A most surprising and incongruous thing happened: Whitney came to our little house and helped me out! She typically didn't fit into my life that way. She had always told me she wasn't interested in doing that. Long before I'd even had children, she'd said vehemently that she was not going to babysit. I don't think she was at all happy about my having made her a grandmother at forty-one. But there she was, washing diapers on my old-fashioned hand-crank wringer washer, standing at the sink sudsing and rinsing dirty dishes, heading off to the market to buy us groceries. I would have never asked her to come, which meant she must have just come. It was very touching to me then--and now. It was a onetime occurrence; she never helped out with any of my other children when they were little. But that's okay. She did it for a first-time mom trying to get her bearings, and that made all the difference.
My mother wasn't the only unexpected visitor. Occasionally Jack would call, asking me if he could come by, say hi to Teddy, and bring me a burger for lunch. Jack and I had never been especially close, and he was no longer a part of our family since the divorce, so I was grateful for his thoughtfulness. He came only during the day, when Bob was at work. I wasn't working and my husband's minimum-wage mail room job didn't bring much money at all. That hamburger and cardboard container of French fries he'd bring over meant a lot to me--especially because sometimes I'd find a $50 bill slipped between the wrapping paper and the top bun.
One time instead of the burger and fries he brought me a gift-wrapped box. I opened the lid and inside found a beautiful, very expensive, diaphanous aqua peignoir with magenta trim. Well, this was unusual. I remember picking it up, seeing how transparent it was, and feeling uneasy. Old apprehension returned.
"Thank you very much, Jack. This is nice," I told him politely and put it back in the box.
"I'd like you to try it on," he said.
Uh-oh. Flashbacks to the old days of bathing suits and his friends. I just slid my arms through the peignoir sleeves and pulled it on over my T-shirt and jeans, then slipped it right off. "This is really beautiful, Jack. Thanks so much."
"I can't tell what it looks like over your clothes," he complained lightly.
"Jack. You know, I don't feel comfortable doing that."
He said, "Well, if I can't have the mother, I'll take the daughter." That just defied a response but I managed to hustle him out of the house. I don't remember what I did with the negligee so Bob didn't see it. Jack's behavior was creepy and confusing. Yes, he'd always back away whenever I rebuffed him, but why was I even having to rebuff him? I didn't want to alienate him, but I hated how he came on to me.
For much of Teddy's early infancy, Bob and I had been talking about moving to Canada to become landed immigrants. It sounded like a great adventure, a way to be off on our own, away from threat of the draft and Jack. Back in 1872, the Canadian government passed the Dominion Lands Act, which essentially offered 160 acres of undeveloped land in the prairie provinces for free to male farmers who agreed to cultivate 40 acres and build a permanent dwelling within three years. The property we would be gifted was located in Canada's Northwest Territory near--and this is the part we found incredibly cool--the Peace River. Why we thought we were up to the task is anyone's guess. Sometimes I look back and think I had the IQ of a landfill. I didn't know anything about anything. I was a California baby and had always been pretty comfortable and lacked for nothing. But, having the arrogance and hubris of youth, we considered ourselves sharp and resourceful and capable of facing whatever lay in our path. We got some books on farming, land management, and log cabin building, sold whatever we could, gave away the rest, and on December 28, 1967, flew with seven-month-old Teddy and a dog to Vancouver, British Columbia.
Part of our plan was to meet up with my brother Brian, who, months earlier, in order to escape the draft had hitchhiked with his pregnant girlfriend Bonnie to a farm in a small town in western Canada called Wetaskiwin. Until we got there, Bonnie was employed as a housekeeper and Brian was working at the farm castrating pigs he said were as large as sofas. Brian, exhibiting symptoms of the same strain of hubris that we suffered from, had already drawn up a schematic drawing for building an A-frame house that we could make out of the lodgepole pine trees we'd read were abundant in the Peace River area.
Then we discovered that the land parcel coming to us was in a section of Canadian prairie where the ground is in permafrost for seven or eight months out of the year. That meant it wasn't soft enough to cultivate for over half of the year. It didn't take us long to realize we were in over our heads. We were stumped. Our only choice was to join Brian and Bonnie, who had just moved to Red Deer, a town in central Alberta, about a two-hour drive from Edmonton.
Our stay in Red Deer lasted five months. Brian and Bonnie lived in a basement pretending to be an apartment. In a corner of the largest room was a massive furnace with big low, round pipes that went up in all directions into the apartments above. Its lights and buttons would flicker at all hours; a red glow and constant grumbling made the furnace seem like a malevolent character in a children's storybook. The apartment entrance opened into the furnace room so you'd have to duck under an obstacle course of pipes to get to the other rooms.
We had a small eat-in kitchen, which was the center of our lives there. Bob and I slept just off the kitchen in the living room, on a foldout couch. Teddy slept in a crib at our feet. Even when it was bitter cold outside, the moist heat of the furnace made the pale green walls of our tiny kitchen and living room sweat. Whatever slivers of natural light spilled into our apartment came from a window that required me to stand on my tiptoes if I wanted to look out. Still, my line of vision was barely even with the frozen ground.
We were flat broke. The food we'd eat--we'd buy ten loaves of bread for a dollar and cheap, cheap, cheap ground pork--was often of such poor quality that it gave us food poisoning.
Though life in that cramped, damp apartment might sound like something out of Dickens's London, it didn't feel like that all the time. It was a special period in our lives where everything, even adversity, was fresh and exciting; we were living not quite off the grid, but at least not part of the Establishment. We solved our problems as they arose and felt like we were all on a wonderful adventure. What can I say? We were so very young.
Because we didn't know anyone in Red Deer, we were our own cozy social circle. There were all-night cribbage and canasta sessions, broken up by bouts of brainstorming, or talking about where our lives would go. Sometimes Bonnie would play the guitar and we'd sing folk songs--Buffy Sainte-Marie, Joan Baez. (A couple of times back in Los Angeles, Bonnie and I performed at open mike nights at music clubs. Our voices meshed well together and I could do a mean harmony in those days.) In the morning, Brian and Bob would get up and walk in the icy chill to their entry-level positions at Alberta State Hospital. Bonnie and I would stay home and take care of Teddy and do the housework.
Washing and drying diapers in a climate as frigid as Red Deer's was different from doing laundry in Southern California. Like every good hippie mother, I eschewed Huggies (not that I could have afforded them anyway), so Teddy's diapers were the big, gauzy cloth variety, the kind you fasten at the corners with safety pins. To wash them, I'd throw them in our wringer washer (yes, again with a wringer washer), feed them through the rollers, pressing out as much water as I could, then I'd run outside into the freezing air and hang them on the clothesline. When the weather is so dry and frosty, it completely takes the moisture out of the clothes and actually sanitizes them. They'd be stiff as a board and smell great when it was time to collect them. I'd carry in a thin stack of rigid, clean diapers and lean them up against a wall. When they dried, they'd collapse on the floor, at which point I would fold them and put them away. When Bonnie had her baby, Tommy, in January shortly after we arrived, between the two of us we took over the entire clothesline system set aside for the whole apartment.
As spring came, the ground was thawed and yet it was still insanely cold during the day. We had
all struggled with bronchial congestion in our damp sweaty abode, but little Teddy was particularly challenged by the elements. One night Bob and I were asleep on the foldout bed and we awoke to the sound of our son's wet raspy breathing, even more labored than usual. His temperature was high enough that we called a cab and rushed him off to the hospital, where he was instantly put into an ice bath. The diagnosis was pneumonitis, or a combination of pneumonia and bronchitis. He was hospitalized for four days, in and out of an oxygen tent. I remember the sheets on his little crib were very rough and they scratched and reddened his already thin, dry skin, but the nurses were kind, attentive, and supportive; I became an instant fan of socialized medicine.
I don't recall if Teddy getting pneumonitis is what finally broke us, but it was certainly a major factor. We'd all been sick just too often.
In April of 1968 I called someone--maybe it was Jack, maybe Whitney--and asked to be wired enough money to bring me and my little family back home. Brian, Bonnie, and Tommy came back shortly after us. Our days as landed immigrants were officially over. We made no impact on Canada, but I felt severely dented by the great Northwest. I didn't think I'd ever be warm again.
Jack came through for us. When Bob, Teddy, and I arrived back in Los Angeles, he had rented half of a duplex for us right across the street from the North Hollywood police station in the San Fernando Valley. Partially furnished, it was pretty and had roses growing on trellises in the front yard. In fact, it was so nice that we couldn't afford to stay beyond the two months' rent Jack had paid. It was hard to leave ... this was by far the prettiest place we'd ever lived.
That meant another move. This time we were on the second floor of a two-story apartment building on Hinds Street, also in the Valley. The upside was that it was a clean, airy one-bedroom and we had a modern-ish kitchen; it was the first time I had a nice stove and refrigerator since I moved out of Jack and Whitney's house. The downside was that we lived directly in the flight path of a small public airport then called the Hollywood-Burbank Airport. The roar of the jets was so low and loud, the dishes would rattle. When I looked out the kitchen window it appeared as if those huge planes were going to fly right into our apartment; it took weeks before I didn't feel the need to drop to the floor as they approached.
We'd been back from Canada for about five months when Whitney called me with an announcement: she and her boyfriend Allan were getting married. I was surprised. Not that I'd given it a lot of thought, but it hadn't occurred to me that she'd ever marry again. Her previous marriages had been bitter disappointments; I couldn't see how this would be much different. Allan must have been very persistent in his pursuit of her. One day he said, "We should get married. We're good together," and my mother apparently agreed. I hadn't even met him yet. But hey, it was a party to go to. Plus they acknowledged Bob and me as a couple.
Earlier in the year, Allan had landed a staff writing gig on the hugely popular TV variety comedy series Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, and Whitney's career had taken another left turn. Her guest star roles had begun to dwindle, so she started cohosting a late afternoon talk show called Boutique on the local CBS affiliate. The series gave her the opportunity to hold forth on all sorts of topics--men, fashion, interior decorating. But she also saw it as a way to shake off Missy B from Hazel and show the world how smart and opinionated she was, that she was nothing like her wishy-washy fictional counterpart.
Whitney was so determined to make the talk show work that on the day before her wedding, when many brides-to-be might be attending to the last-minute details of the event, she could be found in a booth at the Villa Capri restaurant, giving an interview to a local newspaper about Boutique. Even the reporter seemed stunned by her focus on her show.
On August 24, 1968, my brothers, their wives, and Bob and I gathered at the Hollywood house of Allan's best friend, Dr. Mel Avedon. Allan and Whitney stepped into the room; Whitney was wearing a lovely chic white suit. A hush fell over the small group of guests and a Unitarian minister began conducting a humanistic, not very religious ceremony. My brothers and I watched our mother get married for the third time and met our new stepfather, all in the same day. My mother had waited fifteen months after Teddy was born to introduce us to Allan. What could she possibly have been waiting for? Was her hesitation about us or about him?
In Whitney's case, the old saying "The third time is the charm" actually seemed to hold true. For all his purported imperious ferocity at the writers' table, Allan was pretty much a lamb with my mother. One of the things I always found engaging about them as a couple was that when they fought, it couldn't last long. Sometimes I'd call and I'd hear that familiar tight sound in her voice that indicated there was tension between them at the moment. Then I'd hear Allan making a comment in the background, she'd say a few words back, as would he, at which point she'd just start laughing. Allan was so funny he could do something no one else could: break through my mother's anger. It was a marvel of their relationship.
I can't remember what kind of job Bob had at the time, but I do know that between rent, food, and diapers, there wasn't much left in his paycheck to cover drugs or alcohol. If anything, we had beer, which I thought was disgusting, so I rarely drank at all during this time. On occasion friends would share some pot with us but, except for occasional acid trips, my pill-taking days were pretty much over. Getting married had cut our ties with Larry the drug dealer and Canada had taken care of most other contacts. In November, just as I turned twenty-one, I found out I was pregnant again because, oh yes ... no money for birth control pills, either. Teddy was one and a half and climbing everywhere. I was sure he was going to fly headfirst down the apartment stairs. How do people care for two children at once? Whose idea was this?
With our family expanding, I had to figure out a way to bring in some extra cash. Not having gained a lot of confidence in the office arena, I thought I should try a less formal approach to commerce: Tupperware parties! I could get into the business with the help of my stepmother, Ginger. Ginger was the most hardworking, positive woman I've ever known. Anyone else with that quick a smile and direct eye contact would have made me flinch, but she was 100 percent authentic. She cared, she listened, she was a go-getter. These traits served her so well that in just two years she'd gone from being simply a Tupperware dealer to being one of their top managers.
As soon as I told her I was interested, she arranged to take me to one of the big Tupperware meetings at the distributorship she worked through in the San Fernando Valley. Hundreds of women attend these to announce their staggering sales figures, receive support, and get leadership counsel. I was given one of their sales kits, a suitcase filled with about $200 worth of the company's signature plastic products, catalogs, hostess gifts, and a few sample prizes. I'd been to some of Ginger's Tupperware parties when I was younger and had marveled at the cool sales tactics she'd employed. She had a lovely style of self-deprecating humor as she put the women through the party games and presented her products, laughter being a very important element in her techniques. So when Ginger gave me a few of her party dates to help launch me, I considered myself pretty prepared. Kind of the same way I went to Canada. To be honest, I wasn't bad when it came to talking about Tupperware. I had used and loved the products for years (Ginger and my father had given me and Bob a starter set as a wedding gift and we were often given hostess gifts on holidays), and I thought of the presentation as an acting exercise, like the kind I did in high school drama class: I'd try to be warm and chatty and look people in the eye and tell funny stories, mostly stolen from hearing them at company meetings (and embellished by me). I felt they liked me.
I remember cracking up a group once. There was a sandwich-sized plastic container that had a little divider you slid down to separate different foods. I told them, "This is great for nuts and candy or meats and cheese." Then I'd waited a few beats and said, "Soup and nuts? Do not try this. This does not work!" Oh my, my ... the laughter! (I figured they didn't get out much.)
Bu
t I couldn't pressure anybody. The party part I liked; the selling part I could manage; booking the next party I found excruciating. The Tupperware trainers would tell us, "This is the way you get them to agree to a party: Ask them, 'What's better for you? Thursday or Saturday?' " The best I could muster would be to mumble to a prospective hostess, "Um, you wouldn't want to book a Tupperware party, would you?" And they'd agree with me straightaway that no they wouldn't. And that would be that.
Ginger really wanted me to succeed, she really tried to give me every opportunity. But I was a distracted pregnant twenty-one-year-old with a toddler at home and driving a little blue '54 Ford that was always breaking down, which required my being rescued all the time. I was game, though, and did lots of parties all over town; I even did one on a small sailboat in the marina with a tiny galley and a low ceiling. I set up my wares on a low table and did my presentation tilted, with my ear to one shoulder because I couldn't stand straight, and heartily made my soup and nuts joke. I was afraid someone with another boat would book from this party.
But no bookings means no sales and eventually I just got too discouraged. I think I made about $600 for the one year I was selling. The man who helped us do our taxes thought my poor sales figures so unlikely that he suggested I was hiding income. Whatever plastic housewares samples were left in my kit I just put in my own kitchen and quietly closed the cupboard on my Tupperware sales career.
With no income from my end and another baby on the way, we needed to find a cheaper place to live, which meant moving yet again. We found a three-bedroom house in North Hollywood that on paper sounded fabulous:
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