Then Again - Diane Keaton [77]
In the meantime, Dex and I spent weekends at Cove Street. Mom adored her. She even bought a pint-size hope chest and filled it with things like puzzles and alphabet books and buckets and shovels. Dorothy was holding up. On several different occasions she had me sit down to Beulah Keaton’s one and only scrapbook. In an attempt to keep memories alive, she did very well remembering her mother. It was always the same. She opened the last page first. There was Dorrie, a black-and-white fat-faced toddler, being held by gorgeous long-legged Dorothy in front of Grammy’s Monterey Road clapboard bungalow. Robin stood next to them in her new glasses, while sheriff Randy shoved a toy gun into my chest. Mom always pointed out the sweet-pea vines in the background of Grammy Keaton’s old backyard. I would ask if she helped plant the flowers. She would nod as she turned the pages back to an earlier time. I was becoming a more ardent observer of two phenomena: the slow beginning of life and the even slower ending under the reign of Alzheimer’s’ tyranny.
Dexter was eleven months when Mom held her hand at the shoreline. Jumping up and down, all excited, Dex pointed at the seagulls, saying, “Brr,” like the day, like cold. “Brr.” Mom, even more excited, said, “Bird, Diane. She said bird.” Bird was Dexter’s first word, or so Mom decided. I shook my head in wonder. Dexter was as happy as she had been inconsolable only hours before when her little face was all knotted up in tears. I recognized that all the love in the world cannot cushion the reality of pain. In that moment Dexter seemed knowing beyond her eleven months. It made me think of girls—little girls, teenage girls, even old girls like me—who at one point or another discover, like all girls do, their sadness.
It took a long time, but I finally bought an old Spanish house on Roxbury Drive in Beverly Hills, a Wallace Neff fixer-upper. My friend Stephen Shadley began the restoration. In the process I developed an abiding interest in all things Spanish and all things built in Los Angeles. The sheer variety, history, and magic of the classic homes of Southern California made me want to become part of an organization that successfully saved them. I joined the L.A. Conservancy and became a preservationist. Our new old home took a year and a half to restore before Dex became a little girl living in a genuine Spanish Revival house saved from demolition.
First Wives
First Wives was an unexpected hit. Bette, Goldie, and I did a ton of press. I’ll never forget the conference call with Goldie and me at her home in the Pacific Palisades and Bette on the line from her loft in New York. Always a contradiction in terms, Goldie drank some awful green health concoction while she smoked. The interviewer asked, “What’s better about being fifty than twenty?” Goldie plunged in with something like “Being a great mom; learning how to grow up and love yourself for who you are; coping with the discomfort of fame; loving a man by not holding on too much; letting people be who they are; helping your daughter live with the fact that her mother is famously loved by many people; getting revenge, but the right kind; learning to be spiritually aware; learning to grow into self-esteem. Those are some of the reasons why being fifty is better than being twenty.” What could Bette and I add? Goldie had said it all.
“Diane, this is your mom. I hate to bother you, but I couldn’t figure any way to do this. Merna down here in the Cove called and wants to know for sure when you’re going to appear on TV again. If you are, let me know what day and what time. She really wants to see it, but she’s bedridden. Maybe she got it wrong. I don’t know. Just let me know. That’d be great. Bye bye, Diane.”
Mom was