Lady Blue Eyes_ My Life With Frank - Barbara Sinatra [68]
“Okay,” I replied, defiantly offering him my right cheek, “give it your best shot.”
“What would you do if I did?” he challenged.
“I’d leave and you’d never see me again.”
His hands dropped to his sides.
One thing Frank couldn’t stand was rejection. We were at a dinner one night in Palm Desert and he did or said something that hurt me, so I got up from our table and went to call a taxi. Our friend Kenny Venturi appeared by my side (probably sent by Frank) and said, “I’ll take you home.” Kindly, he drove me to the house Frank had bought me. As soon as I got in I called up Dinah at her place at Trancas Beach and asked, “Do you need a roommate for tonight?”
“Why, yes, actually!” she replied, instantly appreciating that Frank and I must have had a fight. I wasn’t home more than ten minutes before I’d packed an overnight bag and left for the beach. Which was just as well, because an hour or so later a drunken Frank and Jimmy Van Heusen drove over to my house and set off dozens of cherry bombs in my backyard in the hope of waking me up. They couldn’t understand why they didn’t get any response. Well, not from me anyway. Frank’s mother was staying in a house nearby, and she responded all right. Throwing open the window, she yelled, “If you two motherfuckers don’t stop all that noise, I’m calling the police!”
Frank tracked me down at Dinah’s the next morning and called me up. “Why did you take off like that?” he asked, sounding like a petulant child.
“It’s simple, Frank,” I replied. “I knew we couldn’t be speaking for a couple of days, and if that was going to happen, I decided I’d rather be at the beach.” There was no answer to that.
Life was certainly never boring with Frank, and it kept me on my toes. Not that I wasn’t used to a bit of drama. Bobby was once asked what it was like to be the son of Barbara Marx, and he replied, “Wherever my mother is, that’s where the action is.” Throughout my childhood in Bosworth, I’d looked at my parents’ relationship and that of my friends’ parents and decided there’d be nothing worse than being bored to death in the way they were. With the life I was leading, I was certainly in no danger of that.
As soon as Frank and I had let off steam, we’d limp back to each other’s arms and only enjoy the making up all the more. We had such rapport. That’s when Frank would be his most sweet and kind and loving. He’d say things like “If you want that mountain, Barbara, I’ll get it for you. All you have to do is tell me what you want. If you want the moon, darling, it’s yours.” I’d never had anybody talk to me like that. It was amazing to hear, particularly after Zeppo.
As part of his next American tour, I asked Frank if we could find the time to visit Bosworth, Missouri, because I wanted to show him where I grew up. It had to have been more than thirty years since I’d been in my hometown. When we got there and drove around in Frank’s limousine, I was astonished at how little the place had changed. Our journey across town took just a few minutes, and although the streets weren’t dirt anymore, my grandparents’ house looked exactly as it always had. Sadly, I couldn’t locate our house—it must have been pulled down, or maybe it blew down in a cyclone. I shivered at my memories of the storm cellar. The Methodist church, school, and drugstore were just as I remembered them. The general store was still there and trading but wasn’t called Blakeley’s anymore, and the rail to tie the horses to had been replaced with a parking lot. I couldn’t face stepping inside because I knew the members of the Spit ’N’ Argue Club would be long dead and I doubted the potbellied stove still had pride of place. Frank didn’t want to hang around much anyway. I was well aware of his loathing for long car journeys, so we cruised slowly past the sights