The Search for Philip K. Dick (27 page)

Ginger wasn’t at all mad. Tim said that it almost seemed like a setup. Later, there were mysterious interpretations of exactly what happened that evening. That night Tessa moved in with Phil at Joel Stein’s apartment. Within a week the new couple had rented their own place across the hall from Joel’s place.

Phil, deliriously happy, was hopeful that a whole new life was starting for him. The first thing he did was go on a diet and put a big sign on the refrigerator saying, “He whom the Gods would destroy, they first make fat.” He was intensely involved with Tessa. Tim noted, “Phil and Tess were almost physically inseparable, even always leaning against each other.” Phil continually told all his friends how brilliant Tessa was. He made her his executive secretary. Soon after Phil had moved in with Tessa, he largely withdrew from his group of young friends.

Phil wrote, in an undated letter to Tessa: “Dark hair, fair skin, small bare feet, unaware, this girl, that he had gone off for a moment: she was oblivious to such minor matters … how much he needed her, how much she meant to him.

She filled the empty spaces that had, for most of his life, surrounded him…. With her nearby, his world perpetuated itself by its own strength and intrinsic reality. He knew that if he shut his eyes or turned his back it would still goon….”

Needy himself, Phil equally needed to be needed and seemed quite proud when he told Tim, “Tess has epilepsy. She had a psychomotor seizure last night. She has to take Dilantin and phenobarbitol. I have to take her to several doctors.” And another time, he said to Tim, “pleased as Punch,” “See that chip in the kitchen wall, Tim? Tess threw a knife in my direction.”

Phil wrote to a friend in Vancouver:

Phil wrote his mother, Dorothy, about Tessa:

In 1975, Phil came up to Marin County for his divorce from Nancy. He brought Tessa with him to testify to his poor financial status. Phil’s old friend Kirsten Nelson met the couple at the airport. She said, “Tessa was a tough little girl. I was surprised that she couldn’t go to a bar, she was too young. Phil was in seventh heaven. Tessa was flattered that an older man, a famous writer, was paying her all this attention. I liked Tessa and thought she might be good for Phil, since she wasn’t timid or frightened and Phil seemed so much better.”

The only time Nancy ever saw Tessa was in court the day she got divorced from Philip. Tess had on a voluminous red coat and a strange hat. Nancy was so relieved that Philip was going to marry Tessa because she wouldn’t have to feel responsible for him anymore. She had felt very guilty about leaving him. Nancy greeted Philip in a friendly fashion, calling him by her old pet name for him, “Fuzzy.” Phil was affronted by this “inappropriate familiarity.” The court awarded Nancy $75 a month child support.

Tessa and Phil returned to Orange County. Tim was there “one of the times” Phil proposed to Tessa. A group had gone to Disneyland and planned to meet at five o’clock at the Carnation Cafe on Main Street. Tim’s account:

Phil and Tessa rented an older three-bedroom house on Santa Isabel in Fullerton, a nice house, although not fancy, with a beamed living room, the glass wall of which looked out on an overgrown small backyard. Isa began coming down from Marin County to visit every three months. She played baseball with Phil and Tessa and their friends and had lots of fun. Tessa was nice to Isa and the two of them got along well.

Meanwhile, Phil was paid small sums for lecturing to Willis McNelly’s class at Cal State, Fullerton. He talked about his writing and about his life. Among his topics was the cruelty of one of his ex-wives who wouldn’t allow him to visit his child and his beloved stepchildren. While at the university, Phil met many young science fiction fans, aspiring young writers, and published writers and invited many of them over to his place.

Doris Sauter came over to Phil and Tessa’s house with her boyfriend, science fiction writer Norman Spinrad. She noted how quiet Tessa was: “Tessa sat and read and didn’t participate in the conversation.”

Writer Jim Blaylock met Phil the day Ray Bradbury spoke in Professor McNelly’s class. Jim was also invited over to the Fullerton house: “Somehow Phil had come into possession of a rifle but he was in such fear of it that he pitched it under the bed like it was a snake.”

I hadn’t been in touch with Phil since he went to Vancouver. The news about Phil’s marriage came to me in Point Reyes from an unexpected source. That summer, I had been surprised when I heard via the Point Reyes grapevine that Dorothy and her twin stepchildren Lynne and Neil had bought a house in Inverness just a few miles from where I lived. After wrestling with my feelings, I was prepared, when Dorothy phoned me, to forget the past. After this, Dorothy, Laura, and I saw each other on a regular basis. I was happy Laura was getting to know her grandmother, and Dorothy and I rediscovered a pleasant relationship. It was from Dorothy and Lynne that I learned that Phil had remarried a young girl. Disgustedly, I gathered all Phil’s letters, put them in the fireplace, and burned them. Then I gave all my copies of his novels away.

Dorothy only lived in Inverness for two years and then moved to a retirement home, the Redwoods, in Mill Valley, still fairly close. After being there a year she moved to Santa Rosa to be near Lynne, and we were no longer able to socialize with her because of the distance, but we kept in touch by phone.

It wasn’t long after Phil’s marriage that Laura and I began getting a whole new batch of letters. On July 9, he wrote Laura:

But he never spoke to me directly about this and I didn’t pay attention. Of course he wouldn’t change the dedication. Later my third daughter, Tandy, picked up a copy of
The Man in the High Castle
at a bookstore in order to show a friend Phil’s dedication to her mother. She was shocked to see that the novel was now dedicated to Tessa. I felt bad and, as usual, couldn’t believe that Phil would do such a thing, but perhaps he’d thought he’d asked me if I still wanted the dedication—and I hadn’t bothered to answer.

Phil was quite ill that summer. He had a bout of extreme hypertension and was hospitalized. Soon after this illness, Christopher Kenneth Dick was born on July 25, 1973. Phil was pleased; he had always wanted a boy.

That fall I ran into Nancy Hackett at the Oakland Coliseum at a huge church rally that we had both attended. We exchanged greetings and, perhaps because we were both in a special kind of environment, the conversation immediately moved into deeper matters. Nancy asked me to forgive her for getting involved with my husband and I told her, “I do forgive you, Nancy.” She lit up like a Christmas tree.

Phil hadn’t called me for a couple of years, but the next day he called me and said, “I understand you’ve forgiven Nancy,” and he paused hopefully. Yes, I had forgiven Nancy but I hadn’t forgiven him. Nevertheless, we had a long, friendly conversation. I gave him the news of our family. Hatte was in Israel doing graduate work in Arabic linguistics. I had visited her in June soon after my house had burnt halfway down. Tandy was hitchhiking through Europe. She would spend the winter skiing in Switzerland and working in a Swiss restaurant. Jayne had married, moved to Point Reyes, and was working with me in the jewelry business. She was pregnant and expecting twins. I had been elected the first woman warden of St. Columba’s mission church and was also president of the local West Marin planning group.

Long-term employees were running my jewelry business so that I could coach a team, including second daughter Jayne and fourth daughter Laura, in a new-to-the-United States sport, vaulting—a gymnastic dance of eight teenagers jumping on and off a cantering horse, better than anything at that time in the circus. Phil was delighted to hear all my news. Then the girls came to the phone and talked with Phil. Later we compared notes and they told me that Phil talked only jive talk to them. While talking to me he had been dignified and serious and brought a lot of religion into the conversation. From this time on Phil wrote or phoned about once a month. He also got in touch with Kleo and communicated with her regularly. When Norman Mini died, he sent Kleo money for funeral expenses.

In December 1973, Phil wrote me:

I must have written him once but I felt more comfortable talking on the phone. Besides, I didn’t want to get letters with those “we’s” in them.

In March 1974, Phil had a mystical experience, which he describes in his novel
VALIS
. He called it his “pink light experience.” This epiphany was so important to him that he began writing a meditation about it late at night, much of it in longhand. The manuscript grew to be a million words by the time of his death and occupied two full-size file drawers. He called it
The Exegesis
. He also began writing a novel based on this experience and on his theological ideas, titled
Valisystem A
. A short time later he was hospitalized again for extreme high blood pressure, which, he told Tim Powers, he connected with his mystical experience.

In April 1974, Phil wrote Laura: