My First Five Husbands (11 page)

“Tom, why aren’t you wearing your wedding band?” I asked.

“Oh, baby,” he said, turning to the window, his back to me. “Don’t be a drag.”

CHAPTER SIX

I
recently read a fascinating book about sociopaths, who are a lot more common in our society than we’d like to think. They’re regular butcher, baker, candlestick maker types who walk through life with a sort of emotional color blindness that renders them incapable of compassion. It’s estimated that one in twenty-five people suffers from this congenital inability to empathize or otherwise give a flea fart about anyone other than themselves. One in five people in prison, which is like a day spa for sociopaths who need to work on their methodology.

My God,
I thought when I read that,
maybe Tom was a sociopath
. Then again, maybe he was just a putz. But if he was, he was a putz of pathological proportions.

During my “lying in” week at the hospital and over the next five weeks or so at my parents’ house, I sent Tom photos of Mark and letters chronicling our baby’s remarkable progress and asking Tom when we could join him in Houston. Nary a word back. I did, however, receive a letter from Norman. He’d been drafted and was stationed at Fitzsimmons Army Hospital in Denver. What a gift that letter was! I was truly a wreck, my self-esteem down around my ankles, way too pale and thin. (Hard to imagine being
too
thin.) But someone still found me worthwhile. And not just any someone! Remarkable, eccentric, inimitable Norman Hartweg.

Sitting there on the bed, watching Mark sleep, I suddenly realized what a zombie I’d been, and between caring for Mark, Norm’s letters, and the natural recalibration of hormones, I started to feel human again, thinking,
Oh—why, this is me! I’d forgotten this person
. After six weeks of not hearing from Tom, I wrote him, saying if he wanted Mark and me to join him, he should keep the snapshots of Mark, and if he wanted a divorce, he could simply return the snapshots. Those snapshots came flying up to Ardmore like cannonballs. No letter. Not even a bar or two of “So Long, So Long.” Nothing.

I started divorce proceedings with Judge Caldwell, who advised me to sever all claims Tom could possibly have in any future custody disputes by cutting him loose with no monetary demands. Mother—who’d once lobbied for that
courteous
Tom Bish—urged me to take this advice. I’d never intended to ask Tom for help anyway, and of course, Tom jumped on the “no joint custody, no support” deal. The divorce would be final in six months, in mid-May. So there I was. Broke. Wildly in love with my miraculous baby boy but stuck living with my parents in Ardmore, Oklahoma. None of this had in any way derailed my burning resolve to launch an acting career in New York, but my plans for world domination were set back more than a week.

I decided to set up a dancing and acting school that would include African-American kids, who weren’t allowed in any other dance school in segregated Ardmore. I went to the black high school and invited everyone to a demo class at their community center. About a dozen kids signed up for dance. I did the same at the white community center and got five for dance, six for acting. Bill put up a ballet barre in the living room of a rental house. I couldn’t afford a pianist, but I had classical, jazz, and pop records and a turntable. I was in business! Sadly, as soon as white parents learned their kids were in a dance class with black kids, they pulled their children out. Oh, well. I still had some talented students and was enjoying teaching.

This was the year of the movie
The Defiant Ones,
starring Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis as two escaped convicts who were handcuffed together. When I went to the Tivoli Theater to see it, there was a sign in the lobby, COLORED UPSTAIRS, with a big arrow pointing up the stairs. So up the stairs I went and settled into an aisle seat. Pretty soon, a little usherette came over and said, “Miss, you can’t sit up here.”

“I have to sit up here,” I replied. “I’ll get sick if I sit downstairs.”

She argued a few minutes, then went away. People coughed uncomfortably and turned to look at me. An assistant manager came and firmly told me I had to sit downstairs, but I stuck to my guns. I wasn’t lying. It truly would’ve made me sick to go along with that segregation shit. But a few months later, when my little group of dancers appeared on a program my mother hosted for a beauticians’ convention, I took them to the soda bar for refreshments afterward and the counterman wouldn’t serve them. Try as I might, I couldn’t get the manager to listen to reason, and my kids had to go home without their after-performance treat.

That was Ardmore, Oklahoma, 1958.

For the dancing and acting school recital, I rented the YMCA auditorium, and parents, white and black, came in and rather self-consciously sat down at random. I peeked through the curtain, saw a salt-and-pepper audience, and felt great. After the recital, the black mothers gave me a handkerchief shower backstage. I still have most of those lovely hankies neatly folded in a wooden box.

“Miss Rue,” they told me, “we never thought it would work, but it did, thanks to you.”

I don’t know when I’ve been more touched. And not one of those families owed me a single penny. Three white families stiffed me for the last month’s classes. I even drove to their houses to collect but never got a red cent.

B
y Christmas, Mark was eating baby food like a trouper. Everyone found him adorable. I danced and sang with him and loved him so much it hurt. I saved every penny I was earning, eager for the two of us to have a place of our own. My parents had their own ideas about how he should be raised, and it bothered me when Mother picked him up, saying, “Come to Mother, sweetheart.” I chronicled each amazing accomplishment in Mark’s baby book and in long letters to Norman. We wrote to each other almost daily, and his letters were saving my sanity.

Another word to the wise: Don’t fall in love with someone through the mail! We write with our left brain but feel emotion with our right. Nonetheless, Norman and I proceeded to rush in where angels fear to tiptoe. He came to Ardmore on Christmas leave. Army training had buffed up his slight build to go with his warm brown eyes and quick grin. He looked great. And he was terrific with Mark. He’d always gotten on well with kids, doing magic tricks, making them laugh. We decided we wanted to be together. I wrote the Xavier Cugat ballroom studio in Denver, applying for a job, and they said I could start teaching in April.

“Eddi-Rue,” said Mother, taking me aside one day, “if you’re going to live in the same city as Norman, I want you to marry him.”

“We’ve been talking about it, Mother,” I said, embarrassed by her implication.

When the doctor who delivered Mark fitted me with a diaphragm, I realized it was an open secret that there were only eight months between my wedding and Mark’s birth, but we didn’t talk about such things. This was the fifties. Repressed, uptight,
Father Knows Best
. The prevailing ideology was: Nice girls don’t have sex before marriage. And Mother was brought up twenty years
ahead
of that by strict Southern Baptists, so you can imagine what she thought.

“I want you to marry him,” she said firmly.

Wait! What are those magic words? Oh, yes.
Let me think it over!

“All right, Mother,” I said.

Late in April, I loaded up an old car that my folks gave me (what, to be honest, would I have done without them?) and, leaving Mark with Mother, drove thirteen hours straight to a little house Norm had rented in Aurora, a Denver suburb. Although my divorce from Tom wouldn’t be final for another month, Norm and I were married (sort of) within a day or two by a justice of the peace, with the justice’s wife as our only witness. We didn’t have a wedding band. We borrowed hers. I wore a fitted gray suit, and the lady took a Polaroid of us. I still have it.

We look happy.

Much like smiling travelers waving from the deck of the departing
Titanic
.

CHAPTER SEVEN

J
onathan had the right idea. But since I set myself this task, I reckon I have to go to school today—though I must say, I did consider quoting Lady Macbeth, Act V, Scene l, descending the stair with her taper: “All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.” It’s much easier to write about the dastardly things done to you than the dastardly things you did to others. And I was about to become Queen of the Dastards. If I can get through this episode without turning to drink, I’ll deserve…well, I’ll deserve a drink! You might deserve one, too.

Mother brought Mark to Aurora. It was springtime. Birds were chirping. Mark was happy, Norm was happy, and I was—well, I was “The Wreck of the Hesperus.” I couldn’t stop thinking about Tom. I was married to my dearest friend, whom I loved, but I was still infected with that old virus, weak with that fever.

One day I went to a pay phone and called Tom’s mother.

“Forget him,” she told me right off the bat.

He’d gone off to Mexico and married somebody he’d met in—oh, God, I think she said
Las Vegas
. Devastating. The end of the world. One would think I’d get the message.

Earth to Rue:
You married an asshole!

Rue to Earth:
Sorry, all circuits are busy. Please, hang up and dial again in thirty years.

And then the “Gotcha!” Devil played an awful trick on Norm and me. Married less than a week, dear Private Hartweg was walking along, passed a general, and neglected to salute.
A general!
He was restricted to base for a month. Couldn’t come home at all. We needed this like a hog needs a sidesaddle. I was allowed to visit Norm at the recreation center, where he was in charge of entertainment, and I occasionally took Mark along, but we didn’t dare interrupt his duties. He was in enough hot water. We just watched him pass by from time to time, carrying things.

Norman got his pal Darren Rogers, a gifted poet and short-story writer, to babysit in exchange for the use of a typewriter. Darren was tall, slender, blond, with a sharp, focused brain and articulate tongue. Before he was drafted, he had been part of the Beat Generation of writers and painters in Venice, California. Their illustrious leader, Lawrence Lipton, whose best-selling book
The Beat Generation
truly defined that place and time, thought Darren was an especially promising writer. So did I. And he was so gentle with Mark, I felt secure leaving my precious son in his care. I’d come home after two or three hours at the rec hall, and Darren would read me what he’d written that night. I found him fascinating. I’d never met anyone like him.

Are you thinking,
Uh-oh
? You should be. Can you bear with me? Can
I
bear with me? This is the really hard-to-tell part, so I’m just going to plow ahead, devil take the hindmost.

“I believe in open marriages,” Norman had always told me. “If one of the partners finds someone else desirable, it should be okay to explore that.”

“I disagree,” I always told him. “Married partners should remain faithful.”

But to my alarm, I began to feel something more than friendship for Darren. One night, I came home to find Darren asleep on our bed.

He woke up and said, “Why are you looking at me like that?”

I hesitantly confessed my feelings. He admitted he was interested in me, too. But I was his friend’s wife. For half an hour, we struggled with it, our desire sparking, glowing, growing.

Norm thinks it’s all right,
I told myself.

But
I
don’t think it’s all right,
myself told me.

What if the Baptists are right, and I’m thrown in a lake of fire?

So what? I’m already hot as a firecracker!

I moved in like a cat. Norm had speculated I might fall for a hunky buddy of his on base, but he never suspected
Darren,
whose sibilant voice and poetic demeanor were hardly the answer to a maiden’s prayer. And frankly, he was no great shakes in bed. I can only give him a C. (Which still beats a D, the damn best I can come up with for Norman. I dearly loved the man, but as Dorothy says in
Golden Girls
about her ex-husband, Stan, “It always seemed to be over before he got into the room.”) About a week later, Darren got word that he was being sent to Korea. He told me he was leaving immediately for California to visit Lawrence Lipton, then his parents.

So there I was, yearning for Tom, who held me in his thrall despite his undeniable dark side; but married to dear, devoted, loving Norman, who was pretty mixed up himself; and sleeping with poetic Darren, who I suspected had one foot in the closet, if you get my meaning.

Another World
was not my first soap opera.

I kept cooking, doing the laundry, caring for Mark, but I was in emotional splinters, electric bolts shooting through my head all the time—never mind my heart. I couldn’t pull myself together. So what did I do? If you guessed “Rue did the mature, responsible thing”—please, pay closer attention. You’re obviously not following this. If you guessed that I went to California with Darren, thus ripping good-hearted Norman’s life apart—well, you get a gold star.

Norman didn’t try to talk me out of it, and I have to wonder now,
Why not?

Oh, why didn’t he have me thrown in the loony bin? Did he
want
me to go? Did he subscribe to that butterfly BS about “if you love something, set it free”? The afternoon we left, Norm was completely blitzed, drunk as a hoot owl. I was devastated for him, but desperate to get away from the electric splinters. Darren and I drove to Ardmore, left Mark with my astonished parents, and continued to Los Angeles. My folks must have been appalled, but they never said so. In their repressed, non-expressive Oklahoma 1950s way, they probably surmised I’d been driven a little crazy by what I’d been through with Tom. I had always been so reliable. As a teenager, I had behaved maturely. Even as a little girl, I’d always behaved like a “grown-up.” They’d made it clear to me from early childhood that I was expected to be a little lady, do as I was told. “Never dispute your elders!” I followed their rules, because I wanted their love. But now I was acting like a nutcase, running amok. And, children, run amok I did. Powerful, painful forces ruled my feelings, and the only relief came from running away. Run from the pain!

Frog: “I don’t think I’ll go to school today.” Curtain.

But of course, Frog School followed me, as it always does.

I
n the spring of 1959, Venice, California, was at the heart of the Beatnik movement sweeping the country, and Lawrence Lipton’s home was at the heart of the Venice Beatnik crowd, peopled with creatures I’d never imagined existed. Painters in torn T-shirts, writers in torn T-shirts, musicians in torn T-shirts, paint on their Levi’s, all living in crumbling one-room digs, sleeping on mattresses on the floor, some with sheets, some without. Graffiti covered the walls. Disjointed jumbles of free-hand art. A lot of “Bird Lives!” and quotations from writers I’d never heard of. These lost souls had big aspirations, no clear direction, were primarily without talent, and undoubtedly on drugs. Eight or ten of the more promising ones showed up at Lawrence and Nettie Lipton’s large table for dinner every night, where they argued for hours over writing and art and ate everything in sight. It was probably their only real meal of the day.

Lawrence and Nettie kindly welcomed Darren and me. Fresh from an appearance on
The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson,
Lawrence was riding the huge success of his recent book. Darren fit right in with this heady crowd, apparently Lawrence’s pet. Larry and Nettie had the beautiful custom of calling each other by double endearments. Sweetheart Darling, Lovey Precious, Baby Dear. Bright and upbeat, they held sway over this unruly coterie of loud, bumptious beatniks who obviously adored them. I quickly came to adore them, as well, but felt like a trout in a koi pond. All these artists, but not an actor in sight. Where were the theatre buffs and playhouses? Nobody ever mentioned theatre, but they argued writers at the top of their lungs. I couldn’t discuss anything these fellows were all passionate about. I sat at dinner, wondering what they were talking about, and why Larry and Nettie fed and encouraged them.

I went with Darren to say good-bye to his parents, quiet, kind, normal folk who lived in Ojai, an artsy, academic town surrounded by orange groves, a big sky, and lovely mountains. A Shangri-la where rich people sent their kids. Darren had been accepted into an exclusive private school there because they expected him to become a force in the literary world. He was a gentle intellectual, hardly battleground material. Nevertheless, off he went to Korea.

I knew by then I wasn’t in love with him, so after he left, I wasn’t sure what to do. Larry and Nettie invited me to stay on while I decided, for which I was grateful and relieved. But I wanted to get out of their hair as soon as possible, and I was determined to find my way in the theatrical world (was there one?) in Los Angeles. The Yellow Pages yielded four playhouses worth checking into. The first three were not for me, but the Pasadena Playhouse was about to start its “Summer Talent-Finder Course,” four weeks of training culminating in a production of Noël Coward’s
Present Laughter
in the Patio Theatre. I scheduled an interview, looked up Pasadena on the map, and somehow found my way there. (I have a terrible sense of direction, but I can read maps like a champ, thanks to my fourth-grade geography teacher.) The powers that be talked to me for an hour, had me read a couple of scenes, and accepted me.

“Lots of film and television movers and shakers attend our plays,” I was told. And they’d had some major stars in the program. Barbara Rush was discovered there. So were Victor Mature, Gig Young, William Holden, Eve Arden, Robert Preston, Eleanor Parker, and later, both Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman. The Playhouse had been out of commission for a while, and the building had fallen into serious disrepair, but it was now being renovated, gearing up for a new era. I didn’t care much about all that. I just wanted a good part in a good play with my own kind—actors, directors, and a stage to work on. But it would be on my dime. And I had only a few dimes left and only four weeks to make some money. But where? And how?

A falling-down old hotel on the beach in Venice provided a haven for artists. In the once-elaborate lobby—proud in the 1930s, now decrepit and probably unsafe—art students gathered by the dozens to sketch and paint, earnestly soaking up the expertise of their guru du jour, a guy named Randy. He was looking for new models.
Nude
models. The pay was twice the minimum wage: two dollars an hour. A fortune! Two dollars an hour! But nude, you see.

But
two dollars
!

But nude.

As in
NAKED
.

I brought it up at dinner, and the crowd around the table couldn’t comprehend why I wasn’t jumping at this easy money. Two bucks an hour! Oh, for—
for crying out tears!

“What’s the matter with you, Oklahoma? Jesus, man, get with it!”

“Wow, can you believe this chick? What are you, honey, from outer space?”

Nettie said in her soft voice, “It’s all right, Rue. Sweetheart Darling, it’s
art
.”

Then they all went back to discussing Jack Kerouac.

Ah. It’s all right, it’s
art
. I take off all my clothes, climb onto a platform, and pose
butt naked
for an hour. And I get two dollars. And it’s
art
. An actress is required to expose her innermost being, raw emotions, nothing hidden, I reasoned. This is only exposing my body in front of a group of fifty art students…for two dollars an hour. I visited the art class and watched the proceedings, hoping the ancient ceiling wouldn’t fall in on me. The students were intent on their work, focusing on sketching, while the models, some not in the greatest shape, were supremely matter-of-fact as they shed their robes, took center stage, and tried to strike interesting poses, perfectly immobile for twenty minutes, three poses an hour. As I watched, I thought,
I can do better than that
. After all that dancing, I was graceful, imaginative, and could hold a pose for twenty minutes without tiring. Heck, I figured I’d be a natural. Randy told me I could start the next day and, if I was satisfactory, work two or three sessions a week. And it was a very well-paying gig, he reminded me, to be paid in cash, on the spot.