My mother passed away recently, 10 weeks shy of her 102nd birthday, and I’d like you to meet her.
Olive was, above all, fun. She was a native San Franciscan, an accident of birth that gave her an illusion of sophistication and held her in good stead when the occasion called for benign superiority.
From the time I was six till I was 18, we had custody of one another every other weekend. I remember the lunches, the movies we liked so much we saw twice-you could sit straight through in those days-and that the two of us laughed louder than anyone else in the “theayter.” When I was 10 she encouraged me to read to her from The Phantom in the comics; I’m convinced she had an inkling I thrived on romantic fantasy. There was hardly a silent moment between us.
Olive wore suits and gloves, and hats and heels, and said of herself: “I was lucky to be born with pretty legs instead of a pretty face.” I always figured her for both: my child mind saw a face like Loretta Young and heard a mouth like Eve Arden.
Since we lived apart, she never met my friends till I was a young man. Early in my acting career, I was in a play with a gifted black actor. She came backstage and for the first time in her life shook hands with an African-American. She took great pride in that moment; in her heyday, black and white rarely touched.
Her three husbands after my father were wonderful to me, as were her in-between boyfriends. They always took us to the best restaurants. Two dry Manhattans, a Dungeness crab salad, a New York cut medium rare and a good California Cab; that was her style. She sugared her grapefruit, never took a vitamin pill and swallowed whatever felt good in her mouth.
During my adolescence, she never showed up at my football games or saw a report card. She didn’t help me with my Algebra or give me advice.
Mommy was a holiday.
Olive left high school during the 1918 flu epidemic and went to work in a bank. Her weekly paycheck grew irresistible so rather than return to school, she established credit at San Francisco’s finest department stores and a woman was born. During World War II, she danced evenings away at the Fairmont, the St. Francis and the Mark Hopkins. When she and Bill-he was married elsewhere-took to the floor the band stopped abruptly and segued into “To Each His Own.” Their song. For a while.
She considered herself a Democrat, though she never voted (“Couldn’t be bothered, Honey”), a fact that drove me nuts. But she took me to Santa Cruz on her vacations and made one helluva pumpkin pie.
Olive seemed forever young. When she was 82, she was mugged at a bus stop. Got up and finished fourth. At 84, she changed her name to Olivia and developed a crush on an employee at Joe’s, an upscale hangout in San Francisco’s Marina district. She sought my advice: “I’ve got a case on a 35-year-old bartender. Honey, what am I supposed to do with that? You’re the writer.”
My mother had a slew of opinions. Some harmless: Did you know, for instance, that the greatest annoyance in a woman’s life is a crumb of French bread trapped inside a brassiere? Or that virginity is overrated? Or that nothing clogs a drain like lamb fat? And a few outlandish: “To be Catholic is to choose not to think.” And, “God must be mad at the Jews, why else would he give them the bagel.” She was fond of reassuring me that my father knew nothing about sex – I’m lucky to be here-nor did any man of Italian extraction. The height of appeal to her eye involved buffed nails, expensive shoes and a Glen plaid suit.
When she was in her 90s we got a little tipsy together at the bar at Guido’s Malibu. Once home, I deposited her onto the guest bed and she rolled off the other side onto the floor, and we laughed ourselves to sleep. The following morning, with the help of two aspirin, a milk of magnesia tablet and a gallon of coffee, she refused to believe any of it.
I’ve mined her essence in two novels, a stage play, a current screenplay and at countless dinner parties. She’s given me material for the rest of my life.
Her last two years were spent in a nursing home. She no longer walked and barely spoke. One Sunday, the pureed lunch on her tray was especially unrecognizable. She shook her head a definite no as I poised the spoon again and again near her mouth. I figured she should have some nourishment, so I lied to her: “Mom, these mashed potatoes don’t look half-bad.” She gave me a look-this hundred-year-old who hadn’t uttered a word since I couldn’t remember when-and with impeccable timing said: “Help yourself.”
There were so many names and places connected to our past that, as time went by, only the two of us recognized specifics. The older we got, the more I cherished that link. Then, as of 2:20 a.m. March 6, the reference library closed for all time.
I’ll miss her astonishing flavor.