Matthew Specktor Remembers His Mother As A Young Woman Struggling To Find Her Place In Los Angeles

My mother is waking up. In her chamber connected Chelsea Avenue, successful a carved-up duplex successful Santa Monica, she stands and paces done nan morning’s cloud-bound whiteness, nan fog that has drifted successful disconnected nan Pacific. All complete Los Angeles, successful Santa Monica and West Hollywood, Toluca Lake and Valley Village, location are women for illustration her: beautiful women pinch headshots successful their closets and refrigerators clustered pinch Tab soda and cottage cheese, women pinch shape names they dream will motorboat them to stardom.

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My mother has had specified a name, also, arsenic she was erstwhile Katherine McKenna (modeling), past concisely Katherine Froelich (marriage), earlier reverting to her commencement name, McGaffey. But astatine twenty-seven, she has fixed up those dreams. Her headshots are up successful an attic somewhere, glossy black-and-whites successful which she appears almost doll-like, though successful existent life her grin is lukewarm and convivial, her eyes a piercing, seawater green. No man has ever accused her of not being beautiful enough, not moreover nan hubby who’d near her, alas, for different reasons.

In nan kitchen, earlier nan rumble of rush-hour postulation begins, she sits astatine a constrictive array and reads, bending complete a Signet Classic. If she could, she would publication each day, or—she cannot rather admit it to herself—write. She would write. She cannot admit it, because though she admires nan boldness of her favourite writers—Jean Rhys and John Dos Passos, James Joyce and Elizabeth Bowen—she remains privately timid, and does not yet afloat person her ain mind. Still, she bends complete her paperback, smiling and shaking her head, picking up a pencil present and location to underline; her imaginative life chartless to nan group astir her, nan ones astatine work, but wrong it’s lively, burbling, and clear.

She sounds until she tin consciousness nan ray changing—she looks up to spot nan fog is starting to pain off—then stubs retired her cigaret and races to get dressed. It is hardly much than a studio, this place, pinch its cramped and shady sitting room, its crooked kitchenette. She grew up successful splendor, arsenic for a while her parents had owned a location connected McCadden Place that had antecedently belonged to Judy Garland, but now she and her mother hardly speak. Her older sister, Marge, is simply a caput astatine Hughes Aircraft successful Fullerton, her older brother, Don, a municipal worker successful Pomona, and she remains successful exile from nan costly world into which she was born, a world that had dissolved itself moreover earlier her begetter died, arsenic nan family had mislaid each its money.

She is alone, divorced, employed wrong nan mobility image industry, and she knows that nan occupation she has, secretary, isn’t going to lead anyplace but that she doesn’t peculiarly want it to. She likes movies fine, but she isn’t obsessed aliases enthralled by them. Sometimes she wonders, arsenic she picks up nan telephone and catches nan sound of a acquainted sound (“Hold connected 1 moment, Mr. Brynner, I’ll link you”) whether they sound arsenic unusual to themselves, these group who buzz successful her receptor each day. It’s not that they aren’t friends aliases polite, it’s that moreover erstwhile they flirt, they look mostly to beryllium talking to themselves. Perhaps this is her quarrel pinch nan movies, why she likes them little than literature: because they are for illustration one-way glass, wherever fabrication is simply a welcoming room, 1 that bursts into life nan infinitesimal you measurement wrong it.

She dresses quickly. Her oblong, Scots-Irish look whitethorn beryllium excessively idiosyncratic for nan surface anyway, nan hollow cheekbones and crisp eyes, nan straw-blond hairsbreadth worn successful a low-slung and somewhat disheveled beehive. Over nan people of her life, she will presume a succession of roles—wife, mother, activist, administrator—some of them person to her original dream than others, but nary of them will suit her perfectly. She will transportation pinch her a definite ambivalence, trying things connected and abandoning them, moving connected to immoderate is next.

Decades from now, her closet will clasp a leotard and respective pairs of shredded ballet shoes; a babe expansive soft will beryllium successful a area of her surviving room, its keys dusty; nan scraps of her life arsenic a serial spouse and parent, some of which whitethorn beryllium much challenging to her than a layperson’s mastery of creation and music, will litter her location and yet it will beryllium books, walls of them, that dominate, not 1 of them base her ain name.

Oh, well. There is plentifulness of clip near to make her mistakes, plentifulness of opportunity for her yet to miss. Her life is for illustration immoderate different young person’s: still golden, much truthful than astir because she has grown up pinch each nan advantages of whiteness and money, pinch backstage schools, pinch swimming pools and a formation nine rank from which her father, nan precocious Mac McGaffey, had yet resigned successful wide protestation of nan truth they didn’t admit Jews. Her trauma—poor Mac had dropped dormant correct successful beforehand of her erstwhile she was conscionable fourteen—is ordinary. Nothing marks her, thing evident to nan naked eye: her divorcement was cleanable and near her thing but heartbroken erstwhile nan circumstances were clear to her. But nan quickness pinch which she grabs her purse, darts backmost into nan room for her cigarettes, races done nan clutter of her sitting room and past out, down nan beforehand locomotion to her car: each of this suggests not a personification who’s simply acrophobic to beryllium late, but alternatively 1 who is running: who remains, always, successful flight.

*

“Ira Steiner’s office?”

She sits astatine nan extremity of a agelong statement of secretaries now, perched extracurricular a area agency astatine 9255 Sunset Boulevard.

“One moment, Mr. Lancaster. I’ll put you through.”

The women statement up successful almost identical profile—all of them pretty, astir of them pale, heads angled against telephone receivers and hovering complete typewriters, hands clutching cigarettes, java cups, and cans of fare soda—flanking a agelong corridor connected a precocious level of a mid-century modern tower. The carpet is mustard-colored, nan aerial grey pinch smoke.

“Ira Steiner’s office?”

Flight, too, is successful her blood. This metropolis is besides celebrated for its different ascendant industry, aviation. Her uncle Neil had owned a mini institution that designed planes for backstage ownership, a prototype called nan McGaffey AV-8, backmost successful nan thirties. Her great-grandfather, a lumber magnate who was 1 of nan wealthiest men successful New Mexico, had died successful a commercialized clang successful 1929, among nan first successful American history. And yet present she is moving for a medium-sized talent agency, having gone to UCLA alternatively of to secretarial schoolhouse for illustration her mother suggested because, according to Helen McGaffey, nan only early that intends thing must impact her uncovering a husband. Helen, my grandmother, is simply a blueblood, an old-line American whose ancestry tin beryllium traced each nan measurement backmost to John Alden of nan Mayflower. She and my mother are conscionable astatine nan opening of a quarrel that will past respective decades. Here, astatine least, my mother feels insulated. The quiet young men and women of nan Ashley-Famous Talent Agency are a acold outcry from Helen’s prim, Protestant frigidity.

“Ira Steiner’s office?”

The repetition of it mightiness bore her to death. But she is bully pinch monotony, successful truth likes a small numbness, arsenic she does crossword puzzles, sums and figures (her begetter was an accountant), driving, thing that invites hypnosis, an anonymizing process successful which it is imaginable for her to disappear. When she was seventeen, she’d taken a leaf and slashed astatine her wrists. Two ray scars commemorate this event, which she will ne'er explicate to me.

Eighteen months earlier this, her begetter had died. They’d been sitting successful her family’s location connected Esparta Way soon earlier her sixteenth birthday, waiting for nan Sammy Kaye Variety Show to start, erstwhile Mac sewage up to prune his flowerbeds successful nan twilight. He’d stepped retired nan sliding doors, his hulking, shot player’s body—he’d been a prima astatine Cal Tech—looming against nan evening sky. She’d looked backmost astatine nan TV a infinitesimal and past heard it: his enarthrosis slamming against nan doors, difficult capable to ace glass.

“Ira Steiner’s office?”

All these years later, she tin still spot his assemblage crumpling to nan actual terrace, nan shears dangling from his hand; his last words—“It’s for illustration a aftermath successful here”—ring successful her ears, and nan transmission of humor that ran from his head, redder than you tin imagine, often paints her dreams. But it’s not this that makes her consciousness she could vanish from this earth, and nary 1 would miss her.

“One moment, I’ll spot if he’s in.”

Not this, valve damage—her father’s bosom for illustration a ticking bomb, acknowledgment to rheumatic fever he’d had arsenic a boy—but thing else, thing I will ne'er wholly understand.

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From The Golden Hour: A Story of Family and Power in Hollywood by Matthew Specktor. Copyright © 2025 by Matthew Specktor. Excerpted by support of Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.