The Boys : A Memoir of Hollywood and Family(88)

Ron and I were contentedly lounging around in our house when we heard unusual noises coming from Mom, who was downstairs in the kitchen. She was on the phone with Dad and she was yelling. This was not normal. Our folks had occasional spats, but these never upset us much because every married couple does. One thing Mom and Dad definitely did not do was yell at each other. So this attracted my and Ron’s attention. The way our house was laid out, we could station ourselves at the top of the stairs in such a way that Mom didn’t see us.

The call went on for a distressingly long time. Mom would get agitated, calm a bit, and then build steam back up to a point where she was even more wound up than before—it was like a little earthquake that progressed into the Big One. Ron and I silently cast glances at each other, trying to get the picture of what was going on. It was like listening to a ball game on the radio, only there was nothing remotely entertaining about it.





RON


Little by little, the contours of the argument became clear. Dad was nearing the end of his trip, but he had told Mom that he needed to stay a little longer than expected. Mom had received this news poorly. She kept saying the name “Vera.” As in, “You’re with Vera, I know you are!”

Vera . . . as in Vera Miles . . . who had played Clint’s mom in the movie Gentle Giant and was the mother to both of us in The Wild Country.

I was confused. And rattled. Mom hung up on Dad at one point, only to pick up the phone when it rang again, to resume their arguing.

When she hung up for the last time, Mom was in tears. We wandered down to the kitchen. I said, “What’s wrong, Mom?”

She exploded. “He’s in North Carolina and Vera is there and she’s got her eye on Rance! And I’m not going to stand for it!”

It was true that Vera Miles was in North Carolina on location with the Where the Lilies Bloom crew. She had recently divorced her husband and was newly partnered with Dad’s friend Bob Jones, who was serving as the movie’s assistant director: the same Bob Jones who lent me his two horses for my film Old Paint.

The Lilies shoot had run over schedule, and the production had chosen to extend Dad for an extra week. To Mom, this had shades of “Don’t wait up for me, honey, I’ll be working late.” But it just didn’t make sense. Films run over schedule all the time. Mom and Vera had been such fast friends on the set of The Wild Country.

Then came an unburdening that knocked me sideways. “I was happy in Duncan,” Mom said, referring to her Oklahoma hometown. “I’ve put in all these years. I’ve been taken for granted. Well, I’m not putting up with that! I’ve had it. I’m just going to pack my things and go home.”

The sting of her words was compounded by how uncharacteristic they were. Mom’s default behavioral mode was chipper, chatty optimism. I recognized that there were things that upset her, like those times in public when people approached her and Dad and thoughtlessly asked, “Is that your son?” I was old enough to understand that no marriage is perfect and that every partnership that endures must weather some adversity.

But I was unprepared for something like this. The force of it was so great and unexpected that my mind went into instant worst-casescenario mode, projecting forward. This is what it looks like when a family begins to fall apart. This is what happens to show-business families. Now it’s happening to us. Things will never be the same. Having witnessed my share of kids and family units damaged by the stresses of our business, I had nevertheless assumed that the Howards were immune. We had made it this far. We had always lived in a bubble of safety, love, and mutual trust—or so I had believed.

My next thought was to protect Clint. I was already on the cusp of adulthood, out of the house, but at fourteen, he still had a ways to go. He wasn’t finished growing up. Now what was going to happen to him?

I grabbed Clint and said, “Let’s get out of here.” We drove to Cheryl’s house. I reported to her what had happened. Cheryl was a child of divorce and talked a little about her parents’ breakup. We were both sensitive to Clint, not wanting to alarm him. But what to do in the meantime? I decided to drive the three of us to Glendale, the next town over, where they had batting cages. For a quarter, you could buy twelve swings at pitches shot out by machines at various speed levels. For $3.50, you could buy half an hour’s worth of unlimited swings. I went for the deluxe package, figuring that it would burn off a lot of the anxiety and stress that Clint and I were feeling.





CLINT


Given that I was fourteen, I had not fully developed the emotional capacity to process what was going on. My gut instinct was to giggle. Not at Mom, but at the whole scene, in an Isn’t this all kinda nutty? way. I saw how upset Mom was, and I was thrown by the venom coming out of her mouth. But I also thought that it would all pass. Ron was more affected because he was so deeply in love with Cheryl and better understood the stakes, the gravity.

Don’t get me wrong; I was freaked out when Mom declared she was moving back to Duncan. We were so settled in the greater Burbank area that I couldn’t imagine us ever living anywhere else. The thought flashed through my mind that if Mom really did move back to Oklahoma, I, at least, would stay in California with Dad.

But as bad as that day was, I just couldn’t see a horrible development like that happening. I thought that Mom and Dad would be okay.