A Rich Recluse

Confess it, Marc—you have spent three hours of productive writing time reading about Huguette Clark, the reclusive copper heiress who had mansions on both coasts which she never visited for more than half a century, as well as a 42—yup, that’s 42—room apartment on the upper East Side of Manhattan.

Which is why I can tell you that Clark chose to live in a hospital for the last 22 years of her life. Oh—and she loved dolls, and went to Dior fashion shows, just to see the latest trends; she liked her dolls in fashion. Well, she could afford it—she was raised in the biggest house in Manhattan, and her estate is worth about 300 million bucks. So the five million dollar checks that she wrote out in her pristine handwriting—an elegant cursive—to her Filipino nurse didn’t hurt much.

Born in Paris, she was the daughter of a copper baron, a man born poor but who struck it rich and got richer, eventually buying land under a town that would become Las Vegas. So Huguette was born with a platinum spoon in her mouth—and she indulged her considerable money in art and antiques. She acquired the taste from her mother, who once took down a Cézanne from the wall, got the chauffeur to drive her to an art gallery, sold it, dropped by a string instrument store, and returned home to deliver the four Stradivari to a cellist who wanted toform a string quartet. That was the mom—Huguette, if memory serves, bought a rare double keyboard piano for Gunnar Johansen, Artist in Residence at the University of Wisconsin, after hearing him play one in New York.

Huguette married twice, briefly, but had no children. And after her mother died, she became a Miss Havisham, living in just one room of her vast apartment, which in fact had been three apartments.

So she was loaded, this lady, and by some accounts was childlike but not crazy. And she, according to one relative, would occasionally call him, but never gave him her number. When she died, at age 104, she had never met most of the 19 relatives who she left behind. And she left two wills, the last of which carried a stinging slap at the relatives who had never called, never visited. Instead, the people who had served her faithfully, especially her nurse, got big money. And her huge California mansion was to be made into a foundation for the arts.

In a move that will surprise no one, the 19 relatives got together and decided to go to court; next Tuesday, the process of selecting the jury will begin. And so we’ll know in three weeks who gets the loot. The nurse, who worked from eight AM to eight PM seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, whom Clark called every night to make sure she got safely home, and would come the next day? Or the family?

Well, it’s a story that resonates, especially for me, having lost a job two years ago, and having relatively little income currently. And last year, I went through a transformation: I embarked on a three or four week journey into self-willed madness, fighting an ingrained belittling demon. During that time, I spent recklessly, as a way of trusting that yes, at some time in the future, I would have money again. And to do that, I needed to be whole, I needed to trust myself and love myself. So I gave money to the homeless lady with no teeth, and told her to keep the small collages of coral and seashells she wanted to sell me. I put twenty bucks in a church hymnal because a lady had smiled at me, as she gave me it.

Today, the cat is on the rug, the husband is on the couch, reading Iguanas in soft cover. The cello is wedged between a china cabinet and the wall. I’m back to playing, you see, after five years of not. And two days ago, I finally heard a glimpse of the musician I had been, as I played a Bach suite agonizingly slowly. I was in flow.

I can only say this about a state that is blissfully hard to describe—somebody or something else takes over playing. My fingers are used by a daemon, a spirit infinitely more talented than I. Time slows, attention both narrows and widens. And if I could have that state—that flow—or heaven / Nirvana? Flow—hands down.

And yes, I was a little drunk, several hours later, when I went to CVS, paid for my purchase, and left the store. But I don’t think that’s why I stopped in my tracks, began to weep, and said, “thank you!”

He had fixed my cello, the man who had battled me, and now I could play again after so many years and it felt so unimaginably good and I had missed it, oh missed it, oh MISSED it, and now I can play again so thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!

“Not a problem,” he says, just the way my brother Johnny does.

So we walk up the street, and we pass the homeless guy and then he knows what he has to do, so he turns and wakes up the guy.

“Caballero,” he says.

“Por favor,” he says.

“Tenga,” he says.

And gives the guy the twenty. The guy who rolls over, takes the bill, and says dios te bendiga not knowing that…

…he already has.