Wildflower Page 3

  As my father was winding down and his days were numbered, I spent even more time at the hospice house. During the days I would walk around to stretch my legs and watch the other patients. There was an old couple I would stare at every day I was there. A woman, who was clearly the patient, would sit in a La-Z-Boy chair in the first-floor communal room where visitors could congregate. Her husband would sit with her, and sometimes he would just take her face with both hands and bring her face into his and they would just stay face-to-face for long periods of time. He would give her these old gummy kisses all over her face, and she would accept his affection, just sitting there with no strength to move. I don’t know if he was making up for not doing it enough or if this was their routine, but all their years together had led to more love. More affection. More appreciation. A oneness that you would marvel at as I did. My father was upstairs with his weed and his lemons, but he was alone. Maybe he wanted it that way. He certainly alienated everyone along the way. But I would want to be the couple who kissed for hours. I went back upstairs.

  Later that afternoon, I was sitting in a chair with a little dress on and no shoes, and my father was in bed, just quiet, which was very novel. He was thinking. I don’t know when he had time to reflect, as he was always spouting out demands. Maybe he thought his thoughts in Joshua Tree. Maybe in the middle of the night. Maybe all those years in Topanga Canyon? But now, in this moment, he was gentle. I didn’t know where his gaze was, and I wasn’t totally sure what to do in the silence. But I sat there, patiently waiting to hear the next wild thing fly out of his mouth. “You were made perfect,” he said, looking at my feet. He looked up into my face and deep into my eyes. “You were made perfect.”

  For the first time in my life I didn’t know what to say. So I just took in the moment. And told myself to remember this forever. For it was his way of taking my face and telling me he loved me.

  He died a few months later. And when I picked up his stuff, there was only Dr. Bronner’s soap bottles and lemon rinds and his old floppy, threadbare bandanas. So I kept a purple one and threw the hippie detritus away. And we planned a ceremony where we would let his ashes fly all over his “home away from no home” . . . Joshua Tree.

  I drove out there late at night and got a room in the middle of the desert, and the hotel had forgot to leave a key, so I slept in my car. When the sun just started coming up and it wasn’t so terrifyingly dark, I looked for a key, and I found one taped in a strange place with a note for me, but I would have needed my third eye and a flashlight to find it, as my dad would have said. I walked through the dirt to my little room and lay down for a while. And just as I was falling asleep, my door slowly swung open on its own. And a ray of sun came pouring in. “Dad?” I said out loud as I felt a field of energy pass through the room. I sat up in bed for a while, silent, until it felt like I could get up and respectfully shut the door. I got back in bed. Was it him? It could have been him. Why not? There are no rules.

  First apartment, at age fourteen

  MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE

  When I was fourteen, I was emancipated by the courts. It’s no secret that I had to part ways from my mother because we had driven our relationship into the ground. She had lost credibility as a mother by taking me to Studio 54 (so wrong but so fun) instead of school. And I was out of control due to working since I was eleven months old and what that had done to my childhood, which made me grow up too fast. Work was a very positive thing in my life, and sadly it had been taken away because my mother also put me in an institution because she felt helpless. But when people found out, they just wrote me off as damaged goods, and I sadly understood that. I was never unprofessional, but I was on a hiatus from being employable. And when I turned fourteen and wanted to start my life over, I wanted to do things on my own terms.

  On the day of my hearing, my mother was there in full support of my emancipation, which would mean me living on my own. I felt so sad, but too much had happened. The judge walked in and the day went on in a blur. People testified, but it wasn’t heavy or dark. It was a way to ask, Should this kid become an adult? At the end of the day the judge looked at me and said these words, which stuck with me: “I can turn the clock forward, but I can never turn it back. Are you ready for that?” “Yes,” I said. “OK,” he said with a slight smile, “I hereby pronounce you an adult! Legally.” My mom and I hugged, knowing things would be different, but things were always just too different, and that was why this needed to happen.

  I walked out an eighteen-year-old in the eyes of the state of California. This was gonna be fun.

  First on my checklist, I needed . . .

  1. Apartment!

  I looked all over West Hollywood, my favorite neighborhood and where I had grown up. I found a place in the back of a building my friend Justine was living at. Great! Although it was off an alleyway in a notoriously “don’t walk around here at night” neighborhood, I was happy that my girlfriend was a stone’s throw away. She lived there with her boyfriend, and I particularly loved when they fought. I was always secretly willing them to break up because I would fantasize about Justine and me getting our own bungalow somewhere! Whenever she and Darren had a blowout, she would come hang out in my place, and then Darren would perform some big mea culpa outside. He would grab the bars on the window (did I mention the apartment had to have bars covering every window?), but to Darren they were like a stage prop. Stanley Kowalski, the ’90s former-model version, would hang from these bars and scream how “he needed her!” And how it was “her fault too.” Blah blah blah. She always let him back in. Whatever. Boys were a whole other chapter that I knew I wasn’t up for yet . . . what’s next?

  Oh right.

  2. Job.

  Justine worked at a coffeehouse in the valley, but she had a car and I was two years away from getting my driver’s license, so I was going to have to act global and think local. Inspired by Justine, I looked at the coffeehouse near us, the Living Room, which happened to be one of the big LA hot spots at night. It was the start of the 1990s, and coffeehouses were where everyone hung out. People poured out onto the street every night, as if it was a big art opening, but it would just be a random Tuesday.

  I wasn’t great at my job. I wasn’t really great at anything. I had only done two things: acted and had wild life experiences. But neither of those prepares you for the real world. At all! My apartment when I came back to it was a mess. It smelled like wood from the IKEA pieces I had bought that still lay in the boxes (how in the world were those EVER going to get erected?), and my fridge was literally a science project. I only had takeout cartons and to-go boxes that had lost their shapes, but much worse . . . they had all grown spores. Yes, it’s true. I didn’t even know you were supposed to throw them away. Somehow my nutty fourteen-year-old brain would put the half-eaten food back in the fridge rather than in the garbage. Even if I knew, somewhere in my juvenile brain, that I probably wasn’t ever going to return to that General Tso’s chicken, I would just place it next to a half-eaten sandwich. It was as if they should just live together. Like an edible Toy Story where the fridge comes to life when I shut the door.

  But somehow looking every night at the growing laundry pile was the thing that really sent me over the edge. I stared at the massive pile of clothes. It soon became a bubbling blob-like horror movie that would start to have the Jaws theme every time I looked at it. The chords of the piano were slow, duh na, duh na, duh na duhna duhna, and then at the height of the music, where you know that gosh-darn shark is coming, I would quickly look away and shut my eyes and the music would end. Ahhhhhhh. The hum of my old fridge and the moaning sounds of the alley cats would soothe me. Sleep. But sleep was scary too. Somewhere in West Hollywood I was very alone. I needed something to comfort me. Something to fall in love with. Something romantic. Something transportive. Something safe. I opened a classic novel I had acquired and read myself to sleep. Somewhere around when the sun came up, I felt safe enough to
close my eyes, my book right next to me like a stuffed animal or the lover I wasn’t old enough to have.

  I went to work the next day, and I could tell my boss, who had hired me on the novel idea of having a washed-up former child actor behind the counter, was patient with all my learning curves but was also irritated with me. “You must be there for the muffin deliveries! At seven a.m. sharp! Or else we won’t have anything to put in the damn cases!!!” “OK, got it.” It was a little in-one-ear-out-the-other. Another time he came in when I was doing dishes (which, come to think of it, probably subconsciously made me realize you actually had to “do” dishes rather than just put everything in the sink and pray, like I did at home), but he walked in and said, very sharply and exasperatedly, “Don’t use the abrasive side of the brush!!!! All the pastry cases are getting scratched and foggy and you can’t see what’s inside!!!!!” “Oh, you’re right! I thought it was getting it cleaner, but yeah, I see what you mean! Huh, I was wondering why that was happening.” He looked at me with wide eyes and clearly went in the other room to mutter “idiot” under his breath. But again, he liked me and I had truly ruined some stuff. He had every right to be miffed.

  I went back to my apartment after work, feeling like a bit of a loser. I looked around the dirty apartment. Everything I touched turned to shit. The fridge! The sink! The furniture that lay lifeless on the floor in fifty pieces. And the laundry! I didn’t even know what I was wearing because everything I owned was in that basket, taunting me . . . AAAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG. I hurled myself on the bed and clutched my pillow, staring at the wall all night. As the sun crept into the creepy alley outside my bedroom window, I knew I had survived another night. But this wasn’t what I pictured when I left that courthouse with a skip in my step. Something had to give. I loved a self-improvement movie montage and I had to actually create one! Cue the music! OK, what did I need?

  First, basics!

  Toilet paper.

  Sponge.

  Soap.

  Vacuum. (Intimidating!)

  A man to put my furniture together.

  Bedside table.

  Lamp.

  More books for that table.

  Yeah, books, books were great! Books make me happy and help me feel not so alone.

  I chipped away at things one by one. But where the montage really started to soar was when I walked into a store to buy a laundry basket. There were all sorts of shapes and sizes, a whole wall of baskets. After holding different ones—as I knew I would be hoofing it several blocks to a Laundromat and I needed it to fit my body—I picked one and walked out with my brand-new vessel.

  I bought detergent, bleach, and fabric softener. I grabbed my book and enough clothes to fill the basket sensibly and headed out the door. In my maiden voyage to the Laundromat, the whole way I was talking to myself . . . Bleach first, detergent, wait, first cycle has bleach and detergent? That doesn’t sound right. And the liquid fabric softener goes in the dryer? But isn’t that going to make the clothes wet all over again? I was very confused. It doesn’t seem like all three go into the wash? What? No! I had given myself a stomachache. I walked in. I went to the machines. Which ones were which? Was this the washer or the dryer? What the hell? The circle shapes all around started to close in on me. I was Michael Keaton in Mr. Mom before he figures it all out! I was screwed. I just stood there. After a while, like a kid cheating on a test, I just started to spy on whatever other people were doing. OK, that guy is pulling out wet clothes, so that must be the WASHER. Aha! Got it! Right. It was also the kind of place where some of the washers were upright so the washer and the dryer looked the same, stacked on top of each other, which confused me so much because I was convinced all the water would come pouring out and I would make the biggest fool out of myself ever.

  Eventually I had put some clothes in the washer, but then, Do I put the liquid right in the clothes??? Wait, is this going to stain everything??? Oh God! And the bleach smells likes it’s going to disintegrate my clothes on the spot!!! Needless to say I put the bleach directly on the clothes and then I put the liquid fabric softener right in the dryer.

  When I pulled out the Dalmatian-spotted jeans and the gummy towels, I knew I had done it all wrong, but there was always a next time and the next time would include Justine! I clearly needed a tutorial.

  She came with me and gave me some tips and direction! It was a revelation! Of course! It all made such sense! Wow! The whole movie went from ’80s comedy to glorious black-and-white! Yes, the opposite! But that’s what I wanted in this new world I was creating for myself. It was the romance I was waiting for. Think old French movie!

  Every weekend I would look forward to this ritual. I didn’t feel alone there. I could be domestic, read my book, and eat some Chinese from the place next door in a carton with chopsticks. Everything fell into place, and I got so good at laundry that it became a point of pride. I loved stain removal. The art of getting your whites white. Pouring in my fabric softener and bleach so that I was more of a chef making a stew getting the ratios and flavors just right! And once I had finished my classic novel, I was excited to go to the bookstore and get a new one. I read books by Tolstoy, Jane Austen, Joan Didion, Bukowski, John Fante, and Kurt Vonnegut. The Fountainhead. To Kill a Mockingbird. I read everything. What was my next adventure going to be?

  As I roamed the book aisles, I had a realization that I had dropped out of school. Once I was emancipated, I just simply dropped out. Oh my God!!! I had a pit in my stomach again. What was I going to do? I had been on film sets my whole life, receiving three hours a day of tutoring. I hated when I went back to school because kids were merciless, a chapter you are supposed to face, but fuck it, I had enough to face at this point, I wasn’t going back voluntarily, but what??? I didn’t want to be uneducated. Oh my God, oh my God???? Just when I had mastered laundry, I was panicking all over again. What did I want to learn? What was my calling? Tears. I don’t know. I know acting, but that’s gone for now, and I don’t know if they will have me back. People thought I was crazy—even though I wasn’t, I just grew up too fast! Aaaarrrrrrgggghhhhhhhhh. OK, pull it together. The walls of books started to envelop me. I looked at all the bindings and the jackets and shelves and the titles and the fonts and I started to come back to earth. The book jackets soothed me, a ritual I enjoy to this day. Books? Book smart? I can read. I love books. Everyone seems to brag about being well-read. Books not only give me pleasure, they are good for me! Healthy. Screw it! I will create my own school! If I can live on my own, I can self-educate too! I will buy a dictionary and study every word. I will steep myself in all the things I love! I love laundry! I love books! I love music! I think I like art (go to museums, quick!). I decided right then and there I would not be defeated. Failure was not an option! I would create my own curriculum.

  And so I did just that! I read! I cleaned! I worked! Oh God, work! Back at the coffeehouse, my boss was having another “you suck at this” moment with me. And as I was explaining another thing I had messed up, he looked at me with those saucer eyes of his one last time and said to me with clenched teeth . . . “Why don’t you go out and find yourself!” And even though he was half trying to get rid of me, he was half right! I looked around: This wasn’t it. This wasn’t my destiny.

  I quit that day. Went back to my apartment, went right up to Justine’s door, and knocked with fervor (word of the day from my annotated dictionary) until she opened it. “If I found us a new place to live, would you ever want to move out and be roommates and get the hell out of this shit hole?” She looked at me. “Well, Darren and I just broke up, so sure! I’m in.” Yaaaaaaaaaaay! A roommate!!!! This might actually become fun! I ran back to my place and started circling apartments for rent in the paper. Listening to the cats fighting in the alley, I looked out my window and waited, as I did each morning, for the sun to come up to tell me everything was going to be OK. And it was. I wasn’t scared anymore. I was ready! And even thoug
h it was only laundry, it taught me how to tackle everything moving forward. You fall in love and try to conquer by way of mastering it!

  My hero, Nan

  TAURUS

  When I woke up in the hospital, I glanced over and took a deep look at my new baby girl, who I had decided with my husband to name Frankie. She looked peaceful and sweet after her journey into the world—what a ride, huh, kid? I watched her, and after a little while she really looked at me. She had need in her eyes; my first daughter, Olive, was born independent and has never given me that needy look to this day. As much as I loved having this moment, something felt strange. I started feeling like a roller-coaster free fall was happening in my stomach. My head clenched tight, and tears started to pour out of me uncontrollably. Then came the sounds. Because I couldn’t keep them inside. The wailing sobs were loud, and as I gasped for air it hit me . . . Frankie looked like my mom.

  Like my mother, Frankie is also a Taurus in the astrological realm of life. And here she lay, looking at me, and I felt so many emotions that I simply could not classify them individually. This was a mosaic of things that made no sense together, yet if I broke it down, it might help me stop convulsing.

  OK, number one, I asked myself, what is my worst fear? Well, the answer was easy; my biggest emotional button in life is my mother. I am a girl trying to be a woman, and being a mother first now, but I was being dragged and hog-tied back to childhood stuff that maybe I have never put to bed.