He was working on Fleetwood Mac's Rumours. When I climbed the
billboard, I didn’t know that it would be for the last time. He’d do
one more after that, just one: Talking
Heads: 77. There was nothing to it. It was red-orange
and said simply, "Talking Heads: 77."
He was leaving Foster and Kleiser, he said. "They keep
asking me to go to Vegas. I'm not going to Vegas. I don't
want to go to Vegas." We sat with our feet dangling over the side of
the billboard. It was a different perspective. It didn't
face out over the city, but up into the hills. You could see up into
the brush, into the chaparral, almost like there wasn't a city behind
us. He said, "I'm leaving at the end of the month."
"What are you going to do?"
He kind of turned away, for what, I don't
know. He said under his breath – did he not want me to hear him? – "I think I'm leaving California." He looked at me,
finally. "I mean, I'm leaving California."
"What do you mean you're leaving California?"
"When we went away, you and me, when we were in Jerome, I
started talking to the fellas in the gallery. I think I'm going to
Jerome. I mean, I am going to Jerome." He was real
fidgety. "Now don’t take this the wrong way, but I got nothing
here. I got you, but I don't see you. It’s my
fault. I know it’s my fault. Things just haven’t been
right. Not since the fall. Not since your
mother. I haven't been happy in a long, long time." A
convertible passed below us. Some girls waved. I waved
back.
"So, Jerome is going to make you happy." It
was half a question and half an answer.
"You know, a long time ago, I kind of gave up my dreams
and I took your mother away from hers." He held up his hand to
demonstrate. "We let them slip away, you know? We let the
stars go free. Things don’t turn out like you plan, pal."
"What did you plan?"
"I couldn’t tell you now. Your mother was
going to be a singer on Broadway. I took her away from
that. She was good, you know? Really good, and she came
out here…"
"And she was good. They liked
her. Burt Bacharach liked her."
"Yeah, but I can’t help thinking that if we'd never come
here, things might have been different. Maybe she would have been on
Broadway. I don't know, I keep thinking that maybe if we'd bought
that little house in Fairlawn, things would have been different."
"I don't think things would have been
different. You've got to love her for what she was, instead of for
what she wasn’t." I hadn't given my father advice
before. I was 18 years old and I figured it was about time.
He said, "Well, it doesn't matter. I'm going
to Jerome. Maybe get some of the stars back."
"But this was good, wasn't it?" I swept my
hand over the boulevard below. "You know I have a picture of every
single one."
"Yeah, well, it was all right. It was
good. Yeah, it was good. I do good work. I
know that. I got to be up here…"
I cut him off. "You were like one of the
lesser gods. Up here above it all. Prometheus gave
humanity fire. You gave them this." Each of the lesser
gods had responsibilities. The billboards were my father's.
He had money saved and he was just going to
go. He was going to buy a little place in Jerome and put some money
into the gallery, the old Woolworth's on the main drag. "It's
becoming quite the artist's colony. I’m just gonna go
paint. And you'll come up and see me. You liked it up
there. You know, where the sky's so big and blue?"
"Yeah. I know, where the sky's so big and
blue."
It was still
early when I started climbing the hill into Jerome. Nothing much had changed. It could have been yesterday when I was there
last. Still the same main street; still
the same Chinese restaurant. When I say
that nothing changed, I mean nothing.
The art gallery
in the Woolworth's wasn't open. I parked
my car on the street. I went into the
hotel where my father and I stayed. Same
guy. I said, "How’s it going?"
He said, "It's
going."
I said, "Happen
to know a fella named Bill? Owns the old
Woolworth’s."
He said, "Yeah,
of course."
"You know where
I’d find him?"
He said, "Who’s
lookin’?"
"His son. I'm his son."
"You're Jay?"
"Yeah, I'm Jay."
"Talks a lot
about you." Huh, that was
something. I had it all made out in my
head how angry I was. I practiced how
angry I was going to be in the car on the way.
Maybe I wasn’t so angry after all.
Maybe I understood better than I thought. At that point, I figured I'd just play it by
ear.
It didn't seem
like people in Jerome had addresses, just directions. The guy from the hotel wrote the directions
to my father's place on the back of an old paper bag. He said, "Gallery’ll open around ten or
so. Comes in ever' day. May as well hang around town." I wandered along the main street. Nothing had changed, but there was one new
shop called Red Path. It sold spiritual
and paranormal things: smudge sticks and smudge pots, tarot cards and amulets
to ward off evil spirits. They weren't
open either, but a woman was inside. She
smiled, and then she went back to what she was doing; probably some kind of
spell or something.
I crossed the
street and looked in the window of the Woolworth's. There was a painting of a young boy. It could have been me, but I had a feeling
about it. I think it was my
brother. I never thought about him much,
if at all. I hadn’t seen him since my
dad moved out of the house. I'd
forgotten there was someone out there who shared my experiences with my father. His name was William; when I used to spend
time there, we just called him "the baby." He seemed like a nice little boy.
I peered as best
I could around the store. It was dark,
but my father's work was unmistakable.
There was one looking down on the Sunset Strip at night. The style was a bit different than I
remembered, a little less abstract, but you could tell it was his work, and who
else would paint the city from the point of view of a billboard? I liked it.
It was as if Van Gogh painted L.A.; real bright and vibrant.
The gallery
looked pretty nice in general, nicer than what you'd expect from a ghost town,
but when you peered into the back you could tell where the soda fountain used
to be. I always liked the soda fountain
at Woolworth's. I remember they used to
put the cola syrup in the bottom of a tall glass and add ice and soda
water. It was delicious; real
refreshing. My father called it the five
and dime. He'd say, "Want a hot dog from
the five and dime?" I was always up for
that.
Along the wall
under an old sign that said "NOTIONS" was a huge canvas, probably three feet by
eight feet. It was a family scene. In my father's abstract way, it could have
been my mother or it could have been Ellen; it could have been any woman in
America. She was sitting on the couch
with her feet up. There was a child on
the floor playing a game. It was real
nostalgic.
It's funny, I've
always been sentimental. I always found
myself reading between the lines, even when the lines were really close
together. Seemed to me my father's
paintings were like all the good parts of life, all the nice in-betweens. Maybe if I were a painter I'd do that too. If you painted the bad parts, you’d have a
lot more paintings, but they wouldn't be as good.
