The rain hammered down as I stumbled into the Van de Kamp’s Restaurant on Lincoln Boulevard in Marina del Rey. Water dripping from my windbreaker, I turned my pockets inside out. Tufts of lint wafted down onto the linoleum floor.
I begged the proprietor for a dime. She wrinkled her forehead, dipped her hand into her apron and handed me the coin.
“Out there,” she pointed to the pay phone beneath the awning.
I ducked outside, inserted the coin and called home. Rain plinked incessantly upon the aluminum awning. Large drops leaked through the slats onto my shoulders.
No answer.
I hung up and dialed a second number. My cousin Shelley answered. I burst out crying. My father was drunk. He’d come to L.A. from Florida to take me back with him. I ran away. How could I leave him like that?
Shelley was shaken, but quickly composed herself. First things first.
“Where are you?” I described my location. “Hang on. Don’t go anywhere.”
Forty agonizing guilt-ridden minutes later, Shelley pulled up in her car. Grandma rode shotgun. Shelley flung open the passenger door and I dove headlong into her arms. I was living the castaways’ rescue from Gilligan’s Island, the episode that never was.
An hour later I was sitting in Shelley’s living room, shivering under a blanket and sipping hot soup. In the kitchen, Shelley sautéed mushroom caps — my favorite! I studied the two-paneled picture frame propped up on the end table next to me. The left panel featured half of a TV Guide centerfold of Shelley dressed in a blue evening gown. Filling the right panel was a shot of Shelley dressed as her character “Linda Little Trees” from the series Laredo. The dead bird on her headdress made me laugh. I needed laughter. Laughter warmed me more than food.
Splayed out over the couch was a script from the latest episode of The Flying Nun (then in its second season). Shelley’s lines as Sister Sixto were highlighted in red as if by a mad school teacher correcting papers. Shelley’s orange tabby, Sheldon, hopped up onto the couch, padded over to me and rubbed the tip of his nose against mine. I flinched. He’d never done that before. In fact, I still bore the scabs from when he scratched me the previous week.
“He knows you’re hurting,” Shelley said, handing me the plate of mushrooms.
She knew, too. Though she was still reeling from the loss of her father only weeks before, Shelley was there for me in ways few people were.
That was 1968. I was 12 years old.
Fifty one years later, the world is mourning the loss of my cousin, actress Shelley Morrison. Some people will remember Shelley for her more than 100 appearances on TV and movie screens, spanning more than half a century. A career capped off by her role as Rosario, the wry, immigrant housekeeper foil to the sardonic Karen on the ground-breaking sitcom, Will and Grace.
I will remember her as one who tipped the trajectory of a boy’s life off a dark path and toward the light of life’s amazement. I will remember her as the one who, with her husband, filmmaker Walter Dominguez, scooped up a lost and bewildered cockapoo puppy off a highway in Visalia, California. And that abandoned chow-mix trembling behind the garbage cans in the alley behind their house. And the stray cat no one but Shelley could befriend. And on. And on. And on. For pets. For people. For any being starving for justice.
Oh, we had our moments. She could be stubborn and opinionated (as could I). But she was one of the few people in my life with whom I could disagree and from whom I could also learn.
I learned from Shelley that who you are is not spelled out in the letters hanging on the marquis above the theatre — It’s who you are in your heart. In your walk. In your talk. In how you leave the world in your wake.
In Shelley’s case, a wide wake gently rocking many boats awake.