The X-ray machine, a sickly beige, was at least twenty years old. It looked like a ma.s.sive appliance from the fifties-a sort of toaster, grill, and steamer room rolled into one. The attendant marked Dad"s head with green X"s, designating the areas to be radiated. The machine, exhausted after battling cancer for so long, seemed harmless. After Dad was strapped onto the gurney, I watched the shadow of his head move across a floor-to-ceiling photo mural of giant redwoods.
On the way back to the Royal Palace, Dad and I walked down Le Conte Avenue, past the old Bullock"s parking lot. He wasn"t in a hurry. Holding my hand in the midday heat, he stopped and looked at the ground for a while, then looked some more. Bending down, he picked up a plastic ring and gave it to me.
Dad had taken to contemplating the design of things like broken pencils, dents on tables, and even the configuration of drops of water in the kitchen sink. The boundaries of what was considered worthy of his curiosity had expanded, like the universe. As I put the Cracker Jack prize on my little finger, Dad wandered off to become friends with a giant sycamore tree"s temporary tenant, a robin redbreast.
That night we went to dinner at Plum West. Mom wore a black dress, topped off with a pair of Dad"s red plaid boxer shorts wrapped around her neck like a scarf. He was her man. She had his underwear on to prove it. Dad ate all his moo shu pork and drank his Johnnie Walker Red on the rocks. We were happy. It was as if we"d always be happy. Of course it wasn"t true, but what lasts longer-the truth, or the memory of a perception of happiness? I opened my fortune cookie. "Value what you have now, so as not to miss it when it"s gone."
After two weeks of radiation, Dad said, "I feel like I"m brain-dead. It"s interesting, Di-annie; I don"t know where I am half the time. I feel pretty good except when they stick their fingers up my a.s.s every day." After two weeks Dad"s head was crispy. He didn"t complain, but he did say things like "I woke up in the middle of the night. I wanted to brush the hair out of my head before it cracks. I started looking for the brush but couldn"t find it. I figured I"d put Dorothy on the case. But when she opened the refrigerator, there was a pigeon inside looking for its sungla.s.ses."
Mom was starting to lose it. "You know, I think I should drive him to Santa Monica, so he can put his feet in the sand and look at the waves. He needs it. I"m worried, Diane. They"re frying him raw. And what are those pills doing to him? He doesn"t say a word. He just takes it. He"s going downhill fast. He orders shakes at Arby"s, but I can"t get him to drink them. He doesn"t eat. The doctor is alarmed. But how alarmed can he be? Anyone can see that Jack"s an experiment that"s destined to fail? I think the "alarm" is centered on the experiment, not Jack."
To watch my father a.n.a.lyze his toothbrush in the bathroom of his suite at the Palace or wait patiently with Rocco Lampone and the other cancer patients was unbearable. He would say things like "Life is transitory. We"re just traveling through." And "It"s like the circus, Diane: If you"re going to go to the d.a.m.n thing, you should see it all the way through." After another couple of weeks Dad"s head was red, as red as a robin redbreast, brighter than a red-winged blackbird, and even brighter than the brightest of all the red cardinals.
On April 13, Dad prematurely flunked the "program" and was driven home in an ambulance to be more comfortable. "It"s the quality of life, not the quant.i.ty," his doctor told us. An air of disbelief prevailed. He might get better. Right? At the same time, Dad was looking more wounded. His failure to live up to the program"s requirements was obvious.
It was the afternoon of Christ"s ascension when Dad dispersed six legal pads in front of six chairs surrounding the dining room table, and it was the last time the entire Hall family would gather together. He pa.s.sed around six pencils and presented what looked to be a thickly bound notebook, sealed with dozens of rubber bands. We looked at his chronicle of financial accomplishments, including the evaluation of the estate, the estimate of the property taxes, the holdings in real estate-in short, the net worth of Jack Newton Ignatius Hall. He informed us the estate taxes would amount to approximately 55 percent. We nodded in unison. "I want to talk to you kids about the living trust and how to brace yourselves for the future." He picked up one of the yellow pencils and held it to the light of the sun. He ran his fingers across each crease. It was almost as if the pencil knew secrets. Slowly (what was the hurry?), Dad put the pencil down, rolled it across the table, then rolled it again, and again, and again. "Any questions? Randy?" Randy shook his head. "Randy, any questions?" Randy"s face froze in the smile he always wore when Dad confronted him. And that was it. Randy got up and left. Our meeting adjourned without so much as another word.
We ate lunch on the patio while Dad faced the ocean without his Johnnie Walker Red. Robin told Mom to be prepared for possible seizures. She itemized her own to-do list just in case. "Turn him on the side so he can"t swallow his tongue. Don"t worry, you can do it. Put your knee under his head so he can"t bang it against something hard." Dad"s faraway look was farther away than ever. "So much nothing, right, Dad? So much nothing, and then the big nothing."
The next time I spoke to Randy, I asked, "What happened? Why did you leave so abruptly?"
This is what he said: "I called Dad last week. After all that"s gone on, I wanted him to know I loved him. You know what he said? He said, "What"s gone on?" He just couldn"t go there. You know what I mean, Diane? Couldn"t go there."
Dad never let go of his big plans for Randy. They were cla.s.sic. John Randolph would carry on the Hall family business. Instead, he sat in his singles condo on Tangerine Street, writing poems about the journey of underground birds. Like Grammy Hall, Dad couldn"t grasp it. "Birds fly, they don"t live under the earth." But Randy went on to spend a lifetime writing about birds that couldn"t quite take off. According to Dad, everything Randy did was a.s.s-backward. For instance, when the temperature in the townhouse Dad bought him hit ninety degrees, Randy didn"t have enough common sense to open the d.a.m.n window. It drove Dad nuts. I just wished he could have understood there was no point in telling Randy what to do.
Together Again Back in Palermo three weeks later, the tension on the set was explosive. Francis was where I left him, still sitting in the Silver Bullet, still rewriting the end. After dozens of breakups, Al and I broke up again. Masters of avoidance, we did not say h.e.l.lo.
It was a cold Sat.u.r.day when Francis called a rehearsal in the very room where Wagner composed Parsifal. The usual suspects were gathered: Andy Garcia, George Hamilton, Talia Shire, Sofia (soon to be on the cover of Vogue), Richie Bright, Al, and John Savage. Eli Wallach came up to me. "You"re a survivor. Good for you. You"re a bright survivor." Survivor? The lights had been hung upside down in the Teatro Ma.s.simo. Gordon Willis was fuming. As we waited for the twelfth rewrite of the ending to G.o.dfather III, I thought about the other versions. There was one where Talia kills Eli Wallach, Al is blinded, and Andy breaks off with Sofia the instant before she is a.s.sa.s.sinated. After blind Al discovers his dead daughter on the steps of the theater, he blows his brains out. There was the one where Al is a.s.sumed dead but comes back. There was the one where he is shot but lives, only to be killed on Easter Sunday on his way to church. There was the version where Al is gunned down at Teatro Ma.s.simo but Sofia lives. None of us knew what to expect. Would this be the final, final draft or just one in a continuing series of attempts to end the saga of our erratic and entirely brilliant leader Francis Coppola?
All I remember about shooting the actual final scene to The G.o.dfather: Part III is this: It was easy to sob. I sobbed and sobbed, then sobbed some more. It wasn"t hard. All I had to do was think of Dad. When I didn"t think of him, I thought of Al. We were back together, sort of.
I didn"t care if it would work or not. I was happy to hear him read Macbeth at midnight, just to listen to the sound of his voice. He was crazy. Crazy great. It was always "Di." "Di, make me some coffee, hot and black." "Di, come sit next to me so we can talk." One night-my favorite-I listened to him tell me about being a kid on the street. He loved the fall and how the shadows amplified the broken-down brownstones. He told me the world would always be that street in the Bronx. Every beautiful thing was compared to those days, with the light shining its gold on his friends and the street. Always the street. I listened.
He hated goodbyes. He preferred to vanish as mysteriously as he appeared. Sometimes I"d wake up in the middle of the night and find him making tea or eating popcorn and plain M&Ms. He liked plain. I liked him plain. I loved him, but my love was not making me a better person. I hate to say it, but I was not plain. I was too much.
My Story of the Story of Dad"s Life Right after I got back from finishing The G.o.dfather: Part III, Dad told Mom to go look for a gun to kill the neighbors. "Do I have bad breath?" he said as he peed while kneeling in his bedroom, fingering the edge of the floorboard. He was terribly thin. He could barely hold a cup. He didn"t stop to look at sparrows anymore; he"d stopped walking. Dr. Copeland had been right. It was "bad."
In the beginning of August he pretty much stopped talking too. Sometimes I would sit on the corner of his hospital bed, look out the picture window, and tell him my story of the story of his life, like the time he took us all the way to San Bernardino to a place called McDonald"s, where they sold hamburgers for fifteen cents and orange juice for five. Did he remember the giant red sign that said, Self-Service System HAMBURGERS. We have sold OVER 1 million? Did he remember the hamburger, and the sign? Did he? He smiled but didn"t nod.
One afternoon I talked to Dad about all the times we drove under the Avenue 55 overpa.s.s onto the Pasadena Freeway, until we made a left at the Pacific Coast Highway. It took us all the way to Palos Verdes. Once there, he and his friend Bob Blandin checked their lobster traps before diving off the cliffs into the ocean. Palos Verdes was famous for Lloyd Wright"s all-gla.s.s Wayfarers Chapel. Mom said people wanted to get married with an ocean view. I asked Dad if he remembered how every wedding was called off after a house slid down a hill one Sunday. Did he remember how we continued driving to Palos Verdes, landslide or not, and how we kept waiting for him in the backseat of our first and only woody station wagon as we ate Mom"s better-than-McDonald"s homemade hamburgers wrapped in tinfoil, with cheese and mayo and dill pickles too? Did he remember coming over the cliffs every weekend, singing, "Who stole the ding-dong, who stole the bell? I know who stole it, Dorrie Bell." Did he remember how he"d always lean down to kiss little Robin Redbreast, then me, his Di-annie Oh Hall-ie? Dad tilted his head back and forth, trying to think it through. It was an awful lot of questions for a dying man to answer.
I told him the story about the time I spied on him through the crack of his bedroom door as he slipped coins into nickel-, dime-, and quarter-size candy-striped wrappers he got from the Bank of America. After he filled them, he opened a drawer and put the new wrappers on top of a mound of others. Seeing the outline of his profile as he reflected on the c.u.mulative results of his undertaking made me smile. There he was, Mary Alice Hall"s son, happily engaged in realizing a portion of his dream, the acquisition of money. I told Dad I wanted him to be sure and be proud of all the other dreams he"d realized too, big dreams, dreams he never thought he could have accomplished. I told him I hoped to pa.s.s on the memory of his accomplishments to a child of my own someday, even though I knew I was a little long in the tooth. Dad didn"t respond. After that, I didn"t tell him any more stories.
The fat man in the black suit came from the coroner"s office. He put on rubber gloves to examine the body. It was brief. He wrapped a wire tag around my father"s big toe. No more Jack Hall"s right shoe, Jack Hall"s left shoe. Robin, Dorrie, and I went outside and sat on the Jacuzzi cover. I looked through Dad"s picture window as two men from the Neptune Society strapped him onto a gurney. Covered in a royal-blue cloth, Dad was rolled out of the living room, through the kitchen, into the garage, out the garage door, and onto the driveway. I followed the little procession from a distance. After they shut the windowed door to the van, all I could make out was the royal-blue blanket stretched across my father"s body. At least he was wrapped in the color of the ocean at sunset.
What Remains Two months after Dad died, Al admitted in the safety of the therapist"s office what I must have always known: He never had any intention of marrying me. What he wanted was out. And that"s what he got. He got out. I watched him walk into the light of the California sun without so much as a glance back. Later the same day, he flew to the safety of New York, the George Washington Bridge, his driver, Luke, and his dog, Lucky, waiting at Snedens Landing.
This is what remains of Al Pacino.
1. Eight pink slips from the Shangri-La Hotel in 1987, saying, "Call from Al."
2. A page ripped out of a book with the sheet music to "All I Have to Do Is Dream," inscribed "To Di" at the top of the page, "Love Al" at the bottom.
3. One happy-birthday note card, with "Love Al" written on it.
4. A handwritten letter from December 1989: "Dear Di, I am feeling uncomfortably lonely more than I have in many, many moons. I don"t know why this is so. It"s perhaps being in a foreign country and not being able to speak the language; you could say that"s one of the reasons. But mainly it"s being away from you and what we have together. As I"m writing this letter I"m sitting in an outside cafe in Rome, it"s pouring rain. I"m looking onto a beautiful square with a church talking to myself. I"ve got my hands folded as if in prayer. But in the middle of my hands is a little tape recorder. So it looks like I"m talking to my fingers. That"s the way it looks. If only I could dictate this letter without moving my lips. Just trying to tell you I miss you, "darlin". In a sort of roundabout way it seems. I will get back to you. Love, Al."
5. A note on a torn piece of paper: "Diane, Andy, me, and Don went to a restaurant in Mondello. I will call you with the name of the joint. Sit tight be right. Don"t fight. Love Al, Your friend."
6. January 29, 1992, handwritten: "Dear Di. I heard that Anna Strasberg talked to you on the phone and may have mentioned something about my sending regards or some such amenity. Never did I do that. I would never use such a coy approach to trying to communicate with you. It"s unbearable to think that you would get that impression. I need no go between if I want to contact you. I apologize for having put you through this note. L. Al Pacino."
7. August 19, 1995, on Chal stationery, typed: "Dear Di, Thank you for your very beautiful note about Lucky. Your warm words, thoughts, and deep understanding of my relationship with Lucky made me feel not alone. Thank you. Meanwhile, I heard about your mother and the news was upsetting to me. I send to you my thoughts and hopes for her recovery. I know it"s very difficult. It"s seriously a hard life, and that"s all there is to it. I feel now, of course, helpless to do anything for you except to let you know that I have some understanding for what you"re going through. Once again, thank you for your note. It helped me. My thoughts are with you, and I think about you often. Love, Al."
A Portrait At the end of November, Dad"s remains sat on the bookshelf of our Tubac, Arizona, home. Dorrie and Mom were waiting. I was flying in from Dallas to join them. Early that morning, Dorrie woke to the sound of a thud. She opened the sliding gla.s.s door to find a mourning dove lying in a pool of blood.
I arrived in time to help finish making Dad"s cross. We three women walked to the top of the little incline overlooking the valley below the Santa Rita mountain range. We hammered the handmade wooden cross into the ground. We thumbtacked a photograph of Dad above his name, date of birth, and date of death. We stuck a couple of hundred-dollar bills underneath the rocks. We figured he"d want a little cash on his trip. We placed the mourning dove alongside Dad so he"d have a traveling companion. We weren"t sure of their destination, but we felt better knowing he wouldn"t be alone.
1990 was the year I lost my father. It was also the year I lost Al. In a way, Dad"s dying was a preparation for Al"s goodbye. During Dad"s five short months living with brain cancer, I learned that love, all love, is a job, a great job, the best job. I learned that love is much more than a fantasy of romance. It turned out losing Al was predictable, but losing Dad was not. Losing Dad would change me in ways I never could have guessed.
One day I took a photograph of Dad looking unflinchingly into the face of death. He was pretty much flying on his own, soaring over California, checking out the lay of the land just before he was about to make his last flight. Some people say photographs lie. My father"s eyes gazing out of prolonged suffering is the truth to me. I"m aware that it might seem peculiar to focus on a portrait of dying Dad rather than young Dad or dynamic Dad. Yet I can"t pa.s.s it without reflecting on the way he left. Stripped of reason, hallucinating dogs doing backflips in his bedroom, Dad was on a wild ride. His face in his sixty-eighth year makes me hope I can engage in life the same way he engaged death. Straightforward, unembellished, and uncluttered.
"I know I can"t take this world with me. I don"t even know where I am half the time, but I"ll tell you, Diane, I feel better. You never realize how much you appreciate the little things. Your Mudd, for instance. I love your mother, even though I never know what she"s going to do." It wasn"t Norman Vincent Peale. It wasn"t Dale Carnegie. What it was was Dad.
11.
AFTERMATH.
Two Letters Dear Dad, It"s the first day of 1991. I think you would have been happy to see your girls today. The sun shone through a dense marine layer at 10. Robin went to the store towing Riley and little Jack, now a toddler. Dorrie, Mom, and I went to look at an open house on Ocean Drive. Can you believe they were asking 2.5 million dollars for a 2,000 square foot box with a marginal view? You would have been proud of Mom. She nearly gagged.
Back at Cove St., Dorrie put on Willie Nelson. I opened a bottle of wine, and we all sat down to one of Mom"s delicious tuna ca.s.seroles. The kids ate candy for dessert, your favorite, See"s chocolate turtles.
It was unseasonably hot, so Robin, Dorrie, and I swam over to Big Corona, where we caught waves with people who don"t own homes on the beach. Thank you for our little box with a view, Dad. When Mom and the kids joined us we built sand castles. Riley taught me how to make them correctly. She"ll end up in management. She"s your kind of girl. Little Jack bent over a collection of buckets on the sh.o.r.eline, examining sand crabs.
I think you would have gotten a big kick out of your three daughters eyeing all the hunks. Dorrie joked about my type. I want to reiterate: I don"t have a type, Dad. I know you think all women love b.u.ms, but you"re wrong. It"s complex. Al and I broke up a couple of months after you died. It"s been sad, but educational. I wonder if I"ll ever find a better way to love a man, the "correct" way. I wish you and I had been closer. I wish I"d been a Daddy"s girl. Your girl. I wish I had figured out a way to love you with a little less effort.
In any event it was a good day, this first day of 1991. We were happy at the beach. It was just us, your five girls, and a little boy named after you. Jack. Love, Diane Dear Jack, I want to talk to you about some things I regret I"ve learned too late. I know you wouldn"t want me to live with regrets. And I"m trying not to, but I look at couples bickering about some small matter and I want to say, "Don"t take your living time fighting & fussing over nothing. Be happy. You have one another."
I still feel your presence. When that feeling comes I look up to the sky (as if that"s where you are), and I think if I feel you so intensely you must have a sense of me also. If that"s true you know that I am feeling old. I hate to confront the fact that I"m slipping in my mental capacities too. It bothers me. I still have the red heart you gave me last Valentine"s Day full of See"s chocolates. Or was that the year before? Oh, G.o.d, Jack, you see what I mean. It"s all slipping away.
I would like to request a favor from you. Please be with me, for I am very much in need of you. Force your way through to me, will you? Please. I am lonely. I don"t know why it was so hard for me to tell you how much I loved you when you were sitting across from me on the bar stool, drink in hand, music playing, dinner cooking, all things working. Maybe you know all the answers now that you"ve gone to the other side. All I know is I held you in my arms as you lay dying. I want to go that way too. But who will hold me, Jack? Who will hold me now that you"ve gone?
I love you.
Your Dorothy The Price of Pretty, March 1991 It"s funny how the rain came so suddenly. A mud slide crushed the yellow crocuses in my backyard. Even at dinner with Dana Delany and Lydia Woodward, two fantastic single gals, my mind was never far from the avalanche. Dana ordered a gla.s.s of cabernet. She wanted to know if I was dating. I mentioned a guy in Newport Beach. "Did he do you?" Dana asked. "No," I said. "No, he did not do me." I hadn"t been done.
What I wanted to say was, my lungs were filled with a residue of dust from the past. Why did I have to be intrigued by the Goth with b.l.o.o.d.y cuts decorating his tattooed neck outside Musso and Frank instead of the happy-faced family eating vanilla ice cream as they entered the Hollywood Wax Museum? Why was Lydia"s loneliness more compelling than Dana"s conquests and confidence?
After Al, I lost all semblance of Dana"s s.e.xy confidence. The truth is I never had it, but that isn"t the point. The point is I let myself, yet again, become preoccupied with failure. Mine. Maybe I wasn"t pretty enough for Al. Maybe Al, like Ronnie McNeeley back in junior high, wasn"t attracted to my face. My face was my failure.
Sometimes it"s hard to separate the concept of beauty from the concept of pretty. They"re different. Beauty is variable. It comes and goes. For example, Grammy Hall was beautiful once and only once, and that was the year she died. Natalie Wood went from pretty to beautiful in Splendor in the Gra.s.s. Anna Magnani was an ugly beauty who flung herself onto the dirt in Rome, Open City. All these women were beautiful. They were mesmerizing, but their beauty didn"t make promises. It wasn"t safe, and it wasn"t eternal.
If I wanted to be pretty I could put in an order for a face-lift, with an eye job on the side, and I could get rid of my Irish bulb to boot. Plastic surgeons would be happy to accommodate my needs. But then what? It"s a little late to start experimenting. And besides, pretty, with its promise of perfection, is not as appealing as it used to be. What is perfection, anyway? It"s the death of creativity, that"s what I think, while change, on the other hand, is the cornerstone of new ideas. G.o.d knows, I want new ideas and new experiences.
The difference between prettiness and beauty is that prettiness-like the Avon lady knocking at your door, offering up a selection of neatly wrapped gratification-is a dead end. Beauty, flinging itself onto the earth like Anna Magnani, is alive and fleeting. I"d like to let go of pretty with no hard feelings, but do I have it in me? Beauty is not an option. Beauty is like living with questions. There are no answers. If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, does that mean mirrors are a waste of time? I don"t know if I"m brave enough to live without answers or to stop looking at myself.
Life Goes On HBO offered me the role of Hedda Nussbaum, a victim of domestic abuse whose adopted daughter, Lisa, died from a severe blow to the head given by Joel Steinberg, Hedda"s lover. I pa.s.sed. No more victims for me. Instead, I restored the Wright house Dad had warned me not to buy. I took a road trip to Canyon de Ch.e.l.ly with Dorrie. I directed a music video called "Heaven Is a Place on Earth" with Belinda Carlisle. I took a screenwriting cla.s.s at USC with David Howard, who talked about preparation and aftermath. "You"re never too old to learn, huh?" a student asked during a break. "Yeah, never too old," I said. I met a producer named Judy Polone, who gave me a shot at directing a TV movie called Wildflower. We hired the cinematographer Ja.n.u.sz Kaminski, who went on to shoot Schindler"s List for Steven Spielberg. I cast Patricia Arquette and Reese Witherspoon to star. They were beautiful and talented. The future was theirs. Randy moved to Laguna. Al had a baby. Warren married Annette Bening. Dorrie bought a house. Robin had two children, one husband, and three rescue dogs. I kept moving.
At the Rose Bowl swap meet, Carolyn Cole, the director of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner photography collection at the Los Angeles Central Library, came up to me and wanted to know if I was interested in taking a look at something very special. Alone in the bas.e.m.e.nt of Bertram Goodhue"s Egyptian revival landmark, I opened the file marked A and began a trip through two million photographs of found dogs, missing children, holdup suspects, wife beaters, cross-dressers-basically the whole kitchen sink of down-and-outers who shared a short-lived if splashy notoriety in the Herald Examiner. I found an eight-by-ten picture of Mother Anderson, who had been caught pa.s.sing bad checks at Clifton"s Cafeteria while pregnant with her seventeenth child. Behind her was a photograph of Father Anderson in jail, accused of kidnapping one of their daughters. Blind ex-G.I. Edward Altman was pictured reunited with his Seeing Eye dog, Trump, and Gladis Archer was photographed in pants after she was freed from jail for having worn a Marine uniform to a drinking party. Subscribers like Grammy Hall and George Olsen ate up the insatiable black hole of someone else"s misfortune.
In the A"s, under "The Amba.s.sador Hotel," I found a picture of triumphant Dorothy Hall being crowned Mrs. Los Angeles by Art Linkletter. But under "Abandoned," there was no photograph of Beulah Keaton scrubbing toilets at Franklin High School in her new occupation as janitor. What about her hard-luck story? The story of a woman who woke up to see her husband of twenty-five years drive off to Utah in the family"s only car with a woman he was about to marry, thus becoming a bigamist. There was no picture of little Jackie Hall"s face pressed against a window as he watched his mother, Mary Alice, play blackjack inside one of Catalina Island"s notorious gambling ships at one A.M. In fact, there were no stories or pictures of the other Halls or Keatons. For me, the thin line between newsworthy and not was converging. A book began to take shape. A kind of tabloid family of man. I called it Local News.
When Woody asked me to fill in for Mia Farrow on Manhattan Murder Mystery, I took the job. It was crazy. Outside, the press circled Woody"s trailer. A day didn"t go by without microphones in his face. "What"s your take on the custody battle with Mia Farrow?" Inside, it felt like Annie Hall days, only looser, if that was possible. Carlo Di Palma shot the movie handheld. Entire scenes were completed in one take. We were in makeup at seven A.M. and wrapped at two-thirty in the afternoon. I couldn"t believe how easy it was. As for Woody, he never brought up personal problems while working.
Unstrung Heroes Donna Roth and Susan Arnold were looking for a director. Unstrung Heroes was based on Franz Lidz"s memoir about the struggle of a boy named Steven after his mother, Selma, is diagnosed with ovarian cancer. When Selma begins to fade, Steven"s father has him stay with his two uncles, one a h.o.a.rder, the other a paranoid. They teach him to value his own uniqueness. Uncle Arthur in particular gives Steven a way of appreciating the beauty found in mundane objects like string and rubber b.a.l.l.s. But it"s Selma who gives him the capacity to love. Steven creates his own memorial to Selma before she dies by filling a box with her things-a tube of her lipstick, a perfume bottle, a cigarette lighter.
Finding redemption through doc.u.mentation was particularly moving to me. It was almost as if Franz Lidz was telling us that items, possessions, even stuff, could make up for the mercurial comings and goings of love. I auditioned with Donna and Susan by giving them my thoughts, particularly those related to doc.u.menting a family"s history. I"d been mimicking Mom for years by writing my own journal. The subject was personal. Susan and Donna were the kind of producers who had enough confidence to give me a try.
It was my first feature as a director. I needed help in every department. I hired a USC film graduate, Greg Yaitanes, as the visual consultant. He had an imaginative approach and was highly inventive with action. Together we shot the film before I shot the film. It may seem insane, but Greg operated the videocam while I played dying Selma, young Steven, even crazy Uncle Danny. Speaking their words made me feel more connected to the story. When we started princ.i.p.al photography, I was grateful I had my little video movie of the movie to help with camera setups. Phedon Papamichael, our cinematographer, went along with my folly. In fact, all department heads were willing to go along with my so-called "vision." The music, composed by Tom Newman, was nominated for an Academy Award. Garreth Stover, the production designer, was full of ideas. Bill Robinson, my soon-to-be partner, was invaluable. All the actors broke my heart. Andie MacDowell, lovely Andie; the late Maury Chaykin, a great actor and friend; Michael Richards, the reason Disney green-lit the film; John Turturro; and quirky little Nathan Watt were unique, idiosyncratic, singular, and wonderful. I loved them all. I wish I had made a better movie. Having directed two feature films, I"m more acutely aware of how nearly impossible it is to make a good film.
When Unstrung was selected for Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival, Disney flew me over. Susan Arnold told me not to worry: The plane was safe, we"d have a great flight, we would drink red wine. I took a Xanax instead. Once I was there, Cannes was a spectacular scene. My interviews with Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times, E! Entertainment, HBO, the Toronto Star, Time magazine, and CNN were positive. Joe Roth, the head of Disney, wanted to know what my next picture was going to be. At the party, Richard Corliss"s wife talked about the theme of hands, how delicately the hands stood out in scene after scene. Wanting to end on a high note, I slipped into the official Cannes limo and disappeared into the dead of night. Inside my suite at the Carlton, a familiar sensation came back. With my Mizrahi dress in the closet, the party was over. I was alone again-this time in Cannes. It wasn"t different from any other night, except I didn"t have my dog, Josie, to pet, which, as lame as it may seem, gave me something to look forward to. Just the thought of stroking her mangy coat, grabbing her muzzle, and laying on lots of kisses made me feel good. I missed the ritual, the every-night of it, the knowing she"d be there. How was it possible that Josie-the shepherd mix who bit the mailman and attacked the neighbor"s dog, Freddy; Josie, aka Jaws, the dog I wouldn"t have wished on anyone-was the only thing I missed as I stared at the ceiling in a beautiful hotel suite six thousand miles away from my very own "yellow snapper"?
Diane"s Journal, May 29, 1995 With eight hours left on the twelve-hour flight, the Fasten Your Seat Belt sign goes on for the fifth time. I start to grip the arms of the seat. It isn"t like I haven"t been warned. The storm clouds at the airport were impossible to overlook. At the ticket counter a woman in a straw hat complained to her husband about plane connections in Las Vegas. What about taking off in a storm, lady? I tried to distract myself with Time magazine"s profile of Reynolds Price, whose new book, The Promise of Rest, had "rounded off a powerful saga of isolation." Isolation. Did I have to be reminded I was flying alone? Where was Warren to hold my hand? I thought of Dad. He, too, found air travel intolerable. Did he feel isolated in the sky? When the plane was delayed I read "Heartbreak Motel," an article singling out the leftover lives of drifters, boozers, and itinerant families found in motels along the Arizona border, as lightning lit the sky. There was Paul Coyle, who, after his wife left him, had the names of his sixteen children in a heart tattooed on his back. Another tattoo read I LOVE MY FAMILY. MARRIED OCT. 12, 1958, CITY TEMPLE, ILL. PAUL AND JANET COYLE. He must have figured if he died his family would find him. One thing I knew, there"d be no family finding me if, G.o.d forbid, the delayed Boeing 747 nonstop to L.A. crashed over the Atlantic Ocean.
I hate the Fasten Your Seat Belt sign. I hate it. Bouncing around at 35,000 feet is just plain horrifying. Plus, the two Xanax and the gla.s.s of wine have failed. Like a car shifting from fourth to third gear, the sound of the motor, at least to me, indicates the plane is trying to adjust to a lower alt.i.tude. Is this a good idea? Isn"t higher smoother? The stewardess tries to convince me everything is all right, but the thousand-foot drops are killing me. I imagine our jumbo jet flipping over upside down. I can see my face smashed against the window. When she launches into the old "car on a b.u.mpy road" a.n.a.logy, I wonder if she"s crazy. She can"t be serious. This is not a b.u.mpy road. This is the air. This is being in the middle of nothing with nothing to hold on to. Sorry, but check it out. Flying is not normal. And guess what? I don"t care where we are, can we please ask the captain to please make it smooth, or something? Anything. Land it somewhere, I don"t know, England, or how about Barbados? Whatever landma.s.s we"re near. I don"t care. Anything. I can"t take it anymore.
The Fasten Your Seat Belt light goes out. On cue my heart stops pounding. I start in with the usual promises of change. I"ll spend more time with Mom. I"ll stop with the endless projects and the half-a.s.sed solutions to a meaningful life.
It reminds me of the day I drove Dad home from UCLA"s Medical Center after he flunked "The Program." I remember all those placating words the doctors and their staff used during Dad"s two-month stay, but especially "It"s the quality of life, not the quant.i.ty." Dad didn"t look like a man with much quality left. We were silent as we headed south on the 405. The traffic was slow. I didn"t know what to say. Two blocks before Cove Street, two blocks away from Dorothy, Dad blurted out, "Diane, I want you to know something. I"ve always hated my work. I wish I"d traveled more, gotten closer to you kids, taken more risks." It was his use of the word risk that made me think of the risks I hadn"t taken, especially those revolving around intimacy. It also made me think of the time Kathryn Grody told me Estelle Parsons had adopted a baby boy at age fifty. Wasn"t she too old to be adopting a baby? It made me remember my sixteen-year-old pledge not to have intercourse before I was married. Boy, that would have been a big loss, particularly since I"ve never married. And what about the time I told Mom I was against psychiatry on principle. What principle? Where would I be without a.n.a.lysis? I was intolerant of everything I went on to benefit from.
As soon as I see L.A. spread out below, I know I"m going to have to reinvent the future. I know I have to make a decision that will or will not lead to the experience of a different kind of love, a love of less expectations on the receiving end. I know if I adopt a baby I will need to adapt to conditions that require care and responsibility, and management skills too. But above all I will need to earn the right to be a mother, especially considering I am a single white woman staring fifty in the face.
12.
h.e.l.lO.
The Bundle Dexter came to me in a straw basket with two handles. The first thing we did was drive to the pediatrician"s office. As I put her in the new car seat, she looked cautious; after all, she"d flown across the country to meet up with a woman she would have to learn to call Mother. Everything about her was new: her tiny hands and feet, her big round face. When the doctor deemed her "alert," that meant she had pa.s.sed her first test. She was alert, and attentive, and prepared, and vigilant. That was the moment I knew I had it in me to take on the rest of the tests Dexter would have to pa.s.s for as long as I lived. That"s when I put my hand on her face, looked into her eyes for as long as forever will ever be, and smiled. I knew I could do it. I knew the dust from the past had lifted. Yes, Warren was right, I was a late developer, but I"d become a woman, despite my protestations, and now a mother too. Dexter was my "in sickness and health, till death do us part," unconditional love. She was my new family, this st.u.r.dy, resilient, alert girl from North Carolina.
Born Thursday, December 14, 1995, Dexter flew to Houston, Texas, four days after she was born. She arrived in Los Angeles the following Friday. On Sat.u.r.day, Uncle Rickey, Robin"s husband, drove Dexter and me all the way to Tubac, Arizona, for Christmas with the family. Dexter was up for the frequent diaper changes at various gas stations with other fellow Americans on their way to Christmas cheer. She appeared to be content with the steady movement of the car on the road. When we arrived at Mom"s ranch, Aunt Robin, Aunt Dorrie, Grammy Dorothy, Cousin Riley, Cousin Jack, and my friend Jonathan Gale gathered around Dexter in the living room. We all agreed she had a sly smile, almost as if "Prove it" would inform her character. At ten days she was unusually street-smart and ready to go.
As if that wasn"t enough, two weeks later Dexter and I flew to New York so I could complete filming on The First Wives Club, a comedy about three old friends who are dumped by their husbands. Ivana Trump summed up the film"s message best with "Ladies, you have to be strong and independent, and remember, don"t get mad, get everything."
Dexter and I had a ritual. Every night after work, I placed her in the bouncy chair and marveled at her almost fishlike, slow-motion, underwater gestures. Sometimes she followed me with her eyes. Sometimes I tried to imitate her expressions, but how could I? I"ve lived too long to go back to the beginning. I held her against my chest. It was hard to believe she weighed less than a medium-size bowling ball. I touched her face and gave her kisses. I put the bottle in her mouth. She swallowed the formula. Simple miracles. I began to appreciate the comfort of furniture, not just the design. More simple miracles.
In the mornings at the rented loft on Prince Street, I fed her and changed her diaper. I talked to her too. There was a lot to say. Sometimes, not always, she"d crack a smile. Then came the most important task of the day: selecting an outfit, at least 70 percent of which were gifts. First I chose one of Dexter"s twenty-two hats, thirteen of which came from Kate Capshaw. Then I"d pause for a moment and go over the list of people who"d been so generous. There was Woody Allen, who gave her a flowery little dress I returned. (Too small.) Meryl Streep gave Dexter four boxes of dresses, and hats (more hats) and blankets, and jumpers and leggings and tops, and washcloths that she called a starter kit. Bette Midler gave her a health book and a very funny carrot hat with a pea on top. Then my boss, Mr. Scott Rudin, gave Dexter a fancy French coat from a store called Bonpoint on Madison Avenue. Steve Martin gave her a much needed and very practical diaper bag. Martin Short and his lovely bride, Nancy, sent her flowers and balloons that flew up to the ceiling and stayed there for two weeks. I could not believe our good fortune-a once-in-a-lifetime complete wardrobe from a host of remarkable notables.
First Ladies Always on the go, Dexter and I went out to dinner three times a week. She came to the set every day. We took the Circle Line and saw the Statue of Liberty during a snowstorm. Bill Robinson, who"d been an intern for Ted Kennedy, made arrangements for a tour of the White House. Veteran travelers, we grabbed the first train to Washington, D.C.
We began our visit in the Oval Office. It was very yellow and blue-official blue. We took pictures in the pressroom-beside a surprisingly antiquated phone system underneath a wall of tiny black-and-white television sets monitoring the whereabouts of the First Family. The phone system was obsolete, and the television sets were tiny. In the East Room, where Presidents John F. Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln had lain in repose before burial, Dexter dozed off in her BabyBjorn. When we moved on to the Red Room, I learned Eleanor Roosevelt had changed it from a ladies" social setting to a pressroom for women reporters who were excluded from presidential conferences. The stipulation? Mrs. Roosevelt"s press conferences were limited to subjects centered on "women"s work."
Every office had a gadget called "the toaster." Like the monitors, its function was to inform the employees of the exact whereabouts of the President, the First Lady, Chelsea, and Socks, their cat. We were told that Hillary and Chelsea were actually in the White House. Chelsea was watching a movie, and Hillary was upstairs with a cold. She, of course, wanted to meet us but was feeling under the weather. Frankly, if I were her, I would cherish every moment of privacy and guard it like a treasure. Her life was nothing if not an intrusion. Imagine always being on view, always being groomed, always being judged and criticized. The more I saw, the more impossible it was to imagine the White House as a home. But then, I guess the idea of home is something you have to create for yourself.
There were many spectacular aspects to the White House, but the role of First Lady was not one of them. Even though she carries the burden of presenting the quintessential "American" family to the public, as well as rallying behind her favorite charities, visiting schools, hosting parties for traveling dignitaries, and privately advising her husband on the state of the union-all of it under the scrutiny of an entire nation-it"s not considered a job and she"s not paid.
We stood in front of the official First Lady portraits and listened to the guide tell us each woman was given the right to choose her own artist. A right? Who else was going to choose? I learned Eleanor Roosevelt felt she was so homely, she insisted that Douglas Chandor"s portrait focus on her finest feature, her hands. The upper part of the painting was a typical portrait, until it bled into a kind of second painting, devoted to a series of monotone inserts of Mrs. Roosevelt"s hands knitting and holding gla.s.ses-in short, engaged in the completion of domestic tasks. This was the same woman who, in 1948, was touted as a running mate for Harry Truman. Even Eleanor Roosevelt had to conform to the demands of a First Lady in the fourth decade of the twentieth century. Barbara Bush"s newly hung painting was nothing if not predictable, until I noticed the framed portrait within the portrait of her dog, Millie-not her children or grandchildren, but Millie the dog-on the table next to her. Jackie Kennedy"s was alluring in a distant, subdued sort of way. Very sixties. Nancy Reagan chose the same artist, Aaron Shikler, hoping to mirror Jackie"s legacy. The difference was that Nancy, ever opposed to monochromatic colors, chose a red dress-a bright red dress. Nancy wanted to be Jackie in primary colors.
All of this goes to say what? An elite list of highly qualified unpaid women became First Ladies of the United States. What can I say? I hope Dexter will live long enough to witness all working women, including the First Lady, earning equal pay for equal work. Maybe she"ll even see a portrait of a First Husband hanging on that wall.
Home Again After viewing home life at the White House, home was on my mind. I couldn"t wait to get back to Los Angeles. I was worried about Mother, whose failing memory skills were becoming more apparent. While I was in New York, she wrote a letter that became the official diagnosis of her illness.
Dear Diane, Dr. c.u.mmings told me I have the onset of ALZHEIMER"S, but I"m not buying it without further tests. I don"t really know how I"ll handle it, if it"s true. I don"t want to give up ... . I admit I"m unable to recall names, and events sometimes, but not always. I must stop writing about my lapses of memory and work on recall. I have to keep trying but it "ain"t easy," as Mary Hall would have said. The worst of it is people talk to me carefully. They"re deferential and aware that I will undoubtedly forget something or make a mistake in judgment. I find myself unable to remember words like genes and chromosomes, nor do I know how to spell them. (It is genes.) How do I tell my friends I have Alzheimer"s? Just don"t.
Love, Mom In 1993 Mom had written she had Alzheimer"s disease and it was "scary." But this letter two years later confirmed the inevitable. She finally understood what she hadn"t remembered to admit. You see, Mom forgot to remember she was one of five million victims of the "forgetting" disease. I called Robin. Mother had just phoned her, saying she wanted to cancel her life insurance and empty out the house Dad had bought next door on Cove Street, knowing she"d eventually need help. She also said she wanted to be sure to commit suicide before she got bad. She was adamant, adding that she was going to take care of it. When I called Dorrie, she burst into tears.
Not a moment too soon, Bette Midler and Goldie Hawn and I wrapped The First Wives Club by dancing down the streets of New York, singing "You Don"t Own Me." The next day Dexter and I flew back to California to begin our real life together. It turned out Ramon Novarro"s Wright house was not suited for family living. My bedroom was the only room on the top floor. Dexter"s was a closet-size s.p.a.ce next to the living room slash kitchen on the second floor, and the office off the garage was on the first. I began looking for an authentic California Spanish hacienda.
In the meantime, Dex and I spent weekends at Cove Street. Mom adored her. She even bought a pint-size hope chest and filled it with things like puzzles and alphabet books and buckets and shovels. Dorothy was holding up. On several different occasions she had me sit down to Beulah Keaton"s one and only sc.r.a.pbook. In an attempt to keep memories alive, she did very well remembering her mother. It was always the same. She opened the last page first. There was Dorrie, a black-and-white fat-faced toddler, being held by gorgeous long-legged Dorothy in front of Grammy"s Monterey Road clapboard bungalow. Robin stood next to them in her new gla.s.ses, while sheriff Randy shoved a toy gun into my chest. Mom always pointed out the sweet-pea vines in the background of Grammy Keaton"s old backyard. I would ask if she helped plant the flowers. She would nod as she turned the pages back to an earlier time. I was becoming a more ardent observer of two phenomena: the slow beginning of life and the even slower ending under the reign of Alzheimer"s" tyranny.
Dexter was eleven months when Mom held her hand at the sh.o.r.eline. Jumping up and down, all excited, Dex pointed at the seagulls, saying, "Brr," like the day, like cold. "Brr." Mom, even more excited, said, "Bird, Diane. She said bird." Bird was Dexter"s first word, or so Mom decided. I shook my head in wonder. Dexter was as happy as she had been inconsolable only hours before when her little face was all knotted up in tears. I recognized that all the love in the world cannot cushion the reality of pain. In that moment Dexter seemed knowing beyond her eleven months. It made me think of girls-little girls, teenage girls, even old girls like me-who at one point or another discover, like all girls do, their sadness.
It took a long time, but I finally bought an old Spanish house on Roxbury Drive in Beverly Hills, a Wallace Neff fixer-upper. My friend Stephen Shadley began the restoration. In the process I developed an abiding interest in all things Spanish and all things built in Los Angeles. The sheer variety, history, and magic of the cla.s.sic homes of Southern California made me want to become part of an organization that successfully saved them. I joined the L.A. Conservancy and became a preservationist. Our new old home took a year and a half to restore before Dex became a little girl living in a genuine Spanish Revival house saved from demolition.
First Wives First Wives was an unexpected hit. Bette, Goldie, and I did a ton of press. I"ll never forget the conference call with Goldie and me at her home in the Pacific Palisades and Bette on the line from her loft in New York. Always a contradiction in terms, Goldie drank some awful green health concoction while she smoked. The interviewer asked, "What"s better about being fifty than twenty?" Goldie plunged in with something like "Being a great mom; learning how to grow up and love yourself for who you are; coping with the discomfort of fame; loving a man by not holding on too much; letting people be who they are; helping your daughter live with the fact that her mother is famously loved by many people; getting revenge, but the right kind; learning to be spiritually aware; learning to grow into self-esteem. Those are some of the reasons why being fifty is better than being twenty." What could Bette and I add? Goldie had said it all.
"Diane, this is your mom. I hate to bother you, but I couldn"t figure any way to do this. Merna down here in the Cove called and wants to know for sure when you"re going to appear on TV again. If you are, let me know what day and what time. She really wants to see it, but she"s bedridden. Maybe she got it wrong. I don"t know. Just let me know. That"d be great. Bye bye, Diane."