I loved Colin McKuen, or more accurately, I loved Mrs. Reynolds. We all did. She was a remarkable woman who was the head of the faculty and our teacher. She strongly believed that Colin McKuen was a place where she could educate children the way they should be educated. She believed that children learned best when they could work at their own pace in a low-pressure environment where they could get the individual attention they needed. Colin McKuen was a three-classroom school, much like the pioneer schools of our ancestors, with all of the grades together. We learned some topics as a group, but for the most part, the curriculum was self-paced. She moved among us throughout the day, explaining, correcting, and encouraging us as we worked on our lessons. It was a racially mixed environment drawn from upper-middle-class families. The majority of the students were white, but it was never a “white” school. Everyone felt welcome.
ON HEPBURN AVENUE, my father built a little cocoon that kept us safe while he was away. Every year we made a pilgrimage to Texas to visit my mother’s family and to stay a couple of weeks with Jeff Brown and his family. At least once a year Jeff and his wife came to California to stay with us. There was a steadiness, a security, that came from a strong sense of community and the freedom from financial want. We had everything we needed and more, everything my father had lacked when he was growing up. Our lives on Hepburn were a world away from the life on the road that made the lifestyle he provided for us possible. Two months of the year my father lived with us in the world of Disney. The other ten months he lived in a world he kept rigidly separate. Eventually we would all pay a high price for that separation. When I was little, though, the only thing I knew was that whenever he was gone, I missed my dad.
CHAPTER 5
What Kind of Man Are You?
What kind of man are
you?
Why can’t I let you go?
—RAY CHARLES
WHEN I WAS A CHILD, MY FATHER WAS LARGER THAN life. He came and went from our lives in a way that seemed mysterious to me. Every year as February drew to a close, he would leave with the band for a ten-month tour. Except for quick trips home when he had a day off, he was gone almost continually. As each year came to an end, Daddy would return just in time for Christmas. It was an iron-clad rule with my father: he had to be home at Christmas. My mother says he never cared about Christmas until I was born. But once I got old enough to celebrate Christmas, it became the most important day of my father’s year.
In the weeks before Christmas, my mother would shop for the practical things for us—clothing and all the things we needed. Then she would pick out some toys and put them on layaway. Getting toys was a big deal for us at Christmas. Toys were for special occasions like birthdays and Christmas. I used to beg my mother to take me to Karl’s Toy Store. I would walk around inside and dream about the models and the slot cars and the electric planes. When my dad returned to town right before Christmas, he and the valet would go shopping for us. They would pick up the toys my mother had put on layaway along with a few more that my father thought were really cool, like electric airplanes.
As much as we loved the toys he bought for us, buying toys for my dad at Christmas was even more fun. My father loved toys. Our mom explained that he was too poor to have toys when he was growing up, so toys were special at Christmas. My mother would take us shopping to pick out something for him. Dad loved any toy that made noise, bumped into things, or turned around—tops, gadgets, cars that he could follow by the sound. He especially loved the kind of old-fashioned spinning top that would spin and whistle each time you pushed down on it. He would lean over and put his ear right next to it, to feel the motion and listen to the sound. Stuffed animals and other playthings with interesting textures were also favorites. He saved the toys we gave him for Christmas in his office over the years. I would go in there sometimes and see a toy we had given him years before.
The ritual was always the same. On Christmas Eve, Dad and I would put out the cookies and milk for Santa. Mother would put us to bed on time, though we were usually too excited to fall asleep. My father would always stay up late putting our gifts together after we went to bed. When I was small, of course, I still believed the elves did it. It was important to Dad to assemble them himself, and he was good at it. David and I would sneak downstairs about four in the morning to see what Santa had brought us. We’d peek at the unwrapped gifts, but we never tried to open anything. No one was allowed to open presents until my father woke up. He loved to open his own toys and to listen as we opened ours. I can still see him sitting on the sofa by the Christmas tree, his glasses off, smiling and running his fingers over his gifts. We would spend the morning together as a family and eat a big Christmas dinner. Sometime in the afternoon, my father would usually go back upstairs. I loved Christmas. It wasn’t just the toys. Christmas was a special day for me because it meant we didn’t have to share our dad with anyone else.
For two months of every year, we were a family, but at the end of February, he would leave for the road once again. I hated it when he went away. Whenever he left for another trip, I would pepper him with questions. “Where are you going? What are you doing? When are you coming back? Will you bring me something?” Endless questions, all designed to delay the moment when he would walk out the door and be gone again. After he left, I would go in his office and breathe him in.
When he was home with us, I wanted to spend every waking moment with him. I wanted to sit on his lap and touch his face. I loved to feel his face, running my fingers over it the same way he did when he “looked” at us. His skin was like leather, and he had a rough five o’clock shadow that rasped against my fingertips. I especially liked to feel his face without the glasses. The glasses hid him from me, and I wanted to see all of him.
I also liked to sit and watch him get dressed. This was only possible on weekends. He woke up late every morning, so on the weekends I would get a chance to see him shave. Dad had a battered old leather shaving kit that he carried with him everywhere. I thought that kit was the coolest thing ever. He shaved with an old-fashioned soap brush and a straight razor. He would take his glasses off, lather his face with the brush, and shave the stubble off with quick strokes—whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. He didn’t miss, and I never saw him cut himself. Then he’d sprinkle aftershave on his hands, rub them together, and pat his face with aftershave. When I was very small, he used Brut. When I was a little older, he started using Cannon. It became his distinctive fragrance. To this day, I remember that smell of Cannon.
His clothes were wonderful. He was particular about them and partial to fabrics with nice textures. He always wore silk boxers and a matching undershirt. I would sit on the bed and watch him put on his nylon socks that came up past his calves. His clothes were tailored for him, so they always fit perfectly. He did not vacillate in weight. I don’t think he put on more than twenty pounds in his entire adulthood. If he was staying home, he would wear slacks and a T-shirt and a pair of house shoes. If he was going out, he always wore cool shoes, made out of expensive leathers. I loved to try on his shoes.
On a typical day he would wake up between ten a.m. and noon, get dressed, have breakfast in the kitchen with my mother, and then go upstairs to his office. A few hours later band members and arrangers would start filtering in, drifting up to my father’s office to continue working on his music or rehearse. Sometimes he would emerge long enough to have dinner with us, but not every night. We seldom went out to eat. Dad didn’t like to eat in public because he had to use his fingers to locate the food. My dad always came home late, after I’d gone to bed. Otherwise he would be there at bedtime for a hug and a kiss. His schedule was always different from ours because his internal clock was set for life on the road. Long after we were asleep, he would be in the kitchen eating. On the road, midnight was dinnertime, after the last set. He liked to fix his own dinner while my mother slept. His specialty was macaroni and cheese. He would call our friend Herbert Miller in the middle of the night and tell him to come over; they
were having mac and cheese. Herbert would tiptoe up to the front door, rapping lightly so he wouldn’t wake us, and eat dinner with my dad at the kitchen table while we slept.
My dad used to sing and hum while he puttered around during the day. He would walk around the house singing something like “Hallelujah, I Love Her So” under his breath. He liked to hum and jingle his keys on the way upstairs to his office. He very seldom played the piano in the living room, but every now and then he would just start playing and working out some arrangement in his head or trying to remember a tune. He did play the sax at home, though. The strains of an alto sax became the soundtrack to life at home with Daddy.
He twitched and was fidgety almost all the time. He always carried a big key ring, and he would fidget constantly with his keys. When we asked our mother why he was always fidgeting, she would tell us that was just Daddy’s way. He always seemed to be preoccupied. I have an abiding image of him looking like Rodin’s The Thinker—bent over, head down and resting on one hand. Unlike the statue, though, he always had a cigarette dangling from his lips or at his fingertips. I used to wonder what he was thinking about so intently. I don’t know if he was thinking at all, or had just retreated into some deep place where he could escape the world for a little while.
My father wasn’t one to talk much at home. I was always wanting to talk to him, but there never seemed to be a good time to do it. I don’t think he knew what to talk about with a child. His own childhood had been so fractured that he never learned what fathers and sons were supposed to talk about. Being blind only made things worse because it meant he would never be able to do normal activities with us. Maybe he felt awkward with us. Most of the time, he was preoccupied with his music. Music was not only his work but his comfort zone. In his office with the door closed and his music surrounding him, he was in a world he could navigate like no one else. In that world, he was the genius and those outside his world would try to comprehend.
His office was a magical place for me. I didn’t dare knock when he was in there. He would hang a towel on the door to indicate he didn’t want to be disturbed. Yet even when I couldn’t see him, I would imagine him. If the door was closed, I would listen for him. When he was gone, I would sneak into his office and sit in his chair. His room had a special smell to it. I liked to walk around, looking at all his things and touching them. I would look at his plaques and the photographs of him with the band. I would run my fingers over his reel-to-reel tape deck imagining his music, leaf through his Cashbox and Billboard magazines looking for his name on the top-100 charts and in the magazine and newspaper articles. He had leather bags that he took on the road, and he always stored them in his office when he was home. I would run my hands over them and breathe in the smell of the leather. And I would look at all the equipment that he had in there. Afterward I would tiptoe out and think to myself, “What does he do when he’s in there by himself? What’s going on in his head?”
HIS SIGHTLESSNESS FASCINATED ME. I didn’t think of it as a handicap so much as a special gift. He never referred to himself as blind. He said he just couldn’t see. I knew he had a different way of seeing things. When I wanted to show him something, I would take his hands and run them over it, just as he did when he showed me something. He would bend down so I could reach him, and I would explain: “See, Daddy, this is what it looks like.” He would memorize it with his fingers while he listened to me, and I knew he could see it.
Afterward he would nod and say, “You don’t say.”
Sometimes I would just sit and stare at my dad, wondering what was going on behind his sunglasses. He would take them off at home if only the family was there, and I would stare at his closed eyelids. “What does he see?” I’d wonder. “Why does he always keep his eyes shut? Do his eyes look like mine?” When he heard something, I would see his face turn and his eyebrows move just like a seeing person’s. The illusion was that he was witnessing something. Sometimes I wondered if he was. My mother would tell me that he was just listening, but I wondered if he could somehow see through those closed eyelids. Sometimes he would appear to look right at me, and I would wonder, “Can he see me? Is he looking at me?”
Only once did I get a glimpse of my father with his eyes open. When I was very young, my dad was startled by a loud noise and turned his head, raising his eyebrows a fraction higher than usual. His eyelids opened just a little, and for a moment, I could see what lay behind them. There was nothing, just whiteness. I caught my breath. “My daddy’s eyes look just like the Invisible Man’s!” I thought. It scared me to death. It also made me wonder if I was right about my dad being able to see things. Maybe he was like a superhero.
I already knew he could do things that no one else could. Other kids thought it was easier for me to get away with things with a blind father, but the opposite was true. His sense of hearing was downright uncanny. He knew who everyone was by the way they moved. He could identify all of us by the way we walked, even on a thick carpet. He said he always knew it was me because of the distinctive way I dragged my feet when I walked. There was no sneaking up on him, and there was no way to sneak around him, either. My mother said that when she tied bells on my shoes as a toddler, she did it so she could find me. My dad didn’t need bells. He could always find me.
One of the biggest mysteries of my childhood was how he got around without bumping into things. It was like he had sonar. He never used a white cane like most sightless people did, and he didn’t need anyone to lead him in familiar surroundings. He did have to reorient himself on occasion. Sometimes when he got home after an extended absence, he would be uncertain where everything was. Things had been added or moved while he was gone. My mother would re-acclimate him, guiding him around the house and showing him where everything was. After that, he had it. He remembered where things were, knew where they were in relation to each other, could construct angles in his head to keep his perspective.
Sometimes he would ask me to get something in the house, and I couldn’t find it. “Where?” I would say. “I don’t see it.”
He would take me by the shoulders, turn me to face whatever it was he wanted, and say, “There. It’s right in front of you.” And he would be right.
I could never fathom how he did it. My mother explained to me that Daddy had counted the steps to get him everywhere he went and had memorized the location of everything he needed. That didn’t explain, though, how he always knew which way he was facing. The only time he ever bumped into things was when he was high or in an unfamiliar place, or in another state of mind. The one exception was the outdoors. Every now and then he would go outside with me and try to pull me around in a wagon or play with me. That was nearly always a disaster, for he had no points of reference to tell him where he was.
He was also better at many everyday tasks than my brothers and I were. I was always spilling my milk, but my dad never did. He would walk to the refrigerator, get out the milk bottle, and fill his glass without spilling a drop. He never poured it over the top of the cereal bowl, and he never knocked over his glass. As I got older, I learned that he could tell how full a glass was by the sound of the liquid as he poured it, and he could tell when the cereal bowl was full by keeping his fingertip on the edge of the bowl.
I also marveled that he could get dressed by himself and that all of his clothes would match perfectly. I needed my mother to help me match my clothes, but my father could do it without anyone’s help. It was only much later that I asked my mother how he did it. She explained that whenever he bought a piece of clothing, he would sit down with my mother and go over every inch of it with his hands—buttons, seams, collar, fabric, everything—so he would remember which one it was. Then he would hang it in the closet. He had a specific place for everything. He would also sew braille numbers onto his clothing labels to tell him what color everything was. He could put an outfit together by matching up all the numbers. Dad kept his shoes under the bed until he bought so many that there was no longer enough room. He put
a pair of socks in each one according to the color and texture. When it was time to dress in the morning, he already knew where everything was and could locate it quickly. On the road the valet helped dress him before a performance, but at home he didn’t need any help. If I complained that my mother expected me to dress myself as well as my father could, she would tell me, “No, I don’t expect that. But I expect you to come close. If he can do it, you can learn to do it, too.”
It’s one thing to feel you don’t do things as well as your father. But when your father is blind, the comparison takes on a whole new meaning.
Despite being billed for years as “the Blind Sensation,” my father’s blindness never defined him. My dad once told our dear friend Herbert Miller that he really didn’t mind being sightless. He was used to it, and his accomplishments proved that. His only regret, he told Herbert, was that he would never see his family. “I’d give anything to see Ray Jr.’s face on Christmas morning,” he told Herbert one winter afternoon as they rushed to Los Angeles for the holidays. “Just once, I’d like to see my son’s face.”
My father had an amazing mechanical ability that baffled most people. He could repair nearly anything with instructions from someone. He was always taking things apart or putting them together—toys, stereo equipment, reel-to-reel tape recorders. He wanted to know how everything worked and why it did what it did. Every time my parents got a new appliance, my father wanted to disassemble it. He would ask my mother to read the directions out loud, and he’d fool with it until he understood how it worked. Afterward, over her objections, he often started breaking it down. She always warned him, “Don’t expect me to plug that thing in after you put it back together.”
When he purchased one of his reel-to-reels that he used for playback and to compose some of his greatest hits, he was fascinated with the mechanism and needed to know every working part. He made my mother spread a sheet out on the table, and then he took it apart piece by piece. All my mother could think was that the recorder cost a fortune, and they were in deep trouble if he didn’t get it put back together correctly. He always did, though. He could lay out two or three hundred pieces of a complicated mechanism on the table, and as long as no one moved any of the pieces, he could come back three days later, remember where each one was, and put them back together perfectly. He had an astonishing memory.
You Don't Know Me Page 7