Linda Grippi, who I hadn’t noticed yet said, “Is this yours, Peter?” picking my bag up. “I’m sorry we’re late. It was my fault. First there was traffic. Then, we couldn’t find a space to park.”
Leslie added, “Well, at least say you’re happy to see me.”
“Yes, I’m more than happy to see you,” I said, picking my heart up from where it had fallen.
The baggage claim area was quite a ways off through a labyrinth of corridors and posted security guards. One bag had nothing but books and presents in it. There was also a surprise that I kept hidden in my pocket. We traced our way out of the terminal to where Linda had parked her BMW. I climbed in back, and Leslie got in beside me. All I remember were glimpses of traffic and mountains between kisses and bangs of hair flying past my eyes. Linda was smiling and laughing the whole time she was driving.
Pulling up to their apartment on Victory Boulevard, I spotted my fickle blue MGB in the parking lot.
“Who do you miss most,” Leslie asked, “me or the MGB?”
“No contest baby, you win. Then again…that depends on if she’s quick to turn over.” I said, knowing it sounded dumb but saying it anyway in spite of myself.
Leslie giggled. “I’m jealous. If it’s going to be me or her, then she’s gotta go.”
When I asked her how the ‘B’ found her way here from Jane’s garage in Monterey Park, she said, “I drove it myself. But I still need you to give me lessons.”
“Les did great,” Linda said. “I drove behind her the whole way and watched that she didn’t break down.”
I stowed one of my bags in the trunk of the MG and carried the one with the presents inside. Leslie rushed to try on the few things I brought her. We three had a late night snack of nachos and salsa, before Leslie and I drove off alone for a little while. We parked somewhere close, where we got out to walk—stopping to make out whenever we wanted. Back in the car, I put the top up. There wasn’t a square inch of open space left with both of us ironed in to the passenger seat, each taking turns one on top of the other. Kind of reminded us both of high school.
“This is our first date, remember.” Leslie said, when I started to reach under her blouse.
Now feeling embarrassed, I began to put on a bit of a sulk. No doubt Leslie had seen this before. We both expressed feeling uncertain and awkward without too much explanation. I thought I’d better slow the pace down. Discipline 007, discipline…Once we returned to Linda’s apartment, where Leslie’s bedroom was a comfortable couch in the living room, I stayed long enough for a nightcap and one or two long-lasting kisses. Then, I drove myself back to Monterey Park to spend the night in Jane Van Houten’s guest room.
The next morning, the rest of Leslie’s family showed up for brunch at Jane’s. David, Shannon and Betsy all came together in one car. Georgie came in from next door. (Actually, she and Jane had a door cut in the wall between their garages.) And, soon after that, Leslie and Linda arrived with treats they baked for the rest of us. In my journal, I wrote that Leslie looked spectacular in a way that I’d never seen her before. I couldn’t wait to get her alone. That was all that I had on my mind.
We paid our respects to the others, then Les and I went for a ride out to Malibu Beach with the top down. Along the way down old Topanga Canyon Road, we pulled over to the side and idled at a spot where a film crew was unpacking their gear for the television show M*A*S*H. We stopped on the campus at Pepperdine and walked around for an hour before we got hungry and found a McDonald’s. I went inside to order two combos with milkshakes and fries, while Leslie waited in the car. When I left her, she was singing along with Gordon Lightfoot’s “Don Quixote.”
When we got back to Linda’s flat, Leslie and I were delighted to find ourselves alone at long last. So we chanced a long and luxurious candlelit shower together. Her suggestion—or was it mine? Does it matter? In either case, it was a pleasure to discover just how soft Leslie’s pale and blushed skin felt. When she asked me to hold her close, I thought back to an old Groucho Marx line Alan Alda used in an episode of M*A*S*H. “If we could get any closer,” I said, “I’d be standing behind you.” Something like that.
After we stepped out of the shower and toweled off, Leslie put on the nightshirt my mom sent her for Christmas. She’d sewn the crest of a pumpkin on the front, and Leslie joked about “Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater…” (who had a wife and couldn’t keep her.) I was still too hot and wet from the shower to put on anything more than sweat bottoms and ankle socks. The scene was confused, of course, since it resembled my state of mind, body and soul. We were both nervous, and I, for one, felt the cold sweat of both shivers and sanctuary. I brought the candles in from the bathroom and turned out the lamplight.
I said, “I’ve imagined our making love many times before...all on my own, of course.” At least that got her laughing. I tried to relax, but my heart attacked me.
“It seems strange just to be with another person,” Leslie said, blowing out all of the candles but one.
Just as things were beginning to heat up again, we heard voices and a key turning the lock.
I called out, “Hey, Linda?”
Yes, it was. Thank the gods. I asked her to please give us a minute. Leslie rushed to put her panties on under her nightshirt, and I crawled on all fours looking to find where I’d thrown my blue cotton top. I opened the door, and in stepped Linda with a young boyfriend in tow. Both of them were teasing and smiling. They could see what was going on.
Linda’s young man was politely introduced. I’ve forgotten his name but recall him as younger and taller than I was. I remember thinking that he was very good-looking. He said he was broke when I asked him to do us a favor. It ended up costing me twenty dollars to get him to take Linda out for pizza and beer. I made them promise not to come back for another hour.
After they left, I prayed nothing else would occur to interrupt this tide in the affairs of a man and a woman. With one arm free and my other hand pinched tight in her lap, I pulled Les’s shirt up without hurry or hesitation. No objections so far. I pressed ahead out of compulsion. I lifted my knee up under her thigh—so to spread her legs wide apart—and, since she sighed when I did that, I took this to mean I should press on. Leslie untied the cord to my sweat pants and reached gently inside.
“Checking for a pulse?” I asked between kisses.
She giggled.
“Yes,” Leslie said, sliding my body inside her thighs for the first time.
All I could say was to whisper, “Yes is right.”
After what seemed like eons had passed, we paused to catch our breath and get our heart rates back under one-sixty. My teeth were still chattering slightly. Laying her thrashing heart against mine, Leslie breathed something ever-so-sweetly. “So what do you want me to do now?”
I cleared my throat and said, “Whatever you want. Let’s not be coy. But, first, let’s take some precaution.”
I checked the lock on the door, and then, just to be extra safe, I braced a wooden chair under the doorknob like we used to see done in the movies.
“That oughta hold ’em,” I said. “Now, with your permission…”
I got back under the bed sheet and proceeded to press myself once again between her tender lips—face-to-face and thigh-to-thigh—both of us panting and swaying in rhythm. When we finally untangled our limbs, we studied each other’s face closely. And once we began talking in complete sentences again, Leslie asked me how I got so many scars on my face, especially around both of my eyes.
“I like the way it makes you look,” she said. “Kinda like Marlon Brando, you know...in that movie where he plays an ex-boxer.”
“Terry Malloy? Don’t I wish I looked that good? That was a great role in On the Waterfront.”
Running the end of her finger over the two thick bars of scar tissue cut across my right cheek
, she said, “Do you remember? Once you told me that a person without scars hasn’t dared to live. You wrote that in one of your letters.”
Brushing her bangs back to reveal the faint “X” she’d once engraved on her forehead, I said, “Yes. The same goes for you, Brutus.”
After that, we stopped talking for several minutes. We just rocked gently in each other’s arms. Once she got dressed again, Les brewed Black China tea for herself and double shots of espresso for me on Linda’s stovetop. We took some time to discuss our individual schedules for the next couple of months. Leslie had more free time coming to her than I did—seemed only just. Though, there was something about that that annoyed me. I complained about our having so little time to spend together, which seemed an odd thing for a loner like me to complain about.
“When are you coming back for your interview in Santa Barbara?” she asked.
“March 17th. Professors Brown, Shapiro and Phillips. That’s a Friday. Court won’t be in session, so we can travel up there together, if you want to. I’ll have ten whole days and nights off.”
“Yahoo! Santa Barbara. Don’t you just love it?” she said. “We can pretend it’s our honeymoon.”
“Which reminds me,” I said. “I have something else I want to show you. I reached into the right side pocket of my jeans and handed Leslie a small, unwrapped gift box made of tin with a tile of polished pink and blue ivory. Leslie looked taken aback at first. Then, she opened the box to see what was rattling inside on a cube of cotton wad. She started smiling again when she opened it. And then, just as quickly, turned pensive.
“I know it’s not much for now,” I said. “Try it on. It may need some sizing. Just a sliver of a stone. Still I hope that you like it.”
“I think it’s flawless. I love it,” she said, slipping the ring on her finger and holding the thin gold band with the lonely diamond up to the light.
“Just do me a favor and kiss me so I won’t have time to start crying.”
First I kissed her gently on the back of the hand, then on each of her cheeks, then her eyes and, finally, pressed my lips against hers—which were trembling.
I said, “Please don’t cry unless you’re happy.”
“I am...very happy,” she said.
Then, I cried instead.
16
An Academic Prepares
American Airlines Flight #50 left Los Angeles International at 12:45 p.m. and arrived in Toronto just past 8:05 in the evening. I was so sick on the plane that it spoiled the in-flight movie for me—The Deep, starring Jacqueline Bisset, Robert Shaw and, the rebel, Nick Nolte. I didn’t sleep a wink that night of the new moon with the usual symptoms. I chewed my nails ragged. I was delirious with hard-earned resentments and real (or imagined) losses to cope with. Is it any wonder to anyone else that I felt so torn apart and confused?
When I got out of bed in the morning, my throat was as bloody and raw as my nerve endings. There were no classes for me to teach on Monday, but I had admin errands and needed to tick off all the boxes. There was a staff meeting at ten o’clock. Teachers called it “the zoo.” Just as well, I kept to myself and nursed my sore throat by sucking on oranges I’d laced with two fluid ounces of Smirnoff Vodka—each. I injected them using a 3-ml syringe and a heavy-gauge needle. If I’d had access to Demerol, I’d have shot that instead. I was hurting in more ways than one and feeling sorry for myself.
Learning more about mass media and culture studies was probably a lot more fun for me than it was for the students. Despite my frustrations with kids who hadn’t a lot of experience with reading or writing, I did my best each weekday morning to introduce them to the history of newspapers, radio and TV. Since I knew so little about it myself, I tried to lead it like an expedition into the past unknown. Our text was Marshall McLuhan’s brilliant Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, which was great for me but, for many of them, not so hot. In the afternoons, I taught the elements of screenwriting, which I also knew nothing about. My approach was to present my own enthusiasm for the subject—for what it’s worth—and hope that didn’t come across as indoctrination.
I also had two senior classes of English lit every day of the week. Othello until March break, then Romeo and Juliet until June. During my “spares,” I hung out with some new people I’d met in the staff room. The first person I made friends with was another first-year English teacher named Nadine Segal. Nadine was an attractive blonde with a lot of wit, sparkle and charm. She was about my same age, only much smarter and the popular center of our crowd of rookie teachers. Through Nadine, I met Sondra, Greg, David, Brian and Elliot. Sondra had been a teacher for five years already and hadn’t quit yet. The rest of the guys were just getting started. Odds were, I wouldn’t last until summer. That’s what my good friends David and Sue Caruana-Dingli said, and I hoped they were right.
Time crept in its petty pace all right already. I’d grown impatient waiting for Leslie’s letters, which I missed and depended on. I told her that every chance that I had on the telephone.We’d taken to calling each other two and sometimes three times a week for our mutual solace. Usually, she’d call collect from Linda’s or from wherever else she was staying. Leslie called after midnight her time. That’s when long-distance rates were the cheapest. I preferred letters to late night phone calls interrupting my sleep—which I wasn’t getting enough of. First-year teaching requires lots of preparation in place of experience.
After my birthday in January, Leslie’s letters began appearing once again in my mailbox. The return address was no longer from L. Van Houten, Booking No. 4186-613, but rather from an entirely new person calling herself L. Chiaramonte, c/o 22246 Victory Boulevard. Leslie’s new address and secret identity seemed a nice way of her starting over. The first letter, stamped from Woodland Hills instead of the county jail, read in part:
Dearest Peter~
I miss you so deeply. And as always, the words are shallow in tryin’ to tell you my heart. Being near you is the most natural, right thing I have ever felt in my life. Believe me. I want so much for us to be together forever and always. The way it’s so obvious we are meant to be. Boy, did we ever luck out!
I look at my ring constantly. Thursday I will get it sized. Then I’ll ask Linda to take a picture of my hand and send it to you with all my love.
This evening Mom and I will have our first real chance to be alone and I’m going to tell her the wonderful news. But I want to do it when I’m alone with her, keeping in mind all the things that we spoke of. That talk you had with her really did wonders. Ever since then she has been so mellow about us making definite plans for the future. I think it’s something she and I should share alone as mother and daughter.
I’ll close this now so it can get on its way from me to you. I’ll write again tomorrow after I’m finished work. Please know I love you and don’t you forget.
Yours always~
Leslie-Lou
p.s. Your birthday present may be late. I had it made by a silversmith. But I know that you’ll love it. It represents your Mercurial personality. That’s a hint…
* * *
Leslie made her first public appearance as a free woman on Wednesday the 25th of January. She and Max Keith had a hearing in court before the judge. Max had requested a further postponement of Leslie’s trial. Judge Ringer moved the trial date from February 2nd to the 21st but said it was the last delay he would grant. Max hoped he was just passing off.
When reporters asked her what had been the most difficult thing to adjust to since she had been set free on bail, Leslie explained, “Planning my own time. After all this time in prison or jail, it seems strange to be able to decide for myself what I can do each day.”
She said she’d been so busy “catching up on lost time” with her family and friends and that “No,” she had not taken time to go the movies or other social entertainme
nts.
Bill Farr in the Los Angeles Times reported: “One of those friends she had seen in the past month is a ‘boyfriend who lives out of state. We have been able to spend a few days together,’ she said with a shy smile. She steadfastly refused to say anything that might identify the man. ‘I don’t want to embarrass the people around me,’ she added.
“When asked about reports that she raised the bail money by receiving a large advance on a book she plans to write? ‘It just isn’t true,’ she replied. ‘My friends and family got that money together.’ But she conceded she might write a book in the future.
“To the apparent amazement of the newsmen who swarmed around her, she said that book will not be about her life with the Manson family. ‘That would not contribute anything to anything or anybody,’ she said, even though a reporter noted, ‘It could be very lucrative.’
“She hopes to further her education, whether she does it in prison, if she is again convicted of first-degree murder, or as a regular coed, should there be some other verdict. ‘It’s hard to focus on the future because of it,’ she said. ‘I yearn for it to be over and for society to let me be the person I am today, not that person who was with the Manson family, who was a stranger even to me.”
No Journey's End: My Tragic Romance with Ex-Manson Girl, Leslie Van Houten Page 24
