Slice and Dice (19 page)

INTERVIEW: VASHTI WELLS, MINNETONKA, MINNESOTA, TUESDAY MAY 11

M:
When did you first meet Constance Buckridge?

Wells:
Before we get to that, do I understand correctly that what I say here may be quoted in your book?

M:
This interview will be used as source information, and if I decide to quote you directly, I’ll need your signature on some legal documents. But we can handle all that later.

Wells:
I see. (Amused smile) All right. I agree to your terms. (Delicately clears her throat) I first met Connie Buckridge in 1969, right after my husband and I bought this house. Connie came over during the first week and welcomed us to the lake community. I thought it was kind of her. I think she brought some homemade jam or chutney, something she’d made. Our backyard bordered theirs, so I’d already seen Connie and Wayne and the kids out on the patio grilling steaks. Initially, Wayne was less friendly. After a few months, the four of us — my husband, Gary, me, and then Wayne and Connie — started getting together for dinner every few weeks. One week I’d prepare something, the next time Connie would. Connie s energy matched my own, though with the exception of food and dinner parties, we had different interests. I thought she was a lot of fun. I guess you could say that, as a group, we just fell in together. Before I knew it, Connie and I had become best friends.

M:
So you never knew Pepper Buckridge, Wayne’s first wife.

Wells:
No. Connie married Wayne in ‘64, I think the year after his first wife died. If you‘re asking me whether or not I know that Connie was his maid and then later his cook yes, she told me. I thought it was a beautiful love story. From what Connie said, Pepper was a sickly woman and Wayne was quite lonely. I’m sure they were in love — possibly even sleeping together — before Pepper died, but Connie never confirmed that.

M:
Did the Buckridge family seem happy?

Wells:
Yes, I think so. Connie was doing a lot of traveling with Wayne during the late Sixties and early Seventies, when we became friends. She really loved seeing the world. I don’t think she’d ever been out of the country before. And the kids… well, Emily was pretty small. I’ve never been very interested in children myself, but she was fun to have around. She was bright and playful but was always getting into things — smearing hand cream on the mirrors, pouring her mother’s expensive perfume down the sink, eating dirt in the backyard. Paul and Nathan were older. (Hesitates) Nathan was a quiet young man. He must have been about fifteen when we first met. Very serious. Very shy. From what I could see, he did a lot of reading and kept mostly to himself. I don’t think there
was
much love lost between Wayne and Nathan. Nathan wasn’t his natural son, you know. Wayne always favored Paul, and I’m sure that must have hurt Nathan a great deal.

M:
Did Paul and Nathan get along?

Wells:
Well, Paul was a few years younger, so they really didn’t play together, but it was clear that Paul already thought of himself as the cock of the walk He and Nathan had very different personalities. Paul was outgoing, aggressive, opinionated, very much like his father, but he didn’t have the mitigating — shall we say, charming vulnerability — that Wayne had. Wayne was an odd mixture. On the one hand, he was an incredibly successful businessman, always very sure of himself, very confident and upbeat. But in his private life, I think he
was
a lost soul. He seemed so self-deprecating at times, to a degree I found almost painful. I didn’t understand it, because, I mean, the man had everything, a beautiful wife, a wonderful family, a successful business. But, deep down, I don’t think he thought very much of himself. I’m sure that made him hard to live with. I know he had very black moods. He never talked about his past, so I have no idea what experiences created Wayne Buckridge. I guess you could say, even with everything he had, I felt sorry for him. (Pauses) But back to Nathan and Paul. Yes, they got along all right — no overt fights — but I don’t think they were close. It was a fairly typical family, lots of tensions but mixed with love.

M:
Was there a rivalry for Wayne s attention or affection?

Wells:
If there was, by the time I came on the scene, Nathan had abdicated in favor of his brother. Nathan rarely spoke to Wayne, and Wayne mostly issued orders when he said anything to Nathan. I know Connie felt terrible about it. The way it set up was, Paul claimed Wayne as the parent he loved most and Nathan claimed Connie. And then little Emily … well, everybody loved her. She was the only one who really got a fair shake in the family, and I really believe she always felt left out because she wasn’t a boy. She thought nobody took her seriously. I think, as she got older, she acted out just to prove she was as tough as her brothers.

M:
And was that the case? Was she taken less seriously?

Wells:
(Shrugs) Not that I ever noticed. The whole family adored her. If anything, she was spoiled because everything she wanted was taken too seriously. Let’s just say, she usually got her way. The only one who didn’t seem to buy her act was Connie s brother, Arthur. I think he thought Emily was a little too manipulative for her own good. He didn’t seem to get along with her as well as he did the boys.

M:
I’d like to talk more about Arthur in a minute, but first, I understand you helped Connie do her cooking shows. You prepped the set for her.

Wells:
That’s right. It just seemed natural for me to help. We both loved to cook, though by ‘72 when Connie was asked to do the
Daytime with Jerry & Emmeline
show, she’d been taught by some of the finest chefs all over the world. When it came to food, she soaked up everything in sight. Wayne seemed to love it. After a while, they even planned his business trips around her growing chef and restaurant connections. Sometimes they’d stay an extra month somewhere just so she could get some intense instruction. When she returned home, she was bursting to tell me everything she’d learned. In many ways I felt as if I was learning along with her. That’s why she gave those elaborate dinner parties. I know they helped Wayne’s career, but mostly she just had to have an outlet, a forum in which to show off her new skills. Shed decide on a theme and then make these elaborate buffets. I might still have some of the menus around here if you‘re interested.

M:
I’d love to see them. I’m curious. What happened to the kids while Wayne and Connie were away?

Wells:
They had a live-in nanny who always came to stay when they were out of town. Can’t recall her name, but she was old. I doubt she’d still be alive. It was mostly for little Emily’s sake. Nathan and Paul were getting older and could take care of themselves, not that they didn’t need supervision. Especially Paul. By the time he hit junior high, he was a terror. I think it was about the eighth grade when he discovered rock music and did his thirteen-year-old version of tuning in, turning on, and dropping out.

M:
Did he use drugs?

Wells:
Not then, but later, in high school. I don’t know what all he used, but Connie was constantly worried about him. Thank God Nathan was never any trouble. He was a good student and reasonably popular. By the time he was sixteen, he was actively involved in the peace movement. Later, he got interested in Greenpeace. He was very socially aware, wanted to participate in the world, not drop out like his brother had. But then Paul was pretty angry at his father during that time. Wayne had put on a lot of weight. He’d come home after work, pour himself a double Scotch on the rocks, and spend the rest of the night eating in front of the TV Paul was disgusted with his behavior and let him know it. It just pushed Wayne further into his shell. Connie was the only functional parent by that time, and she was busy with her TV shows. It wasn’t a particularly healthy family situation, I suppose, but then how many are?

M:
Did Paul ever get in trouble with the law?

Wells:
Not to my knowledge. Nathan was arrested once at a sit-in at the university, but since he was a minor, they just let him go.

M:
Getting back to Connie’s TV appearances. Did you also help prep the sets for the Saturday morning show on WTWN?

Wells:
Yes, and by then I was actually getting paid. Not that I needed the money, but it felt good to be professionally involved in something I loved. I hoped that, one day, Connie would have me on, let me show some of what I could do. But then the show got canceled. She was very upset. So was I.

M:
I’m told that while Connie was doing one of her first tapings, a strange man appeared on the set. He was possibly a street person or a hippie — tall, long beard, long hair, very dirty. Connie seemed to know who he was. As a matter of fact, she left with him in the middle of the taping. The producer was furious. Do you know anything about this guy? What he was doing there? Who he was?

Wells:
(Pauses) Sure, I know all about it, but (Grins) I’m not supposed to tell. It was a big secret back then, and I suppose it still is.

M:
If you’d feel comfortable talking about it…

Wells:
After what Connie did to me, I’m thrilled to be asked. Anything I can do to repay her in kind makes my heart soar. (Laughs)

M:
What did she do to you?

Wells:
That s for later. (Winks) I always think it’s good to end on a high note. (Laughs again) Okay, the mystery man. Well, his nickname was Zippo, I believe. Like the lighter. It probably had something to do with how much marijuana he smoked. If he had a real name, I never heard it. (Pauses) How much do you know about Connie’s brother, Arthur?

M:
Just that he was a psychologist. He’s retired now. I think he’s even written a couple of books. I haven’t read them, but I will. I know he moved in with the Buckridges in July of ‘73, right around the time he began some graduate work at the University of Minnesota.

Wells:
He went on to get his doctorate in clinical psychology at UCLA.

M:
I didn’t know that. He’s what, four years older than Constance?

Wells:
Yes, that’s about right. (Folds her hands in her lap) Okay, back to Zippo. Connie had always been very close to her brother. From what she told me, their home life growing up was a horror. When she became pregnant by some local idiot, her parents threw her out. That’s when she came to Minneapolis and moved in with her brother. Arthur was nineteen or twenty. After he’d graduated from the U of M with a degree in philosophy, he began having some… problems.

M:
Can you be more specific?

Wells:
Mental problems. He’d always been a high-energy person, like Connie, but for Arthur it turned into something else. Out of the blue one day he told her that the papier-mâché globe in their apartment had begun talking to him. At first it was just a comment on his clothes or his eating habits, but the more receptive he appeared, the more it said. Sometimes he’d ignore it, wouldn’t even look at it, and then it would pout. He’d end up feeling sorry for it and go sit next to it until it said something. He told her he knew the whole situation sounded farfetched, but it had been going on for several months and he was convinced that what the globe was telling him was not only true but a matter of life and death for the planet.

M:
Which was?

Wells:
The globe wanted him to write an article for the local newspaper warning the world of an impending invasion from a race that lived at the center of the earth. They were called Nimwaths, or Nimwroths, or something like that, and they looked like dogs, but they were superintelligent. Connie was nonplussed. She knew right away that he was delusional, but he’d always been her rock She was also young and penniless and didn’t have a clue as to how to help. She urged him to go see a doctor, but that only made him angry. He wasn’t sick. He just had to write that damn letter. The fate of the world depended on it, more or less. It wasn’t long before he lost his job. In an effort to keep body and soul together, he did things like pump gas, load trucks, move furniture, anything that would give him time to think and to write. His mind moved a million miles a minute. I can still hear Connie explaining it all to me. She said that talking to her brother was like having an intimate conversation with a jet engine. At times he was more rational than others. Once he said that he knew he was screwed up, but the mystery was, given the state of the world, why wasn’t everybody as screwed up as he was? He’d rant about various things — government secrecy, the idiocy of Immanuel Kant’s theory of empirical knowledge, the ridiculous taste of the candy bar he’d just bought. He started drinking more, sleeping less, but there was so much to be upset about he couldn’t be bothered with things like food and sleep. Life was coming at him fast and furiously. He told Connie that because we all operated on such limited notions of logic, we missed things, relationships, signs. For a while, he decided he wanted to be her teacher. He’d sit in the kitchen while she fed Nathan and talk to her about the deeper meanings of existence, all the secrets the globe had passed on to him. Connie would listen, but she’d get confused. In the middle of one sentence, he’d start another. Subjects changed so fast that she finally realized there was no subject. Then (Pauses) the crying started. First Arthur would cry in front of her, but then he’d have to get away so he could be alone. Anything could set him off. Once she asked him if he wanted a sandwich and all he did was break into tears. He said he needed to get his “mind off his mind.” I’ve always remembered that line. But the problem was, nothing felt or seemed or reacted like it used to. The world was an entirely new place and not a safe one. He was obsessed with writing that letter, but not one of his four thousand drafts was good enough. He was weighed down by the sense that he was responsible for the fate of the world, and his failure to carry out the mission the globe had given him made him even more anxious and depressed. Something was happening to him, and while at times he seemed to revel in his newfound power, at other times he was desperate. Not sleeping and not eating eventually took a toll. There would be days, weeks, when Connie wouldn’t hear from him. When the weeks stretched into months, she became frightened. She assumed he was living on the street. They had a joint savings account, so she was okay financially for a while. When he did come home, she’d try to get him to stay. He loved little Nathan. He’d play with him for hours. I assume that Nathan may remember him from that time, but it would be a pretty dim memory. Arthur couldn’t stay anywhere for very long. He was getting worse. After about a year of this, all of his rationality seemed to fade away. In its place was a man Connie barely recognized. He’d lost weight, had dark circles around his eyes, and sometimes he didn’t even recognize her. That’s when he stopped coming home for good. She was beside herself with worry. She’d take Nathan and wander around downtown trying to find him, but she never had any luck. She wasn’t even sure he was in town any longer. It was a terrible time.