Let's Just Say It Wasn't Pretty

by Diane Keaton

  Oh Duke, your only Chubby Roll of Cheek Dough Mom hopes you’ll remember how much fun it was to jump into our swimming pool feetfirst. I hope you won’t forget running barefoot through the waves as you, Dex, and I stood on the beach witnessing Laguna’s hurricane-force storm of 2007. Maybe. Maybe you’ll remember our screams of laughter laced with fear as a nine-foot wave hit our feet on the deck of the old wooden lifeguard station in Fisherman’s Cove. I wonder … I wonder if you’ll remember me running barefoot in the mulch of the old Redwood Forest toward you, my only son. If so, maybe you’ll forgive me for embarrassing you, with a shrug of the shoulders and a laugh. It was life, right, Duke? It was two bare feet transporting my body to you.

  THE IDEA

  After renovating fifteen homes, I’m well acquainted with the subcontractors who don’t show, the hardware that takes nine months to receive instead of the six weeks guaranteed, and the nightmare of opening up a wall only to find a dozen new stumbling blocks. After working for eighteen months on my last renovation, a Mission revival in Beverly Hills, my contractor, Ben Lunsky, was finished with my endless interruptions: “Wait a minute—what if we …” or “How about we try this?” or “Hey, Ben, I’ve got an idea.” It all came to a head when I pulled him aside saying, “You know, we’ve got to cut costs, Ben. Things are getting out of hand. We need to—” Before I could finish, he blurted out, “Look, what can I do? Sorry, Diane, but you’ve got to face it. You’re custom all the way, and you always will be!” I’d been around the block. I knew “custom” was short for “change-order queen.” Ben wasn’t wrong. On the eve of the recession we somehow managed to finish the house. Duke, Dexter, and I lived in it for a year, sold it at a loss, and rented Meg Ryan’s Spanish-style home in Bel Air while I pondered a more reasonable approach to my housing obsession.

  It was the end of an era. My serial renovation days were over. No more hunting down unattended gems, buying them, piling up expenses with an endless supply of “new ideas,” and selling them at a profit. No more. That’s what I kept telling myself, but like any other junkie, one day I had another “new idea,” a big one. It came to me as I was pinning a cool image tagged as “staircases” by c ktnon, a graphic designer on Pinterest who has a couple million followers. At that moment, I decided the only way to get over being called “custom” was to embrace it. What could be more custom than building a new house? I justified the fantasy by telling myself I would be taking on a housing experience that demanded a practical approach. It would be a “how to” learning endeavor. And maybe in the end, if I did my homework and stuck with a budget—if I minded my p’s and q’s, whatever that means—I could build a sensible dream house from the ground up for the three of us. So I bought a half-acre lot on a street called Riviera Ranch Road in Sullivan Canyon.

  Shortly thereafter, a young couple purchased Meg’s house. They weren’t interested in extending the lease. Their lawyers notified us that we would need to leave at the end of the month. In a panic, Aileen Comora, my broker, and I looked at dozens of long-term rentals, and every house on the market. I was seriously freaking out. Plus I’d already invested the bulk of my savings in the unbuilt dream house, so I couldn’t exactly go hog wild. Several homes had the stamp of previous lives within their walls. As nice as they were, I couldn’t live in the residue of someone else’s life. When we saw a clean, bright two-story spec house in the Palisades offered at the right price, I passed. I dismissed it as cookie-cutter. There was no way Duke, Dex, and I would fit into a developer’s dream of the Connecticut Family Lifestyle. Another couple of weeks went by with no new possibilities. Aileen convinced me to take another look at the spec. It faced a public plaza in a neighborhood of nice but not exorbitantly priced houses. There were California bungalows, adorable haciendas, and a few Cliff May knockoffs built in the 1960s. They reminded me of my early California days, with Mom and Dad. What the heck … Duke, Dexter, our dog Emmie, and I had to live somewhere. Time was closing in. So I bought it. I did. I bought the brand-new opposite-of-custom Connecticut farmhouse one block from a sliding bluff that overlooks the Pacific Ocean.

  THE NEIGHBORHOOD

  We moved onto Wynola Street, across from Almar Plaza, eight months ago. In the center of the plaza stands a gnarly old spruce tree with king-sized roots that spread to the edge of the two-thousand-square-foot park. There are two bright blue plastic swings in the shape of an airplane hanging from the branches, just like the one in which baby Dexter used to scream in glee every time I pushed her higher. The play area is sprinkled with some sorry irises and a couple of bushes. A polished granite bench dedicated to the memory of Olive and John Thomas rests off to the side. The neighbor directly across from us is a retired Dodgers baseball player. His house has a widow’s walk with a view of the ocean. Unlike him and his family, we do not have a widow’s walk, but my bedroom faces east, and the sun enters my window when it rises, and the moon does, too. When I walk Emmie at six A.M., the moon, on its last legs, gently performs its disappearing act. Every morning I’m reminded of the mystery. Good morning, moon. Good morning, Dex. Good morning, Duke.

  Our next-door neighbor Liz is the glue of the community. It was Liz who knocked on the door with a plate of cookies soon after we moved in, welcoming my family to the neighborhood. Her house, a wood-planked English cottage with an authentic (now illegal) shake roof, is irresistible. Every morning Emmie and I pass by. And every morning I elaborate on the same daydream. What if Liz were to put it on the market? What if I bought it? What if I connected her authentic cottage with my fake Connecticut farmhouse? Taking it a step further, what if Laurie, the landscaper next door on the other side, sold me her one-story 1950s modern? I could potentially amalgamate the three homes with interconnecting breezeways and a California cactus garden lined with oaks and olive trees. I assured myself I would be doing the neighborhood a service by linking three distinct examples of Los Angeles’s “wacky” residential architecture into one. That’s when a tiny voice in the furthest reaches of my brain asked: What about Liz and Laurie? What about the Glue and the Landscape Gardener?

  Unlike Beverly Hills and Bel Air, our neighborhood does not have eight-foot walls blocking the intrusion of a community. Sometimes I sit on the swing, checking out the seasonal changes of the Santa Monica Mountains, and catch a glimpse of the ex-Dodger. His house, like mine, is spec all the way. When he shuts the door to his SUV and limps to his red front door, I worry about his injury. What happened? His windows are always closed. His curtains are often drawn. Talk about opposites. Our house, with its “We’re Glad You’re Here” greeting painted in white across the charcoal gray wall of the dining room, visible from the street, tells a different story. Our house has one demand, and it sums up my character. “Please look at me.” Every now and then, the ex-Dodger will turn around and say “Hi, neighbor.” I often wonder—and I’m sure I’m wrong—if what he really wants to say is “Hey, lady, what’s with the ‘All the world’s a stage’ living style?”

  Last Christmas, Hi Neighbor was the brunt of a disgruntled observation from Mr.—excuse me—Dr. Harold Greene: “I apologize for your neighbor’s horrible taste.” Of course, I knew what the doctor was referring to. Who didn’t? It was the Walmart blow-up Santa Claus on Hi Neighbor’s porch. Every three minutes Santa bent over, and every three minutes his Santa pants fell to the ground, exposing his bare-ass Santa butt with “Merry Christmas” written across the cheeks. For a man of culture, this must have been the height of bad taste. But why tell me? Is it possible that the doctor missed the eight-foot-high address numbers I painted in black next to my front door? After all, he was talking to the woman with the look-at-me open-curtain policy. As the doctor sauntered off, I felt the urge to knock on Hi Neighbor’s door and let him and his family know I had their backs. I wanted to reassure them that Santa’s Christmas greeting will be welcomed back next year in all its bare-ass naked wonder.

  One block down lives Lucille. It’s hard not to adore Lucille. For one thing, she’s a fellow baby boo
mer; for another, she has a disarmingly sunny outlook. Her home, a sweet, if modest gray ranch house with white trim, reflects Lucille’s kindhearted character. She drives a ’76 four-door green Mercedes. Every time I spot Lucille, she’s either just about to open her car door or is cruising slowly past our house on her way to the drugstore, shouting, “I’m heading for CVS. Need anything, Diane, some odds and ends?” I think of Lucille as Almar Plaza’s official greeter. The last time I saw her waving from the car, I was reminded of an old Carol Burnett appearance on The Tonight Show where she seemed to be promoting a kind of Pollyanna view on the merits of smiling. I remember her telling Johnny Carson, “The shortest distance between new friends is a smile.” It’s interesting how Lucille has made me reconsider Carol Burnett’s proposition. If you think about it, a smile can be something more than a passing gesture given to, say, the gas station attendant putting air in your tires. Sure, it’s a gesture, but a gesture can have a lasting effect. Lucille is my everyday optimist, my very own Carol Burnett. She reminds me to be grateful for the gift I was given, the big one: the gift of life.

  THE DREAM

  When I was a girl, my Sunday school teacher told us that if we believed in Jesus we’d live in a beautiful mansion in heaven. I believed her. At first I thought God would give me a castle made of stone, like in Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. A little later I changed my mind and wanted a replica of Hearst Castle. When I was twelve, Dad began taking me on tours through model homes in Orange County. Once we drove all the way to Costa Mesa, where we saw a high-end tract development called Vista del Rey Estates. “Estates” was a new word for me. I liked it. I wanted an estate, too. On the spot I told God I’d changed my mind about Hearst Castle—too fancy—and put in an order for Vista Del Rey’s $59,999 tract home, Plan A, in Costa Mesa. I was sure God didn’t mind change orders—not that I knew yet what a change order was, but you get the drift. Anyway, I was convinced that he made zillions of homes that fit everyone’s desires, including a special mansion for our recently demised cat Charcoal. I figured Charcoal probably chose the Plan B Cat House, which included a mountain of catnip and a limitless supply of fake mice.

  905 NORTH WRIGHT STREET

  Dad bought our very own tract house in 1958. It wasn’t a model home, but it did feature four bedrooms and two baths. The wood-planked beige exterior included a two-car garage. As for curb appeal, there was none, unless you call one recently planted tree without leaves, a dirt-covered front yard, and two cars parked in the driveway curb appeal.

  Over dinners of Mom’s meat loaf with walnuts, Dad dominated the conversation with reports on success stories of real estate developers like Bill Krisel in the San Fernando Valley, who single-handedly mapped out the ABC’s of proper planning for tract-style complexes. At the very mention of “proper planning,” my mind wandered to what kind of ice milk—not to be confused with ice cream—we’d be getting for dessert; anything, anything but Neapolitan. The “in-teeer-resting” thing (that’s how Dad pronounced it) about Bill Krisel’s stair systems was that they were prefabricated in factories and installed on-site, thus allowing builders to offer lower prices.

  The day that Walt Disney announced he was opening a new attraction in Tomorrowland called “Monsanto’s House of the Future,” Dad read us the details out of The Orange County Register over Mom’s Sunday night taco dinner. Made entirely of plastic, right down to the electric toothbrushes, Monsanto’s house had a kitchen with a state-of-the-art dishwasher, as well as a new type of heating device called “the Microwave.” Mom laughed when she heard “The kitchen got dinner itself.” The very next week, all six of us stood in line with hundreds of others waiting to take a tour of the “House of the Future.” Since I was certain it would be my next change order for the perfect home in heaven, you can imagine my surprise when I saw what looked like an enormous wheel of cheese that seemed to pop out of the earth. Once we were inside “Plasticland,” as Randy called it, I thought the vinyl kitchen countertops and the vinyl flooring and the vinyl bathroom splashes looked fake. I didn’t care about the zillions of gadgets, or even the button that sprayed the scent of roses throughout the house. It was so sterile I had to be excused, and for the first time, I sort of understood that there was a difference between my idea of beauty and someone else’s. For Dad, beauty was the ingenuity of Monsanto’s engineers, but it could also be found in Mr. Bill Krisel’s clever cost-cutting advances.

  For a homemaker in the suburban 1950s, beauty was a purchasable commodity. That meant it was a product. Shopping for Mom was, unfortunately, limited by the family budget. She valiantly implemented her dreams by making our house on Wright Street an exhibition site. Her source for inspiration came from window displays, and her favorite displays were found at Bullocks Wilshire department store during the Christmas season. Inside the diorama glass boxes, mannequins in red scarves and wool coats gathered around the perfectly lit Christmas tree, where gift-wrapped presents, some open, some not, revealed Madame Alexander dolls, electric train sets, candy canes, and shiny new bicycles. I always looked for Mom’s response before having mine. If her eyes lit up, if she was silent, I could see the dream begin its formation. Mom loved looking, and looking made her love the dream—the dream of beauty. But what was beauty? For Mom it was all things HOME.

  Since she couldn’t buy what she wanted, Mom had to construct her own version. Sure, she stole ideas, but what else could she do? I don’t know anyone who hasn’t been guilty of trying to usurp beauty in one form or another. I like to think of stealing—or appropriating—as a way to create your own version of beauty, especially since it’s based on an idea of someone else’s idea of an idea. Get it? Everything I wanted from beauty was lifted from Mom and Dad. Everything. As I grew older, I began to believe that for both of them beauty was a feeling more than anything else.

  HOME THEN

  My childhood home, 905 North Wright Street, was the second house in from the cross street. Judy Reed lived on the corner. Judy and I played with our Barbies well over the designated stop age of twelve. Judy was an only child whose father was the principal of Santa Ana High School. One afternoon Judy and I got caught in the closet dressed up in her mother’s clothes. Mr. Reed took my hand and marched me over to our house, where he told Mom point-blank that he thought it was strange that two girls age twelve were in a closet together. He didn’t use the L-word, but he implied that there was something highly fishy going on. I was never again allowed in Judy’s house.

  Rocky Lee lived way down at the end of the street. He was Randy’s best friend. One day I caught them under the bed looking at women’s breasts in a Playboy magazine. I immediately told Mom. Mom spoke to Rocky’s mom, which led to an intervention with all the other moms in the neighborhood. The subject? “Intercourse.” One thing I learned: Never rat out your brother. It wasn’t worth it.

  Laurel and Bill Bastendorf lived next door. They had a pool with a sign outside saying, “We don’t swim in your toilet. Don’t pee in our pool.” Their backyard was a jungle, like out of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are. But that was nothing compared to the murder committed five blocks away, in one of the houses that had the same Plan B style as ours.

  Lou lived across the street. She knew how to blow smoke rings. She was married to Jimmy G., who looked like a Ken doll. Lou couldn’t have babies, so she let me stay overnight in her former Plan A model home every other Friday. Jimmy G. made brown drinks with ice in tumbler glasses. After three brown drinks, Lou and Jimmy G. turned out to be a lot of fun. I was given 7Up in a tall green glass with a dozen red cherries on top and lots of ice. I decided that once I got to heaven I would request the very same tall glasses, with the same red cherries, and a barbecue on the patio, and a cook’s hat, and a fancy apron, and lots of laughter shared with people like Lou and Jimmy G.

  Before moving to the Palisades, I’d forgotten 905 North Wright Street, and how happy our family was to share the common bond of being part of a neighborhood. I’d forgotten that th
ose were the best of times for all of us, Mom included. Randy and I produced our first Hall Family Talent Show, where we all played monsters who sang and danced to “Monster Mash.” Every spring Mom gathered a group of neighbors to go see the swallows return to Capistrano. Dad shared Saturday night beers with Bill from next door. The skinny trees in our front yards matured. We were part of a community that shaped the kind of people we became. When several blocks of houses south of Wright Street were leveled so that Interstate 5 could pass through, it left a gaping hole in our neighborhood. Sure, we continued to eat dinners at the counter while Dad, as always, monopolized the conversation, but one night he told us he was going to quit his job. He said he was revving up his engines in order to start an independent engineering firm to be called Hall and Foreman, Inc. That’s when I knew a change was going to come.

  CHANGE

  The next year, I was accepted at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre, in New York City. Suddenly I lived on the fifth floor of a brick walk-up with a toilet down the hall. From there, I went from one studio apartment to another for seven years. There was no neighborhood to be found in New York City, at least not for me. Every morning I opened the door, closed the door, and locked the door behind me. Every day I joined millions of other New Yorkers on the street. Every night I unlocked my door, closed it behind me, and that was it.