My Life So Far (10 page)

Then there were his rages. They were not the Mediterranean, get-it-all-out-and-over-with variety. They were cold, shut-you-down, hard-to-come-back-from Protestant rages. Except for Peter, who didn’t seem to pay attention, we all took great care to avoid his trip wire.

His movie work frequently took him away from home, and even when he was there, he was often studying scripts and preparing his roles. He would sit for hours in our presence and never speak. It was a deafening silence. Mother must have been so lonely, and I think, like me, she blamed herself for his moods. She was outgoing and emotional, and this was surely what had originally drawn Dad to her. But he also saw emotional needs as a weakness. I think he felt that a strong, mature adult was someone who did not need others, except perhaps to satisfy needs like sex or work (although even in his career he seemed to disavow relational needs), or to keep you from feeling lonely. But the needs were what mattered most: The people themselves were more or less fungible.

One of the lessons I internalized from my parents, when I was no taller than the fashionable hems of Mother’s Valentina dresses, was that a woman has to answer her husband’s emotional and physical needs. She has to twist herself into a pretzel: not let him see who she really is. She should let her more fulsome self express itself
outside
the relationship—in the house, in her work, with girlfriends, affairs, whatever. Like so many wives, Mother did this, I think, not because Dad specifically
asked
her to but because that’s what disembodied women do in order to be “good” wives. One thing this does
not
do is promote intimacy.

T
hen came the fateful day, December 7, 1941, the day, as Roosevelt said, “that will live in infamy.” The radio broadcast news of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Eight months later, Dad joined the navy. He didn’t have to go, since at age thirty-seven he was over draft age and had three dependents. But he told Mother, “This is my country and I want to be where it’s happening. I don’t want to be in a fake war in a studio. . . . I want to be with real sailors, not extras.” He was genuinely patriotic and hated Fascism, but I think it was also about him wanting to get away
. . . anchors aweigh!
Mother must have known this, and it must have created a deep sense of abandonment.

Dad graduated at the top of his naval officer candidate school class, selected air combat intelligence duty, and came home for one last week before shipping out to the Pacific. He was wearing an impressive officer’s uniform with brass buttons, insignias, and cap. I remember the evening he came to say good-bye. I couldn’t remember him ever sitting on my bed to say good night before. Then he sang me a song! When he was done, I sang him one, too. Then he hugged me and was gone.

I was so happy to read that in his biography. I only wish he could have let himself cry in front of me so we could have shared our tears and I could have seen him vulnerable and human.

D
uring the Tigertail years, the bad news was that I was pretty much left on my own. The good news was that I was pretty much left on my own. I became increasingly independent and found solace in the dry, pungent, natural world of Southern California.

A photo taken of Mother, Peter, and me to send to Dad during World War II.

Mother, Pan, Dad, Peter, and me (in the tree, in the hat), and our Dalmatian, Buzz, after the war. This was my favorite oak tree to climb.

(John Engstead/MPTV.net)

I was still called Lady, but now I could wear blue jeans and baggy shirts and I was always full of splinters, burrs, and ticks from roaming the mountains and climbing the oak trees. I would get way up to the top of one particular oak and look out over the Pacific Ocean; triumphant martial music would ring in my head, and I would imagine myself leading an army up the hill to conquer the enemy. Peter wasn’t fascinated with Indians the way I was and wasn’t quite as adventuresome, so I created a fantasy brother who was Native American. I used to pray: Dear God, please ask Santa Claus to bring me an Indian brother for Christmas.

We were required to take hour-long naps every afternoon when we weren’t in school. I hated it, because I was never tired. Lying there for that endless hour, I would create a family out of my fingers. The middle finger, the biggest, was the father, the index finger was the mother, Peter was the pinky, and so forth. I would dress them up in robes made of tissues, and if I’d thought to sneak a pen into bed with me, I’d give them faces. When I was through, I’d wad up the Kleenex into tiny balls, as small as I could make them. Then I would try to smooth the pieces out on the bed so that they’d be just like new, with no wrinkles. While I did this, I’d say to myself,
I can make it better. I can make it all better.
That’s when that personal mantra began.

My very best friend was Sue Sally Jones, the best athlete in school. I always felt I could never be as brave and strong, but maybe I could copy how she did things. I remember once asking Peter in all seriousness, “Who do you think could round up buffalo better, Sue Sally or me?”

Without hesitation he said, “You, sis.”

That’s my bro! Of course he probably thought that if he said Sue Sally, I’d push him off the roof.

The only time I can remember ever being sat down on an adult’s lap and told how to behave was by Sue Sally’s mother, Mrs. Jones. I had said the f-word to a boy in the playground. I was spending the night with Sue Sally, and Mrs. Jones took me aside, sat me on her lap, looked straight at me with her pale blue eyes, and said, “Lady, you know the other day on the playground you used a bad word when you were talking with one of the boys? Do you remember?”

“Yes, Mrs. Jones.” I felt even worse because she wasn’t yelling.

“It is not right for you, or anyone, to use dirty words. It makes you seem like you’re not a nice girl. But you are a nice girl. Do you understand what I am telling you?”

“Yes, Mrs. Jones.”

“Will you promise never to do it again, Lady?”

“Yes, Mrs. Jones.” It is a vivid memory, I think, because of its uniqueness in my life.

I
n third grade, I decided to take my destiny into my own hands and announced to all that from now on I wanted to be called Jane, with no “y.” My third-grade report card says, under the heading “Personality”:

I treasure this evidence that I once possessed self-confidence and self-assurance. They would soon be gone.

Sue Sally at age ten, just before we moved east. This is how we both looked at that time. Later, Sue Sally played professional polo for twenty years disguised as a man, because women weren’t allowed to play. She became the first woman to break that gender barrier. I keep this photo on my desk to remind me of her courage.

At Tigertail: me on Pancho, Peter with Pedro, then Dad, Pan, and Mother.

(Motion Picture TV archive)

As for sex, my first encounter was traumatic. We had two donkeys, Pancho and Pedro, and one afternoon I took them both out, riding Pancho and leading Pedro. I was seven years old, it was a hot day, and I had on shorts. I was on the top of a nearby hill, in an oak forest, when all of a sudden two hooves clamped themselves over my bare thighs from behind and all hell broke loose: Pedro, I later realized, had decided to hump Pancho—with me astride! There was a lot of thrashing about, with bucking and with hooves digging into my legs from behind. Eventually I fell off, onto my back, and found myself staring up at—well, it was about two or three feet long, almost touching the ground, and it was all nasty and scabby.

I knew it was about sex. I don’t know how, but I just knew. I looked over at Pancho’s underbelly. This was the first time I’d been face-up with Pancho almost on top of me. Pancho was different down there from Pedro. Then it dawned on me: Pancho was really Panchita! A girl! She’d arrived with that boy’s name and nobody told me to check it out. See what happens when you don’t teach kids the facts of life? I’m not absolutely sure I’ve ever recovered. Stunned, in pain, and shaking with fear, I picked myself up, saw that I was bleeding where Pedro’s hooves had dug into my thighs, and limped back home. I led
both
of them this time, making sure to glance constantly over my shoulder in case there was any more hanky-panky.

This was the time in my life when sex first reared its head, an unfortunate but apt pun. One day shortly after the donkey incident, I was playing catch with some friends in the school playground. There was this boy I had a crush on, and I noticed that he kept throwing the ball to this one girl over and over again but never to me. Then I heard him say to her, “I’m trying to sex you up.” My heart skipped a beat. I didn’t really know what that meant, but I knew that him saying it to her and not to me didn’t augur well for me.