Cocktails, Caviar and Diapers Read online

  Cocktails, Caviar

  and Diapers

  A woman’s journey to find herself through

  seven countries, six children and a dog.

  Renée Duke

  Copyright © 2012 Alex Eckelberry et al

  All rights reserved.

  Table of Contents

  Foreword

  Deliverance

  Chapter 1: The Visit

  Chapter 2: Growing Up

  Chapter 3: Company Wife

  Chapter 4: Slavery

  Chapter 5: Courage

  Chapter 6: Conspicuous Consumption

  Chapter 7: The Palace

  Chapter 8: The Lover

  Chapter 9: The Left Bank

  Chapter 10: Coming Back

  Chapter 11: Rain

  Chapter 12: The Trip

  Chapter 13: The Morning After

  Chapter 14: Hollywood

  Epilogue: After the visit

  About the Author

  Mary Queen of Scots

  Pictures

  Foreword

  This novel is a roman à clef– a “novel with a key”– if you know the key, you know the real story. In other words, the characters are largely real in this book, just the names were changed.

  My mother, Renée Duke, wrote this novel as a partial story of an amazing life, as a fine artist, poet, writer and mother of six boys. It was originally titled “No More Rainbows”, but toward the end of her life, she was thinking of changing it. When we started working on it, we also felt that the original name wasn’t right for this book, and came up with the title you see now.

  However, this book is not just about her life (because in that sense, it really isn’t complete and understates it quite a bit). It’s a story of a woman finding and freeing herself during a period when women were starting to break free of societal chains. Importantly, it is her story, from her own viewpoint, with her own inclusion or exclusion of facts. She wrote this novel as she felt it should be written. We do not pass judgment on whether or not she should have said more, or less.

  Renée lived her life completely, finally passing away on New Year’s Day, 2010 at the age of eighty-three. One testament to her full life was the funeral service, the largest the facility had ever seen.

  To do true justice to her life would take a considerable amount of time. When I came into this world, I suppose you could say I hit the jackpot. Ours was a beautiful family, with a handsome jet-setting father, beautiful and intelligent children, all living in palatial grandeur in Paris (literally–we lived in a large apartment in the Palais-Royal, the original home of Cardinal Richelieu and later, Louis XIV’s childhood home). But then there was Renée. More than a beautiful woman, she was a blazingly bright shining light of a being.

  Her boys were everything to her. She forgave every mistake and petty disagreement and continued to love and adore all of us unconditionally. I could tell story upon story of my mother’s lioness-like protection of her children, and some of them are almost too amazing for people to believe.

  But she was not only a fighter for her family, she also a fighter for her friends, for the arts, for the humanities, and for mankind’s betterment.

  It would be trite to say that she always fought for those less fortunate than herself. Yes, she did, but actually, she fought for everyone’s betterment.

  She did not seek material wealth (although she certainly didn’t mind money and didn’t see anything wrong with it). She had had all the trappings of a material existence, living in splendor, and knew well the pleasures of material life. Yet, she was also quite aware of the ennui, dissatisfaction and emptiness that a purely material existence can bring upon a soul.

  She was one of the few people I knew who was truly only interested in helping others, quite an amazing thing. As a result, she was vastly rich in friends. We could all be so fortunate.

  Renée Duke truly lived. She loved rugged tough people. She loved rugged tough geography. She loved crashing waves and hard beautiful lands. She loved people with the spirit of the north. When we were in Denmark, many weekends were spent traipsing around various Viking ruins (she loved Vikings). She also loved the beach, like few other things. She had her birthdays at one of her favorite California beaches, with a bonfire blazing and the children running around. And at six in the morning every Saturday, we would all go surfing with her (she loved to surf).

  I think she would have loved a funeral in the ancient tradition–put her body on a funeral pyre in a boat, and send it off to sea burning, followed by all of us sitting around a roaring log fire, giving toasts. However, given the restrictions of conventional environmental and health regulations, that was not possible. Instead, several of her sons followed her wishes and spread her ashes into the waves of Malibu from surfboards.

  I am the editor of this novel. I received assistance from my dear friend, Liane Schirmer, but ultimately, any mistakes or errors are mine.

  One could say that my mother wrote this book in a “Virginia Woolf” style, with long paragraphs, rapidly-moving imagery, and partially-formed staccato sentences. It’s a stream-of-consciousness, going back to the past and speaking in the present tense, picking up the images, the dialog, the senses–a poetic type of prose. I have made edits for clarity, sometimes splitting a paragraph or section of dialog, gently adjusting some text, or filling in the occasional missing words. However, I have always tried to remain as true to the original manuscript as possible. I knew my mother well, and was very close to her, and tried to “channel” her as best I could. This edition is as true as possible to her style, while still maintaining a readability I hope will keep the reader moving from page to page. Anyone who wants the original manuscript can always get it from me by emailing me. I can be contacted at www.eckelberry.com.

  I have also added in some pictures of her life and two of her poems-Deliverance, placed at the beginning, and Mary Queen of Scots, placed at the end of the book. Also, if you’d like to see her art, there are some examples at www.reneeduke.com.

  I enjoyed working on this book and I hope you enjoy reading it.

  Alex Eckelberry

  Deliverance

  Deliverance

  and when I awoke to my beat when I saw

  my deliverance

  when the future

  became liveable

  in

  holy

  present

  when beatified again

  I arrived

  at myself

  once more

  again was I

  myself

  myself I

  I myself

  and in coming to myself

  everything else

  slipped away

  the world

  slipped away

  all error

  and sin

  slipped

  away

  - Renée Duke, undated.

  Chapter 1: The Visit

  Hollywood, 1977

  Good God, is it possible that I’m standing here at the front door of my Hollywood house, ready to receive my ex–husband and his second wife? How many years have rushed by? Can I really care? Can I even afford to care whether either one of them lives or dies?

  “Anne, please come in.”

  I think a quick peck on her left cheek should do the job. Hmm… her perfume’s not her at all.

  “Anne, how delicious you smell.”

  And so I continue the charade. Up the path they come to my small house perched on the steep road in the Hollywood Hills. The children have cut the lawn and the hedges and inside I have sprayed instant lemon oil on all available wood, tucked things into drawers, arranged the furniture with mathematical precision. He likes it that way. Why should I care? />
  I have been waiting since this morning.

  Waiting.

  The children were rushed through their breakfast and I nervously ate the leftover Cream of Wheat in the pot. I have paced the kitchen up and down, my constant movement back and forth a symbol of my slavery. Although I’m now technically free, I still can’t escape. Is my life to be spent pacing up and down one room or another?

  “We brought you a present–actually, he picked it for you,” says Anne. There are nervous lines by her eyes, her red hair pulled back tightly.

  She looks my age, not half my age. How did I stay looking so young with this man? It must have been arrested development or life blinkers or throwing myself into loving children and dogs and cats and people. Did I make loving people an escape?

  Watch it, no more thoughts, there’s too much going on. How fascinating, these undercurrents, life as it’s spoken, life as it’s thought and felt, two different concepts.

  The dogs are barking madly and rushing the door, as usual, and I’m managing it like an off-key ballet.

  Have a good bite, beasts, wish I could join you. We all feel that way.

  “How beautiful your jacket is, Evans, uhmmm, a lovely feel.”

  Really, the man always gets the right thing, this jacket is cashmere. If I kiss his cheek, I can see if he wears the same cologne. Yes. How can I know him so well, yet not at all?

  How white his hair seems. Those planes of his face, the wideness of his nose where it’s broken, so familiar. He really is handsome. I know him so well, so intimately, down to the cut of his underpants and I have absolutely no contact, no rights, no part of him. Yet he does of me. Either I’m strange or the woman’s lot is strange or perhaps the falseness of this relationship shows now, when there are the false bonds of divorce agreements.

  “I bought it to last for years.”

  “Why?”

  We both looked startled. Does he think I want his early demise or does he see so suddenly our different points of view?

  “Do come in, I have some coffee. Look at my view, isn’t it incredible?”

  Gushy wushy. I’m running away with the hostess bit between my teeth. If I stand up too straight, I feel like I may go through the roof. This is all so contrived, so artificial.

  They think and observe me as I observe them. I am creating my life for them to see.

  The music they are too dense to hear is currently popular–“Switched on Bach”, Bach played on a synthesizer. Nothing is really wrong with Bach on a synthesizer, but the real Bach lives and breathes, is full of night rustlings and reaching spirit and this will certainly frighten them.

  There is a trap here for me too: I must not believe the creation I am putting on for them, and fall back into the love I feel for this man but must never bring to life again.

  I can love her too. I see what she is doing to save herself from his blindness to the spirit.

  She would also tear the slender fabric of the family to save herself and her marriage and her position. She will try again to take and reject my children to give him a reason to keep her on, his chief domestic.

  For a minute we pause and look over the city poured out in front of us, thin yellow smog filtering the farthest buildings; downtown Los Angeles, looking like the city of Oz to the left; glimmerings of the sea to the right; the darker mass of Baldwin Hills nearly blocking the pale grey elephant of Palos Verdes.

  The palm tree rustles its skirts in my garden.

  “Look at my orange tree, Evans. They’re real ones, full of pits and juicy. Isn’t it amazing to be able to pick oranges in your own garden? And look at my poor fig tree, it needs water.”

  He doesn’t seem to be listening. I had hoped to evoke a memory of our days in colder climates, the apartment in Paris, its glamour renewed, its misery forgotten. I wanted him to have a picture of dancing children around the orange tree. Oh, well, another tack.

  “Do sit down, would you like coffee or tea?”

  They sink down into my most ancient bench. I suppose they are grateful for the thought of hanging onto a coffee cup and the familiar clink of spoons and the ritualistic communication.

  “I’d love coffee. I’m sorry we’re late, Andrée.”

  He lands heavily on my name, making it instantly practical and boring by intonation.

  “We wandered all over, saw the most dreadful people on Hollywood Boulevard.”

  So he noticed the neighborhood, I’d better fix that.

  “Yes, isn’t it delightful. Hollywood always reminds me of a frontier town, so many different people and such an unbelievable setting, all facade.” The gentle charm of Hollywood, fags on Selma and pimps on Sunset, hookers on every corner, gum ground into the bronze names of stars on Hollywood Boulevard and raw talent, my friends here have so much talent.

  He takes this picture of Hollywood and files it, looking ambiguous.

  Time then for the coffee. It’s done on the kitchen stove with a filter and the aroma fills the air, overpowering the overly sweet smell of Anne’s perfume. The green plants curl around the kitchen window and the mountains beyond act as a sea anchor. I feel at home here in the kitchen and quiet inside.

  Yet, once more I must gird my loins for battle and I come into the living room with the coffee. What have they been talking about? The same things I would say? Or do they have long silences? What is Anne’s relationship to Evans that might be part of my experience with him?

  “Do you want cream or sugar?”, and I pour the coffee into cups. The cups with saucers are a decision over mugs. Would he think that mugs were a symbol of the decadent West, that I had lost my refinement? I have only four cups, bought for Will Durant when he came for tea one magic day and they are always referred to in the family as the “Will Durant cups”. Since Evans kept all my furniture in France, I don’t have any china anyway but I don’t want to mention this.

  Personally, I prefer mugs, as I see them as a symbol of independence. Mother and her friends would never have them. In Denmark when I was alone with the children we used to buy big thick mugs in bisque clay with light glazes. Each one of us had a mug that seemed ours and we would put a great deal of thought into what we felt was a good mug, and looked like us. Sean had a mug that gave a homey, bowlegged warm feeling and mine had the vague outlines of cozy Danish houses. Duncan liked English Spode with horses and hounds, Randall preferred the spare and architectural and Matthew, out of stark necessity, ended up with solid plastic. I have warm thoughts with mugs.

  “What delicious coffee, so much stronger than most Americans make it. They like it so weak.” I conceal my surprise at my mid-western ex-husband’s slip of the tongue. It is true that he talks in a strangely pedantic way. He always used to take on the accent of anyone around him. Is he being Evans or a wealthy French banker?

  The thought is curious enough to change my bland mask. Check the mirror, am I still just old solid ex-wife who has the children? I really should have covered up last month’s red hair. Not serious enough.

  The present. I’ve forgotten it, although it takes up most of the table. Opening it takes up time too,

  What’s this? A lingerie case? How improbable.

  I’m a bit lost.

  “For my bikinis?”

  “Well, no, well, but you could,” says Anne. Sex rears its head and I must be sexless. “But it’s for holding your things when you read in bed, you slip it under the mattress.”

  “How very pretty, thank you so much, it’s charming. What a good idea. I said bikinis because my daughters-in-law bought me a whole bunch when I was terribly broke, to cheer me up.”

  Anne looks stunned. I feel like saying “Oh shit, come off it”.

  I smile agedly, as though at the end of my weary path in life, and here are the daughters-in-law. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I’m sure Anne doesn’t even dream of the lusty communication and wild laughter that I have with the only female members of the family.

  “Would you like a Gauloise[1], Andrée?” Ah, he has slipp
ed behind my mask; he knows it but doesn’t know why.

  “Love it, the smell of France.”

  I need something to hang on to and I have seen also that someone offering me a cigarette is, in a way, offering a communication by reaching towards me.

  French cigarettes, the memory of days and days of talking. When he first left me I would sit in cafés by the hour talking with my fellow art students, of men and women and Kandinsky, the lasting qualities of different types of paint and the point of view we knew a hopeful world was waiting for us to express. Whole memories in smoke, of yellow awnings and “TABAC” signs and rain on the glass walls. He and I have some of this past in common.

  Watch it, the dike is weakening.

  We still talk on.

  “Andrée, I’d like to see the childrens’ school. Let’s go see it now.”

  The table seems to be running away from my hands. Instead of negotiating with him on omitted alimony payments, he will try and find something wrong with their school and get an excuse to take them away. No, he can’t take them, we are in California.