They asked me questions and wrote down my answers in small pocket notebooks. They had me describe my weekend with my father and asked me to name my mother’s boyfriends.
I mentioned Hank Hart and Peter Tubiolo. My mother went out with Hank back in Santa Monica. Tubiolo was a teacher at my school. He dated my mother at least a couple of times.
I asked the men if my father was in trouble. They told me he wasn’t. They said I would be released to his custody.
The white-haired cop gave me a candy bar and told me I could see my dad now. They let me out of that little square room.
I saw my father standing in the hallway. He saw me and smiled.
I ran straight to him. The impact knocked him back a little. He gave me his standard bear hug that showed off how strong he was.
A cop drove us to the El Monte depot. We caught a late bus to Los Angeles.
I sat next to the window. My father kept an arm around me. The San Berdoo Freeway was dark and full of glittery taillights.
I knew I should cry. My mother’s death was a gift—and I knew I should pay for it. The cops probably judged me for not crying back at the house. If I didn’t cry, it meant I wasn’t normal. My thoughts were just that convoluted.
I let my clenched-up nerves go. I let the pure fucking awe I’d been feeling for hours slip free.
It worked.
I cried. I cranked tears out all the way to L.A.
I hated her. I hated El Monte. Some unknown killer just bought me a brand-new beautiful life.
She was a farm girl from Tunnel City, Wisconsin. I cared for her solely in conjunction with my father. When she broke the marriage off she made me his son exclusively.
I started hating her to prove my love for my father. I was afraid to acknowledge the woman’s edgy will and courage.
My father was mistakenly diagnosed with cancer in 1956. My mother broke the news to me—but withheld the he’ll-be-all-right punch line for dramatic effect. I wept and punched out our living-room sofa. My mother calmed me down and told me it was ulcers, not cancer—and I needed a little trip to get over the shock.
We drove down to Mexico. We got a hotel room in Ensenada and ate a lobster dinner at a nice restaurant. My mother wore an off-one-shoulder dress. She looked startlingly fair-skinned and redheaded. I was aware that she was performing.
I went swimming in the hotel pool the next morning. The water was visibly dirty. I came out with blocked ears and a throbbing headache.
The headache worked its way down to my left ear. The pain grew more localized and more intense. My mother examined me and told me I had a severe ear infection.
The pain was godawful. I cried and ground my teeth until my gums bled.
My mother bundled me up in the backseat of her car and drove us north to Tijuana. The pharmacies there sold medicine and hard narcotics over-the-counter. My mother found a place and purchased a bottle of pills, a vial of dope and a hypodermic syringe.
She fed me water and pills. She prepped a spike and shot me up right there in the car. My pain died instantaneously.
We drove straight back to L.A. The dope warmed me and lulled me to sleep. I woke up in my bedroom and saw strange new colors drifting out of the wallpaper.
I withheld the incident from my father. The omission was instinctive and precociously derived. I’ll ascribe motive 40 years after the fact.
My mother protected me with decisively great style. I knew my father wouldn’t want to hear her praised. I played to his fear. I didn’t tell him she looked good in that dress. I didn’t tell him how good that dope felt. I didn’t tell him she owned my heart for a little while.
My parents excelled at appearances. They were a great-looking cheap couple, along the lines of Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell in
He was 17 years her senior. He was tall and built like a light heavyweight. He was drop-dead handsome and possessed a massive wang.
He was an ineffectual man who came off dangerous at first reading. She bought the physical package and the charm that went with it. I don’t know how long the honeymoon lasted. I don’t know how long it took them to get disillusioned and cede their marriage to dry rot.
They both moved west in the late ’30s. They met, sizzled, wed and settled in L.A. She was a registered nurse. He was a noncertified accountant. He inventoried drugstore stock and prepared income tax returns for Hollywood people. He had a three- or four-year run as Rita Hayworth’s business manager and arranged her wedding to Aly Khan in 1949. Redhaired women ruled his postwar years.
I made the scene in ’48. The novelty of a kid sent them gaga for a while. They moved out of their place in Beverly Hills and found a larger apartment in West Hollywood. It was a Spanish-style pad with brushed-stucco walls and arched doorways. I grew into a warped state of cognizance there.
Rita Hayworth fired my father, circa ’52. He took occasional drugstore jobs and hogged the living-room couch most standard workdays. He loved to read and sleep. He loved to smoke cigarettes and watch sporting events on our bubble-screen TV. The couch was his all-purpose forum.
My mother hustled to and from work. She had a full-time gig at St. John’s Hospital and wet-nursed a dipsomaniacal actress named ZaSu Pitts on the side. She brought home the bulk of the money and bugged my father to get a permanent job.
