The Real True Hollywood Story of Jackie Gold

By Dinah Manoff

Following her Oscar nomination, tabloid cover girl Jackie Gold has been offered the role of a lifetime. At the height of her career, her equally famous boyfriend and current People's "Sexiest Man of the Year" has a proposal of his own. It's enough to make a pack of bloodthirsty paparazzi push her over the edge.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Star Alley Press
• Release date: Jul 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9781946802774

Dinah Manoff

Dinah Manoff is an award-winning actor and director. She has written for both stage and television and had several short stories presented at the prestigious writer's forum Spoken Interludes and recorded for KCRW. She has had numerous roles on stage and in film, among them, Grease, Ordinary People, and Child's Play. Dinah has starred in the television series, Soap, Empty Nest, and State of Grace. She received a Tony award for her role in Neil Simon's play, I Ought to Be in Pictures, and won the prestigious L.A. Theater award for her stage adaptation and direction of her father's novel, A Telegram for Heaven. Dinah is the daughter of actress/director Lee Grant and the late writer Arnold Manoff; she resides with her husband and sons in the Seattle area. The Real True Hollywood Story of Jackie Gold is her first novel.

Book preview

This is a joyful ride of a read! Funny, irreverent, original and poignant. You’ll miss Jackie when you’ve finished the book.

—Susie Essman

stand-up comedian, actress, writer, television producer

A brilliant rewinding of a life of Hollywood glitz, grit, gluttony and nose jobs and a good, old-fashioned story of rags to riches and hags to bitches and the paparazzi to cause and capture it all. Brava, Dinah!

—Jamie Lee Curtis

actress, author, producer, director, activist

Can this lovely lady write? Oh, my heavens! Oh yes, she can! I loved my experience traveling with her—laughing and crying and remembering—and to identify, to be part of the full experience is nothing short of stunning! A brilliant first start on a journey of a literary future to lead us through wherever she is going, I will always follow.

—Brenda Vaccaro, actress

Manoff’s novel is an epic tale that truly lives up to its name. A 360-degree view of Hollywood that only an insider could tell, ‘Jackie’ is pure gold, a raucous, biting look at the compilations of family, love and fame in an industry that, to paraphrase the author, will gladly eat its young for the price of cheese. The Real True Hollywood Story of Jackie Gold is a delicious story to savor one page at a time.

—Warren Read, author of One Simple Thing and Ash Falls

The Real True Hollywood Story of Jackie Gold is pure gold. A fascinating glimpse behind the scenes into a world where people expose themselves as they truly are when they think no one is looking (or able to understand). Dinah Manoff has skillfully woven a fascinating twisting tale of fame, friendship, family, betrayal all set against the juicy veneer of celebrity. Jackie Gold’s comatose journey of self-discovery is dazzling and funny from page one and so addictive I couldn’t put it down.

—Lynn Brunelle

4-time Emmy Award-winning writer, author of Mama Gone Geek

The Real True Hollywood Story of Jackie Gold is an emotional roller coaster of a debut; at turns tense, funny, and heartbreaking.

—Jonathan Evison, author of

The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving

"Dinah Manoff has such an original voice in this exceptional debut novel about Jackie Gold, a Hollywood survivor who will win your heart.

Her writing is full of wit, laugh-out-loud humor, and surprising, heartfelt moments. Let’s put it this way. She made me laugh, she made me laugh, she made me cry and cry again.

A real page-turner in the best way. I couldn’t put it down."

—Melanie Mayron

actress and director of film and television

"Dinah Manoff’s first novel is not just a fun romp through the glitzy, decadent, dysfunctional world of glamorous stardom, it is much more. It tells the story of a girl who has suffered terrible maternal neglect only to find herself experiencing adulation and attention that feels unearned and unsatisfying. Through the twists and turns of the story, we get to see Jackie in all her hilarious, indulgent brattiness. The ending is the perfect combination of bad Karma and sweet redemption. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

—Brooke Adams, actress

High jinx, hilarity, and heartbreak abound in Dinah Manoff’s romp through the perilous chase for fame in Hollywood. A comic-tragedy among the glitterati as told by a true insider.

—Mary Guterson, author of Gone to the Dogs

The explosive opening captivates the reader immediately! The story of Jackie Gold is unique, intriguing, and fun-filled! Dinah’s creativity never ceases to amaze me. Her descriptions are so vivid that I could feel each location and time period as if I had traveled there. There must be a sequel!

—Kristy McNichol, actress, comedian, producer, singer

"The very REAL insider look into the ultra-private lives of two hot Hollywood stars. A deep dive into ambition,

abandonment, addiction, and sex (lots of it).

Dinah, my old Pink Lady pal, has created a vivid, sexy portrait of the private doings and undoings of a rich and famous movie star who, through a tragic event, finds grace, happiness and her true self."

—Didi Conn, actress

THE REAL TRUE Hollywood

Story of

Jackie Gold

DINAH MANOFF

A picture containing text, silhouette Description automatically generated

Star Alley Press

Copyright © 2021 by Dinah Manoff

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

Dinah Manoff/Star Alley Press

www.StarAlleyPress.com

Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes, and their stories are entirely fictional.

Book Layout © 2021 Star Alley, LLC

Cover Design © 2021 Star Alley, LLC

The Real True Hollywood Story of Jackie Gold/ Dinah Manoff. -- 1st ed.

ISBN 978-1-946802-76-7

eBook ISBN 978-1-946802-77-4

Audio ISBN 978-1-946802-78-1

To My Mother

Nowhere could you get that happy feeling when you are stealing that extra bow.

―Irving Berlin

There’s No business like Show business

Fame

Fame, fame, fame

Fame, fame, fame

Fame, fame, fame, fame

Fame, fame, fame, fame

Fame, fame, fame

Fame

― david bowie

EXT. BALCONY - MALIBU SHORES INN

JANUARY 15, 1999

MORNING

SFX: CRASHING WAVES

Finally, it is just as I pictured.

Brett on bended knee, velvet box in hand, his popped question hanging in the salt air. My white silk robe slips ever so slightly off one shoulder as I rise gracefully from my perch on the balcony, my left fingers extended, poised for coronation. I part my freshly glossed lips, preparing to utter that one life-changing word of affirmation when I see the helicopters over Brett’s shoulder.

Shit.

They’ve found us.

The front door explodes open.

Jackie! Brett!

They shoot, storming through the suite and onto our third-floor balcony, framing us in proposal position, climbing over each other to get a better angle.

Jackie! Dollface! Look over here!

I scream, Brett!

Brett is frozen, still on bended knee.

Get up! I yell again. Let’s get out of here!

The sound of the helicopter grows louder.

Brett!

His eyes widen, then he blinks, shakes his head, gets on all fours, scurries under the room service table, and covers his face with the jelly-stained tablecloth, sending bits of croissant tumbling down through the iron railings of the balcony. A seagull swings past in time to pluck a fat buttered crumb out of the air.

I will him to come, to carry me through the crowd the way he did in Space Warriors. But he’s cached behind a hedge of legs and equipment.

Searching for escape, I look to the door and see Nicole battling through the crowd. Nicole, my angel. How did she know I would need her?

Over here, I cry, but the crashing waves and whirring helicopter blades swallow my voice. I wave my arms hoping she’ll see me. The rat-a-tat of a dozen cameras explodes around me capturing my gesture. Nicole swivels this way and that, lost in the melee. Behind her, more paparazzi push forward, cameras cocked.

Brett, now on his belly, crawls stealthily beneath the hordes—a move he learned for the Vietnam sequence in Month of Heroes.

His goddamn publicist must’ve ratted us out.

Brett, wait! I try to follow, but the troops surge, swallowing the gap between us and slamming me against the balustrade.

Arms and legs wedge against me; an elbow rams my breast as a fat man struggles to untangle the cameras choking his neck. I squirm away and pull myself onto a sturdy, cast iron chair where I see the full picture: Panavision. Cameras and sound equipment, photographers shoving. They shoot blindly, our blood scent in their snouts. On my left, the pixie-blonde from Entertainment Tonight, on my right the toupee-guy from Variety. Towering over all is the Australian from the Enquirer in his trademark tan suit.

Another helicopter appears on the horizon.

Hey, Jackie!

Jackie Gold! Hey, is that you?

Where’s Brett, Jackie?

Down on the patio, hotel guests are shouting and pointing.

Jaks! Nicole sees me now. I wave.

We want Brett! We want Brett!

Nicole help!

She battles toward me, knocking the pixie-blonde out of the way but gets blocked behind the ET crew.

The second helicopter moves closer, stirring up sand. The guests below laugh as they hold on to their hats and beach umbrellas. The blade’s wind causes several paparazzi to retreat. My foot slips off the chair and I catch myself on the railing. Three feet over is another balcony. Not far. I could jump and go through the next room, down the back stairs to the parking lot. Brett is probably already waiting in the car. I glance three floors down to where high surf pounds the rocky shore. I’ve done my own stunts, like the one in Time Thief, but there was a trampoline and thirty crew guys under me then. Nothing would cushion me now. Bloody, feathered remains of a seagull lie on the jagged rocks below.

Come on down, doll! Stubby fingers tug my sleeve. You gonna’ hurt yourself.

I pull away and step onto the balustrade. Gauging the distance between balconies, I gather up the folds of my white robe and crouch, focusing on my target landing spot with the concentration of a knife thrower. Already I feel free. I present the paparazzi with my middle finger.

Geronimo! I jump.

Jaks! Look over here, Nicole cries simultaneously.

I turn automatically to see my best friend, pointing at me. Smiling.

Her arm is draped over the Australian.

He shoots.

The flash goes off in my eyes. And not until my robe billows over my head like a broken parachute do I realize I have missed the mark.

I wish I could say my life played out before me in slow motion, or that I thought of Brett, or my family, or even about how Nicole had betrayed me. But my last thought before striking the rocks is, Thank God I’m wearing nice underwear.

MAIN TITLES

THE REAL TRUE HOLLYWOOD STORY OF JACKIE GOLD

INT. HOSPITAL ROOM

4:52 A.M.

DAY 14

Today is my birthday. I was born right here at Sinai Memorial in the east wing exactly thirty years ago, on January 29, 1969. It was the same day that Mia Farrow, newly separated from Frank Sinatra and in India to meditate with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, punched out a photographer when he tried to snap her picture at a New Delhi hotel.

My room is shadowed in bluish-gray light. Where the curtains join, a strip of sun laser skims the foot of my bed. I am encased like a mummy up to my neck. The intravenous stands to which I am hooked reflect fragments of my bandaged head and body. Tubes root in and out of my arms and belly; irrigating, hydrating. Blood swishes into plastic bota bags dangling from my sides. An oxygen mask grips the flesh around my mouth and nose like the sucker of a tentacle.

My room is peaceful. Lovely really, with its polished wood floors, marble tiles, and gold fixtures in the bathroom. Other than the ICU where I spent the first two weeks, I haven’t seen the rest of the accommodations. But knowing Daddy, this is the presidential suite.

Understand, I can’t actually see. Not in any conventional way. Though my eyes are open, I am technically and by unanimous decision, knocked out. What I witness is more of an experiencing of my surroundings. Images flash sequentially like a filmstrip running inside my head.

There are no flowers. Thousands of arrangements sent by well-wishers have been donated to other patients or carted away by hospital orderlies and cafeteria workers. On the floor in the corner, a Hefty bag of fan mail sits next to a short stack of week-old issues of Daily Variety and the Hollywood Reporter featuring headlines of my unfortunate accident: JACKIE’S JUMP BUMPS PIC SALES WORLDWIDE, JACKIE GOLD: FALLING STAR BRINGS RISING BOX OFFICE, and my personal favorite from the front page of the Enquirer, GERONIMO! JACKIE’S LAST STAND. My nurses sneak the copies out of my room, and then carefully put them back as I lie here, enshrined on my Posturepedic. My awareness, this ability to see, is not in their medical journals. It’s likely those of us who experience it don’t live to tell the tale.

The door of my room is thickly painted a soothing, creamy green, the reliable color of government buildings and public schools. Cut into the door’s upper half, a porthole allows nurses and visitors to peek in as if framing the image before entering will somehow soften the blow. A chair sits by my door, the kind stashed in office closets; black plastic bucket seating, chrome sidearms, light enough for even frail, grieving hands to manipulate. A white wicker loveseat and matching chair with peach cushions from Pier One sit by the window, an ensemble meant to disguise my sterile chamber with an air of hominess. Like the smell of chocolate chip cookies wafting up from the chimney of a crematorium.

Camped in the parking lot below my window are dozens of fans and paparazzi. In the corridors and beyond, the media circus; ABC, CBS, FOX NEWS, CNN, MSNBC, even the BBC have gathered. Some guzzle coffee at nearby Starbucks or in the hospital cafeteria. The more creative hacks station themselves in waiting rooms; armed operatives with listening devices and hidden cameras pretending to be part of a worried or grieving family. Not that they’re all scumbags. As a movie star, I just happen to attract the bad guys. Until my accident, newsmen like Rather or Jennings had no cause to mention my name. So maybe not every reporter is in the rat race but believe me, they’ll all eat their young for a piece of the cheese.

DISSOLVE TO:

INT. HOSPITAL ROOM

AFTERNOON

My visitor hunches over in the black and chrome chair, his handsome head cradled in his hands. Tears slip between his fingers and drip onto a crumpled copy of the Los Angeles Times.

A nurse with a Streisand bob and red-framed reading glasses bustles around him, clucking her sympathy.

Thank you. Brett sniffles as the nurse offers a fresh Kleenex. It must be strange for the nurses to see the Brett Haney crying. On camera, he plays tough guys with steely emotions. When trouble strikes, he juts out his cleft chin, furrows his brow, and squints. In real life, he cries at McDonald’s commercials.

She goes to the chart at the end of my bed and makes a notation, then examines the contents of the IV on the stand.

Course you’re upset, dearie, she coos. Course you are. Surgery went well though, isn’t that a blessing?

Brett sobs and nods into the pile of soggy tissues.

Poor thing, the nurse says. She pats his shoulder and slips out the door.

Brett blows his nose several times and lobs the Kleenex into the wastebasket. Jackie honey? He moves the chair closer to my bed. Can you hear me darlin’? He reaches for my hand, examines my chipped nails, strokes each finger, then squeezes sharply. Please wake up, Jackie. Please.

For one of People’s sexiest men alive, he looks terrible. Three days unshaven, yellow half-moons of sweat stain the underarms of his rumpled white polo. He’s been sleeping at the hospital all week, putting on a brave face for the intensive care staff; the real-life heroes. Now that I’ve been transferred to a private room, he’s fallen apart.

Brett drops my hand and reflexively runs his fingers through his unwashed hair to cover the thinning spot. Okay, okay, pull it together Haney. You can do this, guy! He crouches down, springs forward, does ten push-ups, and pops back up to his feet. He circles the room, then retrieves a paper towel from the bathroom to mop his forehead before rushing back over to me as if my condition might have suddenly improved.

They say they’re doing everything, but I don’t know. His eyes well up again. Oh baby, Jackie honey, tell me what to do! He waits for the possibility of an answer. I can’t sleep. I can’t eat a thing, Jackie. I’ve lost thirteen pounds.

Brett is obsessive about his weight. Worse than me even. He checks it first thing when he wakes up, then again right after he goes to the bathroom. No joke.

I’m gonna’ move into a hotel for a while. It’s just… He takes another Kleenex, wipes his nose, and flops on the wicker couch. And anyway, I can’t stand being home. I can’t even work out, I’m so depressed.

Brett reaches for the side table, finds the paper, and shakes it open. "The reviews came in on Double Barreled. Two lousy stars. And wait’ll you hear what that Jackbutt Abrams wrote about me."

Jackbutt is Brett’s way of saying jackass. Brett rarely swears unless he’s had a few drinks and even then, he’s remorseful.

He says I ‘substitute nervous tics for emotion,’ that I act with my eyebrows. Is that true, Jackie? God, I wish you could answer me. You would tell me the truth. Honey, do I act with my eyebrows?

He sits up. Come on, please say something. Do something! Wiggle a finger. Open your eyes. Show me a sign!

It’s ironic. All through school, I envied girls who were quiet and mysterious. Boys always preferred girls who were enigmatic and still. Me, I was the pesty one with a big mouth. Not anymore. I have been rendered the perfect listener.

A doe-eyed, red-haired nurse wearing freshly applied lip gloss sidesteps through the door holding a Dixie cup of water. A juicy peach of a girl, she’s just bursting with sympathy, her freckles unimpeded by her Cover Girl makeup. The plastic tag over her left breast reads Dani. A happy face dots the i. Brett wipes his eyes and takes the cup, sipping as she squats before him and waits until he is finished. He hands back the paper cup, mouths a thank you, and puts his hands together in a prayer position, the same gesture I watched him practice over and over for a scene in Eighth Dimension.

She looks at him pointedly and then stands and smooths the crouch creases from her uniform; one of those matching pants and top numbers that look like Sears catalog pajamas. Hers are orange and covered with pictures of dancing kitty cats wearing stethoscopes.

I’m so sorry for what you’re going through, I… Her voice trembles. I just want you to know that we’re praying for you. And for Jackie, of course.

Thank you, Nurse.

Oh gosh. Please call me Dani. Her voice brightens. I’m here every day ‘cept weekends.

Okay Dani, much appreciated.

"Anything you need. Anything. I mean that." She attempts a look of professional seriousness to mask the smitten look in her eyes. Then she reaches over and gives my boyfriend a not-so-nursely squeeze on his arm. Without remembering to so much as glance at my vital signs, she practically skips out the door.

INT. HOSPITAL ROOM

MORNING

DAY 15

My father is a nice guy, a darling, a mensch. Except in business. In business, Daddy is a killer, a piranha. Physically, he resembles every other Hollywood studio executive, a skinny nebbish with one overdeveloped forearm from a lifetime of tennis. Now he stands over me looking ancient. Anna, through the porthole, occasionally taps her fingernails on the glass to let him know she is there if he needs her.

The nurse with the Streisand hair opens the shades, but the room barely brightens, the sun eclipsed by a knot of storm clouds. Even in this dull light, there is too much clarity, and my father shades his eyes.

Can I get you something, sweetheart? Nurse Streisand asks.

My father shakes his head and motions her away.

All righty, she says kindly. You just push that button if you need anything.

She leaves the room, crosses past Anna, and shuts the door.

My father pulls the chrome chair to my bed and slowly lowers, hunching over me. He grabs my fingers, a crumpled hanky in his hand. Tears strain at the area around his eyes; so many years of running the studio, of being in control, have rusted his ducts. He speaks into my limp hand, My fault, baby…done things differently. Dry shards of regret spill into my palm. Spent more time…sent you to a university… He struggles with the ways he could have prevented this.

It’s utterly inconceivable to my father that events can take place without his authorization like even God is waiting for him to send up a deal memo, approving His plans. In my father’s world, problems are fixable and the people who don’t cooperate are moved to a different department.

I want to say, Daddy, it’s okay. I don’t feel nearly as bad as I look. But I can’t. That’s the awful part—watching people suffer without being able to reassure them or even squeeze their hands.

Sidney? The door opens and Anna enters. She presses a hand to the back of my father’s neck and he quickly straightens up in his chair. I called the driver. He’ll meet us downstairs.

Of course she’s doing better than he is. She is Catholic. She lights candles, says prayers. She has the Blessed Mother and the saints to talk to when she’s scared. Anna comes to my bedside, brushes phantom hairs off the bandage on my forehead. Underneath the white strips lie my gleaming wounds—the stitched purple tracks, a Frankenstein scar newly minted.

Dear Mary Mother of Jesus, Anna whispers, her voice a soft wind rustling the leaves of a weeping willow. She seals her prayer with a cross over her chest, bends down, and kisses my cheek. Her lips are cool. I have a memory of being very young with a high temperature, Anna leaning over me, wiping my body with a cold washcloth to bring the fever down, my eyes following the gold crucifix swinging from her neck.

My father points to his watch and signals that it is time to go. In all these years, he has never missed a day at the studio. Regardless of catastrophe—earthquakes, divorce, even death—he maintains a perfect attendance record. Some people cope by drinking, my father copes by coping. He walks to the wicker loveseat, picks up his folded jacket, and looks back at me. I realize that he is not wearing his glasses, diffusing this picture of his comatose, only child through a filter of near legally blind vision. A copy of the Hollywood Reporter sticks out of his jacket pocket as it has since the beginning of time.

SLOW DISSOLVE TO:

MALIBU COLONY HOME

DAY

APRIL 1979

When you lose someone early on, your mind bottles the memories and stores them away, airtight. I have recollections of my parents going back to my first years of life. It’s possible these are imprints from stories told to me, though who would have done the telling, I don’t know. In Sidney Goldstein’s house, one didn’t speak of the not-so-dearly departed.

My mother was rarely mentioned. Like the word cancer, her name was mouthed rather than spoken aloud. She lived in Hawaii and kept in touch through long, drunken, hysterical messages left on our answering machine. There were no pictures to remind us of her; Daddy had removed them. Most of the furniture she’d bought had been replaced. In my room, under my new four-poster bed, I kept her old jewelry box. Its contents—abandoned keepsakes—were my only links to our past: a heart locket containing a picture of me at six, a charm bracelet, and (my prized possession) a necklace with violet gemstones. It was part of a set that included dangling, clip-on earrings. While I treasured those pieces, it is important to note that in the two years since she’d been gone, I wasn’t exactly pining for her. Life was much calmer and about a million decibels quieter with her gone. Daddy and Anna and I had dinner together at the kitchen table almost every evening. Anna chuckled at my father’s jokes. We were like a television sitcom family.

Still, there were times—like on Mother’s Day when every single one of my friends was busy making cards or bringing breakfast trays to their moms—that I sort of missed her. Well, maybe I didn’t exactly miss her, but I missed having a mom. And though I was all too aware of my parents’ fights, I wondered what specifically led up to her leaving. Maybe she’d had good reason. Maybe there were events from her past I didn’t know about. On Anna’s soap opera, a teenage girl found out her mother was actually her big sister! That probably didn’t apply in my case, but still, my mother’s life was mostly a mystery.

Several weeks before my tenth birthday, I decided to broach the subject. It was a school day, and I was already dressed in shorts and a blouse, my tennis shoes damp and sandy from having been left outside. Daddy was at the oak breakfast table, drinking coffee and reading Variety. Anna was scrambling eggs. News blared from the small television on the counter. Gingerly, I reached over and turned the volume down.

So, um, Dad, I said keeping my tone casual. I have some questions about my mother.

My father flinched as if I had poked him in the eye. Where the hell did that come from?

Dad, c’mon. You never talk about her. I don’t even know how you met.

Anna placed our eggs on the table and shot me a warning look, which I ignored.

Dad?

Not a good topic, he grumbled.

I pulled the paper away from my father’s face. But every single kid in America knows how their parents met, I persisted.

Don’t bother me with this crapola, Jackie.

I think I have a right to know some things.

My father wiped the corners of his mouth. I’ll eat at work, he said, then got up from the table, kissed my forehead, and left. There was silence for a minute, then Anna began clearing my father’s breakfast plates and silverware.

Put socks on. She pointed under the table, avoiding my eyes.

I’m not a baby.

Jackie.

None of my friends wear socks. Besides, my shoes are wet.

It’s your father’s rules, Anna declared as she scraped food from the plates into the garbage.

They should never have gotten married, to begin with.

That was the first thing everyone said. With my father stubbornly mute on the topic, I questioned all our friends and neighbors, memo pad and pencil in hand like Harriet the Spy. Tammy, the checkout lady from the Mayfair Market; Mr. Jackson, the gray-haired, black-skinned security guy at the Malibu Colony guard gate who remembered all the comings and goings of the last twenty years; Will, the attendant from the Texaco station. I got an ear load from Brian, the manager at the Colony Coffee Shop where my mother had once worked. I filled up one whole notepad on my mother’s history by conducting interviews at the Malibu sheriff’s station. The police were especially helpful and surprisingly forthcoming! But the more I learned, the more questions I had. Her life was like a giant puzzle with tons of missing pieces.

I scoured our house for clues, looking in forbidden places—in my father’s closet and dresser drawers, the file cabinet by his desk—but there was nothing. It was as though she had never existed. Then one day, in the garage while searching for a bicycle pump, I discovered several labeled boxes sticking out from under an old packing blanket. Documents. Scripts. Contracts. I tugged each one out until I came to the smallest carton marked Photographs. A bundled pile of empty picture frames lay on top, and I put them to the side. Braving a spider web, I stripped off a crisscross of duct tape, reached inside, and pulled out a photo album. It was heavy, bound in dark-green cracked leather and coated with a fine layer of beach dust. I turned it around in my hands, the sandy soot sticking to my fingers, and opened it to the first page.

There were dozens of snapshots lodged at careless angles under the plastic. My mother, a drink in her hand, wearing a floppy hat, plopped in a hammock, shielding her face; my mother, a drink in her hand, standing under a tree, pointing at her pregnant belly; my mother in a waitress uniform. I turned the page. Photographs of my parents at different functions. I’d stumbled upon buried treasure!

I rifled further into the album’s stiff pages. My mother as a teen, her hair teased into a flip. My father as a boy with his relatives in front of a sign reading Goldstein’s Clothiers. From my sleuthing, I’d partly assembled my parent’s history. Now, here were the missing pieces of the puzzle. I could almost picture their story playing out like a movie.

I pushed the cartons back under the blanket and gathered the album in my arms. Several photos spilled out, and as I scooped them up, one caught my eye. A Polaroid of my parents as I could never have imagined them; relaxed smiles, holding hands, squinting against the bright sunlight with a turquoise ocean washing up over their ankles. My mother’s tanned, shapely body in an orange and yellow Hawaiian print bikini. Her blond hair flowing over her shoulders as she stands with my father, twenty pounds lighter and fit in navy blue swim trunks. The tip of a green palm frond lashes out of focus in front of them. I turned the photo over. Inscribed on the back in faded blue ink were the words: Sidney and Merilee, May 9, 1968.

COLONY COFFEE SHOP

MORNING

MARCH 1968

I picture my father, peering through the window of the coffee shop making sure his dream girl was working her shift. Yes! There she was, Merilee Miller, taking orders from a medley of male customers who, like Sidney, came to sit at the salmon-and-gray-speckled Formica counter not for the food but for the service. Merilee was a stone fox. A for-real California blond kissed by God and the sun and blessed by nature in all ways physical.

Unfortunately (as my father would soon discover and as is often true of those blessed with extraordinary physical attributes), foxy Merilee was sorely lacking in other areas.

The Colony Coffee Shop was built in the 1950s in that Googie architectural style. Half the building housed a pharmacy that sold candy and cosmetics. For her twenty-first birthday, Merilee had dropped by the makeup counter that morning and stolen a new shade