A Lotus Grows in the Mud (12 page)

“Yeah, where are you headed?”

“I’m going home,” he says.

“Going home, huh? Great. Jump in.”

He opens the door and folds his six-foot frame into my car, filling the space with his broad shoulders. I breathe a sigh of relief. A soldier is escorting me through Death Valley.

“So, where’s home?”

“Good Springs. It’s about sixty miles this side of Vegas.”

“Vegas? That’s where I’m going. Have you ever been there?”

He laughs. “Yes I have, ma’am. Too many times.”

“Uh-oh, what’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing,” he chuckles. “What are you doing in Vegas?”

“I’m a dancer.” Seeing his surprise, I add hastily, “Top on.”

We both laugh.

“Where are you dancing?”

“The Desert Inn. I’m doing five shows a night for three months. If I ever get there, that is.” There is a pause, then I ask him, “Are you on leave or something?”

He nods. “I’m going to surprise my mom. She doesn’t know I’m back.”

“Back from where?”

“Vietnam.”

I stammer my reply. “V-Vietnam? You’ve been in Vietnam?” I think of all those banners, the grim statistics in the papers about how many people are being killed every day, and how young the U.S. soldiers are—average age, nineteen.

“Yup,” he replies without missing a beat. “I’m a Green Beret.”

“Wow! That’s pretty heavy. You must be, well, God, a Green Beret…” I look up at the beret with renewed respect. Seeing me staring, he pulls it from his head to reveal a closely shaved scalp.

“I’ve got a week’s leave,” he says. “I didn’t tell Mom. It’s her fiftieth birthday next week. My name is Stu, by the way.”

“Oh, hi, Stu,” I reply with a giggle. “I’m Goldie. And this is my dog, Lambchop.”

He turns to look at my sleeping poodle and smiles.

“So, what happens at the end of your leave?” I ask.

Staring straight ahead at the empty road winding off into the desert night, he says, in a small voice, “I have to go back.”

“Go back?” I gasp, but I stop myself from saying more. We drive in silence for several miles, both lost in our own worlds.

“Are you hungry?” he asks suddenly.

“I’m a dancer.” I grin. “We’re always hungry.”

“Then turn off up ahead. There’s a good little diner in a mall just along the next road.”

Over an ice-cream sundae that Stu can barely believe I will finish, I tell him about my childhood in Takoma Park, my dream to be happy and a few of my more salutary experiences in New York.

He tucks into a chocolate fudge sundae and listens intently to every word I have to say. “Boy, this is good. I sure miss this,” he says, enjoying every mouthful.

“Gee, listen to me chattering on,” I say, suddenly embarrassed. “You must think me very shallow compared to what’s happening in your life. I mean, you’re a real live soldier, in a war and everything.”

Stu laughs. “Yeah, but I’ve never met a real live Vegas showgirl before. Who knows, maybe you’ll be a star one day. When I’m back in
Vietnam, I’ll think of you dancing your butt off to ‘Mustang Sally’ in your little fringed costume and it will remind me of home.”

I look in his eyes and wonder if he will ever make it home again.

“What’s it like in Vietnam?” I ask finally, almost afraid of the answer.

He stares at his big hands for a moment before answering. “Ugly…I’ve lost a lot of good friends.”

Reaching out, I take his hand in mine and squeeze it. No words are necessary. Pulling myself together, I tell him proudly, “I have a friend who’s a captain in the Army out in Vietnam.”

“You do?” he replies, relieved by the shift in mood.

“Yes.” I nod. “His name is Michael Waghelstein. He was at Montgomery Blair High School with me in Silver Spring, Maryland, and then they called him up. He is a good Jewish boy and a great student with not a fighting bone in his body. Hey, would you please say hi from little Goldie Hawn if ever you meet him?”

Stu laughs. “Yes, I will.” Grabbing his beret, he slides out of our booth. “Come on, now. It’s getting late. Time to go.”

We travel in silence for the next hour. The landscape is lunar, with just a few little pockets of humanity clustered around the odd truck stop. We pass Baker and Soda Lake, Clark Mountain and Jean. My heart sinks when I see the town sign to Good Springs, and Stu points out where to turn off.

“You can drop me on this corner,” he says. “I live just down that street.”

Bringing the car to a halt, I peer beyond him into the darkness and see a series of unremarkable low-rise houses flanking a road with nothing else along it.

Stu turns to look at me for a moment, and I think he is going to say something. Maybe he’s having second thoughts? Maybe he wants me to drive straight on to Las Vegas and help him go AWOL. Why don’t we just run away together and forget all about the things we were supposed to be doing? I can almost hear him say. But whatever he is thinking privately he decides not to share.

Without speaking, he grabs his duffel bag from the back and dumps it on the ground next to him. He pulls on his green beret and smooths
down his uniform. I open the driver’s door and step out and walk round to where he is standing. Reaching up, stretching on tiptoes, I adjust his beret so that it comes down at a slight angle over his right eye.

“Good-bye, Goldie Hawn,” Stu says with a smile, leaning down and kissing me tenderly on the lips.

“Good-bye, Stu,” I reply, kissing him back. His lips are soft and taste of vanilla. “And good luck.”

Stepping back, he brings his right hand up to his head in a crisp salute before turning sharply on his heel and walking away.

I climb wearily back into my car with Lambchop for the final leg of my long journey. Starting the engine, I pull slowly away from the side of the road as if floating in a dream.

In my rearview mirror I watch for as long as I can until Stu melts into the darkness and disappears from sight. When he is gone, I realize with a heaving sob that wells up from somewhere deep inside me that I will probably never know the fate of my “unknown” soldier.

War. When will we learn?

“C
ome on, Lambchop,” I whisper, opening the door to my apartment so he can follow at my heels. “Let’s get out of this place!”

It is dawn, and I am fleeing Las Vegas like a thief, slamming the door on the five shows a night, the vampire hours and the drooling perverts.

The wheels of my car spin dust as I head for the Mojave Desert highway that brought me here three months ago. Three whole months of sleeping when I can during the day, tinfoil taped to my window to block the light. Three months of never venturing out in the daylight because of the ferocious heat. Three months of having to dance in half-empty bars. I’ve had enough.

Goldie, I can hear my dad’s words of advice ringing in my ears. Go back to L.A. and see if you can get some work at one of the television studios. Give yourself a set time period, and, if it doesn’t work out, then come on home.

Nine months, I tell myself. I’m giving myself nine months. If I haven’t got a dancing job by then, I’m going to go back to Maryland, and I’m going to open that dance school.

Escaping now in the middle of the night, Lambchop at my side, I retrace my journey across the desert toward L.A. The top down, the wind in my hair, I drive up through the mountains and down the other side. My road to hell has become my road to freedom. Passing through Good Springs, I wonder about my unknown soldier and what kind of hell he is in.

Back in the city, pounding the pavement with a portfolio that is bigger than I am, I try to get work at a studio or in commercials. Time and again, I am turned down. Time and again, I put myself in a place of rejection.

“Oh, thank you, Miss Hawn. That was lovely…Next!”

“You’re too unusual-looking…You can’t be pigeonholed…We don’t know what to do with you.” One agent even tells me, “We don’t really know where to place you. Go get a job and then come back and we’ll see what we can do.”

I go through all the usual agonies of wondering what it is about me that the producers and directors don’t like. Is it my face? My body? How I look? How I read the line? The scrutiny is intense and only brings more self-scrutiny, feeding on my insecurities.

“I am not going to be one of those sad L.A. girls who grow old here waiting to be discovered,” I tell my new roommate, Shawn Randall. She’s a dancer too, and we share an apartment in the heart of Hollywood.

Looking up a list of talent agencies, I find one in downtown L.A., on Fourth Street. I take the freeway, the top down, but the smog is so bad that it burns my eyes. Pulling my car over, I wipe the smudged makeup from my eyes in the rearview mirror and carefully reapply it. I try to put my top up, but it won’t go. My car, like my life, is falling apart.

Eventually finding the agency, I push open the door and scale a mountain of wooden stairs with paint-chipped walls on either side. I reach the top and a door with a rickety knob. I turn it tentatively and step inside. A big guy sitting behind a desk smiles at me. “Come on in,” he says with a wave.

He has a broad smile and a colorful shirt. His name is George, and I like him. The wall behind his desk is plastered with photographs of his clients.

“So, what can you do?” he asks as he pores over my portfolio of publicity shots.

“I’m a dancer.”

“Great. How about commercials? Do you have any experience?”

“Well, yes, I did one for a hair product in Vegas. But I had to wear a big red wig and I looked awful.”

“I don’t know why they didn’t let you show your pretty hair.”

“George,” I ask, looking up at his wall of fame, “tell me, do you represent any white clients?”

George laughs, a big open laugh that reveals a mouth full of teeth. “Well, no, girl,” he replies with a chuckle. “You’d be my first. Don’t you worry, Goldie, I don’t care what color your skin is. I can help you…I can definitely help you.”

So now I have an agent, only he never asks me to sign anything, and he never seems to call. I continue to spend my life traipsing from one audition to the next, my dance bag slung over my shoulder, sometimes with Shawn, sometimes without, always hungry for work.

One day, we spot an advertisement in the show business rags for
The Andy Griffith Special.

“Yes!” I cry, excitedly. “This is exactly what Daddy said I should go for.”

We drive to the CBS studios in Shawn’s Oldsmobile, which looks and sounds like a Sherman tank. Laughing, chatting away, we are as free as birds and looking forward to our audition. Finding the rehearsal hall, we see some familiar faces from other auditions, girls like us who are doing the rounds. Most of them are older, and have been dancing in L.A. for years. They form tight cliques, and know their presence here is perfunctory; they will almost certainly be selected.

“Okay, five, six, seven, eight…” the choreographer, Nick Castle, puts us through our paces. We begin in groups of ten, and then he mixes the combinations, watches some of us perform solo, hears a few of us sing, and finally whittles us down to twenty girls.

“All right, now,” he says, clapping his hands together and lining us all up in front of him. “You, you and you, thanks so much, but not this time. You and you, you’re in.” He was pointing at Shawn and me.

“Really?” I cry, looking excitedly at Shawn. “We’re in?”

“The pay is four hundred and fifty bucks for the week,” Mr. Castle’s assistant tells us. “There’ll be four days of rehearsals and three days’ shooting. You’ll be doing some singing as well as dancing.”

“Four hundred and fifty dollars?” I reply, my eyes wide. “God! I was
only making one-eighty in Vegas!” I am so excited, I can’t wait to call Mom and Dad.

“I’m going to be dancing on an Andy Griffith special for Nick Castle, Mom,” I tell her later that night from somewhere above cloud nine. “Nick’s a god to the dancers in Hollywood. If he likes me, then I’m made.”

“Oh, Andy Griffith is my favorite, doll,” she says, in her gruff voice. “Goldie, this is going to be so much fun. Rut! Rut! Come and speak to Goldie. She has some good news.”

“Way to go, Kink!” Dad says. “We’ll be watching. Wear something red so we can see you among the spear throwers.” It gives me a thrill to imagine him watching me with his TV tray and his socks half off.

I arrive on set the first day, and Tennessee Ernie Ford, the statuesque country-and-western singer who shares the show with Andy Griffith, stares down at my old dancing shoes, which have holes in them. My eyes follow his.

“So, what’s with the shoes?” he asks. “You going for extra ventilation?”

“These are my lucky shoes.” I giggle.

“Hmm.” He smiles and walks away.

Later that day, he stops the rehearsal in front of the whole cast to make an announcement. “Everyone chipped in,” he tells me with a grin, presenting me with a brand-new pair of shoes.

I am so overwhelmed I almost cry. Happily, I pull them on, and they feel great as we do some new routines. A short while later, Nick Castle pulls me to one side. “You’ve got it, Goldie girl!” he tells me. “From now on, you’re going to be in all of my shows.” As he walks away, I stare down at my new shoes. Wait a minute, I think. Maybe
these
are my lucky shoes!

That night, I glue glitter on them so that it spells out
THANK
on one shoe and
YOU
on the other.

I
t is the first day of shooting, and now I know why I’m being paid so much. Nick is a wonderful choreographer, but we sweat and pant our way through the grueling routines we have to learn in just a few days. The constant repetition to get the shot just right is exhausting.

Twelve of the older girls are up front, singing and doing their thing, and Shawn and I are in the background, high-kicking and trying to synchronize our movements and singing all at once. It isn’t easy.

“Okay, everyone,” Nick yells, clapping his hands together, “take a break, and then we’ll go again. Five minutes, everyone.”

Leaning up against the back wall, swigging thirstily from a bottle of water, I spot a handsome young man walking straight toward me with a big smile on his face. “Uh-huh,” I say to Shawn, with a nudge, “here we go.”

“Let’s hear his line, at least,” she says.

“Excuse me,” he begins, extending a hand, “my name is Art Simon. I work for the William Morris Agency, and I’m servicing the show.”

I look at him like he has six heads. William Morris? I don’t think so.

“Tell me, are you represented?”

“Not really,” I say, thinking guiltily of dear George, who hasn’t called me in weeks.

“Well, can you come to my office next Wednesday so we can talk?” he asks, handing me his card. “Say, at eleven o’clock?”

“Uh-huh,” I reply, coolly.

“Okay, everyone! Places!”

I can hardly believe my five-minute break is over. I take the man’s card and stuff it down the front of my leotard without another thought.

The following Wednesday morning, the telephone rings in my apartment just as I am halfway through a piece of Sara Lee vanilla cake, the kind my dad loves.

“Miss Hawn? This is Art Simon’s secretary at the William Morris Agency. We got your number from CBS. Mr. Simon’s waiting for you here, and we just wondered if you were coming for your eleven o’clock appointment?”

“Oh my God!” I cry, spitting crumbs from my mouth. “He really is an agent for William Morris? Okay, I’ll be right there.”

Scampering around the apartment in a blind panic, I grab an orange jersey dress with a bold psychedelic design, tousle my hair and smear some lipstick across my lips. Slipping on some sandals, I rush out the door and jump into my trusty Chevy, which is now really falling apart on
me. The passenger’s-side door won’t latch, and each time I make a right-hand turn it flies open and exposes me and any passenger to the street. Driving with one hand, I have to lean across the front seat and pull it closed. Left-hand turns are no problem—but, then, they never have been.

Looking like something out of
The Beverly Hillbillies,
I find the agency on El Camino Drive, in a smart area I don’t usually frequent. Parking my car illegally, I run into the building and ask a receptionist where to go. Rushing upstairs, I say to anyone I see, “Art Simon? Where’s Art Simon’s office?” Several people point or give me directions, and I barrel through his door.

“I’m so sorry I’m late,” I say, breathlessly.

Art is sitting behind a long desk, flanked by six other men, all dressed in identical suits and ties. They all stare back at me.

“Hello, Goldie,” Art says. “Good of you to join us.”

“Hi,” I say, catching my breath and sitting down. “I really didn’t think you were serious.”

“It’s okay,” Art interrupts. “You’re here now. Well, guys?”

I sit on my hands, fidgeting as seven pairs of eyes give me the once-over.

One of the agents looks down at his notes and speaks to Art as if I am not even in the room. “Well, what can she do?”

“She can sing.”

“Actually, I’m really a dancer,” I chip in, but no one looks my way.

“She can dance.”

“Anything else?”

“She has something about her, don’t you think?”

They all look up at me with blank faces.

I stare back at them. Gee, what should I do? Maybe I should break into a soft-shoe shuffle.

A man on the left asks Art, “What were you thinking of sending her up for?”

“
Good Morning World.
That new CBS comedy sitcom by Persky and Danoff.”

“But she’s too young for that character.”

“I know, but I thought Persky and Danoff should meet her.”

Good Morning World
? Persky and Danoff? What in the world are they talking about? I wish someone would cue me in.

“Okay,” one of the men says, standing up. The others follow him toward the door. “Do what you want. Go ahead. Sign her.” They leave the room without as much as a good-bye.

Art looks across at me and gives me a conspiratorial wink.

I
read the few pages of the script Art gave me and then go to my meeting with Bill Persky and Sam Danoff, who, it turns out, are the biggest TV producers in town. The story revolves around two radio disc jockeys who are friends and neighbors, one married and one single. I’m supposed to play the wife. I arrive lugging a huge shopping bag that clanks as I heave it into the room.

“Come on in, Miss Hawn,” one of them says. “Well, now, what have you got in there?”

“Props,” I say, putting down the bag and pulling out a Corning Ware teapot, cup, saucer and plate, as well as spoons, knives, forks and napkins. “The script says I have to make some tea.”

They start to laugh.

“Did I do something wrong?” I giggle.

“No, it’s just that we’re not used to actresses bringing in their own props.”

“Oh, really?” What an ass, I think to myself. Could I be any dumber?

“Anyway, dear, that’s very clever of you to think of it, so why don’t you go ahead and get it all out and then you can read your lines?”