Keaton - Then Again

Then Again is a work of nonfiction. Some names and identifying details have been changed.

Copyright 2011, 2012 by Diane Keaton

Reading group guide copyright 2012 by Random House, Inc.

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

R ANDOM H OUSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

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Quote from Annie Hall copyright 1977 by Metro Goldwyn Mayer.
All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Quotes from the Lincoln Center Tribute for Diane Keaton speech by Woody Allen copyright 2007 by Woody Allen.
All other text by Woody Allen copyright 2011 by Woody Allen.
Used by permission.

Credits for photographs and artwork appear on .

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Keaton, Diane.
Then again / by Diane Keaton.
p. 00-6878-4
eISBN: 978-1-58836-942-0
1. Keaton, Diane. 2. Keaton, DianeFamily. 3. Motion picture actors and actressesUnited StatesBiography. I. Title.
PN2287.K44A3 2011
791.43028092dc23 2011023752
[B]

www.atrandom.com

Cover design: Emily Harwood Blass
Front-cover photograph: Dewey Nicks

v3.1_r1

I always say my life is this family, and thats the truth.
Dorothy Deanne Keaton Hall

Mom loved adages, quotes, slogans. There were always little reminders pasted on the kitchen wall. For example, the word THINK . I found THINK thumbtacked on a bulletin board in her darkroom. I saw it Scotch-taped on a pencil box shed collaged. I even found a pamphlet titled THINK on her bedside table. Mom liked to THINK . In a notebook she wrote, Im reading Tom Robbinss book Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. The passage about marriage ties in with womens struggle for accomplishment. Im writing this down for future THINKING She followed with a Robbins quote: For most poor dumb brainwashed women marriage is the climactic experience. For men, marriage is a matter of efficient logistics: the male gets his food, bed, laundry, TVoffspring and creature comforts all under one roof. But for a woman, marriage is surrender. Marriage is when a girl gives up the fightand from then on leaves the truly interestingand significant action to her husband, who has bargained to take care of her. Women live longer than men because they really havent been living. Mom liked to THINK about life, especially the experience of being a woman. She liked to write about it too.

In the mid-seventies on a visit home, I was printing some photographs Id taken of Atlantic City in Mothers darkroom when I found something Id never seen. It was some kind of, I dont know, sketchbook. On the cover was a collage shed made out of family photographs with the words Its the Journey That Counts, Not the Arrival. I picked it up and flipped through the pages. Although it included several collages made from snapshots and magazine cutouts, it was filled with page after page of writing.

Had a productive day at Hunters Bookstore. We rearranged the art section and discovered many interesting books hidden away. Its been two weeks since I was hired. I make 3 dollars and thirty-five cents an hour. Today I got paid 89 dollars in total.

This wasnt one of Moms typical scrapbooks, with the usual napkins from Cliftons Cafeteria, old black-and-white photographs, and my less-than-thrilling report cards. This was a journal.

An entry dated August 2, 1976, read: WATCH OUT ON THIS PAGE. For you, the possible reader in the future, this takes courage. Im speaking of what is on my mind. I am angry. TargetJackbad names, those he has flung at meNOT forgotten and that is undoubtedly the problemYou frigin bastardall saidall felt. God, who the hell does he think he is?

That was it for me. This was raw, too raw. I didnt want to know about an aspect of Mother and Fathers life that could shatter my perception of their love. I put it down, walked out of the darkroom, and did not open another one of her eighty-five journals until she died some thirty years later. But, of course, no matter how hard I tried to deny their presence, I couldnt help but see them resting on bookshelves, or placed underneath the telephone, or even staring up at me from inside a kitchen drawer. One time I began looking through Moms new Georgia OKeeffe One Hundred Flowers picture book on the coffee table, only to find a journal titled Who Says You Havent Got a Chance? lying underneath. It was as if they were conspiring, Pick us up, Diane. Pick us up. Forget it. There was no way I was going to go through that experience again. But I was impressed with Moms tenacity. How could she keep writing without an audience, not even her own family? She just did.

She wrote about going back to school at age forty. She wrote about being a teacher. She wrote about every stray cat she rescued. When her sister Marti got skin cancer and lost most of her nose, she wrote about that too. She wrote about her frustrations with aging. When Dad got sick in 1990, her journal raged at the injustice of the cancer that attacked his brain. The documentation of his passing proved to be some of Moms finest reporting. It was as if taking care of Jack made her love him in a way that helped her become the person she always wished she could have been.

I was trying to get Jack to eat today. But he couldnt. After a while, I took off my glasses. I put my head close to his, and I told him, I whispered to him, that I missed him. Istarted to cry. I didnt want him to see, so I turned my head away. And Jack, with what little strength remained in that damn body of his, took a napkin from my pocket and slowly, as with everything he did, slowly, so slowly, he looked at me with those piercing blue eyes and wiped the tears away from my face. Well make it through this, Dorothy.

He didnt. In the end, Mom took care of Dad, just as she had taken care of Randy, Robin, Dorrie, and meall our lives. But who was there for her when she wrote in a shaky hand: June 1993. This is the day I heard I have the beginning of Alzheimers disease. Scary. Thus began a fifteen-year battle against the loss of memory.

She kept writing. When she could no longer write paragraphs, she wrote sentences like Would we hurt each other less if we touched each other more? and Honor thyself. And short questions and statements like Quick. Whats todays date? Or odd things like My head is taking a turn. When she couldnt write sentences, she wrote words: RENT. CALL. FLOWERS. CAR. And even her favorite word, THINK. When she ran out of words, she wrote numbers, until she couldnt write anymore.

Dorothy Deanne Keaton was born in Winfield, Kansas, in 1921. Her parents, Beulah and Roy, drifted into California before she was three. They were heartlanders in search of the big dream. It dumped them into the hills of Pasadena. Mom played the piano and sang in a trio called Two Dots and a Dash at her high school. She was sixteen when her father drove off, leaving Beulah and her three daughters to fend for themselves. It was hard times for the Keaton girls in the late thirties. Beulah, whod never worked a day in her life, had to find a job. Dorothy gave up her college dreams in order to help around the house until Beulah finally found work as a janitor.