by Steve Hodel
8
Gypsies
IF THE LIVES WE LED in the fairy-tale beauty of the Franklin House, with Father holding court every night, were rich and magical, our lives with Mother, until I left the family to join the Navy, were marked by starkly desperate periods of privation and transiency. At first we settled in the harsh California desert, in a small dusty town forty minutes from Palm Springs inhabited by sidewinder snakes and scorpions.
We liked the desert because it was different. The night sky was a spread of a million bright stars against a chorus of howling coyotes somewhere in the distance beyond the scrub and chaparral. During the day the hot winds would blow, sending tumbleweeds like an advancing phalanx before them. But amidst all the fragments of memory of those first few months in Rancho Mirage that I can bring to mind — Mom in the real estate office, Mom and our neighbors, Mom in a stupor on the couch as the duties of carrying the empties out to the garbage fell to us — what stands out the most is the brief, few-hour visit from Dad. He came from Hawaii and brought us as a gift a dog named Aloha.
We loved her, but she quickly ran away and was lost to the desert, where she might have been eaten by a puma. And Dad too had left, returning to his new family and his new life.
We didn't stay in the desert very long, moving back to Los Angeles in less than a year. We had also discovered Mother's secret drinking problem, only it wasn't a secret anymore. Her binges would last sometimes for days, and after the second or third day she could not work, cook, clean, iron our clothes for school, help us with homework, or even stand up and walk. Although we were only nine, ten, and eleven, the three of us had to figure out how to run a household around our semi-comatose mother. We couldn't even bring anyone home, because we couldn't let anyone see her lying on the couch, unable to get up, unable to do anything. We made a pact to protect her and just make do, all the while hoping that we would be rescued, that this bad dream would end, and we'd be back inside the castle. But it was not to be.
By 1951 we had become gypsies, always on the move, because every time our mother went on binges she would lose her job, fall behind in the rent, and wind up with an eviction notice pasted on the door. Fortunately, when she did work it was for real estate offices, where she would jump on the rental listings before they became public. That gave her an inside advantage when cheap apartments came up. So we bounced around from town to town throughout Los Angeles County, moving on an average of every three months. In the early 1950s Mother was arrested several times for child neglect, when neighbors would discover her passed out after she was well into one of her two-week binges. On several occasions, the three of us were taken away from her by social services and placed in county homes, but somehow she would get us back. At which point we would move to another area, another town, and start over again.
Our nomadic existence lasted for two years before we finally wound up in Pasadena, where Mother managed to stay sober long enough to save some money and rent a large home on Los Robles Avenue on the west side of town. Just as we were allowing ourselves to relax and enjoy our new place, she started drinking again, and before long she lost her job and another "pay or quit" notice was stapled to our door. Desperate for money, having tapped out all her usual sources from her friends, and already having been advanced a month's salary from her real estate manager, Mother chanced to see an article in the newspaper about John Huston's return to Los Angeles for the Academy Awards.
She may have been drunk most of the time, but if there was an opportunity, Mother knew how to seize it and make her move. She called us into her room, where she dressed us up in wrinkled but clean shirts and pants, then quickly brushed and leashed our boxer dog, Koko. She hurriedly scribbled a note, folded it into an envelope, and pinned it to my shirt. She spoke to us in her accustomed slur, as she dialed for a taxicab: "Now, boys, I want you to be on your best behavior. You're going to see John. Steven, you will give him this note from me, then after your visit come straight home."
The cab arrived and the driver looked at Mother. "I can't take the dog, lady," he said. She opened the back door of the taxi and motioned for all of us to get inside. "Yes you can. It's all right, take them to the Beverly Hills Hotel, and wait for them, then bring them back here." The cabbie's eyes lit up and he smiled, knowing that it was a twenty-five-mile drive each way.
The Beverly Hills Hotel, a stately pink-and-green landmark at the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Beverly Drive, is more like an elegant golf or country club than a hotel. In the middle 1950s, it was still one of the last bastions of the old Hollywood aristocracy. It was into this gentlemen's club lobby that I and my two brothers walked, feeling all eyes in the hotel staring at us, making our way to the front desk and holding Koko tightly on her leash. The dog, whose grandsire had been national champion and judged "Best of Show," knew how to perform on a leash. "Koko, sit," I ordered her once we reached the desk. And the dog obeyed. The desk clerk smiled. "Can I help you gentlemen?" I tried to hide my nervousness. "We would like to see John," I said. He suddenly became more guarded and looked down at me with peering eyes. He asked, "Who?"
My older brother Michael responded, "Mr. Huston. We are here to see John Huston." The clerk became more guarded now. "Who might I say is calling?" Michael answered again: "Tell him that it's the Hodels, Michael, Steven, and Kelvin. And Koko." Upon hearing her name the dog began wagging her tail furiously. The desk clerk placed a quick call on the house phone, looked surprised, nodded, and we were escorted to the elevator, which took us up to the penthouse suite. The elevator door opened and in we went.
We hadn't seen John Huston in over two years. We knew him from the Franklin House, where he and his father, Walter, had been regular social guests at many of the parties. Standing there now in the Beverly Hills Hotel, thin and tall, he looked to me to be a seven-foot tower as his booming voice greeted us. "Hello, boys. And who might this be?" Kelvin answered first: "She's our dog, Koko, she's a boxer." John instantly caught the nuance in her name and laughed loudly. "Koko — is that for a double knockout? K.O.-KO.?" Michael, who had named her, was impressed. "Yes, that's right. You're the only person that has ever figured it out. We always have to tell other people." John laughed even harder.
Excited by hearing her name called out so many times, Koko ran to the center of the suite, squatted on the plush white carpet as if it were high brush on a vacant lot, and took a dump. The three of us stood watching in disbelief, then a loud voice, roaring with laughter from the couch behind us, said, "I'll get it." The tall handsome dark-haired man, obviously in even better spirits than John, staggered to a bathroom and came back with a large roll of toilet paper. He dropped to his knees near where Koko had squatted and started to clean up the mess. John Huston said, "Boys, I want you to meet Greg Peck. When he's not cleaning up dogshit, he acts," and both roared with laughter. John took the envelope from my shirt, read its contents, walked over to a desk, wrote out a check and a note, placed them both back in the envelope, and returned it to me.
"Here, Steven, give this to your mother," he said. The big man with the big voice walked us back down to the lobby and out to the waiting taxi. Huston handed the driver some bills. "Here, cabbie, take them home." And in less than an hour we were standing before our mother, who had come out to meet us at the front door when she saw the taxi pull up. Before I could get out of the taxi, she grabbed the envelope from my hand, opened it, and smiled. "Five hundred dollars. We can pay the rent and we can get some food. You boys can go to the movies and I can buy a new coat." For us, this meant we could stay in Pasadena and not have to flee the sheriff in the middle of the night.
Over the next few months, Mother's drinking became even heavier, and her binges seemed to last longer. Instead of five-day drunks, they would extend to ten, but we had friends now and stayed overnight at their houses as much as we could. Our schoolmates' parents seemed to understand and often fed and housed us for a few days as family when they noticed we hadn't changed our clothes and hadn't eaten. But even tha
t didn't help, because John Huston's money quickly ran out and we had to move again.
It was late one warm summer night in 1954, about midnight, when I entered our newly rented home on Lake Street. Mother had told us that her gypsy spirit demanded a change in houses, hut we knew it was because the previous landlord had given her notice after three months' late rent payments. Mother had found a new friend of hers to move us, someone we had never seen before. A big man with an old truck, he had large greasy hands and dressed in blue overalls like the picture of Farmer John on a package of sausages. The move took us two days of back-and-forth, but we finally got all our stuff to the new house.
The electricity still hadn't been turned on that midnight as I felt my way cautiously through the maze of boxes in the living room. The house was silent. "Mother," I called out. But there was no answer. I yelled louder, "Mother, are you here?" I could hear muffled sounds in the bedroom and made my way to the door. I opened it. "Mother?" I could barely make out both figures on the bed. "Mother, are you all right?"
I ran to her through the darkness. The large ugly man who had moved us was on top of her, his clothes in a pile on the floor. "Get off, leave her alone!" I grabbed the nearest object — a lamp — and began hitting him on the back with it. He turned and slapped me open-handed, knocking me across the room. "Get the fuck out of here, boy, before I really hurt you." Then I heard Mother's voice, slurred and sloppy: "How dare you touch my son! Get out, get out of this house!" They were both drunk. "I'll get out," the man hollered, "but don't you ever ask for money or help from me again. You and your high airs and fancy clothes, you ain't nothing but a whore, lady, and not even a good one."
I watched in fear and silence as the dark figure fumbled with his clothes, dressed, and staggered toward the door. He stopped, turned toward me, his voice filled with rage: "Just so you know, boy, your mother — she's a lousy fuck!" He left. Mother pulled the blanket over herself, lit a cigarette, and said, "He's a bad man, Steven. He's a terrible man. I should have never let him move us."
I looked at her lying there drunk, barely able to hold her cigarette as she struggled to sit up. Then she collapsed in a heap, cigarette and all. I was filled with hatred. "He's right, Mother!" I screamed. "You are a whore. You are a drunk and a whore! I don't want you for my mother. I hate you. I never want to see you again. Ever! I want to go live with my father. I want to go to the Philippines and live with him. If you don't let me, I'll run away and never come back!" Her voice got louder now, and she began to yell back at me. "You don't know! You don't know! Your father! Your father is a monster! He is a terrible man and he's done terrible things!"
Her voice cracked from the intensity of her screaming. "Your father pretends to be a doctor and a healer, but he's really insane! If you really knew the truth you'd hate your father!"
"You're just saying that because he left you," I cried. "Because he hated you too, like I do. He hated your drinking and your lies."
I ran, not as much from the house as from her words, and for four days stayed with a friend. I returned only when I had made a promise to myself to leave the family as soon as I could figure out a way to get to my father. And when I did return, I found Mother weak, shaky, but at least sober. In front of all three sons she promised that she was quitting drinking, that she would never "touch another drop." We'd heard that a hundred times before, but we were gullible and believed her each time.
When we were alone later that night, I asked her what she meant when she said those things about Father. She looked at me and said, "What things?" I told her what she had said. Her already pale face turned ashen as she said, "I never said those things." I stared at her in disbelief. "You did, Mother, you called him a monster and said he was insane. Those were your exact words."
Now there was real fear in her voice. "Steven," she said, "sometimes I say things when I've been drinking that are fantasies, make-believe. They are made up things, like bad dreams that come to people when they are drunk. Have you heard the word DT? It stands for delirium tremens, and it comes to people when they drink a lot. People see and say imaginary things. Maybe that's what it was, but whatever I said is not true. Your father is a brilliant doctor, a good man, and maybe I was just upset because we have no money and because you said you hated me."
She put her arms around me and held me tight. "I want you to forget about such things. They are ugly and unreal. What is real is that I love you, and I promise you I will never drink again and everything will be back to normal." I looked at her pale face, her shaking hands and sad eyes filled with tears, which I took to be tears of remorse. And in that moment I believed that what she had told me about Father she had said because she was drunk. If it was because of what she called the DTs, then that's what it had to be. And if she would truly quit drinking, then maybe we would be like other families. Maybe we too could be normal. The thought of her quitting drinking forever was all I wanted and needed. It was the only thing that my brothers and I cared about, and now it was going to happen. "I love you too, Mother," I said.
Of course it didn't happen, and we were soon evicted again. In fact, we moved so much during the middle 1950s that we learned not to unpack the boxes because we knew we wouldn't be there very long. From Pasadena we moved to Santa Monica. Next came the San Fernando alley and Van Nuys High for me for two semesters, and then Glendale. Suddenly I was sixteen and again Dad stopped by to see us out of the blue. He must have discovered it was my birthday, because he brought me a gift. I unwrapped the white tissue paper and discovered a Tinkertoy set. Dad hadn't the faintest notion I was now sixteen.
And then it was November 1958, my seventeenth birthday. I finally felt free. I couldn't wait to leave. Even though Mother urged me to wait until my graduation the following June, I couldn't. I wanted out. I convinced my mother to sign the authorization papers allowing me to leave high school. Three weeks later I joined the Navy. Now that I was grown up, I promised myself I would find some way to see Father. I didn't know how I would pull it off, but joining the Navy seemed as good a way as any.
9
Subic Bay
IN JANUARY 1959, I started Navy boot camp in San Diego, and after basic training was transferred a few miles north to hospital corpsman school for six months' medical training at Balboa Hospital. I told myself I wanted to pursue medicine and become a doctor like my father when I was discharged, and figured this could give me a solid foundation before entering pre-med. As a doctor, maybe I could finally establish a relationship with my father, complete a part of myself that had been short-circuited by the trial and divorce.
I knew very little about Father's new life. I knew that while in Hawaii he had studied to become a psychiatrist and had taught at the territorial university, then he had gone on to Manila to a new life with his new wife in the Philippines. Although Mother spent most of her time drunk and bitter, she felt justified in complaining that Dad, who rarely sent any money to support the family, was now rumored to have married a very wealthy woman. "Her family owns a large sugar plantation," Mother told us. "She belongs to a family that is supposedly close to Marcos and the political bigwigs of the Philippines."
At the end of 1958, Father and his wife were living in Manila and had four children: two sons and two daughters, half-siblings whom I had never met. Mother told us that Father was "president of a large market research company, and is now very wealthy and living like a raja, emperor, or king."
To be sure, Mother's descriptions of Father's lifestyle had made me hate him all the more for abandoning us. She had nothing, and he had everything. She lived from week to week in squalor and poverty; he lived in comfort in some great palace with servants and cooks, who, in my mind's eye, sounded great exotic brass gongs at dinnertime. Father had sent almost nothing in the way of money or support as we were growing up. After Mother's third or fourth plea when things were critical, he would occasionally wire some "emergency funds" to "tide us over." But there was nothing on a regular basis, nothing of his own volition, nothing fr
om his heart to her or us. No note that said, "Here, Dorero, this is for you and the children. Tell them I love them." There was only the Tinkertoy set when I was sixteen. And now, by way of the U.S. Navy, I was setting out to find him.
My first billet after corpsman school, as I'd hoped and expected the fates would arrange it, was a two-year assignment to a small hospital just outside Subic Bay Naval Base in the Philippines. This posting was not something I had arranged, or would have even been able to arrange, but I had thrown myself into the currents of life, hoping that they would bring me and my father together. Now that it was about to happen, I had mixed emotions. But I told myself that this was nothing I had consciously arranged. I was only a seaman apprentice who wasn't really qualified to ask questions, or, for that matter, to think any thoughts. A sailor's job was to go and do.
Once I was in the Navy and on my own, I soon discovered that if there is a gene predisposing you to boozing, my introduction to life in the military turned it on like a light switch. It took less than a month in the small Navy town of Olongapo, just outside the huge U.S. military installation at Subic Bay, for me to water that gene. Three dollars U.S. bought me twelve scotches, and five dollars U.S. bought me Toni, a nineteen-year-old Filipina beauty. I got drunk and I got laid for cash. The dances with her at the Club Oro to Johnny Mathis's "Misty" were free.
And now it was time for Dad. He was fifty-two when I first arrived to meet him after so many years. We were strangers and I didn't know how I really felt about my own father. Did I love him or hate him? Both, I guessed. Mother's propaganda over the past ten years had given me mixed messages. She had glorified his intellect and doctoring skills, telling me that few knew his true genius as a doctor, which was as a diagnostician. At the same time she had vilified him for abandoning his children. Our first reunion took place a month after I arrived in the Philippines. It was a Saturday luncheon at the
