One and Only

by Gerald Nicosia

  After Joe got out of jail, he opened an after-hours music-and-dancing joint in the Tenderloin called the 181 Club, at which famous musicians like Nat King Cole sometimes dropped by after their regular gigs. The club was successful, but Joe was tied up for long hours working there. Annie Ree got pregnant, moved out, and began raising her own baby when she was still quite young. With Lu Anne’s husband away most of the time, perhaps it was loneliness that got to her, but she began using morphine and heroin more and more heavily.

  According to Hinkle, she used up her husband’s merchant marine checks to pay for the drugs; and when she again ran out of money, she borrowed against her house, then had trouble making the new mortgage payments. Al knew she was starting to get in too deep when her phone was disconnected. He paid the bill for her, but he recalls that strange people would answer her door when he came over, some of whom didn’t even seem to know Lu Anne, and he sensed that they were all high on drugs. Eventually Lu Anne lost her house. At some point, she moved in with Joe, a few blocks from where she used to live, but her desperation for money increased. Al remembers her frequently coming to see him on the railroad, pleading for small loans of 10 or 20 dollars, which he always gave, and promising that she would go into a Methadone treatment program soon. He was appalled by the degrading lifestyle she’d fallen into, and felt ashamed of his own inability to refuse her money, since he knew he was contributing to her downfall by helping finance her habit.

  Al recalls that Annie Ree was really worried about her mom at this time, and of course Al and his wife, Helen, were too. Lu Anne’s husband, Bob, was highly disapproving of her drug use, in fact would not tolerate it, and so the two separated for a while. At one point, Al says, Lu Anne actually disappeared for almost six months—though it turned out she had merely gone back to Denver. As sympathetic as Al was, and as pained as he felt to witness Lu Anne’s humiliation, he was also puzzled and a bit dismayed that a woman in her forties would allow herself to become hooked on hard drugs. He could see people experimenting in their youth, he says, but he felt that somebody in middle age should know better than to embark on such a dangerous lifestyle. It also didn’t accord with the Lu Anne he and his wife thought they knew—the woman who was usually so truthful and outgoing and loving, who didn’t seem to have a selfish bone in her body, who loved children and in fact often babysat Neal’s kids (without Carolyn’s knowledge) when they were young, the woman who would endlessly do kind things for her friends, like passing her own daughter’s clothes and toys on to the Hinkles for their daughter, Dawn, who was two years younger than Annie Ree.

  The only possible explanation Al could come up with for Lu Anne’s big downhill detour late in life was that it was “a middle-age thing.” He said she would sometimes wonder aloud, “What’s left for me?” But it seems there was more than that going on. All the evidence points to the fact that she had never gotten over her love for Neal Cassady, and that the tragic end of his own life was absolutely devastating for her.

  Although she truly loved Bob Skonecki, Lu Anne could never break off her sexual relationship with Neal even after she took vows with her fourth husband. The connection she had with Neal seemed to override everything else she had in her life. Al recalls how happy she was—just bubbling over with laughter and merriment—when Neal drove them over to see Jack at his little cottage in Berkeley in 1957. He also recalls how worried she was about Neal the following year, when he was in San Quentin. Deeply mortified to have landed in such a place, Neal did not want to write letters to the majority of his friends while in prison (though he did keep up a faithful correspondence with Carolyn). For the most part, he also did not want to see visitors. Lu Anne had no way of getting word of his condition, and she feared for his life. Finally, arrangements were made with the prison, and Al drove her over to Marin County to see him. She asked Al to leave them alone together during the visiting period. Afterward, he says, she was enormously relieved to have found that Neal had achieved some sort of tranquility in jail, and that he was doing his best to earn an early release. It was clear to Al that she still cared a great deal about Neal, and that Neal’s state of mind profoundly affected hers, as if there were some sort of communication wire between their psyches.

  Bob Skonecki (Lu Anne’s fourth husband), Lu Anne, and Annie, age 13, holding Junior, her Maltese terrier, Daly City, 1964. (Photo courtesy of Anne Marie Santos.)

  Al Hinkle with coworker, Southern Pacific Railroad, July 9, 1954. (Photo courtesy of Al Hinkle.)

  Hinkle also recalls how, during the sixties, Lu Anne would meet fairly often with Neal for clandestine sex. Until 1963, of course, he was still married to Carolyn; and from late 1963 on, she was married to Skonecki. But the marital status of neither one proved an obstacle to these rendezvous, the urgency of which both Neal and Lu Anne seemed to feel keenly. Occasionally Hinkle would abet their trysts. By prearrangement, Neal would wait in San Jose on certain days when Al brought her down from San Francisco on the train. There’d be big hugs and kisses as soon as they came together, and then Neal would spirit her off in his car to a motel or somebody’s empty bedroom, where they’d share a few hours of bliss in each other’s arms. Other times—Al learned from Neal—Lu Anne would simply drive down to San Jose in her car and call Neal to come meet her. Her daughter would be left in the care of Joe or one of the many people who spent time living at their house. As far as Hinkle knew, nobody else in their lives, including Carolyn Cassady and Annie Ree, was aware of these secret love meetings.

  When Neal was found dying beside the railroad tracks in San Miguel de Allende in 1968, Annie Ree, barely 17, was having her own difficulties and was not there for Lu Anne, to talk through all the things her mother must have been feeling. Nor could Lu Anne easily have talked with Skonecki about Neal’s death, even had Skonecki not been absent so much of the time. Joe stayed with her during some of her worst times. Still, Lu Anne retreated into herself. Never much of a drinker, she got so drunk and disoriented one night that she ended up falling asleep in a stranger’s house. Four years after Neal’s death, she tried heroin, and found herself compelled to ride the self-destructive train almost to the same place where it had taken Jack and Neal.

  But Lu Anne proved herself stronger than they were. Maybe it was her love for her child and grandchild that saved her, but one also feels there was a strength in Lu Anne from the very beginning that always let her land on her feet, always kept her one step ahead of the pack of troubles that dogged her for most of her life. After all, as a willowy teenager only halfway through her high school years, she survived the worst tricks and knockdowns a hardened ex-con like Cassady (for in many respects that’s what he was) could toss at her. She also survived a host of physically abusive, sometimes brutal men. Some might think there was a streak of masochism in her that brought her back to men like that time and again—but that would have been a matter for a trained therapist to dissect, and she’s gone now and beyond the reach of analysis. I would merely suggest here that there is an alternate explanation—that the lady honestly sought love as her highest goal, that she needed love more than anything, craved it, and was willing to risk anything, even her own well-being, to find it.

  In any case, according to Hinkle, at some point around the early 1980s, Lu Anne took herself back to Denver again, determined to get off heroin. Hidden away from everyone except her longtime friend Jimmy Holmes, who was himself dying at that time, she put herself through a rehab program and got clean. And as far as anyone knows, she did not use hard drugs ever again for the rest of her life.

  She and Skonecki reconciled, took their savings (for she’d managed to keep a little money from the sale of her house), and bought a trailer up in Sonoma County, an hour or so north of San Francisco. There they seemed like the ideal, loving, and contented retired couple. Lu Anne’s kindness and thoughtfulness returned in full force. When Al’s wife, Helen, died of cancer in 1994, she called him and comforted him greatly. Al returned the favor by visiting Lu Anne several times after Skonec
ki died in 1995. Bereft herself, she comforted Al again when his second wife, Maxine, whom he married in 1996, fell victim to Alzheimer’s disease only a few years later. She remained in her trailer in Sonoma, where Al would find her ensconced amid hundreds of dolls, with a loyal dog for companionship. Her old girlfriend Lois was now dead, and she had also lost her half brother Lloyd, whom she’d been close to.

  But she soon found a new companion. She met Joe Sanchez, a Mexican American man who had dated Lloyd’s widow for a while. Originally from Los Angeles but now suffering through the Denver winter, he told her he was broke and had no place to stay, so she invited him to move into her spare bedroom in Sonoma. He lived there happily for several years—not so different from the stray people Annie Ree remembers ending up at their house in Daly City several decades earlier. By this time, Lu Anne had her own social security benefits as well as Skonecki’s merchant marine pension, and her financial worries were long gone. Just as she always had, she felt it was her duty to help people who were less fortunate than she.

  If she were no longer the overtly joyous, impulsive, hell-for-leather young pinup girl she had once been, she was, according to Al, “not unhappy.” She had gained a little weight and appeared slightly “plump,” but most people found her still beautiful. Whenever they got together, she would ask Al about Ginsberg and other people they knew from the old days who were still alive, like Hal Chase. But when he left a message on her answering machine about Ginsberg reading at Stanford and offered to drive her there and back, she never responded.

  Annie and Lu Anne, Lu Anne’s last apartment, Clayton Street, San Francisco, 2008. One of the last known photos of Lu Anne. (Photo courtesy of Anne Marie Santos.)

  Until she became very sick with cancer during the last year of her life, Lu Anne would call Al about every three or four months to see how he was doing, but she almost never took calls from him or anyone else. She became famous for using her answering machine to screen all her calls, as if she were now relishing her solitude and reluctant to give it up except when she chose to. Often in her calls to check up on him, she’d promise Al that she would “come down soon to see ya,” but she never did.

  When they did talk, in person or on the phone, he noticed that she avoided talking about Neal, as if the subject came with a pain she didn’t want to revive. Likewise, she avoided any specific references to the Beat world, and would brush Al off quickly whenever he suggested she should visit or speak at the new Beat Museum in San Francisco. If he’d ask her questions about their time in New York, she’d always answer him, and even talk readily about it, but she would never bring up the subject herself.

  Once, he asked her who the musicians were that they had heard up in Harlem with Jack and Neal. He was astonished when she named every person in that band—she recalled the trumpeter, drummer, clarinetist, every instrument and every player there.

  “Her memory was still perfect,” he said.

  Letter to Neal

  Anne Santos found this handwritten, unsent letter among her mother’s papers in her San Francisco apartment after her death. It is clearly written to Neal Cassady. Anne believes it was written in Tampa, Florida, in 1957, just after her mom got out of the hospital following a serious illness, during which Lu Anne may have had to confront her possible death. The handwriting, in light-blue pen, has faded over the years, and her spelling and punctuation are nonstandard, so deciphering the letter was no easy task. In one place, where I was not certain of the reading, I marked the doubtful word with a question mark.—G.N.

  Lu Anne’s letter to Neal from Tampa, Florida, 1957, page 1. (Ccourtesy of Anne Marie Santos.)

  Neal,

  I’ve suddenly realized at this late date that you’re my what? I don’t know what really, all I know is that as I’m sitting here in Tampa I can’t stand the thought of not knowing you. I can’t put down what I’m feeling & yet I’m trying. I wonder can I put down the emotion within me, even when I’m with another, someday, someway, I’m listening to Frank Sinatra. Oh Neal I love you. Have you ever just sat & wrote what you felt. I feel you as much now as when I was sixteen. I don’t know if you’re a hangover or am I mad. I’ve made so many moves, but not until this last year have I realized why. Neal please. I started to say please help me & I don’t really know if it was pride or once again I’m stumped. I’m sitting here with my head in my hand trying to say the right thing. What is the right thing. Even when I say I love you I cringe. You’ve dominated most of my life, & if I could feel your arms around me I could go on forever. Is that theatrical? I’m just talking baby. Just anything to ease some of this torment. Somehow you’ve become like some irritation on the skin and keep getting bigger and bigger & even when you squeeze it, no it’s not gone, just a permanent scar (forever). Is that the way it is. I hate to think I’m a martyr [?], and yet do I. I don’t really know & once again I’m back to saying please help me not in the usual sense, but I started to say because we’re friends. I love you or whatever it is Neal & can’t get over it. You have to teach me, tell me know me & mostly I want you to love me with your lips, your eyes, your hands & as always just to have you walk to me, you make love to me. I’m afraid Neal that you left me as a child & will once again find me the same, I take that back. I just got mad at myself for thinking that, you won’t find me a child, maybe in ways, but talk to me & love me & you’ll find I’m a woman, but more than that, you’ll find I’m a woman you’ve molded without ever being near. I know how you think, but regardless you motivated more things in my life than anyone living.

  [The letter breaks off, unsigned.]

  A Daughter’s Recollection by Anne Marie Santos

  Lu Anne presenting trophy to the winner of the Midget Auto Races, Denver, 1944 or 1945. (Photo courtesy of Anne Marie Santos.)

  My Mother was Lu Anne, the model for “Marylou” in On the Road. She is known to most of the literary world as Lu Anne Henderson, although she was born Cora Lu Anne Bullard.

  She also had the surnames Cassady, Murphy, Catechi, and Skonecki. Each one of these names represents a husband: Neal Cassady, Ray Murphy, Sam Catechi, and Bob Skonecki. But each also represents a different time in her life. Even more than that, they really were clear and separate lives—each having the joys and sorrows of love found and lost. Mother always spoke with love and kindness of all of these men with whom she shared her life, though in later years she would reflect on the hardships she endured while living with some of them. All of these husbands—including eventually even Ray Murphy, from whom she’d initially had to hide for a couple of years after their divorce—remained loving toward her, just as almost all the people she met throughout her life remained her friends. She was one of those people who drew others in to want to know her. She invited you in by her smile and sparkling eyes. Her gentle, warm greeting, “Hi honey,” got them at the first hello. Being pretty, smart, humble, caring, and a good listener didn’t hurt either. I always describe her as a cross between Auntie Mame and Holly Golightly.

  Lu Anne, age 16, Peetz, Colorado. (Photo courtesy of Anne Marie Santos.)

  My friends were always envious of her; they always said that I was the only one with a “fun mother.” Since I was an only child, she made sure I always had friends around. When I was little and she worked at San Francisco Airport as a cocktail waitress, she would rent a motel room for the day at Casa Mateo, which was close by, and we would swim all day until she got ready for work. Or she would take a carload of her friends and us kids to Marin Town and Country Club for barbecue and swimming. In the summer she would rent a cabin at Rio Nido on the Russian River, and over the summer people took turns staying with us. One summer she surprised us with tickets to see the Beatles at the Cow Palace. She had her friend Joe come and pick us up in Rio Nido and deliver us back after the show. She loved playing board games and cards or just playing records and singing and dancing around the house. One of the highlights for my two best friends, Tina and Sharon, was to put on shows with me for my mother and her friends. She would let
us get in her closet and wear all her beautiful dresses, high heels, furs, and jewelry—nothing was off-limits.

  We went out to dinner all the time and saw floor shows at places like Bimbo’s 365 Club, Sinaloa Mexican restaurant, and the Forbidden City in Chinatown. She always got the best seats, and my friends and I would usually be asked on stage because she almost always knew someone who worked there. She even took Sharon to Las Vegas one time by herself because I had been there with my mother the year before and didn’t want to go again. They saw Flower Drum Song, and through my mother Sharon met Joey Bishop. Kids felt they could confide in her when they needed an adult to really listen to them. All my friends remained close with her.

  Though we were surrounded by many friends who loved us, when I was very young I would always wonder why we seemed to have no family. She would tell me that we actually had a very large family back in Colorado and that we would go visit sometime. But we never did. Sometimes she told me about how her great-grandparents and grandparents had homesteaded large tracts of land around Peetz, Colorado, and that those ranches were still thriving. I knew that my grandparents were in England, because “Pappy,” as I called my grandfather, was in the Air Force. When Pappy and his wife, Thelma, came back to the United States, he was stationed in Florida. They had been there when I was born; then he was stationed overseas for a few years. They would send gifts at the holidays, which are some of my earliest recollections of them: Christmas stockings with nuts and oranges, and a tea set that I still have. My mother’s half brothers moved to Los Angeles when I was about five years old, and soon after that we did make a trip there so that I could meet my family for the first time.