THE VERDICT -- Robert Gardner

Robert Gardner

My sister Marion, of whom I have spoken, was born in the state of

Iowa, where our father was making a career of going bankrupt on every

farm his highly successful older brother turned over to him.

I was born rather late into my parents’ lives. Thus, when we hit Santa

Ana, I was 9 months old, my mother was in her late 40s, and the immediate

scandal was that I was the illegitimate son of Marion, who was 16 at the

time. As the years went by and she and I became closer and closer, I

sometimes wondered if the rumor might not be true.

A couple of years later, we left Santa Ana for Green River, Wyo.,

where Marion met and married Jack Guild, the younger brother of Bill

Guild, the president of the Union Pacific Railroad. They had a stormy

relationship and got divorced. After a period, they remarried, but they

still couldn’t get along and got divorced again.

The next thing I knew, Marion was living in a mansion in Beverly

Hills, just across the street from the mansion of Dolores del Rio.

According to Marion, she was living there because she was selling the

house for its owner, a nice guy who owned a chain of shoe stores and who

was around all the time. She never seemed to have any prospective buyers,

and I got free shoes for quite a while.

Sometime later, she was selling the house of a guy who owned a

steamship line that ran between San Pedro and San Francisco. This house

also didn’t seem to have any buyers, and this time I got a job on one of

his ships as a cabin boy.

Marion developed certain firm beliefs. One was, “Never look back.”

Another was “Never tell the truth if a lie will suffice.” A third: “If

there is a choice between money and loyalty, take the money.”

Eventually, Marion gave up her career in real estate and married a

naval aviator who managed to stay drunk 24 hours a day by keeping a

bottle in the toilet tank. He was constantly in the bathroom “brushing

his teeth.” It was while she was married to the aviator that we traveled

in China. He was stationed there, and every time he was assigned to a

cruise, Marion and I would go off on an adventure. There was often a

gentleman friend who was part of these adventures, someone who could

provide a car or access to an exclusive club.

Finally, the aviator overdid his drinking and had some kind of

seizure. The doctor in attendance said the poor guy’s brain had the same

consistency as a piece of hard cheese. He went to St. Elizabeth Naval

Hospital, where he died.

This left Marion a poor, bereft widow, but not for long. But that’s

another story.

* ROBERT GARDNER is a Corona del Mar resident and a former judge. His

column runs Tuesdays.