My Incredibly Wonderful, Miserable Life

by Adam Nimoy

Between 1968 and 1971, during the middle and end of Trek, I attended Emerson Junior High School. In art class, Kurt Hammond, this cool, long-haired troublemaker, would refer to me simply as “Ears.” At any given moment, he would call to me from across the room, “Hey, Ears!” just for a laugh. It was kind of nice to be considered worthy of the attention of one of the cool kids. Even if he was a screw-up.

  I became friends with a kid whose older brother worked at the Cherokee bookstore in Hollywood. Upstairs, hidden in the back of Cherokee, was the comic book department, and this hippie-type guy had put together floor-to-ceiling boxes of collectible comics for sale. My dad took me there a few times to buy some. My friend’s brother offered to sell me the #1 Spidey for fifteen dollars. That was a lot of money back then, but I pulled it out of my Bar Mitzvah fund and bought it.

  I still have a collection of comics hiding in a footlocker, and I never sold a single issue. Except the #1 Spidey. Two years after I bought it, I sold it for thirty dollars. My father congratulated me on making 100-percent profit. But I spent the thirty dollars on things like french fries at Pico Drug and hot fudge sundaes at Kirk Drug on Westwood Boulevard.

  In the early ’70s, Dad started getting into photography. He set up a little studio in the garage, and one morning he dragged me out of bed to sit for pictures, which I totally resented because I hadn’t showered and my hair was squished on one side of my head. A picture from that sitting still hangs in my mother’s house. He also happened to take a picture of me with that #1 Spidey. In it, I’m sitting on my bed with a tray table looking at some of the comics in my collection and there, in a plastic bag, is the #1 Spidey. To this day, the picture still haunts me because selling that comic was one of the biggest mistakes of my life. Depending on the condition, it now could be worth more than $100,000.

  But the real tragedy wasn’t selling the Spidey. It was the loss of the Mr. Toad cuff links.

  ONE STEP FORWARD

  THE SCHOOL YEAR ended and Maddy graduated from middle school with honors. She became a counselor in training at the day camp at the Cheviot Hills Recreation Center. She got to take care of the little kids. She loves little kids. And she loves her twelve-year-old brother.

  One day, when he was home alone, Jonah called me because he wanted something to do or someone to be with him and I told him Maddy might have to go home early from camp because she wasn’t feeling well. And sure enough, when I went to drop off her lunch, she wanted to go home. And when she walked through the front door, Jonah was there and they hugged each other and didn’t let go. I felt left out.

  “Don’t I get a hug?”

  Jonah came over and gave me a little slap in the face and we all laughed as I grabbed him and then grabbed her and held them and squeezed them, and, oh my God, this could turn out to be okay.

  TWO STEPS BACK

  “ADAM, NEXT YEAR things will be different. Things will be so totally different that you won’t even recognize yourself.”

  That’s what Paula told me only a few months ago, but right now, that’s pretty hard to believe.

  Last night Maddy and Jonah came over for dinner. It’s been months and months and they finally came over. They were standing in my living room and Maddy cried, and then he cried, and then they both cried. Then they begged me to come home and I had to just sit there as they begged me. They begged me. Jonah told me how lonely he is for me to be with him and to put him to bed at night and to wake him up in the morning. How am I supposed to respond to this? I’m constantly going through the litany in my mind, reminding myself of all the signs and all the things that happened through the years that made it perfectly clear to me that my marriage was over. It’s a nice long list and it’s in my hard drive and I cling to it now. But the litany is not something I care to share with my children. Instead, I tried to tell them how bad I feel, and that I understand how they must feel, and that I’m lonely for them too. Both of them. But I just can’t come back.

  Maddy can’t stand my apartment. She can’t believe I could possibly want to live here in a two-bedroom apartment off Venice Boulevard. And she peeks into their room with the made-up beds like it’s some sort of torture chamber. She tells me on the way over that room better be shut because she doesn’t want to see it, and then when she does look, she can’t believe that I bought sheets and comforters for the two beds.

  And then Jonah admits he’s crying because she’s crying and I just sit there and take it and I start to think I could stop it and make them so happy if I just came home.

  But then I think about what it would be like, and then, yet again, I have to go through the checklist in my mind of why I moved out and I realize there is no way I’m going back to that because there was never any indication that any of the problems were ever going to change.

  But the kids. What about the kids?

  They don’t want to eat dinner because they lost their appetites even though Jonah goes into the fridge and pulls out a piece of cheese. And I offer to take them to dinner instead of cooking and they say okay—as long as Mom comes along. Maddy and Jonah are supposed to be having dinner with me, just the three of us, which is what they do with Nancy at the house every night while I eat alone. But Maddy changes her mind and calls Nancy to come pick them up and I say I’ll take them home.

  On the drive to the house, she keeps pushing.

  “How can you do this to me? I’m through with you, Dad. How do you feel about never seeing me again? I will never, ever come back to your stupid apartment. How do you think it will feel to live alone for the rest of your life?”

  I’m driving down Palms Boulevard past my old, trashed house trying to control myself while my hands grip the steering wheel.

  “Well, Dad? How do you think it’s going to feel? Dad? Are you going to answer me? Answer me, Dad. How’s it going to feel?!!”

  She’s at full force. I should have fed her. And then she grabs the steering wheel and we swerve on the road.

  “Maddy, let go!”

  I pry her hand off the wheel and immediately pull over to the side and turn off the engine.

  “That is so not okay and we’re not going anywhere until you apologize. You could have gotten us into an accident.”

  “Well, what about my feelings, Dad? Did you ever think of that? Why don’t you answer me? Don’t just sit there, Dad. Answer me!”

  And I’m at a total fucking loss as to what to do with her yelling, and Jonah’s in the backseat yelling at Maddy to calm down. I’m totally lost and my mind goes haywire for a second because all I can hear is the sound of things crashing all around me.

  * * *

  We were living on Comstock. I was maybe six or seven. I was in the kitchen with my mother. Dad came in to fix himself a drink. It was in the afternoon and he made himself a martini and he put some lemon peel in it. Mom was looking for something in the refrigerator. Dad finished making his drink then shuffled off to their bedroom, leaving the bottles and the lemon and the knife on the counter. My mother pulled a bottle of milk out of the refrigerator. She lifted it over her head, yelled my father’s name, and threw the bottle at the countertop. The countertop was made of tile. Avocado green. The bottle shattered and the milk splashed and a small piece of glass hit my brow. I ran out of the kitchen and into the living room. I hid under the coffee table, whimpering.

  My father came into the living room and sat silently in a chair. He just sat there and said nothing.

  * * *

  “Dad! Don’t just sit there, answer me! Well, Dad? How’s it going to feel? How’s it going to feel to be living the rest of your life alone in that apartment?”

  RENAISSANCE MAN

  BEFORE STAR TREK, Dad had bit parts on dozens of TV shows. In between those shows, he juggled a half dozen part-time jobs. Between 1966 and 1971, he worked five straight television seasons: three with Star Trek and two with Mission: Impossible. When Mission was over, Dad started spending more time at home. But you can’t stop a workaholic.

  When we lived in Mar Vista and the
n later in West L.A., Dad always had some home improvement project going, whether it was building a patio, putting up brick walls, or landscaping the front yard. But when we moved to Westwood in 1968, he usually paid to have the work done and turned his attention to some of his many other interests. It was around this time that he started mixing colorful glazes for my mother’s pottery. He started to delve deeper into photography. At the Westwood house, there was a small room behind my bedroom that was actually built as a darkroom in the ’50s for the previous owner who was a portrait photographer. My bed was up against the common wall and Dad would be back there all night processing and printing and I’d fall asleep to the sound of him repeatedly pushing the button on the timer for the enlarger. It was also around this time that Dad was learning to fly single-propeller planes, which his parents were just “thrilled” about.

  Being a Renaissance man, Dad pursued a number of other interests, some of them slightly out of the ordinary. One of the things he did to fill his spare time was to paint a series of bricks. He painted red, white, and blue American flags on them, and next to the flags he wrote slogans like “My Country Wrong . . . Or Wrong!” This was during the Vietnam era, and in 1972, Dad campaigned heavily for George McGovern.

  My mother still lives in the Westwood house, and last summer during a pool party, I was turning up the pool heater that sits behind the studio out back, and sticking out from a mound of dirt was one of those bricks. Though more than thirty years old, the paint was still pristine and it had the signature American flag and the slogan “Love It or Heave It.”

  I showed it to my sister and we speculated what it might fetch on eBay.

  Dad also had a green thumb. He was always shuffling around in the garden tending to his azaleas, camellias, and fuchsias. In the studio, he built a mini hothouse. He built the frame and supports so that it stood at waist level, then he wired it to heat the soil and installed hoop supports for a plastic top to maintain the humidity. And then he started growing asparagus ferns, first from cuttings, then from seeds. It was his little science project, his little botany project: The Botany Bay.

  One afternoon, when he was out there tending these plants, I was by the pool and he called me into the studio. I must have been sixteen or seventeen at the time. He was always calling me, summoning me. In the house, he’d call me from his upstairs bedroom, “Adam!” “What?” I’d yell back. And then there’d be this silence while I waited for his response, but it would never come, and I knew I had no choice but to go. I knew he was usually calling because he needed me to do something or he wanted to inquire about something like his missing tools, which I had a habit of borrowing and then forgetting to put back.

  When I walked into the studio, he pulled some potted ferns out of the hothouse.

  “Look at this. I grew this from a cutting—and this one I grew from a seed.”

  He was so proud of the plants, which I thought a little odd because, I mean, come on, they’re asparagus ferns, which are very nice but not terribly remarkable, like, say, orchids. It was dark in the studio as the last light of day came filtering in through the windows behind his little hothouse. Dad was in the bathrobe and slippers he liked to wear when he was puttering around the house. I knew the ferns were important so I told him how great it was that he was able to grow the seedlings. But sometimes, I just couldn’t control myself.

  “Dad, you do realize you’re not on the Enterprise anymore, right?”

  COUNTY LINE

  I USED TO daydream about camping at Leo Carillo State Park, which is a beach campground an hour’s drive north of L.A. In my mind, I could see myself at this canyon camp full of trees just a short walk from the beach. And I finally figured out how to do it. I take Jonah and his friend Harrison so that we can camp and swim. We arrive in the afternoon, and after setting up camp, we walk to the beach. The boys bring their boogie boards, but Leo Carillo is very rocky and it’s really a surfer’s beach and there’s no place for them to swim. I ask the lifeguard where we should go so the boys can catch some waves and he says County Line, which is five minutes north. On the spur of the moment, Chris, Harrison’s dad, drives up from L.A. and meets us. County Line is a beautiful beach. We park on the bluff overlooking the water. There are surfers in black wet suits everywhere. The lifeguard says it’s okay to boogie board as long as we stay out of the way. We ride wave after wave in the cold, clear water.

  That night, the boys ride skateboards while I cook dinner: shish kabobs and roasted potatoes on my portable grill. We eat everything. After dinner, we make a fire and roast marshmallows and make s’mores.

  The next morning, we drive back to County Line, and the boogie boarding is even better than the day before. I rest on my board in the chilly, clean water and the sun makes everything so blue and fresh and new. The kelp beds keep growing everywhere, a foot of growth a day they say, and a school of dolphins swims close by. When we finally come out of the water, I open up the towel that’s wrapped around me and take Jonah in and hold him close to warm him up, his lips are so blue. And he makes fart sounds by blowing on my shoulder as I lean down to hold him.

  After lunch, I just lie on the beach and watch him catch wave after wave on his boogie board. Mostly just white-water rides because the waves are so big. But he seems so happy.

  Then Chris and Harrison have to go to meet up with the rest of their family. After we say our good-byes, Jonah suddenly wants to leave. We’re in no hurry and I planned to stay and swim with him for another hour, but all of a sudden he’s in a big hurry to follow them out of there. He’s so insistent I finally agree, and as I start to pack things up, he lets me have it.

  “I just want you to know I’m not having a Bar Mitzvah, and if I do, you won’t be there.”

  “Why are you talking about this now?”

  “Because I want you to remember.”

  “The minute they leave you have to jump on me?”

  “Do you want me to do it when they’re around?” And then he starts to cry. “Why did you leave, Dad? We had such a good family and then you just left. Why couldn’t you sleep out back in the studio? Why did you leave me with Mom and Maddy? Just tell me.”

  “I know how you feel Jonah and I am so sorry. I am so very sorry.”

  “No, you don’t know how I feel because it never happened to you! Why’d you do it, Dad? Just tell me.”

  And he’s standing in his rash guard, the black swimming shirt I gave him that was mine but he needed it so I gave it to him. He’s standing there, and the tears keep falling down his face as he stands there with his red cheeks and his wet hair, against the blue ocean and the white water and the kelp beds that keep growing. It’s so painful to see him standing there crying after we had such a nice time.

  I’m pretty sure Maddy and Jonah never saw it coming. I stopped arguing with Nancy in front of the kids a long time ago. After all the marriage counseling that went nowhere, there didn’t seem to be any point to arguing. And when I became angry or frustrated, I would go off and smoke myself into oblivion.

  “I know you miss me and I feel terrible about it, just terrible. Sometimes I think you got it the worst because you’re the only boy there now.”

  “Then why won’t you come back for me? Please, Dad, just for me.”

  “I can’t, Jonah. I just can’t come back. I just can’t. Let me hold you.”

  “No!”

  And he just stands there and cries in his rash guard. And his red and blue Hawaiian flower swimming trunks. And his wet hair and the tears and the ocean is really pounding now.

  “And why, Dad, why? Why did you leave me? Why? Just tell me why.”

  “There are a lot of reasons. Too many to try and explain right now. But I am so sorry. And I miss you too, Jonah. And I want to be with you.”

  “And you promised you would be at the house every day. You promised me and sometimes I don’t see you and what am I supposed to do?”

  And in that moment, I become so confused I actually try to figure out a way to make i
t work, to come home if only just for him.

  But that’s crazy, because this is the hard part, where sometimes, at times like this, I can’t quite remember the why, why, why. I’ve done so much work in AA, I’ve done so much work in my recovery and learning to let go of all the little injustices that happened to me during the course of my marriage is a big part of it. The letting go is such a big part of it and I’m beginning to forget the why, why, why.

  But that’s where everything gets screwy because to fight the vortex, to struggle against the kids who keep pulling at my heartstrings to come home, I have to hold on to some of that stuff, some of those injustices to remember why I left in the first place. Otherwise I simply don’t have the guts to follow through on what I told myself I had to do. I have to remember about all the troubles and the neglect and the indifference and the love gone cold and all the counseling sessions that went nowhere. Nowhere with Hannah, nowhere with Carol, nowhere with Patricia. Absolutely nowhere.

  It was just an hour ago when I sat on the beach watching him on his boogie board. When I sat on the sand and it was windy and I was watching him ride the white water. And he came in with the surf again and again, flopping around on his board, just like a little fish. He’d look up at me after a great ride, and I’d give him the thumbs-up, and he was so happy—happy to be in the water and happy to know I was watching. I’m sure he was happy. I’m positive. Or was it a dream?

  And last night, when we were in our sleeping bags in the tent, I turned to Jonah and put my hand on his round face, the face with the almond-shaped eyes and all that hair.

  “And when we get back to L.A. you’ll go to kung fu without any problems?”

  “Yes, I want to go.”

  “And you’ll go to your guitar lesson?”

  “Definitely. And I have to read my books, Dad. My two books before school starts.”