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Chapter 10
Westwood
Sherman Oaks, 1992
Dearest Mother,
The excitement of telling you what happened to me after we were separated so long ago has still not worn off, but sometimes I feel like your mother, not your daughter. Even your grandchild Hilary, that I named, thinking of “ Hildegard" is older than you were when you died. My life story jumps all over in ages and stages and gets livelier with the juggling. Writing is a healing activity.
I haven't told you much about my years at the university. I think my awkward years embarrassed me for a while.
Let me tell you about the Winslow Arms on the UCLA campus where I lived for a while. It had a long dark hall, painted “landlord's tan" we said. The lobby was respectable enough for a student rental apartment.
A feisty little housemother had her quarters near the entrance. She enforced “lockout" after the 12:00 curfew. I don't remember being too upset, the time my sister and I had to knock on someone's window to open the door after hours. And she did rescue me once from some fellow who demanded to see me in the lobby. I didn't know he was known on campus as a psychopathic liar. I was just flattered he had spoken with me when I, who could hardly count change, had a part time job in the post office one Christmas season.
As a young woman, I wanted to be liked very badly, so why I agreed to put myself in the vulnerable position of struggling over the cost of stamps, with a long line of customers waiting, is beyond me. No wonder I had so few dates. Maybe men walking on campus noticed me and remembered that I was the one behind the window in the post office that Christmas.
I have many other unflattering memories of myself during college days. I admired the cheer leader girls, the breezy happy girls who dated, probably ate three reasonable meals a day and could probably count change.
I lived with my sister in Winslow Arms housekeeping apartments and we never kept house. We had come from a small town and a tightly regulated life. At college we were free to be ridiculous. I can't remember ever buying groceries to eat normally except when the building had a dinner exchange. Usually my sister and I would binge on ice cream cones and red peanuts from Thrifty's drug store. Then we would diet.
For a while my sister and I had a joint checking account, but the fights resulting from my bookkeeping, spelling and her parsimony stopped that. I had a slim budget, made worse by the overdrawn fees I incurred.
Remembering myself at UCLA so many years ago makes me want to take the young girl I was by the shoulders and give her a good shake. I was a country bumpkin, but I didn't need to be stupid.
The good part was I loved school. I would take 15 units and then audit some classes. I went to noon concerts, campus theater, and poetry readings. Once I heard Dylan Thomas read. I went to hear Helen Gahagen Douglas give a speech and became a Democrat.
I absorbed the excitement academia can be. I didn't care about grades. I spend hours in the library, half of them studying and half of them day dreaming about someone suitable who would come to the lounge of the Winslow Arms and call for me.
Eventually shame drove me to learn to spell better, balance a check book and count change. The dream caller and a better diet followed in time. That young girl I was did have a pretty face.
Love Bette
* *
*
Dear Mother,
I belong to the Geographic Club at college and I went on a field trip with them and had a terrible accident. No wonder. I joked about Wilma Bruce. I said, “Willie, you're such a bag of bones, we have to protect you from the vultures."
Wilma is five years older than I am and she is an old maid already! She is the daughter of the people Jewel used to live with as a “mother's helper", before I graduated and came to college to room with Jewel.
She kind of horns in on things, but has taken us to the opera and is interesting because she was an anthropology major before she dropped out of school.
Anyway, she probably hates being thin, like I hate being plump, but she didn't say anything and I was having so much fun. We were going to the Grand Canyon and the club rents this big panel truck and we put the boxes of our food, and the stoves in there and toss in all the sleeping bags and then we lay all over them.
I have a big wool plaid jacket from Penny's I wear over my man's shirt and jeans. It's the style. I was sitting by Tom. He's about seven feet tall and wears round glasses, like he doesn't know any better, but he is a physics major and a real brain. He was teaching me to finger spell and had his arm around me. It was exciting but then I noticed he had his arm around Willie too. Mother she wears glasses that are so thick! And she is flat-chested besides.
Did I tell you that Jewel has a boyfriend? Mother, Jewel has named herself Julie and she suggested that I spell my name “Bette", I hope you don't mind I haven't been called the name you gave me since I was seven years old.
Julie and this boyfriend, Pat, are almost engaged. Well if that isn't startling enough, I have learned to smoke, though I don't do it around Willie as I would rather her parents didn't know. They are strict Methodist types and invite Julie and I over for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. It's really nice of them, as it is embarrassing not to have any place to go when everyone else leaves. And now Julie may go to Pat's.
Well, back to the Grand Canyon field trip. I had my feet hanging out the back of the truck. A lot of us did. But we had just gotten into our camp site, and I was pulling my legs out and one leg was braced between the boards when Spider, who was driving suddenly backs up as fast as he can and he rammed into a car behind us. Mother my foot went right into the headlight.
It didn't even hurt. My foot just felt very short and numb. But everyone was so stunned, they kept me down and were really careful with me. I was just very scared. The driver felt so badly, and the professor with us stayed with me while they took x-rays at the hospital. He stroked my hair while I was laying there. I used to think he was so handsome when he lectured, but he must hate me for the trouble I caused him. They say he refused to sponsor any more field trips.
They knocked me out and did surgery. Now I know why everyone was so stunned. The tarsal bone of my foot was broken through the skin of my arch.
I had a big cast all the way up my leg, when I woke up. Then the pain really started. My foot swelled up inside the cast. God, it was so awful.
Well, I was lucky that Julie phoned about our insurance and they will pay the bill in the hospital at the Grand Canyon. The trip went on without me, of course. I went home on the train, when the doctor was sure that his bills would be paid. The insurance company had a fund for helping people out. It was humiliating, mother “my foolishness and my having to depend on everyone all the time.
My physical trouble wasn't over, either. The doctor gave me a Tetanus shot before they put me on the train and I soon broke out in hives and I was so miserable and thirsty. Someone brought me some orange juice. But I don't think I even had any money to pay for it.
Some day I won't need to ask for charity anymore. Someday I'll be like Julie, she always has money and knows how to do things. Now she has Pat too. And I have a big white cast and have to finish the semester's work at home (Julie arranged it for me). Worst of all, Willie's mother insists on doing the Christian thing and having me at her house. And I think I was punished for making fun of Willie and I don't even believe in God and I don't think I should smoke at the Bruces.
Truly yours,
Bette
* * *
Dear Mother,
This is what I wrote recently. You can read it:
At last, a kiss from a boy! I waited for that moment ever since watching Fred Astair and Ginger Rogers as a child. I was 18, I guess it was about time. This is what I thought when it finally happened...
Your name is Paul and I expect you to kiss me. You expect to kiss me. What's keeping you? I'm so anxious. We both know we must do this thing. I can't be rejected. You must kiss me. You can't be a coward, you must kiss me, but when will you kiss me? The wait seems endless. In the dark, in this car. Do it. Come on. I am 18 and have never been kissed by a boy. I can't go on like this. I dreamt about it so long. Not with you of course. I just met you... At last!
You spring at me! You push your mouth on mine so hard our teeth clack together. I'm horrified. I push you off. That was not how it's done! Didn't you have ever pay attention at the movies?
Whoever kissed so hard their teeth met? Dummy!
Your errant daughter
* *
*
I forgot where Paul came from. My sister arranged a blind date for us
somehow. She was so resourceful. I hope Paul survived the Korean War,
and the Vietnam War, as he survived what was surely his first kiss as
well as mine.
* * *
Dear Mother,
My suit is dove grey. A box jacket with white pique showing under the sleeves, which must be pushed up. This is chic. But they will not stay up.
The sales woman at Bullocks Westwood has transformed me. She says I look marvelous. This is to be my wedding suit. There will be a white pique bell cap and white heels as well.
I will be in a civil ceremony. I want to get it over with as fast as possible. I can't bear being looked at, except here in this mirror. This is the first suit I have tried on. I will buy it. I am too terrified to say “no" to a salesperson, especially one at Bullocks.
In a deep pocket of my mind is a white wedding dress. It's for others not as sophisticated as I am.
A little piece of me remembers the glass curtain I once put over my bobbed hair with a rusty bobby pin. That and the dandelion bouquet, thinking Katherine Hepburn in white satin.
I will have two new names soon: Bette Simons or Mrs. Donald S. Simons.
I have never told you how embarrassing it is not to have parents. When I rushed to get into a sorority at UCLA, I had to have Mrs. Bruce come to the mother daughter tea with me. Then when students went home at Christmastime, I couldn't go back to the Masonic home, so Julie and I stayed at the dorms and the Bruces, Wilma Bruce's parents invited us to dinner. They're good Christian people and I suppose we are their favorite charity. That sounds mean, but it's because I was always uncomfortable about it. I really love Mrs. Bruce, she is motherly and runs such a nice household. I'll do things like she does some day.
Mother, if you were still living, I would go shopping with you and you would help me not be so afraid of things!
Love,
The former Bette Bottger
* *
*
Dear Mother
This morning I looked in the mirror and really saw myself. I was so shocked. I am very thin and there were some grey hairs ...I didn't look long. I had to get to school, I'm on double session and I use the room first, for my second grade class, but I've been in a state of shock, kind of all day.
I've been working so hard, I don't take time to look at myself. I haven't had any children yet, but never mind that. My husband and I just bought our first house. When I get home from school I work on it. I'm scraping the old paint off the exterior now, so we can paint it. It will be a dark grey and have a shiny, sunny yellow front door.
The inside is about finished. Then there's the yard. Oh, we have a yard! There are old wild walnut trees and the grass is all overgrown, and beyond the grass the lot slants down to a gully where there are more trees and water is always running.
I remember when I first saw the house. I just loved it. It's an old two bedroom Spanish, with a kitchen, a dining room and a long living room. When I went down the little backporch stairs and walked to the edge of the yard and saw that gully the first time, I was so excited. Just think, a stream in my own back yard. If you go up the gully on the other side, there's a strip of land and then the street.
Each day I marvel at my house. The ceilings are open beam, a little water stained. We won't change them. They are just right. They say an old lady lived here. She died in the rocking chair in the living room.
The original Spanish light fixtures are on the wall. Black iron curtain rings held drapes that tore when I took them down. There are hardwood floors. Some day when we can afford it we will put new linoleum on the kitchen floor. We had to take out a short wall in the kitchen to get our refrigerator in. It's amazing all the things I've learned to do.
I go to school with paint under my fingernails. This morning I thought there might be paint in my hair. But they were definitely grey hairs. Funny, I always thought I was fat, but I'm thin now. My husband helps me with the remodeling of course, but he's not as fast as I am. He doesn't say much, he works slowly, but we wouldn't have gotten this house if he didn't know how to make a deal with the bank that was selling it. I'm sure he's not sorry, but it is hard work.
The front yard was all overgrown with weeds when we first saw the house. We were just out driving. The door had been left open accidentally. It was like the children's story, The Secret Garden. It had such possibilities.
When the outside is painted, I hope I'll get pregnant. My husband doesn't say much, but I think he wants it too. Wow! A house, maybe a baby ...and a few grey hairs.
With
much love,
Bette Simons
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