The Search for Philip K. Dick (17 page)

When we split up, it was as if we were receding from each other, both of us helpless to do anything about the forces that were moving us apart. I think that when Phil was feeling bad, he didn’t want to come back, and when he was feeling better, he thought, “I behaved so badly I don’t want to inflict myself on them.”

It seemed to me more and more as I worked on this book over the years that what was happening inside Phil at that time had little to do with me. Later he spoke of having had a major “nervous breakdown” at this time. Even after he filed for divorce, Phil continued to return to Point Reyes Station, but at longer intervals. One time he brought his beloved Royal Electric typewriter and gave it to me. Another time he told me he wanted the girls and me to keep his beloved
Encyclopedia Britannica
. Then, as he left again, I would give him various books from our collection. He came back in early May, although, as I look back, I see that it was more like a ghost than Phil who arrived, bringing his new electric typewriter and his suitcase, planning to stay forever, but leaving again in a few hours. Perhaps by then, I was a ghost, too, with little left to give. Though I wanted him to stay, I no longer could imagine that he would.

Jayne graduated from eighth grade in early June. She couldn’t believe that Phil wouldn’t come to her graduation. She kept looking around the room for him, sure that he’d come.

Hatte reflected, “One day there was a family. The next day it was gone. The father left and never came back.”

With some anxiety, even after the passage of eighteen years, I traced and found Dr. A. Over the years he had gained weight and looked like a great blond Buddha. He came to my house to be interviewed for this book, and we sat out on the patio. He tilted his chair against the side of the house. I hadn’t seen him since the traumatic events of 1963. He wordlessly expressed a warm, apologetic approval toward me. It was difficult to get him to talk, he was so tuned in to listening. He sat, quiet and alert in a listening pose, his ears even seeming to extend slightly. But it was a healing moment—to be able to forgive him and converse with him
.

As our conversation developed, he began to talk about Phil in what seemed to me to be a nonfriendly way, speculatively labeling Phil with various psychiatric diagnoses and then saying he never could figure out what was wrong with him. I didn’t want to hear this psychiatric slander. I had thought Dr. A liked Phil. But after all I had invited him over to listen to him and he was a guest in my house. He went on and on. I didn’t know how to respond or even if I should respond. I listened for a long time and then finally managed to blurt out, “But I loved him.” Dr. A looked very surprised and left shortly afterward
.

More and more of the past came back to me as I wrote about my personal memories. Events I had never discussed with anyone were now down on paper, not still stuck painfully inside me. Now, I wanted to know what had happened to Phil after his life with me. Would I be able to find out? Where would I have to go to find the people who knew him? Would they talk to me? How would I feel, learning about things I had ignored while Phil was still alive? My oldest daughter, Hatte, warned me, “Mother, don’t get lost in the world of Philip K. Dick.” There were times when I felt like an intruder, times when I was shocked, dismayed, grieved—but once I started, my bulldog self wouldn’t quit
.

I
N
1963, P
HIL
began a correspondence with Grania Davidson, who had written him an admiring letter about
The Man in the High Castle
. In 1969, Grania lived in Mexico with her husband, Avram Davidson, who was at that time the editor of
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
.

As the correspondence developed, she wrote Phil:

I’m glad I didn’t know about this letter back then. I have to admit that it’s a masterpiece of flirtation
.

When Phil wrote Grania that the relationship with me was finished, she began writing to him in a more explicit vein.

In June 1964, she wrote:

In mid-June of 1964, Grania came up to Berkeley to meet Phil. She stayed at the house of her friends science fiction writer Marion Zimmer Bradley and Walter Breen. Grania was intelligent, charming, verbal, and confident enough of her femininity to overcome a serious weight handicap.

Many more surprises were in store for me when I interviewed Grania Davis, who had been Grania Davidson in 1965. Grania invited me to her house in San Rafael and served me a glass of Greek wine. Now much thinner, she had written and published science fiction novels, worked in a travel agency, and traveled extensively. An accomplished woman of great charm and great determination, Grania had an unusual voice with a slightly quavering timbre that gave the impression of great sensibility and sympathy
.

Phil was still living near his mother, but he asked Grania to find him a house to rent. She found one on Lyon Street in Oakland. It had a small cottage in the backyard where she and her little boy, who would be coming soon to join her, would live.

About this same time Phil drove to Inez Storer’s house in West Marin in the secondhand white VW he’d just bought. Inez had asked Phil to write a piece of publicity for a show of her paintings. He had asked her in return to get a prescription for him. Phil told Inez that he was going to kill himself. He said, “I can’t live with Anne and I can’t live without her.”

Ray and Kirsten Nelson, both good friends of Phil’s when he moved back to Oakland, were both friendly and helpful while I was collecting the material for this book. I met with each one of them several times and have corresponded occasionally with Ray since. I was surprised to learn about Kirstens romantic relationship with Phil
.

Ray also recovered a dim memory of meeting Phil briefly much earlier when Phil was married to Kleo. The Nelsons kept a connection with Phil throughout the rest of his life and Kirsten remained Phil’s confidant. Ray visited Phil in his Santa Ana condominium a few months before his death
.

Ray thought that Phil was driven to despair by not being able to make money with his writing, even though he had won recognition for it. Ray wrote, “The key to understanding Phil’s life is … the economics of a writer’s life in these United States…. [Phil finally] having concluded that he could not make a living as a writer … saw his life as being dominated by an evil God.”

While Grania and Phil were moving their possessions into the Lyon Street house, Phil went too fast on a curve, totaled the VW and seriously dislocated his shoulder. He was in a body cast, his right arm pinned to the front of his chest, and he was unable to write for most of the time that Grania lived with him. He told his new friend Ray Nelson that he had tried to commit suicide but was such a failure he even failed at this. Ray asked him anxiously if he would try again. Phil told him, “Suicide is for the living.” He told Ray that, since he had made a serious attempt to die, he was actually dead even though the attempt had failed. He said he was a “walking corpse.”

Ray Nelson and Phil became close friends and soon began collaborating on a novel. Later, when I visited Phil at his house in Oakland, Ray was friendly and warm to me and we immediately got along well.

Although Phil was telling everyone “monster” tales about me, Ray didn’t buy them. He wrote me years later, “I knew that Phil had attempted suicide because he was convinced that he would never be anything but a drag and a liability to you and your children.”

Phil phoned me and told about his injury. I hoped he would come home and let me take care of him, but he didn’t give any indication that he was going to do this, although he wanted tons of sympathy. He gave me his address on Lyon Street and asked me to come visit him; I went almost immediately. The neighborhood was rundown, weedy, and filled with litter. It seemed incredibly dreary to me. How could he stand it after beautiful Point Reyes? Along the way there, though, I was cheered by the new ephemeral art form, the mud flat sculptures extending for miles along eastern San Francisco Bay. They were made of driftwood and other debris and were quite wonderful. Each time I drove by some of them had fallen down and new ones had spontaneously been built in their places. Phil had furnished his house with his battered old Magnavox, a few pieces of Salvation Army furniture, and several sheepskin rugs that we had had made from our own sheep. To my dismay, he had acquired two cats, which made me think he was going to be living permanently at this location. They had already ruined the sheepskin rugs, which they evidently preferred to their cat box. I don’t remember what we talked about, the mud flat sculptures, probably. I had become fearful of saying anything to him, he was so incredibly touchy. I didn’t know about the little cottage behind his house or that Grania was living there.

In their life together, Grania found Phil caring and domestic. He bought her an old Chevrolet and a Philippine wooden salad bowl. She noted that he was disciplined and orderly about the physical setup of his house. He ate regular nutritious meals, kept his house tidy, did his laundry, and generally kept himself physically together, but she found him to be extremely volatile—”too many mood swings and craziness and carrying on.” Phil never stopped telling her stories about his terrible ex-wife. He said he’d worked hard and written eighteen novels to make the money to support the sprawling household in Point Reyes. Later she wondered if Phil invented these stories in order to justify leaving his wife and four children. Phil also told Grania that he had been attracted to Hatte and he “was going to have to watch it.” Phil asked Grania to marry him. Grania said, “Phil’s idea was if you had sex with someone, you got married. He was serially monogamous.”

Grania noted that Phil had a whole drawer full of medications and was taking Elavil and Stelazine prescribed by Dr. A and many other strong tranquilizers. At times he was so agitated he would walk the floor all night listening to opera on the record player at high volume.

Back in Point Reyes Station I was faced with a legal situation in which I had to answer Phil’s divorce action or he would automatically get the divorce on his terms, which meant he would get half the house. Where would I raise my children? I felt very anxious about this, but still I couldn’t bear to file for divorce, so my attorney, Anne Diamond, found a little-used legal alternative, and I filed “for reconciliation.” This action surprised and dismayed Phil.

When I contacted retired attorney Anne Diamond after Phil’s death, she invited me to have lunch with her. I met her in her beautiful home in Ross, which was filled with a collection of antique Asian art. Anne had always been quite fond of me and was helpful with my search, gave me new insights about the divorce, and instructed her office to supply me with all the relevant records. She told me that the Anne and Philip K. Dick divorce was the worst case she had ever handled and she now used it as a model to teach young divorce attorneys
.

Phil’s papers and manuscripts were still in the Hovel. My attorney asked me for a financial paper that happened to be there, and it made perfect sense to my pragmatic nature to go to the Hovel, saw off the lock, get the paper, and put on another lock. I was rather proud of the technical aspects of this small achievement. Phil; his attorney, William Wolfson (the husband of Phil’s favorite high school teacher); my attorney; and my psychologist all became hysterical. “Why?” I thought. “It wasn’t a paper of any importance.” Because of this incident, Wolfson served me with a restraining order that said that I couldn’t visit Phil anymore. Phil changed his phone and got an unlisted phone number; we were out of touch—until he phoned again a few weeks later.

To further complicate an already difficult divorce, my attorney, Anne Diamond, had been the attorney for Margaret Wolfson, William Wolfson’s wife, during their recent divorce, and Phil’s psychiatrist, Dr. A, and my psychotherapist, Dr. J, had a falling out over the monetary kickbacks. The divorce became a battle of the sexes. Unfortunately, Dr. A and William Wolfson believed Phil’s tales instead of helping him. (Mrs. Diamond, the wife of famous forensic psychiatrist, Bernard Diamond, repeatedly moaned, “Too bad he isn’t getting any decent psychiatric care.”)