Mom and Dad were clearly in trouble, but in her journal she kept her focus on her son:
Randy hasn’t worked since February. I’m sick with frustration. He’s dropped out of touch with everyone except Dr. Markson, a psychiatrist Jack finally let me hire to help. He’s taken the phone cord out of the wall, and totally withdrawn. I’ve been to see him twice. Both times he assured me he was all right, saying he wasn’t depressed, just working some things out. He’s through with Hall and Foreman—what he will do next is a mystery. How will he support himself? I could scream from pain. I feel as if I failed somewhere, or all along. When Jack asked $300.00 rent of him Randy sent it, which must leave him near the bottom. My head & heart are taxed to the limit. The girls and I talk about the problem, but not Jack. He won’t go into it at all. A change has to take place soon.
I’d been busy making films, more than ten of them in ten years. One of those years was spent living in London, shooting Reds. While I acted my way through movie after movie, my brother’s decade was spent drinking inside his trashed-out swinging-singles condo, with low-flying fighter jets terrorizing him day in and day out. Years later, he told me how desperate he’d been: while I was playing the firebrand Louise Bryant, he’d attempted to gas himself in the garage. At the time, despite worried reports from Robin and Dorrie, I’d chosen to justify my absence by being ensconced in a life that enlarged my horizons. I told myself I didn’t have time to linger on my family’s problems, and certainly not Randy’s.
Dad made a move to stop all assistance. But Mom couldn’t live with the idea of Randy facing the world without help. Randy didn’t have a job. Could he even handle one? His appearance was getting worse. He’d quickly gained a lot of weight. He didn’t give “a rat’s fuck,” as Dad put it, about the way he looked, or anything else. Dad argued that Randy’s freefall was not something they should fund. Mom eventually won out: Randy never had to work again. Jack Hall accepted his fate by issuing Randy a monthly stipend for the rest of my father’s life. Randy couldn’t have cared less about being the so-called bum Dad tortured himself over. He didn’t have the foresight to comprehend he’d gone too far into the woods to find a path back. Instead, Randy took failure and wore it the way Hester Prynne wore her scarlet letter. At thirty-five, he proudly took on the role of a destitute man who appeared to have been raised by wolves.
Strangely enough, after the release of Reds, he wrote me a letter. It was first time he’d ever written me anything that commented on my acting.
Diane,
I think you outdid yourself. You’ve done great acting in other films, but there are times in “Reds” when I wanted to stop the projector so the moment wouldn’t move so fast. Where did you learn to use your face so well? I think you ran across every emotion in the book, then threw the book away and made up some of your own. It comes off the screen like some magical honey. Anyhow, you did yourself good and you can take pride, not only in the film, but of your contribution. (This is not idle chatter. I really believe it.)
Randy
* * *
—
Writing continued to be the medium Randy expressed himself in. He wrote and wrote and wrote. Letters, poems, fantasy-driven stories. Several stick out from that time:
Billy Seven Fingers had a wicked father whose name was Fat Boy Todder. On Tuesday he punished his son with silver tools while Billy screamed and fingers flew. When Billy grew up he killed Fat Todder with electric wires and bathtub water. Billy buried Fat Boy near an orange tree where every morning he goes to pee.
Here’s Uncle George under an apricot tree, feeding a blue jay with an open hand. The bird is perched on his fingertips, its head cocked to one side. You can see George’s teeth protruding from a wide grin. George is sixty years old and knows he is dying. He spent his last six months coaxing hope out of the sky and feeding it.
Truth is I was one scared shitless kid who cried on the first day of school and ran out of the classroom three times before Mother was allowed to take me home. Truth is my father stuck a broom handle up my ass simply by calling my name. Truth is I died at the age of ten but just kept walking around wondering who would slap me next. Truth is my mother lay naked in the bathtub while I asked her questions about my home work as I peeked at her breasts. Truth is I was a chip-off-the-old-block that quickly turned to sand under my father’s heels as he stomped his way to a fortune. Truth is I grew up confused by passion and confused by desire so much so I hated my flesh and feared my thoughts. Perhaps part of my brain was missing at birth. Truth is the doctors replaced it with fish gut and extension cords. Truth is the sadness inside my head was shrapnel from a distant parental war or maybe lack of supervision. The truth? My family was, and is, a crowd of strangers.
CHAPTER 7
BIRDMAN
By the mid-1980s, when Randy I were both in our thirties, we’d stopped sharing experiences. My success was an uncomfortable reality I didn’t know how to navigate. Instead of retreating back to the familiar terrain of my family, once again I pulled away. I sensed that my absence, coupled with such good fortune, may have caused regret for Mom, maybe even for Dad. Still, I once more convinced myself I didn’t have time to engage with their ongoing plight to save Randy.
In 1986, while shooting the film Crimes of the Heart in North Carolina, I had a day off and decided to visit the Tregembo Animal Park in Wilmington. I remember coming across a cassowary stuck in a small cage. His massive body seemed too big for such short legs. Bright-blue feathers peppered with chunks of orange stuck out from his dark-gray plumage. Unkempt and uncomfortable, he looked like he was about to topple over. As I read the brief description outside his tiny enclosure, I learned that in the humid rain forest the strange bird was quite adept at disappearing. I had to smile. The cassowary, I thought, isn’t so different from Randy—or me, for that matter.
Randy was still living on Tangerine Street, still unemployed, and still hoping for more publications. The screaming jets flying above continued to drive him crazy. From Randy’s point of view, Dad had bought the Tangerine Street town house to make sure he would suffer. Mom privately met with his psychiatrist, Dr. Markson. After a while, she felt comfortable enough to open up her thoughts and feelings. She told him that Jack was convinced Randy was the source of all their misery. She claimed that if he had any feelings for his son he would be more empathetic. Nothing had changed. It was as if they were stuck in an endless Sandy Meisner Repetition Game.
In her journal from June 1989, Mom described an unexpected call from Randy. Dad answered, began arguing with him, and slammed the phone down. Mom drove to Randy’s town house in an effort to patch things up. Randy, well into his drinks, confessed that he was beginning every day with a six-pack of beer, followed by tequila at night. Yes, he knew it was bad, but he couldn’t quit. Mom called Dr. Markson, who told her point-blank that Randy needed to be hospitalized and also told her where to take him.