you dirty Indian! I got you. I’m tough . . . I’m Lorenzo Lamas!”
It’s as if my father was already laying the seeds for my acting career without me even knowing it. Little do I realize that the renegade in me is starting to surface. I starting to come out of my shell—thanks to a little nudge from my father.
In the storybook titled La Dolce Vita, I play this swinging bachelor much too busy reading my Pinocchio comic book to talk. Finally, I instruct my chauffeur, “To my cabin on the beach, Perkins, and don’t bother me, I’m reading!” In no time, I am spending the day at Ostia Beach (in a small storybook, it is amazing how fast time flies!), walking the sand and swimming nude as if I am some kind of ladies’ man: “This is the life! No clothes, my beach house, my boat and a few girls. Hah!”—my father’s words!
Father goes to great lengths to show his love for me on that trip, as evidenced in The Two Guys, the third and final storybook he does for me. Inside are panels of old two-by-three-inch photographs of us lovingly cobbled together—“two happy guys”—on Ostia Beach and “two not-so-happy guys” in front of his classic Alfa Romeo convertible at Fiumicino Airport moments before my flight back to the States. The final captions on the last page in Dad’s handwriting say it all about the bond between us, as well as his deepest regrets over our separation:
“I’ll see you soon, Daddy!”
“Be a good boy, eh?”
“NO ENDING!”
Our actual final minutes together are bittersweet. Tears well up in my eyes when I say goodbye to Dad as Lola and I board the plane. It is so hard, not knowing when I will ever see him again, that my heart aches just thinking about it.
“Daddy, Daddy,” I say, running into his arms, sniffling, “please come with us, Daddy.”
“Someday, Lorenzo, someday,” he says. We lovingly embrace. “Promise.”
One last embrace, then Lola pulls me away with “Lorenzo, we need to board.”
For a moment, I see real emotion in my dad’s eyes. He feels the same pain, the same turmoil, the same tug-of-war with his feelings I do, even though he does not outwardly show it like I do.
“Goodbye, Son!”
At that, Lola and I walk off. Lola tugs me along as I keep glancing over my shoulder. Father is still standing where we left him. He is watching my every step. I pause a second and wave. Dad smiles broadly and returns the favor as Lola and I make our way to the plane. Then I suddenly lose sight of him and he disappears into the mass of humanity moving about.
Every day I hold on to that promise that I will see my father again. In 1963, it comes true when Dad and Esther move back to Los Angeles. The news makes me the happiest boy on the face of the planet. It means my father and I can see each other any time we want. Earlier, when I said I prayed the same prayer every night, it was that my father and I would be together again. Finally, we are.
Dad and Esther rent a guesthouse on Lola’s sprawling estate off Sunset Boulevard in Brentwood until they buy their own house in Bel Air four years later. That February, for my fifth birthday, Dad and Esther throw a lavish birthday costume party at Lola’s in my honor. They dress me up as a pint-sized caballero. Actor Chad Everett (later of TV’s Medical Center fame) is among the invited guests. He brings a pony for all us kids to ride. Dad even gives me my earliest tips on picking up women when he introduces me to a little señorita who catches my fancy. Of course, by now, I am a master at nodding and letting him do all the talking.
It is the most time my father and I ever spend together. From kindergarten through third grade, he picks me up every day from school and drops me off at Lola’s main house while he hangs out with Esther at the guesthouse. For me, Dad becomes the image of what it is to be a man, and quite an image it is: this huge voice and grand presence always willing to share and teach me many important lessons on becoming a man. One of my favorites is his teaching me how to give a person a firm handshake.
“Look them right in the eye, Son,” he says and then practices with me. I am only six years old. “Now shake my hand.”
I extend my right hand, grip his loosely, and shake.
“That’s not firm enough,” Dad admonishes me. “Don’t give me a fish. Give me a handshake.”
I try again.
“In the eye, look me straight in the eye,” he reminds me.
I stare so hard into his eyes, mine tear up from the strain.
“Good. Now again.”
Anytime I come over to visit or stay for dinner, Esther is always accommodating. She is an honest-to-goodness home-loving wife and mother through and through. She is also a terrific cook, as I quickly discover, and is truly in her element whenever she entertains. Even when we all go together to the beach with my friends, she really puts out a feast. She cooks the kind of meals served for dinner on Saturday night—mouthwatering, home-cooked lamb shanks or pot roasts as the main course, with roasted corn, potatoes, and asparagus—all made in a hibachi right on the beach. Dad makes it my job to load Esther’s Mustang convertible before we pick up my friends Bill and Dave, or Jay and Jeff, all of whom live up the street (they are so skinny Dad collectively nicknames them “The Bird”), and head to the beach.
My father makes a circle in the sand with the heel of his foot around him and Esther and the food every time we go to the beach. It means that area is off-limits. Dad says, “You boys stay out until you are called.”
Of course, my father has an ulterior motive: The last thing he wants is a bunch of crazy kids kicking up sand on his lamb shanks!
As Esther cooks and Dad sits and reads the newspaper, we do what most kids do when they go to the beach: frolic and have fun. We have a blast together—body-surfing, digging holes in the sand, chasing each other, tackling each other. The water is so cold we come out freezing and shivering, and bury ourselves in the sand from head to toe to keep warm.
One of Dad and Esther’s favorite pastimes is gardening. They love it as a stress reliever and enlist me, whether I want to or not, to assist them. It is again all a part of my father’s effort to instill responsibility in me at an early age. He is of that old-fashioned mind-set that if I am old enough to hold a trash bag, I am old enough to stand there and hold it for him.
“Over here, amigo,” Dad says before instructing me exactly on how to hold the bag as he stuffs in ivy clippings, overgrown brush, or whatever else he is cutting back for the fire season.
After we finish, my quirky father throws all this stuff—large bags of clippings and bundles of branches twined together—in the back of Esther’s stylish Mustang convertible as if it is a dump truck and takes it all to the nearby dump. Incidentally, million-dollar homes in the very affluent neighborhood known as Summit Ridge now sit on that dump site. Today, every time somebody successful tells me they live in Summit Ridge, I laugh because those homes are built on top of crap and God knows what else.
Any spillage from the bag is also my responsibility. Dad points to some clippings that never quite make it inside. “Be a good amigo and pick those up, too,” he says, “and when you are done, help Esther.”
Esther never really needs my help. She seems to have things under control. My father, however, believes it is the responsibility of a man to
