Page 23

Palm Springs

December 4, 2022

I couldn’t hike with Grant, but my foot was getting better. I could easily handle my morning octogenarian walks with Jeanie and Gene along the wash. We moved slowly to adjust for our infirmities. I watched how loving Gene was with his wife, waiting patiently if she fell behind, holding her arm, never rushing her, always attuned to the subtlest changes in her demeanor. The couple had become like second parents to me, and role models for what Grant and I could become if we could get our acts together.

The wash was always active with dog walkers and runners. I’d been in Palm Springs long enough to establish a routine, and to begin to recognize people who were on the same schedule. Eighties sunglasses guy, the stylish lady with the standard poodle with its tail dyed pink.

Jeanie told me about her job as a nurse, and Gene told stories about working in a coal-fired power plant. During his lunch breaks, he and his coworkers would feed arsenic to the rats behind the building and place bets on when they would die. “The air in the plant was so thick with asbestos that you couldn’t see across it.”

“Some of my friends died from asbestos just from washing their husband’s laundry,” Jeanie said. Mornings, you’d never know her memory was causing her problems. By afternoon and evening, she could get lost in her own mind.

“My lungs feel like they’re made out of cheap plastic. Listen to this, kid.” Gene inhaled deeply so I could hear a cracking sound.

I couldn’t stand the thought of Gene being sick. He reminded me of Burl, always kind and interested.

“Gene, are you… okay?”

“Today, I sure am. Sun is shining. I’m with my sweetheart. We’re in this beautiful place. You know, at our age, anything can get us. The stuff we know about, the stuff we don’t. We’re just happy to be here. How old are you?”

“Fifty-five.”

“Start counting your winters, my dear. You’ve only got so many.” A pit bull running alongside an old ponytailed man on a bicycle darted past us. “This is probably our last year here, so we’re really trying to enjoy it.”

I heard countless stories about their kids and grandkids, whose names I couldn’t keep straight. Jeanie said one had the voice of an angel when she sang. Another had gotten addicted to heroin and lived on the streets in Alberta. Because of this, Gene jumped every time his phone rang, worried about bad news. They were lonely without all their good friends who used to spend the winters here with them; they’d all either gotten too old, were priced out, or had passed away. Gene and Jeanie said they were closer with their snowbird friends than their friends back home because they spent more quality time together.

I thought these glacial walks would prepare me for “pep stepping” with Melody. That’s what she called her long, fast walks around the inside perimeter of Smoke Tree Ranch, adjacent to the tall fence with scrappy jumping cholla cacti hugging the posts as if begging to be let in. It felt as if the fence weren’t there so much to protect the ranch’s residents as to remind the rest of the world that they are on the outside of all that wealth, history, and power—it was like the divider between first class and coach.

Melody wore a crisp white tennis skirt, a white polo top with the Smoke Tree insignia, and a Smoke Tree visor. She did not wear sunscreen. “Good lord, at my age, who cares?” If I’d seen her from the wash, I might have thought she was a young woman. Her body was shaped by a lifetime of vigorous use and excessive pampering. Maybe Grant was right. It wasn’t the geography and climate of Palm Springs that made older people here look so young—the secret was that so many had so much money.

“Tell me, is Grant hiking again?” Melody asked.

“Every day.” I was still rattled that Grant hadn’t mentioned that he and Cassie had gone out together—twice. “He’s super into it. I’m so grateful he has something to keep his mind off things. He’s been in a rut.”

“I can tell you what his problem is. He’s got a case of the fifties.”

She waved at an older man who drove past in a golf cart and smiled flirtatiously. “This happened to Vandyke. Men just barrel through life and suddenly the kids are grown, and the productive years of their careers are behind them. That’s when they start to think about all the decisions they’ve made and they are shocked—shocked!—to realize their futures are shorter than their pasts. It’s hard for them, poor babies. But women? We constantly assess. We talk with our friends. We’re always checking in with ourselves and each other, like us. Look what we’re doing right now.”

Melody stopped to catch her breath. Behind her was a simple ranch home painted white with the traditional shake roof. “Come, Kimberly. Join me for lemonade on the palapa.”

All the widely spaced homes in Smoke Tree were one story and the same general size, although some were campy and older, like Melody’s, while others looked more as if they belonged in Florida, with coral siding and pink shutters. There were newer houses from the eighties, some that were a multitonal explosion of beige, and others had Polynesian-style roofs and recreated a more faux-tropical environment. We even passed a home in severe disrepair, a sight I found somehow reassuring. All of the homes were worth millions, and they hardly ever came up for sale to the public.

Melody’s house was more lived-in and dated inside than I’d imagined it would be. “I keep waiting for a Svengali of the design world to come work his magic,” she said. It was both laid-back and elegant, with lots of fine upholstery and western-style antiques.

She pointed at a dresser against one wall. “The credenza belonged to Walt.” The surface was covered with trinkets and framed photos of Melody, Vandyke, Basil, and yesterday’s celebrities. They were at parties, playing tennis, goofing around by the pool, riding horses. “The fun we had!”

She handed me some lemonade in a crystal goblet. “Vandyke’s aunt Nell stole that glass you’re drinking from out of Gloria Swanson’s house. She thought it was possible Joe Kennedy drank out of it—she always had a thing for the Kennedys. As far as she was concerned, they were East Coast royalty, and we were the royal family of the West Coast. And do you want to know something? Jack winked at me in 1962, when he visited Bing Crosby’s Silver Spurs Ranch in Palm Desert. I found him sickly and rather tragic, which of course made him attractive.” Melody paused. “Bing, you know, he was a personal friend. Lovely man. I met him at dinners with Dolores Hope. Dolores loved her antipasti.”

I was afraid I’d drop the glass, so I set it down and walked around to admire Melody’s artwork; it was everywhere.

“This is amazing.” I pointed at the painting above the brick fireplace. “A real Mark Rothko? That orange is so… emotional.”

“I hate it!”

I almost jumped. I couldn’t imagine hating something so clearly valuable. I wandered to the dining room, where I laid eyes on an authentic Joan Miró. Melody’s house could have been a museum. I wanted to live a life where I, too, could be surrounded by so much beauty and art.

“Now Miró, he was better, but not my favorite. Vandyke’s taste trended much more modern than my own. He preferred saturated colors that rise out of nowhere. Modern art is like a punch in the nose.” She picked up a throw pillow to fluff. “I’ve always preferred the French impressionists, but Vandyke found their work frilly and feminine. When we married, without my consent, he moved all of my parents’ ‘splotchy’ and ‘soft’ paintings—his words—off the walls here at the ranch and into our Hancock Park home. He especially hated Renoir’s overly sweet greens. I was far more upset about the paintings than I was about any of his affairs. ‘How could you?’ I asked. They were my paintings, my history, my preferences, my taste! The tears I shed over that man!”

Basil had often recounted his father’s infidelities, which was part of the reason I never liked Vandyke. I’d always wondered if Melody knew. “That must have been painful.”

She pulled on her earring. “I suppose it was. I forget.”

“How did you find out?”

“Vandyke was careless. But also, I think he wanted me to be jealous. His dalliances were legendary.”

“Melody, didn’t it bother you?”

“It bothered me that he had such poor taste. Carol LaGrange—that woman couldn’t find her way out of a paper bag, and she was married to a real Casanova herself. My husband’s taste in women, present company excluded, was no better than his taste in art.”

She threw her sun visor on the mahogany dining room table. “Honestly, I was much more upset when I returned to Los Angeles and discovered Mother’s beloved Pissarro painting of peasants picking apples hanging in the guest bathroom above the toilet. Now that was a true betrayal. She’d bought that when she was overseas at an auction with Lee Annenberg. You see, Vandyke did not know his place, that was the problem. I was the chatelaine, the keeper of our castle. But I got the last laugh, as I usually do. Now the painting is on permanent display at the Palm Springs Art Museum. I worked with a woman named Sherri over there. I told her to make sure the little sign next to it says, ‘From the Vandyke and Melody Underwood Collection.’”

“Why don’t you move your artwork back here to Smoke Tree?”

“Because up until now I haven’t had anyone to help me do it. That’s where you come in.”

“Me?”

“Come.”

She led me down a hallway and opened one of the doors. I couldn’t believe my eyes. There were piles and piles of papers, manila file folders, boxes, unopened letters. The air-conditioning kicked on and the paperwork near the vent fluttered as though it were alive. It reminded me of an art exhibit I’d seen where you walked into a room filled with hundreds of reams of paper being blown by industrial fans. “It’s not just the paintings that need to be moved, you see. I’ve let all my affairs slip.” She frowned. “Our financials have been arriving in the mail and I just can’t deal with them, so I throw them in here and shut the door. Out of sight, out of mind. It’s sadly beyond my control.”

“Can I help?” Sure, I’d made a promise to Basil, but this didn’t have anything to do with him. Melody had become a friend.

She smiled. “I’d like that very much. You can assist me until I find my new husband. I’m determined to marry again. Most widows my age say they prefer to be on their own. Even my married friends prefer to be alone. It takes a long time to break in a gentleman of advanced age, but I’m up for the challenge.”

If something happened to Grant, I liked to think I could manage. It even sounded a tiny bit appealing to me—not the part about something happening to him, but the idea of forging my own way in the world. Of making the food I want to eat, of cleaning up my own messes, of going—and living—wherever I desired, whether to escape winter or to start a totally new life. I got a taste of that here.

She put some lipstick on, bright red, and smacked her lips together. Then she looked at me. “Forget about widowhood and that horrendous mess. Come here, Kimberly. This would be a wonderful color on you. Chanel’s Rouge Allure.”

“Red? I never wear red.”

“I know. It’s because you don’t want people to look at you, and it’s time for that to change. May I?” She led me to a gilded mirror and told me to pucker. “Women excel at remaking ourselves because we do it all the time.”

“My friend Octavia said that as women get older, they want men to change, while men just want women to stay the same.”

“We change all the time because we actually think about life as we go through it, and we respond to it. We experience many renaissances. I’m having one right now. I can feel it. And look at you, Kimberly.”

The color did look great—dramatic. “What about me?”

“You’re here, aren’t you?” She squeezed my shoulders. It was reassuring that she could see what I couldn’t. “You’re experiencing a renaissance right now.”