Let's Just Say It Wasn't Pretty

by Diane Keaton

  Dave Gold was old, octogenarian old, when I met him at his granddaughter Genna’s bat mitzvah. He reminded me of Walter Matthau, and Art Carney, too: the unassuming way he dressed; the way he loped along, kind of hangdog. His life was anything but hangdog. Dave dropped out of college at nineteen to run the family liquor store. He noticed that when he put a bottle of wine on sale for a dollar or ninety-eight cents, it sat on the shelves, but when he placed a ninety-nine-cent sign on the bottle, it was scooped up in no time. Ninety-nine became Dave’s magic number. So much so, he had an epiphany. What if he created a store where everything cost ninety-nine cents? Despite his family’s unanimous chorus of “that’s a ludicrous idea,” Dave stashed enough money away to launch his 99 Cents Only Stores at an age when most people are looking forward to the benefits of retirement. He was in his fifties.

  Gold was the kind of guy who started work at 4 A.M. and finished at 7 P.M., his daughter Karen Schiffer said in his Los Angeles Times obituary. “He would come home at the end of the day and say, ‘Look at this beautiful shampoo.’ He would say, ‘We have fifty truckloads of Kleenex coming in.’ ” And his ads were as outlandish as his personality. One congratulated the Dodgers on losing ninety-nine games. Another wished Joan Rivers a “Happy 99th Facelift.”

  Dave did not adopt the outward flash of a man whose 99 Cents Only dream expanded to more than three hundred stores, making him one of Forbes’s famous 400 richest. Hell no. He lived in the same middle-class home for five decades with Sherry, his wife of fifty-five years. I admired Dave Gold. He was an authentic eccentric who believed in his dream and stayed an original family man to boot. Last April, eighty-year-old Dave died at home, still doing business as usual. Old Grand Central. Old Frank Zimmerman. Old as gold Dave Gold.

  There was nothing gold about the crumpled envelope I found in the pocket of my Marni dress this morning. It was almost as if it was waiting for me to toss it into the trash; instead I made the mistake of looking at the return address. Tim Nicholson, the Neptune Society, 4312 Woodman Avenue, Sherman Oaks, CA 91423. And guess what? Against my better judgment … I opened it.

  “Dear Diane,” the letter inside began. “For a variety of reasons, more and more people are choosing to plan for a memorialized cremation over a traditional funeral arrangement, and the numbers are increasing every year! Cremation just makes sense. If you are not interested in spending your family’s inheritance on embalming, caskets, vaults, markers, fancy funeral homes or cemetery property, then we have the answer! To learn more about the Neptune Society and our different memorialization options, simply complete and return the enclosed reply card or visit www.neptunesociety.com.”

  And on and on and on. Cut to “Sincerely, Tim Nicholson.” And: “P.S. Sometimes deaths happen before you have had a chance to put plans in place. Neptune stands ready to assist at a moment’s notice should you need immediate help.” As if that wasn’t enough, Tim added, “Please accept our apologies if this letter has reached you at a time of serious illness or death in your family.”

  Serious illness? Death in the family? I know the time has come for me to contemplate preparation for the end of the road, the “see you later, alligator, till we meet again” part of my life. But do I have to so soon? How about in a while, or later, a lot later, and definitely not with Mr. Tim Nicholson’s cost-cutting planned memorial cremation in mind.

  That day in New York, I got into a cab and called Kathryn, who wanted to meet on the West Side at 110th Street so we could stroll through Central Park. As we walked arm in arm past the newly refurbished Charles A. Dana Discovery Center, people greeted us with “Beautiful day!” and “Great weather, huh?” The Conservancy Garden’s roses were in bloom. On Fifth Avenue we saw the Museum of the City of New York’s red-brick Georgian building and decided to go inside, where we found ourselves in front of A Beautiful Way to Go, an exhibition celebrating the 175th anniversary of Green-Wood Cemetery. We looked at Hudson River School paintings and historic documents from the old cemetery. When I stopped in front of a photograph illustrating a nineteenth-century headstone that read, “Grace Ann Small. Wife of William B. Small.” Suddenly five-foot, two-inch Grace Johansen came rushing to mind. Grace was the oldest person I’ve ever known. She must have been in her mid-eighties when I first saw her parading down Hollywood Boulevard, greeting tourists in front of Musso and Frank’s restaurant. I was trying to find people to interview for a movie I was making on the subject of heaven. Over time, Grace and I became friends. We stayed friends until the day she died, at age ninety-seven. I would lay ten-to-one odds her funeral was a hell of a lot more fun than Grace Ann Small’s.

  First of all, the crowd bore no resemblance to the formal gatherings pictured at Green-Wood Cemetery. There was Carol Kane, Bud Cort, Joan the pet psychologist, Dr. David Kipper, Rhea Perlman, and Mae, Grace’s Indonesian waitress at the Holiday Inn’s coffee shop, where Grace dined every evening. Also in attendance was Mae’s co-worker Raphael, the Mexican waiter who served her apple pie with coffee every morning, Roddy McDowell’s sister, and Cameron Crowe, the director. People say Hollywood has no family, yet we were a family of friends gathered in honor of our beloved Gracie, who played a mean piano and packed a wallop with her song stylizations.

  In the chapel at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, the light shone on Grace’s casket as we sang “Ain’t She Sweet.” Raphael stood up and spoke extemporaneously on the details of Grace’s morning hot apple pie with coffee and cream. Mae talked about Grace’s irrational fear of earthquakes and her love of Jean Naté perfume. Carol told a couple of Grace’s favorite jokes. “What’s a Honeymoon Salad?” “I don’t know.” “Lettuce be together. We’re a peach of a pear. My heart beets for you.”

  A six-minute video montage was projected onto an old-fashioned pull-up screen where a pulpit would have stood. There were snapshots, beginning with young Grace all decked out at the piano, then one on the day she married Al, her husband of fifty years, and another of her playing the slots in Las Vegas, her favorite city. Then came the photographs of Grace with her extended family … us, celebrating a series of birthdays at the top of the Holiday Inn’s famous revolving restaurant. Toward the end, there were photographs of ninety-six-year-old Grace wearing her new black acrylic wig. The same wig she wore as she lay dying in her hospital bed at the Motion Picture Home. I remembered holding her hand. It seemed as if she was working hard to live through dying. No more Jean Naté for little Gracie. No more Jean Naté. No more Grace.

  Outside the chapel, we walked behind a vintage black hearse to the mausoleum, where Grace’s simple green casket was draped with red roses. The grass was brown, the wilting palm trees slumped, and the little road winding its way through Hollywood Forever needed repaving. The mausoleum’s skylights were missing sections of stained glass, and yet … there was something compelling in the disarray. It felt like we were in a post–World War II Fellini film, gallivanting through the ruins. What is it about abandoned buildings and overgrown cemeteries? What is it about the beauty of collapse? Is it something more than meets the eye? Maybe. Is it beauty caressed by loss?

  As the sun faded and Grace was laid to rest, I couldn’t help but see her face as she spoke to me before she died. This is what she said. She said she saw a miracle in the sky, a genuine miracle. Then she got serious and shook her head back and forth, saying, “I saw a cross in the sky. It was a real cross. But nobody looks up at the sky anymore, nobody looks up at the sky.”

  In honor of Grace, I make it my business to look up at the sky on occasion. To date I haven’t seen a cross. But I do think life is a miracle. At this point I’m sure of one thing, and that’s this: I know nothing. I would venture to say some of my friends would agree. At least I’m pretty sure they would concur that life is far more impenetrable than we imagined. This isn’t Disneyland. It’s Wonderland. Most of us over sixty have come to the point where we recognize that our accomplishments are diddly-squat in the grand scheme of things. I guess I have to admit that I’m in preparation for
the incomprehensible end zone of life. I don’t know if I have enough courage to stare into the spectacle of the great unknown. I don’t know if I will make bold mistakes, go out in a blaze of glory unbroken by my losses, defy complacency, and refuse to face the unknown like the coward I know myself to be, but I hope so. On the way I intend to deepen my laugh lines and enjoy the underrated beauty of humor. Like Grace, I don’t want to be “afraid to crack a joke. After all, it’s only a can of people.”

  Thinking of Grace, I told Kathryn I wanted to go to Café Sabarsky for a double espresso in a glass with whipped cream and some apple pie. Fifth Avenue was swarming with people. I love Los Angeles. I live there, but I miss the energy of a city that houses 8.3 million people on an island two miles wide and thirteen and a half miles long. In front of the Guggenheim, I heard someone calling my name through the crowd. I looked over to see a stunning woman getting out of a limousine. “Diane, it’s Ricky.” “Oh my God, Ricky, you look great.” And she did. Ricky Lauren, Ralph’s wife, looked great. “No, Diane, no, you look great.” But I didn’t. I looked like a woman my age.

  Cher once said, “There is only value to having the look you have when you are young and no value to the look you have when you are older.” Who can argue with Cher? She’s not wrong. But she’s not right, either. What she is, is right for herself. Diana Vreeland claimed she approved of plastic surgery, noting that none of her friends could understand why she hadn’t had it done herself. But, Vreeland added, she had her own reasons.

  What were her reasons? I know what they were. They were hers. All of us over sixty-five have our reasons. I respect Cher’s choices as much as I respect mine.

  I tell myself I’m free to do whatever the hell I want with my body. Why not? I may be a caricature of my former self; I’m still wearing wide-belted plaid coats, horn-rimmed glasses, and turtlenecks in the summertime. So what? Nobody cares but me. I don’t see anything wrong with face-lifts or Botox or fillers. They just erase the hidden battle scars. I intend to wear mine, sort of. At least that’s what I say to myself.

  Let’s take the example of being in your sixties but looking forty, like Ricky. Kathryn wanted to know who Ricky was. “Duh! Ralph Lauren’s wife.” “Is it his second marriage?” I set her straight: “They’ve been married almost fifty years.” We marveled at her great hair, thick and long; her dazzling smile; her straight-as-an-arrow patrician nose, so unfair; but most of all, her fantastic figure in her Ralph Lauren pantsuit. Okay. Okay. We agreed. What woman in her sixties doesn’t want to look like Ricky Lauren? I do. But the awful truth is this: no matter what I do, I’m never going to look like Ricky Lauren. Kathryn and I are going to have to let that dream go. And we did. We made it to Sabarsky’s. They didn’t serve apple pie, but the strudel was delicious. Grace would have ordered it hot, with vanilla ice cream on the side. And Ricky Lauren? Ricky’s beauty will always be high on my want list.

  Yep. I belong to a group of sixty-five and older show business folk. Sometimes I wish I could talk to my contemporaries about how they’re grappling with their senior years. Do they wake up every morning and, like me, look in the mirror with a big sigh? Do they? Do they ask themselves what old age is for? I do. I think I know the answer. It’s for grace—not Grace my friend, but now that I think of it, Grace was a perfect example of generosity, goodwill, and poise, and isn’t that what grace is? No one wants to be called doddering, or past their prime, or long in the tooth. No one wants to be reminded that they’re no spring chicken. No one wants to be a dilapidated, broken-down, beat-up, out-of-date, cast-off, worn-out, stale example of a human being. We worked hard to become who we are. But with the accolades behind, and the honors of the past in front, what is our present? For those of us who’ve been separated from reality by fame, being old is a great leveling experience. I don’t mind being taken down a peg or two, but what about the physical effects?

  Every one of us is going through bodily decline. We’re less active. We have wrinkles and liver spots. Most of us, I would venture to say, have tried to remedy these unsightly problems. And why not? Our hair color has changed from black, brown, red, and yellow to gray and white all over. In most cases that, too, has been rectified—with the exception of Michael Douglas, who is one silver-haired fox. I am a sorry example of the truth that women, as well as men, are losing their hair. Not only do we have reduced circulatory system function but we’re losing lung capacity, too. It’s all pretty tragic. Our immune systems are shutting down, and I don’t know about anyone else, but there are changes in my vocal cords that seem to be producing a strange “old person” voice, which I hate worse than my envy of Michael Douglas’s hair. Every one of us has a heightened risk of injury from falls, hearing loss, diminished eyesight, and, yes, as if I didn’t know it, we all have reduced mental abilities, too. Thanks for nothing.

  I have become friends with some of my show business contemporaries. The most unlikely is Jack Nicholson. When I first met him, in my thirties, friendship was not possible. He was Jack Nicholson. I didn’t want to be his friend. I wanted him to kiss me. It didn’t happen. In my mid-fifties we met again, when Nancy Meyers cast us in Something’s Gotta Give. On the set I listened to his stories about being raised in a beauty salon surrounded by women. He listened to mine. We commiserated about old friends and how to make new ones. We played around with the idea of forming a pseudo-salon in Los Angeles, where we would gather like-minded people to discuss topics of the day. Jack and I still meet every month or so for lunch at his home on top of a hill. His unassuming California ranch house, built in the 1960s, is filled with paintings by Henri Matisse, Picasso, Maynard Dixon, Andy Warhol, and Tamara de Lempicka.

  A few years ago, I wrote him a little note of friendship. The sentiments remain the same today.

  “I’ve been thinking about you and friendship,” it began. “Here’s what it means to me. It means from down here at the bottom of the hill to way up there at the top of the mountain, I’ll be watching your back. I’ll be looking out for you. Think of me as your Palisades rep, your gal Friday on the West Side.

  “Unlike me, you are not a person who resides in the world of right and wrong. You are not bound by moral platitudes. Your authenticity has been earned by the choices you’ve made. These choices show on your face. Your face, your great face, challenges standardization. Looking at you for as long as I have has made it easy for me to come to the conclusion that your face is the best face I’ve ever seen. Not only because you’re pretty—and you are pretty, Jack—but mainly because over the years your face has morphed into something magnificent. I believe that at the heart of this magnificence one would not find the bad boy genius actor who has dazzled us, but the good man. You may not like hearing this, but you are a good man. In spite of all your fame, talent, wealth, and temptation … you are a good man. You are my good man. And even though words like ‘good’ and ‘decent’ have come to represent sappy Hallmark cards … they mean everything to me, especially now that I’m older. Based on accumulated evidence collected over years of watching both of us rise, stumble, fall, and get up again, you remain a friend. As we plow headfirst into the so-called golden years I continue to think, rethink, and re-rethink you. It’s been a great challenge. My interest in you will never decline. As the years go by, like I said before, I’ll be watching your back and, might I add, loving you from down here.”

  Kathryn had to get back home. I had a few hours to kill, so I took a chance and called Woody. He was about to leave for France to make a movie, something he’s done virtually every year since 1965. What could we do together before he headed off? I asked him if he wanted to take a walk on Madison Avenue, like we used to. We started at Seventieth Street. We didn’t hold hands, like the old days, but I swear he wore what must have been one of his beige bucket hats from Annie Hall. I had on my Marni dress, sans the Neptune Society letter from Tim Nicholson, over a black long-sleeved turtleneck and leggings, along with Prada boots, a big fat cross dangling around my neck, and the requisite wide-brimme
d black hat. We looked in the windows of stores, starting with the Ralph Lauren complex on Seventy-second. We passed the Whitney. We took in the people. They took us in, as well. When we reached Campbell’s mortuary, we looked at each other. He was seventy-seven. I was sixty-seven. Where did the time go? We walked into a corner deli, where he bought me a vanilla ice cream and a chocolate milk for himself.

  Around Seventy-ninth Street, we ran into Paul McCartney and his wife, Nancy. People gathered around us. It was almost like it used to be, only sweeter, because I knew it couldn’t last. Paul waved goodbye as we headed back. I could almost hear Jimmy Durante sing, “Oh, it’s a long, long while from May to December, but the days grow short when you reach September.” We’re there, Wood. We’re in September. I didn’t say it. He would have told me I was a dim-witted cretin and a worm to boot. I dropped him off at home, took a cab back to Grand Central Terminal, preserved for us by Jackie Kennedy, and rushed alongside fellow commuters to get on the train.