What falls away : a memoir (4 page)

My father taught me how to sail by the winds and navigate by the stars. He talked about tall ships and distant lands so that I, like him, longed to see the world. He loved the sea and poetry, he could cook and he could tell a story. My father filled a room. He was not simple, but he was direct. He was an insomniac who read two books a night. He spoke about "honor" and "responsibility." He told me about war and showed me his beautiful glory medals for a hero's work; awed, I touched them in their boxes lined with black and purple satin, and wondered whether I too would be brave.

I say all this as if there is one coherent picture, as if I knew him, as if I understood, but in truth I didn't—I was a child, I saw only fragments. With a crayon I could draw his eyes exactly the right shade of blue. I remember him worrying, and laughing. He had a beautiful smile. Everybody looked at him; it wasn't just me. His monogrammed silk

shirts were made by Turnbull & Asser in London. Suits and tweed jackets were from London too, and his shoes were custom-made by Lobb. He was proud of his memberships in London's Naval and Military Club, and the Athenaeum; still, he satirized their stuffiness in Around the World in Eighty Days.

I remember my father leaning over a steamy pot, sipping spaghetti sauce from a wooden spoon. I remember sitting beside him listening to Gregorian chants, and I remember struggling to understand when he read aloud the poems of John Donne.

I didn't know about all the women then. Except for Ava Gardner. When I came into his office at the studio I caught a glimpse, a flash, a tear in the fabric, just a little slit, quick, close It back up. He was very handsome—everybody said so. After he died, women used to come up to me and they'd look at me a certain way and I knew what they were going to say: / knew your father. I never knew what to reply, or what expression to wear.

When I was about ten, I got hopping mad and called the nanny a fat bastard and ran away to the Wonder bread factory, across the Santa Monica tracks. I hid out there for a while, and when it got dark, I came home. My father was waiting, and he whacked me clear across the room. He had an almighty temper. When I was six or seven, my brothers and I put together the filthiest poem we could think of— we even got it to rhyme. Only somehow my mother got hold of it. She said, "You just wait till your father gets home," which was the scariest thing imaginable. After a long, hellish wait, he sent for me. I had to hang on to the big beige chair, and I thought he'd break my back with his walking stick. Jesus. He was something.

He slept in a different bedroom from my mother, which had its own private entrance. Mom says she had that put in during his affair with Ava Gardner m 1953, while they were

filming Ki^, Vcujuero! "I thought I'd be so annoyed if I heard him commg in in the middle of the night," she explains.

The door leading from the nursery into the grown-ups' part of the house was memorable for its knob: a larger-than-usual, perfectly round crystal sphere, a universe of tiny bubbles. Permission from an adult and then two small hands were all it took to turn it and step into our mother's dressing room, where every surface was mirrored, reflecting light and countless images of our wide-eyed selves. It was a dazzling, magical passageway into our parents' domain.

There was always the sense of important things going on in the grown-up world of our home. When my parents gave parties, there was great excitement in the house. Eileen would have three extra girls to help cook and serve. The two nannies brought the children out at sevenish, to be kissed and complimented. The four girls were dressed in matching floor-length silk bathrobes, and the three boys were smart in their flannel ones. The main attraction was a man named Tony who played the accordion and kept on his shoulder a tiny monkey wearing a hat. Then we were put to bed and tried to fall asleep to the sound of the accordion and the civilized chatter and laughter.

I thought of my mother and father who were good to me, and Eileen, in her black uniform with the white starched apron, and my siblings, so vulnerable in their sleep, and the tiny monkey in his hat, and the beautiful guests moving and laughing so confidently under the California stars. Overwhelmed by the mystery of my home, I finally fell asleep.

Ghapter Two

My first visit to a movie set came sometime in my early childhood. I remember my terror that a sound would escape my tightly clamped lips. I could almost feel it building inside me: some frightful, uncontainable explosion of sound, a devil's noise that would leap out and smash to smithereens the amazing pretend-buildings that were only facades, the cowboys with hats and holsters who smoked and swaggered through saloon doors with Kleenex fluttermg around their necks, the bored horses at the hitching posts, the women at their mirrors with their lovely dolls' faces, and countless blazing lights on stilts and hanging from the catwalks. One eruption from my lips would blast the whole illusion right up to the painted canvas sky.

I was about three years old when John Wayne, the tallest person I had ever seen, scooped me up and placed me on the tallest chair in the world. I arranged my pretty dress so that my underpants wouldn't show (there was always that concern when anyone picked me

Up), and I sat quietly, just as I was instructed. After a while John Wayne forgot about me and strode off down the dusty street. I couldn't see my mother or the nanny or any familiar face, and the chair was so high I couldn't get down—I couldn't even try without my underpants showing, and I couldn't make a sound, no matter how badly I needed to go to the bathroom; so there I waited, on that lofty perch, in mute desperation.

When I was about ten, I was taken to visit my mother at a studio where she was working. It was after school, so I was still wearing my uniform when I walked onto the dark soundstage. In a tiny, brightly lit room, my mother was being kissed on her mouth, a strange man was squeezing her arms, pulling her toward him. I had never seen kissing like that, not anywhere, and I couldn't make a thought. Then someone yeUed, Cut!, and Mother was moving toward me with the man she introduced as Mr. Joseph Gotten, who said. How do you do?

For the most part, my visits to the soundstage were less alarming. I loved studying the specialized tasks of the grips, the prop-men, the makeup and wardrobe crews: highly skilled men and women working under immense pressure. Growing up, we watched them on our parents' movie sets. We Hollywood children had no social contact with people from other professions—except, in my family, for priests— unless they were hired by our parents in some capacity. Doctors, lawyers, teachers, tradesmen: everyone seemed to function as a sort of satellite. It was a catastrophic distortion, unintended by our parents, but it damaged healthy role models for so many children in my hometown. If kids grow up in some other one-business town, where it is logical to dream the local dream, and they are educated and work hard, and they have family connections helping a little, it is reasonable to suppose they have a shot at making the dream come true. But if you are a movie star's child, and you grow up in Beverly Hills or Brentwood or Bel Air,

and you dream that dream because it is all you know, then you go to acting school, and take advantage of your connections, and you give it everything you've got. But even with all this going for you, it's unlikely you'll be able to earn a living in your parents* profession, let alone become a star.

We didn't know that then. We dreamed, and outgrowing our charmed childhoods, we scrambled to find our own footholds. And when the doors closed, it was a shock. Even the toughest kids were lU-equipped to make their way in the real world, because most of them honestly didn't know what that was. If there had been more explaining at the beginning ... I wonder whether that would have helped push some of the peculiar aspects of our existence into a more comprehensible shape, and lent perspective to life structures that were, with hmdsight, conspicuously out of whack.

But our parents were busy improvising their own complex existences on an uncharted, high-pressured frontier. My parents were pioneers: talkies were brand-new when my mother came from Ireland to make her first film, and I was among the first generation of movie stars' children. The fiiture was presumed to be golden for them, and for us. There were no explanations—not about fans or stars, the preferential treatment, or the way people stared. There was no talk about what being famous meant, as perceived and projected by the community in which we lived, or how far from typical our small Amencan town was, and why. Of a simpler world, Ralph Waldo Emerson observed: "I trust a good deal to common fame ... If a man can make better chairs or knives or crucibles or church organs than anybody else, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house." A child could understand this sensible description of "common fame," but I wonder what Mr. Emerson would have thought about motion pictures, and the immense industry that took root and flourished around them. For those who made their lives within that colony, traditional values were

not easily maintained, and for the children growing up there, it was nearly impossible to envision the broader landscape, or ponder its possibilities. Like our community, we were not focused on the world outside.

On Saturday mornings, with seventy-five cents' allowance in my jeans pocket, I would ride my bike down Beverly Drive, poke around the fish pond in the park, and climb the won-derfial tree that still dominates the corner of Santa Monica and Beverly. You had to cross the railroad tracks to get to the stores, and it may be just as well that the train never stopped there, because if it had, I might have climbed aboard and gone wherever it took me. As it was, if a train was coming, I'd lay a penny on the track. Flattened pennies could always be traded at school.

At the five-and-dime, I'd order a chocolate milk shake at the soda counter, and stock up on M&M's and jujubes. Then I might try out the new Yo-Yo's, or look at the comic books, or buy caps for my gun. Last stop was the Beverly Pet Store. George, the owner, had an accent and could be grouchy, but I was extra polite. Want me to clean the mouse cage for you, George? Can I hold this puppy, please? How much are the lizards? George got used to me hanging around and after a while he'd let me play with all the animals except the puppies, and I'd brmg home anything my parents would allow me to keep. They were pretty good about that. At one point or another, apart from the dog and cat, which were everybody's, I had a duck, five guinea pigs, a garter snake, two turtles, a horney toad, a shoebox full o{ roll-up bugs, and eighty-seven hamsters. I took excellent care of them all.

My three brothers teased me into shape. "Sissies play with dolls," they would taunt me, so I didn't flinch when they took out the eyes and left the heads all smashed; and after a while, if anyone who didn't know any better gave me

a doll, I'd thank them, and go straight behind the house and bash its head on the brick steps, to get the eyes out before my brothers did. It was okay. I only really cared about my first doll, anyway. So we had a great collection of eyes, which you could also trade at school. Once, I was offered a three-legged kitten for one green eye and a pair of blues. But we had enough cats, my parents said.

Sometimes I brought a hamster to school in my pocket, since they like to sleep all day anyway. One practical thing I always kept in the pocket of my school blazer was a tooth, and if I wanted to get out of class, I'd hold it up and, covering my mouth, make some sounds and head for the bathroom. That was good for fifteen or twenty minutes at least, and they never caught on, so it was well worth forfeiting the tooth fairy's reward one time for that. Of course, you had to keep track of which teachers, and roughly how many teeth can be lost in a year.

From the time I could think, I was crazy about Michael Boyer, who cared nothing at all for me. Exactly my age, and the only child of my mother's closest friends, the French actor Charles and his wife, Pat, Michael and I had been paired from infancy. He was slightly overweight and darkly handsome with a beautiful mouth and pensive, shining eyes. Everyone said he resembled his father: not the Mr. Boyer I knew, of course, but the much younger man I'd seen on television in Gaslight. Except Michael didn't have a charming French accent; what Michael had was a heart-stopping, anxiety-generating stutter.

The Boyers lived a couple of blocks over from us in Beverly Hills and had a beach house near ours in the Malibu Colony. Mrs. Boyer was "highly strung," with a fluty English voice that went on and on. She must have missed Mr. Boyer, who traveled a lot. Perhaps that's why she so focused on her son, fluttering over him, worrying

about his every move and word, and every bite he ate. She made everybody nervous, especially Michael, but at the same time, you couldn't help feeling sorry for her.

Mr. Boyer was another story entirely. I liked him a lot— and unlike Michael, he always noticed me. Not only did he remember which of the seven I was, but he even asked me how things were going, and seemed interested while I told him. It was amazing. Sometimes he would tell me about Paris, which sounded too beautiful to exist, and I longed to see it. And what was more, he paid almost no attention to my brothers and sisters. I wished he didn't travel so much, so Mrs. Boyer would relax a little: then Michael could relax too, and who knew, one day his stutter might just disappear. I'd be happy about seeing more of Mr. Boyer myself. Because what he didn't know, what nobody knew, was that, after Eileen and my parents, Mr. Boyer was my favorite grown-up.

So I was glad when he stopped by our beach house one hot morning of my tenth summer. I hung around while he chatted with my parents, then he asked to walk me back to his house for a visit with his son, who we both knew would tolerate the encounter with polite indifference.

Together we set out along the shaded sidewalk, and as always I asked him where he'd been lately. He told me of his travels, and I watched his eyes get the far-away look. Just then, where I nearly stepped on it, a baby bird sat on the sidewalk, its mouth wide open and a little buzzing, squawky sound coming out of it. Mr. Boyer went right on walking and talking because at this point he was virtually in Pans, but when he noticed I'd stopped and why, his whole face changed. He leaned over and squinted hard at that tiny bird, then he reached up into the tree that hung over the sidewalk and tore off a clump of leaves. Mystified, I watched him scrub them mto his hands.