by Lorna Luft
Mrs. Chapman seemed to hate me almost as much as I hated her. I never understood why. Maybe it was because I’d speak up if I thought something was wrong, and Joey wouldn’t. I was older, and I thought it was my job to watch out for things. When somebody got hit, it was usually me.
Mrs. Chapman knew how to make me wish I’d kept my mouth shut. She usually hit me with a wooden ruler, sometimes raising big welts. She would always hit me on the back of my legs, the tender skin right below my bum. That way the hem of my dress covered the marks, and they didn’t show. She hit me often. My mother had spanked me with her bare hands occasionally when I deserved it, but never anything close to this.
I didn’t tell either of my parents. Every time Mrs. Chapman hit me, she threatened me with something worse if I told anyone. Sometimes she’d say, “Don’t ever tell your mother or I’ll leave, and then you’ll be all alone with her, and you know what will happen.” I was terrified of being left alone in the house, without anyone else to take care of Mama. I knew by then that something was very wrong with my mother, though I didn’t understand the nature of her illness. I was scared something bad might happen to Mama without another grown-up around. I never even told my father. Mrs. Chapman stayed, and the punishment went on.
Christmas that year was an appropriate ending to a turbulent year: the infamous Garland children kidnapping. The headlines read, “Luft Steals Judy’s Kids,” but it wasn’t much of a kidnapping. It was more like a dysfunctional family Christmas.
Joe and I were supposed to fly to New York that Christmas to spend the holidays with my mom (who had just returned from London) and Liza, but my dad was really upset about not getting to spend Christmas with us. He was also unhappy about Joe and me being left at the house with the bodyguard my mother had hired. The bodyguard’s name was Red. Unlike the men who had watched over us on Mapleton Drive, this guy was a real piece of work. He moved into the pool house for a while when we first lived on Rockingham. Red was huge, tall and heavy, with bright red hair. He was also, as we found out, a flasher. Joe and I discovered this the hard way one day when Red tapped on the window as we walked by the pool house. When we turned to look, there was Red, fresh from the shower and naked. We looked away and ran into the house, giggling uncomfortably. A few days later he tried it again when some of our friends came over for the evening. Not knowing what else to do, we told my dad what was going on, and he had a fit. He couldn’t fire the guy, but he wasn’t about to leave us alone with a pervert while Mama was in New York, so he did the next best thing. He got us out of there.
A few days before Christmas, Dad showed up at our house and told me and Joey we were going to Disneyland with him later in the week. It sounded like a great idea to us. Mrs. Chapman reminded him that we had to be home in time to fly to New York. Dad said okay. A couple of days later he put us in the car, and drove down to Anaheim. On the way there he stopped to make a phone call. When he came back to the car, he seemed very upset. We asked him what was the matter, and he said he’d called a friend who lived nearby because we were going to spend Christmas there. But when he’d called his friend’s house, the man’s wife had told him that her husband had had a sudden heart attack and died an hour or two earlier.
At first I said, “Oh, how awful.” Then I thought, “Wait a minute. Aren’t we supposed to go to New York to meet Mama for Christmas? Something’s not right here.”
So much for Disneyland. We drove over to the friend’s house and sat around the living room with his kids for what seemed like forever. It was a very strange few hours. Their father had just died, yet everyone was trying to act as though nothing were wrong. I kept thinking, “I don’t want to be here. I want to go to New York and be with my mom.” I asked my dad when we were going home.
We left then and drove to a house at the top of Tower Road, near Sunset, where my dad dropped us off with some other friends and left again. By that time I knew something was fishy. Dad was supposed to be taking us home so we could catch our plane. Joe and I went out in the front yard to play, and when we looked down the street, I realized that I knew where we were. Mrs. Chapman’s daughter lived just a block or so away. I took Joe, and we walked down to her house and knocked on the door. I was planning to ask her to call my mom and have someone pick us up and take us to the airport, so we could catch our flight. The door opened; I started to say, “Hi, remember me? I’m Lorna,” when the woman gasped and said, “Oh, my God! They’re looking all over for you!”
She grabbed me and Joey and pulled us into the house, asking us where we’d been. We told her. Then we went back to Dad’s friend’s house. A few minutes later my dad pulled into the driveway. Just as he did, we heard the loud wailing of sirens, and police cars came racing into view and surrounded the house. The next thing we knew, someone was taking Joey and me to a car, and then to the airport to put us on a plane to New York. We later found out that all the television stations were broadcasting the news that Joe and I had been kidnapped. Kidnapped? The police were kind and reassuring, but we hadn’t been scared in the first place. We had never been in any danger. We’d had a couple of interesting days with our dad. I was actually quite pleased with myself for the way I’d handled the whole thing. Now Mama wouldn’t worry, and we could celebrate Christmas in New York with Mama and Liza the way we’d planned.
“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” Yep, just another Christmas special at the Garland house.
By this time my mother had started dating the man she would marry next, Mark Herron. He was a very nice man, always very kind to Joe and me. In ways it was a relief when he came into her life. Everybody wonders if Joe and I resented Mark because of my father, but we really didn’t. The thing we wanted most at that point was for Mama to be okay, and if Mark made her happy, then he was all right with us. Mark gave us a respite from all the chaos, and for a while life settled into something of a routine.
Meanwhile, my dad had found a girlfriend of his own. He never called her that, of course. Dad was still waiting for Mama to come back to him, so he didn’t want me and Joe to know he was dating. He certainly didn’t want my mother to know. He always introduced the woman with him as his “friend Bridget.” We liked her; she was lively and fun, and on the weekends Dad and Bridget and Joe and I would go out and do all the things my mother couldn’t do with us in public. We’d go horseback riding or to Pacific Ocean Park, and it was wonderful because we were a normal family; without Mama along, no one paid any attention to us.
There was just one catch. “Bridget” wasn’t really Bridget. As a matter of fact, the Bridget I knew didn’t exist. In our continuing family farce, my father had decided to hide Bridget’s real identity from Joe and me because he didn’t want to upset my mother. I might never have found out who she really was if I hadn’t turned on the TV one boring afternoon. There was a game show on, and the actress on the show was a woman named Mariana Hill—except that it wasn’t Mariana Hill. It was Bridget. I was dumbfounded. How could this be possible? Did Bridget have a twin sister? Why hadn’t anyone ever mentioned her? Maybe it wasn’t Bridget. I looked closer. No, it was definitely her. I couldn’t figure it out, and I didn’t dare ask.
A few weeks later I went to see Blue Hawaii, starring Elvis Presley, and there was this woman again! Sure enough, the credits listed her as Mariana Hill. It just wasn’t possible. Bridget wasn’t an actress; she’d told me so herself. She was just a regular person, a secretary or something. Now I was really confused. Who was this person with my father? Did Bridget have a double—you know, one of those exact duplicates they always tell children everybody has? I didn’t say a word to anyone, not even Joey. I didn’t want to upset him.
At the time, I never did figure out what was going on. I was a teenager before I finally asked my dad about Bridget. One day, years later, I said to him, “Dad, who’s Mariana Hill?”
I thought he was going to have a heart attack.
“Who? Why?” Eventually he calmed down and explained to me what had happened. Back then
he’d decided not to tell us who Bridget really was because he didn’t want my mother to know about her. My mom might have known who Mariana Hill was, but “Bridget” was just some nobody, some friend that Mama never saw. He explained that he hadn’t told me before because at eleven, I had a big mouth, and I might have said something to my mother. That, he said, was out of the question. There was no telling what my mom would have done to get back at him. The fact that they were divorced and that Mama was seeing Mark Herron had nothing to do with it as far as Mama was concerned.
Dad’s fears had been justified. I didn’t hear the story at the time, but a couple of years later my dad brought Bridget to a large party that my mother attended. Every time my father tried to dance with Bridget, my mother cut in, and when he finally sat down and refused to dance at all, my mom had the hotel switchboard page him every five minutes so he couldn’t talk to Bridget. If you’d pointed out to my mother that she’d already been through another husband, a couple of fiancés, and was about to marry again by that time, she would have said, “What’s your point?” The fact that she’d divorced my father didn’t mean he wasn’t still hers. Unfortunately for my dad, she was right.
A few months later my mom asked Joe and me if she should marry Mark. Of course, we said that it was fine with us. We couldn’t very well say no. By then Joe and I would have done nearly anything to keep our mother happy. Mama also asked me if I wanted to change my name to Lorna Herron when she married Mark. I didn’t know what to say, so I asked her, “Do you want me to?” She told me to think about it. Fortunately for me, she never mentioned it again.
Our only real disagreement was when she tried to get us to call Mark “Dad” after they were married. We told her, “But we already have a dad.”
She exploded, shouting, “No, you don’t!” During that period of our lives, our dad existed only if our mother wanted him to. Eventually we ended up calling Mark either “Mark” or “Marko.” Mark was easy to be around, and for a while everything was relatively peaceful. Inevitably, it didn’t last.
That spring of 1965 Mama decided we all needed some family vacation time in Hawaii to relax. We would go together: Mama, Mark, Joey, and me.
Those two weeks in paradise turned out to be the end of my childhood.
Collection of John Fricke
In the pool with Mama at the house on Rockingham, 1965.
CHAPTER 8
Blue Hawaii
Like most things with my mother, it started out fine. Mama and Mark decided a vacation in Hawaii would be good for the whole family. They packed up me and Joey and a few dozen of my mother’s outfits, and we all took off for Waikiki.
At first we had a grand time. We rented a house beneath Diamond Head, right on the beach, next door to Steve McQueen and his wife. It was like a scene from Blue Hawaii. My mother hired a female assistant for the trip, so Joe and I were free to do whatever we wanted. I got to take surfing lessons with an instructor at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel down the beach from us, which was pretty exciting for a twelve-year-old. Every morning I’d walk down the beach to the bright pink hotel and go surfing with my instructor. In the evenings I’d fall asleep with the tropical breeze blowing gently through the window.
One night a few days after our arrival, I woke up to the sound of angry shouting. Joe and I shared a bedroom next to my mother and Mark’s bedroom, and since the bungalow wasn’t very big, I could hear voices clearly. The noise seemed to be coming from the living room. I heard screaming and cursing, and the sound of things being thrown. When I got out of bed to listen, I heard my mother screaming for help. I was so frightened, I didn’t know what to do. I crept to the door in my bare feet and peered into the living room to see what was going on.
I’ll never forget the scene before me. There stood my mother and Mark. My mother was wearing her nightclothes. She was deathly white, and one of her eyes was blackened and swollen like an egg. Mark was completely naked. He was very drunk, and my mother was far from sober. Both of them were covered with blood. They were screaming at each other; my mother was shaking with anger. Some of the furniture had been knocked over, and there was blood splattered around the room. I held onto the doorjamb, staring at them in shock. I stood there frozen, unable to move. I don’t know what frightened me more, the blood or the sight of a grown man standing naked in the dim light of the room. Mark’s blood was streaming down from his face and on to his bare white skin. My mother was twitching from anger and whatever she’d taken.
One of them threw something at the other. There was a loud crash; I flinched and pulled back. A moment later I felt Joey come padding up behind me and tug on my nightgown.
“Lorna? What’s wrong?”
Instinctively, I moved to block the scene from his vision with my body, yelling at him to get back to bed. I heard him scurry back under the covers. He was only nine years old. I didn’t want him to see what I was seeing.
Mark must have heard me. Turning to look, he pulled himself together, rushed into the bedroom, grabbed some clothes, and ran out into the night.
Meanwhile, the assistant my mother had hired came into the living room. She forced my mom into a chair; my mother was shaking violently, and the woman had to hold her down. The lady told me to get some ice for my mother’s eye, which was bloody and swollen. She kept trying to make my mom sit still, holding the ice against her face and talking to her. After a while she got Mama to take some pills, and the shaking began to lessen. My mother had no idea I was in the room. She was still conscious; her good eye was wide open, but mentally she was absent.
As soon as Mama calmed down, the woman turned to me and said, “We can’t let anyone see the room like this. You’ve got to clean it up while I take care of your mother. Get some soap and water and start wiping up the blood.”
I looked around the room. There was blood everywhere—on the floor, the furniture, everything. The half-darkened room had an overwhelming smell of cigarettes and liquor and blood, all mixed together. I’ll never forget that smell.
I started cleaning. There was no bucket or mop, so I went into the bathroom, soaked some towels and washcloths, and started mopping up the blood. I wiped it off the coffee table, and off the floor. I wiped it off the chairs. I went back into the bathroom over and over, to rinse the cloths and wash the bloody water down the drain. And all the time there was that smell filling my mouth and lungs. When the floor and the furniture at last were clean, I started scrubbing the throw rug. It was one of those woven cotton rugs, with a deep bloodstain I couldn’t get out. I got down on my hands and knees and scrubbed it over and over with soap and water, going back and forth to the bathroom, but I couldn’t get the blood out. Even in the dim light, I could still see dark red color in the carpet fibers. Like a small Lady Macbeth, I desperately scrubbed away at the final reminder of what had happened that night.
I kept trying not to look at my mother, propped listless in a chair nearby. I was terrified she was dying; she looked so white, and her eye was unnaturally wide open. After what seemed like forever, the woman who was taking care of my mother said, “I’ll clean up the rest of it. You go to bed.” My mother was calmer by then. Still conscious, but calmer.
I got to my feet in my damp nightgown and gathered up the last of the cloths. I went back into the bathroom to rinse out the cloths one last time. The bloody water ran down the drain in the graying light. I noticed a bottle of Pepto-Bismol sitting on the sink, a sickly pink in the yellow bathroom light. I felt so ill. I reached for the Pepto-Bismol, took a sip or two out of the bottle, and sat down on the damp bathroom linoleum to rest. Almost immediately, I began to vomit. I couldn’t purge myself of the images that filled my mind, or rid my nose of the smell of blood. The linoleum hurt my knees as I clung wearily to the toilet bowl. Finally the vomiting stopped. I rested my head on the edge of the toilet for a few moments, and then I pulled myself to my feet.
Still in my bare feet, I crept back down the hall to the bedroom. Joey was still half-awake, huddled in the corner of the
bed. As I crawled in next to him, he asked me if everything was all right. I told him to go back to sleep, that everything was okay now. I lay down next to him, my body aching and my feet cold. He closed his eyes and was soon breathing regularly.
Only then did I begin to shake. My body trembled so hard that the bed shook, and I was afraid I’d wake my brother. I tried to control the trembling, telling myself over and over, “You mustn’t wake Joey. You mustn’t wake Joey.” I could feel the ocean breeze through the window as I lay there, blowing gently over our bed. Sometime in the gray hours of morning, I drifted off to sleep.
When I woke up, it was light, and I was a lifetime older.
Joe and I got out of there early the next morning. My mother’s traveling companion had finished straightening up the living room and put my mother to bed. It was quiet in the bungalow. We walked down the sand to the Royal Hawaiian and ordered breakfast, but I couldn’t eat. Joey kept saying, “What do you think is going to happen?” and I kept saying, “I don’t know.”
“Do you think we’re going to go home to L.A.?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you think happened to Mark? Do you think he left? Do you think he’s okay?”
I didn’t know. I didn’t have anyone to ask. My father was thousands of miles away in Los Angeles. We were just children, and no one told us anything. After a while, we got up and walked back down the beach to the bungalow. I was afraid of what we might see when we got there.
