Grouser
Aside from my lack of appreciation for synthetic materials and assembly-line furniture, as a kid I was pretty easy to please. I was only an average student, but I liked school. My favorite subjects were English, ancient history, art, geometry, composition, and Latin. I slid through algebra with a D (the only reason I didn't get an F was because I had perfect attendance). I slept through American history and science. And I considered economics useless. Boy, was that a mistake: only later did I realize that “artists” need to know business games and numbers. It's unfair, really, because business types never have to learn to draw, sing, dance, or write lyrics.
I played war games with the boys and jump rope with the girls, I went to Western movies with my father and shopped for clothes with my mother. Whatever anyone wanted to do sounded interesting to me. I didn't develop the “Fuck you, I do what I want” attitude until I was long gone from my parents' control. As a kid, the only time I balked was when I was told not to do something.
WHY NOT.
One evening, I was sitting in the living room, sort of absentmindedly fiddling with the ashtray on the coffee table. My father, who was sitting across the room, said, “Don't touch the ashtray.”
“Why not? There's nothing in it,” I said.
“Because it's not a toy,” he answered.
I placed my index finger about a quarter of an inch away from the inside of the ashtray so he'd have to stand up and come over to my side of the room to determine whether I was contradicting his order. Since I wasn't, he simply gave me a disgusted look and returned to his chair. But after I got him out of his chair again, he said, “That's not funny.” And he proceeded to challenge me in a contest of wills. I was sitting in a rocking chair, so the following exchange had a rhythm all its own.
My father said, “Are you going to do that again?” And he pushed my forehead with the tips of his fingers.
I said, “Yup.”
He said, “Are you going to do that again?”
I said, “Yup.”
Each time I spoke, he pushed my forehead so that the rocker, with me in it, went backward. This went on for about fifteen minutes, until my mother broke the seriousness of the game by laughing out loud at both of us. “Boy, you guys are stubborn.”
Truce.
Most people who write autobiographies have some crucial whining to do about parental aberrations, but not me. When I got punished, it didn't surprise me a bit. Usually I was sent to my room as a penalty for misbehavior, but it happened so rarely that I don't recall any specific incidents that were horrible enough to mar my outlook on life. What can I say? I simply knew when I'd done something wrong. When you're a kid, you don't break rules and then sit around wondering why you're being reprimanded.
If you can't do the time, don't do the crime.
I understood that, so I almost never complained. What was there to complain about? I was either too stupid or too happy (or some of both) to recognize opportunities for grumbling, so my parents sarcastically nicknamed me Grouser, which means “one who complains.” I didn't know what the word meant at the time, but since they always said it in a friendly fashion, I just accepted it. I called my father Lid because he always wore a hat. My uncle called my aunt Slats because of her long, skinny legs. I called my daughter the Goon because of the funny expressions she'd get on her face as a baby. The whole family is saddled with silly nicknames.
Occasionally, my parents wanted to go to a party or just be alone for a while, so they'd hire a young, quiet schoolgirl, Elva, to baby-sit. With her brown hair in a bun and wearing glasses, she'd show up with an armful of homework and several novels. I amused myself by doing the usual Jekyll and Hyde routine with costumes, or I annoyed her by drawing her face. Being watched is uncomfortable for someone who's shy (which she was), so in order to get the angles and colors right, I had to keep looking at her—up close. She suffered in silence, and, ever the polite girl, she always complimented me on the finished portrait.
Usually, though, I went out with my mother and father because their idea of a night on the town was to go to dinner at a five-star restaurant. One evening in December 1948, I can remember the three of us riding in our old 1938 black Buick on the way to the Tonga Room in the Fairmont Hotel, when my father said, “We have something special to tell you, but we'll wait until we get there.”
Suspense.
When we arrived, my parents asked me to sit at a table with them instead of whirling around by myself on the carousel that was in one of the lounges. “We have good news,” they said. “You're going to have a little sister or brother pretty soon.” My parents hadn't planned the pregnancy, but it sounded all right to me. As it turned out, I didn't hear the phrase “sibling rivalry” until years later, when I was too old to be affected by it, so the usual inherent jealousies didn't get much of a workout.
My brother, Chris, was born the following September, 1949, at Saint Mary's Hospital in San Francisco. All I knew was that Mom and her big stomach and her small suitcase went off to the hospital, and a couple of days later, she came home with a tiny, crying boy. Newborns are usually kind of funny-looking, and Chris was no exception. His skin was dark pink and he had a shock of bright red hair that stood straight up in a point at the top of his head. In those months after he arrived, I'd watch my mother tend to him; I'd observe the constant feeding, lifting, rocking, covering, singing, and diapering. It looked like a lot of work for an indiscernible reward, and it was clear to me right then that occupations such as nurse or schoolteacher wouldn't be high on my list, nor would having lots of children.
The nine-year age difference between Chris and me made the business of hanging out together a bit problematic. He usually didn't want to do what I wanted to do and vice versa. I baby-sat for him once in a while, but by the time he was eight, I was already away at college in New York. Today, I see him once in a while, but since I live in L.A. and he lives in Palo Alto, our relationship is sporadic.
Blood doesn't necessarily bind.
Maybe it was because my parents hadn't expected another child, that I wasn't raised like most girls. It's not that they gave me knee pads and a football helmet, but they were unusually open concerning guidance for a female child. Considering their conservative upbringing, I would say they were lenient about my obvious disinterest in the homemaking arts. If I seemed to have an affinity for something, they encouraged me. But that comes later.
When I watched my mother cook, the routine consisted of chopping, turning stoves and ovens off and on, shuffling pans around, cleaning up messes, setting the table, and washing dishes. Not terribly exciting. When I asked her if she actually liked cooking, she said, “It's something that needs to be done, like brushing your teeth.”
Ballet, on the other hand, was enchanting, beautiful, graceful, and people clapped when you finished, so I did ask for ballet lessons. Stretch, point, turn and bend, memorize positions, plié at the practice bar, costume fittings, and at long last, the day of the performance. We were performing The Nutcracker Suite, and I had my part down at the dress rehearsal. But when it came time to step onstage, it occurred to me that there were more interesting moves that could be executed in the Sugar Plum Fairy's role, so I proceeded to do my own version of the piece. When the show was over, the instructor approached my mother. “Maybe Grace has talents in other areas,” she suggested. Not only was I too short and fat to be a ballet dancer, it was also becoming apparent that taking direction was not my forte.