In the morning I flew back to California and Rick picked me up at the airport in LA. We barely spoke all the way back to Jet’s house an hour north. I hated to think of what was ahead of me. The jewelry business just wasn’t cutting it, and Rick had smashed his thumb horseshoeing and couldn’t work until it was healed. There would be applications to fill out for a waitressing job at Carrow’s and other coffee shops in town. Raines, the local department store, wasn’t hiring.
A week later, I came home tired and discouraged after a day of filling out job applications. “Your brother called,” Jet said. “He said he’s been trying to reach you. You better call him right away.”
Johnny? Was everything all right? I grabbed my purse and headed out to find a payphone for some privacy.
“Are you sitting down?” Johnny’s voice on the other end of the phone line sounded strangely comforting.
“I’m in a phone booth, I can’t sit down. Are you all right?”
“Nank died. I got the news yesterday and flew to Kansas City last night. The service was this morning. I haven’t been able to reach you.”
“Oh, my God!” The tears came fast.
I told Johnny I felt I had helped Nank die. I had whispered to him that he could head for the light, that I was okay, Johnny was okay, he was okay. Johnny waited a few minutes while I cried. “I need to tell you something else,” he said. “I met with a bank trustee and the attorney handling Nank’s affairs.”
I clutched the telephone cord to my chest and tried harder to listen.
“We both inherited a sizable trust fund.”
“Sizable?”
“Enough to support us for the rest of our lives if we live modestly,” he said.
I gasped. “I applied at Carrow’s yesterday! The waitresses have to wear short skirts and knee-high black boots. I don’t have to work there! Thank you, Nank.”
After we hung up I sat down on the grass outside the phone booth for a long time. Nank was still watching over me, my guardian angel. (“You can always count on me, my little daisy. I will never let you down.”) He had given me many gifts, taught me to value integrity and kindness, showed me love. And now he had left me set for life. Because of his gift I would be able to choose work that had real meaning to me.
I had once believed with all my heart that I would be a good mother. But I knew now that day-to-day parenting was not a bigger life purpose for me, and I was in the process of trying to forgive myself for not showing up for my daughter the way she needed. Could my disappointment in myself as a mother propel me toward a greater good, something beyond adventure and wandering? What was I here to offer that is greater than being a good mother? I wanted to give back to life as much or more than I felt I had received.
That day, sitting by the phone booth, I had no idea of the role destiny would play or had already played in my choices. All I knew was that opportunity lay at my feet and I was ready to start walking.
Chapter Three
The Power of Connection
While we waited for my funds to come through, Rick and I rented a small house by a dry creek bed in the poorer section of the Ojai Valley. Paint peeled off the clapboard sides and we had no furnishings besides a secondhand bed and a black and white TV. The abandoned garden surrounding the house survived somehow in the dry, caked soil. But I vowed to make this place our home for as long as we needed it. I had no idea how much money the trust fund would generate, and I was careful not to overextend myself in this flush of expansiveness. A few cans of fresh paint and some good yard sale furniture would get us off to a good start and the scent of sweet orange blossoms was everywhere.
But one night we pulled back the bed covers to find four scorpions resting on the bed sheets. I screamed and ran outside. How would I endure this? We slept in the truck that night.
The next day Rick got a call to shoe some horses at a nearby ranch and I went along for the ride; anything to get out of our private ghetto. We drove our rig—a white Ford pickup pulling a tall corrugated aluminum trailer that still bore the word “PRODUCE” in faint lettering—up a winding road, and passed through the gate to the Levines’s five-acre ranch. We passed corrals, tack rooms, and a barn before pulling to a stop in front of an older ranch house situated under the oak trees. Madeleine Levine approached as I climbed out of the truck, her arms outstretched to greet me.
“You’re here!” she said, giving me and then Rick a generous hug. Along with glistening white teeth and a perpetual smile, she wore a low-cut T-shirt, contoured riding pants, and knee-high riding boots. She waved for us to follow her. ““Come meet Barry. He’ll love you, Kernie. He loves company. Rick and I will work on my horses.”
Rick and I glanced at each other and followed her into the funky house then into a bedroom, where I was met by a pair of blue eyes so intense they shook me to the core. His face, crowned by a head of medium brown curls threaded with silver, made my knees tremble. His look was so bold and forthright I felt naked under his gaze.
Barry Levine was a successful Hollywood screenwriter who lived most of his life from bed. He weighed over four hundred pounds and could barely walk to the bathroom or to the car to drive into Hollywood for meetings with the heads of all the major studios. But that didn’t hold him back. He was creative, productive, and very interested in women. He motioned for me to stay while Madeleine took Rick to the stable to begin their day of grooming and shoeing her magnificent Arabians.
I looked around the room. There was a large sunken bathtub encircled by windows nearby, and the accoutrements of bed life surrounded him: pillows of various sizes, a water-filled carafe, a tray of vitamins, a breakfast plate with remnants of an English muffin. “Would you take my tray to the kitchen?” Barry said.
It was as if I were ordered by royalty to perform the task. “Of course I will,” I said, feeling his gaze as I walked from the room. When I returned from my errand, Barry nodded toward a worn easy chair across from him. “Have a seat,” he said. “I want to connect with those eyes.” His commands were clear and benevolent.
No one had ever asked to “connect” with my eyes before. I wasn’t sure I even knew what he meant by “connect.” I sat down. Barry looked into me more deeply than anyone had ever looked into me, more deeply than I had even looked into myself. I felt vulnerable in front of the most astounding sight I had ever seen.
Barry lay belly down on his king-sized bed clad in a cornflower blue velour caftan. He supported himself on his elbows, a telephone nestled in the crook of his arm. His flesh took up half the bed. “So where did you get this name? Kernie. That is your name, right?”
I told him my brother hadn’t been able to say “Carolyn” when we were kids, and Kernie became a nickname that stuck. “You can call me Kern,” I said, feeling strangely familiar already with this mammoth being before me.
He smiled, focusing his sharp intensity on me. “Kern. Do you have any idea how absolutely adorable you are? When I saw you jump out of that pickup, my first thought was how can I spend time with her? Kern, let me ask you. Does this horseshoeing cowboy speak to your heart? Are you happy?”
I felt exposed under that direct gaze of his. With nowhere to hide I came pouring out. I told my new confidant how sad I was not to be able to reach inside of Rick and contact the person in there. I shared my grief about my grandfather’s death and told him the news of my inheritance.
“How wonderful!” Barry cried. “An heiress just walked into my bedroom! How does it feel to go from rags to riches?” He asked me why I was settling for a sweet, sexy, yet-to-incarnate cowboy like Rick. I jumped to Rick’s defense, though even as I spoke of what a good man he was, tears burned