My First Five Husbands (34 page)

One day, as my shy little Catholic nurse was bustling about, and Oliver Hailey was visiting with his wife, two little girls, and his mother, a gorgeous young man appeared at the door with a boom box, from which issued sexy, slinky music. He slowly began to strip. Yep. Strip. Vicki Lawrence had sent him as a surprise. And surprised we were! The dear little nurse squatted down in a metal locker and tried to close the door. The rest of us stared, transfixed, until he was down to his G-string. Oliver’s mother remained quite composed, the girls giggled, and I just tried to live through it. I do hope I remembered to tip him. He needed encouragement. Turns out he was a sweet young man from Peoria and this was his first strip job. My God, the least we could have done was egg him on a bit, twirling some pillowcases or something. Hollywood can be tough on newcomers.

All told, I stayed in the hospital a little over three weeks. Doctors’ orders called for me to stay longer, but I decided the hell with doctors’ orders. I weighed 133 when I checked in, and when I got out of intensive care, only 121. They wanted me back up to 133, but I left at 125, and they could jolly well like it. (I did.)

“You’re smart to leave,” my little nurse told me as I packed. “The entire floor above you has come down with pneumonia.”

Drago insisted over my weakly croaked protestations that he drive me home. I thought he was the last person on earth I wanted to see, but even
he
was bumped up a notch when my dad said jovially, “Oh, guess who I invited to come visit you!”

And in walked The Greek. Good Christ and little spanakopita.

Drying my hair with a towel, I ignored him until he left, which was blessedly soon, but not soon enough for me. Back at my house with Bill and Marie, feeling like my insides were going to fall out onto the carpet at any moment, I crawled into the daybed in my office, too sore to climb even one stair. Bill went up to bed, but Marie pulled a chair up to my bedside, opened her Bible, and began badgering me to accept Jesus Christ as my personal savior.

“Marie, I’m extremely tired,” I croaked diplomatically. “I don’t feel like visiting.”

But she droned on and on and on. I don’t know who I wanted to strangle most—her, Bill, or myself. The next morning, her proselytizing done, they departed for Ardmore and I began the difficult healing ordeal. Getting around was difficult. I couldn’t sit in a chair; I had to perch on the arms. The drugs played hopscotch in my brain. I tried to sign a check and couldn’t remember how to spell “and.” Was it
a-n-d
, or
a-d-n
? A favorite poster of Koko, the gorilla who’d learned sign language, now terrified me and had to be taken down. Norm talked to me every night on the phone. Once, I fell asleep listening to his voice and woke up to a dial tone.

I croaked for the next two years, my range lower and noticeably impaired. Where were those high notes? Gone, my darlings,
all
gone. No more
Lucia di Lammermoor
. Now I sounded like a muted whiskey baritone.
Mama’s Family
was miked, of course, so I was able to croak my lines until the season ended early and we went on hiatus. I’d been cast as the Fortune Teller in Thornton Wilder’s
The Skin of Our Teeth
at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego with Sada Thompson, Blair Brown, and Harold Gould (who later played Rose’s beau on
The Golden Girls
), but I couldn’t project past the first few rows. Director Jack O’Brien had me use a megaphone, with disappointing results. We also recorded it for PBS. My hoarse six-note range made it impossible to develop that juicy character the way I heard her in my head. I was only middlin’ fair in this role I was so right for! Maybe someday I’ll get to play it again—on a double bill with “The Three Little Kittens.”

I went to some no-frills health spa for weeks of colonics and raw vegetables. Infused with new energy, I was frisky as a young goat, when one day, my old friend from high school, Lynn Pebbles, called.

“Eddi-Rue, you’ll never guess who I saw recently. Tom Keel!”

I was suddenly back on the bus with my high school squeeze in his hep leather jacket.

I just want you to know, Eddi-Rue, I’m not a sex fiend.

“He just got divorced, and he looks great,” said Lynn. “If you don’t go after him, I’ve half a mind to give him a call myself.”

You don’t have to worry, Eddi-Rue. I won’t take advantage of you
.

Wanna hear about Husband #5?

CHAPTER TWENTY

M
y dear reader, whatever else you might take away from this book, please hold fast to this idea:
Be careful, careful, careful whom you marry
.

We’ve covered four very good reasons not to make that fateful trip down the aisle: pregnancy, pressure, panic, and…more panic. Good looks and romantic notions are nice, but not enough. I hate to admit it, but sometimes, love is not enough. There was something to love—or at least like—about each of my first five husbands. There’s no such thing as an Ideal Man, but if I could take a few ingredients from each of the men I married and mix them in a big bowl, I might whip up an Almost Ideal Husband Pudding. Take a pint of meltingly great looks, musical talent, and humor from Tom Lloyd Bish. Equal parts kindness, genius IQ, literary talent, courage, and artsy quirkiness from Norman Hartweg. A pinch of smelling sweet and a dash of orgasm from The Italian. A soupçon of high spirits from The Greek. And from my fifth husband, Tom Keel, a generous dollop of vigor and good looks, plus a gallon of gasket-blowing sex appeal.

Yum. My pudding bowl runneth over. Almost.

I called Keel in Dallas, and he was delighted to hear from me. He was planning to visit his mother, who lived in San Juan Capistrano, an ultrachic town down the coast from L.A.

“I’d love to drive up and see you,” he said. And I said, “Terrific!”

It would be a blast to see him again. It was so easy talking to him on the phone. After all, I’d known him for thirty-four years, we’d been good friends as kids, dah-dee-dah-dee-da…Okay, it was also pretty damned exciting, and when he showed up a week later—well, well,
well,
Miss Pebbles was right. He did indeed look great. These days, it’s not unusual to look great at forty-nine, but you never know; in reunion photos of my high school mates, some looked pretty haggard. Tom was vibrant. Same familiar grin, same sturdy body, same broad shoulders.
Vavoom
. This was one sexy dude.

We talked and talked, laughed and laughed. I don’t remember what we had for dinner, or if we had anything for dinner, except each other. What can I tell you? Hot and heavy when we were teenagers never went further than my bringing him to climaxes by hand while we were parked out at the lake. I remember standing in my parents’ driveway in 1953, saying good-bye to Keel after a visit, aware that this was not the man I wanted for life. At nineteen, however, my life was before me. At forty-nine, the terrain looked quite different.

That night in 1984, with none of the old guilt but all the old chemistry, we finally had an adult sexual experience. And that man had a penis that would stand straight up and dance. No, really.
Dance
. It was a sight to behold. Can other men do that? Certainly none I’ve ever known. I found Keel to be highly sexed and pleasantly uncomplicated and just as big a sweetheart as he always was. FQ Rating? Oh, definitely A. With extra credit for his amazing dancing
oo-hoo
(as Mother called our private parts).

A lot had happened in Keel’s life since we were kids. He had had four children with his ex-wife: three older girls and a son, David, then fourteen. Just before Christmas of 1979, his father (that old bear, Louie) had gotten desperately sick while in Mexico with his wife, Lil, and her twin sister, also named Lil, oddly enough. Tom flew down, put them all on a plane for San Juan Capistrano, then drove Louie’s car back, arriving three days later—the day after Louie had died and been immediately cremated. In Louie’s will, he left everything to his wife. Nothing to Tom, not a sou. Nada. Not even a memento.

Ah, Lil. And Lil. Therein lies a tale. Lilian and Lilly, both widows. They lived within blocks of each other and looked identical, except Aunt Lil had a sweet face and Mother Lil had hard lines etched by a lifetime of crankiness. They shared an astounding dinner-table dynamic that usually ended with Aunt Lil rushing off in tears. Aunt Lil died not long after I met her. I was sorry I didn’t get to know her. And sorry I
did
get to know Mother Lil.

I went to visit Keel at his pleasant Dallas condo with his happy little Scottie named Harrod, and Tom drove us around Dallas in his pickup, drinking beer at the wheel. (You could do that in Texas in those days.) We were residents of two very different worlds. I, an ambitious actress with laserlike focus on my career. He, not particularly happy or unhappy in his job as a computer specialist for the phone company, not looking for advancement, just troubleshooting whatever problems were handed to him. He knew computers like the back of his hand, but I think he was bored.

“I tend to drift downstream. Like flotsam,” he told me. “I go along until something reaches out to snag me.”

On the one hand, this sounded like a lovely Zen way to be, but on the other hand…
Oh, dear,
I thought when he gave me that analogy,
we could get into trouble here
. My style was the opposite of passive. I tended to run for the cliff like a stampeded buffalo—
BAH-RUMPH! BAHRUMPH!
—and leap over, all feet flying. Maybe not the best setup for a lasting relationship, but have I ever let anything like that stop me? Hell, no.
BAH-RUMPH! BAH-RUMPH!
Stand back, Sally! I’m dangerous! And you can’t teach an old buffalo new tricks. At least, not without more therapy than this buffalo had had.

It was easy for me to start rationalizing: “Hey, this Keel thing could work. This
should
work. He’s a good man with a lot of qualities I find very attractive. Lovely, masculine, sexy qualities! What’s not to love?”

The man could shinny up a tall tree to get me a bird’s nest. Up he goes! Like a kid! Where does a man of fifty get that kind of energy? His physical gifts were bewitching. His personality was fun. His Texas accent and colorful way of expressing himself were charming. He made chili from scratch. He mixed well with people. He drove like a pro. He was reliable. Maybe a bit unenlightened, but he was willing to be taught. (Like I knew enough to be teaching anyone. Please! I was a fourth-grader teaching a kindergarten kid. I tell you—I’m dangerous.)

Long story short, we were married April of 1984 in Ardmore at my father’s house, with about a dozen old friends. The night before the wedding, we went to The Hamburger Inn, a place we used to frequent in high school, and although I was now a vegetarian, we ordered the same humongous hamburgers we’d had in the good old days. With all the fixin’s! Yum, yum! I spent the subsequent hours of that chilly, moonlit night in the front yard, upchucking like crazy, Keel at my side. I kept remembering how I’d thrown up my fish dinner during my honeymoon night in Maine with The Italian. Was this a foreboding, or just my natural reaction to eating a hamburger? Buffalos are vegetarians, after all.

The wedding was very nice. I wore a little white silk suit and he wore a dark one. We looked terrific—trim, young, and very happy. On our way to L.A., we stopped at some little town in New Mexico, where he bought me a lovely pair of silver and amethyst earrings. Of course, I still have them. We found a justice of the peace, then went to a motel, where he started drinking beer, his libation of choice. He downed one after the other and quickly…got somewhat
plastered
. Glued to the TV.
Oh, no, here we go again,
I thought.
Everything’s fine until the honeymoon, and then—
thud.

In L.A., Keel’s son, David, joined us, following his mother’s wishes. He did need his father at his age, and it was fun having him around.

Tom Keel and me in high school, Ardmore, Oklahoma, 1950. Hot ’n’ heavy at the time.

Tom Keel and me cutting our wedding cake, 1984. Hot ’n’ heavy again.

He was a cute kid who wanted to be a rock ’n’ roll drummer. Mark was still into rock ’n’ roll, although it had caused tinnitus in one ear, a condition he’s struggled with ever since. David kept the drum set in his bedroom—Mark’s old bedroom—and practiced a lot. Hey, drummers gotta drum. Rockers gotta rock. But I was happy when Keel told me, “I play a classical music cassette in the car when I’m driving him to school.”

I said, “Oh, that’s good. Classical music.”

Keel and I were in an L.A. bookstore one day and ran smack into Norman Hartweg wheeling around a corner. I’d neglected to tell Norm I was getting married. Caught off guard, I made awkward introductions.

“Norman Hartweg, meet Tom Keel…my husband.”

Norm blatantly gave me a look like I had lost my mind. Yes, Norman. I got married—
again
! You don’t have to look at me like I’ve been caught with my hand in the cookie jar.

Norm said, “Rue, I’ve been thinking we should write a play together. I’ve done some research on an old play by Plautus about an Athens merchant and his son.”

I was intrigued. I bought an IBM home computer, Keel taught me the bare basics of operating it, and Norm and I started writing.

K
eel was very dependent on my company, which soon became a problem, but what else could he be? He’d left his life and everyone he knew in Dallas. I knew he was lonely, and oh Lord, it made me painfully aware of how selfish I was. While he waited for a job to open up at the phone company, he did repair work on my pool. He knew how to do that kind of thing, a talent that’s always thrilled me. And how sexy he looked doing it! Watching him repair that pool was a treat for me. As I sat at my computer creating a whole new ancient Greek world on paper, he’d pass by the window pushing a wheelbarrow full of cement, grinning in at me with an expression I can only describe as…sweet and full of longing. I was working on my creation, happy as a clam, and he was working on the pool with that lonely-puppy look. I would often go out to visit him while he worked.

Watching Keel when Lil was around was harder to take. She told him when to roll the car windows up or down, how fast to drive, practically told him when to breathe!