Let's Just Say It Wasn't Pretty (9 page)

Bill Woods, Jr., was a professional photographer who documented life in Fort Worth for several decades after World War II. His studio on Hawkins Street was a hub of activity. He drove a yellow VW Bug. He wore bow ties. He took a picture of an adolescent girl in a bathing suit with a football-sized tumor protruding from her thigh. He took a picture of Eleanor Roosevelt shaking hands with a man in front of a curtain. He took a picture of a man holding a rifle standing next to a dead bear hanging by its feet. He took a picture of two nuns seated in a bare room with a small TV in the corner and a black man in a janitor’s uniform cleaning a white porcelain bowl. I bought every one of the twenty thousand photographs Bill Woods, Jr., took with his large-format camera.

Bill Woods’s photographs were commissioned by a variety of local patrons, who posed in front of a series of backdrops culled from real life. But reality vanished with the click of Mr. Woods’s camera. Diane Arbus said, “For me the subject of the picture is always more important than the picture. And
more complicated.” That was the result, if not the intention, of Bill Woods’s life work. His subjects were, as Diane Arbus said, more complicated than the story each photograph was trying to tell.

Bill Woods was no Diane Arbus. Bill Woods got the job done. He recorded life in Fort Worth. He gave his clients validation, just not the way they expected. Bill Woods’s work is a reminder that none of us are that much different from the folks of Fort Worth. We all long to feel confident, look great, and do well. We all want to be remembered. Sometimes we’re lost. Sometimes we’re found. But one thing’s for sure: no matter how much control we have over our appearance, we’re all awkward, laughable, ugly, and beautiful at the same time. The only difference between Bill Woods’s patrons and me is this: my life has been documented by more than one photographer. Like others, to the best of my ability I’ve tried to create a Diane Keaton I want the future to see.

I woke up in the middle of the night five hours after my mother’s body, draped in a purple cloth, had been wheeled out of the kitchen on a gurney. I woke up knowing there would never be another person to replace her. I would have to rely on myself. I knew that the days of little high-foreheaded Di-annie Oh Hall-ie had been wheeled away with Dorothy.

Life keeps moving forward, as if following a predictable time line. I was a girl, I grew up, I became an adult, I reached middle age, I worked hard to accomplish my goals, I got old, I watched people die, and I said my goodbyes, including farewells to a couple of sparrows who flew into my plate-glass window unaware. I’ve had a life, and soon it will be reasonable to expect me to let it go with grace. But that’s not the way it works for some of us.

Like the sparrows, I’ve flown into some serious plate-glass windows, but I survived. On the way, I’ve learned a few things. Namely this: beauty’s a bouquet gathered in loss. The sad part about my bouquet is that it keeps growing. Now that Mother is gone, darkness is spreading across my fading petals. Light is beautiful, but darkness is eternal.

I live with the beauty of regret, and the memory of love. I feel it when I feed cheddar cheese to Dexter’s rats, Ludicrous and Nala. I watch them hold the orange strips in their almost human hands as they trim the cheese with delicate precision. I see Mother’s hands. I see her fingers throwing bread crumbs to the pelicans on the seawall. I believed in Mother’s permanence. I believed in the radiance of her face in the photograph Dad took of her with her head thrown back in laughter. When I try to make her photograph laugh in three dimensions, I feel the sorrow of beauty lost.

There’s “a bird’s-eye view,” “a gleam in the eye,” and “a roving eye.” There’s “a sight for sore eyes” and “a worm’s-eye view,” too. Don’t forget “all eyes are on you”—that’s a favorite. Or “an eye for an eye” or “don’t bat an eye” or, especially, “be in the eye of the storm.” I love “bedroom eyes” and “I can’t take my eyes off of you,” but I don’t want “a black eye.” I’d give anything to be “eye candy” and “more than meets the eye.” There’s always the old standby “Don’t try to pull the wool over my eyes.” As far as I’m concerned, I don’t want to take the “red-eye,” even if “we’re seeing eye to eye.” If you want to, try to get some “shut-eye,” then don’t let the “stars get in your eyes,” because you’re the “apple of my eye.” And never “turn a blind eye,” “without batting an eye,” especially with “your eyes wide open.” In the end, “there wasn’t a dry eye in the house,” because “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

“I fantasized about being an ‘astrogator.’ We collide with an asteroid; there is not enough fuel to get back to earth. We turn the ship straight away from the sun, we voyage out beyond the orbit of Pluto. We know we will perish in the interstellar void,
yet we hope to radio back to earth images of beauty never seen as well as valuable information.… On August 19, 1998, my neurologist told me [Alzheimer’s] is what the PET scan indicated. And here I am on that spaceship.… I find myself more visually sensitive. Everything seems richer: lines, planes, contrast. It is a wonderful compensation.… We [who have Alzheimer’s disease] can appreciate clouds, leaves, flowers as we never did before.… As the poet Theodore Roethke put it, ‘In a dark time the eye begins to see.’ ”

I was with my friend Diane English at the Landmark theater on Pico. We were eating popcorn and watching
Silver Linings Playbook
. The setup went like this: Bradley Cooper is locked up in a mental institution. He’s bipolar. That means he has no control over his impulses. He wants his wife back. One day his mother gets him out. They drive home. He runs into a friend. The friend invites him over for dinner. Bradley Cooper meets Jennifer Lawrence. They lock eyes.

That’s when the movie stopped cold. That’s when my heart went into my throat. Bradley Cooper says, “You look nice.” Jennifer Lawrence says, “Thank you.” Bradley Cooper pauses, then says, “I’m not flirting with you.” Jennifer Lawrence says, “Oh, I didn’t think you were.” Bradley Cooper says, “I just see that you made an effort and I’m gonna be
better with my wife, I’m working on that. I wanna acknowledge her beauty. I never used to do that. I do that now. ’Cause we’re gonna be better than ever.” It was like the line Montgomery Clift said to Elizabeth Taylor in
A Place in the Sun:
“I love you. I’ve loved you since the first moment I saw you. I guess maybe I’ve even loved you before I saw you.”

That was the subtext. That was the moment. It was like Renée Zellwegger when she said “shut up” to Tom Cruise in
Jerry Maguire:
“Just shut up. You had me at ‘hello.’ ” It was better than every great kiss I’d ever seen or been given. It was flawed beauty. Fucked-up beauty. It was bigger and better than life. It was art. It was sex, and it was love. Bradley and Jennifer didn’t know it, but that was the moment we became a threesome. Even now, months later, I can close my eyes and look into Bradley’s eyes knowing he’s seeing me and Jennifer. I look into Jennifer’s eyes and know she’s seeing his and mine. I know what he’s hiding. I know what she’s afraid of.… I own their comings and goings. I’m the third wheel of a beautiful moment on film. And it’s all in my head.

His curly blond hair is suddenly brown. His angelic baby face is adolescent. He still hugs me. I’m still his Cheeks. But the most remarkable thing is … no matter how much Duke hates my nagging about his homework (“More detail, Duke”), no
matter how much he screams when I tell him we’re watching the documentary
Poor Kids
on PBS instead of
Jersey Shore
, from which he’s memorized quotes like “Get your weiner cleaner” and “Work blows shit for Skittles,” no matter how much I harp on eating more avocado, and greens, and his oatmeal with almonds, which he hides at the bottom of the trash can every day, no matter how much I tell him honesty is the best policy, no matter how much I hammer him on his tennis technique, or being a good friend, or listening to a conversation instead of dominating it, or reminding him to stop following his impulses without regard for other people, or to sit up straight at the dinner table, or stop interrupting when other people are talking, and what’s with the monologues or, rather, the endless rants … no matter what …

He loves me. He still kisses me and wants to touch my chubby cheeks, which are anything but chubby. He loves me unconditionally. What have I done for Duke? Nothing except be the poster girl for “Harried Mother.”

I can answer that. It’s in my eyes, the picture window I look through. It’s eating Quinn’s parmesan & rosemary popcorn after walking Emmie. Sometimes it’s hiding in plain sight, like the note I found on my bed: “Mom, I am sorry I’m retarted, and can’t be good for a week. From Duke.” Sometimes it’s
a glass of Layer Cake cabernet with ice. It’s the Statue of Liberty’s right hand holding the torch, and the call from Jimmy, the man who’s washed our car for the last fifteen years, telling me he bowled 300. It was Mom and Dad kissing in the shower three weeks before he died. This fall it was Morgan Freeman singing “That’s Life” on the set of
Life Itself
. It was listening to Tom, the camera operator, tell me about the red barn he bought in upstate New York. It was the hairdresser Donna Marie’s surprise wedding proposal from John, her partner of twelve years. It was Mikey, the makeup artist, whose wife took the big leap and jumped out of a plane at age fifty-eight. The thrill was so intoxicating, she forgot to open her parachute until it was almost too late. Crippled for the rest of her life, she said it was “worth it.”

What is beauty? It was the recent healing-humor, funny-is-money phone call from Woody. “So, Half-Wit. The Golden Globes wanted to know where I could find someone stupid enough to come and pick up my Cecil B. DeMille Award, and all of a sudden it occurred to me, I don’t know why, but your face in a beekeeper’s hat came to mind.” The next day he followed up with this: “I call you at ten to eight your time in the morning, and you’re not in. I don’t understand it. Where do you go at ten to eight in the morning? You’re like a vampire. What is it with you? Look, after this appearance, maybe you’d start to get some roles as maids, or maybe maiden aunts, or a
night watchman, or, who knows, one of those washerwomen people, the kind that come in and clean the office after hours. Worm, call me back.”

It’s my brother Randy’s long fingers as he toasts me on my sixty-eighth birthday with a cup of his favorite drink, instant coffee and Coke. It’s my friend Larry, whose love I keep in my hip pocket. It’s the other note I found on my bed: “Mom, Sorry! I want to be a better tennis player. So I left. Don’t worry. I just want to play. I’m sorry you don’t love me anymore. Love Duke.” It’s a knock on the door I don’t answer. It’s the two candy hearts I pick up off the floor that say, “Be mine.” These are the sum of beauty’s parts.

Diana Vreeland said she’d spent a lifetime looking for something she’d never seen. That’s not a bad pursuit. Like Diana Vreeland, I regret what I haven’t seen, but I’m thankful for what I have, and I promise myself this: I will try harder to look for what I don’t see when it’s staring me right in the eye.

Duke didn’t say anything about the three hats on top of my head as he opened his presents Christmas morning. As we walked on Venice Boulevard, he didn’t mention the henna tattoo I got with
DUKE
painted on my left hand and
DEXTER
on the right. At his birthday party in the Woodland Hills Sky High Sports trampoline center, he didn’t mention my Rosie the Riveter ensemble with red bandanna, hoop earrings, and big, belted khakis rolled above my black Converse tennis shoes.
He’s ignored my recent habit of sporting swimwear apparel on the street: e.g., two long-sleeved Quiksilver crew-necked rash guards over Sea-a-Sucker board shorts with dark glasses and a hat. Every day I drive Duke to the bus stop with my Calvin Klein plaid men’s pajama bottoms peeking out from under my black North Face Triple C full-length down coat. Every day my hair is in rollers. Duke has nothing to say about that, either.

These are my “save the best for the last,”
Rebel Without a Cause
days. These are my “go for broke, grab anything you want to wear, because why not” days. Recently we went to dinner at Toscano to celebrate Dexter’s passage from learner’s permit to driver’s license. I wore a pair of men’s extra-large ski pants. Duke ignored them. He didn’t care when I kicked off my six-inch Yves Saint Laurent platforms. When we toasted Dexter with Orangina in wineglasses, I bet Duke five dollars I could pick up my Visa card with my bare toes under the table. When I did, Duke went on an “It’s so unfair, Cheeks” rant. “Cheeks, my cute little pie,” he said, “my precious, my only squeaky in the whole wide world, you cheated. You did. You stuck your hands under the table and put the Visa card between your toes. That’s cheating, Cheeks.” I told him he was crazy. His response? Totally predictable: “This is a Mom Cheek fighting-to-cheat day. Admit it, Cheek Cheater. You cheated.”