Candy at Last (8 page)

In Texas terms, the sisters were a “real hoot.” One morning I stopped by to visit with them. Pearl was at the kitchen counter making tea. I asked her how she had slept. “Lena kept me up with her snoring.” Then I went into the living room where Lena was sitting and I asked her how she’d slept. “Pearl kept me up all night with her snoring.”

What was so amazing about these women was that they had grown up poor and raised their children during the Depression, yet at their core, they were happy individuals. Sadly, Pearl died just before Aaron and I were married.

My mother was born Augusta Gene. When she was older, she legally changed her first name to Gene, from her father’s name Eugene. My mother was Hungarian by descent. Her mother Helen was Hungarian by birth and married a Hungarian immigrant, Eugene Rosen, here in the United States. My
grandfather Eugene owned all the meat concessions in Grand Central Market and was able to create a very comfortable lifestyle for my grandmother Helen, my mother, and her brother, Milton.

My grandparents eventually settled in Beverly Hills, and that is where my mother went to high school. Eugene was president of Sinai Temple, where I am still a member today. I always loved when my mother told me about the horses and buggies that rode along Sunset Boulevard.

My mother’s brother, Milton, went into the meat concession business with my grandfather Eugene and ended up stealing most of the business from his own father. This obviously led to a serious fracture in our family, and Milton ended up legally changing his last name to Melton so he wouldn’t be a Rosen anymore. So somewhere out there I have cousins on the Rosen side who have the last name Melton.

Eugene and Helen fell on hard financial times after the situation with Milton. In those days a bride had a trousseau, which was a hope chest filled with the personal possessions of the bride. This included, among other things, the wedding dress, linens, household wares, and sometimes a dowry. When my mother got engaged to my father, my grandmother Helen scrubbed floors to earn the money for my mother’s trousseau.

My father was Merritt Marer. His parents were Arthur and Ada Marer. They were both Russian immigrants who lived in Chicago. Arthur was a sophisticated man-about-town living the American Dream. At the age of forty-nine, he died of a heart attack in the arms of another woman. It may very well have been at the Copacabana in New York City. Wherever it was, I always picture martinis flowing in a smoke-filled room full of gorgeous showgirls, sexy cigarette girls, and splashy night-club acts.

My parents were obviously married at the time of my paternal grandfather Arthur’s scandalous passing. Helen felt terrible for Ada, who was not only suddenly a young widow but was also betrayed by her husband. Helen’s heart went out to Ada, and she started inviting her over to the house and out everywhere with her and Eugene. Well, Ada and Eugene got a little closer than
expected. Let’s just say too close. Eugene and Ada had an affair, and then Eugene left Helen and married the widowed Ada.

Helen was absolutely humiliated and devastated. She was only in her fifties but never remarried or even went on one date. I always wondered how she must have felt being betrayed by someone she had shown so much kindness and compassion. I don’t have a clear memory of how this affected my parents although it couldn’t have been easy since technically they were now stepsiblings.

There’s that expression “walls have ears,” and at the time those ears were mine. My parents never directly told me what was happening, but I overheard most of the details. I do remember it was difficult for my mother because Helen was calling all the time and asking, “How could he do this to me?” Other than this we never discussed the “situation,” even though it was a major crisis in our family.

We used to have these awkward family visits where we went to see Eugene and Ada. It was obviously very uncomfortable, but in keeping with the times and the way my family was, everybody maintained an air of civility. I was always amazed at how everyone ignored the giant elephant in the room.

When I was about fourteen years old, I found a letter in my mother’s jewelry drawer that alluded to an affair my father was having. My mother had obviously elected to bury her head in the sand and ignore her husband’s indiscretion. Meanwhile, she kept up appearances with expensive things and refined manners.

So this was the pattern in my family. Starting with my Uncle Milton, the men committed transgressions and the women in my family bore the burden. I suppose this was the role of women of that generation. These women seemed to have no voice and sadly no option for taking care of themselves unless of course they wanted to scrub floors.

Given my family background, it’s no surprise that just a few years later I married Howard. Even though most of my high-school girlfriends were going to college, I relegated myself to a different category. I had an eye disorder
called convergence insufficiency that made reading difficult. It is a neuromuscular anomaly that makes it impossible for my eyes to focus when looking at an object up close or reading. These days it’s diagnosed in school-age children. Unfortunately, I wasn’t diagnosed until I was an adult, so my entire academic life I was just considered “slow.” All through high school, I had to find creative ways to study, like memory games and word association.

After graduation, Howard was my escape from my repressed home environment. The great irony of course was that my life with Howard was as isolating as my life with my family was. Women could drive and vote, but somehow it seemed that we were still living in the previous century.

14

Strangers: The Story of a Mother and Daughter

When Aaron and I chose the Saturday after Thanksgiving for our wedding date, I didn’t give much thought to the fact that in some years our anniversary would actually fall on Thanksgiving Day. It was our fourth wedding anniversary that fell on the holiday, so we planned a Thanksgiving Day wedding anniversary dinner at the Bel-Air hotel.

There we were all gathered around the beautiful Thanksgiving table with my parents, and Aaron presented me with my anniversary gift. Because I have a hard time being the center of attention, I really would have preferred to open it in private with my husband. Always the showman, Aaron insisted I open it in front of my parents, so I did. It was a stunning diamond pin from Van Cleef & Arpels.

I don’t know why I was so surprised by my mother’s reaction, but until that very moment, I guess I was still naive. Instead of commenting on the thoughtfulness of the gift or the craftsmanship of the piece or how lucky I was
to have a husband who remembered our anniversary, she blurted out, “I guess I won’t have to leave you my diamond pin after all.” I’ll never know exactly what she meant by this but it was hurtful. It was also embarrassing for my husband. I realized then that my mother was a fundamentally unhappy person and I would never be able to share anything with her.

Four years later my mother was diagnosed with leukemia. She was only fifty-five years old. It didn’t come as a huge shock since throughout my childhood she had suffered from various ailments. Some of her conditions were real while others I believe were psychosomatic. And others still were illnesses triggered by stress.

My mother did have some real medical problems. She had heart arrhythmia and suffered from palpitations. She was also one of three million people plagued by gastric dumping syndrome, a condition where ingested food bypasses the stomach too quickly and enters the small intestine undigested. Normal digestion time is anywhere from six to eight hours. My mother’s food passed within fifteen minutes causing her quite a bit of pain. She also had nausea, bloating, vomiting, and dizziness. This was probably why she was so thin.

My mother was a very smart woman. When she was feeling well she did crossword puzzles and she did them in ink. I have never since seen anyone sit down to do a crossword puzzle with an ink pen. Even when she was well, she didn’t do much with her time. She didn’t volunteer or give time to charities. She spent most of her free time sleeping. Eventually she had two-thirds of her stomach removed because of an ulcer.

Looking at her through the eyes of a child, I didn’t connect the dots. It was much simpler for me then. I liked my friend Nancy’s mother better than my own because she lively, attentive, and sweet. She was this tiny woman who let us dress up in all of her clothes. Her shoes were a size three-and-a-half and her evening gowns fit me. She didn’t mind one bit every time Nancy and I raided her closet.

I am eleven years older now than my mother lived to be. I see now that my mother held everything in, and the bitterness inside ate her up alive. Going back to her brother, who stole my grandfather’s business and reduced them to
circumstances in which my grandmother had to clean houses, I can see why she was so angry. I don’t think she wanted to be in the meat business, but my Uncle Milton, by the mere virtue of being male, was given an opportunity.

After marrying my father, my mother watched him mismanage their finances. She spent a lifetime trying to be happy from the outside, but nothing was ever enough to fill that gaping hole. I think the hole expanded and filled itself with resentment. It must have also been hard to be dependent on men to take care of her when she was capable and could have taken care of herself.

My mother was treated for her leukemia and went into remission. Shortly after this, she suffered a fall that left her unconscious. She was placed on life support, and her doctor advised me that she most likely had suffered brain damage that would leave her paralyzed on one side of her body.

My mother had wanted a “
DO NOT RESUSCITATE
” order when she was undergoing cancer treatment, but we never got around to executing it. The doctor treating her for the fall knew her well and talked me through all of the possible outcomes. My mother was very proud, and I knew she wouldn’t want to live with one side of her face and body paralyzed. I also knew she wouldn’t want to go through chemotherapy again if as a result of the trauma, she fell out of remission.

Through all of this my father was completely shutdown. It fell on me to make the decision to remove my mother from life support. After one long agonizing day, my mother’s body finally expired, and she passed away.

Nolan Miller accompanied me to her home to pick out the clothes she would be buried in. We looked everywhere for her false teeth, but they were nowhere to be found. Despite his philandering, it suddenly seemed that my mother was the glue that held my father together. Without her he couldn’t function at all.

Tori always brought out the best in my mother. When she was feeling well, we’d stop by for a visit. She had a closet full of toys for Tori that we would pull out and play with. My mother was very natural with her, and even though she never quite seemed to feel the joy of being a grandparent, it was the happiest I ever remember seeing her.

15

Everything’s Bigger in Texas

My husband was a dreamer and had been since he was a little boy walking around Dallas, making up stories in his head. When he was about eight years old, Aaron lost use of his legs and was bedridden for a year. His doctors believed it was a form of posttraumatic stress disorder from being bullied on his way to school every day. Aaron was in danger of not being passed onto the next grade. He was required to write twenty-five book reports, and I think he wrote something like one hundred and forty. He probably also came up with countless characters and stories in between book reports. (I once read that film director Martin Scorcese had also been bedridden as a child because of his asthma. He also credits this time with fostering the development of his imagination.)

Aaron was a rugged individualist. An intellectual and creative version, but still, a real “pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps kind of guy.” When I think of his vision, his values, his work ethic, and his sense of responsibility, I always
think of his roots in the enormous state of Texas. The geography and history of the state were as much a part of my husband’s being as his characters were.

Before I met Aaron, I had this notion of Texas being just like it was in the 1956 movie
Giant
starring Rock Hudson, James Dean, and Elizabeth Taylor. These rugged men, their cattle ranches and horses that refused to be tamed. Aaron certainly had the southern drawl but didn’t quite fit into the role of Bick or Jett, and he also didn’t learn to ride a horse until he came to Los Angeles and got cast in a western.

What I learned over the years from meeting Aaron’s family and listening to his stories is that Texas really is the land of the entrepreneurial spirit. Unless you’re from Texas, there isn’t anyway you would know that, and I found it absolutely fascinating. I never thought about it, but Texas has only four big cities, and the Dallas–Fort Worth area only became a presence in the last twenty or so years. Until then it was Houston and San Antonio, which is funny to think about now because San Antonio is small by today’s standards. Other than these four cities, Texas is made up of all these tiny little towns connected by rural highways.

Early in the twentieth century, Texas experienced its oil boom known as “The Gusher Age,” when a massive petroleum reserve was discovered near Beaumont. By the 1940s, Texas was the leader of oil production in the United States, and according to some historians, the Texas boom ushered in the global Oil Age. During this rapid forty-year period of development, exploratory wells were drilled all over Texas. Wildcatters were the adventurous entrepreneurs who jumped in their trucks and went from place to place drilling wells in areas not known to be oil fields. The term evolved from the wells that were drilled out in the middle of nowhere, where only wildcats lived. Many of these wildcatters made their fortunes, but they started out with very humble beginnings.

In his own way, Aaron was a wildcatter who struck oil in Hollywood. He had the vision, the imagination, and the drive. Aaron became Aaron Spelling not just because he was such a prolific writer but also because, true to his
Texas roots, he wanted to be a stakeholder in his own ideas and play an active role in the creative process. He was already a successful writer at Four Star Entertainment. Many writers would have been satisfied with that alone. Aaron was different. He wanted to find his own well. That Texas spirit of entrepreneurship was hardwired into him. He wanted his own land, and he wanted to be his own oil well.