American Girls(65)

“That must be weird.”

“It must have been, but it wasn’t that. She arranged to meet her dad, who’s now become this international businessman, at some super-exclusive restaurant. I guess that she wanted to impress him, to show him she’d done okay without him.”

“To make him love her,” I said. My arms felt chilled and I turned the air off.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’m so used to sound stages. It’s always cold.”

“No problem.”

He turned the heat on low and I wrapped my sweater over the ends of my hands.

“I don’t know exactly what happened. I know that he made a pass at her. I don’t think he tried to sleep with her, but he did something. My mom flew over and she told me not to go, but I should have. I was having problems of my own, and I didn’t know exactly what was happening. Olivia’s always been so dramatic. Even now I never know when she’s really in trouble.”

My last mental snapshot had been of Olivia Taylor, practically spread-eagle next to Karl Marx, acting like some sad groupie and not like someone who used to be the world’s biggest teen star. It reminded me a little of Squeaky Fromme, who got the nickname Squeaky because when the Manson family was living on the ranch, the owner was a blind old man who thought that Fromme squeaked when he was feeling her up. Which, evidently, was a frequent enough event to get a nickname out of the arrangement.

You couldn’t have a favorite Manson girl—that would be like picking your favorite finger to start with as they ripped off your nails. But the one I thought about the most was Squeaky. Squeaky Fromme should never have been Squeaky Fromme, and not just the nickname, the whole deal. She should have grown up to become Lynette Fromme-Something-or-Other, veterinarian. Or dancer. Or poet. I’m not excusing her behavior. I don’t think she was awesome. I still think she was a psycho who picked the dumbest hippie method possible to try to kill the president. Still.

Squeaky Fromme was a dancer as a child. She was on The Lawrence Welk Show, a program for the deeply old now—but big in its time—and performed in front of crowds of thousands at the Hollywood Bowl with a group called the Lariats. She loved animals and was voted best personality in junior high. But by high school she was shooting staple guns into her arms at work and begging her English teacher to take notice. She was covering black eyes and burning her arms with cigarettes. She pleaded with neighbors to take her in for a day, a week, the summer. She asked a friend’s parents to adopt her. Any wild guesses as to why? Anyone? Anyone?

I know there’s nothing worse than having your father molest you, but the problem is that you hear about it so much, it’s like Roger talking about amnesia or past lives in his stupid script. It’s just one of those stories, even though it’s not. When I was reading about Squeaky Fromme, that her dad was probably a monster wasn’t even a big reveal—it was like the “no, duh” of the book.

But the thing that stuck with me, that really bothered me even though it was about a million times less horrible, is that from the time she was a little girl, really little, he wouldn’t let her eat dinner with the family. She had to sit somewhere separate while the rest of them ate Spam or whatever it was people ate in those days. That detail felt sad to me the same way Olivia Taylor’s big, overstuffed, animal pit of a house felt sad. No wonder Squeaky Fromme found another family.

I read about a million reasons that the Manson murders took place. LSD. The sixties. Failed record deals. Racial unrest. Paranoid schizophrenia. And who knows? Who knows if they could have been stopped? I’m sure there’s no simple way that everything could have been erased, made better. But if I had to write a memo to America on what to do to improve the future, on how to go back and correct the past, it would be simple: Dear America: Please give your daughters sturdy bedroom doors that lock from the inside. And when they are hungry, give them a place at the table.

It wouldn’t solve everything, but it would definitely be a start.

“That’s really terrible,” I said, and it was almost like I meant Olivia and Squeaky Fromme together.

We kept driving and I thought about Olivia flying back and forth from Las Vegas, sitting alone with her sad dog and her iguana. Wondering if she was ever going to catch up to who she used to be, find a table where someone wanted her there just because.

“I think you have the coolest profile,” Jeremy said finally. “I like that when I look at you I can’t think of anyone who looks quite like you. You have a great face. An interesting face.” It was the worst kind of compliment. Interesting, but not beautiful.

“Wonderful,” I said.

“I’m serious. You probably want to be pretty, because everyone here does. But pretty just winds up looking like a hundred girls who look like a hundred other girls who are all trying to look like the same person because they saw her in some stupid movie. That probably doesn’t make sense, but after a while, pretty doesn’t even register.”

When he was talking I could tell that he wasn’t lying, and it made me wish that I were a better person, that I knew how to take a compliment.

He pulled up beneath a white skyscraper of a structure, and it took me a minute to register that it was the Hollywood sign. He parked the car and rolled his window down, so I rolled mine down as well. The air was surprisingly warm and smelled faintly floral.

“That’s the observatory where Rebel Without a Cause was shot,” he said. “I love James Dean.”