STARING INTO AN EMPTY TEACUP
My last memory of her could be Carbon Dated to 55 years ago. Julie Smith and I were Jehovah’s Witnesses back then...
Julie was a startling beauty. She was a blue-eyed, natural blonde; a model, guitar player, a singer with glowing purity of tone, a talented writer and possessed of a wicked sense of humor.
She was too young to be dating and yet she was a natural flirt. She had a big crush.
I too had a crush-.-on her mother! Don’t worry, it was all innocent. (Damn it.)
_________
In our phone conversations, she cautioned me--prepared me in advance she had been felled by an affliction or two and would not look the same.
On the phone, it was as though mere days had passed since our last encounter in the Jurassic era of our lives--so vivid and bright was that ravishing humor and personality I felt no necessity of bracing myself.
Now, here I am standing outside her apartment.
Finally, the door opens...slowly…
There before my wondering eyes stood this little old lady bent double; pushing a walker, covered with Band-aids and strenuously achieving each step forward.
I hope I did not gasp.
_____
I entered her apartment and sat down among her souvenirs, cats, and memorabilia.
She stood slightly bent forward on the other side of her latticed door still applying makeup and chatting away like the 15-year-old prodigy she once was.
You know how you can walk out of a darkened room into full sunlight and feel suddenly invigorated? Julie’s life had been the opposite. She’d taken a path from glittering summer solstice to a catacomb of darkest winter.
I followed behind this living ghost, a cherished person as indispensable to my development as an artist and young man.
As old friends must always catch up capturing the bits missing in each other’s recollections.
Missing pieces.
Tiny editorial emendations.
A wisp of who we had once thought we were.
______
Julie performed nobly as the tour guide.
We sat for tea in fine China cups as old Friends poured into the cup of memories.
We sipped, savored, and sighed.
Julie's cell phone b-r-r-r-r-ring now and again.
I easily overheard a loud, an abrasive male voice. Each new phone call: the same voice--interrupting, demanding an accounting of this very visit, insistent and irrepressible.
She was embarrassed and explained.
It was her man friend--not at all happy that another male had set foot in "his" domain.
She mildly reassured and scolded him alternately, then, disengaged and apologized. Every man in her life for as long as she could recall......had been controlling....possessive....and rude.
Even now.
I think she relaxed and plunged in because she needed to say what she said to somebody who had once known her before...BEFORE the long, slow, slide into the abyss.
______
Julie and I were Jehovah’s Witnesses back then. She had been ‘born in.’
I, on the other hand, had been what I like to say was “a boiled frog” cooked so gradually I never realized I was done till I was served up on a platter.
As she spoke, sealed doors and nailed windows creaked open on her life as it was. Bit by bit, I learned things I wouldn’t have dreamed--what really went on in her family. Those people I thought I knew had a rotten side no matter how lovely, self-possessed or spiritual they appeared. Julie had run away from all that by the time she was 18.
She set off out of Texas into Los Angeles, from the Jehovah’s Witness ‘frying pan’ to the Scientology ‘fire.’
That's cult mentality.
The abused mind is drawn to the familiar.
If you are raised around bullshit you develop a taste for it no matter what color plate on which the meal is served.
Julie had ended up pregnant and forced (Scientology’s policy) to abort if she wanted to remain ‘on staff’ as an Auditor. She hung in until she crashed and moved back to Ft. Worth, Texas.
Somehow, she pulled it together long enough to start a modeling career. In no time at all she met and married a man with money who built things for a living. There was money--lots of it--and cocaine. She burned through a lot of both. Her candle was burning at both ends. The addiction and her temperament collided and the balance of her mind was ‘disturbed.’
She injured her spine and the severity of the damage required an internal steel brace. As she was recuperating, she fell and twisted. The operation had cost a Queen's ransom. Pain and misery ended the marriage. The divorce settlement was enough for her to possess a beautiful home, property, assets to last a lifetime. Right?
Wrong. The money went up her nose.
Her back problem couldn’t be addressed without a small fortune. That was gone.
So great was her legendary beauty, there were still men who came and went--each time breaking of a part of her and leaving with assets.
You see where it’s going--I know I did.
She lost her home and property and friends, one awful decision at a time.
She turned to her mother--her old ‘competitor-in-chief’ for money and pity, but soon exhausted what little remained.
See what a bright and wonderful reunion we had?
It was my turn.
I was disabused of any thought at all that MY life had been anything but lollipops and sparkling Unicorns by then. I recited a few of my standard Hollywood stories and divorces and crowed about my seven children.
Finally, those two old people in the room found themselves staring into an empty teacup wondering where it all had gone.
We sat in silence for a long minute or two...just ‘being.’
______
Eventually, with our visitation at an end, we vowed to stay in touch and regather some of the old gang and have a proper reunion. I headed toward the door and she tried to follow as best she could to see me out. We hugged and I peered at her tear-brimmed blue eyes and caught a glimpse of a soul drowning in pain.
"So very nice to see you--let's do this again soon..."