A Life in Parts Read online

  He acted in an incredibly fake and delightfully cheesy movie called Beginning of the End, a low-budget sci-fi film made in the late fifties by the great Bert I. Gordon—aka “Mr. B.I.G.”—who specialized in “giant” movies that he made by superimposing images onto his films. For this one, Gordon filmed real grasshoppers, then unconvincingly superimposed them onto the action. You know the classic story: an invasion of angry, voraciously hungry, giant man-eating grasshoppers created at an experimental farm in Illinois.

  Joe Cranston plays a soldier stationed as a lookout on top of a skyscraper. Grasshoppers are attacking the city. Don’t they always? You never see them descending on a field of wheat. When my dad reports to his superiors over the two-way radio, he is still peering through his binoculars. “Eastern sector clear,” he says. Just then, the quivering antennae of a giant grasshopper appear behind him. Cut back to headquarters: the officers are listening to Dad’s report, his voice emanating through the speaker on the wall, “No sign of them here.” Then a bloodcurdling scream. “Noooo!” Dad was a goner. Great stuff.

  If my dad was featured in a show or movie on TV, neighbors would drop by the next day to report how they felt about his work. “I liked the production value, but all the actors were turkeys.” “The beginning was great . . . but the end was a fiasco.”

  That was my first brush with celebrity. And critics. There was always a but. Everyone felt entitled to voice his or her opinion. As an actor, you were fair game.

  My dad didn’t seem to lack for confidence. And yet the endless stream of buts got to him. When things went south, he griped and fumed and resented others he felt were unworthy of their success. He was better than that actor. He worked harder than this other guy. So much of the world made him mad. You never knew what was going to set him off.

  I remember riding in the front seat of my dad’s car with my brother late one afternoon, and a guy driving a hot rod cut him off. Dad slammed on the brakes and straight-armed my brother and me to keep us from flying through the window. We were in the rusted car that had replaced our new one. My dad gave chase, honking, and at a stoplight he pulled up alongside the spiffy car and rolled down his window and started yelling. The man said, “What are you going to do about it, old man?” This guy was young—much younger than my dad. “Pull around the corner,” my dad said, “and I’ll show you what I’m going to do about it.”

  They turned the corner and parked behind some stores. Stay here, my dad instructed my brother and me. We were terrified, clutching each other. My dad got out of the car. The other man got out of his car. He was tall and well built. Much taller than my dad. But my dad marched right over to him and punched him in the face. The guy hit his car and fell to the ground, his nose a bloody mess.

  My dad came back to the car and got in. “Don’t mention this to your mother. It’ll just make her worry.” Kim and I twisted around to peer out the rear window as we drove away. The man was holding his face. His face was covered in blood. My father had done that. That was my father. The fighter.

  The violence wasn’t reserved to random motorists. My father and my mother fought, too—careening, blistering fights that occasionally left us children cowering in our rooms, out of the line of fire.

  Things were already shaky by the time my dad took over the lease of the Corbin Bowl, a bar and coffee shop attached to a bowling alley on Ventura Boulevard in Tarzana. The occasional appearances on TV weren’t enough to sustain a family, and so he had a vision for the bar: something cool and sophisticated with nightclub singers. The coffee shop would bustle during the daytime while the club ruled the night.

  It didn’t turn out like that. My grandmother manned the cash register. My mother worked as a fry cook and waitress. Kim and I bussed tables and washed dishes after school. Even my five-year-old sister did her part, bringing water to the tables. My dad managed the bar, but he was often away. Maybe at an audition. Maybe at a clandestine rendezvous.

  My brother and I were aware of the fragility of the situation, if not the fine details. We waited in knotted anxiety for our dad’s reappearances and the inevitable fights that ensued.

  We looked for respite whenever we could get it. The movies were our favorite escape. We went to the coffee shop nearly every day after school, and at 3:00 p.m., if we’d done our homework, we went next door to the Corbin Theater to catch an afternoon screening before we had to be back to the coffee shop to help with the evening business.

  Our favorite flick was Cat Ballou, a Western spoof about a prim schoolmarm who sets out to avenge the death of her father and becomes a notorious outlaw. Lee Marvin had two roles—the legendary gunfighter Kid Shelleen and gunslinger Tim Strawn. It tickled us to recognize the same actor in two roles. Nat King Cole and Stubby Kaye played a kind of a Greek chorus and crooned “The Ballad of Cat Ballou.” My brother and I both had wild crushes on Jane Fonda. She was tough and beautiful. We went to see that movie every day as long as it played. We knew every word, every micro facial expression, every gesture. We’d go home and take a bath, and before bed we’d act out the scenes, playing different characters, singing the songs at the top of our lungs: Cat Ballou, Cat Ball-ou-ou-ou. She’s mean and evil through and through.

  Over two years we saw all kinds of movies at the Corbin. The Glass Bottom Boat. Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Momma’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad. The Graduate. I was eleven. Too young for The Graduate. But I loved it. I related to Dustin Hoffman’s character, his confusion. He was trying to figure things out. That’s how I felt, too. I was just starting puberty, just starting to awaken to the allure of girls, and I was enchanted and nervously excited by the idea that an older woman could seduce you, would want to seduce you. Dustin Hoffman’s character watching in awe as Anne Bancroft pulls her stockings onto her beautiful legs? The taboo image stayed with me wherever I went. Until that movie, I thought there was some kind of law that you had to be with someone your age for the parts to fit.

  • • •

  Corbin Bowl was a dud. My dad had to bow out after a couple years; he was crushed. My parents grew even further apart.

  There was a period of weaning off. He started to show up at home less and less. And then not at all.

  Two years later, we went to a courthouse with my mom. She wore her best dress and a lot of makeup. Despite her coiffure and pretty façade, her mood was tense and downbeat. I think she told us she was the witness to someone’s divorce. I don’t remember exactly when we learned it was hers. Sometime later.

  We saw my father in the cold marble courthouse hallway under the fluorescent lights. We hadn’t seen him in two years. I remember his dress shoes and then his face close to ours when he knelt down to say hello. And then moments later, in a blur of violence, he slugged a guy. Boom. Man down. Blood splattered.

  “Jimmy! Jimmy!”

  It turned out Jimmy was the husband of the woman my dad stole and would soon marry. Her name was Cindy. It all happened so quickly. Maybe it took two minutes. Two minutes. And then my dad was gone. I wouldn’t see him again for a decade.

  Flea Marketeer

  I remember lying to my friends and neighbors, the Baral boys, when they asked me, “Where’s your dad?”

  “Oh, he’s been working every day but he comes home at night and wakes us up and we play for a long time.” I think they believed it. Even I started to believe it.

  For a while my dad had been a ghost. And then he was gone. We were never told why. In fact, we were never told anything. That’s just what happened. Move on.

  For the longest time I thought my sister, Amy, who was too young to understand what was happening, was luckier for sliding through that period relatively unscathed. But now I realize that she missed all the happiness and stability of the time before things fell apart—the Christmas lights, the outings, and the games we’d play as a family.

  Because we had known the good times, I think my brother and I felt the loss more acutely. My father’s waning presence, his chronic absence, his disappearanc
e. Now he was just a memory.

  He was the love of my mom’s life. In his wake she grew angry. She began tending to her resentment like a private garden that was more real to her than any living thing. Where once she was vibrant and accessible, now she was overtaken by depression and inertia. Once caring and present, now she was sullen and melancholy and remote. She began to drink. Slowly at first, and then not slowly. She started with wine. Boxed wine. Wine in jugs with the little finger hole. I saw a lot of those empty jugs.

  She would perch at the kitchen table draining her glass and complain to my brother and me: Your father. Ugh, your father. He needed to be a star. And he wasn’t a star. And that’s what drove him crazy.

  She’d sometimes turn to me and say, with a sneer of bitterness and pain: You look just like him.

  What was she going to do? Since there was now zero money coming in, she needed to find a pathway to income. Mom was a natural pack rat, so the obvious avenue was to sell off some “assets.” Her plan was to pack up her ’56 pink Cadillac (probably a holdover from one of our “up” periods), and drive to the Simi Valley swap meet to sell whatever she could. Every Saturday night, Kim and I would pack the Pink Lady, as my mom had affectionately dubbed her car, to the roof. And every Sunday morning, before sunrise, we’d somehow, someway stuff ourselves in, too, for the twenty-five-mile trip.

  Kim and I were charged with unloading the car and arranging the eclectic items for sale on blankets. We made tidy rows while Mom went scouring for bargains from other sellers. About the time we finished setting up our wares, Mom would return with armloads of other people’s junk for us. Not for us, exactly, not for our personal use, but to resell at a profit. We carefully integrated the new haul into our own.

  When Mom found out that there was another swap meet opening up on Saturdays in Saugus, in Santa Clarita, we added that to our itinerary. We now spent the whole weekend at swap meets. We were in the junk business. Once we sold off our own items, we became fully dedicated to hawking other people’s goods. The garage that Kim and I had once used as a stage for creative expression was now creating an expression all its own. Junk filled the space from floor to ceiling. It wasn’t just the garage. The house was now unrecognizable to us. Everything was stacked and crowded and askew: slightly used bedding and secondhand clothing and radios with broken speakers and ratty furniture and tarnished table settings. There were dolls with one eye missing and tattered magazines with their covers torn off.

  I came to abhor clutter. I still feel uneasy when things around me are in disarray.

  But my mom pressed on. In spite of her growing desperation and despair, there was something valiant about her tenacity. I think she really did believe the swap meets would save us. But in the end, the numbers wouldn’t add up. After a while, the bank told her that we were going to lose the house. And then we did.

  Professor Flipnoodle

  I got adequate grades, but the teacher comment section of my report card was always filled with ominous statements: Bryan needs to apply himself. Bryan is often goofing around and disruptive. Bryan spends too much time daydreaming. I so clearly remember hearing these comments reworked and recited back to me as admonishments whenever my parents disapproved of my behavior. If I were a kid today, I’d probably be diagnosed with mild ADHD. Back then, the only descriptor for my condition was: Bryan needs to pay more attention.

  So, now entering fifth grade, what was different? Maybe I looked to school as a haven away from the chaos at home. Maybe school was a safe place where I could focus my energies. Whichever. My grades rose, and so did my spirits. Suddenly I was popular; I was invited to parties and asked to run for student-body president. I was a good athlete—not great, just good, but I harbored the dream that one day I would become a major league baseball player.

  I also dreamed of Carolyn Kiesel, a torturously cute classmate. She wore her dark brown hair in an adorable cut that framed her petite features. Rather than telling this sweet girl how I felt or striking up a conversation, I put some of the tasty paste we used for arts and crafts in her hair. Naturally, that made Carolyn angry with me—which was . . . all right by me. I understood anger; it was affection I couldn’t wrap my head around. Having Carolyn yell at me was at least better than having her not notice me at all. Eventually I realized I needed to find another way to tell Carolyn I liked her. Maybe next year when we were both mature sixth graders.

  I was very fortunate to have two wonderful mentors in Mrs. Waldo and Mrs. Crawford, my fifth and sixth grade teachers at Sunny Brae Elementary. Neither of them was finger-wagging or textbook. They wanted their students to find their own ways to express themselves, and they encouraged me to explore performance. I learned that there were other ways to do a book report besides sitting down and writing the tired old: Huck Finn, Mark Twain’s most acclaimed work, tells the story of the travails of a young man as he leaves his hometown seeking adventure, blah, blah, blah. None of that. I could act it. I could be Huck Finn. Or Professor Flipnoodle.

  Professor Flipnoodle was the lead role in our school play, The Time Machine; Flipnoodle was the machine’s wacky inventor, who traveled back in time to seminal, teachable moments in history. Two years earlier, the school had done the same play, my brother in the lead role, and I was blown away by his ability. When Kim donned the character’s fire-red curly wig on the stage, he became a different person. I remember sitting in that audience and knowing with piercing clarity that I wanted to wear that wig, too. At last, my audition arrived. I can’t remember the details, but I must have been good. I got the role. The wig was mine.

  Two performances were scheduled: one in the daytime for the student body and teachers, and one at night for the parents. I chipped away at the text and memorized it. I was confident that everything would fall into place. Doing a play was like an oral book report, just longer.

  With the red curly wig as my talisman, I breezed through the afternoon performance, winning applause and cheers. During a break, a castmate and friend, Jeff Widener (a convincing Davey Crockett), shared an idea, a note he thought would be a funny addition to the evening performance.

  “Hey, Bryan, wouldn’t it be funny if instead of saying, ‘After delivering the Gettysburg Address, President Lincoln will return to the White House,’ you said, ‘President Lincoln will return to the White Front.’ Wouldn’t that be funny?” In the sixties and seventies, a department store chain named the White Front was as ubiquitous in Southern California as Target is today. I laughed and agreed, sure, substituting White Front for White House would be funny. But saying that would ruin the play. My response was emphatic, serious. No. Conversation over.

  But now I was paranoid. I couldn’t have been aware of the term mantra, and yet that’s what I employed. I hammered these words into my head with grim determination. Don’t say White Front, don’t say White Front.

  Hours later, I got up on that stage and performed my heart out. This happened before my dad punched the guy in the courthouse, but I don’t remember him being in the auditorium. I knew my mother and brother and grandparents were out in the darkness, however, so I was filled with pride and adrenaline. I came to the part of the show dealing with the strife of the Civil War, and in a tone of supreme authority I pronounced that “after delivering the Gettysburg Address, President Lincoln will return to the White Front.”

  Silence.

  I realized what I’d done instantly and stopped. Did they hear it? Maybe they didn’t. Maybe God stepped in and corrected my word at the last second and saved me. I sheltered in the brief moment of silence and hope. But then came the laughter. The sound ricocheted off the walls and ceiling tiles like bullets. Men were doubled over in hysterics. Kids on stage were so overcome that snot was coming from their noses. Carolyn Kiesel was on stage, too, crying with laughter—which extinguished any hope of currying favor with her from my afternoon’s perfect performance.

  Everything came to a standstill exept my breathing. I stood there panting. I felt numbness in my face. A few years b
efore, I’d had some teeth pulled, and afterward, as the drugs wore off, the world trailed by me in slow motion. Speech was distorted, faces misshapen. On stage, at that moment, I was reliving that sensation. Plus panic. I messed up something bad. Real bad.

  I looked backstage and there was my beloved Mrs. Waldo. She couldn’t contain herself, either. She was laughing so hard that she could barely muster the strength to wave her hand in a circle. She was signaling to me to continue the play. But I couldn’t. I was frozen.

  I suppose it lasted only a couple of seconds, though it felt like an hour. Eventually the roar quieted to some softer laughter and tittering, and I sensed I could continue. But what to do next? Plow forward? Go back and correct my mistake? I decided on a do-over. I said the line again. As written: “After delivering the Gettysburg Address, President Lincoln will return to the White House.”

  Suddenly the room was loud again with laughter. It was almost violent. The line now had a history, like a favorite joke; all you had to do was allude to it and people started to lose control.

  I was no longer stunned. I was angry. I SAID IT CORRECTLY! I couldn’t understand why the audience wanted to continue to punish me. It felt mean. The meanness of it struck me to the core.

  I thought about walking off the stage—but somehow I knew that would make things even worse. Eventually the room settled down enough to start again. Fool me once. This time I plucked out a line that came after the now charged, loaded words White House. I pushed through the play with a hasty but precise pace, imagining everyone anticipating my next mistake so they could have another good chuckle at my expense.

  Finally, mercifully, it was over.

  I was upset. I was inconsolable. The worst part was that I had to endure the throngs backstage thanking me for an evening they would not soon forget.