By the time they returned from Paris, my father’s reputation outside the art world was cemented. Henry and Suzi knew how to draw the crowds to them. The Motel became the place to congregate, create, and crash for artists, rock stars, and beautiful people of all stripes, despite its less than cool location in a modest Pasadena neighborhood.
The stories were legendary and well-documented, mostly by my mother’s black-and-white photos that became pieces of art themselves, shown at galleries in LA, New York, and Paris in the mideighties as a series known as Motel #1, Motel #2 and Motel #3. She published a successful coffee table book by the same name, a collection of photos I knew as well as my own family photo album. When I was younger, I would page through the book over and over again, memorizing the famous faces. My father with a young Jamie Lee Curtis and Patti Hansen. The entirety of Aerosmith hanging out with Dyan Cannon and John Travolta. Ed Moses and Joan Didion playing pool with then rock star, now recluse Peter Beckman of the Ravens. Dennis Hopper, Carrie Fisher, and Ed Ruscha lighting a bonfire in the parking lot. And my favorite, a self-portrait of my parents kissing in my father’s studio with Paul McCartney strumming on a guitar in the background. The photos looked like location stills of the coolest movie ever shot, except it was real.
Her natural poise and grace combined with everything she had learned in her time in the limelight became the building blocks for taking my father from visionary to successful working artist. Henry Blakely became almost a household name, thanks to my mother’s acumen and his talent for thinking big. They didn’t quite cash in like Christo, with T-shirts and coffee mugs, but all the more reason why my father’s commissions were so highly coveted.
After September 2001, my mother had either thrown off the shackles of her previous existence—or thrown in the towel. There were no more runways or openings, deals to be made, photos to pose for in a vintage Halston number. Gone were the blinding flashes going off as she made her way into an AIDS benefit or a late-night dinner in Beverly surrounded by famous friends. Occasionally, she popped up in a “Where Are They Now” kind of article where my father’s death was the main story or some fashion blogger posted a tribute to her as a style icon, but she never gave interviews anymore. For her, there was the quiet of Ojai and the area’s famous lavender fields and the occasional white-wine-in-a-plastic-cup reception for a local painter she mentored. She retained a small, loyal circle of friends from the old days, but she lived her new life on a different scale.
My mother was only forty-eight when my father was killed, but as she liked to say, “I had a big life, then I chose to have a small life.”
The full retreat from public life after his death may have been surprising to those who only saw my mother in her shining public persona, but not to me or to her close friends, who knew her complete devotion to and dependence on my father. All it took was one random photo on Page Six to send my mother to Ojai for good. About four months after my father’s death, she was walking out of a Los Angeles restaurant and Jack Nicholson happened to be exiting the same place at the same time. A paparazzo’s camera caught the two of them in the same frame. The Post’s headline read “A Merry 9/11 Widow?”
And, with that, she was done. No more limelight and no more public appearances, no more possible Page Six headlines. Though she later said to me, as she rolled her eyes, “As if I would ever date an actor.”
The Ojai house was a bright, airy Spanish-style retreat that my parents had purchased before the movie stars moved down from Santa Barbara and invaded the town. My father rarely worked on a project in Ojai, save sketching and grinding out details in his notebook, but my mother’s darkroom had always been there, out in a converted barn that was half art studio and half yoga studio. They loved spending long weekends nestled away at the end of the long driveway, shaded by eucalyptus, reading, walking, and talking by the fire until midnight. My mother instituted a “No Guests” rule in Ojai; after so many years of running a motel, she wanted nothing to do with overnight guests. You could come for dinner or drinks, but you had to stay in town.
I hated it as a teenager. It felt like the ends of the earth and the last thing I wanted to do on the weekends was go for a hike or have a glass of iced tea on the front porch. Kill me now, I used to say dramatically every time I was forced to spend more than one night there. But, of course, now I appreciated the serenity. The gravel crunched as I made my way down the driveway and my mother stepped out onto the porch, as if she’d been listening for my car.
Now, in her late fifties, my mother looked great, as always. Trim, fit, and pulled together, a testament to aging gracefully through diet, exercise, good genes, and very expensive clothes. Her style was more indicative of her San Francisco roots than her Ojai address. She hadn’t given up her waistbands and tailored shirts in favor of gauze skirts and flip-flops. She favored clean, simple American designers in timeless styles. She could still wear her hair long, and thanks to expensive highlights, it was still blond. Her skin showed enough lines to look natural, but not so many as to look old. I’d inherited most of her physical attributes—the height, hair, and coloring—but only a fraction of her confidence. As I took in the visual of my mother, coffee cup in hand, dressed in denim and cashmere, casually waving from the front porch, it easily could have been a print ad, but instead, it was her life. Even in the darkest days after my father’s death, she got up, got dressed, and put on eye cream and lip color. When I was little, I thought she was the most glamorous mother in the world. I still thought the same thing.
“Joanie.” And that was all it took. I felt the tears the minute my mother put her arms around me.
The day had given way to evening and the cups of tea to a few glasses of wine, but I’d gotten it all out. The second family, Casey’s calculated renovation of the Motel, and my signing it over to him, the sick feeling that ran through my whole body at the thought of having the awful story out there for the public to judge. From the ups and downs of my job to Casey’s annoying habit of rinsing out the milk cartons and leaving them on top of the counter instead of simply putting them in the recycling bin, I didn’t stop until my voice started to get hoarse. I even managed to take a swipe at Amy’s overalls: “She’s a grown woman and her clothes have painted flowers on them.” I realized I spent so many years not talking about what really mattered in an effort to make other people more comfortable, that to finally get it out was exhausting and liberating. I ended my monologue with, “I have nothing to say to Casey. Not one thing. Isn’t that odd?”
“No, not at all.” At first, my mother listened, poured, and offered only sympathy. Now, she was ready to judge. “The man you thought you married left the building six years ago when the assistant entered the picture. What kind of a man has an entire family hiding in the wings? Who knows what he’s really like now?”
“I don’t even feel that bad about never seeing Casey again. I’m relieved. Like, thank God that chapter of my life is over.”
My mother’s blue eyes welled up. I knew where she was headed. “You had the opportunity to make a good choice. Be grateful you’re in a position to do that.” I knew she was referring to her sudden widowhood, and my eyes teared up, too.
My mother took my hand and we sat in quiet, until my mother started to laugh, slightly at first and then a roar.
“What’s so funny?”
Her eyes lit up and she said, “Henry Blakely dies in a terrorist attack, and then his daughter spends the next ten years married to an asshole that has a whole other family with a whole other woman and somehow walks away with a chunk of the Blakely legacy. And his widow barely leaves the house, hasn’t interacted with a straight man except her lawyer in a decade, and can’t remember the last time she felt alive. Is that what’s happening here?”