* * *
Our next address was Oak Grove Avenue in downtown Menlo Park. Welfare payments were $384 a month and the rent was $225, so the shabby little rental was all we could afford. It may have been small (some four hundred square feet), and the little patio may have been made of porous cement, but I had my own door to shut and a place to call my own.
I considered it an incremental improvement.
Lisa and I lived in the stucco apartment for three years. I felt unsafe in the beginning because I didn’t have a car or even a telephone, as it would take me months to save up the money for the deposit that was required in those days. But I was one street off downtown Menlo Park, so I had an easy walk to a grocery store, Peet’s Coffee & Tea, and window shopping. In this way I started to branch out and build a community.
The old woman who lived next door told me that the owner of my house was waiting for her to die so he could buy up her property to build his office complex. She hated him and “his type” for it, as she would say. Sure enough, within a year she went into the hospital never to return, and Al, my landlord, did buy her property. It would eventually become an office complex, but first it was flophouse for immigrant Chinese.
My new neighbors would play mahjong late into the nights. I would listen to the clicking of the granulated game pieces when I left the windows open on hot summer evenings. The sound captured my imagination and washed my mind like ocean waves. I still don’t know what the game actually looks like or how it’s played, but the ebb and flow between the completely silent moments in which fate hung in the balance and the crashing roars of laughter or disappointment that followed kept me engaged for hours. Sitting in a rocking chair next to the window I would hold Lisa, listening in my loneliness, and cry for hours while she slept in my arms.
The days were monotonous, a lifeless routine that backed up on itself and created a gray world. I’d put Lisa in her high chair for a meal and she’d look at her food with worry because there was never enough money to buy a variety of good foods and she didn’t like what I gave her. I had so disconnected from the flow of my creativity and lost so much that one day I noticed that my hands, once so full of energy from my art, had become dull and lifeless. I shrugged with a sense of, Ah yes, this, too, is gone.
The finer perceptions that come with happiness and maturing were so impossibly locked down due to poverty that I just registered the change and surrendered to it without tears. I have worried that I missed too many hours of happiness in this life. But far more than that, I have been haunted by what I wasn’t able to give to Lisa during this time, because surely our beleaguered circumstances had an effect on her. Still, like children all over the world Lisa had joy in her, and she’d pull me outside to take her for walks on beautiful days, unroll reams of toilet paper in play, and sing songs with her tongue moving back and forth to wiggle the sound as it came out of her mouth. All of this made me laugh because she was so sweet.
And we just kept going.
I had heard that in Tibetan culture, if a child is going to be wealthy and powerful in his or her adult life, that the community will surround that child with less than ideal circumstances so that he or she matures knowing both worlds and will have the heart and generosity of both experiences. I like this idea. It makes sense to me.
I sang her all the songs I had taught myself in my teens. She loved my rousing versions of the Beatles’ “Rocky Raccoon” and some of the jazzier Joni Mitchell pieces, along with Hindu chants that I had collected in India. And once, only once, I sang the folk song “Tom Dooley,” and my tiny child looked at me like I was nuts and with such serious question in her face as to why I would deliver such a sad message that I never sang it again.
* * *
About four months after I had moved into the house on Oak Grove, Daniel called to warn me that Steve’s attorneys had blueprints of the Presidio house. They were trying to make a plausible case that I could have had men coming through the window from the front bedroom of the house and so argue that someone else could have been Lisa’s father. He also told me that Steve and the lawyers assumed Daniel’s buy-in to make a stronger case against me. Daniel was inclined to align with Steve in most cases, but that day, because of the rush and panic in his voice, I heard how the dishonesty of this undid him.
Daniel tells me that he doesn’t remember this call or any attorneys with blueprints of the Presidio house, in fact he’s glowered when I’ve brought it up with him. But I remember. How could I not? I suspect that Daniel doesn’t want to remember some of the ways he was so helpful to me because he so wanted to be one of the guys—to be in Steve’s club. But he lacked the guts for such base motivations. Stuck between his true, well-founded ethical convictions and his desire to belong, I can only imagine that Daniel simply lost his memory to avoid the stress of his conflicting imperatives.
When I found out about Steve’s newest assault I was so jangled I couldn’t think straight. It just broke me into pieces. I didn’t know why he was suddenly trying to be more damaging when I was minding my own business, trying to do the best for our daughter. Again, this was all about Apple going public. The attorneys must have figured out that the best way to protect their boy’s image would be to make me—and Lisa—look like illegitimate heirs. There was plenty to go around, yet for this they sold their integrity and their manhood. We were just building up for the Reagan years, a period in which greed was amplified and in which single mothers were vilified. It all fit.
After finding out what Steve was doing I called him a couple of times. During one of a number of terrible phone calls between us, I gathered all my strength, and standing in the kitchen at the end of a long stretched-out phone cord, I yelled at him, saying, “You know that I did not sleep around! And you know this is your child!” To my surprise, a deep well of silence seemed to pool on the other end of the line. Maybe he heard me. Had all the hype around Apple filled him with the horrendous justifications? After that argument I never heard another word about his wanting to drag me over the coals. I wondered what more I could have accomplished if I had put my mind to it, though it would be a great mistake for me to think I could have been responsible for maintaining Steve’s conscience by yelling at him. There was just way too much moral failure.
Not long after that conversation came the availability of DNA testing that could prove paternity up to 94.5 percent accuracy. This was the game changer. I had from the beginning claimed that Steve was my daughter’s father on the welfare forms, so welfare went after him to take the test. The State was bigger than Apple at that time, so Steve had to do it.
I was surprised that our blood tests had been scheduled for the same time. So Lisa, Steve, and I waited together in a dim, windowless waiting room in some county building in San Mateo. Lisa strained to get out of her stroller so I stood her up against the vinyl couch I was sitting on, and she quickly curled around and took off on her little hands and knees. I moved fast to run after her, bending over to catch her up in my arms. After that I kept Lisa in my lap playing little games with my keys to keep her attentive. The place was institutionally clean and institutionally filthy all at the same time. I didn’t want her touching anything. I saw Steve register how immediate and tuned into her I was when I ran after her. I knew him so well that I could tell he was surprised at my speed. He had been projecting quite another picture onto me to keep himself comfy and connected to the justifications.
Steve got called out of the room first and then Lisa and I were led into a small room where we sat on an examination table. They took my blood first and then Lisa’s. Lisa, still so small, wailed and struggled against my arms when they stuck the needle into her. As they couldn’t find the vein, they poked the needle into her again and again, searching. I was ready to smack the nurse. Just then, I looked up and saw Steve peeking through a tiny window of the mud-colored door, flitting his fingers to wave hi. He was his typical charming and clueless self.
The DNA tests established paternity and directed Steve to pay $385
a month child support (which he rounded up to $500), as well as return to the state all back payments I had received from welfare. Apple went public a month later. Steve was worth millions.
* * *
Through some new friends, I was recommended for a waitress position at a Palo Alto restaurant that showed art films and had live music on the weekends. The New Varsity was the closest thing to a “scene” in Palo Alto, with the exception of the Brazilian dance club in Whiskey Gulch down by 101. Both are gone now.
I had unlimited access to art movies in my new job. I drank espresso and worked with interesting people my own age, some of whom surprised me with knowledge that has stayed with me throughout my life. One waitress, a Ph.D. student at Stanford, told me about her work as part of a team that was trying to figure out how DNA was packaged. And then there was the man from Holland, a musician, who had played with Leonard Cohen. He wrote me a year after I had left The New Varsity to tell me that in all his travels through the United States, he had never met anyone with as much soul as I had. This was an oasis of recognition.
And, oh, the movies. I saw so many, including two of the most defining films of my life. One Thousand and One Arabian Nights fascinated me for its deep transformational logic. Here was a film that showed how consciousness could work through generations of seemingly unrelated people and events to bring about the next evolutionary steps. I believed this—it’s how my mind naturally thought—but nothing in my education had prepared me for it, so I was really surprised to see it in a feature film. Meetings with Remarkable Men was the other movie. The life story of the mystic G. I. Gurdjieff, this film deepened my sense of the Middle East and Middle Eastern mysticism. In all, a rich addition to my trip to Afghanistan and Pakistan in 1975.
Later the first Apple store in Palo Alto would be established right across the street from the movie house. And after The New Varsity closed down, it was sold to Borders Group, the now-liquidated book and music retailer, where the dark interior was painted in bright colors. Even though the space was filled with books, it felt to me like a soulless business in a soulful building. After the Borders nationwide bankruptcy, the old movie house sits empty, facing the recently vacated Apple store. (Apple moved up the block to a new location.) They now look like two big, dead Cyclops-eyed buildings looking at each other. Things change.
It was during that time at The New Varsity that a friend gave me Shakti Gawain’s book, Creative Visualization. A seventies classic, this book explains how to use imagery to create out of the thin blue air. Thin blue air was all I had, so the book held great appeal to me. After reading the book I made myself drive around in my car with a pleasant smile on my face and I became a happier person and more organized because of it. Even my waitressing skills improved. And because of this, some joy broke through and gathered in my life. I had more energy for playing with Lisa and thinking about next steps. I now understand how important it is to generate happiness in as many moments as one can manage because no matter what the circumstances are, happiness is what moves the mountains.
* * *
On Saturday mornings Lisa and I would go to Peet’s Coffee in Menlo Park. Saturday was a day of regulars: everyone talked and laughed together at the church of caffeine. The barista always managed to pour my cup for free. He knew that even 75 cents was a lot to me and, thanking him, I’d accept it. At around one o’clock things would break up and people would get on with their days except that some of them, myself included, would move over to the park across the street, many of them to play or listen to music all afternoon. This was my social life and I looked forward to Saturdays because they were reliably fun and interesting. The coffee boosted me out of the sadness, and the conversations and connection to people would keep me amused and thinking all week long.
Sometimes at Peet’s I would see people point me out and whisper something like, “That’s Steve Jobs’s ex-girlfriend and that’s his kid.” On one Saturday morning a woman approached me while I was standing in the middle of the room because in those days Peet’s didn’t have chairs. Lisa moved from her stroller to my hip, and then someone swept her up to play with her while I talked with the woman. The woman was a little older than I was, also in her twenties, with brown hair. For some reason, I remember how conventional and attractive her clothing was, a flower-print blouse and a thin, brightly colored sweater. She may have told me her name but I don’t recall it now and I wouldn’t recognize her if I ever saw her again. Her approach toward me was direct and she told me without a moment’s hesitation, “I was in the office when Steve and his attorneys all celebrated because he’d gotten off by paying you so little.”
Her face twisted and she repeated, “They all congratulated themselves. They literally celebrated!” Then she added, “It was so disgusting it made me ill. It still makes me ill.” My mouth must have hung open a little as I listened. Few people ever took initiative on my behalf, but it just took this one moment of her anger for the frozenness around me to thaw. I didn’t think anyone knew or cared what Steve had done to Lisa and me, but this woman did, and with a kind of fierceness that for once seemed right. Just seeing the human face of dignity woke me up. I was so deeply hurt after being treated badly for so long that I’d stopped looking at it because I could find no way out. Yet how quickly the fullness of life turned when someone spoke the truth and cared!
Fast-forward six years when Lisa was nine, after she and her father had grown to know and love each other. By this time Steve was no longer at Apple and had become humbled and more like his former self. (I have John Sculley to thank for that because his action to get Steve removed inadvertently made a difference to the rest of our lives.) It was in that window of time that Steve and Lisa decided to get her birth certificate straightened out. At nine, Lisa went from Lisa Brennan to Lisa Brennan-Jobs. Steve told me that he could hardly believe that she wanted to take his name. Very plainly relieved and honest, he said, “I am just so happy that she does.” I was touched by his surprise and glad for both of them. I was curious, too, and I would try to imagine the conversations between them that resulted in the decision. I saw Lisa speaking power to her father from her full-on little girl authority, and Steve meeting her power and sweetness with his honesty, each claiming the other as family forever.
William Fenwick of Fenwick & West was the lawyer Steve used to fact-check and change the birth certificate. Though he is a corporate attorney he did this work as a favor to Steve because of the history they shared in regard to my pregnancy and Lisa. Fenwick called me and introduced himself and said he had a few questions he needed to answer in order to get the facts straight on the birth certificate. At this time he also said, “You have an incredibly lovely and impressive daughter. And you have done a very nice job with her.” I said “Thank you” but held my reserve. I didn’t need kudos from people like him. I knew she was lovely and impressive. And I knew I was a good mom. Still, I was concerned. How had this man met Lisa without my knowing about it?
After Fenwick asked his questions, I decided to risk asking him some questions. For years I had decided that if I ever had a chance to talk with any of the men who were around Steve when Lisa was born I would do so. “Why, Mr. Fenwick, didn’t, you, as an older man, advise Steve to do better for Lisa and me in the beginning years?” I added something like, “Steve was young, he needed the advice of older, more mature men. Why didn’t you say anything to him to help him grow up and take appropriate responsibility?” William Fenwick proceeded to tell me that when he found out that Lisa’s eyes were brown that he had a talk with Steve about just accepting responsibility. He said he was proud of having done a good thing and it was why Steve had asked him to do the legal work on her birth certificate. I knew what he was indicating. Chris, whom I had met at Duveneck Ranch, was the only person Steve could identify to target and pin the paternity of his child on. Chris had blue eyes, so Fenwick had done a service to Steve to call him to accountability.
Carefully, building my case, I then went on to ask him about
when Apple went public and the attorneys had celebrated because Steve had gotten away with paying me so little child support. I told him about the conversation I’d had with the woman at Peet’s. I had definitely assumed that he would have been a party to that gathering. Fenwick’s voice broke with baffled shock and he said, “Well I was never at such a meeting. And I never would have celebrated such a thing, either.” The tone in his voice was honest. I believed him.
Yet, because I thought I might never have another chance to talk with him, I pushed on, “Mr. Fenwick, do you really think five hundred dollars a month was an adequate amount of money for any woman to raise a child much less Steve Jobs’s child?” He fired back, “You could have gotten your own attorney!” He spoke fast, harsh, hard, and defensively, and I suddenly understood that I had stepped into his mean sandbox. I could hardly speak because ten thoughts hit me at once. I was unable to parse through them quickly enough and pursue questioning. We soon got off the phone.
Perhaps William Fenwick believes that the law is an equal playground and that a young single mother could be a match for Steve and all the moneyed interest that surrounded him. But that was not the case. Moreover, Steve’s advisers failed him, too. To all the men who thought they did a good job by protecting Steve, I want to know, was there some point to keeping him infantilized? And even now, I ask, what is the enlightened response in me to all of this? What will bring me strength and grace in the face of such useless, mindless, wasteful collaborations for power and position when the memory of our daily unmet needs still haunts me?
* * *
In 1980, after the paternity was established and Steve was sending an automatic transfer to my account once a month, one day out of the blue he came over to my house on Oak Grove to speak to Lisa. Lisa was not yet three. He sat on the floor with us and then proudly announced to Lisa, “I am your father.” It was like some kind of Darth Vader moment. Then he waited for a response with a big, slightly fake smile on his face. I knew he was trying to do the right thing, so I watched, not knowing how to help. Lisa had no idea what he was saying and I was baffled by his stance. The Prodigal Daddy, come home. “Ta-da, here I am!” and, “This is what I look like.” “It’s me!!!” He literally said, “I am one of the most important persons of your life.”
The Bite in the Apple: A Memoir of My Life with Steve Jobs Page 25