If Walls Could Talk

I have lived in a quaint little beach house built in the teens for 11 years. Sea breezes. A great school system. Safe neighborhood. Big, old pine tree in the yard for my three cats to climb. Health food store on the corner. The works. I was renting; somebody came along and bought it.

The history of that house on Tenth and Montana is rich. For eight years before my ex Michael, our son Nick, and I moved in, it was leased by Don Johnson, who long before had been a boyfriend of mine. He cleared out a den of angel dust dealers, and the landlords loved him. His girlfriend at the time, Patti D'Arbanville, and I met and clicked like magic, and we soon became the world's friendliest foursome-barbecues, bashes, and many Trivial Pursuit parties ensued. Then Donnie became Sonny Crockett and had to relocate to Florida to shoot Miami Vice. He bought Patti a big pad in the Valley, and Michael, Nick, and I left our Hollywood digs for the beach.

Cut to 11 years later. Shoveling around in drawers, cupboards, my heart. If walls could talk, mine would weep and wail, shout and sing. So much life is crammed into these forest green and peach colored rooms. With angst, suspense, and wickedly persisting adoration, Michael and I broke up a few years back and are now very best friends. Nick was tossed out of half a dozen schools for asking too many questions and giving too many answers; now he's 17 and an editor at a video game magazine.

I had silly flings, tragic affairs. I fell in love with a much younger man, and he moved in with me for four years. I re-re-rediscovered my sexuality, I searched my soul with a high-powered microscope, I found that I was a writer and wrote two books about my dastardly rock and roll liaisons, unrequited loves, lust, romances, heartrending marriage bust-up, teenage grief, joys, ecstasies, and the high-trauma drama of living life wild and hard-and so much of it all went on in the quaint little beach house on Tenth and Montana.

When it came time to pack it all up into neat little bundles, I was flummoxed. Where to begin? With the porcelain ladies' heads from the 1940s? My ceramic-animals-with-eyelashes collection? My 200 reverse-painting-on-glass silhouettes from the 1930s? Racks of frothy, fading antique dresses? The seemingly endless display of crosses and Jesus pictures at every age in every possible holy situation? Not to mention the several portraits of his mom.

And what about the kitchen? That would surely take a week. I have three dozen Mickey Mouse mugs, three sets of original Melmac tableware, several precious Elvis Presley glasses from Graceland (trimmed in 14-carat gold), many happy ceramic birds, two actual McCoy cookie jars, and all those animals-with-eyelashes. You get the very colorful picture.

I began with the stacks and stacks of photo albums of Nick in various stages of childhood- shrieking beet-red newborn, a little tiger on Halloween, the toddler gazing up at "Da," my beaming daddy, learn- ing a few chords on his kiddie guitar from one of the Sex Pistols, digging into a big, blue Cookie Monster cake that Mommy made for his third birthday. Sigh.

Way back in the hall closet behind the mound of frilly doilies, under an American flag, I discovered my dad's long-forgotten box of Navy doodads from World War II. My mom gave them to me for safekeeping when she moved. O.C. Miller died ten years ago from coal-miner's disease- I miss him like crazy and will always be grateful that I inherited his absurd optimism. It has gotten us both into some pretty hairy situations.

When I lifted up his Navy jacket I spied a pile of letters he wrote to my mom while he was missing her in Borneo and unfolded a page. "My Dearest One, It made me feel a thousand percent better when I got your two letters. I'm glad you liked your present. I wish I could have presented it to you personally, then claimed my reward. I know there is nothing that can equal just being together. No, I'm afraid we won't be just looking at each other very long without something nice happening, and we may be a little embarrassed after being separateed for so long. Even that part will be good. Honey, when I get home we won't care if some of the Sundays are bad. It will give us an excuse to stay in bed all day. I guess we will anyway-weather or not. My love and longing gets greater each day, my Darling, and I'm sure it won't be much longer. Soon will be daylight. I have two more hours to go on my watch. I love you, honey, O.C." Double sigh.

As I wiped the tears away, I wondered if Nick would one day come across some of the lovely mush I wrote to his dad when we had an ocean between us. Then I realized I would have to cram it into a cardboard box first.

I won't say that I'm a pack rat, but Mickey Mouse and I go way back. I seized the opportunity to discontinue some of my collections and had two hugely successful yard sales. My yard sales are legend. People line up and charge the yard with hurricane force, Velvet frocks and spike-heeled shoes sail through the air. I ditched quite a few Oriental figurines, several African tribal masks, and my entire rattan bedroom suite, replacing it with tacky 1950s French Provincial Barbie doll furniture. Change, I have always been told, is good.

After much headache and heartache I'm not about to go into (self-employed female with flaming red hair, unusual long haired son), I found a new pad 15 miles away and over the hill in the San Fernando Valley, where I was raised-a beautiful, rustic charmer built the year I was born. I finally have my own office, and Nick has his own bathroom. There's a rare weeping redwood tree in the front yard that draws intense-looking people who stand and stare at it with silent awe. My cats dig it too.

I thought I was doing pretty damn well, packing up the bits and pieces of my wild life without too much hysteria, until my final go-round at my former home. As I scoured for trinkets possibly lost in the Berber carpets, I came across a tiny scrap of paper in the shape of a heart, on which was written in a childish scrawl "I love you Mom." That's all he wrote. I was off into emotional outburstland. I stood in the empty nail-studded hallway pining for all the oh-so-important lost moments that I was about to leave behind.