Anywhere But Here (74 page)

ADELE

17
THE COURSE OF MIRACLES

I
don’t plan anymore. I used to. I used to try to control. Now I just sort of let things go with the flow. I live in The Now. And I find, everything just comes the way it’s supposed to.

I’ve learned To Give Is to Receive. And when I can, when my billings are up, I look around for things for her. Even when I shouldn’t, I do. I saw an adorable Calvin Klein black and white evening dress at Robinson’s. It isn’t cheap, but it is ADORABLE, it would be just smashing on her, and she needs to have one or two good things. It’s fine to be the intellectual, but once in a while, you should dress up a little, too.

I even thought of it for me, I drove out at noon and tried it on, but my arms are just too old for it, you need a young arms and back. So I put it on lay away for her, she may as well wear it now when she’s young. When you’ve still got the good arms. And those little white outfits I sent her like mine, they’re two twenty-five, two fifty, actually, no, they’re two seventy-five.

It’s the most important, beautiful, fulfilling thing I’ve ever done in my life, being a mother. And I look at her and think, Hey, I didn’t do such a bad job. But she holds in her fear and her anger, she hasn’t learned to let go yet of her fear and just love, the way I do. I have no guilt. Not anymore. I’m living in The Now. I’ve found a real inner peace and nothing can really disturb it. She hasn’t learned to forgive yet. But, you know, I look at her and think, If I was such an awful mother, the way she paints me out to be with her friends, she LOVES to play the poor child, the
martyr, POOR, POOR Ann, then she wouldn’t be so great, what she is.

I see the kids right here in Beverly Hills where the mothers were too busy with their manicures and their thises and their thats, they never took the time to give the real total love, the emotional closeness I did. I see it, I see it all the time in the convalescent homes. I have two girls, one is nineteen, the other’s twenty-six, and neither will ever walk again, from the drugs.

And I started from scratch, from nothing, she saw the house and the dead-end road I grew up on. I was on my own, raising her, when I was her age, who does she think helped me? When I think of what I grew up around, the old mink sheds, a dead-end road—nothing, and I look at what she’s had. Beverly Hills High School, college. And the lessons. And the clothes.

I think to myself, How did I get out of there. Other people just stay in the same rut all their lives. It must be something in the genes, our genes, that pushes us ahead. My sister is the totally opposite of me. And yet, it’s the gene characteristic that’s so incredibly, magnificently universal. That makes me believe there has to be a master plan, a universal power. Something in the genes way back, whether it’s centuries ago—and here we are that we, a few of us, all these chromosomes meet and become something. We’re all only electromagnetic particles. And so is a rock, a fish, a bird, a butterfly. And that’s how you know. That’s how I know, that I’m more than just this lifetime.

I’m part of all that went before and all that went after me. These are my beliefs. They’re very strong and very deep. I was always different. From the kids I grew up with. I was the same and yet I was different. But then everyone feels that.

Everything was meant to be and if she has to rebel to find her own independent self, then I can let her. And I know what I’ve done, I know it in my heart, in myself, I know she’ll thank me someday.

She could have been a poor nothing girl in a factory town in the midwest. And here she’s in with a great crowd, going to the best schools, she can go anywhere, mix with anyone. Absolutely anyone. She’s really a member of the intelligentsia, the real
cream, the upper crust. And she’s there because I got her in when she was young enough to learn. I was already thirty-nine when we moved here. I was young and good-looking. Sure, she’s smart and she’s pretty and talented—the works, she’s got it all, the best of everything, I tell her—but I’ll tell you, there are plenty of them there in the midwest who are the same and you’ll never see them, because they’ll never get out and rise up. Like Lolly. They just sink.

They tried—to make me and more than that, my child, into their mold. I had to let myself and my daughter go free. And mold in another way. I didn’t see the joys and the happinesses I felt life offered. If only to look at a sunset or to look at an owl on a fence or to see the glories of Yosemite. I think the real ordinary is just to be simple with yourself. But they weren’t simple. They were highly complicated people. They lived by the negatives, rather than love and joy.

My mother could have come out once and visited me. Never once did they think that I could need. That has hurt me. But I also know it was Carol’s doing. How selfish people can be! To think they don’t have to do anything.

It’s very hard to change social classes after a certain age. I have friends, the Swans are lovely really, and Bert Keller, they’re very good to me, having me up for parties and dinners and screenings, brunches, whenever I want, really, but I’ll never be in the way that she can. You really need the man and the house. And you don’t just find a man at my age. They’re all looking for a woman who has money. And like Nan Keller used to say, if you don’t learn your tennis before a certain age, before you’re twenty, you’ll never get your form just right. But I’m practicing, with tennis I don’t agree, I am learning.

She’ll have the big house someday and the husband and the beautiful yard, all of it. And, I’m hoping, grandchildren. I’m ready to be a grandmother. I think it’ll be one of the most satisfying emotionally, I mean, beautiful things. I don’t worry about getting old. You’re as old as you feel and I feel young. I’m ready for grandchildren right now.

I’m happy here in my little place, I’ve fixed it up cute. Some
day, I’d like to buy, I’d like to have a little house where I can see the ocean and the mountains, real choice. But it has to be the right spot. I’m looking. I’m looking all the time. I’m going to move pretty soon. I’m saving. LA has gotten too big and too busy. I’m sick of all this driving.

And her going to Wisconsin, her doubts, all this playing up how she was poor, working class—I tell her, Honey, you were NEVER working class, your mother always had an MA, that’s not working class—at the time, it hurt me, it really just hurt me right here in the heart, when she wouldn’t dress up, even once, she wouldn’t put on the clothes I sent her FOR ONE DAY, just to please me, but now I understand that was all just rebellion. And I’ve learned to be patient, not to try and change people. And when you do that, they come around by themselves, quicker than if you try to influence. And she’ll never go back to Wisconsin. Never in a million years. She couldn’t go back, after Brown. I couldn’t either, now. I really couldn’t. There’s nothing for us there anymore.

I remember all those stinky mink sheds—I used to go there after school and talk with my dad. We’d stand and stick our arms in, real quiet and still, that was how you got the mink to know you. I’m the one who had my childhood there. And I wouldn’t go back if you paid me. I’d like to know where my furs are now, though, and my dresses. There’s one suit with a green velvet collar and the pinched waist, it’s exactly just what they’re wearing again now, I’d give anything to know where that is now. But Carol probably threw it out or kept it for herself. That’s what happens when you leave.

But it’s worth it. You have to just say, you lose a lot of things that should be yours, but it’s worth it. They’re the ones who are stuck there.

A man? I’d like to meet someone real, real special someday, a man I could really share with, but right now, I’m concentrating on my work. I’ve got the convalescent homes, my patient load is up again, thank God, and I’ve got a few other little things, I’m designing a line of clothes for the bedridden, I have a partner and we’ve hired a designer, this young Japanese boy who’s going out
with Betsy Swan, and I’m writing a book. I don’t go to a lot of parties, I live a very quiet life. I’m actually a very shy person. And before I really want to look for a man, I’m just going to get ME organized first, type up those damn reports, it’s the end of the month again.

And I read before bed every night. I’ve gotten very involved in the spirit, in giving and really feeling a oneness with the world. I read this Course of Miracles and I hope and pray, she’ll read them. I sent them all to her for Christmas, with a few other things of course, clothes and a little jewelry. She laughs. They may not be Pulitzer Prize–winners but they show you the fullness and the openness of life. They teach you to give. And let’s see, what else? I’m reading Zen, all these various philosophies.

Sure, she’s going to rebel.

What I try to tell her is you can be BOTH—you can have the high IQ and the real intellect, you can be the Female Doctor AND you can dress up a little and act a little feminine.

I’ve done it all these years without a man. Not many women have been father and mother both. And I’ve been through lots she doesn’t even know. There are many things she doesn’t know, the things I didn’t tell her, just so she wouldn’t worry, just so she could be a child. I was in jail once for those damn parking tickets, never again will I let them pile up, but for a while there, I was back in school, getting my new California certification and I just put them in the glove compartment when I got them. Well, it happened twice and the first time, Frank Swan drove right down and paid my bail. But the second time I was there till four in the morning, the Swans were in Mexico, they couldn’t reach the Kellers, the Kellers were at a party, four o’clock was when they came home. Well, I was raped by a woman in there. Yes, so there’s a lot she doesn’t know. I haven’t had it easy either.

But I’ve learned to be at one with the world and to forgive. And since I’ve let go of my fear, lots of good things have just flowed into my life—all this furniture, the Tiffany, the Seth Thomas—it’s all just meant to be.

And I even see her coming around. She visited and I got a place at the beach last year, for all her kids, so they could party.

And I watched her with them. I just had to say to myself, leave her be, even with the hair and the bitten nails and all, and the underarms and the legs, ugh, that I really can’t go for. But those boys all looked at her, so I guess that’s just how they wear it now. I don’t think you have to, I think the really great girls now still have the long, thick hair and they wear a little mod jewelry or mod dress, not the punk hair that’s going to be out of style in six months, but I just shut my mouth and smiled. And I hoped and prayed that like I did years ago, she’d find her own grace, with her eyes closed. And I think maybe she is. They all danced out on the sand, with their music, and can she ever dance! Well, I suppose with the ballet and the thises and the thats, the cotillions, all I gave her as a child. But I didn’t recognize her at first, I looked down from the balcony and thought, who’s that? And then I couldn’t believe that it was me, I made that beautiful girl.

But she thinks too much, she’s so nervous, she has that anxiety, she’s got to learn to just BE. And for so long all I heard was bitch bitch, whine whine, that now sometimes, no always. Always her happiness surprises me.