FICTION -
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"I finally understood my parent's fascination
with supernatural seduction."
Photo by Weebly.com
with supernatural seduction."
Photo by Weebly.com
The Great Pretender
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Oh yes, I'm the great pretender (ooh ooh)
Pretending I'm doing well (ooh ooh) My need is such I pretend too much I'm lonely but no one can tell Oh yes, I'm the great pretender (ooh ooh) Adrift in a world of my own (ooh ooh) I play the game but to my real shame You've left me to dream all alone Too real is this feeling of make believe Too real when I feel what my heart can't conceal. Ooh ooh yes, I'm the great pretender (ooh ooh) Just laughing and gay like a clown (ooh ooh) I seem to be what I'm not (you see) I'm wearing my heart like a crown Pretending that you're still around (Written by Buck Ram, lyrics © Panther Music Corp) |
Every time I hear this song on my playlist, I visualize them dancing together, Carol twirling in that wide skirt like the little ballerina in a jewelry box. They were young and hopeful, determined they had the power to prove themselves to the world, or at least to all the gossips in Manistee.
2
I was conceived around October of that year and arrived on Flag Day of 1959. My parents never talked about their wedding and there are no photos. I suspect it was a quick Justice-of-the-Peace type wedding with frowning parents on both sides. Not long after, Bob was hired by the J. J. Newberry’s chain of 5 & 10 department stores as an Assistant Manager, and they relocated to Gary, Indiana, and Louisville, Kentucky, and then back to Ludington, Michigan. When I reached school age, they decided to return to Manistee.
I don’t know when they decided to act on their mystical beliefs. I have no memory of them being any other way. They were ambitious in a place where there weren’t many opportunities. They chafed at their struggles with money and family, and wanted more from life, quickly. They turned to the supernatural and those invisible, magical beings. My father was an equal opportunity mystic. He would converse with any being that would pop into his head, whoever they might be. It could be Zeus, Thor, an Archangel, Jesus, a historical figure, or a personal acquaintance that had passed on. My mom would go into a trace-link state and let these beings speak through her, an act commonly known as “channeling.” Given Carol’s Catholic roots, the Virgin Mary was a popular guest. When I got old enough to pay attention to what was going on, I became intimately involved in all this, as the channeling shifted from Carol to me. They were always happy to hear from the Egyptian goddess Isis, but I became adept at vocalizing anyone they requested me to be.
We moved several times during my childhood, but by the time I was old enough to participate in these events, they usually took place in the living room of our rented townhouse on First Street, a short walk to the main shopping district and a block from Manistee’s historic firehouse. My parents went out of their way to show that they were more progressive and modern than the regular town folk (i.e., their relatives) so they filled the living room with trendy late 60s furniture. Tables made of shiny chrome and glass topped with lamps containing little fiber optic trees, and metal framed chairs with thin vinyl pads in bright colors. They had odd sculptures of exotic women which might have reminded them of the African sculptures displayed in the gallery owned by Kim Novak’s character in Bell, Book and Candle. All this modernity was broken up by traditional oil paintings by my dad and me, in ornate gold frames with black velvet linings. My parents were both chain smokers, so there were overflowing ashtrays on every surface.
Through me, the Gods would visit this room. My dad would quiz these visitors and I would do my best to answer in character. I would focus on the theme of the evening, usually winning the Michigan State Lottery, and sometimes even I was surprised by the voice that would answer.
I don’t know when they decided to act on their mystical beliefs. I have no memory of them being any other way. They were ambitious in a place where there weren’t many opportunities. They chafed at their struggles with money and family, and wanted more from life, quickly. They turned to the supernatural and those invisible, magical beings. My father was an equal opportunity mystic. He would converse with any being that would pop into his head, whoever they might be. It could be Zeus, Thor, an Archangel, Jesus, a historical figure, or a personal acquaintance that had passed on. My mom would go into a trace-link state and let these beings speak through her, an act commonly known as “channeling.” Given Carol’s Catholic roots, the Virgin Mary was a popular guest. When I got old enough to pay attention to what was going on, I became intimately involved in all this, as the channeling shifted from Carol to me. They were always happy to hear from the Egyptian goddess Isis, but I became adept at vocalizing anyone they requested me to be.
We moved several times during my childhood, but by the time I was old enough to participate in these events, they usually took place in the living room of our rented townhouse on First Street, a short walk to the main shopping district and a block from Manistee’s historic firehouse. My parents went out of their way to show that they were more progressive and modern than the regular town folk (i.e., their relatives) so they filled the living room with trendy late 60s furniture. Tables made of shiny chrome and glass topped with lamps containing little fiber optic trees, and metal framed chairs with thin vinyl pads in bright colors. They had odd sculptures of exotic women which might have reminded them of the African sculptures displayed in the gallery owned by Kim Novak’s character in Bell, Book and Candle. All this modernity was broken up by traditional oil paintings by my dad and me, in ornate gold frames with black velvet linings. My parents were both chain smokers, so there were overflowing ashtrays on every surface.
Through me, the Gods would visit this room. My dad would quiz these visitors and I would do my best to answer in character. I would focus on the theme of the evening, usually winning the Michigan State Lottery, and sometimes even I was surprised by the voice that would answer.
3
I grew up, like my father, believing I was surrounded by these magical beings, never alone. This could be good, as all children seem to have imaginary friends and confidants, but often my parents would tell me that we were being attacked psychically and those invisible beings were not on our side. This was deeply stressful. I was a creative child with a fertile imagination to begin with, and here were my parents telling me that I was surrounded by unseen demons. Carol would experiment with automatic writing, believing that if she could communicate with these spirits, she could trap them by directing her writing into a cross pattern and then ritually burning the page over a candle flame.
The thing is, these spirits weren’t necessarily evil. No one was going to get possessed and have their head spin around Linda Blair style. No. What these spirits were was uncooperative. They were interfering. My parents, from the time I was in the middle of grade school on, believed that the beings that they spoke with “out there” promised them that they would win the Michigan State Lottery in a big way. They were so convinced of this that they would make plane and hotel reservations, book vacations and shop for fancy cars, knowing that they were going to be millionaires as soon as the numbers were announced.
They never won. Ever. Luckily, this was in the 70s, before you were required to give a credit card number and pay up front for everything, or they would have been bankrupt. After the initial letdown and the embarrassment of having to cancel all the commitments they made, there would be a dramatic period of figuring out why whichever magical being reneged on their promise, or who was “interfering.” Tellingly, the culprit was often my deceased Grandmother Pearl, reaching from beyond the grave to mess with my parents’ lives and dreams. At one point they tried to end her attempts to influence things by keeping her wedding ring and other jewelry in a plastic baggie in the freezer, where it stayed for decades, frozen solid in a block of ice.
Another way they tried to influence the outcome of all this was through rituals. This usually happened in our kitchen, buttercup yellow with a beige wall-mounted rotary phone that had an extra long cord, twisted and knotted from me pacing the floor between rooms as I endlessly talked with my friends. We would stand around the black and grey Formica table with our hands resting on the high-backed gold vinyl chairs, my mom and I at the ends and my dad in the middle. The ends of the table were printed with a gold scroll pattern which was repeated in little metal shapes attached to the tops of the chairs. I would stroke these metal patterns over and over with my fingers as my dad burned strips of paper in a cheap gold chalice in the middle of the table, yelling incantations inspired by mail order booklets published by the Rosicrucians. I would cringe at the anger in his voice, wishing the floor would open up and swallow me. My mom would often follow up on these rituals by taking me to Novena at Guardian Angels Church so she could talk these matters over herself with the Virgin. The paintings and the low murmuring of people saying the rosary over and over was soothing to both of us. To this day, I light a candle in my mom’s memory in every grand cathedral I visit.
The thing is, these spirits weren’t necessarily evil. No one was going to get possessed and have their head spin around Linda Blair style. No. What these spirits were was uncooperative. They were interfering. My parents, from the time I was in the middle of grade school on, believed that the beings that they spoke with “out there” promised them that they would win the Michigan State Lottery in a big way. They were so convinced of this that they would make plane and hotel reservations, book vacations and shop for fancy cars, knowing that they were going to be millionaires as soon as the numbers were announced.
They never won. Ever. Luckily, this was in the 70s, before you were required to give a credit card number and pay up front for everything, or they would have been bankrupt. After the initial letdown and the embarrassment of having to cancel all the commitments they made, there would be a dramatic period of figuring out why whichever magical being reneged on their promise, or who was “interfering.” Tellingly, the culprit was often my deceased Grandmother Pearl, reaching from beyond the grave to mess with my parents’ lives and dreams. At one point they tried to end her attempts to influence things by keeping her wedding ring and other jewelry in a plastic baggie in the freezer, where it stayed for decades, frozen solid in a block of ice.
Another way they tried to influence the outcome of all this was through rituals. This usually happened in our kitchen, buttercup yellow with a beige wall-mounted rotary phone that had an extra long cord, twisted and knotted from me pacing the floor between rooms as I endlessly talked with my friends. We would stand around the black and grey Formica table with our hands resting on the high-backed gold vinyl chairs, my mom and I at the ends and my dad in the middle. The ends of the table were printed with a gold scroll pattern which was repeated in little metal shapes attached to the tops of the chairs. I would stroke these metal patterns over and over with my fingers as my dad burned strips of paper in a cheap gold chalice in the middle of the table, yelling incantations inspired by mail order booklets published by the Rosicrucians. I would cringe at the anger in his voice, wishing the floor would open up and swallow me. My mom would often follow up on these rituals by taking me to Novena at Guardian Angels Church so she could talk these matters over herself with the Virgin. The paintings and the low murmuring of people saying the rosary over and over was soothing to both of us. To this day, I light a candle in my mom’s memory in every grand cathedral I visit.
4
Over a week or two, my parents’ confidence would be restored by these efforts, and they would do the lottery cycle again. After a while, they stopped making reservations and commitments based on the promises given by these mystical beings, but the ups and downs because of the nonappearance of the hoped for miraculous financial windfall continued. As I was the conduit these spirit voices flowed through, this cycle was stressful and exhausting. My parents lived out the lyrics of their favorite song, living in a fantasy world of mystical power, frustrated in their ambitions, torn about making permanent commitments in a town they badly wanted to leave.
It may not seem like it, given this description, but there were also normal things in my childhood. I was short and anxious with big blue eyes. I had terrible allergies and rashes. I drew, read voraciously, and played with my Barbies like any other girl. I had friends and a dog (no word on his psychic powers, although I was told he was an “old soul”). My dad and I read the comics in the Detroit Free Press together over coffee and donuts almost every morning. My parents gave me as much as they could, and at one point I had my own play space in the basement, with a year-round artificial Christmas tree and all the Disney records I could play. I loved horses and Wonder Woman. Like my friends, I liked the Monkees, and all the other bubble gum pop bands of the era.
Manistee had beautiful forest areas and beaches, and I spent a lot of time at them. Bob liked to hunt squirrels. He would tell me about how he liked to be quiet and hear the “spirit of the forest.” Except for a brief period where I was expected to join in the hunt myself and they made me kill a chipmunk with my BB gun, I loved the time we spent in the woods.
My parents had terrible fights, over money and the lack of opportunity. Sometimes they would tell me, their only child, wildly inappropriate things, like how trapped they felt by having children and how different things would have been if it had never happened. Periodically, one of them would tell me about their sex life, oddly each of them, at one time or another, believed that their partner was momentarily possessed by some glamorous god or goddess that just had to have them (apparently Apollo was hot for my mom, and Isis had a thing for my dad). My parents also believed in that the emotional release of sex had magical powers and would tell me about how they would concentrate on goals like winning the lottery and financial success while having sex, to “help it along.”
It may not seem like it, given this description, but there were also normal things in my childhood. I was short and anxious with big blue eyes. I had terrible allergies and rashes. I drew, read voraciously, and played with my Barbies like any other girl. I had friends and a dog (no word on his psychic powers, although I was told he was an “old soul”). My dad and I read the comics in the Detroit Free Press together over coffee and donuts almost every morning. My parents gave me as much as they could, and at one point I had my own play space in the basement, with a year-round artificial Christmas tree and all the Disney records I could play. I loved horses and Wonder Woman. Like my friends, I liked the Monkees, and all the other bubble gum pop bands of the era.
Manistee had beautiful forest areas and beaches, and I spent a lot of time at them. Bob liked to hunt squirrels. He would tell me about how he liked to be quiet and hear the “spirit of the forest.” Except for a brief period where I was expected to join in the hunt myself and they made me kill a chipmunk with my BB gun, I loved the time we spent in the woods.
My parents had terrible fights, over money and the lack of opportunity. Sometimes they would tell me, their only child, wildly inappropriate things, like how trapped they felt by having children and how different things would have been if it had never happened. Periodically, one of them would tell me about their sex life, oddly each of them, at one time or another, believed that their partner was momentarily possessed by some glamorous god or goddess that just had to have them (apparently Apollo was hot for my mom, and Isis had a thing for my dad). My parents also believed in that the emotional release of sex had magical powers and would tell me about how they would concentrate on goals like winning the lottery and financial success while having sex, to “help it along.”
5
Bob had several sales jobs, selling ads for the local radio station (all the local merchants would buy candy from me when we had school fundraisers!) and he sold propane gas. Much like the kind of event that would happen on King of the Hill, every summer the propane company had an event where they would have a pit of snakes on display on their front lawn. These were large snakes: boas and pythons. I was fascinated by their smooth, unblinking coolness. Several friends had snakes, and I was never afraid, only sorry that I missed the day that Cuddles, the boa that lived in my high school science lab, escaped and eventually fell from the rafters into the ample lap of the Home Economics teacher in the auditorium during a school assembly. Ms. Woldridge screamed her lungs out, as one could imagine. She was also the coach of the bowling team, and I can still picture her, in her Mumu, thundering down the alley. She was a good bowler and a nice lady, but not so good with snakes.
Bob was never able to find dependable long-term employment, until he was hired by the Morton Salt factory. New employees were required to work loading 50 lb. bags of salt into train cars until they joined the union, a hard blow for a man used to a white-collar sales job. He became a union steward and moved through a series of technical jobs at the factory. It was soul-sucking, boring work in an open-air factory hot in the summer and freezing in the winter. He hated it and felt misunderstood by his co-workers. He stayed there for 30 years, working rotating shifts (a cycle of morning, evening, and graveyard shifts with two days off in between) until he earned early retirement. He never ever gave up on the idea that he was promised greatness and plenty and became convinced that he was being penalized for something horrible he did in a past life.
Carol was determined to make more of her life, taking advantage of the gains of the women’s movement. She worked in a local garment factory, The Glen of Michigan, a ILGWU shop, and then sold advertising at the local newspaper, The Manistee News Advocate. She seemed happiest at this job. She dressed nicely, talked to all the local merchants, and she had creative participation in the layout of the ads (they had a whole room filled with books and books of advertising clip art; I was transfixed by these for hours). After that she was office manager for a tire company.
Bob was never able to find dependable long-term employment, until he was hired by the Morton Salt factory. New employees were required to work loading 50 lb. bags of salt into train cars until they joined the union, a hard blow for a man used to a white-collar sales job. He became a union steward and moved through a series of technical jobs at the factory. It was soul-sucking, boring work in an open-air factory hot in the summer and freezing in the winter. He hated it and felt misunderstood by his co-workers. He stayed there for 30 years, working rotating shifts (a cycle of morning, evening, and graveyard shifts with two days off in between) until he earned early retirement. He never ever gave up on the idea that he was promised greatness and plenty and became convinced that he was being penalized for something horrible he did in a past life.
Carol was determined to make more of her life, taking advantage of the gains of the women’s movement. She worked in a local garment factory, The Glen of Michigan, a ILGWU shop, and then sold advertising at the local newspaper, The Manistee News Advocate. She seemed happiest at this job. She dressed nicely, talked to all the local merchants, and she had creative participation in the layout of the ads (they had a whole room filled with books and books of advertising clip art; I was transfixed by these for hours). After that she was office manager for a tire company.
6
All the siblings in my father’s family were interested in, and did some work in, the arts. My uncle Jack worked for an advertising agency in Flint, Michigan. My aunt Betty took art classes in France as a young girl and became known regionally as a painter (portraits and traditional representational oil paintings). Her third husband, Monte Blue, was a leading man in silent films, best known for a character role in the Bogart film Key Largo. He was awarded a star on the sidewalk at Hollywood and Vine in 1958. Betty and Monte had a happy but short-lived marriage, from 1958 to 1963, when he died of a heart attack during a business trip. After his death, Betty remained in Los Angeles where she had a private painting school (the Monte Blue School of Art) in Beverly Hills on Wilshire Boulevard.
I started drawing and painting at a very early age. Bob taught me the basics of figure drawing when I was little by showing me how to copy Captain America and Wonder Woman from comic books. They encouraged me and took me out to Los Angeles a couple times to spend part of the summer painting with my aunt. I didn’t quite realize it at the time because I was still a kid, but my parents’ dream shifted from winning the lottery to helping me become a child movie star so they could break out of their dull existence in Manistee. I remember an odd lunch with my aunt, my parents, and Monte Blue’s old friend Red Buttons at a famous cantina right outside the gates of Paramount Studios. The movie musical Paint Your Wagon (1969) was the studio’s big release, with billboards everywhere. Over dessert, Mr. Buttons looked at me very seriously and asked me if I knew the Hokey Pokey. I knew the song backward and forward, and being a little kid, sang it at the top of my lungs to the entire restaurant (just like in the cereal aisle at the grocery store). I have no idea if he was touched or horrified, but my parents seemed encouraged by this meeting. Communication about my impending stardom continued with my aunt, although it was lost on me.
As I got older, the fortune telling took a strange turn. Nobody did anything in my house anymore without looking at the cards first and asking my dad for interpretation. I can still see his hands laying out the cards with his tobacco-stained fingers. He wore a gold ring with a flat black stone that would clack against the kitchen table as he placed each card face up and announced its meaning. He would predict miraculous things for me, and when they didn’t happen, he would inhale half a Camel cigarette and tell me accusingly, “Well, you must have changed something.”
I started drawing and painting at a very early age. Bob taught me the basics of figure drawing when I was little by showing me how to copy Captain America and Wonder Woman from comic books. They encouraged me and took me out to Los Angeles a couple times to spend part of the summer painting with my aunt. I didn’t quite realize it at the time because I was still a kid, but my parents’ dream shifted from winning the lottery to helping me become a child movie star so they could break out of their dull existence in Manistee. I remember an odd lunch with my aunt, my parents, and Monte Blue’s old friend Red Buttons at a famous cantina right outside the gates of Paramount Studios. The movie musical Paint Your Wagon (1969) was the studio’s big release, with billboards everywhere. Over dessert, Mr. Buttons looked at me very seriously and asked me if I knew the Hokey Pokey. I knew the song backward and forward, and being a little kid, sang it at the top of my lungs to the entire restaurant (just like in the cereal aisle at the grocery store). I have no idea if he was touched or horrified, but my parents seemed encouraged by this meeting. Communication about my impending stardom continued with my aunt, although it was lost on me.
As I got older, the fortune telling took a strange turn. Nobody did anything in my house anymore without looking at the cards first and asking my dad for interpretation. I can still see his hands laying out the cards with his tobacco-stained fingers. He wore a gold ring with a flat black stone that would clack against the kitchen table as he placed each card face up and announced its meaning. He would predict miraculous things for me, and when they didn’t happen, he would inhale half a Camel cigarette and tell me accusingly, “Well, you must have changed something.”
7
Other people would come for readings, and I found that my channeling skills were often on display because someone always wanted to speak to a goddess or a long lost relative. I got pretty good at reading the room, but sometimes it would backfire. One time, my parents took me to see two older ladies that lived in a large mobile home in a park outside of town. They had had several readings by Bob and seemed impressed with his skills as a seer. After a big buildup, I was supposed to go and channel for them. Unfortunately, the ladies had a least five cats, and I was deathly allergic. I sneezed, my face swelled up, and I immediately broke out in a horrible itching rash. Not impressive to see the psychic protégé rolling around on the bathroom floor scratching. My parents were horribly embarrassed. I don’t know if they ever connected with those people again.
Around seventh grade, I discovered theatre. The Ramsdell Theatre was an ornate Victorian opera house built by a lumber baron in 1901, with an active civic theatre group. I practically moved in. Much to my parents’ dismay, after one or two child roles, I became a committed stage manager/lighting designer/scenic artist techie. They enjoyed coming to the openings and mixing with what was probably a higher social class than they usually had access to, but they were disappointed that they would never see me on stage. Then I got involved in the choir, and wanted to learn to play guitar, and their dream shifted from child movie star to superstar musician. Hope springs eternal, but at that point, I felt more at home in the theatre than I did at home with my parents.
I had a tribe of friends that worked on all the plays and we shared everything. My friends would come over and my mom would hang out with us and make “Lime Kool-Aid” (lime Kool-Aid, tequila, and Triple Sec) in the blender. We would all get smashed and laugh and sing. Even with this diversion, my mom always seemed sad, and she began to experience a cycle of unexplained illnesses. Eventually, they discovered cancer, and she passed away at 40 years old after an excruciating battle against it. I was 15.
Toward the end, she was a four-hour drive away in a big hospital in Grand Rapids, the biggest city in our part of Michigan. My Dad was still working, and the two of us would go as often as we could. I buried myself in the theatre work, unable to face what was coming. I wasn’t told everything that was going on, but when I would see her, the heartbreaking truth would slap me in the face. To this day, I will never forget the horror and sadness of the last time I saw her alive, wasted away after multiple surgeries and chemotherapy treatments, hooked up to a series of pumps and other machines in a hospital room far away from friends and family. One morning, I answered the phone, and a nurse matter-of-factly told me that Carol had been exhausted after another surgery and had just passed away that morning. Bobby grabbed the phone as it dropped from my hand. Her funeral was a blur.
Around seventh grade, I discovered theatre. The Ramsdell Theatre was an ornate Victorian opera house built by a lumber baron in 1901, with an active civic theatre group. I practically moved in. Much to my parents’ dismay, after one or two child roles, I became a committed stage manager/lighting designer/scenic artist techie. They enjoyed coming to the openings and mixing with what was probably a higher social class than they usually had access to, but they were disappointed that they would never see me on stage. Then I got involved in the choir, and wanted to learn to play guitar, and their dream shifted from child movie star to superstar musician. Hope springs eternal, but at that point, I felt more at home in the theatre than I did at home with my parents.
I had a tribe of friends that worked on all the plays and we shared everything. My friends would come over and my mom would hang out with us and make “Lime Kool-Aid” (lime Kool-Aid, tequila, and Triple Sec) in the blender. We would all get smashed and laugh and sing. Even with this diversion, my mom always seemed sad, and she began to experience a cycle of unexplained illnesses. Eventually, they discovered cancer, and she passed away at 40 years old after an excruciating battle against it. I was 15.
Toward the end, she was a four-hour drive away in a big hospital in Grand Rapids, the biggest city in our part of Michigan. My Dad was still working, and the two of us would go as often as we could. I buried myself in the theatre work, unable to face what was coming. I wasn’t told everything that was going on, but when I would see her, the heartbreaking truth would slap me in the face. To this day, I will never forget the horror and sadness of the last time I saw her alive, wasted away after multiple surgeries and chemotherapy treatments, hooked up to a series of pumps and other machines in a hospital room far away from friends and family. One morning, I answered the phone, and a nurse matter-of-factly told me that Carol had been exhausted after another surgery and had just passed away that morning. Bobby grabbed the phone as it dropped from my hand. Her funeral was a blur.
8
Following this we both got lost in a haze of grief and booze. I have no idea what kind of mystical deals Bob made in his desperation to help her get through it all, but this was a loss he never healed from. He felt that this was an unforgivable betrayal. He believed his disapproving, controlling mother reached out from the spirit world and murdered his wife. He was of the generation that didn’t believe in the value of psychiatric help, so his grief and the deep distrust of the world he created from his own thoughts manifested in a bitterness that gradually took over his life. Occasionally he would attract a girlfriend interested in trying to solve life’s problems through mysticism, but none of these relationships lasted.
In 1979, I moved to Los Angeles and lived briefly with Aunt Betty, taking classes at her school, and meeting her friends. I was 19. I found a job doing charge-line ticket sales at the Shubert Theatre in Century City. Suggestions about my imagined film career came quickly, nose jobs and wealthy older men that I should “date.” I couldn’t do it. There was a huge blow-up and I moved out on my own.
Although I’m sure he was disappointed, Bobby never criticized me for this. As time went on and I got settled, I encouraged him to move to California where the weather was warm, and people were more accepting of the occult and spirituality. His memories of loading train cars at Morton’s kept him from transferring to a branch of the Morton Salt Company in Southern California and he would not move without a job. Unable to persuade me to give up my own life and move back to Manistee, he lived the rest of his life alone in the First Street townhouse surrounded by capricious spirits and dusty late 60s furniture until he died in 2003.
In 1979, I moved to Los Angeles and lived briefly with Aunt Betty, taking classes at her school, and meeting her friends. I was 19. I found a job doing charge-line ticket sales at the Shubert Theatre in Century City. Suggestions about my imagined film career came quickly, nose jobs and wealthy older men that I should “date.” I couldn’t do it. There was a huge blow-up and I moved out on my own.
Although I’m sure he was disappointed, Bobby never criticized me for this. As time went on and I got settled, I encouraged him to move to California where the weather was warm, and people were more accepting of the occult and spirituality. His memories of loading train cars at Morton’s kept him from transferring to a branch of the Morton Salt Company in Southern California and he would not move without a job. Unable to persuade me to give up my own life and move back to Manistee, he lived the rest of his life alone in the First Street townhouse surrounded by capricious spirits and dusty late 60s furniture until he died in 2003.
9
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Vistas & Byways Review is the semiannual journal of fiction, nonfiction and poetry by members of Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at San Francisco State University.
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Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at San Francisco State University (OLLI at SF State) provides communal and material support to theVistas & Byways volunteer staff.
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