Candy at Last

by Candy Spelling

  Aaron had been the skinniest member in a family of five children. When he was growing up, it fell on him to wait in the bread line for the day-old bread. Aaron’s mother, Pearl, was incredibly loving and self-sacrificing. He had many memories of her going to bed hungry so her children could eat. She would pretend she wasn’t hungry and turn in for the night. So for Aaron, giving to our children meant giving them every possible material object they might want. And every celebration, whether it was a birthday, holiday, or anniversary, was designed to be a magical experience that would bring joy to the whole family.

  As for me, when I was a child I longed for a mother who would treat me like the child that I was and not like I was her pupil at a finishing school. When I was a little girl, I desperately wanted a dog, but my mother didn’t care for animals. She used to say to me, “When you get married, you can have as many dogs as you want.” Once I was a mother, I wanted my children to have the many things I didn’t have as a child, not the least of which was affection and, of course, a dog or maybe even two.

  Our children were definitely allowed to have pets. In fact, I felt like Farmer Gray from the 1950s Terry-Toons comics. At one point we had six dogs, a mixed pack of poodles and bichons. We also had birds, fish, turtles, frogs, and tadpoles. I found the tadpoles absolutely frightening. I had nightmares of the full-grown frogs taking over the house like one of the Ten Plagues of Egypt. I could see them hopping all over the kitchen, in the oven, inside the refrigerator, and up the stairs into our bedroom. Worst of all, I envisioned them hopping up onto our bed and all over me while I was sleeping.

  At one point, we also had rabbits. I naively thought they would make cute Easter presents and great pets. I had no idea rabbits would be such hard work. The cages were hard to keep clean, not to mention deodorized. Our fluffy Easter rabbits started off as adorable little bunnies with those unbelievably cute pink ears. Before too long they had evolved into these mad March hares that fought at night. It was so awful, and I felt so badly for the sweet Angora rabbit who was always being attacked by the white New Zealand rabbit.

  Even in separate cages, the rabbits seem to antagonize one another, so we’d wake up every morning to a big mess of hay, rabbit pee, and rabbit poop scattered all around the table where we kept the cages at night. I had been trying to enforce Tori and Randy’s responsibility for cleaning up after their pets, but after about the fourth consecutive day, the kids were done. I knew that we needed to find another home for the rabbits, so I called the owner of the pet shop to see if I could enlist his help. I explained that I didn’t want any money back, I just needed his assistance in rehoming the rabbits. The storeowner refused to help. He explained that Easter was over, and full-grown rabbits were not the popular commodity cute baby bunnies were.

  Looking back, I’m sure I wasn’t the first frantic mother calling with a plea for help. In fact, hysterical mothers were probably part of his retail season. I was desperate and needed a solution, so I did what any desperate mother would do. I loaded the bunnies in their cages into the backseat of my BMW and drove straight to the pet shop. When there was no one around, I unloaded the cages and left them at the shop’s front door. I felt like none other than Lucy Ricardo as I sat in my car nervously waiting for someone to come out of the shop and take them in. Finally someone did. That was when I drove away. I called the owner later to confess and apologize. We had a good laugh, and he said he understood. He had been able to find them a new home, so I felt a lot less guilty.

  If only the trials and the tribulations of the pet bunnies had been the hardest part of parenting, I would have been in pretty good shape. I honestly can’t think of anything harder than raising a teenager, except of course raising two teenagers. Compared to adolescence, late-night feedings and the “terrible twos” seemed like a cakewalk. The hormonal teenage years are truly the acid test for all parents.

  I’ve always said that Tori has “the eye of the tiger.” This was true of her even as a little girl. She knew what she wanted and truly thrived on being Aaron’s daughter. Tori had lots of friends, did well in school, and was accepted to the University of Southern California on her own merit. When she got serious about being an actress, she met with a talent manager who told her she needed to “be hungry.” Tori took this advice to heart, raised the bar on herself, and I think has exceeded expectations.

  My son, Randy, was a different kind of child. He was a sensitive and emotional kid who didn’t like competitive environments. He may be more like his mom in that way. When we tried enrolling him at the prestigious Harvard School (brother school to Tori’s all-girl school), he was very clear that he didn’t want to go there. We got Randy a full-time tutor weeks before school was supposed to start and tried another school that wasn’t the right fit either. Finally we found Montclair Prep in the San Fernando Valley, and it turned out to be the perfect school for Randy. It was a much more nurturing and collaborative environment and truthfully not something I would have thought to look for in a school; I’d gone straight for the academics.

  Hindsight really is twenty-twenty. I see now that in my quest to be the perfect mother and create the picture-perfect life for my children, I was too focused on the bigger picture and not enough on the smaller brush strokes. The poet Maya Angelou really hit the nail on the head when she wrote, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

  I feel badly that my children felt I wasn’t affectionate enough. I thought I was. Having come from a family where there was no affection, my barometer was obviously off. I thought I was being nurturing by hiring a tutor for Randy and being open to different schools for him. I know now that he needed a different kind of nurturing.

  Aaron and I definitely made mistakes, and if I had to do it all over again, I would change certain dynamics. First, and I think this goes on in a lot of households, I would not have allowed Aaron to be the “good cop.” I was always the “bad cop” and even when I wasn’t, Aaron hung the rap on me. I would definitely go back and institute a united front for the benefit of the children and the family as a whole.

  With time, I see now that it would have been beneficial for the children to have had responsibilities around the house. It would have been a battle with my overindulgent husband, but we really should have taught the kids to do more for themselves. They should have earned the electronic gadgets, the designer clothes, and the fancy cars.

  Both of my children are parents now with their own children. I think they are learning the complexities of being “Mommy” and “Daddy” and how as a parent you are graded on a curve. I don’t think Tori ever forgave me for returning the rabbits to the pet shop. A few years ago, she and her husband got rabbits for their own kids. Instead of fighting, her rabbits multiplied the way those rabbits are known to do.

  I guess the good news for them is that these days, there are bunny rescues who can help rehome those rascally rabbits if the situation gets out of control.

  13

  Family Matters

  Aaron’s father, David, died just before we met, but I had a wonderful relationship with Aaron’s mother, Pearl. When I met her, she was living on her own in Texas and used to come visit Aaron in Los Angeles with her sister Lena. The three of them were very close, so Pearl and Lena would come stay in his little two-bedroom house.

  In Texas terms, the sisters were a “real hoot.” One morning I stopped by to visit with them. Pearl was at the kitchen counter making tea. I asked her how she had slept. “Lena kept me up with her snoring.” Then I went into the living room where Lena was sitting and I asked her how she’d slept. “Pearl kept me up all night with her snoring.”

  What was so amazing about these women was that they had grown up poor and raised their children during the Depression, yet at their core, they were happy individuals. Sadly, Pearl died just before Aaron and I were married.

  My mother was born Augusta Gene. When she was older, she legally changed her
first name to Gene, from her father’s name Eugene. My mother was Hungarian by descent. Her mother Helen was Hungarian by birth and married a Hungarian immigrant, Eugene Rosen, here in the United States. My grandfather Eugene owned all the meat concessions in Grand Central Market and was able to create a very comfortable lifestyle for my grandmother Helen, my mother, and her brother, Milton.

  My grandparents eventually settled in Beverly Hills, and that is where my mother went to high school. Eugene was president of Sinai Temple, where I am still a member today. I always loved when my mother told me about the horses and buggies that rode along Sunset Boulevard.

  My mother’s brother, Milton, went into the meat concession business with my grandfather Eugene and ended up stealing most of the business from his own father. This obviously led to a serious fracture in our family, and Milton ended up legally changing his last name to Melton so he wouldn’t be a Rosen anymore. So somewhere out there I have cousins on the Rosen side who have the last name Melton.

  Eugene and Helen fell on hard financial times after the situation with Milton. In those days a bride had a trousseau, which was a hope chest filled with the personal possessions of the bride. This included, among other things, the wedding dress, linens, household wares, and sometimes a dowry. When my mother got engaged to my father, my grandmother Helen scrubbed floors to earn the money for my mother’s trousseau.

  My father was Merritt Marer. His parents were Arthur and Ada Marer. They were both Russian immigrants who lived in Chicago. Arthur was a sophisticated man-about-town living the American Dream. At the age of forty-nine, he died of a heart attack in the arms of another woman. It may very well have been at the Copacabana in New York City. Wherever it was, I always picture martinis flowing in a smoke-filled room full of gorgeous showgirls, sexy cigarette girls, and splashy night-club acts.

  My parents were obviously married at the time of my paternal grandfather Arthur’s scandalous passing. Helen felt terrible for Ada, who was not only suddenly a young widow but was also betrayed by her husband. Helen’s heart went out to Ada, and she started inviting her over to the house and out everywhere with her and Eugene. Well, Ada and Eugene got a little closer than expected. Let’s just say too close. Eugene and Ada had an affair, and then Eugene left Helen and married the widowed Ada.

  Helen was absolutely humiliated and devastated. She was only in her fifties but never remarried or even went on one date. I always wondered how she must have felt being betrayed by someone she had shown so much kindness and compassion. I don’t have a clear memory of how this affected my parents although it couldn’t have been easy since technically they were now stepsiblings.

  There’s that expression “walls have ears,” and at the time those ears were mine. My parents never directly told me what was happening, but I overheard most of the details. I do remember it was difficult for my mother because Helen was calling all the time and asking, “How could he do this to me?” Other than this we never discussed the “situation,” even though it was a major crisis in our family.

  We used to have these awkward family visits where we went to see Eugene and Ada. It was obviously very uncomfortable, but in keeping with the times and the way my family was, everybody maintained an air of civility. I was always amazed at how everyone ignored the giant elephant in the room.

  When I was about fourteen years old, I found a letter in my mother’s jewelry drawer that alluded to an affair my father was having. My mother had obviously elected to bury her head in the sand and ignore her husband’s indiscretion. Meanwhile, she kept up appearances with expensive things and refined manners.

  So this was the pattern in my family. Starting with my Uncle Milton, the men committed transgressions and the women in my family bore the burden. I suppose this was the role of women of that generation. These women seemed to have no voice and sadly no option for taking care of themselves unless of course they wanted to scrub floors.

  Given my family background, it’s no surprise that just a few years later I married Howard. Even though most of my high-school girlfriends were going to college, I relegated myself to a different category. I had an eye disorder called convergence insufficiency that made reading difficult. It is a neuromuscular anomaly that makes it impossible for my eyes to focus when looking at an object up close or reading. These days it’s diagnosed in school-age children. Unfortunately, I wasn’t diagnosed until I was an adult, so my entire academic life I was just considered “slow.” All through high school, I had to find creative ways to study, like memory games and word association.

  After graduation, Howard was my escape from my repressed home environment. The great irony of course was that my life with Howard was as isolating as my life with my family was. Women could drive and vote, but somehow it seemed that we were still living in the previous century.

  14

  Strangers: The Story of a Mother and Daughter

  When Aaron and I chose the Saturday after Thanksgiving for our wedding date, I didn’t give much thought to the fact that in some years our anniversary would actually fall on Thanksgiving Day. It was our fourth wedding anniversary that fell on the holiday, so we planned a Thanksgiving Day wedding anniversary dinner at the Bel-Air hotel.

  There we were all gathered around the beautiful Thanksgiving table with my parents, and Aaron presented me with my anniversary gift. Because I have a hard time being the center of attention, I really would have preferred to open it in private with my husband. Always the showman, Aaron insisted I open it in front of my parents, so I did. It was a stunning diamond pin from Van Cleef & Arpels.

  I don’t know why I was so surprised by my mother’s reaction, but until that very moment, I guess I was still naive. Instead of commenting on the thoughtfulness of the gift or the craftsmanship of the piece or how lucky I was to have a husband who remembered our anniversary, she blurted out, “I guess I won’t have to leave you my diamond pin after all.” I’ll never know exactly what she meant by this but it was hurtful. It was also embarrassing for my husband. I realized then that my mother was a fundamentally unhappy person and I would never be able to share anything with her.

  Four years later my mother was diagnosed with leukemia. She was only fifty-five years old. It didn’t come as a huge shock since throughout my childhood she had suffered from various ailments. Some of her conditions were real while others I believe were psychosomatic. And others still were illnesses triggered by stress.

  My mother did have some real medical problems. She had heart arrhythmia and suffered from palpitations. She was also one of three million people plagued by gastric dumping syndrome, a condition where ingested food bypasses the stomach too quickly and enters the small intestine undigested. Normal digestion time is anywhere from six to eight hours. My mother’s food passed within fifteen minutes causing her quite a bit of pain. She also had nausea, bloating, vomiting, and dizziness. This was probably why she was so thin.

  My mother was a very smart woman. When she was feeling well she did crossword puzzles and she did them in ink. I have never since seen anyone sit down to do a crossword puzzle with an ink pen. Even when she was well, she didn’t do much with her time. She didn’t volunteer or give time to charities. She spent most of her free time sleeping. Eventually she had two-thirds of her stomach removed because of an ulcer.

  Looking at her through the eyes of a child, I didn’t connect the dots. It was much simpler for me then. I liked my friend Nancy’s mother better than my own because she lively, attentive, and sweet. She was this tiny woman who let us dress up in all of her clothes. Her shoes were a size three-and-a-half and her evening gowns fit me. She didn’t mind one bit every time Nancy and I raided her closet.

  I am eleven years older now than my mother lived to be. I see now that my mother held everything in, and the bitterness inside ate her up alive. Going back to her brother, who stole my grandfather’s business and reduced them to circumstances in which my grandmother had to clean houses, I can see why she was so angry. I don’t think she wan
ted to be in the meat business, but my Uncle Milton, by the mere virtue of being male, was given an opportunity.

  After marrying my father, my mother watched him mismanage their finances. She spent a lifetime trying to be happy from the outside, but nothing was ever enough to fill that gaping hole. I think the hole expanded and filled itself with resentment. It must have also been hard to be dependent on men to take care of her when she was capable and could have taken care of herself.

  My mother was treated for her leukemia and went into remission. Shortly after this, she suffered a fall that left her unconscious. She was placed on life support, and her doctor advised me that she most likely had suffered brain damage that would leave her paralyzed on one side of her body.

  My mother had wanted a “DO NOT RESUSCITATE” order when she was undergoing cancer treatment, but we never got around to executing it. The doctor treating her for the fall knew her well and talked me through all of the possible outcomes. My mother was very proud, and I knew she wouldn’t want to live with one side of her face and body paralyzed. I also knew she wouldn’t want to go through chemotherapy again if as a result of the trauma, she fell out of remission.

  Through all of this my father was completely shutdown. It fell on me to make the decision to remove my mother from life support. After one long agonizing day, my mother’s body finally expired, and she passed away.

  Nolan Miller accompanied me to her home to pick out the clothes she would be buried in. We looked everywhere for her false teeth, but they were nowhere to be found. Despite his philandering, it suddenly seemed that my mother was the glue that held my father together. Without her he couldn’t function at all.

  Tori always brought out the best in my mother. When she was feeling well, we’d stop by for a visit. She had a closet full of toys for Tori that we would pull out and play with. My mother was very natural with her, and even though she never quite seemed to feel the joy of being a grandparent, it was the happiest I ever remember seeing her.