Let's Just Say It Wasn't Pretty (7 page)

Our love didn’t include hugs and kisses, and I remember only a few times when I held his hand like other girls did with their fathers. This made our eyes—not what we saw, or how we engaged the world, but the concrete, undeniable shape of our eyes—all the more meaningful. Like I said, it makes sense that if I’m looking for a way to understand how my father played into who I am, of course I’d find myself sitting on a bench twenty-three years after his death, trying to see beyond the blue of the ocean into the once living blue of my father’s eyes. It’s a risk worth taking. And I take it every day. Even if I’m distracted. I never fail to think of the boy who loved the ocean, the boy who grew up to be the man with the house sitting on the edge of the continent. Sometimes I imagine combining Dad’s eyes with mine. Together they’d slide so far down the hill they’d touch the ocean below. Only he and I, and maybe hangdog Speed, know the joy of the rise before the beauty of the fall.

Dad must have spent fifteen years of his life looking at the largest body of water on earth. I think of all the times he dove off the cliffs of Palos Verdes and Divers Cove. I think of him stretching his feet against the sand on Rincon and Dana Point
and Zuma Beach and Topanga, too. I think of him surfing at Salt Creek Beach, and camping at Doheny State Beach. I think of the sound our Buick station wagon made as he drove across the train tracks to San Clemente. I think of the chair he sat in at the old house across the bay from the Balboa Fun Zone, in Newport Beach. I think of that same chair with Dad in it, at his new house, the last house, the house overlooking the mouth of the bay at the tip of Corona del Mar. Where did it go?

Dad didn’t leave a record of what he saw, or the way he saw it. Yet nearly one-quarter of his life was given to the art of looking. All those grabbed hours, those sunburned moments collected over a lifetime of observations shared with no one but himself. He must have known that the ritual would disappear when he did.

Sometimes, to help kick-start one of our imaginary conversations, I play back our one milestone memory. I’ve told it before, but it’s the only one I have. It was 1963. The curtain had fallen on Santa Ana High School’s production of
Little Mary Sunshine
. My rendition of Nancy Twinkle’s “Mata Hari,” a song about a spy who brought men to their knees by “doing this and that-a” had just given me the only standing ovation of my life. On the way to change out of my costume I saw Dad approach from backstage. He stopped in front of the red velvet curtain, stepped in close, and looked me straight in the eyes for
what seemed like an eternity. He did not speak, yet his face, lit by the blue of his eyes, told me a story. It was not the story of a father who repeatedly reminded his daughter to plan ahead and use her noggin. All plans had been temporarily canceled. This father’s face paled from the glow reflected in his eyes. This father told the story of a daughter who, against all odds, had suddenly landed on the sacred ground of “right,” even though her “right” was a multitude of “wrongs.” She would put these wrongs to good use in a venue she would continue to pursue for the rest of her life. Performing. It would be the only time I would see my father’s face beam with pride for the very wrongs that made me right; by this I mean my endless tears, the vague distractions, the awkward hesitancy, and my annoying brand of being “so sensitive that you’re insensitive.” Just like the standing ovation, it was the first and only time Dad looked at me with unabashed joy.

I’m still trying to convince myself that the identical shape of our eyes must mean we were not opposites. We must have shared feelings and dreams and fears, too. We must have. It’s true I collect objects of beauty, like John Stezaker’s collages, while Dad collected jars full of nickels and dimes. I love the G-Wagen. Dad was consumed by the gas he saved with his Toyota 4Runner. Dad thought function was beauty, not form. I choose form over function every time. On the functioning front, Dad tried to make me do things right, like “plan ahead”
and “look before you leap.” But there was always something wrong interfering. That is, until
Little Mary Sunshine
. Dad didn’t write his thoughts down the way Mom did. There is no evidence. My investigation into our similarities is nothing more than conjecture. All that’s left is the ocean he stared at, and our tumbling eyes. It doesn’t give me much to go on.

“Dad, can I ask you something from the other side of the great mystery? How much of what you saw is what I see? It might sound crazy, but sometimes I believe I’m seeing things from inside your eyes. Am I? I wish. In three short months I will be the same age as you were when you died. I can still see the smoky blue tint of your eyes. I can still see the red velvet curtain, and the crowds parting almost as if I were Maria in
West Side Story
, to your Tony. Here on the bluff, looking at the ocean, I wish I could share with you a truth I’ve come to believe: It’s all in the eyes. Our eyes. Yours. And mine.”

I’ve never known a woman who didn’t love to shop. My sister Robin is a Ross Dress for Less maven. Dorrie, my baby sister, loves North Face and Tommy Hilfiger. My friend Susie Becker is a walking dictionary of fashion, with a closet the size of a costume rental store. Carol Kane loves sacky dresses in prints à la Marni and Yohji Yamamoto. All my girlfriends love to shop. Then there’s my daughter, Dexter. She is not a shopper.

I named Dexter after Cary Grant’s character in
The
Philadelphia Story
, C. K. Dexter Haven. She arrived in a basket eight days into life wearing a pink ruffled dress with a white bib trimmed in red. I was ready for action. Off with the fussy garb and on with a pair of black leggings, matching cap, licorice loafers, and ebony socks. Dexter was among the first to have a Baby Gap wardrobe of gray striped onesies accessorized with plaid bibs, Vans slip-ons, and a Billabong baby trucker hat. For her first Christmas I bought her a hound’s-tooth baby boy suit and a pair of vintage cowboy boots I found at the Long Beach swap meet. My reign of terror ended when she was able to distinguish pink and purple from black and gray. As soon as she could string a couple of sentences together, Dexter let me know she didn’t take to boys’ trousers and she wasn’t going to be a princess in black. She was her own Dexter, and she was living in color.

By the time I turned fifteen, I was my own Diane, and I was living in Black and White. It began after the annual family trip to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, on Hollywood Boulevard, where we saw
The Wizard of Oz
. I was so upset I wrote Judy Garland and asked her to explain why Dorothy had to leave Kansas for Oz. She didn’t write back. But when I saw Cary Grant as C. K. Dexter Haven in
The Philadelphia Story
, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I was so excited I wrote to him, asking for an autographed eight-by-ten glossy. Two weeks later, a manila envelope arrived with a picture of him wearing thick-rimmed
glasses that offset his dark eyes, his square jaw, and that dazzling smile. I didn’t want a picture of Katharine Hepburn, his costar, who I thought of as upper-crust. Plus, I didn’t cotton to her long gowns or shoulder-padded suits with A-shaped skirts. In fact, I felt sorry for her, and could never have dreamed that one day she would be one of my heroes. She probably had to wear corsets every day in order to have an hourglass figure. Big deal. The last thing I wanted was to be hemmed in by a twenty-one-inch waist. Katharine Hepburn must have been terribly uncomfortable. Maybe that’s why she stomped around the Lord family mansion with a snooty sense of entitlement, while Cary Grant skipped through the stuffy atmosphere in double-breasted pin-striped suits with black loafers and white socks. He wore things like white cardigan sweaters thrown ever so casually over his shoulders after a game of tennis, or a tuxedo with a white bow tie for afternoon tea, just for the fun of it, “old man.”

My “Things and Stuff” scrapbook was crammed with pictures of him in turtleneck sweaters under crisp striped shirts, and herringbone jackets over tweed pants. He wasn’t afraid of a polka-dot tie or handkerchief. He wore gray worsted wool suits with wide lapels, a waist button, a white shirt, and his collar up. I also wrote down several of Mr. Grant’s fashion tips. For example, he knew that the proper look of a tie lies in a taut knot. If not executed to perfection, the knot loses
the necessary spring to arch out from the collar. He believed every man should own a variety of ties, adding that he preferred the relatively wide sort while never venturing near what might be considered “over the top.” I wrote down two of his famous quotes. Number 1: “Clothes make the man.” And Number 2: “I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be, and I finally became that person.” I had no doubt I could be the person I wanted to be if I applied Cary Grant’s concept that “clothes make the man”—or, in my case, “clothes make the woman.”

When Dexter turned fifteen, she received a two-hundred-dollar gift card to Victoria’s Secret. I had to drag her into their store on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, where we were welcomed by aisles of boy shorts with messages like “Life of the Party” and “Unwrap Me” printed on the crotch. We passed hipster panties spelling out “No Peeking” and “Let’s Go Skinny Dipping” on the butt. At the million-dollar Fantasy Bra display, Dexter informed me she’d recently become a C cup. Wait a minute, a C? When did that happen? Just yesterday she was a solid B. Was she going to become one of those breast-implant gals who fears she’ll never be big enough? Surely she didn’t want to become an oversized Dexter cow with a couple of udders dragging on the floor? Dex kept insisting she was a C cup. I kept insisting she was a B … and
that was it. End of discussion. She marched off to find a saleslady.

Left alone, I couldn’t get over the evolution of underwear at Victoria’s Secret. Everything was so friendly. Except for those few years in the early 1970s when I didn’t wear one, I’d never thought of bras as anything but a necessity one had to address. Occasionally I come across pictures of myself from the braless days. What the hell was I doing? Soooo unattractive. And my poor little breasts. They must have been confused. At a party recently I reminisced with my old friend Elliott Gould, who said, “Oh, I remember you from the seventies—you had those low-slung tits.” Several years ago, I was about to make a movie called
Because I Said So
when the costume designer, Shay Cunliffe, wanted to know if I had any favorite bras she might borrow in case she needed to buy extras. I brought in several standbys from when I’d filmed
The First Wives Club
, a decade earlier. Trying to hide her shock, Shay gently informed me that most women toss their bras after a year.

When Dexter came back with a saleslady named Jane, she was all fired up. Suddenly she wanted four bras and a dozen panties. This was definitely a new Dex. Passing what seemed to be thousands upon thousands of sexy boy-short panties and padded, leopard-skin bras encrusted in pink rhinestones, Jane walked us to the dressing rooms painted, you got it, pink. A
stock boy almost knocked me down as he flew past with several boxes of undies to put on display. I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of fantasies played havoc in his mind as he placed “Santa’s Helper” ruched panties in drawers under display bins with “Eat Me,” “Come Here Often?” and “69” printed on a veritable universe of crotches.

Unaffected, Jane measured Dexter for her cup size, taking note of her broad back. Was Dexter a swimmer? she inquired. Dexter nodded. And yes, Jane agreed, it appeared Dexter’s cup size was a C. She suggested that when in doubt Dexter might want to try both the C cup and the B. Now, that’s an expert for you. With that taken care of, she handed Dexter what could only be described as bras on a stick in every imaginable shape and style. Reassured, Dexter shut the door, while I checked out the vibe at Victoria’s. This is what I saw: I saw a family of women from varying walks of life loving their underwear. I wished sex was as harmless and free-spirited as the atmosphere in Victoria’s Secret. Not to cast aspersions, but there are women like Jodi Arias and Jean Harris for whom sex goes awry. But here in benign Victoria’s Secret, it’s easy to forget that sex is capable of bringing out such murderous rage. Speaking of Victoria, I wonder if there is an actual Victoria. If so, I’d like to meet her sometime and have a serious chat about her “Eat Me” underwear. All in the name of good fun, mind you.

Shame permeated the ambience in the bra department of Newberry’s five-and-ten-cent store in Santa Ana, where I worked as a salesgirl in 1960. Bras were embarrassing, dreary things; certainly not fun. There were no colors. Each style sat in ugly plastic boxes, in aisle after aisle filled with other ugly plastic boxes. Women didn’t come to Newberry’s expecting a private dressing room with a lovely Jane-type saleswoman carrying her ever ready measuring tape while dispensing sage advice. No way. Buying a bra was like buying Kotex. The unattended cotton Maidenform bras had names like “Snoozable” and “Sweet Dreams.” Hardly dangerous, and hardly sexy. After hours of folding them neatly before placing them into containers, I felt nothing if not embarrassed, but also secretly curious. One day I got caught red-handed placing a 32B padded Wonderbra over my sweater to see what it would look like. Oh my God, you’d think I’d committed a crime. Mr. Olsen, the assistant manager, immediately downgraded me to a cash register in the hardware department. He didn’t understand. I’d been compelled to feel the cushioned fabric that made one’s breasts a Wonder.