Read Online How I Got to Be Whoever It Is I Am by Charles Grodin - Free Book Online Page B

was next door receiving chemotherapy. I never heard Julie express any sorrow
     for herself.
    I would sometimes join Marion on Julie’s medical appointments. One particularly stands out in my mind. A renowned doctor at
     New York’s Memorial Sloan-Kettering was asking her some questions, which Julie had trouble comprehending due to her gradual
     loss of faculties. She would look to me for help, and the doctor snapped at her, “Don’t look at him! Look at
me
!”
    After the examination I complained to officials at the hospital, and that brilliant cancer researcher was then limited only
     to research—no longer seeing patients. Evidently, I wasn’t the first to complain.
    Before all this happened and while we were still married, Julie received great acclaim starring in an off- Broadway play.
     A major agency invited her to meet their agents. At the end of all the meetings, the agent who had brought her in said the
     feeling was that she wasn’t a “commercial” type. This was before actors like Dustin Hoffman and Gene Wilder redefined what
     a commercial type looked like. Julie looked more like a tomboy, but she had a unique quality that was so special, many of
     us felt she would become very successful, but that one rejection caused her to stop her pursuit of an acting career. This
     has been the case for many gifted young actresses and actors who temperamentally could not handle what feels like constant
     rejection.
    After our divorce, Julie became an outstanding woodworker. She made desks and chairs but never charged enough to make a profit,
     so she also taught woodworking at a Y in New York. She continued this even after her fatal diagnosis. She would be teaching,
     feel a seizure coming on, excuse herself, walk into the hall, have a seizure, and return to teach.
    When she died, she was fifty-two. She was one of a kind and an inspiration for courage.
    My daughter later told me she would go home after her visits with me and tell her mother, “Dad’s great.” Julie would always
     say, “Yeah, but y’know.” Eventually, Marion asked, “Y’know
what
?”
    Since it’s hard to imagine the mother of a four-year-old child would leave and deprive the little girl of a father, just about
     everyone thought I left Julie. Even people in my family felt I left my wife and baby. Later a relative of mine who learned
     the truth said, “I thought that seemed so out of character for you.” I once visited Julie and Marion in Pittsburgh. Her father,
     a distinguished gray-haired man who was the head accountant for Pittsburgh Plate Glass, chose to not even speak to me as he
     sat in another room reading a paper.
    I wonder what he would have thought had he known what actually happened.
    In doing research for this book I read a quote from Julie in an interview I came across from 1972, five years after we were
     divorced. She said of me, “The thing about you is that everything bad about you is right there up front. As you get to know
     you, you get better and better all the time.”
    Naturally, I was pleased to read the last part of the quote and honestly baffled by the first part. I hope that’s not how
     everyone perceived me.
    Since I’ve written the above, I’ve come across an outline for a play I wrote in the early sixties. It’s about Julie and me.
     According to the female character, the male character never stops talking, and a lot of the talking is about sports. The female
     character has no interest in anything the male character has to say.
    In fairness to Julie, that rings true. So when Marion said to Julie, “Dad’s a great guy,” and Julie said, “Yeah, but y’know,”
     and Marion said, “Y’know
what
?” Julie meant I was always “on” all the time, and Julie was never “on.”
    Marion, a headlining and brilliant stand-up comedian, makes
me
look like the semistrong silent type. That’s why Marion’s experience with me was so different from her mom’s. My nickname
     for Marion as a kid was