Damian and I were quite comfortable in the guest quarters downstairs, but when we’d leave the house, Aunt Claire would come down and rearrange my belongings, shut the windows, and draw all the drapes shut. I was mystified to find that while we were out she had cut the electrical cords clean off my alarm clock and electric hair rollers. It was her kooky way of letting me know that I was using too much electricity.
The biggest bombshell came when Aunt Claire and Blake were getting ready to go to the airport. I asked who they were picking up. Claire huffed, like it was a big bother, “Oh it’s Bob’s other daughter.”
I had to think for a minute: Bob’s other daughter, what other daughter?
Claire said my dad had had an affair twenty years ago, and now the girl wanted to meet her father. In utter astonishment, I asked, “Wouldn’t that make her my sister, then?”
Claire thought about this, then said, “I guess she would be.”
Wow. I had a sister who lived in Colorado, and nobody had ever thought to tell me.
We met Carol at LAX airport, and she was the spitting image of my dad, a tall blond Swede with pale blue eyes. Her demeanor was simple and shy. She was soft-spoken, with clear, innocent eyes, not at all like anyone in my family. Carol had clearly been sheltered, and traditionally cared for. She knew nothing about Hollywood or the eccentric James family. She just wanted to meet her long-lost father. Unbelievably, Aunt Claire hadn’t mentioned to my dad that she was bringing Carol to his home; Claire just plopped her off on his front door. The hapless reunion must have been a real shocker to my dad. He refused even to open the front door. I felt mortified for Carol, and tried to console her. I tried to persuade her not to take it personally, but I knew it was a moment she would carry to the grave. We exchanged telephone numbers, she boarded the jet plane back to Colorado, and I never saw my sister again.
13
I felt like Marilyn, the normal niece of the Munster family. I quickly realized that Damian and I needed to find a place our own, pronto!
I started my rounds with Wilhelmina’s Los Angeles agency, and found that my eighty million go-sees in New York had paid off. On my first interview I booked three weeks’ work on a Saks Fifth Avenue catalog.
I rented a roomy Spanish-style house on Kirkwood Avenue in Laurel Canyon, and was happy to finally unpack my things and have a bit of solitude. I enrolled my eight-year-old son in Wonderland Avenue Elementary School, and began working full-time doing layouts for Bloomingdale’s, Macy’s, and I. Magnin. For the first time I was making more money than I had time to spend. I bought a classic red 1964 MGA convertible for two thousand cash, and stashed the rest under my mattress and between book pages, like my grandmother Mimi did.
• • •
It was 1976 and New Year’s Eve. I was invited to a fancy bash at an artist’s loft in downtown Los Angeles. I had a touch of the flu and wasn’t really up for a party, but something urged me to go. I slipped on some pencil-thin velvet trousers, an off-the-shoulder Marilyn sweater, and a scant pair of spiked slides. I grabbed a few strands of silver tinsel from our Christmas tree and fixed it in a festive bow encircling my neck, and I was ready to meet the New Year.
The trendy warehouse was jam-packed, shoulder-to-shoulder with leggy models, fashion photographers, and interesting artisans. It was a drug-induced fashionable Babylon with the Ronettes’ “Frosty the Snowman” blasting through the entire neighborhood. Just before midnight I edged my way past the cocaine line to the powder room and slipped out onto the fire escape for a breath of fresh air. I thought I was alone, but then heard a young man’s voice sigh. “Thank you for coming out tonight.”
I’d never heard that line before, and couldn’t help but smile. He asked, “Would you wait here for one minute?”
Then he came back with my favorite champagne, a hand-painted Art Nouveau bottle of Perrier Jouet, and two glasses for a new year’s toast. We were the last to leave the party, and at the end of the night I gave him my telephone number.
Paul Zacha was different from any man I’d ever known. His father was the head art director on the popular show Dallas, and Paul was following in his footsteps. Besides being a talented artist and budding art director, he was ridiculously funny. From the moment he’d pick me up he’d have me laughing with artful pratfalls and goofy practical jokes. At a fancy restaurant he took realistic-looking fake flies and floated them in his soup, and strategically planted a few in my pasta. When the waiter came by gasping with apologies, we were in hysterics. He could juggle, perform magic tricks, and lasso anything that moved. Paul also treated my son like he was his own, surprising him with prime Dodgers tickets, playing catch at the park, and hiring him to assist on the film sets he was art directing on. When he was working on a film he’d send a production assistant with chocolate chip ice cream from Baskin-Robbins to my house because that’s what I liked for breakfast. He did everything he could think of to impress me, and quickly won my heart. Paul was twenty-seven years old and whimsically romantic. He called me Mrs. Pixley and would muse, “Mrs. Pixley, one day I’m going to buy you a big sparkling diamond ring just like the one my father gave to my mother,” and I would giggle with delight.
My rented house in Laurel Canyon was about to be sold, and I found a charming Deco apartment in the foothills of old Hollywood. Damian and I moved temporarily with Michael and Pamela Des Barres, and Paul would stay with a friend till our new place was renovated, then we planned to set up house and marry.
It was the late seventies, and cocaine reigned supreme in the inner sanctums and on film sets. I did my share, but Paul became insatiable. We’d been together for almost two years, but it wasn’t just us anymore; wherever we went, whatever we did, the insidious vial of powder came along with us. We’d have fascinating, cocaine-induced, meaningless conversations until dawn. I’d try to fall asleep before sunrise with my heart pulsating clear to the bedsprings. I’d make deals with God praying, “Please don’t let me have a heart attack tonight. I promise I won’t do this again.”
I’d appeal to Paul, “Let’s not do this anymore.”
He’d humor me, then stay out till the wee hours under the guise of working late.
Paul had just been hired to art direct a period movie, and the production company advanced him five thousand in petty cash. When I learned he’d spent a thousand of it on cocaine, I flipped.
“This is it,” he promised. “When this is finished I’m done, just one last weekend.”
I tossed every ruinous affront I could sling, then slammed the phone down in his ear. I eventually regained my composure and remembered that I loved him, and should have been more supportive. I decided to let him have his night, and would call him the next day to make amends.
I spent the morning with my son happily combing the Saturday flea market and estate sales for unfound treasures, but when I got home Pamela seemed abnormally upset.
“I have something really bad to tell you,” she said.
I asked, “What?” But she couldn’t bring herself to say the words. The somber look on her face was as serious as heart failure.
“Pamela, you’re starting to scare me, what’s wrong?”
There was a long pause, then the sickening words, “Paul is dead.”
I instantly felt like vomiting, but calmly replied, “Don’t say that! He’s not dead.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “His sister called while you were out; he died last night of a heart attack. It was a cocaine overdose.”
He couldn’t be dead. We were young and invincible. We were both only twenty-nine years old. Then I remembered three days ago, when he asked me to read his palm.
He questioned, “Do you think I have a long life?”
I touched the lines in the inside of his slender hand and saw nothing.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t get a feeling.”
He clasped my hand and sweetly said, “I hope I die before you; I wouldn’t want to be on the Earth without you.”
I’d ne
ver been one to give up or take no for an answer, but death was an impermeable barrier I couldn’t cross. If I didn’t have an eleven-year-old son to raise, I might have followed, taken the leap and tried to catch up with him. My snappy last words ate at my soul like ravenous demons. I prayed and implored God that he knew I didn’t mean a word of it, that he left the world knowing I loved him.
I took to haunting the liquor aisles, swigging tart bottles of wine, trying to drown the bitter contrition, but nothing could console me.
After Paul’s memorial his family asked me if there was anything I wanted from his belongings. Besides one of his unfinished paintings, Paul left a Deco ceramic pot planted with three miniature palm trees that he’d carefully tended for the previous ten years. I’ve managed to keep the palms flourishing in the same pottery for twenty-four years, and now they are a willowy five feet tall. Most important, Paul left me with an invaluable gift. When I slammed the phone down on him I never dreamed in a million years it would be my last gesture. That was the hardest and most painful part of his death, the way I left it. From that day since I’ve never left anyone with an unkind word or without being crystal clear about my feelings. I think of Paul every time someone walks out of my door.
14
Pamela’s husband, Michael, was on tour with his band, Checkered Past, which gave Pamela plenty of time to do what she liked best: go shopping. After scouring the thrift shops in the depths of the San Fernando Valley, she came home saying, “Do you remember that guy I brought up to your house in Connecticut?”
I laughed. “Yeah, the goofy guy with the glasses, the one who drove you all the way to California.”
She told me she had run into him out on Lankershim Boulevard, and he was coming over to treat us to a spicy Thai dinner.
Joseph rolled up in his Volkswagen square-back wearing the same funky horn rims, and dressed in nondescript casual attire. I thought he still fancied Pamela, but all through dinner he unabashedly stared directly into my eyes. Even when I burst out with laughter, he held his curious, fixed gaze. I whispered to Pamela, “What a weirdo.”
She laughed, “Come on, be nice. He’s coming over Friday to help us with our yard sale.”
Pamela’s and my wealth of vintage crapola was enough to stock a medium-sized flea market, and our yard sales were a neighborhood event. Literally, by 7:00 A.M., a hundred bargain hunters would be gathered, chomping at the bit for us to open the gates. Friday evening, while sorting through the spoils, Joseph took a fancy to one of Michael’s 1950s suits. It was a gold lamé Elvis ensemble that fit him like it was tailor-made. With no shirt and the shimmering jacket hanging loosely open, his smooth chest was like that of a dreamy Adonis. Without the horn rims, he stood in the doorway wielding Michael’s guitar and purring a sexy rendition of “Blue Suede Shoes”: “One for the money, two for the show.” In a magical moment he’d gone from Clark Kent to a sensual god who had my full attention.
In the midst of the morning yard sale frenzy an amazing thing happened: One of the hagglers came up to me and asked, “Is your name Catherine?”
When I confessed, the man said he used to be a resident at Vista del Mar, the orphanage I had lived at. After all these years I couldn’t believe that this guy had recognized me. He said he remembered the time I brought Bob Dylan onto the grounds and what a stir I’d caused. Ha! I remembered how all the ungracious delinquents scoffed and jeered at Bob that day in 1963, and how humiliated I had felt. I couldn’t help but reiterate my prophetic words, “I told you you’d never forget it.
He also said that I’d been a bit of a legend. I was the wild girl, and the only one who ever ran away from that place and got away with it. I’d come full circle. He paid his fifty cents for a worn copy of the Beatles’ Rubber Soul and disappeared back into the past.
After an exhausting, sweaty ten-hour day of selling, haggling, and finally packing up the last unwanted dregs of the sale, I offered to make Joseph dinner for all his gracious help. Any other time I would have paid cold cash just to be able to go straight to sleep, but the feeling of looming romance promptly revived my spirit. In the flip of a coin, I’d gone from thinking he was a goofball to felling like a nervous schoolgirl trying to make my best impression. I prepared us a delicious pot of Indian curry, and before I knew it we were in my bed having the most passionate sex I’d ever experienced. It lasted till the sun rose. We would have gone on, but Joseph had to go. He had a morning flight from LAX to visit his parent in Oregon.
Joseph was an actor who had done a handful of commercials and acted in local theater. He supplemented his living as a skilled-finish carpenter. He owned a Craftsman house in Santa Monica that was a perpetual work in progress. The décor was bachelor Zen. No sofas or carpets, just clean space with a simple bed and a chest of drawers he’d built from scratch. There was an old upright piano in the living room with a small, framed photograph on top. When I looked closer I was amazed; it was a picture Pamela had taken of us six years earlier in front of my house in Connecticut. Were we predestined?
Joseph came from a place I’d only dreamed of. He’d never tasted alcohol or puffed on a cigarette, or tried any other sort of contraband. He’d grown up in a large cozy family in rural Oregon, and still attended church services on Sundays. He was John Boy in the flesh, or maybe he was Jesus in disguise.
I don’t know how I missed it in the beginning, but Joseph was the most handsome man I’d ever laid eyes on, with clear blue eyes and baby blond hair. His graceful hands looked like the work of Michelangelo. We had a chemistry I’d never expected or experienced. We made love like gods till dawn, then we’d wake up and do it again. Sex with Joseph was like time traveling, rocketing out of my body and finding myself hovering in a meadow, or an awareness of being in another century. I never knew where we’d go, but I couldn’t get there without him. He was like a liberating euphoric drug, and I was thoroughly hooked.
I finally moved into my new apartment on El Cerrito Place, and Joseph rented out his Santa Monica digs to move in with me. We joined the old Methodist church on the corner of Franklin and Highland that had the most elaborate, grand pipe organ in all of California. Joseph joined the men’s morning prayer group and we attended all the holiday parties and Sunday teas. The dances were held in the church gymnasium and were wonderfully hokey, like going back to the innocent times of the fifties. On Valentine’s Day the hall was decked in red construction paper hearts and pink spiraling streamers. Heart-shaped sugar biscuits and sweet strawberry punch were the refreshments. Joseph and I did the swing to Bobby Darin’s “Queen of the Hop,” and we slow danced to Patsy Cline’s “Sweet Dreams (of You).” It was the mid-eighties but you’d never know it.
Unfortunately, my son was not as enamored as I was. He was approaching the terrible teens and had become most comfortable ruling the roost, having me all to himself. He admired Joseph, but when Joseph started laying down the laws, my young son bucked like a wild bronco. When Joseph stood firm on reasonable rules, my son changed his strategy, and I became the enemy. In secrecy he’d confide to my new boyfriend, “Wait until you really get to know her, you’ll be sorry.”
During an afternoon brunch at the farmers’ market on Fairfax, young master Damian took the opportunity to remark, “You’re starting to look really old, mom. How come your hands look so wrinkly?’ I was mortified.
From the moment my son was born I had lived for him, and wanted to give him everything I never had. It was through him that I loved myself. Damian was my purpose and grounding force, but when I fell in love with Joseph, my little dream boy turned into a nightmare. He was pushing hard for me to choose between him and Joseph, but there had to be an easier alternative.
It was coming on Christmas, and Joseph invited us to go to Oregon for the holidays to meet his family. I wanted to go more than anything, but what was I going to do about my salty son? He was as grumpy as a riled tiger and definitely not the picture I wanted to present to Joseph’s family.
I rarely saw my younger brother, S
cot, but we always kept in contact by telephone. He’d recently married his eighteen-year-old girlfriend, Gina, and had moved to an idyllic little house in the mountains near Lake Tahoe. It was the perfect solution. I’d send my surly cub to spend Christmas with my brother. He could cool his heels in the mountainous country snow.
Joseph and I drove the sixteen hours to his family’s home in Gresham, Oregon. Instead of stopping halfway at a common inn, we camped out in the wintry forest. I’m sure we were the only souls camping in the frosted timberlands in mid-December, but it was fare more romantic than any wayside lodge. In the morning we came upon a picturesque bridge spanning a deep river. We stripped off our clothes, grabbed each other’s hand, and jumped off the trestle. I’ve never gotten out of the water faster. The current was so cold that the December air actually felt warm on our wet bodies.
We arrived safely at the farm in Oregon, and I finally got to meet Joseph’s affectionate family. There were four brothers and an older sister. His father was a part-time missionary and his mother played the organ at the local church. After the Christmas candlelight church service, the whole family went door-to-door, singing Christmas carols in the falling snow. The feeling of being part of this, the sense of belonging, was so unlike anything I’d grown up with, it was almost indescribable.
Joseph woke me up at dawn whispering, “Catherine, come to the window, look at the sunrise.”
That’s what I loved so much about Joseph; he always saw and took time to inhale the beauty. We made slow, quiet love, being careful not to disturb the squeaky floorboards till his mom called us down for pancakes.
Christmas morning all the kids, grandkids, nieces, and nephews were there to open their presents. I had bought Joseph a fancy alarm clock from ritzy Fred Segal’s, and he got me the flowing white, nightgown I’d seen in the Victoria’s Secret catalog, the one with the baby blue, double-back satin ribbon. Later we all packed into the family pickup loaded down with massive black inner tubes to sled the slopes by the farm. This was truly the most perfect time in my life.
Dandelion; Memoir Of A Free Spirit Page 14