When Jane wasn’t working, she picked me up on the weekend, which we’d spend at Laurel Springs. On several visits she was also hosting some of her friends. One weekend, Sophia Loren stopped by. She was warm and engaging and taught me how to pick and slice up ripe cactus fruit. On another trip I met Bonnie Raitt. I recall her being quite funny and that she talked incessantly, as if she had something very important to say and was fearful of being cut off.
When it was just us, we’d read lines if she was preparing for a film or we would go for a leisurely hike. We spent many afternoons at opposite ends of the little house engrossed in books. During Oscar season we would go to the Alta house. We had a tradition of what we called “movie marathons.” Jane compiled a list of movies she needed to see in order to vote on them for Oscar consideration. She then compiled the theaters and showtimes. The marathon began with a matinee and could extend through to the final evening showing. We often found ourselves racing between theaters on opposite ends of town, taking breaks for lunch and dinner in between showings. Nowadays members of the academy get screening DVDs sent to their homes. The DVDs are more convenient but I miss the good ol’ days of battling L.A. traffic to get to the theater before the opening credits. Especially since we had it down to a science.
When Jane was working and couldn’t pick me up, I’d go home with one of my friends. They introduced me to the L.A. scene. One of my friends had a BMW and she’d drive us to Hollywood, where we’d walk around and people-watch. They especially loved to eat sushi, which I found totally gross but pretended to like in order not to seem square. We spent most of the evening riding around in the BMW with the windows down, waving to cute boys. Then we’d all crash at somebody’s house and spend the day doing our nails and gossiping.
I enjoyed my time at Happy Valley, but by the end of the school year I let Jane know that I didn’t feel challenged academically. She took me out of Happy Valley and enrolled me herself in a high school program run out of Santa Monica Community College not far from the Alta house.
I loved the new school because it was in a college setting and made me feel a bit grown up. I liked that the classes took place in the same rooms college courses were taught in. I felt quite mature sitting in a big lecture hall, especially after Happy Valley, where class size maxed out at about ten and sitting in a chair was optional.
It was here that I came to love writing after taking a creative writing class with a very eccentric teacher. I don’t remember the teacher’s name, but he was a little man who looked and dressed a lot like Albert Einstein without the wild hair. He’d stand in front of the class and read passages from the works of Dickens, Hemingway, Shakespeare. He wouldn’t just read the words, he’d allow them to dance off his tongue, and his arms would spiral in an arabesque when he read a particularly beautiful piece. “Did you hear that! Lovely! Let me read it again!” Most of the students found him comical but I got what he meant about words. That it was artful how they were strung together, not randomly but with thought and craft, like the weaving of an intricate carpet or the strokes of a brush wielded by a master painter.
When the school year ended, I had enough credits to graduate. Jane and Troy attended the ceremony. Jane wore a floral dress and Troy was decked out in his finest. I was beyond proud of myself. There was a time I didn’t think I’d ever see graduation day. I presented Jane with my diploma, letting her know it was because of her that I have it.
I was almost eighteen years old. I would no longer be a minor and I was relieved that I had almost reached the age of maturity without my mama demanding I return to Oakland. In my heart of hearts, I wished she would have fought for me or at least tried to stay in touch. It was around this time that Jane sat me down for a serious chat. Up until then our relationship had been undefined. Jane told me she felt as if I had become an important part of her family and wanted to know if I’d feel comfortable being referred to as her daughter. I told her I’d like that very much.
After I got my high school diploma, I enrolled in college-level courses at Santa Monica College in preparation for transferring to a four-year institution. I moved out of the Alta house and in with roommates. I also became infatuated with bicycles. Jane bought me a beautiful Cannondale touring cycle that I rode along the boardwalk. Jane joined me on a few rides and became hooked herself. We went on several rides together before I headed off to college at Pitzer, a small, private liberal arts school just an hour outside of L.A. Jane and Troy dropped me off at school and Jane helped me unpack while she chatted up my new roommate, a Latina woman named Maria from Los Angeles. Maria was an alternative student, which meant she was an older student—twenty-five years old—who was attempting to get a degree because finances and other problems were a barrier. Maria was on several scholarships and had to work to make her tuition.
From the intense way Jane was grilling my roommate, I knew that she was planning something. Jane had been financially supporting struggling students (many of whom she met at Laurel Springs) for years. Sure enough, a few days after she dropped me off, she called to speak to Maria. I left the room to give Maria privacy. When I returned, Maria’s happy expression told me what I already knew. Another worthy had been rewarded because she, like me, was fortunate enough to cross paths with Jane. Her decision to help Maria paid off. She would graduate ahead of schedule with honors.
• • •
My love affair with the bicycle intensified during my first semester of college. I’d go on long sojourns through the town of Claremont and environs. My eyes were always drawn to the snow-capped mountain that dominated the landscape: Mount Baldy. I asked the locals about it. Turns out it was 4,000 feet at its highest elevation and was home to a popular ski resort. I asked if the road up was good for cycling and a shopkeeper looked me up and down and said he wouldn’t attempt it, but when he drove up to go skiing, he did pass crazy cyclists from time to time pumping their way up the mountain. He told me there was a place called Mount Baldy Village that many cyclists shot for at about mile eight.
I set my sights on Mount Baldy even though I hadn’t biked anything steeper than a slight incline. The next day I biked to the base of the mountain and saw that the road was steep, but I’d been told that it was heavily switchbacked. I put my bike in the lowest gear and started climbing. Within ten minutes I was winded and I turned back. A few days later I tried again and I was still unable to make it much farther than I had before. Now when I saw Mount Baldy in the distance, I didn’t see a beautiful mountain, I saw a nemesis. I began to feel that the mountain was taunting me. Nearly every day I peddled back out to the mountain, forcing myself to climb just a little bit farther than the last time. On my visits I noticed another biker, a young white guy suited up in spandex biking shorts and a bright yellow racing shirt. A real biker. He zipped by me without a second glance.
As the weeks turned to months, I was making progress. I could get well past the halfway point before turning around, and the biker dude was noticing. Now when he passed me, he gave a nod and I nodded back.
One weekend, I was in the middle of my climb. I was reaching the halfway point and feeling fatigued and contemplating turning around early when Biker Dude pulled up beside me. He didn’t pass me, he just stayed beside me matching my pace, then glanced over at me and said, “Stay on it!” giving me an encouraging nod. Then he pulled in front of me but didn’t speed off like he usually did. He biked just a few feet in front, leading me on. He arced his arm in a semicircle and pointed ahead as if to say “Onward! Upward!” I tailed him despite my fatigue and soon we were a bit past the halfway point.
The progress was slow but I refused to stop, especially now that Biker Dude was here to witness my defeat. I was standing on my pedals and every revolution was agony. With each foot in elevation gained, it felt as if the sun was getting exponentially hotter. Still I didn’t stop. I went inward. The road disappeared, Biker Dude’s ass disappeared, the mountain disappeared. I was still climbing but I no longer felt achy muscles or the blistering sun.<
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I had a vague sense of the scenery gliding past, of Biker Dude’s rhythmic movements, but I was in the eye of the storm. I felt invincible. It seemed no time had passed since Biker Dude pushed me on, and then we were turning into Mount Baldy Village. I cruised in with my hands raised in victory above my head and Biker Dude was grinning from ear to ear. “Atta girl!”
I learned there was a place I can go to when my body and mind were pushed to their limit. A place within where I could draw strength to continue. I loved how I felt in that place. I was hooked.
By the end of the semester, biking to Mount Baldy Village was never easy but it was no longer a huge challenge. I returned from my ride pleasantly sore and emotionally high. I wanted something more. That summer I stayed on campus and took a job as a summer resident assistant with ten other students. The job entailed living on campus and cleaning out the dorm rooms and staffing campus summer programs, which included groups like Elderhostel and conferences. I became close with another RA named Heidi who also liked to bike. She was a petite blonde with skin and hair so fair it would be easy to mistake her for an albino if not for her striking blue eyes.
We began riding together on the weekends. On one of our rides I proposed a longer trip for the end of the summer: a two-hundred-fifty-mile bike ride from school to Santa Monica and on along the Pacific Coast Highway to Laurel Springs in Santa Barbara and back to Santa Monica. It was quite ambitious but we were both up for the challenge. We’d spend the first night at the Alta house and the second night at the Ranch. When I told Jane our plans, she gave the trip the OK with the exception of us biking up the last stretch of narrow road to the camp. “Too dangerous,” she said, and made arrangements for someone to pick us up at a gas station at the base of the mountain.
Since I was about to embark on a real biking adventure, I decided it was time I looked like a real biker. So I went out and bought myself real biker gear: spandex shorts, a jersey, shoes. We trained daily, practiced changing tires and other minor bike repairs, and meticulously researched the best routes. We left campus early in the morning the day after our jobs ended. The first fifty miles from school to the Alta house was long but fairly straightforward. It was the first time either of us had biked fifty miles at once. We arrived at the Alta house well within the ten hours we scheduled. We rewarded our efforts with a spaghetti dinner, with ice cream for dessert. Then we watched a bit of TV before turning in early.
We were up bright and early the next day and made the short trek onto the Pacific Coast Highway to begin the next leg of the trip, a century (one hundred miles) to Laurel Springs. The ocean was spread out like a bejeweled blanket on our left as we pedaled along in the bike lane headed north. The weather was in our favor. We were pushed along with a wind at our backs.
My fear that the traffic would be a hazard, as it was known to speed along the highway recklessly, was unfounded. The problems arose when nearly every hour one or both of us got a flat from all the tiny sharp objects that accumulated in the bike lane along the highway. We got flats so many times we began to take pictures of ourselves repairing them.
On the way to Santa Barbara, our path left the highway and veered off into a hilly residential neighborhood before spitting us back onto a highway, then to the little gas station at the base of the mountain, where we were to use the pay phone to call our ride. I was a bit annoyed that Jane was against us biking up. I felt we were strong enough to make the climb. But when our ride came and I looked at the road for the first time through the eyes of a road biker, I knew Jane was right. The lack of guardrails and the blind turns and speeding vehicles made the road reckless for vehicles and doubly so for bikers.
When I look back at the many pictures we took on this trip repairing flats, standing with our arms around each other’s shoulders and dressed in identical biking outfits, smiling like we owned the world, I see a girl being reborn. That trip would be the beginning of many challenges I would create for myself in order to recapture the feeling of being in control of my life.
CHAPTER 8
DURING A BREAK from college I flew to Mexico City for two weeks to join Jane on the set of Old Gringo, costarring Gregory Peck and Jimmy Smits, based on the best-selling novel by Carlos Fuentes. In the film, Jane plays an American spinster who travels to Mexico to tutor the children of a wealthy Mexican family only to find herself embroiled in a tempestuous love affair with a corrupt general, played by Jimmy Smits.
It was my first time on a movie set and my first time out of the country. A private car picked me up at the airport, and as we drove through the city I remember the sidewalks bustling with foot traffic in sharp contrast to the empty sidewalks of L.A., where walking is so despised people are willing to wait for twenty minutes for a parking space near the entrance of a building rather than walk a few hundred yards from a readily available spot farther away. The driver dropped me off in front of a beautiful traditional hacienda complete with a terracotta tile roof, whitewashed walls and a courtyard. Jane greeted me at the door and, after a light lunch, she showed me a schedule of activities she and her assistant had put together for me: Things we can do together and things I can do on my own when she’s on set.
I was a bit embarrassed because I know she requested this schedule because of my propensity to loiter on couches if left to my own devices: “This is Mexico! I want you to get out there and explore!” On the schedule was lunch with the writer Carlos Fuentes and his son the following day. Ever since Jane introduced me to the classics as a way of improving my vocabulary, writers had displaced actors in the battle for my admiration. The combination of best-selling author and a movie adaptation of his work was enough to make me giddy.
The Fuentes’s apartment was in a contemporary building with sweeping views of the city. Carlos’s living room was lined with bookshelves and Mexican art hanging on the walls. He was a distinguished older man, welcoming but reserved in manner. His son, also named Carlos, looked to be ten or eleven years old, very thin and pale but with a lovely face—clear skin, big brown eyes and elfin features. Jane had told me beforehand that he was a hemophiliac. I’m good with kids, so while Jane talked with Fuentes senior, I tried to draw out the shy little boy. I asked him about his studies, what games he liked to play. He responded with one-word answers, avoiding eye contact. Rather than being charmed by me, I began to see he was extremely annoyed. I gave up and turned my attention to the adults’ conversation. Jane and Carlos were discussing Old Gringo and Jane’s character in particular. I was too intimidated to join in the conversation though content to listen.
The visit was a brief one. I shook Fuentes’s hand and told his son good-bye, but the latter merely gave me a laconic stare. I left thinking I had just met the weirdest kid in all of Mexico only to find out later Carlos Junior was not eleven; he was seventeen, quite intelligent and had been winning awards for his writing since he was five years old. What an ass I made of myself inquiring about his schoolwork and favorite games! No wonder he was trying to brush me off. The up side was I now had a clear example I could draw upon that defined a new phrase I’d come across in my readings: faux pas.
The next day Jane went to the set and left me with a list of museums to explore. I started with the mother of all Mexican museums, the Museo Nacional de Antropología, at 100,000 square feet one of the largest museums in the world. I had a lot of poking around to do. I actually enjoyed the peaceful hours I spent strolling through this magnificent building as exhibits took me through every epoch of Mexican cultural history. I also checked out the Museo Rufino Tamayo and fell in love with the artist’s deeply pigmented, textured paintings. I found his many works depicting watermelons charming. I thought now if I heard someone making a joke about black people and watermelons, I could debunk the stereotype and sound erudite too by referring them to Tamayo’s obsession with the sweet fruit.
The next day Jane took me to the soundstage. I enjoyed sitting in the hair and makeup trailer listening to the ladies chat about life and work. Just like barber and
beauty shops in the hood can be the best place to hear the latest gossip, so it is with the hair and makeup trailers on movie sets. Listening to the banter of the film crew over a catered lunch was also a good way to pass the time. But for me the best part of movie making was sitting in on the dailies, watching footage of what was shot that day along with the director, producers, actors and other key players. I enjoyed the intimacy of sitting in the dark with Jane and the crew, listening to them critique the performances, lighting, camera angles, et cetera.
The next movie set I visited was for Stanley and Iris, starring Jane and Robert De Niro, whom everyone on set called Bob. It was directed by the great Martin Ritt, known for his work on Sounder, Norma Rae and Nuts. I joined Jane on location in Toronto.
She’d warned me before I came that while on location in Waterbury, Connecticut, a group of Vietnam veterans showed up to picket the production and protest her anti-war activities. Since becoming a part of her family I learned there had been a few death threats made against her by people still angry about such activities. The more serious threats were met with a bit of heightened security, but Jane never seemed too fazed by it and never altered her routine as far as I could tell. I admired her fearlessness and her refusal to let her detractors disrupt her life.
My first day on set, Marty Ritt, the director, spotted me, introduced himself and personally welcomed me to his set. Whenever I was present he always took the time to say hello and inquire if I was enjoying my time in Toronto. There was a very homey closeness that existed among the cast members that was almost familial, even on the part of a big star like De Niro. He always spoke to me and inquired about my interests. I noticed he had a pretty bad fungal infection under his nails. He saw me staring and told me that he’d gotten the infection on the set of the film Angel Heart. In that film he played the devil, and as part of the character he was required to wear fake nails.