by Diane Keaton
We moved a lot. When I was 4 we lived in an old two-story frame house on Walnut St. in Pasadena. The house sat right on the sidewalk. But we had a huge yard that backed up to the railroad tracks, which carried the new Super Chief Santa Fe train. No fence, or wall, or anything separated our yard from the track. I saw passengers’ faces as they looked into our kitchen. Today this would not be permissible but no one cared back then. Dad’s German shepherd, Grumpy, would sleep on the tracks, but he always ambled off just in time.
We always had cats. I was still just a kid when we moved to a cheaper rental house on top of a hill in Highland Park. It was set on a half acre of loose dirt, with a small patch of grass. We didn’t have neighbors. Very few people cared to climb the steep public stairway from the street. It was a perfect setting for cats. Mom let me have all I wanted. 13. Dad couldn’t have cared less. He was seldom there anyway. Money was scarce. Somehow these little furry creatures got fed every day along with the five of us. I found Pretty Boy, Cakes, Yeller, and Alex in one week. One particular cat though dominates my memory. Her name was Baby. She was a dull gray thing, with skinny legs, and eyes that made up most of her head, and a broken tail that hung crooked. The strangest thing was she made no sounds; no meows; no hisses and no purrs. Baby was a genetic failure to everyone but me. I loved her. One day, she gave birth to a litter of four kittens. To my great sorrow, though, Baby was never the same. She died not long after. Orpha didn’t care that much. She already had boyfriends she didn’t tell Mother about, so she was constantly sneaking out in the middle of the night. Marti was just a little girl, so she didn’t pay attention to them, but to me, the cats were the dearest things in the whole wide world. Mother always said being the middle sister made me the most sensitive. I don’t know about that, but it made me sad we couldn’t share how special they were. I never told them about my dream of owning a big cat farm where I could save every orphan cat I ever saw, broken down or not.
Firstborn
Being firstborn had its advantages. I had Mom and Dad all to myself. Then Randy arrived, my junior by a couple of years. Randy was sensitive—too sensitive. As president and creator of the Beaver Club, I made Randy, the treasurer, come with me to the public stairway near the arroyo to look for money. Our number-one mission was to buy coonskin caps like Davy Crockett’s. They cost a dollar and ninety-eight cents apiece. We were beside ourselves when Randy spotted an actual honest-to-God fifty-cent piece. Wow. Since I was president of the Beaver Club, it was my self-appointed responsibility to handle all finances, so I picked it up and held it in my hand for one perfect instant before Randy started screaming. I looked up and saw an airplane gliding across the sky in slow motion. Big deal. But Randy was so terrified I couldn’t stop him from running home in tears and hiding under our bunk bed. Even Mom couldn’t convince him it was only an airplane. After that, Randy became seriously hesitant about the outside world, especially about flying objects. In his teens it was almost impossible to pry him out of his room down the hall. Robin was convinced he was disappearing, and he was: He was disappearing into Frank Zappa, whose lyrics to songs like “Zomby Woof” became his mantra.
Mom and Dad worried about him right from the get-go. I made use of their concern by willing myself to be everything Randy wasn’t. Big mistake. What I didn’t understand was that his sensitivity allowed him to perceive the world with intensity and insight.
It was almost too easy to manipulate him out of items like his one and only green Duncan Tournament Yo-Yo, or the Big Hunk candy bar he saved from Halloween, or one of his very special cat’s-eye marbles he hid under the bunk bed. Sure, he was more unique and intuitive, but what did I care as long as I got what I wanted?
When Robin came along three years after Randy, I was beside myself with envy. A girl? How was that possible? Surely there was some mistake. She must have been adopted. Of course, she turned out pretty and she had a better singing voice than I did, but, worse than all that, she was Daddy’s favorite. Many years later, it drove me nuts when Warren Beatty referred to Robin as the “pretty, sexy sister.”
Dorrie came as an “unexpected surprise.” I was seven years older, so she could do no wrong. Her face was a miniature replica of Dorothy’s. She was the brightest, most intellectually gifted of the Hall kids. In fact, she was the only one of us who ever presented Mom and Dad with a report card of straight A’s. She loved to read biographies of inspirational women like Simone de Beauvoir and Anaïs Nin. She read A Spy in the House of Love because it was a good “message” book. She said it instilled in her an optimistic outlook toward the future. She thought I might find some tidbits to apply to my philosophy on “love.” I didn’t have a philosophy on love. That’s what hooked me on Dorrie; she was full of contradictions. It must have been part of the terms of being our only “intellectual.”
We spent all weekends and every vacation at the seashore. In 1952, Huntington Beach still gave permission for families to pitch tents on the water’s edge for a month at a time. Ours rose out of the sand like a black cube. That was the summer I read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and The Adventures of Perrine. I was nine. It seemed like life would always be imbued with black words on white pages, framed by white waves and black nights. Mom put zinc oxide on my nose every morning before Randy and I collected pop bottles, stacked them into borrowed shopping carts, and deposited them at the A&P supermarket for two cents apiece. With money in our pockets, we were able to buy our way into the famous heated saltwater swimming pool. A few years later, Dad took us farther south and assembled our tent at Doheny Beach, where we caught waves on six-foot Hobie surfboards and sang songs like “Hang Down Your Head, Tom Dooley” around the campfire. Sometimes we’d drive up to Rincon, where we set up camp at the side of the Pacific Coast Highway. But it was Divers Cove in Laguna Beach that had Daddy’s heart. He and his best friend, Bob Blandin, would slip into their wet suits and disappear under the ocean’s surface for hours at a time while we kids played on the shore. Mom packed bologna sandwiches with mayonnaise. Willie, Bob’s wife, wore Chinese red lipstick and smoked, which Mom said was really bad. I remember the cliffs. At night they looked like dinosaurs ready to attack us. During the day we climbed them to the top and looked out over our beloved Laguna Beach. If you had seen us from the beach below, you would’ve thought we were the picture-perfect average California family in the fifties.
One Man’s Family
The radio played a big part in our life. The one I remember most was a tall cabinet model made by Philco. We bought it on time, as we did with everything of value. Sundays were Radio Day. One Man’s Family was on at 3. It was my favorite. My sisters and I hurried home from church in order to follow the plot of Father Barber and his perfectly neat family. There just couldn’t be anyone as good, or wise, or understanding as Father Barber. I thought it unfair that I couldn’t have a father who would give big hugs and talk and laugh with his daughter. I always wondered how come my dad wasn’t like that, all warm and patient and loving and … well, he just wasn’t, that’s all!! “If only” he would just say, “Come over here, Perkins, and give your dad a kiss.” If only Mom would say, “Hurry up, I know how exciting the next episode of the Barber family is for you.”
The only thing our family had in common with the serials was Mom and Dad were always looking for a better life. I thought it was unfair. And when I grew up I wasn’t going to live the way we did. My family would be perfect. I would see to that; always and forever happy, smiling, and beautiful.
Unanswered Questions
When I was six, television gave me a gift. Gale Storm. Not Lucille Ball. Gale Storm in My Little Margie. She was everything I wanted to be—clever, fearless, and always up to wacky antics that invariably got her into big trouble with her father. She was funny but fragile. I liked that. I Love Lucy was television’s number-one highest-rated sitcom. Gale Storm’s knockoff was number two, but not to me. Gale and I were kindred spirits, or so I thought. After 126 episodes, My Little Margie was canceled. It was a sad day.
Fifteen years later, when I was a student at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre, Phil Bonnell, the son of Gale Storm, was one of my classmates. On Christmas break he invited me to his mother’s home in Beverly Hills. This is what I remember. It was noon. Gale Storm was nowhere to be found. Phil told me she slept late. I thought everyone’s mother was up at six A.M. with hot Cream of Wheat and the voice of Bob Crane, the King of the Los Angeles Airwaves, blaring on the radio. There was no radio playing at the Bonnells’ house, an uncomfortable, rambling ranch-style affair. When Gale finally came out, she wasn’t lively, and there were no antics. Later, Phil told me she drank a lot. Gale Storm drank? That’s when it dawned on me: Everything wasn’t perfect for Gale Storm, even though it seemed her dreams had come true.
I found my next hero in high school: Gregory Peck. Well, Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. His unassuming, quiet approach to solving the moral dilemmas of life inspired me. My worship for him was even greater than my teen crush on Warren Beatty in Splendor in the Grass.
I always told Mom everything—well, everything except my feelings about intercourse and movie stars like Warren Beatty. Gregory Peck, however, was discussed over and over. If only there was a way to meet him. Mom had to understand how he alone could teach me to be the kind of person I wanted to be, a hero in my own right. Under his guidance, I would have the courage to rescue people from the injustice of a racist community or even put my life on the line for what I believed.
Always encouraging, Mom let me roam through some pretty undeveloped thoughts. One time I told her about how frustrating Dad was. According to him, I never did anything right. He was always saying, “Don’t sit too close to the TV or you’ll go blind,” or “Finish the food on your plate; there’s starving people in China,” and, my least favorite, “Don’t chew with your mouth open unless you want to catch flies.” Was there something about being a civil engineer that made him that way? Was that the reason he never thought I did things right? Mom was different. She didn’t judge me or try to tell me what to think. She let me think.
Grandfather Keaton
The word came late one February night. It was a long-distance phone call from Oklahoma. An emergency. Had to be. There was no other reason for calling in 1937. Daddy took the call. “Come get your father. We can’t keep him any longer.”
Dad couldn’t possibly leave work, so it was decided that Mother and I would bring Grandpa to live out his days with us. I would unfortunately have to miss two weeks of school. I pretended “answering the call of an emergency” was a duty I was obliged to fulfill. Secretly I was thrilled.
We set out with 25 dollars in cash, two gas credit cards, our California clothes, and a 1936 Buick Sedan. We took Route 66 through Kingman, Flagstaff, and Gallup on through to Oklahoma. When we arrived at our relatives’ home, Grandpa was ready. All his worldly possessions were in a small worn suitcase. His hair was unkempt, but he smiled at us with tears in his eyes. We were told he was incapable of expressing a thought.
Grandfather Keaton had been a lazy if good-hearted man. Roy’s mother, Anna, bore the burden. Eventually she had to go to work. When she insisted the marriage end, unheard of in those days, Grandpa began roaming the country in a red Model T Ford truck accompanied by his dog “Buddy.” Over time things deteriorated, and Grandpa came back home. Anna took him in until she became so frustrated she called us in the dead of winter to come take him away.
On our trip back home, Grandpa seemed happy. He no sooner stepped into the backseat of the Buick before he leaned forward and handed Mother a huge wad of bills. Our trip home was full of many more comforts than the trip going, but we paid for it. Dressing Grandpa in the morning was impossible. He put his pants on backwards. He couldn’t get his arms in his jacket. He didn’t know how to tie his shoes. He refused to wear socks. He didn’t have any table manners, or teeth, for that matter. His baggy trousers were damp all the time. He was incontinent. This annoyed Mother to no end. We put in long, long hours driving in order to make it back in three and a half days.
Needless to say it was a whole new life with Grandpa occupying one of our 3 bedrooms. Dad refused to participate in his father’s care at all. That was Mother’s job. The details were unbelievable. Grandpa would sneak out of the house and run away at least twice a week. Mother had to go looking for him all over the neighborhood. Finally, we locked him in his room. He would pound on the door so loud he caused the neighbors to complain. When his bowels became impacted, Mom forced Dad to give him an enema. The results were so awful the toilet plugged up. It didn’t take long for us to decide that Grandpa’s condition was beyond home care. Arrangements were made to transfer him to the veterans hospital on Sawtelle in Los Angeles. Dad drug his feet on this, but Mother insisted.
The last time I saw Grandpa he was waving goodbye from a car driving him to the old soldiers’ section of the veterans hospital. Dad never forgave Mother, even though he never bothered to lift a finger to help. I’m ashamed to say, Martha and I gave Mother no help either. We were teenage girls, and Grandpa was an embarrassment. Later I found out that while Mom was burdened with the hardship of caring for Grandpa, Dad was seeing another woman. It wasn’t long after this he drove off, never to return.
The Sea of White Crosses
Five days a week for the past four years, I’ve taken a shortcut through the very same veterans hospital off San Vicente near Sawtelle. On the north side of the complex is the graveyard Duke refers to as “the Sea of White Crosses.” Sometimes I tell him about all the soldiers who lived and died to help keep our country safe. He always wants to know if they looked like the green plastic soldiers we buy at Target.
Until I read Mother’s words, I didn’t know the story of an incontinent, wandering Keaton fellow who shared a house with his young granddaughter Dorothy, who was on the eve of meeting a certain Jack Newton Hall, who would become my father. How is it possible that I could have driven by Duke’s Sea of White Crosses for so many years without knowing my great-grandfather Lemuel W. Keaton Jr.’s cross was so close to home?
Sermons
All sermons were always about the resurrection of the living Christ Jesus of Nazareth, born to save mankind from the threat of an eternity in Hell. The catch was you had to be born again. I played it safe. I read my Bible and proclaimed in testimony at prayer meetings that I indeed was saved, sanctified, and born again. Whenever I had the courage to stand up and state my memorized passage, the entire congregation smiled. I never understood what my declaration meant. I just wanted church to be colorful. I just wanted beautiful music like Handel’s Messiah and Copland’s Appalachian Spring. I didn’t want to hear about Blood and Death. Yet this was the ritual you couldn’t avoid. Blood. Sin. Guilt. Tears. Death. Shroud. Tomb. It was nothing more than a relinquishing of our free will to a philosophy that all men are born in sin and must be forgiven and saved from themselves in order to qualify for eternal and everlasting peace. It has taken all my 60 years to straighten out my thinking on all this, and believe me I am finally unburdened. I am free of the fear instilled in me, free from the angry God, the straight and narrow path to Heaven, and the fiery anguish of living in Hell. I am grateful to whatever force in the universe there is that has removed me of all the ugliness imposed on me by false ideas about what life should be. And when I’m through with my time in the scheme of it all, I’m not afraid of what comes after. Amen.
Playing with Death
When I was ten we moved to Garden Grove for six months. Dad rented a house with a rock roof. The man and woman who owned it were brassy. She had bleached-blond hair, and he owned a bar. Dad called them “alcoholics.” I’d never heard that word before. It meant they drank a lot of liquor. Dad said the landlords were slobs. He was right. The house was a mess, but it had four bedrooms and two baths. It was the biggest house I’d ever seen, way bigger than the blue stucco house he had moved in a truck to Bushnell Way Road in Highland Park. The kitchen had swinging doors, like the ones in Gunsm
oke, starring James Arness. Dorrie and Robin shared a bedroom. Randy, who was eight, had his own room, like me.
One day Robin was playing with friends in the backyard. I wanted to join in, but nobody cared, especially Robin. I decided to take one of the ropes from our swing set, wrap it around my neck, and pretend I was hanging myself. When Robin ran past me without so much as a nod, I started to make loud choking sounds. Surely that would make her come to her senses. But, oh no, she kept on playing. So I showed her. I slumped my head over the rope even farther, gagged as loudly as I could, took a deep breath, let out a scream, and died. She never noticed.
With my face knotted up in tears, I ran inside and told Mom that Robin let me die. She looked at me and asked why did it matter so much whether they played with me or not? Death, even a pretend death, was not the way to get what I wanted. It was not a game. In her face I saw what I hadn’t seen in Robin’s. Concern. The truth is, I would have done the whole stupid thing over again just to have her wrap her arms around me so tight I could feel her heart beat.
Mom’s empathy was bottomless, an endless source of renewal. I can still see her sipping her afternoon cup of Folgers coffee while I sat across the kitchen counter in some form of distress. It was a scene we would relive in endless variations throughout the years. Her message was always the same. “Don’t be so sensitive, Diane. You’ll show them one day. Go for it.” And, like clockwork, even if I failed I kept going for it, not only because I longed for validation but also because I wanted to come back to her and that kitchen counter for as long as forever would last.
Those days were terribly puzzling, especially when I became aware that Robin had no interest in playing the part I wrote for her or that alcoholics drank stuff that made them bad people, much worse than Willie Blandin and her bad cigarettes. But the worst, most bewildering, awful thing came the day Daddy took it upon himself to tell me I was about to become a woman soon. A woman? Was he crazy? I ran to my bedroom, slammed the door, and threw myself on the bed facedown. Mom came in a little later and said I was going to love being a grown-up girl. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, but I was disgusted. I didn’t want a period, whatever that was, or breasts, or hair in my privacy area, like her. I didn’t want to be a woman. I wanted to be me—whoever that was.