Dandelion; Memoir Of A Free Spirit

by Catherine James

  16

  Peddling flowers had been a gentle distraction from my unsteady life, but I was ready for something a bit more challenging. My little son was almost nineteen, and practically out of the house. I hadn’t been this free since I was a fourteen-year-old runaway. When my girlfriend Denise Kay suggested we go partners in a vintage clothing store, I jumped right in. We rented a space on trendy Melrose and called our little establishment Two Timer. We decorated the walls in vintage top hats, felt fedoras, and frou-frou ladies’ bonnets, and stocked the racks with gentleman’s garb and sequined silky gowns of the past. I was now the proprietor of an actual business. I still sometimes agonized about Joseph, but when he called to say he was remarrying (and not to the soap actress), I was finally convinced the horse was dead.

  I met my next and most extraordinary husband when I was with my new partner, Denise, at a Hollywood dinner party. Patrick was the consummate silly Englishman, a one-man Monty Python’s Flying Circus. He’d been successful in the UK as a show host, and now he’d moved across the ocean to California to find his fortune.

  Patrick had a disarming boyish charm, but was slightly manic, as if he’d overdosed on sugar cubes. He also drank like a thirsty fish. I gave him my phone number but confided to Denise, “I could never go out with that guy; he’d drive me crazy.”

  Four years had passed since my hatchet-job marriage to Joseph. I’d had plenty of admirers, but none of them had stood a chance. Not because they weren’t attractive or suitable, they simply weren’t Joseph. Life was calling me to the banquet, but I refused to go. I preferred to molder away like some heroine in a Jane Austen novel.

  There was something different about Patrick that sneaked up on me. He was unthreatening, a charming jester who knew how to make me laugh.

  We dated for three months before he felt confident enough to confide in me. There was something important he wanted me to know. Patrick loved the ocean and thought the beach in Santa Monica would be a good place to talk. When we were all cozy, watching the sunset by the pier, I asked him, “Okay, what is it?”

  I never would have guessed it in a million, trillion years.

  “I like to dress in women’s clothes,” he confessed.

  I thought he was gently trying to tell me he was bisexual, or maybe even homosexual.

  “I just like the way women’s clothes feel,” he said.

  I remembered watching a late-night black-and-white movie called Glen or Glenda. The film was directed by the eccentric Ed Wood, the master of B movies. Mr. Wood was the scandalous cross-dressing director who Johnny Depp later portrayed in the movie. The funny thing was, I loved that film, and thought Johnny Depp looked smashing in a cashmere sweater. I’d actually bought the video. Little did I know it was a sneak peek into my never-dull destiny, and it was about to become my reality.

  “So, you just like to dress in women’s clothes, that’s all there is to it, nothing weirder? You’re not the least bit attracted to men?”

  He assured me he wasn’t. I was slightly apprehensive, and didn’t really get it, but I liked him and it seemed harmless enough. I shrugged my shoulders and said, “All right, then.”

  Patrick ended up moving in with me, and when his visa was about to expire we rushed a simple church wedding so he could stay in the country. The cross-dressing fetish was pretty interesting. He wasn’t garish or flash like a drag queen; quite the contrary. He was most comfortable in a straight skirt with a cardigan and pumps, simple and smart. Patrick had fine features, with big blue eyes and smooth English complexion. With a touch of mascara and his long brunette hair, he could have easily passed as a tall, lanky girlfriend. I convinced myself that it wasn’t a big deal; it was merely a harmless costume.

  In the beginning of our marriage, sex with Patrick was strangely arousing. I’ve always found women sexually attractive but never enough to take the plunge. Being with Patrick was like having a free pass to explore. In female attire he was as pretty and sensuous as any femme fatale, except with boy parts, which made it pretty interesting.

  Patrick worked hard trying to hit the big time. He got a national commercial, several television pilots, and five nerve-racking callbacks to be a cast member in a popular sitcom. He was always just a bird’s breath away from the big time. My store, Two Timer, wasn’t making us rich, but it held its own and paid the bills. Before I married Patrick the long hours were fine, but now the shop was like a competing hungry child. When I wasn’t manning the counter, I was out trawling swap meets and estate sales for fresh vintage spoils. I was rarely home before nightfall, and my new husband was feeling neglected. We decided to sell the store so I could be a full-time wife and comrade, which suited me fine.

  We’d been married just six months when out of the blue I received a call from Dian, my long-lost mother. I’d seen and spoken with her a few times over the years, but mostly kept abreast of her whereabouts through my younger brother, Scot. Years earlier, when I had introduced Diana to her first grandson, she seemed mildly enthusiastic, but when my little tot got fussy and cried, she accused me of over coddling and spoiling my baby boy. She said that when he whimpered I should put him in a room by himself till he learned to behave. Also, a good spanking on general principles would keep him in line. I decided once again to forgo her and her motherly advice.

  Since I’d escaped the fold my mother had given life to two more souls. She’d had a baby girl, Elizabeth, with the folk singer, and six years later a boy, Etienne Saint Laurence, from a fourth marriage. Etienne is four years younger than my own son. I heard that Diana’s younger husband had dropped dead from a brain tumor, and that Elizabeth had run away from home at age fourteen. Diana had moved up north to a town called Grass Valley and was raising Etienne, her last child, all on her own. I was surprised to hear from her, but even more stunned when she said she was in Los Angeles and asked if she could stay the night.

  It was interesting having my mother as a guest in my own home. She was someone I had quite a history with, but also someone I didn’t know at all. The next day I offered to make her an afternoon breakfast, but she opted for three grains of raisin bran, which she ate intently one crumb at a time. She still held fast to her diet of speed, painkillers, cigarettes, and coffee. Unexpectedly, the night turned into two weeks, and I realized Diana was on one of her mystery trips, like the ones she used to take when I was little, only this time it was sixteen-year-old Etienne who was left home alone. The poignant part was that Etienne was about to graduate high school, a considerable achievement in our dysfunctional family. I gently urged my mother to go home and be there for her son’s graduation, but she’d become comfortable in my spare room and back in the bustle of Hollywood. A week later my half-brother went through the honors with no fanfare or parent present, and my tolerant new husband finally asked, “How long is your mother going to be staying with us?” Having to give anyone the boot can be unpleasant, but it’s even more difficult when it’s your estranged, willful mother. Another awkward week had passed, when one morning after I finished mopping my kitchen I casually dumped the pail of soapy water down the sink. My mother, who had taken to following me around the house, gave me a look of horror and disbelief. In her familiar, dominant tone, she asked, “Catherine, why did you just waste that perfectly good water?”

  For a brief moment I was flustered without a reasonable excuse. I’d zoomed right back to 1960, when I was ten years old. I’d forgotten: In her house we saved and reused soapy water till it was black with dirt. In forty years I’d never once been defiant, questioned, or spoken back to Diana, but she was waiting for my reply. I felt slightly faint, then boldly piped, “If this was your house I would have saved it, but this is my house. I can pour the whole pail down the drain if I like.”

  There was an odd pause; she cocked her head with a puzzled expression, and said, “I guess you’re right.” I took that opportunity to tell her, “Mother, it’s time for you to go back home.”

  The first year with Patrick was marital bliss, but when th
e cash ran low I need to find employment. I’d just turned forty and had little formal education. My major was in creativity, with an A in survival.

  It was coming on Christmas, and three blocks away on the corner of Franklin and La Brea was a bustling Christmas tree lot. I suggested to Patrick that we go over and see if we could get a part-time position selling trees for some extra Christmas cash. The proprietor was as friendly as Santa and hired us on the spot. Patrick did most of the heavy work, but I was pretty good at enchanting the customers, and was having good fun learning to flock the pines. The week before Christmas the owner of the lot said he had to get back to Laguna Beach, and asked if we wanted to take over the whole shebang. He said we could keep half of everything we sold, and could even use his little trailer to keep warm in. All of a sudden Patrick and I were running a tree business and had giant wads of cold cash, and I do mean cold. We were freezing our butts off. Every chance we got we’d huddle in the trailer to get away from the winter wind. I brought along festive bottles of Bailey’s to stave off the chill. By the end of the chilly nights we were like a pair of tipsy elves. The night before Christmas we had earned four thousand dollars, which meant two thousand was ours to keep. Before closing the lot and pulling the plug on the colored lights we picked the biggest, most majestic of the leftover Noble firs, and the two of us carried the piney-scented tree all the way home.

  Still chasing our elusive fortune, I said to my English husband, “I bet I could get a job photo doubling for Diane Keaton, or maybe I could write a book about my curious life.”

  Patrick teased me, “Are you a writer now? I didn’t know you knew Diane Keaton.”

  I wasn’t, and didn’t, but ever since the movie Annie Hall debuted, I was often mistaken for Diane, and I had heard she was about to start a new picture.

  I looked up her agent at William Morris and submitted a few Polaroids, along with my phone number and a little note requesting to work on her next film. I never did get a reply, but as luck would have it, my old friend, serendipity, was waiting in the wings.

  Patrick and I were at a Hollywood soiree when a casting agent approached me, exclaiming, “You look so much like Diane Keaton. I’m casting a movie with her, and you’d be a great stand-in and photo double for her.”

  At the interview, for a prank, the producer introduced me to the writer and director of photography as Diane. They didn’t even question it. They shook my hand and said, “Nice to meet you, Diane.”

  I got the job, and ended up working on two more films with her. I traveled to New York, San Francisco, and the Hampton’s with Diane, and at the end of each film she gave me a personal cash bonus, along with divine books on photography. At the end of the last movie, Town and Country, she read the first chapter of my book and encouraged me, “Keep writing, Catherine.”

  I always think how amazing it is that a single thought can open the universe and lead you on amazing adventures.

  17

  At 3:00 A.M. Patrick and I were awakened from a deep sleep. It was my dad on the telephone, weeping, “Loren isn’t breathing, I think she’s dead!”

  By the time the paramedics arrived Loren had clearly departed. At age fifty-five she had looked pretty spry to me, but apparently she had just stopped breathing in her sleep.

  I’d never really gotten to spend much intimate time with my father, mainly because Loren, my stepmother, harbored a deranged jealousy toward me. She behaved like I was “the other woman” trying to horn in on her territory, and she never missed an opportunity to be rude or insulting. The last time we spoke she sweetly said, “Your father’s a very busy man. When he has free time he spends it with me, do you understand?”

  Calling their house was a guaranteed slap in the face, and I eventually gave up. Her mysterious demise left me the last surviving James, and the only one my dad had left. I was hoping it would give us a chance to be closer, and that perhaps I would at last have a father.

  I should have been more careful what I asked for. After the funeral I became his sole lifeline. He’d call at all hours, irrational and incoherent. In a pool of moonshine, he’d slur, “You have to come over right now. I don’t think I’m going to make it.”

  I’d race over to Studio City, only find my father passed out cold on his leather sofa. His hair would be awry, and an empty quart of Gentleman Jack lay by his side. So this was my dad, the man I’d fantasized about all these years; he was a full-on alcoholic maniac. I gently laid a comforter over him and tiptoed out the door.

  I was surprised at how quickly he recovered from Loren’s departure. Within a month he had sold his home of twenty years and picked up and moved to Palm Springs.

  The distance was actually a relief. There wouldn’t be any more late-night calls or emergency excursions to the valley; hopefully he’d be happier in the dunes of the desert. Sadly, the calls soon got more desperate. He was lonely and hated it there. My dad wreaked havoc and caused commotion everywhere he went. He’d been kicked out of all the local bars and bistros, and had been arrested twice for drunk and disorderly conduct. He had also been involved in two drunken traffic accidents in the first month. My poor old dad was out of control.

  Patrick and I decided we’d better go check on him, and packed our bags for what would be one wacky weekend.

  We assumed he’d be alone, and that we’d take him out for a little dinner, maybe see a movie, try to cheer him up a bit. When we arrived, a party was already under way. He’d invited a few of his closest drinking chums from the bar to meet us. The whole lot of them was already pummeled and staggering about at the crack of noon.

  My dad took us aside and murmured, “I told my friends you were both in your twenties, so if anyone asks, just say you’re twenty-four.”

  Patrick and I grimaced. At forty-one I still looked youthful, but certainly not twenty-four. One of his cronies slurred, “Oh, how nice, you kids are the same age as my daughter; you two have to get together.”

  When we politely turned down an invitation for afternoon cocktails the old sots adjourned to a more private party in the den, leaving my husband and me alone in the living room. We felt like uninvited guests, and I was slightly embarrassed. I whispered to Patrick, “Should we just get out of here?”

  We were about to make our excuses when my dad announced, “Okay, kids, we’re all going to lunch.”

  To our dismay, we were roped in for the all-night duration.

  After a long rough day of drinking, and several Vicodins later, my weary dad was ready to hit the hay, and passed out cold by 8:00 P.M. With nothing much else to do in the desert, Patrick and I headed for the guestroom with the stubborn sofa bed.

  No matter how hard we tugged and pulled, the bed would only open three fourths of the way out. We jumped on it, tried to prop it up with the end tables, and basically wrestled ourselves into a sweaty exhaustion. We finally fell asleep with our heads at the foot of the bed on a thirty-degree tilt, like Frankenstein on the slab.

  My father was an early riser, always up and at ’em by 4:00 A.M. In his eyes, if you slept past five you were a derelict. By 6:00 A.M., when Patrick and I were still fast asleep, my dad was about to explode with fury. Using his elaborate stereo system, he blasted us awake by an ear-piercing volley of nose-diving fighter planes, with bombs bursting in air, followed by Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture.” We didn’t know whether to charge or run for cover.

  My dad had already eaten his breakfast and was busy setting up his portable bar for the day. He systematically set out a fresh bucket of ice, a full quart of Jack, a liter of Diet Coke, and an empty Vicodin bottle for measuring shots. He was ready to meet the day. He pulled out a bundle of Polaroids and shouted, “Hey kids, I want to show you some pictures of a friend of mine.”

  He handed me a stack of some pretty bizarre photographs. At first glance I thought, “This is the single most unattractive woman I’d ever laid eyes on.” I gently inquired, “Oh, is this one of your girlfriends?”

  With an elated grin he said, “No, she’
s just a good friend.”

  Something strange was going on. I shuffled through the pictures a few times before realizing they were all of him, my dad in drag. The rings he was wearing were identical to those in the photographs. Was my father a cross-dresser too?

  “She looks like a pretty tall girl.”

  He modestly replied, “Yes, she’s a showgirl from Vegas.”

  I’ve heard that girls look for qualities similar to their fathers’ when choosing a husband, but I hardly knew my dad. Was the universe trying to tell me something? How could it be that the two men in my life were both alcoholic powder girls?

  In the passing weeks I received a myriad of wild calls that got stranger by the day. One day my dad said he’d been arrested and was calling from jail. I asked him, “What jail?” and said that I’d come to get him, but all of a sudden he couldn’t talk any longer. He said the guard was making him hang the phone up. Next he said he’d sold his house, moved to South America, and was living in a trailer in the jungle. Later that week he was flying a Cessna over the desert, and it was running out of fuel. He said he was about to crash and wanted to tell me he loved me before the plane went down; then the phone went dead. I could hear the roar of the plane engines in the background, so I believed he was flying. That time he actually scared me, but there wasn’t a lot I could do. I’d heard so many of his insane tales in the past and prayed, “Please let it be another one of his crazy stories.” Of course he was fine and didn’t remember anything about the in-flight phone call the next day.

  When he called saying he had prostate cancer and had to have his penis removed, I humored him with, “Yikes, that sounds a little extreme; have you gotten a second opinion?”

  He said he’d seen several doctors, and they all agreed it would have to come off.

  Besides being an incorrigible drama merchant, my dad was a habitual hypochondriac. Over time I’d become numb to his absurd tales and bizarre antics for attention. But he said he was leaving in the morning and actually gave me the phone number of a hospital in Colorado. I wondered, was it real this time?