The Rainbow Comes and Goes: A Mother and Son On Life, Love, and Loss (12 page)

Getting involved with Pat DeCicco was both fanatical and
an act of desperation. He was forceful, domineering, and supremely sure of himself. When you have low self-esteem, as I did, those qualities are attractive. He resembled Dean Martin—tall, dark, handsome, and extremely extroverted. Pat could have a roomful of people laughing in hysterics, though what he said wasn’t really funny; the way he said it was. He would do anything to get a laugh and often used me as the punch line.

One day, soon after meeting DeCicco, I was on my way to see him and as I left my room, I saw my mother ahead of me on her way down the stairs. She hadn’t noticed I was there. Her beautiful face, so often tense, appeared softer, almost as if she were happy. Her raven hair, not bound in a chignon, flowed loosely around the shoulders of a long silk Nile green dress I had never seen her wear before.

It was only a moment, but I stood watching her as she entered the living room below and sat on the sofa facing the portrait of her that my father had commissioned Dana Pond to paint when they were in Paris on their honeymoon.

“Wannsie, I’m expecting Mr. Hughes at six. Please show him into the living room,” she called out.

I went down the stairs and headed toward the front door without speaking to her. As my hand touched the doorknob, the bell rang. I opened the door, and there, standing before me, was a very tall, very thin, very, very sensitive-looking man who made me weak in the knees.

And that is how I met Howard Hughes.

I quickly said, “Hello,” but Wannsie was close behind, and as I hastened past Howard, she escorted him into the living room.

My mother was asleep when I got home that night, so I had to wait until late in the afternoon the next day, when she finally emerged from her room, to find out why Mr. Hughes had been there. Apparently he had come to speak to her about
me.
He wanted to give me a screen test.

“Of course, I told him it was out of the question,” my mother said, sounding annoyed.

“Why? Why?” I cried out, “Why is it out of the question?”

“What makes you think you could ever be an actress?” she said, glancing over at me.

“I’ve often thought of it secretly, I have, I have!” I wanted to scream out. But I didn’t.

Instead, I started dating Howard. Something had passed between us when I opened that door and saw him, and wild horses couldn’t have prevented us from seeing each other again.

When my mother became aware of this, she seemed uninterested and never mentioned him again. Later, I learned she was angry because when Howard came to visit that first time, she thought he was coming to ask her out.

Early on in our relationship, I told Howard that Pat frightened
me and was pressuring me, so he sent him off to Chicago to handle some minor job for Pan Am. It was a huge relief, but I was angry that I didn’t have the courage to get Pat out of my life by myself.

W
hen I think of Howard Hughes, I imagine him as a recluse living in the penthouse of the Desert Inn hotel in Las Vegas, using tissues to protect himself from germs.

I can’t reconcile
the man I dated with the man he apparently became. When I knew him, he was thirty-six, wildly romantic, and gentle, yet he had the power to rule the world.

I had never met anyone like him. He was extremely masculine, but there was a fragility about him, as if he were made of fine and tawny flesh; and a reticence, a shyness, which was extremely appealing after the crudeness of Pat.

When I was with Howard, I always felt that he was concentrating on me exclusively, and he was so easy to be with. Silences in our conversation were not empty spaces I wondered how to fill; they were as natural as breathing. It was as if we had known each other forever, yet whenever we got together, we plunged into wild joy as if it were our first meeting.

Howard was extremely possessive, and secretive about our relationship; no more nights dancing till dawn at Mocambo
and Ciro’s. He would pick me up at my mother’s house in a shabby Oldsmobile and off we’d go. I never knew where. Often he would fly me in his plane to Catalina for dinner in a seaside restaurant. There were nights in his private screening room when he’d proudly show me films he produced and directed,
Hell’s Angels
, with Jean Harlow, his first big success, among them. Some nights when he was working he’d ask me to wait for him in the screening room. I’d watch movies until he’d suddenly appear with a picnic dinner we’d prop on our laps and enjoy.

Best of all, sex not only worked, but it was the first time since I started having sex that summer that I didn’t have to fake an orgasm.

Before long, though, Pat figured out why Howard had sent him to Chicago. He knew we were constantly together and started inundating me with phone calls.

“Smarten up, Fatsy-roo. He’s never going to marry
you
!” he would shout.

I stopped listening, but began to wonder if perhaps he was right. In the moments we were apart, doubts took hold. Howard could have any woman in the world; how could I possibly compete?

Although with each meeting we grew closer, he never mentioned marriage. It didn’t occur to me at that age that we needed to spend more time together before any serious plans
could even be considered. We had only started seeing each other, but time had no meaning to me. I was frantic and impulsive. I was desperate to get away from my mother but determined not to return to high school and my previous life with Auntie Ger.

Suddenly, toward the end of summer, my legal guardian, Surrogate Foley, demanded that I return to New York immediately to meet with him. My senior year in high school was about to start, and he wanted to know why I wasn’t there.

Howard would miss me, of that I was certain, but was he going to ask me to marry him? I didn’t know. After all, we had only known each other for several months. My mother insisted on taking the next plane to New York with me. Howard alerted the pilot, who came to my seat and said Mr. Hughes had requested that he escort me into the cockpit, where I could watch them fly the gigantic jet.

Throughout the flight, I kept hearing Howard’s voice in my head,

I love you, Gloria.

And my own:
Howard, I love you.

To each other we said that. He meant it. So did I. There was no question in my mind that it was the truth. Everything was going to be all right.

But then we landed, and it wasn’t. It turned out all wrong.

I did not go to Auntie Ger’s house in Greenwich Village.
Instead, my mother checked us into the Hotel Marguery, on Park Avenue. In our suite, yellow roses, masses of them, brimmed over the rim of a crystal bowl. I rushed to open the card, knowing it was Howard who had sent them.

I did go and see my aunt, before the appointment with Surrogate Foley. I was happy to see her and put my arms around her as we sat on the sofa in front of the fireplace. I told her about Howard, boasting that we were planning to marry. She was pleased but cautious.

“I do think it wise to wait until you complete high school. See how you feel about it then.”

Of course, it was a completely sensible suggestion, but then she threw me into a panic, saying, “Let’s call him. You can introduce us on the phone.”

Trembling, I went upstairs and dialed his number, imagining Auntie Ger congratulating us on our engagement. He answered immediately. We spoke briefly about how much we missed each other, but I made no mention of my aunt. I went back downstairs, where she was waiting.

“He’s very busy right now, Auntie Ger. Maybe another time. . . .”

“Oh,” she said pleasantly, but she seemed somewhat taken aback.

On my way back to the hotel, I kept clutching the religious medallion Dodo had sent me to give to Howard. I had written
her and told her we were in love. She’d had it engraved,
G.V. TO H.H. NOVEMBER
1941. Hesitant, I had not given it to him, and it remains in my possession to this day.

Later that evening, I went to a party at the Pierre hotel, and there he was—not Howard, but Pat DeCicco. He ignored me, as if I weren’t there. I, too, pretended I hadn’t seen him, until he came up to me looking angry and hostile.

“What is it with you!” he said, grabbing my arm.

I froze, a rabbit, terrified. He stared at me in silence. Then pulled me toward him and said, “You’re going to marry me.”

I was repelled but fascinated by the darkness of his intensity.

What was the destructive force that drew me to him? Was it my lack of self-esteem? Or something I dared not admit to myself: that he treated me as I deserved to be treated, punishing me for having brought shame on my beautiful, beloved mother by turning against her in the custody battle?

All I had to do was run back to the safety of life with my aunt, but I didn’t. The next day, I told my mother that Pat had proposed. She was ecstatic, and hastily called the
New York Times
to announce our engagement. Everything was happening too fast. Every time I thought of calling Howard, I panicked, and so I never did.

When I finally met with Surrogate Foley, Pat insisted on being there. Foley controlled my trust fund and demanded Pat sign a document stating he had no right to my inheritance
should we divorce. It was as if hot pepper had been sprayed in Pat’s face. He jumped up, shouting abuse at Foley. It was an amazing performance. Head in my lap, I started to cry, but Pat dragged me from the room, leaving the document unsigned, and that was the last time I ever saw Foley.

“May you always be as happy as you are now,” my mother kept simpering to me as she and Aunt Thelma bustled about, occupying themselves with wedding plans. It was like a weird Alice in Wonderland dream.

How had this happened?

Today I have plenty of theories, but there is really only one explanation: an immature seventeen-year-old girl was playing blind man’s bluff in a dark forest. I felt unworthy to be loved by a man who treated me as Howard did, like a queen. Pat knew the secret of unworthy me. It’s really no surprise that I soon found myself Mrs. Pasquale John DeCicco.

I
t is a sign of how alone you were that no one sat you down and tried to help you make better choices.

I just looked up an old Movietone News newsreel of the wedding on YouTube. You and DeCicco are on steps outside the church. There are crowds of people watching, held back by police. The wind is blowing your veil, and the whole affair
looks rushed and confused. There is one moment when you seem to laugh at something DeCicco says, but it looks like you’re faking it. Your smile seems almost frozen.

Oh God, that wedding!
It took place in Santa Barbara, at the Old Mission Catholic Church on December 28, 1941. It was a modest wedding, paid for by the allowance my mother was getting from Surrogate Foley.

I walked alone down the aisle in a dress designed by Howard Greer, with a thirty-foot veil trailing behind me. By tradition, it would have been appropriate for my mother’s brother, my uncle Harry Morgan, to take my father’s role in “giving the bride away,” but he wanted nothing to do with the wedding. He and his children refused to associate with me, blaming me for rejecting my mother in the custody trial.

Dazed as a zombie on the altar, I stood, kneeled, stood, kneeled . . . while the four-hour High Mass droned on and on. Who was this stranger by my side, this tall, withdrawn dummy in a store window?

Then it was over. Two robots turned and walked back down the aisle and out onto the steps, where photographers and onlookers had gathered to view the proceedings. One newspaper noted, “The bride remained un-kissed.” True, indeed.

Photo © Bettmann/CORBIS.

The wedding party drove back to a cocktail reception hosted by my mother and Aunt Thelma, in their house on Maple Drive. Auntie Ger had been impressed when I told her about Howard Hughes, but she was very much against my marrying Pat, and there was no question of her attending the wedding, but Dodo and Naney were there, though they kept clear of my mother and Thelma. They enjoyed ogling the movie stars, and Dodo commented, “Rita Hayworth is the only one that looks aristocratic.”

For our honeymoon, Pat’s pal Bruce Cabot lent him a new car for us to drive to Kansas, so that Pat could begin his officer training course. It was just a few weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and Pat had joined the army. Bruce’s car was a sleek silver vehicle that appeared to come from a
Flash Gordon
comic strip. Pat got big laughs christening it “Flash Gordon’s Bed Pan.”

“Where are we spending our wedding night?” I asked as we drove off, waving to the assembled guests.

“A surprise,” he responded.

It certainly was. After a few hours on the road, we stopped at Joe Schenck’s house in Palm Springs. Schenck was chairman of 20th Century-Fox. Inside the home, Zeppo Marx and a group of men were playing cards. They briefly glanced up through the haze of cigar smoke to nod hello, indicating a room down the hall that was to be our bridal suite.

“Settle in,” Pat told me. “I’ll be back in a bit.”

I lay in the dark waiting until 6:00 a.m., when he appeared for a quick . . . dare I say? . . . fuck. Then off we went for a breakfast hot dog and many more days on the road.