Stories From Candyland (19 page)

It’s fun to look at the notebooks, makeshift recipe books, binders, file boxes, and sleeves for the clippings and coupons my mother and I shared over the years. Each has its own place in time, with my mother’s early collections full of yellowing newspaper recipes from the fifties, sixties, and seventies, while my own newer books are more high-tech, with e-mail printouts and fax identifications across the top. The basic recipes haven’t changed much, though.

I’ve played Mah-Jongg with a group of friends for many years, and they get such a laugh when I prepare a dish from one of those ancient recipe books or boxes. We’re all always watching our weight, so we don’t eat desserts every time we meet—just most of the time. Our current passion is anything “black cherry,” although no one turns down butterscotch pudding. I also collect what I call my “junior cookbooks,” with recipes packaged with titles such as
The Hollywood Bowl Cookbook
and
Taste of Texas
. I call on those recipes if one of my friends has gone to a recent Hollywood Bowl concert or has houseguests from Houston.

Living alone, I don’t have much occasion to cook today,
but I love being in my kitchen, and will use any excuse to cook or bake. I get such a kick out of looking through our tattered
Easy Vue Recipe Book
, and laugh when I see that my mother tucked cleaning tips for removing food stains into the back of one of her file boxes.

My red notebook of recipes is the biggest and heaviest of the entire collection. It’s the most contemporary, too, with everything from raw food menus—does that make me prehistoric?—to e-mail recipes for mandel bread. I have ads for cooking classes I’ll never take, manuals for my kitchen convection ovens, and the original monkey bread recipe my mother copied and kept.

The majority of recipes are for desserts and breads, and I rate them—just in case I forget which evil treats I like the most.

Next to the recipe for Apple Puffed Pancake, I’ve written, “Great, 5/27/84.” The Pumpkin Raisin Cake received my great rating on November 11, 1985. Old-fashioned Marble Cake won its accolades in 1978, the month Randy was born. Hmm. Even earlier, when Tori was two, I labeled Cocoa Apple Cake as “Excellent! 8/14/75.”

Another Candy Spelling pattern?

At the back of my red notebook is a fax dated September 9, 1992. It’s for a bland diet, designed to “ease symptoms of certain gastrointestinal disturbances.”

I can’t remember who needed this diet or why, but I do
remember my mother’s cautions about eating drugstore food and digestive problems. I wonder if not eating at drugstores then allows me to eat cocoa apple cake now. If so, thanks for this, too, Mom!

Preheat oven to 400°F (according to Mrs. Marer), to 375°–385°F (revised by Candy in 1970s).

Ingredients

2 cakes yeast

¼ cup warm water

½ cup sugar

1 cup milk

½ cup butter (1 cube)

1 teaspoon salt

3 eggs, beaten

3 to 4 cups flour

Soften yeast in warm water. Add sugar. Set aside.

Scald milk and put in big mixing bowl. Add butter, salt, and eggs. Cool to lukewarm. Add yeast mixture.

Add flour, beating well until soft dough is formed. Knead until smooth.

Allow to rise until doubled in bulk. Roll ¼-inch thick. Spread with melted butter, cut in diamonds, and arrange in greased ring mold. Let double in size. Bake 45 minutes, or until brown.

Courtesy of Gene and Candy Marer

Los Angeles, California

Circa 1956

Chapter 14
My Mother’s Gloves
Were Off-White

M
y mother was a very elegant woman, but she didn’t seem to know it. She would sweep into a room, and everyone would notice her. She had a regal presence about her. I always wanted to tell her what an impact she had with her grace and style, but I knew she wouldn’t believe me.

And I didn’t believe
her
when she told me that people noticed me. That was the last thing I wanted. I’ve always been painfully shy, and my aim was always to slip into a
room unnoticed. I succeeded for a while. Marrying Aaron Spelling made it much more difficult to slip in anywhere unnoticed.

While my friends’ mothers were like June Cleaver or Aunt Bea, my mother was like Auntie Mame—had Auntie Mame been a strict disciplinarian. She parented by fear, and I was always so afraid of making mistakes. She was elegant, ever ready for the next gala, dressed to the nines, and so wanted a perfect child modeled after her. I always felt like a failure.

My mother named me Carole Gene after Carole Lombard and my grandfather Eugene, but I heard those names only if someone was reading my name from an official government or school document or when my parents were angry with me. They started calling me Candy when I was just a few weeks old, my mother would tell people, “because she’s so sweet.” That’s a nice image to maintain.

I like the name, but it’s often difficult to be taken seriously when you’re called Candy. Blond Candy. I’m just commenting, not complaining.

My mother’s given name was Augusta, but everyone called her Gene, after her father. People said she looked like the beautiful actress Gene Tierney. She wouldn’t say anything to this, except to remind them that she had named her daughter after another beauty, Carole Lombard.

My mother was also blond, but she dyed her hair red. I never knew why. She was so careful about her appearance, so beautifully dressed, so well coiffed. Her fingernails were
long and red. She had beautiful clothing, and she made sure I was dressed in black and red taffeta, vests, layers of slips, delicate jewelry, shiny shoes, and all the beautiful things a pretty little girl should wear. She would talk about ways to look beautiful as she let me fill her evening bag with everything she needed for going out, starting with her lipstick, lipstick brush, comb, “ladies’ room cash stash,” and those non-filtered Chesterfield cigarettes that she made look unequivocally feminine.

I still have dozens of pairs of my mother’s elegant gloves. I couldn’t watch regal Audrey Hepburn in
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
or trendsetting Jackie Kennedy on television and not think of my mother and her gloves. They were part of her class and grace, and a fashion accessory that has disappeared over the years. Too bad.

Those gloves weren’t just a fashion statement. My mother was an expert at the “white glove test,” always making sure everything was clean. No, not clean. Perfect.

Mirror, mirror on the wall.

I am my mother after all.

I enjoy admiring and touching my mother’s tiny French and Swiss gloves, so delicate and intricate—and so small. She wore size six and a half. I marvel at the tiny buttons, handstitched detail, fine beadwork, leathers, hand-embroidered designs, and silks and cashmeres.

Looking back, I realize my mother didn’t actually use her beautiful gloves to test for dust. She would take them off and use her finger. That explains why her gloves were ecru, off-white, and beige. They weren’t designed for cleaning tests. They really were part of her elegance.

I’m not as good with my finger. I use gloves. Just below the drawers that now hold my mother’s gloves, and my own designer gloves, I have some less-refined gloves that I use on mantels, counters, shelves, and anywhere else I think dust might have snuck in.

I’m a clean freak. My mother was, too, but she did it with more style.

I was brought up to be the perfect homemaker and housekeeper because that guaranteed that life would be wonderful. What man wouldn’t love a wife who could keep a house spotless while wearing high heels?

My parents bought me little white gloves that looked like those that Mamie Eisenhower wore to church. Mine came with a little booklet that warned me not to smoke, drink, play cards, or put on makeup while wearing them. I didn’t.

My treasured magazines told me that cleanliness was next to godliness in every facet of life. I never spotted a stain or mark when I saw photos of my movie star idols’ homes.

One of my early issues of
Photoplay
magazine ran a big headline, “
WHY HUSBANDS LOVE WIVES
,” and then, in smaller print, “To Shop at Stanley Hostess Parties.” I couldn’t wait to go to a hostess party.

I studied the ad, memorizing it. Stanley had dusters, mops, brooms, brushes, waxes, polishes, cleaning chemicals, and more. I had my heart set on the “extremely absorbent Amazo Mop,” the Tan Swivel Mop (“to keep floors dustless”), and the E-Z Broom, “for easier sweeping.” I had to have these. I started saving my money.

My childhood was in the exciting era of cleaner and whiter laundry, rolling portable dishwashers that were “gleaming porcelain inside and out,” with a “flowing hot air blower for sparkly drying,” and all kinds of new devices to minimize housework and make the home spotless. Even Salem cigarettes refreshed our taste, promising that the “air softens” with every puff. Wow, I could smoke Salem while doing laundry and, as Salem advertised in
Photoplay
, “Take a puff—It’s springtime.” My house would be fresh and clean and smell great from cigarette smoke, too.

My family made fun of me for my house-cleaning devotion, and my mother never thought it was very charming or endearing when I held up my little dust-dotted white glove and showed her why she needed to try harder.

If I had any doubts about the importance of keeping everything neat and clean, my first trip to Disneyland erased them.

I was only ten, but I’ll never forget being greeted by bigger-than-adult-size Mickeys, Minnies, and Goofys, and they were all wearing white gloves! They must have been doing the white-glove test because all the trains, horses,
monorails, steamboats, whirling saucers, race cars, submarines, and spaceships were spotless and antiseptic.

Beyond Mickey and Minnie, everywhere I looked were people wearing festive costumes and hats sweeping up trash. One happy worker told me that the streets of Disneyland were washed and steam-cleaned after closing each day. I now had a new goal in life, besides being the perfect wife: “I want to get a job here sweeping Disneyland when I’m old enough,” I told my stunned parents.

By the time I was old enough to become a professional Disneyland sweeper, we lived an hour’s drive away from the theme park. But I didn’t have a car, and the concept of sweeping was a lot less attractive when I was eigh teen. So I took jobs closer to home.

Besides, I had gotten married at seventeen, so it wouldn’t have been too convenient. My husband was three years older, a se nior when I was a freshman in high school, and we had dated on and off during my four years of high school. I liked him, and he had a cute convertible, but I think I liked the idea of getting away from the parents even more. We married right after I graduated from high school, and divorced after a couple of years. We never kept in touch, and our other high-school friends don’t hear from him, either. In the meantime, I honed my housekeeping and cleaning skills in our small apartment.

When I married Aaron, at age twenty-three, I was on track to fulfill my aim and legacy to be the perfect white-gloved wife.