A Lotus Grows in the Mud (9 page)

“Are you here to see Mr. Capp?” the doorman greets me at 400 Park Avenue. “Fourteenth floor.” He points to the elevator.

How does he know who I am?

The elevator bounces, settles, then opens. A man dressed as a butler is waiting and ushers me into the apartment with grand formality. “My name is Eric, miss,” he says in an impeccable English accent. “Mr. Capp is running a little late, but he will be here shortly. Please take a seat.”

Openmouthed, I stand in the middle of this amazing space, admiring the view and the paintings and the objets d’art and the hundreds of books lining the walls. Needing to sit down, I ease myself onto a fluffy white couch that swallows me up in its feathery softness. Struggling to escape, I wish my dad could see me now. We would have shared a good laugh at how absurd this all was.

Suddenly remembering why I am here, I pull my script from my white vinyl bag and apprehensively study my part for the umpteenth time.

The butler waltzes into the room carrying an elaborate silver tea set, which he sets down grandly in front of me. “Mr. Capp likes his women to pour his tea for him,” he says with a smirk before leaving as quietly as he came.

His women? But I’m not even a woman yet. I stare at the two-hundred-pound tea service and wonder how best to tackle the teapot, which looks like it weighs more than I do. I stare at it defiantly—my first test. I practice lifting it up and down with both hands over an imaginary cup. I try resting my elbows on the table to take the great weight but realize that pushes my bottom too far into the air. Determined to look elegant, I continue practicing for several minutes until I realize that someone has come into the room and is watching me silently from the doorway.

His bellowing voice startles me. “Goldie! Having trouble with the teapot?”

I stammer and crash it back down to the tray, most inelegantly, as Eric appears to take his boss’s damp coat.

Al Capp chuckles. “I’m sorry I’m late, but I’m so happy to finally meet you.”

A burly man about six feet tall and in his mid-fifties, he barrels toward me. His body tilts and rolls. Oh my God! He has only one leg. I mean, he has two, but one is false. Bobby never mentioned that. Desperately trying not to notice, I extend my hand and giggle nervously. He giggles back, and wobbles away from me with the words, “I’ll be right back.”

When he returns, he is dressed in a silk dressing gown.

I can feel every muscle in my body tighten.

He chuckles. “Little Goldie, I hope you don’t mind, but I slipped into something more comfortable.”

I do mind.

“Now, dear, why don’t you pour us both some tea?” I hesitate, staring at the teapot again, and he laughs. “You’ll do just fine.” His guttural chuckle sends an unpleasant chill up my spine. I now realize it is not a chortle of happiness but a peculiar kind of nervous tic. It makes me even more uneasy.

Beads of sweat roll down my armpits. I feel his gaze inspecting me as I follow his directions and pour tea into paper-thin porcelain cups. His body pitches and rolls around the coffee table to reach the other half of the L-shaped couch. Losing his balance, he falls back into a sea of down.

“Ah, that’s better,” he says with a sigh.

Suddenly, I can’t stop talking. “Mr. Capp, I love your apartment. Bobby has said such wonderful things about you. I just arrived in New York from Maryland. My father plays violin, and my mom is a typical Jewish mother. She wanted me to marry a Jewish dentist, but I really want to dance on Broadway…”

He stops me. “Let’s not waste any more time. I want to tell you that if this works out today, as I’m sure it will, I will put you with one of David Merrick’s finest acting coaches. You know who he is?”

“Oh yes. He’s the biggest producer on Broadway.”

“You’ll have to work very hard. This is a difficult business.”

“Mr. Capp, I’m a dancer. Nobody works harder than we do. I know what it’s like to pick myself up, dust myself off and start all over again.”

“Good, Goldie, that’s good. Now stand up and walk to the middle of the room.”

I do as I am told. The moment has come to prove my talent, and I am terrified. I read aloud the part of Tenderlief Ericsson. I know it by heart but pretend I don’t. Unlike my audition for Juliet, this time I hold on to the script for dear life.

“You don’t have to project quite so much,” Mr. Capp interrupts. “This is film, not theater, so you can just speak normally.”

“Sorry,” I say and start again. I begin to trust him more. He is actually teaching me. I take a deep breath, relax a little and go on.

He stops me again. “Goldie, I would now like you to read the part of Daisy Mae. I think you could be very good in that part.”

“Daisy Mae?” I am stunned. “But she’s the lead. She’s beautiful and sexy and large-breasted! Mr. Capp, I really don’t think I look like she does.”

“Nonsense!” he roars. “I created her!”

He watches me with unblinking eyes that sear right through me. He orders me to go to the back of the room and walk toward him as if he were the camera. “I want to see how you play to the camera,” he says. “Look kinda stupid. Like Daisy Mae.”

I go with it. Look stupid? Well, okay. He is my coach. Using my beads as a prop, I put them in my mouth and dangle them from my lips, eyes wide. I try to look as vacant as I can, all the while imagining that he is the camera.

“Okay, now go and stand in front of the mirror and let me see your legs.”

I look around nervously. I pray for the butler to come back with fresh tea. “Oh, don’t you want me to read from the scene?”

“In a minute.” Seeing my hesitation, he chides, “Go on, don’t be shy. I’ve seen legs before.”

I bet you have, I think. Obeying somewhat reluctantly, I walk to the mirror, turn slowly and lift my dress just above my knee. I tilt my head and giggle.

“Higher.”

I raise my dress another inch.

“Higher.”

My fingers freeze on the edge of my skirt. I’m beginning to feel that this isn’t right. I mean, where is all this getting me? What about the part? Looking up, I say, “Mr. Capp, I’m going to be late for work.”

He chuckles again, which only makes me feel worse. I am getting sick of that damn chuckle.

“I have to get all the way out to Long Island,” I explain, looking longingly at the elevator door. “I’m afraid I’ll miss my train.”

“Come over here, Goldie,” he says, patting the couch next to him. “You won’t miss your train.”

My knees lock, and I stand stock-still staring at him for a moment, in an agony of confusion. Part of me wants to run from the room; the other part tells me to do as I’m told. After what seems like forever, I walk over and gingerly sit on the edge of the couch.

Afraid to make eye contact, I stare hard at the driving rain beyond the picture windows, biting my bottom lip.

A dark energy fills the room. A shiver runs up and down my spine. When I let my eyes drift slowly back toward Mr. Capp, I see that my host has parted his silk robe to reveal a flaccid penis resting heavily against his wooden leg.

The breath rushes out of me. All I can hear in my head are Bobby’s words: I want you to be extra nice to him, honey. I feel sick to my stomach. Bobby tricked me. Al Capp tricked me. Tears prick my eyes, and I bite my lip until I can taste blood. Finally, summoning up my courage, I speak, my voice quivering in my throat.

“Mr. Capp, I will never, ever get a job like this.”

Sneering, he quickly covers himself up.

“Then go back and marry a Jewish dentist!” he spits, waving a hand at me dismissively. “You’ll never get anywhere in this business, Goldie Hawn.” Pulling himself up on his one good leg, he snarls, “I’ve had them all, you know, much better-looking than you. Now go on and get the hell out of here!” He throws a twenty-dollar bill at me as I fumble with my purse and umbrella. “You don’t want to miss that damn train.”

I tear out of that apartment as fast as I can. I rush past the disgusting
butler and the tittering doorman, both of whom I now realize are accomplices for this ugly routine. I run out into the pouring rain. I run for several blocks without using my umbrella, hoping to wash the filth of Al Capp and Bobby the Pimp from my memory.

Drenched and exhausted, with his twenty-dollar bill clutched tightly in my hand, I hail a cab. I can’t be late for work.

Later that night, when I eventually get home from work, dog tired and still deeply affected by my experience, I find a letter waiting for me in my mailbox. It is from my mother and it is a day late.

“Goldie dear,” she wrote. “Daddy and I were very excited to hear about this great opportunity you are having with this cartoonist, Mr. Capp, but I have to tell you something, honey. Please know that while these men may offer you the casting couch, while they may promise to give you your first break, it is your talents and your gifts that will sustain you in the eyes of the public. And it is your inner self that can decide what best to do. Remember that. I love you, Mommy.”

T
here is never a happy ending for people who lose their integrity. Not just in show business but in the fast-paced competitive world we live in as well, where so much energy is put into winning, at the sacrifice of so much.

Knowing your limits, and that there is a limit to getting what you want, comes from a sense of self-respect instilled in you from an early age. It takes guts to stand up in the face of what you really want, but you have to know in your heart that if you make the wrong choice you won’t be able to live with yourself for the rest of your life. There is only one person who matters at that point and that’s you. If you give in to such pressures, you strip away your self-respect, your personal ethics and your standards—the very things that create the fiber that will hold you together for the rest of your life.

We can instill integrity in our children by teaching them not to be afraid to speak the truth about things they believe and not to be intimidated by someone else’s view of what’s right and wrong. To be able to
stand back and observe clearly. The hope is that children respect their parents enough to want to please them. It mattered so much to me what my mother and father thought because I had so much regard for them. So, the circle continues, and I hope that what I learned from my parents I have passed on.

Once you have decided to hang on to your integrity, you have a much easier path to knowing yourself and what you believe in. Because on that last day of your life, that’s all that matters. That’s where you find peace in your life, your loved ones and your god.

I
t was several years before Al Capp’s cartoon characters, including Tenderlief Ericsson, were taken up by a network and run on national television. I saw the program listed one night, and I laughed out loud. By now a household name myself, I couldn’t resist sending him a telegram.

It said:
DEAR MR
.
CAPP
,
CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR SHOW
.
AS YOU CAN SEE I DIDN
’
T HAVE TO MARRY A JEWISH DENTIST AFTER ALL
.
SIGNED GOLDIE HAWN
.

I
can hardly hear myself think, let alone speak. My friend Spiro is yelling something in my ear above the music blasting out of the giant speakers in the Peppermint Lounge, but I can’t make out what he’s saying. Laughing, taking another slug of my scotch on the rocks, I shrug my shoulders and we sit at the bar and carry on watching the go-go dancers.

“Do you want to dance?” Spiro finally yells at me during the momentary break between numbers.

“Sure!” I cry, still energized after a five-hour shift at the World’s Fair. I’ve never worked so hard. I’m about ninety pounds of twisted steel. I spend every night screaming, whooping and hollering, wearing a full cancan costume of red-and-black ruffles, performing high kicks, cartwheels and splits with the rest of the troupe. I have about twenty seconds to change into a black fringed go-go dress before rushing back onstage to dance the pony, the froog or the monkey to the latest hits.

Kicking, spinning, yelling and jumping to the four-four beat, I rush out on cue each night and dance my butt off. Shimmying my fringe in the black-and-white strobe lights, I hardly dare look down. I am twelve feet up, above the bar. Thank God, Spiro has promised to catch me if I fall.

He has brought me to the Peppermint Lounge in Midtown Manhattan tonight after work. Now he leads me up onto the dance floor, where we move and groove to the music, trying to find a space in the crowd. Dressed in a pink top, psychedelic miniskirt and white go-go boots, I lose myself dancing with him, and then spin around to dance with a
stranger, before bumping back against Spiro. Then comes my favorite part. As the music blares out of the speakers, the whole club throws their hands into the air and starts to sing as one to “Twist and Shout,” laughing together as we launch into the song. What a blast.

When the song’s over, Spiro grabs me by the hand and leads me to the bar. “Come on, let’s get a drink.” A tall, handsome guy in his early twenties nudges between us. “Hey, Johnny, this is Goldie…Goldie, this is a friend of mine.”

“Hi, nice to meet you,” I yell over the crowd.

The bartender plops down two scotches, and Johnny throws down a twenty. “I’m buying,” he says. “And another round, please.”

“We’re having a party now!” I cry.

It’s four in the morning and the place is closing up. As usual, I am always the last one to leave. “Hey, guys, need a lift?” Johnny says.

“You have a car? In New York City? Cool!”

“Sure.” He laughs. “I’m from Jersey. Of course I have a car!”

“Hang on Sloopy” by the McCoys is blasting out of the car radio when Johnny turns on the engine. I sit on the front seat, sandwiched happily between him and Spiro, two male gods. As we set off the streets are empty except for a few yellow taxis cruising for the last stragglers of the night.

Johnny has what my mother would call “a heavy foot.” I’m feeling foggy, but not so foggy that I don’t notice that we are reaching speeds of up to sixty miles an hour between stoplights.

Our car bumps and swerves, tossed in and out of the potholes as I bounce around in time to the music. The warm air from the open window tousles my hair. Happy and relaxed, mellowed by the scotch warming my veins, God, I feel good as I sing along at the top of my voice to the chorus of “Hang on Sloopy.”

We turn onto the West Side Highway, the fast way uptown. This road is even more pitted, and it curves this way and that. I’m tossed like a rag doll between them.

The car hits one pothole so violently that my head bounces off the roof. The sharp pain jolts me. “Do we have to go quite so fast?” I ask, rubbing my head.

Johnny doesn’t answer. I look across at him, but his eyes are glazed. A ripple of fear passes through me.

“Hey, can you please slow down?” I snap the radio off so he can hear me. Gripping the dashboard with both hands, I yell, “Please! Slow down! You’re going too fast!”

Johnny hardly slows at all, and I wonder if he’s drunk or stoned. I turn to look at Spiro to see if he is as frightened as I am and I can see that he is. Immediately behind us, just a few feet away, I see a yellow taxi heading straight for our car. The driver’s head is resting on the back of his seat. He is fast asleep, or worse.

“Hey! Look out!” I cry.

The cab crashes into us at top speed and shoves our car forward violently. Johnny is too out of it to respond. Locked against our fender, the cab pushes us off the side of the road at around fifty miles an hour.

Seeing a lamppost rushing straight toward us through the windshield, I try to slide my body underneath the dashboard to protect myself. Covering my head with my hands, I let out a primal scream.

“Watch out!”

But it is too late.

I
s she alive? Can you feel a pulse?” someone is asking the stranger who is bending over my lifeless body, crumpled beneath the dashboard.

“I dunno,” comes the worried reply.

I’m floating weightlessly, observing everything from an elevated position, a few feet above his head. “Did somebody call an ambulance?”

In my dreamlike state, I see an ambulance speeding its way down the highway toward us. I hear the siren and I see the pretty lights and I watch the people standing all around. Two paramedics rush from the back to attend to my injuries.

“Is she dead?” one of them yells. “Feel her heart.”

I watch, disinterested, as my favorite pink top is snipped clean down the middle.

“She’s alive. Help me get her out of here,” his colleague replies.

I’m witnessing all of this, but I am not in my body. I’m somewhere else—where, I’m not sure. Maybe it’s all just a dream. I can see Spiro and Johnny staggering around in a daze, blood pouring from cuts on their faces. I watch as the paramedics lift my body out of the cramped space under the dashboard. They lay me on a gurney with the greatest of care. As they slam the ambulance doors behind me, my world goes black.

I
’m going to throw up.”

“Keep your head still!” a nurse barks from somewhere near my feet. A giant X-ray machine clicks and whirrs above me. “I’ve got to get pictures of your head. I’m almost done.”

She forces my head left and right, without any tenderness. Maybe because she can smell the liquor on my breath, she’s as unforgiving as the cold table I’m lying on.

“I’m going to be sick.”

“Ah, you just have the dry heaves.”

As she comes around to the side of my head, I vomit all over her.

“Ah, shit!” she complains. Disgusted, she hands me a rough paper towel and hurries off to clean herself up.

“Mommy!” I wail. “I want my mom.”

I can’t seem to make sense of anything. I don’t even know where I am. Everything feels wrong—upside down. Suddenly, Spiro is at the door. His face is caked in dried blood, and his nose is broken. He’s clutching his left arm, which is in a sling.

“Goldie?”

“Uhhhh…”

“Goldie, are you okay? I’m so happy to see you. I thought you were…well, never mind.” He flops onto a nearby chair, his skin waxy.

“Spiro,” I ask groggily, “where are we? What happened?”

“We’re in the hospital. We had an accident.” Standing shakily and walking to my side, he says through clenched teeth, shock vibrating his body, “Nobody can believe we walked out of that car alive. The doctor said we must have an angel watching over us.”

I hurt too much to care.

T
he school bell from across the street wakes me. My eyes flicker open. The sound of the bell reverberates inside my skull. I’m back in my little one-room apartment. How did I get here? Did the hospital send me home? I don’t remember. Sitting up, my head starts to spin. I realize I’m completely alone. Looking across at the telephone on the other side of the room, I stand to negotiate my way toward it. The room tilts around me, and I feel like I could vomit. But I put one foot in front of the other, and dial my mother’s number.

“Mom? Mommy?”

“Goldie? What’s the matter? What’s wrong?”

“I’ve been in an automobile accident. I’m hurt bad, Mom. I need you.”

My mother snaps to it. “Where are you?”

“In my apartment.”

“I’m on my way.”

The minute I hang up the phone, I rush to the bathroom and throw up.

In no time at all, it seems, she appears at my door in her suit and little high-heeled pointy shoes. Without even going home, she closed up her store, grabbed her purse and jumped on a Greyhound bus to NewYork.

“The policeman who saw the car after the crash said we must have had an angel looking out for us,” I tell her weakly, as she feeds me sweet lemon tea from a spoon. “He said no one should have survived.”

“Yes, sweetheart, you do have an angel,” she says. “It is Tante Goldie.”

“What do you mean?”

“I never told you this,” my mother tells me, “but just after you were born in the hospital something extraordinary happened to me. I know that I wasn’t sleeping, I was wide awake, but I had a vision. Tante Goldie appeared to me out of thin air.”

“Really?”

“She sat on the edge of my bed, put her hand over mine, smiled and
said, ‘I’m so glad you had a little girl and you named her Goldie. I’ll be watching over her.’ And then she disappeared.”

“She did?”

“Yes. Tante Goldie is your angel. She’s watching you.”

L
ife and death live in the flicker of an eye, a flash in a cloud or a bubble in a stream. That’s how fragile they can be.

Many years after this experience, I went to see a psychic in Thailand. He didn’t know who I was, and he didn’t speak a word of English; I had to use a translator. He sat in a room that smelled of incense in a strange little café in the middle of Bangkok. He was a small man with a huge smile that never left his face. He drew illegible scribbles onto paper—strange geometric symbols that made no sense to me.

He sat in silence for a long while, and then he suddenly spoke. “You almost died at the age of nineteen.” His interpreter carefully translated.

“No, I don’t think so,” I replied cautiously, thankful that, to my mind, I’d never had any really close encounters with death.

“Go back in time,” he instructed firmly, his doodling becoming ever more furious. “Something happened to you at nineteen. It must have. Think.”

“Nineteen?” I said. “No, I don’t think so. I was still in New York then, wasn’t I?”

“Were you in an accident?” he asked, his brown eyes piercing.

“Oh, yes, of course I was,” I said, suddenly remembering. “I was in a car crash.”

“Did you leave your body?”

“Well, I don’t know. I thought I was dreaming, but, yeah…maybe I did,” I replied, goose bumps appearing on my skin. “How did you know that?”

“Your life changed drastically after that, didn’t it?”

I started thinking about it and nodded my head. “Yes, it did,” I said quietly, more afraid now.

“That is because you were not supposed to die. You were sent back
because you had something to do. You are here for a reason, and what happened to you then was supposed to happen to you.”

A few minutes later, he shut the lids on his smiling eyes. The session was over. The interpreter told me it was time to go.

I could barely stand and leave the room. I thanked him and staggered out into the bright white light of day, completely winded. The truth of how close I had come to dying, and how it was always supposed to happen, shook me to the core.

“So, I have a purpose,” I whispered, repeating his words. “I was sent back for a reason? Hmm. I wonder if I’ll ever really know what that is.”