Candy at Last Read online

  On the day of his burial, I went to view his body. I honestly can’t remember if Randy went with me. He may have but he didn’t go into the room with me to see Aaron, and that was okay. I couldn’t help but think they had done his hair wrong and I wished I had brought him one of his older shirts that would have fit his fragile frame better. I took a mental picture of him, one I’ll never forget, and then they pulled down the lid. It was easier for me once the coffin was closed. We had a small service of about thirty or forty people, just family and close friends. I chose a sarcophagus inside the hilltop mausoleum as Aaron’s final resting place. I wanted him to be above ground, and I wanted his grave to reflect his magnificent character, his incredible accomplishments, and his brilliance.

  One of my clearest and most moving memories from that day was when Tori, Randy, and I lined up before the service for the tearing of the ribbon. It’s a very touching Jewish mourning tradition rooted in the biblical stories of David, Jacob, and Job, all of whom tore their clothes when they received tragic news. The ribbon is pinned to the clothes of the bereaved, usually right over the heart, then torn by the rabbi.

  After the burial, we retreated to The Manor. I had organized some very simple catering. I remember thinking, what is it with funerals and food? The last thing I wanted to do was eat. The reception was endless and uncomfortable, yet I dreaded the thought of being alone that night. The house had already taken on a different countenance. I realized that day the importance of letting people take care of you in times like these. So when my dear friend Willy offered to spend the night with me and stay for a few nights, I took her up on it.

  I definitely didn’t laugh about it then, but I do now. Because I am who I am, nobody came to the door with any homemade casseroles. There was only one platter of food delivered to the house. It was a deli platter sent courtesy of Hillcrest Country Club.

  2

  Beverly Hills Child Bride

  It was 1964 and I was probably the only teenage girl who hadn’t been infected with the Beatlemania epidemic. When The Beatles came to Los Angeles, one of my girlfriends found out where they were staying and paid for a helicopter to airlift her into the backyard of the house. At nineteen, I was an old soul in a young body. I loved classic jazz and music from the 1940s. I was also wiser beyond my years having already been married and divorced.

  I was only seventeen when I married my boyfriend, Howard, who was twenty-one at the time. Like most girls that age, I didn’t know who I was yet or what I wanted from life, but I bought into the fairy tale when Howard proposed. My family lived in Beverly Hills, which, in the post–World War II years, was being shaped as a glamorous shopping and lifestyle destination. The city’s famous hotels like the iconic pink Beverly Hills Hotel and the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, which had just been renovated to include a ballroom for big bands, brought tourists from all over the world. Funny enough, I think it was The Jack Benny Show, which used Beverly Hills as a backdrop, that put the fabled city on the map of America’s imagination.

  My parents were regular middle-class people living beyond their means. Of course my father, Merritt Marer, was the only one who knew this very privileged information. He was a traveling salesman for a furniture line. My mother, Augusta Gene Marer, who later changed her name legally to Gene, was a beautiful woman consumed with all things elegant. She was a fit model for dress companies and an absolute perfectionist. We had a houseman named Taylor who drove my brother, Tony, and me to school. His wife, Lena, was our housekeeper.

  Being driven to kindergarten by a chauffeur is not all that it is cracked up to be. In fact, it was awful. Children don’t want to be singled out at school, and I was no exception, so I had Taylor drop me off two blocks away from the school so I could walk just like all the other five-year-olds. Probably not unlike other families of this generation, my brother and I didn’t speak unless spoken to, and decisions were made for us without any discussion. This included what I wore to school. While everyone else was wearing blue Oxfords with white-striped laces, I was in fancy black patent leather Mary Janes. My clothes were always a fancier style than what everyone else was wearing, and I was bullied. Even the other mothers phoned my mother to ask why I wore such expensive clothes to school. What they didn’t know was that we didn’t shop at Saks or Magnins. We shopped at moderately priced stores like Lerners. My clothes were not actually expensive, they just looked expensive.

  Ultimately it didn’t matter, I suppose. At the end of the day, I just didn’t fit in with the other kids. All the teasing devastated me, and I was held back from moving on to the first grade. In the teacher’s assessment, I was not emotionally mature enough for the next grade. Needless to say, flunking kindergarten did not do wonders for my self-esteem, and, sadly, from that time on I think my mother held the belief that I was not very smart.

  About this time my father suffered some financial missteps when he expanded his retail furniture business too quickly. We lost everything including our home and were forced to move into an apartment in Hollywood. Ironically, what was ruinous to my parents financially was a blessing to my childhood development. We could no longer afford to keep Taylor, so now I walked two miles to the bus stop and then used public transportation to get to school every day. I really enjoyed being out in the world and getting a taste of real life. My new school was also significantly less competitive, and I was able to skip a grade and make up for having been held back.

  Despite our circumstances, my mother continued my “proper” upbringing. I learned how to cook and set a French table service, which my mother still set every night for our family dinner. I also learned the art of needlepoint, was taught to entertain, and even went to private school where among other social graces I learned to curtsy.

  Like all daughters, I wanted to be perfect for my mother. I was thrilled when I pleased her by meeting her demands. Unfortunately, there was another side to this. When I failed to live up to her high expectations, I could see that she felt that she had failed. This was extremely difficult for me and undermined my self-confidence in the most damaging way. I was already shy, and this made me even more so. I also had trouble making eye contact with people, and I absolutely dreaded making conversation with strangers.

  We eventually recovered enough financially that we could return to Beverly Hills. I was a student at Beverly Hills High School when I met Howard. Our courtship was typical of high-school romances; we parked our car and necked, stopped at Dolores’s Coffee Shop on La Cienega for burgers and Cherry Lime Rickeys. We were crazy about each other, and fortunately for my mother, Howard wasn’t just my type—he was also hers. His family was wealthy, they owned a very successful transport business, and Howard himself owned a ski shop in Beverly Hills. Despite being disappointed in the size of the diamond in my engagement ring, my mother gave us her blessing, and we embarked on planning our wedding.

  My parents were not in any position to pay for the lavish wedding my mother envisioned, and I really didn’t want them to spend money they didn’t have, so we took the advice of Howard’s mother and eloped to Las Vegas. Because I was still a minor, my parents came to Las Vegas with us. We had a very sweet ceremony at the Flamingo Hotel. It was a very happy day for everyone.

  Howard and I took a two-and-a-half-weeklong Mariposa cruise to Hawaii for our honeymoon. At the time they were one of the premium cruise operators, so when we got back, everyone wanted to hear all the wonderful details of our luxurious trip. The detail that was at the forefront of my mind, but the one I did not want to discuss (eventually I had to tell my mother), was the fact that somehow I had returned from my honeymoon still a virgin.

  So in addition to being set up in a 2,000-square-foot apartment on Oakhurst Drive, I was also taken to the gynecologist for my very first pelvic examination. The discomfort of the exam was one thing, and then there was the humiliation of the doctor’s conversation with me and my mother. It was so strange that suddenly my body, not to mention my sex life, was everybody’s business. At the end of the day
, I was given a clean bill of health. The doctor’s conclusion was simply that I was very young and stressed out about my “first time.”

  Eventually Howard and I would consummate our relationship, but our intimacy issues, which continued, were the least of our problems. Now that we were man and wife and spending our days together, I saw firsthand that Howard had absolutely no work ethic. I spent more time at the ski shop than he did. Howard preferred spending his days at a casino in Gardena playing poker. We were well provided for by his parents, but we were still expected to speak only when spoken to, even though we were a young married couple.

  I still remember when my father-in-law called to tell me that he had purchased us a refrigerator. I asked if I could see it or choose the color before it was delivered, and he told me that I couldn’t. Instead, he gave me instructions to be home for the delivery. On another occasion, he drove me out to look at a house he was buying for us. It was not the “starter” home I was expecting. It was a five-bedroom family home, and he made it very clear those rooms were to be filled with grandchildren.

  That, I think, is when Howard and I truly fell apart. There was a lot of pressure to have children, and up until that point, Howard and I had only had sex maybe eight times. I also started to feel like Howard’s father was my husband and not my father-in-law. I didn’t have the emotional vocabulary yet to express how I was feeling. I wasn’t completely unhappy, but I also knew I wasn’t happy. I couldn’t talk about how I was feeling with my mother. We just didn’t talk about those things. To his credit, my father initiated several conversations with me in which he told me it was okay to admit I had made a mistake and that my marriage wasn’t working. But I held on, fearful that if I couldn’t make this work, it meant there was something wrong with me.

  They say that sometimes God does for you what you can’t do for yourself. One night after another fight, Howard walked out on our marriage. I was so scared and even more frightened of telling my parents. It turned out Howard had already called my parents to tell them he had left and that I was alone at the apartment. I’ll never forget my father saying they were coming to get me. Hearing those words made my heart skip a beat. I felt so embarrassed.

  My mother was not a nurturing person, but she definitely had a “take-charge” personality. Her way of mothering me during this crisis was to rescue me. She had me and all of the furniture they had given us packed up and out of the apartment in record time. And in the best way she could, she did try to talk me through what was happening.

  Three weeks after I filed for divorce from Howard, I received a phone call from Howard’s family physician. He asked me to come meet with him at his office. I wasn’t sure what this was all about, but I went in anyway. The doctor’s line of questioning was very personal, and I confided in him about our intimacy issues. He listened very carefully and then offered his professional opinion that it was unclear whether Howard preferred women or men. The bottom line for the doctor was that the United States was drafting men to fight in the Vietnam War, so I needed to reconcile with him to decrease his chances of being called to service.

  The doctor’s mandate made me feel as if I were living in the dark ages and had no rights. I was not a possession and had no intention of going back to Howard so I could be his Draft Lottery “Beard.” I followed through with the divorce proceedings, and months later we finally had our day in court. I petitioned to have my name legally changed back to Marer, and Howard petitioned to keep the monogrammed poker chips my mother had given him as a wedding gift.

  3

  Caught in Aaron’s Spell

  One of my all-time favorite movie quotes is from Hannah and Her Sisters. It’s at the very end of the film when Woody Allen’s hypochondriac character, Mickey, has found love again (with his ex-wife’s sister, no less). “The heart is a very, very, resilient little muscle. It really is,” he says to his former sister-in-law, who has turned out to be his soulmate.

  Living back at home with my parents, I found this to be true. Possibly even more so since I was still so young. For a while I felt like nobody would ever want to date me again, but I really didn’t have any trouble getting dates. I also had lots of good conversations with my mother, and that helped me to move on as well. One afternoon, Jack Hanson, former shortstop for the Los Angeles Angels, stopped me on the street. It was Nancy Sinatra Jr. who best described Jack when she said, “My father, Hugh Hefner, and Jack Hanson are the three most important men in America.” Jack and his designer wife, Sally, had made a fortune with their signature “hip-slim pants.” Jackie Kennedy, Audrey Hepburn, Marlene Dietrich, and Marilyn Monroe were just a few of the celebrities who wore his cute clothes. His exclusive stores, called Jax, were in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Palm Beach, and South Hampton. His flagship store was in Beverly Hills. Jack offered me a job there. I told him I had never worked in a retail store and that I could only work four hours a day, but he gave me the job anyway.

  I was being paid on commission, so I instinctively knew that having the right attitude was going to be the key to succeeding at the store. Boy, was I right. All of the other girls, who, like me, were hired for their looks, were incredibly lazy. They were all dressed up and made up, but they couldn’t seem to get up and out of their chairs to help the customers. I was adamant about being nice to customers regardless of how they treated me. I was also very industrious and didn’t make a big deal of bringing up the clothes from the back. The result was that in just four hours, I made more than most girls did working eight.

  Jack also happened to be the owner of the Daisy, a private nightclub and discotheque on Beverly Drive. It was the kind of place where everyone who was anyone went to be seen and have a good time. In 1967, Dan Jenkins of Sports Illustrated wrote, “Every night and most every day in the technicolor life of a man named Jack Hanson it rains dream girls. They pour down from the heaven of Beverly Hills with those exquisite faces, luscious figures, and that long, serious hair the color of ravens or oranges or sunlight. They are actresses and starlets, dancers and models, heiresses and conveniences, and Jack Hanson relishes them all—every slinking, shiny, unimpoverished one. He sees them in the evenings, either Twiggy-eyed or smoldering, at his brutally private club, the Daisy.”

  The doors to the club were open to all of the girls who worked at the store. Even though Jack probably let my co-workers and me in as eye candy, it still felt very special to be there. Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, Katharine Ross, and Peter Sellers were just a few of the stars referred to as “Jax Pack.”

  One weekend while my parents were out of town, I stayed over at my girlfriend Ronnie’s house. Ronnie had a date on Saturday night and was pressuring me to double with her date and his friend Lee. I really wasn’t interested in Lee, but as much as I liked Ronnie’s mother, I didn’t want to spend my Saturday night at home with her. So double date it was.

  We started the evening with dinner at La Scala and of course wound up at the Daisy later that night. As usual, the club was a scene. Tina Sinatra was there with songwriter Wes Farrell, who was riding high on the success of his number-one single, “Hang On Sloopy.” Lee was friendly with both of them, so we sat with them at their table.

  Aaron was also in attendance that night with a date on his arm. I knew all about him from the gossip at the store. It was a real “who’s who” in there during business hours. Aaron was a television writer at Four Star Entertainment, the production company behind shows like The Big Valley, Burke’s Law, and The June Allyson Show.

  Aaron was also known as a charming playboy around town. He was seen out with a different starlet or model every night. On this night, his date looked annoyed that he kept stopping by our table to whisper into Tina’s ear. I had no idea what he was saying to her. Finally, he asked me to dance.

  There was something indescribable between us from the moment we met. It was a profound connection. New Agers might say we had shared a past life. Psychologists would probably say it was all projection. Cynics would say it was lust. Call it
what you will, it was real. I remember feeling like we could see something in each other that no one else could. I think we danced to eight or nine songs together, including “My Funny Valentine.” During one of the dances, Aaron said, “I’m going to marry you some day.” It was an eye-rolling moment for me. I thought, Oh yeah, what a line! I mean really, what a line! When I got back to my table, Lee was standing there holding my coat open for me. Our date was clearly over. I have no idea what happened to Aaron’s date, and I never asked him.

  On our way out of the club, Ronnie told Aaron that I was staying with her. He gave Ronnie his number and made her promise that I would call him. I made a detour to my house for a change of clothes before returning to Ronnie’s. As soon as I walked in, she handed me Aaron’s number and insisted I call him. When I refused, she dialed Aaron’s number and practically forced me to take the receiver. He was very happy to hear from me, and we talked until five in the morning. Despite Aaron being a terrific “phone date,” I was all too aware of his reputation. I knew all about the starlets on the sets and what went on once the cameras had wrapped. As smitten as we both were, I didn’t want to be his flavor of the week. I determined that I would not get caught up with Aaron.

  The next morning came around fast since I had been up all night. I was bleary eyed when Ronnie’s mom burst into the bedroom and said we were taking a spontaneous trip to Las Vegas to meet Ronnie’s father there. We got so caught up in the excitement that we forgot we didn’t have a ride to the airport. I’m not sure what got into me, but even though I hadn’t hung up the phone all that long ago, I called Aaron and asked him if he would drive us to the airport. I did my best to sound very cavalier to cover up how much I already liked him.