At home, Dad seemed frustrated. Apparently, the principles of his day job didn’t apply to fatherhood. Still, he urged us to “Plan Ahead” and “Be Positive.” He even tried to teach us how to have firm handshakes. God only knew what he was going to do with his four drifty children. Every day he methodically built his business, ascending both professionally and financially. And every night he came home to us, where we presented him with our stubborn fragility.
After just a few years on Wright Street, Mom began to understand she was on a one-way street, heading into a future filled with more of the same. There was no going back to dreams she didn’t have the courage to admit she wanted. Not only was she the mother of four children; she was also playing the role of mother to a man whose own mother hadn’t been mother material. As Dorothy’s husband, Jack felt entitled to her undivided attention. When he complained about clients who wouldn’t pay their bills on time, she’d reassure him: “Don’t worry, honey. Keep at it. Don’t let it affect your mood. It’s time Hugh Foreman stepped up and supported your efforts with more zeal!” She single-handedly gave him enough confidence to think through psychologically complex issues, which in turn helped sustain the firm’s success.
When it became all too apparent no one was going to encourage her own dreams, Mom’s world darkened. After a while, Jack Hall couldn’t help but perceive Dorothy as yet another employee, one whose job included the distribution of three meals a day, shopping, decorating, washing, researching extracurricular activities for the kids, and, yes, if time permitted, the pursuit of her artistic hobbies. But only if. After all, he was paying for everything, including her shiny new Buick station wagon.
In response, Mom may have unconsciously pitted us against Dad. The driving force of her unspoken resentment was his attempt to turn Randy into his kind of man. Her solution was to form a secret society in which the four of us kids unwittingly excluded our father. When he unexpectedly came home during one of Mom’s after-school fun sessions over crackers and cheddar cheese, his presence meant that fun took a back seat. He wasn’t welcome.
In her journal, she kept close tabs on twelve-year-old Randy’s progress at Willard Junior High School, especially his potential gift in writing.
Willard seems to be the school Randy needed. All the movement from class to class, the feeling of adulthood; he even buys his own lunch now. Apparently, there’s no trouble with the locker set up and he brings his schoolwork home every night. I see a new boy in the making. One week has gone by and suddenly he’s eager to get to the bus at 7 am. He even prepared a paper on “Safeguarding our American Freedom.” We went to the library for books and ideas and made it home in time to battle out a theme before dinner. The result: his paper was one of the 15 chosen for final judging. He was very pleased with the outcome. He’s such a good kid. One needs to spark him up a bit. He has no trouble sparking when he’s interested in something.
I can’t remember Randy’s presence at any of my landmark moments at Willard. When I was elected class secretary, and when I finally became a Melodette Songbird and performed for local groups such as the Kiwanis Club or the PTA’s annual Founders Day Luncheon, he showed no interest. But, then, why would he? After I sang “All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth” for Willard’s talent show, Randy didn’t seem to notice, but I didn’t have time to monitor his accomplishments, either. Still, it was odd. I never saw him hanging out with friends. He didn’t seem to have any.
One weekend afternoon, when I was sixteen and Randy was fourteen, I heard noises coming from down the hallway as I was cutting out pictures from Mademoiselle magazine’s special issue for “The Girl Moving Up.”
Someone was screaming. Running toward Randy’s room, I heard Mom shout the word “divorce” as Dad yelled back, “Jesus Christ, get one.”
When I opened Randy’s door, I found him sitting at his desk, reading Mad magazine as if nothing were happening. The yelling got louder. “What’s going on?” I whispered. “Oh my God, do you think they’re going to get a divorce? I’m scared.” My heart was pounding. I asked him if we should call the police. Tears started rolling down my face. Without so much as a glance my way, Randy put the magazine down, got up, opened the door, and then started running down the hall toward the front door. I tried to stop him. “Randy, what’s going to happen? Shouldn’t we do something?” As he reached the front door, I grabbed him, looked into his eyes, and begged him to go back and try to talk to them. Couldn’t he hear them throwing things? They might hurt each other. Without so much as a nod, Randy slipped out of my grip and ran outside. He never bothered to look back.
Hours later, when he did return, it was as if the incident had never happened. There was the seemingly usual dinner that night, and the nights thereafter. When I tried to talk to Randy, he just shrugged his shoulders and walked off. Gradually, Mom and Dad’s arguments became more frequent, but also harder to detect. From behind the bedroom door at the end of the narrow hallway, their anger pushed Randy deeper into an even more solitary world, where normalcy was no longer an expectation.
* * *
—
Not long after I left for New York to study acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre, Mom and Dad moved the family to a new, more expensive house on Towner Street.
Dorrie wrote me about how Randy was faring:
Dear Diane,
Randy has a few hippie friends. He wears high boots tucked into his pants with a suede jacket. His hair is kind of a Beatle cut brushed to one side. He looks very handsome and put together. He plays the guitar and writes, even sings songs. Here’s one. It goes like this: “I am a freak at the fair, people stare but I don’t care, I am a freak at the fair.” We haven’t told dad about his view that working to obtain material things and prestige stand in the way of more meaningful pursuits. For Randy meaningful pursuits means writing poetry. He uses unusual imagery, and strange thoughts of a random, even confessional nature.
Love, Dorrie
In June 1966, Randy graduated from high school. I flew home from New York City to attend the ceremony and stay for the summer. As he walked to the podium to accept his diploma, he looked pretty dandy in his cap and gown. Mom and Dad were beaming. After all, Randy had succeeded in continually getting up at 6:30 a.m. each school day to trudge his way to and from classrooms for three years. Wasn’t that what high school was all about? As we sat in the grandstand of the same high-school auditorium where I’d graduated two years before, Dad looked at Mom with a combination of pride and willed optimism and said, “That boy is a sleeper, and someday…watch out.”
My summer vacation in the new three-thousand-square-foot home on North Towner Street revealed an underlying sadness in everyone, even though our family had entered the upper middle class by purchasing a house for the exorbitant price of forty thousand dollars. It was a big step up from Wright Street, to a much more upscale Santa Ana neighborhood. The backyard was dominated by an oversized pool with a little fountain in the middle. The unattached former maid’s room became Randy’s private bedroom. With a new stereo setup, he introduced Dorrie and Robin to Frank Zappa, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Joni Mitchell. I slept in what felt like guest accommodations. Remnants from my past had all but disappeared. We’d rarely pile into the station wagon and drive to the beach; camping was a thing of the past. Dad didn’t have time to surf with his old buddy Bob Blandon. On the plus side, Robin and Dorrie no longer had to share a bedroom. Mom was busy working on her teaching degree at Cal State Fullerton. Hall and Foreman was a flourishing enterprise. Our dinners were eaten in an actual dining room. Along with serving the meal, Mom placed a new bottle of wine on the table every night. My days were spent bleaching my hair blond, shopping with Mom when she had time, hanging out with Dorrie and Robin, and occasionally visiting Randy’s world.