momentary lull, I quietly asked the closest officer, "Um ... could you please hand me my glasses on the end table over there, please?" He smiled broadly and handed them to me. Donna, the friskee to my left, gave me such a kick! I'd just placed us inside the apartment.
Next thing I knew, we were handcuffed, and Donna and I were loaded into the backseat of a police car. We came down off the pot high on the silent drive to the Sybil Brand Institute for Women, then the women's jail in Los Angeles. We were pretty humorless as they formally processed us and gave us paper dresses and paper shoes to put on. It may have been a June night, but it was awfully cold in the jail, so they gave us sweaters. We were held for a short time in a fairly clean room with benches so narrow they defied our lying down on them, but we were able to muster some laughs by playing games with the buttons we tore off the sweaters. When I was finally put in a cell, alone, I think, all the cell doors closed automatically with a vehement clang, which seemed to reverberate throughout the whole jail building. At which point I began to cry. And cry. It took me that long to appreciate where I was and how much trouble I was in.
The next afternoon, when I was finally allowed to make a call, I dialed my parents' number. Whitney answered on what I could tell was the poolside phone. I disguised my voice and asked for Jack. "It's one of your girls," said Whitney flatly, and passed the phone to my stepfather. He laughed when I tearfully told him my tale of woe.
Now, I was afraid of Jack, I deeply resented his violence against us, I hated how he sexualized me, I felt he'd taken our mother away, and I didn't trust his motives. But the sorry truth was that he was all I had to turn to. I hated to admit it, but I could count on him.
Late that night, Jack came downtown to bail me out; Bob was sprung by his mother a few days later. My arrest warrant read, "Possession of narcotics, to wit: Marijuana." The charges were eventually dismissed because, despite my glasses faux pas, the police couldn't prove we were the miscreants in the apartment. A couple of days later, Bob and I celebrated our two-week wedding anniversary.
Just as my first marriage was getting off to a bang-up start, Whitney's second was winding to a close. This didn't necessarily come out of the blue. She and Jack would have epic fights. One occurred about two years earlier over the quality of their seats at the world premiere of Stanley Kramer's much-anticipated film Ship of Fools. I could hear Whitney yelling at Jack and I think she threw a jar of cold cream. She was miffed that they'd be sitting up in the balcony where no one would see them. Hazel had ended on a downward spiral for her. She had reason to want to appear to be a happening actress--and apparently you aren't happening if you're sitting in the balcony. She told him that she wasn't going.
Jack's trump card? Me. He said, "Fine, I'll take her."
I was not unaware that I was being used. And where the hell I got an appropriate dress is beyond me. But I imagine Whitney felt wretched later on when she found out that she could have been seen at the lavish after-party at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. There was drinking and dancing and somehow they got a huge model ocean liner and floated it in the swimming pool.
Years later I asked Jack what it was--the marathon shouting matches, how my mother blamed him for her flagging career, their apparent lack of chemistry--that finally convinced them both to call it quits. Jack's response was so odd I can still picture it today. He stuck out one of his very polished, almost glossy, black lace-up shoes, and said, "Look at these shoes. Aren't these nice shoes? Aren't these shiny shoes? Don't they look pretty? They look comfortable, don't they?"
He paused for a couple of beats, then asked me, "Can you tell where they pinch?"
Chapter 4
With my brothers and our respective spouses at Whitney and Allan's wedding, 1968. Only their marriage survived.
So, there I was: nineteen, a new, young wife, living with a new, young husband and his mother in her apartment. Hmm.
In October of 1966 I found out I was pregnant with my first child, something I was even less prepared for than being a premiums adjuster. I guess no one checked my references to find out why my insurance career ended so abruptly, because soon I was taking the bus downtown every day to Pershing Square to my new job in the tax department of the Price Waterhouse accounting firm.
Before all their records and information were computerized, attorneys at the firm would come to the "Vault" to requisition the personal files of their specific clients. The Vault was a tiny, closetlike room, crammed to the gills with all the very sensitive, confidential dossiers of Price Waterhouse clients. It was overseen by a small, no-nonsense woman named Hertha and me. Many a new lawyer would do a double take when they came to the service window, because there's me--a wide-eyed, earnest, pregnant, big-busted, barely disguised hippie who still looked about twelve years old but eager to wait on them. The only recollections I have of that period are all those male attorneys standing at the window leering at me as I delivered their documents, and then me reading those same secret files at lunchtime, trying not to drop Thousand Island dressing on all the tax data. It is their good fortune I have the financial understanding of a milk shake.
As for home, the idea of sharing a small place with young newlyweds and an infant was probably more than Bob's mother bargained for, so we decided it was time to pack up our boxes and move again. We found a charming little one-bedroom bungalow in back of an apartment building on Oxford Street, just east of Western Avenue, in a slightly dodgy section of midtown Los Angeles. One day a friend of Bob's who worked in the mail room at KCET, the local public television station, told him he could get him a job there. Soon Bob was in a starter position at KCET, sorting letters and delivering packages in the hopes of working his way up into television production. It was the kind of entry-level opportunity that sometimes kick-starts Hollywood careers, so we were excited.
Meanwhile, Whitney had a new man in her life. His name was Allan Manings. He was a successful forty-three-year-old screenwriter and playwright from New York who shared Whitney's passion for the dramatic arts. Back in the '50s, he was working on The Imogene Coca Show when his agent told him he'd been blacklisted. The Canadian film director and producer Norman Jewison offered Allan work if he'd come to Canada. So, in 1957 Allan moved to Toronto. Seven years later, he returned to Hollywood and immediately started writing for hit shows like McHale's Navy and Leave It to Beaver.
Years later, I would hear about the cinematic way he and Whitney met. They were dancing with different partners at a party thrown by mutual friends when Joan, the woman dancing with Allan, tapped the shoulder of the man dancing with Whitney and said, "May I cut in?" Then Joan pushed Allan into Whitney's arms and rumba-ed off with the other guy. Whitney always believed the partner switch had been prearranged--she was separated from Jack, Allan was separated from his first wife. By the end of the evening Allan was smitten enough to ask for my mother's phone number and handed her his address book. I imagine she wanted to make sure she left a lasting impression, because she took Allan'
s address book and in green ink scribbled out her name and number in huge flourishing script as if she were signing an autograph. It covered two pages, obscuring about eight of Allan's other entries. "You ruined my address book," Allan told her forlornly.
A couple of days later, Whitney flew off to Mexico to attempt a prearranged reconciliation with Jack. It must not have been a success, because she called Allan as soon as she got back. By May of 1967, when I was going into labor with my first child, they were deep enough into a relationship that when Bob called Whitney in the middle of the night to tell her to come to the hospital, she was with Allan. Whitney told me she had wanted her bearded, pipe-smoking new boyfriend to get out of bed and come along with her, but Allan, ever the more reasonable one, begged off. "Does she really want a stranger there?" because he hadn't even been introduced to the family yet.
Theodore Justin Bush (known as Teddy until he was fourteen) weighed 7.5 pounds and had Bob's animated eyebrows with the blond hair and blue eyes of a Baxter. He was a good baby, as most first babies are. I didn't know much about mothering. Okay, scratch that: I didn't know anything about mothering ... never having seen it done. It took me quite a while to feel any connection to Teddy, which worried me. I had long thought there was something wrong with me, that perhaps I had a limited ability to love. I liked him fine, but he seemed to require more attention than our two cats and that kind of threw me too. But slowly he grew on me. I came to look forward to his baths, particularly. Sometimes he'd get all red and angry when I'd wash his hair, hating the water on his head. He hated being changed even more, crying so hard, eyes squeezed shut, toothless little mouth agape. Then he'd pee! And pee right into his own mouth! I'd be gasping with laughter, he'd be gasping for breath, sputtering and madder than before. We were a great pair.
I loved nursing especially because it was quiet sit-down time. I could brew a nice cup of strong instant coffee, grab my tattered copy of Leon Uris's Exodus and my pack of Raleighs. Then I'd blissfully rock, nurse, drink coffee, and smoke for the next hour. I learned to drag out the calming ritual long after he'd fallen asleep. (Regrettably, I smoked my way through my first two children. I had no idea that I was contributing to their many years' struggle with bronchial problems.)
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