Mom and Dad worried about him right from the get-go. I made use of their concern by willing myself to be everything Randy wasn’t. Big mistake. What I didn’t understand was that his sensitivity allowed him to perceive the world with intensity and insight.
It was almost too easy to manipulate him out of items like his one and only green Duncan Tournament Yo-Yo, or the Big Hunk candy bar he saved from Halloween, or one of his very special cat’s-eye marbles he hid under the bunk bed. Sure, he was more unique and intuitive, but what did I care as long as I got what I wanted?
When Robin came along three years after Randy, I was beside myself with envy. A girl? How was that possible? Surely there was some mistake. She must have been adopted. Of course, she turned out pretty and she had a better singing voice than I did, but, worse than all that, she was Daddy’s favorite. Many years later, it drove me nuts when Warren Beatty referred to Robin as the “pretty, sexy sister.”
Dorrie came as an “unexpected surprise.” I was seven years older, so she could do no wrong. Her face was a miniature replica of Dorothy’s. She was the brightest, most intellectually gifted of the Hall kids. In fact, she was the only one of us who ever presented Mom and Dad with a report card of straight A’s. She loved to read biographies of inspirational women like Simone de Beauvoir and Anaïs Nin. She read A Spy in the House of Love because it was a good “message” book. She said it instilled in her an optimistic outlook toward the future. She thought I might find some tidbits to apply to my philosophy on “love.” I didn’t have a philosophy on love. That’s what hooked me on Dorrie; she was full of contradictions. It must have been part of the terms of being our only “intellectual.”
We spent all weekends and every vacation at the seashore. In 1955, Huntington Beach still gave permission for families to pitch tents on the water’s edge for a month at a time. Ours rose out of the sand like a black cube. That was the summer I read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and The Adventures of Perrine. I was nine. It seemed like life would always be imbued with black words on white pages, framed by white waves and black nights. Mom put zinc oxide on my nose every morning before Randy and I collected pop bottles, stacked them into borrowed shopping carts, and deposited them at the A&P supermarket for two cents apiece. With money in our pockets, we were able to buy our way into the famous heated saltwater swimming pool. A few years later, Dad took us farther south and assembled our tent at Doheny Beach, where we caught waves on six-foot Hobie surfboards and sang songs like “Hang Down Your Head, Tom Dooley” around the campfire. Sometimes we’d drive up to Rincon, where we set up camp at the side of the Pacific Coast Highway. But it was Divers Cove in Laguna Beach that had Daddy’s heart. He and his best friend, Bob Blandin, would slip into their wet suits and disappear under the ocean’s surface for hours at a time while we kids played on the shore. Mom packed bologna sandwiches with mayonnaise. Willie, Bob’s wife, wore Chinese red lipstick and smoked, which Mom said was really bad. I remember the cliffs. At night they looked like dinosaurs ready to attack us. During the day we climbed them to the top and looked out over our beloved Laguna Beach. If you had seen us from the beach below, you would’ve thought we were the picture-perfect average California family in the fifties.
One Man’s Family
The radio played a big part in our life. The one I remember most was a tall cabinet model made by Philco. We bought it on time, as we did with everything of value. Sundays were Radio Day. One Man’s Family was on at 3. It was my favorite. My sisters and I hurried home from church in order to follow the plot of Father Barber and his perfectly neat family. There just couldn’t be anyone as good, or wise, or understanding as Father Barber. I thought it unfair that I couldn’t have a father who would give big hugs and talk and laugh with his daughter. I always wondered how come my dad wasn’t like that, all warm and patient and loving and … well, he just wasn’t, that’s all!! “If only” he would just say, “Come over here, Perkins, and give your dad a kiss.” If only Mom would say, “Hurry up, I know how exciting the next episode of the Barber family is for you.”
The only thing our family had in common with the serials was Mom and Dad were always looking for a better life. I thought it was unfair. And when I grew up I wasn’t going to live the way we did. My family would be perfect. I would see to that; always and forever happy, smiling, and beautiful.
Unanswered Questions
When I was six, television gave me a gift. Gale Storm. Not Lucille Ball. Gale Storm in My Little Margie. She was everything I wanted to be—clever, fearless, and always up to wacky antics that invariably got her into big trouble with her father. She was funny but fragile. I liked that. I Love Lucy was television’s number-one highest-rated sitcom. Gale Storm’s knockoff was number two, but not to me. Gale and I were kindred spirits, or so I thought. After 126 episodes, My Little Margie was canceled. It was a sad day.
Fifteen years later, when I was a student at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre, Phil Bonnell, the son of Gale Storm, was one of my classmates. On Christmas break he invited me to his mother’s home in Beverly Hills. This is what I remember. It was noon. Gale Storm was nowhere to be found. Phil told me she slept late. I thought everyone’s mother was up at six A.M. with hot Cream of Wheat and the voice of Bob Crane, the King of the Los Angeles Airwaves, blaring on the radio. There was no radio playing at the Bonnells’ house, an uncomfortable, rambling ranch-style affair. When Gale finally came out, she wasn’t lively, and there were no antics. Later, Phil told me she drank a lot. Gale Storm drank? That’s when it dawned on me: Everything wasn’t perfect for Gale Storm, even though it seemed her dreams had come true.
I found my next hero in high school: Gregory Peck. Well, Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. His unassuming, quiet approach to solving the moral dilemmas of life inspired me. My worship for him was even greater than my teen crush on Warren Beatty in Splendor in the Grass.
I always told Mom everything—well, everything except my feelings about intercourse and movie stars like Warren Beatty. Gregory Peck, however, was discussed over and over. If only there was a way to meet him. Mom had to understand how he alone could teach me to be the kind of person I wanted to be, a hero in my own right. Under his guidance, I would have the courage to rescue people from the injustice of a racist community or even put my life on the line for what I believed.
Always encouraging, Mom let me roam through some pretty undeveloped thoughts. One time I told her about how frustrating Dad was. According to him, I never did anything right. He was always saying, “Don’t sit too close to the TV or you’ll go blind,” or “Finish the food on your plate; there’s starving people in China,” and, my least favorite, “Don’t chew with your mouth open unless you want to catch flies.” Was there something about being a civil engineer that made him that way? Was that the reason he never thought I did things right? Mom was different. She didn’t judge me or try to tell me what to think. She let me think.
Grandfather Keaton
The word came late one February night. It was a long-distance phone call from Oklahoma. An emergency. Had to be. There was no other reason for calling in 1937. Daddy took the call. “Come get your father. We can’t keep him any longer.”
Dad couldn’t possibly leave work, so it was decided that Mother and I would bring Grandpa to live out his days with us. I would unfortunately have to miss two weeks of school. I pretended “answering the call of an emergency” was a duty I was obliged to fulfill. Secretly I was thrilled.
We set out with 25 dollars in cash, two gas credit cards, our California clothes, and a 1936 Buick Sedan. We took Route 66 through Kingman, Flagstaff, and Gallup on through to Oklahoma. When we arrived at our relatives’ home, Grandpa was ready. All his worldly possessions were in a small worn suitcase. His hair was unkempt, but he smiled at us with tears in his eyes. We were told he was incapable of expressing a thought.
Grandfather Keaton had been a lazy if good-hearted man. Roy’s mother, Anna, bore the burden. Eventually she had to go to work. When she insisted the marriage