“Who is this crazy person?” I demanded. After my mom dealt with Neal and his friends, she came back in and said, “Yes, I did get married when I was quite young in Denver, and then we divorced and I came to California. That’s when I met your dad and married him.” Since Lu Anne’s marriage to my dad had only lasted a year, I did not know my biological father either—so now there were two previous husbands I was in the dark about. It was clear my mom was uneasy about the visit and didn’t want to tell me any more than she had to about Neal, so I didn’t ask her any more questions. I was used to her keeping parts of her life off-limits to me, and I didn’t want to make her uncomfortable by prying into those areas. Plus I was always much more interested in her stories from the time we called “the Jack Benny years,” when her father worked for United Artists Studios and was the bodyguard for Mr. Benny, in the 1930s.
It turned out—I later learned—that the bus had been filled with Pranksters and members of the Grateful Dead, who’d been hoping to come in our house to crash for a while. If I had known that, being a big fan of the Dead, I would probably have invited them in with open arms.
It’s funny that I could grow up and be so totally unaware of such an attachment as my mom’s love for Neal. I was aware, even despite the long distance, of her half brothers and other people in her life—people who’d been significant in Denver, for instance. But I have no recollection of Neal ever being around until that day when he showed up in the painted bus. My mother did not include him, or invite him, into any part of our life. She still kept that relationship totally separate. To think that there was someone my mother had been so close to—and this life she had been so much wrapped up in—and yet I was totally unaware of it, seems strange. My mother usually was open, but she kept that part, the Beat part, totally compartmentalized, so that it was not part of my world at all. I think she just put that part of her life away. If Neal would reach out, she’d be there for him, but she didn’t want that to be her life, her reality, now.
Later on, I actually wondered why she didn’t bring him over and say, “Oh, hey, this is Neal,” instead of keeping him so sequestered from me. It also amazed me that he actually abided by that. He seemed like the type who would selfishly drop in when he felt like it, but for most of those years he’d always go through Al Hinkle when he needed to see her, and Al would come and pick her up. When he did finally drop in with the bus and the Grateful Dead, in 1966 or 1967, it was close to the end of his life. Maybe he didn’t care anymore.
It took my mother years to finally open up to me, and to start telling me her Beat stories. She always made it seem as if the Beats were not a big deal. It was not until Heart Beat was being filmed in 1978, and people started showing up wanting to interview her, that I began to get a little hint that Lu Anne had led some sort of life different than the one I’d known. But the only thing I heard at that point was that a friend of my mother’s had been a writer and had written a book—that it was about some people in New York that people were now interested in. My mother made it seem like the main interest in the movie was that these famous actors like Sissy Spacek and Nick Nolte were in it. She still didn’t talk to me about the Beat Generation or beatniks. I remember that I did sense some rivalry she had with Carolyn Cassady, because when Al would drive her to the set in San Francisco, she always made sure she looked her best. Sometimes she would even borrow my clothes to look more modern, to look younger, knowing people would be comparing her to Carolyn. I knew that my mother’s first husband was one of the people they were making the movie about, but that was all.