I doubted there was any truth to the latest yarn, but my curiosity finally got the better of me. I called the number he had given me just to check. Holy shit, it was a real hospital, and he was actually a registered patient. Up till now I’d been coolly blasé, but suddenly I felt sick to my stomach.
I asked the receptionist to please connect me to his room. A male nurse answered his phone and informed me, “She’s just come out of the operation. The surgery went well, but she’s still a little groggy.”
She? “I’m sorry,” I said, “I must have the wrong room. I’m looking for Mr. Robert James, my father, he’s a man.”
The male RN replied, “You have the right room, hon. Why don’t you call back a little later, when she’s more alert.”
I dropped the receiver like it was a hot coal. It was worse than cancer; he’d been mutilated! As if he wasn’t confused enough, now he was a man-made woman. Maybe I didn’t understand the nurse right; this had to be a mistake. I called back later and my dad answered the phone. In a caring tone, I said, “I called you earlier and spoke with a nurse. What kind of operation did you have?” My father sounded dazed and said he’d call me in a few days, when he got back to Palm Springs.
That first luncheon fiasco at Musso’s was like falling into a bramble of thorns. I’d accepted that my father was essentially unsound, but now that he wasn’t even a man anymore, he felt and looked like a downright stranger! It wasn’t just the physical aspect; he’d taken on a whole new persona; he behaved coy and coquettish. During our lunch he delighted in speaking to me about intimate feminine details, as if I was a close girlfriend. I didn’t want to talk to my father about feminine hygiene, hormonal mood swings, or lipstick shades. I don’t think it ever occurred to him how it affected me, or my weary brain. I felt like my synapses were buckling, refusing to connect. Nevertheless, he was the man who had given me life, and I did my best to be a supportive daughter.
Whenever he came to town we made arrangements to meet for lunch, then we’d go to Forest Lawn to put fresh flowers on Loren’s grave. He always showed up in full fright drag. I’d lag behind in astonishment as he maneuvered the grassy hillside of the cemetery in his unsteady high-heeled gait and tight-fitting skirt. He looked about as graceful as a wounded bat.
On Robin’s sixty-third birthday Patrick was working in England, so I enlisted my pretty blond girlfriend Sandra to accompany me to Palm Springs for a little celebration. Sandra wasn’t a girl who was easily fazed, and she possessed a wicked sense of humor, so she’d be the perfect companion for the weekend pilgrimage. I filled her in on my dad’s eccentricities and she assured me she could handle it.
We suited up for the unexpected and tapped on his/her front door. I expected to see a bewigged Aunt Bea, but my dad was dressed like a man, in crisp tennis whites, with just a hint of lipstick. The only real giveaway was his copious, unbridled boobs, which were stretching his polo shirt to the limit. He was already a bit tipsy but doing his best to be a gracious host. He leaned over and whispered, “I didn’t want to embarrass you.”
He then lost his balance and toppled into us, knocking all three of us to the ground. Sandra and I scrambled to our feet, but my dad was down for the count, still tangled in the lamp cord and room divider that collapsed when he tried to steady himself. The look on Sandra’s face was priceless, and this was just the first thirty seconds of a long, looming weekend. I could see that she didn’t know whether to laugh or run for the desert. We gave my dad a hand up, and as if nothing had happened, he asked, “Hey, would you kids like to go for a swim?”
My dad’s desert home was a suburban three-bedroom tract house in the center of Rancho Mirage. He had a lovely manicured garden with wrought-iron love seats, a birdbath, and an inviting swimming pool. The interior was adorned with sentimental china, Italian scenic oils, and pots of dried flower arrangements. The only hint of manliness was his extensive stereo equipment, theater-sized television set, and his fire engine-red Ferrari parked in the garage.
We were already in the pool when my dad came out resembling the Creature from the Black Lagoon. In the 120-degree desert heat, he was clad in a full, antiquated deep-sea diving suit, ready to swim some laps. If he wasn’t such a loon, he would have made quite the comedian.
After dinner my dad suggested we go for a moonlit dip in the Jacuzzi, and disappeared into the garden to turn the thing on. I don’t know what happened, but ten minutes later he stumbled back into the house with a bleeding gash on his forehead and scrapped bloody grass stains on both knees. I blurted out, “Oh my God what happened? You’re bleeding!”
He said it was nothing, but he was bleeding pretty badly. I sat him down, bandaged his wounds, and cleaned the grass stains off his knees. This man was a walking accident; I wondered how he made it through a day. We decided to forgo the Jacuzzi and opted for a nice safe movie from Blockbuster. Sandra said she had heard The Crying Game was really good, so that’s what my dad rented. Fortunately we were only a third into the film when my dad, who was sauced to the gills, decided to hit the sack. When I realized the transsexual plot, I almost fainted. I whispered to Sandra, “How could you have suggested this video?”
She swore she didn’t have a clue.
In the midst of my dad’s drama in the desert, I received a call from my mother in the foothills of Grass Valley. Etienne had left home and moved in with my brother Scot; meanwhile my sister, Elizabeth, had gotten into trouble with drugs, and was remanded to a rehab facility somewhere in Nevada. Like I, Elizabeth had also had a baby in her teens. It seems that when my sister was growing up our mother used me as the faultless weapon. I was the mysterious sister, the model and singer who lived in England with rock-and-roll legends. She held me over Elizabeth’s head as a shining example. “Why couldn’t you have been more like Catherine?”
Elizabeth did the next best thing. Her baby was born on my birthday, and Elizabeth named her new daughter, Catherine.
While my young sister was being rehabilitated, Diana somehow gained custody of eight-year-old Catherine, and history was being repeated.
I had hoped that maybe the years had softened Diana, but after the first phone call I realized that as long as my mother had a heartbeat there wasn’t a chance in China. Diana confided to me that Catherine was an evil girl who needed to be punished. I said to my mother, “That’s what you used to say about me. How bad can she be, she’s just a child.” I tried to tell my mother that having a new Catherine with my same birthday was like a fresh chance to amend the past, but she wouldn’t hear me. Knowing young Catherine’s dismal destiny, I wrote letters, sent cards, and tried to call, but Catherine had shared my same fate with her grandmother. Besides living at the foot of terror, there was also the same diet regimen, little food, plenty of Tabasco, and Dawn dishwashing liquid to wash it down with. Catherine later told me that Diana had twisted her arm so hard that it broke. I never wanted to see or speak with my mother again.
Patrick kept extending his trip in England, till he finally got up the courage to tell me he didn’t want to come back to America at all. He said it was too hot and sweaty for him in California, and he missed his family and friends. I loved Patrick, but we’d become more like pals than husband and wife; maybe it was best he didn’t come home.
In the fourteen years I lived on El Cerrito Place, I grieved the loss of my boyfriend Paul, trudged through the wreckage of my marriage to Joseph, and raised a healthy son who was now married and had his own baby son. With all that enlightenment under my belt, Patrick’s departure was not quite as painful as in the past. It seemed simply that our time together was up. At forty-three I was back on my own and ready to turn the page.
I’d been dreaming about going to New York, maybe even going back to Connecticut. I missed the seasons, the turning of the leaves, the snow, the adventure of it all. At twenty-three I would have jumped on a plane and not looked back, but now for some reason it felt a little more complicated.
My lifelong friend Patti D’Arbanville, whom I had m
et in Greenwich Village when I was fourteen, had become a successful actress, married a handsome fireman, and moved to the picturesque town of Sea Cliff, New York. I had a standing invitation to come for a visit and decided to take her up on it.
So I took a deep breath and packed up fourteen years of memories and crapola and deposited them in a storage vault on the corner of Franklin and Vine.
Patti’s home was a cozy three-story eight-bedroom Victorian dream. The place took up and entire block, complete with a surrounding white picket fence and a Catholic church the next lot over. Her street was wide and lined with regal elms and oaks, and rambling historical housed set far back from the road. I expected to see Andy Hardy coming around the corner at any moment.
Patti had just procured the role of Lieutenant Cooper on the Fox cop show New York Undercover, and graciously managed to wrangle me in as her stand-in. I’m a full four inches taller than she is, but it didn’t seem to matter, we were together again, and I was gainfully employed in New York City.
It had been two decades since I’d left my cottage in Connecticut. For twenty years I’d had vivid recurring dreams of going back there, but in my dreams someone else was living in my house. Sometimes I dreamed it had been abandoned and I’d secretly moved back in. Now was my chance, I was going back for real.
I boarded the train at Grand Central and rode a taxi from the familiar Brewster station to my beloved Candlewood Lake. What a shock! The formerly rural Route 7 was now built up and besmirched to the point of being almost unrecognizable. My quaint little Carvel ice cream stand was now a shopping strip. In place of the graceful weeping willows and grand maples stood bright-colored fast-food chains littering the pastoral landscape. But once I turned up onto the lush, green Huckleberry Hill, and passed White Turkey Road, I knew I’d arrived. I wondered for a moment, “Is this real, or just another one of my wishful dreams?” I was past the two dips in the road where the Pontiac would take to the air and fly like a bird, and it all came back. Just a little farther and I’d be at the lake.
Ah, there it was, this was the spot, but my cottage was gone! Only the burned-out, weathered remnants of my stone fireplace, front porch, and blistered window frames remained. There were wild blackberries twisting through the charred window sashes, and winding around the granite fireplace, almost in celebration. I pushed back what was left of the scorched window casing and was startled to see an uncharred strip of clear plastic neatly stapled close to the hinges in the wood. It was the very plastic I’d put up over twenty years earlier to keep the cold wind out. An amazing feeling came over me. It wasn’t just a mysterious burned-down house. I knew its history. I knew that girl, the girl and her blond baby boy who once lived here.
It was early October, and the lake had the same peaceful lull I’d fallen in love with. There was a faint breeze in the air, and the shimmering leaves were beginning to turn color and fall to the ground. I could hear the gentle sound of the lake lapping the shore and wild geese flapping their feathers, ready to migrate south for the winter. I lay back on what was left of the surrounding stone wall and breathed it all in, inhaling the moment, all the sweet memories of me and my son, both of us growing up here.
I was lost in the rapture of it all when I heard distant voices coming up from the lake. It was an elderly couple walking hand-in-hand, relishing the last weeks of fall. As they neared me, I asked, “Excuse me, do you know what happened to this house? When did it burn down?”
The woman answered, “Oh, the place burned down years ago. There was a girl with a child that used to live here. When they left, her boyfriend came back and set it on fire.”
Oh, my God, was it Chris? Did he really burn the place down to the ground? I knew he’d be upset when he found me gone, but I didn’t think he possessed that level of rage. I could just imagine him dowsing the cherry logs with gasoline, and then reveling in his fury as the old place went up in a blaze.
I suddenly realized that the couple I was speaking to were my former summer neighbors from up the road, Mr. and Mrs. Sobel. In just twenty years they went from older to elderly. They seemed happy to see me again and invited me to their cottage for a nice cup of tea and an update on the history of the lake.
I thought it odd that in all these years no one had ever rebuilt on my premium property, but was thankful to be able to see my beautiful little spot one more time, even in its charred, overgrown glory.
• • •
Miss Pamela was in New York to research and write a chapter for her latest book, Rock Bottom. Her subject was the scandalous, dearly departed GG Allin. GG was the punk rocker who shocked and disgusted his spectators by defecating on stage, sometimes hurling his putrid poop into the audience or eating his own excrement. Pamela showed me a video of him performing at New York University, where even the hardest core rockers, ran for cover.
She casually mentioned that Led Zeppelin was in town to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at Radio City Music Hall, and she wanted to go to the party. She asked if I’d call Jimmy Page so we could go. Call Jimmy? I hadn’t seen him in over ten years, nor did I have a clue where he was staying. She said he was at the Essex House on Central Park, but didn’t know the secret password to get through to his room. I was hesitant to call. Such a long time had passed, but I eventually relented and tried the moniker he had used twenty years ago. I was sure the hotel operator would tell me nobody was registered by that title, but then I heard Jimmy’s unmistakable, angelic, soft voice. After all these years it still made my heart patter.
“Hello, Jimmy, this is Catherine.”
It was like we’d spoken yesterday. When I told him I was in New York he was excited, and said, “Come over right now. Let’s have dinner, anywhere you would like.”
We met at his hotel on Central Park West, and what a surprise. In my memory he was still the velvet-clad, lithesome prince with soft long ringlets and a majestic air, but something amazing had happened: We had both gotten older. It was like a veil had lifted. It was still us, we still had the history, but it wasn’t quite so mysterious; it felt more comfortable, and easy.
Arm-in-arm, we window shopped along Central Park like old friends and reminisced of our wild youthful days. It was almost a relief, the painful passion, the burning torch I’d carted around all these years had smoldered into a cinder, or so I thought.
In the soft romantic light of the Plaza Hotel and two Cosmopolitans later, Jimmy began to look exactly as he had the day we met—still dangerous. There’s something about one’s eyes that never change. I got that same old achy feeling, the one that goes right through your soul. After dinner we were touring around the Plaza, when Jimmy grabbed me and said, “Why don’t we just run away together right now; we could go anywhere.”
As always, he disarmed me completely, but I dismissed the offer with a giggle.
“Well then,” he said, “if you don’t want to run away with me, would you at least be my date for the Hall of Fame induction?”
I felt bad breaking the news to Miss Pamela, but I was going, and that was that. It seemed kind of perfect that I would be his girl on this grand occasion.
Before meeting up with Robert Plant and John Paul Jones in the downstairs hotel lounge, I helped Jimmy with his impossible bow tie, which neither of us had a clue how to tie. It was the first time I’d seen Mr. Page in a tux. Yes, we’d definitely grown up.
The limo was waiting and the revelry was about to begin I had had no idea what a big deal this was. Besides Led Zeppelin there were also Neil Young, the Allman Brothers, and the transcendent Al Green, whom I worship and adore, all being inducted that night.
Al Green opened the ceremony with “Take Me to the River,” and left me longing for more with “Love and Happiness.” After a grand dinner and several long winded speeches, Jimmy got up and jammed with Neil Young, and I was gone like a rocket, transported right back to 1968.
When Jimmy went onstage a young man had taken his seat at our table and tried to chat me up. When Jimmy came offstag
e he strolled up and announced to the swain, “Number nine, your time is up.”
And the would-be beau scurried off in a huff. Ha! After all these years, Jimmy still had a jealous streak for me.
We rode the limo back to the hotel, and I thought, “This is all happening pretty fast. Oh well, I’ll think about it later.” When we got to his room, we kissed like the gods. No one has ever kissed me the way Jimmy did. He inhaled my breath, still stealing my soul; I could almost see the misty vapors passing between us. His breath and taste were still sweet as a baby’s, and as hot as high-voltage wire, but I couldn’t get into the moment. The imps and angels were looming in my head, spryly clattering, “Do you really want to start this? He’s off to London in the morning.” Nope, I wasn’t up for another potential heartache, but it sure felt dreamy. He could feel my vacillating doubt and whispered in his softest voice, “What do you want, my girl?”
It was five in the morning, and I didn’t know.
With a smile I replied, “I think I better go before the sun comes up.”
We got dressed, and he walked me down to the waiting limo. I blew kisses until we turned the block, and that’s the last time I saw the ever-dazzling Mr. Page.
18
Living in Sea Cliff, staying with Patti, was more than comfy, but I was beginning to feel a bit like the spinster aunt up on the third floor. She had a family, three babies, and a firefighter husband to look after. I missed having my own kitchen, my own things, and time alone. It was time to go home, back to California.
I’d saved a bit of money working with Patti on New York Undercover, but unfortunately it wouldn’t sustain me for long. The rentals in Los Angeles had soared, and I had to settle on a smallish place in the flatlands of Hollywood.
Dandelion; Memoir Of A Free Spirit Page 17
