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MY
KISSING COUSIN
It
didn't matter that he had a beaky nose and protruding ears. He was tall
and
thin, with a charming, slightly crooked smile. Nor did it matter that
his grandfather
Louis and my grandmother Sadie were brother and sister. Decades
earlier, Louis
and his brothers had treated Sadie's husband so poorly in their laundry
business that our families hadn't talked to each other since. So I
thought of
Andy less as a cousin and more as the sexiest boy
in the sixth grade, the one all the girls imagined kissing
whenever we practiced with each other at pajama parties.
A
dozen sixth graders played Post Office one Saturday afternoon at a
birthday
party, and Andy chose me as his partner. Mesmerized, I followed him out
of the
living room into the hall where he looked at me calmly before kissing
me so
softly that for the next week, I couldn't stop bringing the back of my
hand to
my lips pretending that I was kissing Andy, and he was kissing me back.
His
kiss confirmed that he "liked" me, just as, until then, he had
"liked" Phylis, also Sadie's granddaughter. (When they were only six,
Andy had walked her home from school and kissed her on her front
steps.) But to
say Andy and I became boyfriend and girlfriend would be taking it too
far. There were no
special looks between us or
holding each others' hands when we hung out with our friends. And when
it came
time for the sixth grade prom, Andy and two other boys tossed a coin to
see who
would take me. Andy lost and didn't seem all that upset.
That
summer, at the beach, he reportedly placed a long stick on the sand,
put two
little stones near one end and told his buddies it described me: "A
beanpole and a carpenter's dream, flat as a board." Hearing what he
called
me behind my back cut like a sharp knife against tender skin.
The
pain of his rejection was short-lived, however. As soon as we got to
junior
high, I fell in love with another lanky, sexy Jewish boy with big ears
and a
prominent nose. He became my steady in high school while Andy, his nose
bobbed,
dated a girl with a great figure and a wry sense of humor. I studied
hard and
participated in extracurricular activities to ensure my acceptance into
the Ivy
League while Andy, bored by his classes, starred in school dramas,
played in a
rock band, and perfected a cocky, unapproachable demeanor. We had so little to do
with each other he
didn't even scribble the obligatory note across his picture in my
senior year
book.
Later,
I heard he dropped out of college to study acting in New York, landed a
part in
a popular scooter commercial and moved to Los Angeles to work in TV. He
got his
big break when the director Martin Ritt cast him as a lead in a movie.
I
was a modern dancer in New York when the film was released. That
summer, I
visited Phylis, who was living at Venice beach.
She invited Andy over one evening. Lean, tan,
self-possessed, his smile
still sweetly askew, he seemed happy to see us and told us that his
girlfriend,
an actress, was out of town shooting a movie.
After
Phylis went to bed, Andy asked if I wanted to take a walk on the beach.
I
followed him out of the house into the dark night as unquestioningly as
I had
out of a living room twenty years earlier.
As we walked on the soft, cool sand, he asked, "Why do you
pretend
you don't know what you know?"
That
he had been observing me startled me. "I don't know what you mean."
"Yes,
you do."
Was
he saying I was privy to some kind of gossip or that I was more
intuitive or
wiser than I admitted? I decided on the latter and took his question as
both a
compliment and a piece of advice.
He
asked me to open my mouth. I wondered why, but did it anyway. He ran a
finger
lightly along my gums. When we sat down, I realized he'd applied
cocaine to
them. I'd tried
cocaine only once before
and hated the lump it caused in my throat.
I noticed no lump this time, only dots of stars in the
black sky and the
insistent rhythm of the Pacific as it repeatedly reached the shore. Then he leaned over and
kissed me as lightly
as he had when we played Post Office. "Where are you sleeping
tonight?" he asked.
I
told him as though it were obvious, at Phylis's.
He nodded and not much later, walked me back
to the house and left.
I
remained in a dreamy, stimulated state for hours. Only the next morning
did it
occur to me that he may have been asking if he could sleep with me. I
was
flattered but dumfounded. It seemed impossible that he'd be attracted
to the
sixth grade beanpole or the high school cheerleader who'd been as
gung-ho as
he'd been aloof. Despite
my toned
dancer's body hidden beneath my poncho and bell bottoms jeans, I was no
match
for an actress. What about her anyway? Wouldn't she mind? Then I remembered
something he'd told me as
we walked on the beach: According to Martin Ritt, a movie star's most
important
criterion was "fuckability."
The director told Andy he had it. Perhaps Andy felt
compelled to try out
his sex appeal the way a sports car owner yearns to speed.
A
couple of years later, I moved to Los Angeles with the man I would
marry. A few
of us from New Bedford got together in someone's house in Santa Monica.
Andy
was there, now single, still acting, still flirtatious. At one point,
he pulled
me onto his lap, making me giggle and my fiancé uncomfortable.
A
month or so later, he invited Phylis, my fiancé and me to his house for
tea in
his backyard. In a Polaroid taken that day, wearing a crimson t-shirt,
his
brown eyes big under a mop of curly dark hair, he has one arm around
Phylis and
another around me. His smile is affectionate while ours are radiant, as
though
we're both aglow from being in his presence.
I
thought nothing of the color of his t-shirt, except that red looked
good
against his olive skin, until he mentioned that he had joined a
spiritual
movement that required its followers to wear red.
I found out years later that he'd moved to
Oregon to live in that spiritual community, married a woman who
channeled the
dead, and together they ran a wild animal sanctuary. The old gang
thought he'd
gone weird. But having been intrigued by Muktananda and Meher Baba, I
understood his quest for something more lasting than an acting career
that had reached
its plateau.
Decades
went by with no news of him. Then
a few
years ago, I got curious and looked him up online. His IMBD bio said
he'd never
lost his passion for acting, that he and his new wife had traveled the
world
and lived with Aborigines in Australia's outback. They were now living
in the
same L.A. neighborhood where he'd once served us tea in his backyard. I lived only ten minutes
away. I had the
impulse to see him again. Maybe
we could
continue our conversation from thirty years earlier about "knowing,"
comparing what we'd both learned since then. But before I mustered the
courage
to contact him, an email arrived from a friend who'd seen Andy's
obituary in
the New Bedford newspaper.
The
news hit hard. I got his wife's email from her website and wrote her
that I was
Andy's cousin, that we had grown up together, and that I wanted to
attend his
memorial service. She wrote
back
saying the service had already occurred, that she was sorry we weren't
able to get together while
"Andrew" was alive. I wrote asking if we could meet. She
wrote
she would like that, but she was going out of town and would get in
touch when
she got back. I dug up an old picture of Andy at eleven, hanging out in
front
of my house, smiling broadly, his arm around one of his pals. I
couldn't wait
to show it to her and to hear about Andy's adult life. But by the time
she
returned home, I was traveling. Our schedules kept eluding each other's
until
the emails stopped. After a year, I wasn't sure if meeting was
appropriate.
Maybe she'd moved on or was trying to, and bringing up old memories of
Andy
would stir up her grief.
Then
Phylis called. "I
have an Andy
story for you," she said. She'd
been at a family event in Massachusetts and ran into Andy's first
cousin, Eli
who told her "the strangest thing happened." After not seeing each
other
for a decade, Andy had called Eli out of the blue to ask if he could
visit him.
He had "something important" to tell him. Once Andy arrived, Eli
asked him what was so important. "I don't know how you're going to take
this," Andy had said. "But your father came to me in my bedroom one
night with an urgent message: 'Tell Eli he has to start walking in
order to
keep his heart healthy.' He didn't think you would be open to hearing
from his
spirit, so he appeared to me knowing I would be."
"I
believe it." I said. For weeks after my mother died, I'd felt her
presence
in my house, even suggesting once that I put on lipstick. "So what did Eli do?"
"He
started walking."
We
laughed at the punch line.
"Did
Eli tell you why Andy moved back to LA.?" I asked.
"He
said Andy wanted to be near his doctors. He was doing some kind of
alternative
treatment for lung cancer."
I
winced at what he must have suffered. And again, I wished we had
communicated
before he died. I
wanted to understand his
journey from a small, New England city to the outback, from being the
coolest
boy in our childhood gang to receiving messages from the dead; how his
movie
star sex appeal conflicted with or complimented his spirituality, how
he
changed as he aged, faced illness and death, and how he didn't.
A
few weeks later, my daughter and I were standing in a ladies room line
at a
Broadway Theater. Two women ran past us.
My daughter said, "Sorry, but this is the end of the
line."
They apologized and got behind us. One of them was the actress who'd
been
Andy's girlfriend that summer I had visited Phylis in Venice. The film
she'd
been shooting then had launched her career. She'd become a major star.
I
turned to her, my hand on my heart as a gesture of apology for invading
her
privacy. "I just have to tell you that Andy Rubin was my cousin."
Her
eyes widened. "Really? How?"
"His grandfather and my
grandmother were brother and sister."
"You
grew up in New Bedford?"
"Yes,
in the same neighborhood as Andy. We were children together. I knew him
before
he fixed his nose."
Her
friend laughed. "What a great metric."
"Everybody
loved him," I said.
"He
was wonderful," she said, wistfully
"I
saw him in 1978 when he was going out with you."
"What's
your name?"
"It
doesn't matter," I said.
She
tilted her head and asked again. I told her and then introduced her to
my
daughter as though I had bumped into a friend from my youth. "I read your Wikipedia
page," I confessed.
"I noticed the first line of your "Personal Life" section states
you were in a relationship with him for three years."
"He
was a great love of mine. We bought a dog together. After we broke up,
we
shared custody of it for fifteen years."
"He
loved animals. I heard he ran a wild animal sanctuary at one point."
She
rolled her eyes. "That was when he was married to the channeler." Was
she scoffing at his involvement in the occult, or did she feel
competitive with
his first wife? "He
asked for me when
he was dying," she continued. "His new wife didn't like it, but I
came anyway. He was in a coma, trying to leave his body." Her face,
still
beautiful in her 60's, grew soft and sad.
A
stall emptied, and it was my turn to use it. I said it was great to
meet her
and walked away, grateful for our encounter, feeling as though Andy,
responding
to my wish for contact, had somehow pulled strings for me to meet his
old
girlfriend so I could see how vibrant their love had been.
As
soon as I got back to L.A., I bought a copy of the actress's memoir, a
collection of lyrical insights and memories. Towards the end of it, she
recalls
being young and falling "hard in love with an actor."
They met at a screen test. At one point, the
director told them to kiss. The moment was so electric the director had
to
holler "Cut" three times before they pulled away from each other. She
and the actor became inseparable after that and were soon living
together in a
little cabin overlooking the Pacific. Then one day the actor's best
friend and
girlfriend came to visit. Returning to the house from working in the
garden,
she found the actor and his friend's girlfriend sharing a passionate
kiss.
"Stunning" was how she described her sense of betrayal. Who could the
actor have been but Andy, unfailingly seductive whether he was playing
a
southern horse breeder's son, a city cop who faked a Spanish accent to
"get the girls," or himself, the once gangly, charming kid from
Massachusetts?
Still
wanting to know who he became as he aged, I found a documentary online
about
the connection between emotions and health in which he appeared a
couple of
years before he died. His
lined face was
still handsome, his curly hair thick and dark, his manner confident. He'd been told ten months
earlier that he had
at most a year or two to live, but he believed he was healing. With his
pretty
wife sitting close to him, he said "Love is everything...truly." His eyes watered, and his mouth
twisted the way my mother's used to whenever she'd cry. He was still
the boy
who had kissed me at a birthday party when we were twelve and the man
who had
kissed me on the beach at thirty-two. And he would always be a member
of my
family. If he has further messages for me, I'll be listening. Lisbeth Davidow's writing has appeared in over a dozen literary journals. She won second place in Event's Nonfiction Contest and was a finalist inAlligator Juniper's National Creative Non-fiction Contest and The Southeast Review's Narrative Nonfiction Contest. She's also a Feldenkrais Practitioner i.e., she teaches people how to move more easily and with less pain. She lives with her husband in Malibu, California. Lisbeth.davidow@gmail.com
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