by Aissa Wayne
12
In 1963 I missed second grade entirely when my father decided to take his dream trip, on his dream ship, in what looked at first like our dream family vacation.
Around the time Ethan was born my father had purchased The Wild Goose with the money he earned from Paramount. It was not his first boat, but the first befitting my father’s own bigness. The Wild Goose was 136 feet of converted World War II minesweeper, with the finest engines and navigational equipment. Once my father remodeled, her accomodations included an oak-paneled master salon with a wet bar, a wood-burning fireplace, a motion picture projector and screen, and a teleprinter receiving UPI, AP, and weather bureau reports; a luxurious master suite and three guest staterooms, each with its own bath; a dining room that comfortably sat ten; a sixty-foot afterdeck for sunning and playing cards; a cast-iron barbecue; a washer-dryer; a liquor locker; and a wine cellar.
When my father wasn’t working, The Wild Goose had a strong psychic pull for him. In the winter, we took it to Acapulco; most summers we cruised to Alaska. For my father and other famous leading men, yachting was a venerable tradition. In many ways enslaved by their outlandish celebrity, stars like Humphrey Bogart, Jimmy Cagney, and Errol Flynn all found asylum on the sea. By the summer of 1963, my father had launched a love affair with The Wild Goose that would continue unabated until his final years. By then we’d already taken The Goose from Newport Beach to the Baja coast, but these trips had been leisurely. To challenge his brawny new ship, my father was eager to find a stiffer test. When Henry Hathaway asked him to star with Rita Hayworth in Circus World, a film he planned shooting in Spain, my father found his crucible. He told Hathaway yes, he would be in Madrid that September, delivered there by The Wild Goose.
As my father breathlessly explained it, leaning over the maps spread on the desk in his trophy room, we would start down for Acapulco, then steam around the Mexican coast and on through the Panama Canal. From there we’d traverse the Gulf of Mexico and dock in Bermuda, where Ethan, my mother, and I would disembark. Feeling this leg of the trip too jeopardous for his wife and young children, he and a crew of eight would strike out alone across the Atlantic. We’d rejoin them on the Portuguese coast, lingering at several ports up to and beyond the tip of Spain.
When the notion took hold of me, I was giddy with the prospect of flight and adventure. An entire year away from our compound, much of it in Spain, and no school except for a tutor! Spain sounded gay and sunny, and having a Latin mother and two Latin maids, I already spoke Spanish. I also sensed that my father needed this badly. In the final weeks before we set off, he’d started behaving erratically. One moment he’d be animated and loquacious, detailing the newest wrinkle in our itinerary or his latest renovation to The Goose, and the next moment he’d be somber and mute. On the queerest night of all, my father had entered my bedroom and pulled me to his chest without speaking.
“Aissa?” he’d finally said, a stiffness to his voice that told me something wasn’t right.
“Yes, Daddy?
“When you get older and you realize I’m not as strong as you think I am, will you still love me?”
“Yes, Daddy.”
Always with my father it was “Yes, Daddy,” and I said it that moment by rote. In truth I was disconcerted. Why was he acting so unlike himself, the dynamic self I relied on so utterly—even more, it sometimes seemed, than water and air?
I knew he was hurting inside. Every day his smoker’s hack sounded uglier and more raw. And I’d seen the wadded tissues littering his side of their bed, the tissues at times streaked reddish-yellow, what I knew was his blood mixed with phlegm. At some subconscious level, I understood these things threatened me, but I didn’t add them together, and so did not yet know the sum of my fears. Hating when things were obscure to me, I felt increasingly eager to launch our trip.
And then we were off! From the day we left the dock at Newport my father was never easier to be around. Before we were joined in the noisy ports of call by his party-loving comrades, I spent long hours alone with him, and was pleased to glimpse new sides of him. Out at sea, my father never seemed mired in preoccupations, and minor concerns could not provoke him. When I asked about the moon’s hidden sway over the tides, why the sharks we spotted looked so essentially evil yet the dolphins spun and romped in the wake of our boat, why each sundown he searched for the evening star, and why he always called the ocean “she,” he not only heard my voice, my father heard my words, and he answered me eagerly and patiently.
But then, one early morning, when the sea was cobalt blue and the coast only a long green line, my ever-changing father discombobulated me.
“When I die,” he said, “I don’t want to miss the ocean. I want to stay here. That’s why I don’t want to be buried, I want to be cremated when I die. Then take me out and scatter me over the ocean, because that’s where my heart is.”
My father, like that night in my bedroom, was not making any sense. Seven years old, I understood that some people die, but I’d certainly never considered that death could come for my dad. Sure, I had noted that he was much older than the fathers of all my girlfriends, but the fact had no weight. My father was not a normal man, so he could not be measured in normal terms. He personified power, and even the thinnest possibility of his death was so preposterous as to not be worth a moment of my time. His words seemed so strictly out of place, on this fine clear day, and yet stranger still was my father’s expression. Though speaking of his death, he looked hopeful, even serene, wholly unlike a man who was daunted by life’s limitations. In fact, I was starting to see, when our ship was underway and my father was feeling the tang of brisk, cool, salted air, there was little or nothing of life that did not excite and intrigue him.
This meant he was at his very best, and I thought the trip would be good for him. I felt confident the trip would be good for us all. Never was a confidence less justified.
13
The wickedest storm of the trip hit while we sat anchored at a Mediterrean port. I heard it first, a dull roll of faraway thunder. Then I saw lightning striking all around, lacerating the sky. Soon the thunder came in louder, sharper cracks and my parents’ friends rushed to the stern. Over their heads I could see orange flames. A hillside home was burning, a man swore he had seen it struck by lightning, and a woman began to sob. Big drops of water pounded our deck and in moments everyone was wet. The Wild Goose spanned 136 feet, yet she rocked now like a toy boat in a rowdy child’s bathtub. Whipped by the new moon, the ocean crashed inside our living room. When the sea rose again and drenched our downstairs cabin, all the adults looked nervously to my father. Even some of the highly capable crew stood frozen in place, no one assuming leadership. The sobbing woman then became hysterical. “I’ve never been out in lightning! My God! I’ve never been out in it!” She chanted this over and over, until I felt vexed almost beyond the point of endurance. I knew she couldn’t, but I felt like screaming “Stop!”
My father went to her then. He didn’t touch her, and I couldn’t make out his words through the heavy darkness and rain. She quit her sobbing, though, and soon started giggling in a high-pitched girlish tone. Several adults started laughing with her, and even one of the men made light of his own fear. The rain still fell in earnest, but the lightning strikes had receded and the storm appeared in retreat.
It wasn’t. Later that evening the black clouds burst again. Though the sea stayed out of our ship, it battered her sides on and off through the night. By the time my father and I rose with the sun to survey the damage, the winds had died and the sea had flattened. The adults appeared topside around nine, looking puffy-faced and drowsy, but by mid-afternoon they had drunk, gambled, regained their vim. I could tell by their manner and conversation that they were pleased with themselves, as if the night before they had passed some collective test. I was pleased with my father, who had quietly shared his mettle.
I had never seen my father so flustered. What the savage storm couldn’t do, Grace
Kelly could.
With our ship moored in Monte Carlo, my father had planned a rare early night. I think he was still worn out by the visit of the William Holdens, who had just flown back to their home in Nairobi, Africa. My dad was extremely fond of Bill Holden, but from the moment they’d stepped on The Wild Goose, he and his wife Ardis had bickered nearly nonstop. Apparently Mr. Holden’s marriage was not holding together, and a heavy drinker anyway, he started binging. Though not in the habit of imbibing day and night, my father and his old friend drank steadily for the better part of two weeks. When my father drank in front of me, he was prone to act sloppier, sillier, more gregarious, never mean, but sometimes obnoxious. When Mr. Holden drank he seemed not to change at all: unerringly kind to everyone else, he fought constantly with his spouse.
Between the boozing and the tension between his guests, when the Holdens left my father sought little more than a private night with my mom in their master bedroom. But that night my parents were first disturbed by me—I couldn’t sleep and crept to their bedroom—and several hours later by a member of our crew. “It’s Princess Grace!” he announced. “It’s Princess Grace! She’s coming on board!”
It was after midnight. Running to the mirror, my father said “Jesus!” Though sleeping soundly I woke up quickly, desperately wanting to meet Princess Grace. My parents had met her earlier at a party hosted by movie mogul Jack Warner, honoring her engagement to Prince Rainier, when Grace Kelly was leaving Hollywood. I, on the other hand, had seen her only on TV and in my mother’s magazines. Even there, her fresh pure skin looked aglow. She was the most radiant woman I’d ever seen, and I yearned to see her in person. My hopes were dashed by my father. “It’s very late,” he said in a tone with no room for rebuttal. “You’re a little girl, and we’re in a hurry.”
A hurry? He was positively rattled. Rushing to peel off his pajamas, his thick fingers fumbling at little buttons, he finally cursed and quit in exasperation. While my mother lagged behind a little longer, John Wayne marched out to greet the Princess of Monaco wearing his silk pajamas hidden beneath his clothes.
Several days later, in Portofino, still feeling pouty over not meeting my first authentic princess, it barely registered when my father was called to work. Henry Hathaway was prepared to shoot Circus World, so we flew directly to Madrid, where my parents had rented a villa belonging to Ava Gardner. During their tempestuous affair, Miss Gardner had shared this home with Frank Sinatra. Now, behind the actress’ villa, an unheated pool was cracked and dirty, and squawking chickens tromped through Ava Gardner’s tomatoes. I found it kind of neat, and bohemian; hating it, my mother called it “barely livable.” Already working long hours for Henry Hathaway, my father did not seem to care either way. Exhausted, all he wanted at night was food and a bed.
It was only a few days later that my father and I were mobbed near Madrid. Despite this trauma, I don’t recall hearing my parents discuss it. Then again, they were not talking much about anything. I could tell they were not getting along well; I wanted to go home. But our trip was still young, the mobbing only prelude to the nightmare.
14
The least of my family’s problems, Circus World itself was well on its way to failure. In 1963, Rita Hayworth was only forty-five, but her once-soaring career was in decline. My father had never worked with her, and never hoped to again. A consummate professional, he did not comprehend why a veteran actress arrived chronically late, without knowing her lines, only to start acting surly to peers. Alienating him further, when he and my mother dined out with Miss Hay worth near the onset of filming, she was nasty and condescending to waiters and busboys. That was anathema to my father. “Never lose the common touch,” he told me throughout my life. “Never think anyone is better than you, but never assume you’re superior to anyone else. Try and be decent to everyone, until they give you reason not to.”
My father’s opinion of Rita Hayworth notwithstanding, neither he nor his leading lady tried keeping their children from playing together. While our parents made bad chemistry on-screen and off, I cavorted on the sidelines with Rita’s young daughter, Yasmin. Near the end of her mother’s life, when Miss Hayworth tragically got Alzheimer’s disease, it was Yasmin who put her own life on hold to caretake her mother.
Late that November, as filming lagged on and on, we learned that someone had shot President Kennedy. In Spain, even more so than back in America, the early reports were conflicting, making it unclear whether Kennedy was dead or only wounded. When the confusion finally abated, we heard the sickening truth: John F. Kennedy was assassinated. That we were not home to experience our shock and grief with other Americans only made this obscenity more disturbing.
I have been told that my father had great dislike for all the Kennedy men, but the only ill will I witnessed myself was toward Teddy. Even before Chappaquiddick in 1969, my father watched Ted Kennedy on TV and branded him a liar and a phony. “This guy says he only cares about issues. Bullshit. He cares about getting power, and he’ll say and do whatever he has to to get it—just like every other politician. If he’d just admit he’s like everyone else. Ted Kennedy’s so fake he makes me sick.”
After the opaque events of Chappaquiddick, my father was incredulous then outraged. An evening news junkie, a religious reader of Time and Newsweek, he habitually groused at the curious predilections of certain public servants, but until Chappaquiddick I’d never seen him so worked up. One night after dinner, watching yet another report, my father went ballistic.
“Jesus Christ, it’s a cover-up!” he ranted. “Anyone else would at least get indicted! They’re letting him off because he’s a Kennedy. That family’s got too much goddamn pull!” As the televised story continued, I could see my father becoming hotter and hotter. He snatched a metal paperweight, hurling it straight at Ted Kennedy’s visage, shattering our expensive TV. My father, I surmised, was not a rational man when it came to the senator from Massachusetts.
If John Wayne bore such animus for Ted’s older brother Jack, he never revealed it to me. Although he deplored his politics, although he voted for Nixon, my father gave JFK high marks for presidential leadership. After John Kennedy’s sudden and senseless murder, my parents were more forlorn than I’d seen them in years.
We were all depressed and displaced. We needed to finish this movie, go home to California, and the balm of familiar surroundings. Instead we were still abroad, living in rented quarters, on a trip that now seemed doomed.
Late one night in my bed, yawning and tired but unable to sleep, I heard angry sounds emanating through the wall separating my room from my parents’. They were fighting. I was unprepared—back then their fights were still infrequent—and this only heightened my terror. In the past when they had fought, my father had done the shouting, my mother had lapsed into sullen, silent indifference. Though my mother knew she could not compete with his volume, her silence had not been submissive. She knew nothing annoyed my father more than when people simply ignored him.
Now, my mother was screaming back, and the sound through the wall kept building and building. My father sounded malicious, out of control. He was swearing, the first time I’d heard him cursing my mother. For the only time in my life I feared he might strike her.
I lay there flinching, obsessively hugging Ava Gardner’s pillow, hating my life, wishing that I was in my own bed. In my bedroom at home, during my parents’ rare bad fights like this one, I sometimes imagined I was elsewhere. I pretended now I was way up in the moonglow, vaulting from star to star. But I kept missing the star by inches, and my brakes were not working. Dropping through space again and again faster and faster, I kept falling back to my parents’ hostile voices. Finally they stopped yelling, and I sat in the darkness taking deep breaths until the hours got small and I fell asleep.
In the morning my parents were shy around me, feeling me out to see how much I’d heard. My father lit another cigarette and the smoke curled up around him. “We’re starting back home soon, babe,” he said.
“Just a few more weeks of shooting, then we’re starting home.” I nodded, leaving him coughing there in the kitchen.
I wasn’t allowed on the set for the final days of shooting. The Circus World script called for a hazardous, spectacular, pyrotechnic climax. Playing an American cowboy and circus owner barnstorming through Europe with his troupe, my father would be caught inside his big tent as it went up in flames. The action called for him to rescue the caged animals and spectators by chopping down seats and poles with an axe, setting up a fire barrier. As usual, my father chose to perform his own stunt in this critical scene, feeling he owed that to his fans, who went to John Wayne movies expecting credibility. For five straight days my father ate smoke, from artificial fires and real fires, set and put out and set again. “I’ll be fine,” he promised my mother each night. “Once the fire scene is finished I’ll be fine. This is what they pay me for.”
The last day of shooting in Spain, my father’s penchant for working and working and working, until he heard the word cut, could have killed him. Wearing fireproof underwear, a fireman’s helmet beneath his hat, and wielding an axe, he began chopping his seats and poles, working close to the fire. An unexpected breeze fanned the blaze even closer to his turned back. Fragments of glowing wood swirling around him, he kept swinging his axe through the black smoke, rather than do the dangerous take again. He could not see that everyone else had fled, including Henry Hathaway, his director, as the fire exceeded their control. Assuming John Wayne would run, tpo, no one screamed “Cut!” and my father stayed where he was, he and the fire, until he could not withstand the smoke and heat. Seeing that he was alone, he angrily chucked down his axe and raced from the blistering tent.
That night, my father stormed in with the red-streaked eyes of a drunkard, but he hadn’t been drinking. He barely spoke and until I fell asleep I heard him viciously coughing.