Heavier Than Heaven Read online

  On March 1 it was Don who moved out and took a room in Hoquiam. He expected Wendy’s anger would subside and their marriage would survive, so he rented by the week. To Don, the family represented a huge part of his identity, and his role as a dad marked one of the first times in his life he felt needed. “He was crushed by the idea of divorce,” remembered Stan Targus, Don’s best friend. The split was complicated because Wendy’s family adored Don, particularly her sister Janis and husband Clark, who lived near the Cobains. A few of Wendy’s siblings quietly wondered how she would survive financially without Don.

  On March 29 Don was served with a summons and a “Petition for Dissolution of Marriage.” A slew of legal documents would follow; Don would frequently fail to respond, hoping against hope Wendy would change her mind. On July 9 he was held in default for not responding to Wendy’s petitions. On that same day, a final settlement was granted awarding the house to Wendy but giving Don a lien of $6,500, due whenever the home was sold, Wendy remarried, or Kim turned eighteen. Don was granted his 1965 Ford half-ton pickup truck; Wendy was allowed to keep the family 1968 Camaro.

  Custody of the children was awarded to Wendy, but Don was charged with paying $150 a month per child in support, plus their medical and dental expenses, and given “reasonable visitation” rights. This being a small-town court in the seventies, the specifics of visitation weren’t spelled out and the arrangement was informal. Don moved in with his parents in their Montesano trailer. He remained hopeful that Wendy would change her mind, even after the final papers were signed.

  Wendy would have nothing of it. When she was done with something, she was over it, and she couldn’t have been more over Don. She quickly became involved with Frank Franich, a handsome longshoreman who made twice as much money as Don. Franich was also prone to violence and anger, and Wendy loved nothing better than to see that venom projected toward Don. When a new driver’s license of Don’s was accidentally mailed to Wendy’s house, someone opened the envelope, rubbed feces on the picture of Don, resealed it, and forwarded it to Don. This wasn’t a divorce—it was a war, filled with the hatred, spite, and revenge of a blood feud.

  To Kurt, it was an emotional holocaust—no other single event in his life had more of an effect on the shaping of his personality. He internalized the divorce, as many children do. The depth of his parents’ conflicts had been primarily hidden from him, and he couldn’t understand the reason for the split. “He thought it was his fault, and he shouldered much of the blame,” observed Mari. “It was traumatic for Kurt, as he saw everything he trusted in—his security, family, and his own maintenance—unravel in front of his eyes.” Rather than outwardly express his anguish and grief, Kurt turned inward. That June, Kurt wrote on his bedroom wall: “I hate Mom, I hate Dad. Dad hates Mom, Mom hates Dad. It simply makes you want to be so sad.” This was a boy who as an infant was so bonded to his family that he fought sleep, as Mari had written in her home economics report seven years previously, because “he doesn’t want to leave them.” Now, through no fault of his own, he had been left. Iris Cobain once described 1976 as “Kurt’s year in purgatory.”

  It was hard on Kurt physically as well. Mari recalled Kurt in the hospital during this time; she’d heard from her mother he was there as a result of not eating enough. “I remember Kurt being in the hospital because of malnutrition when he was ten,” she said. Kurt told his friends he had to drink barium and get his stomach X-rayed. It’s possible that what was thought to be malnutrition was the first symptom of a stomach disorder that would plague him later in life. His mother had suffered a stomach condition in her early twenties, not long after his birth, and when Kurt first started having stomachaches, it was assumed he had the same irritable condition as Wendy. Around the time of the divorce, Kurt also had an involuntary twitching in his eyes. The family assumed it was stress related, which it probably was.

  While his parents were divorcing, his life as a pre-adolescent boy, with all its internal challenges, was continuing. About to enter fourth grade, he began to notice girls as sexual beings and to be concerned with social status. That July he got his picture in the Aberdeen Daily World when his baseball team won first place in the Aberdeen Timber League after compiling a record of fourteen wins and one loss. The other highlight of the summer was his adoption of a black kitten that had been wandering around the neighborhood. It was his first pet, and he named it Puff.

  Three months after the divorce was final, Kurt expressed an interest in living with his father. He moved into the trailer with Don, Leland, and Iris, but by early fall, father and son rented their own single-wide trailer across the street. Kurt visited Wendy, Kim, and Puff on weekends.

  Living with his father solved some of Kurt’s emotional needs—once again he was the center of attention, an only child. Don felt bad enough about the divorce that he overcompensated with material gifts, buying Kurt a Yamaha Enduro-80 mini-bike, which became a neighborhood attraction. Lisa Rock, who lived a few blocks away, first met Kurt that fall: “He was a quiet, very likeable kid. Always with a smile. He was a little shy. There was this field where he’d ride his mini-bike, and I’d ride alongside him with my bicycle.”

  Rock’s observation of the nine-year-old Kurt as being “quiet” echoed a word that would be used repeatedly to describe him in adulthood. He was able to sit in silence for long stretches without feeling a need to make small talk. Kurt and Lisa had the same birthday, and when they both turned ten, they celebrated with a party at her house. Kurt was glad to be included, yet he was tentative and uncomfortable with the attention. He’d been fearless as a four-year-old; as a ten-year-old he was surprisingly fearful. Post-divorce, he held himself with reserve, always waiting for the other person to make the first move.

  After the divorce, and with the onset of Kurt’s puberty, his father took on a role of heightened proportions. After school Kurt would stay at his grandparents’, but as soon as Don returned from work, they were together the rest of the day and Kurt was happy to do whatever Don wanted, even if that meant sports. After baseball games the two Cobain males occasionally ate dinner together at the local malt shop. It was a bonding that both savored, but each of them couldn’t help but feel the loss of family—it was as if a limb had been severed, and though they got through the day without it, it was never far from their thoughts. Their love for each other that year was stronger than it was before or after, but both father and son were still profoundly lonely. Afraid he might lose his dad, Kurt asked Don to promise not to remarry. Don gave his son this assurance and said the two of them would always be together.

  During the winter of 1976, Kurt transferred to Beacon Elementary School in Montesano. Montesano’s schools were smaller than Aberdeen’s and within weeks of transferring, he found a popularity that had escaped him previously and his fearlessness seemed to return. Despite his outward confidence, he held on to a bitterness about his circumstances: “You could tell he was tormented by his parents’ divorce,” recalled classmate Darrin Neathery.

  By the time he began fifth grade, in the fall of 1977, Kurt was a fixture in “Monte,” the name locals used for the town—every student in the small school knew him, and most liked him. “He was a good-looking kid,” remembered John Fields. “He was smart, and he had everything going for him.” With his blond hair and blue eyes, Kurt became a favorite of the girls. “It was no exaggeration to say that he was one of the most popular kids,” observed Roni Toyra. “There was a group of about fifteen kids who would hang out together, and he was an important part of that group. He was really cute, with his blond hair, big blue eyes, and freckles on his nose.”

  That outward attractiveness hid a struggle for identity that hit a new plateau when, in October 1977, Don began to date. Kurt disliked the first woman Don met, so his father dropped her. With his ten-year-old’s narcissism, Kurt didn’t understand his father’s desire for adult companionship or why Don wasn’t happy with just the two of them. In late fall, Don met a woman named Jenny Westby, who her
self was divorced with two kids: Mindy, a year younger than Kurt, and James, five years younger. From the very beginning, the courtship was a family affair, and their first date was a hike with all their kids around Lake Sylvia. Kurt was friendly to Jenny and her children, and Don thought he had a match. He and Jenny married.

  At first Kurt liked Jenny—she provided him with female attention he was lacking—but his positive feelings about his new stepmother were canceled out by an internal conflict: If he cared for her, he would be betraying his love for his mother and his “real” family. Like his father, Kurt had held on to a hope that the divorce was just a temporary setback, a dream that would pass. His father’s remarriage, and the now severely cramped trailer, destroyed that illusion. Don was not a man of many words, and his own background made expressing feelings difficult. “You told me you weren’t going to get married again,” Kurt complained to Don. “Well, you know, Kurt, things change,” his father replied.

  Jenny tried to reach out to him, without success. “At the beginning, he had a lot of affection toward everybody,” Jenny recalled. Later, Kurt continually referred to Don’s promise not to remarry, and kept withdrawing. Don and Jenny attempted to compensate by making Kurt the center of attention around the house—he got to open presents first, and he was given leeway on chores—but these small sacrifices only served to increase his emotional withdrawal. He enjoyed his step-siblings as occasional playmates, but he also teased them and was merciless to Mindy about her overbite, cruelly imitating her voice in front of her.

  Things temporarily improved when the family moved into a home of their own at 413 Fleet Street South in Montesano. Kurt had his own room, which had been fashioned with round windows to look like a ship. Not long after the move, Jenny gave birth to another son, Chad Cobain, in January 1979. Now two other children, a step-mom, and a baby were all competing for the attention that had once been Kurt’s alone.

  Kurt had free rein in Monte’s parks, alleyways, and fields. It was a town so small transportation was hardly required; the baseball field was four blocks away, school was just up the road, and all his friends were within walking distance. In contrast to Aberdeen, Monte seemed like something from a Thornton Wilder play, a simpler and friendlier America. Every Wednesday was designated family night at the Cobain house. Activities included board games like Parcheesi or Monopoly, and Kurt was as excited about these evenings as anyone.

  Money was tight, so most vacations entailed camping trips, but Kurt was the first person in the car when they were getting ready. His sister Kim went on their trips until Don and Wendy had a battle about whether vacations meant less child support; after that, Kim saw less of her father and brother. Kurt continued to visit his mother on weekends, but rather than warm reunions, these times would usually just irritate the old wound of the divorce; Wendy and Don were hardly civil, so trips to Aberdeen meant having to watch his two parents battle over the visitation schedule. Another sadness befell him one weekend: Puff, his beloved cat, ran away and was never seen again.

  Like all children, Kurt was a creature of routine and he enjoyed the structure of things like family night. But even this small comfort left him conflicted: He yearned for closeness while fearing being close would result in abandonment down the road. He had hit the stage of puberty where most adolescent males begin to differentiate themselves from their parents, to find their own identity. Yet Kurt still mourned the loss of the original family nest, so breaking away was fraught with both necessity and dread. He dealt with these many conflicting feelings by disassociating himself emotionally from Don and Wendy. He told himself and his friends that he hated them, and in this vitriol he was able to justify his own remoteness. But after an afternoon of hanging with his buddies and talking about what rotten parents he had, he would find himself yet again participating in family night and being the only one in the house who didn’t want the evening’s festivities to end.

  Holidays were always a problem. Thanksgiving and Christmas of 1978 meant Kurt was shuttled around to a half dozen different households. If his feelings for Jenny were a mixture of affection, jealousy, and betrayal, his feelings for Wendy’s boyfriend, Frank Franich, were pure anger. Wendy also began to drink heavily, and intoxication made her more acerbic. One night Franich broke Wendy’s arm—Kim was in the house and witnessed the incident—and Wendy was hospitalized. When she recovered, she refused to press charges. Her brother Chuck threatened Franich, but there was little anyone could do to change Wendy’s commitment to him. At the time, many thought Wendy stayed with Franich because of the financial support he provided. She’d begun working after the divorce as a clerk at Pearson’s, an Aberdeen department store, but it was Franich’s longshoreman’s salary that afforded them luxuries like cable television. Before Franich came along, Wendy had been so in arrears on paying her bills that her electricity was about to be turned off.

  Kurt was eleven that year, and small and scrawny, but he never felt as impotent or weak as when he was around Franich. He was helpless to protect his mother, and the stress of watching these fights made him fear for her life and perhaps for his. He both pitied his mother and hated her for having to pity her. His parents had been his gods when he was younger—now they were fallen idols, false gods, and not to be trusted.

  These internal conflicts began to exhibit themselves in Kurt’s behavior. He talked back to adults, refused to do chores, and despite his small size, began to bully another boy with such force that the victim refused to go to class. Teachers and parents became involved, and everyone wondered why such a sweet boy had turned so rancid. At the end of their ropes, Don and Jenny finally took Kurt to counseling. There was an attempt at family therapy, but Don and Wendy never could manage to arrive at the same appointment. The therapist, however, spent a couple of sessions talking with Kurt. His conclusions were that Kurt needed a single family. “We were told if he was going to be with us, we needed to get legal custody of him, so that he knew we were accepting of him as part of our family,” Jenny recalled. “Unfortunately, all this did was to cause problems between Don and Wendy, as they debated it.”

  Don and Wendy had been divorced for several years, yet their anger with each other continued, and in fact escalated through their children. It had been a difficult spring for Wendy—her father, Charles Fradenburg, had died of a sudden heart attack ten days after his 61st birthday. Wendy’s mother, Peggy, had always been a recluse, and Wendy worried that this would increase her mother’s isolation. Peggy’s strange behavior may have resulted from a grisly childhood incident: When she was ten years old, Peggy’s father stabbed himself in the abdomen in front of his family. James Irving survived the suicide attempt, and was committed to the same Washington mental hospital that later would give shock therapy to actress Frances Farmer. He died from his original injury two months later; when hospital staff weren’t watching, he ripped open his stab wounds. Like many of the family’s tragedies, Kurt’s great-grandfather’s mental illness was discussed only in a whisper.

  But even the travails of the Fradenburg family failed to bring Don and Wendy together in shared grief. Their discussions about Kurt ended, as all their conversations did, with an argument. Wendy finally signed a document that read: “Donald Leland Cobain shall be solely responsible for the care, support and maintenance of said child.” On June 18, 1979, three weeks short of three years after the date of Don and Wendy’s divorce, Don was granted legal custody of Kurt.

  Chapter 3

  MEATBALL OF THE MONTH

  MONTESANO, WASHINGTON

  JULY 1979–MARCH 1982

  His favorite food and drink are pizza and coke. His favorite saying is “excuse you.”

  —From a Puppy Press profile.

  In September 1979, Kurt began seventh grade at Montesano Junior High School. It was an important milestone, and school began to take on a bigger role in his life. He had begun music classes in fifth grade, and by seventh grade he was playing drums with the school band, an accomplishment he sought to downplay to
his friends while also savoring it. Most of what he studied and practiced was marching band or small ensemble drums, learning snare and bass drum for songs like “Louie, Louie” and “Tequila.” The Monte band rarely marched—mostly they played for assemblies or basketball games—but Kurt was a fixture at any event where they appeared.

  His band director, Tim Nelson, remembered him as “a regular, run-of-the-mill music student. He was not extraordinary, but he also wasn’t awful.” Kurt was pictured that year in the Montesano “Sylvan” yearbook, playing snare drum at an assembly. He had a pageboy haircut and looked a bit like a young Brad Pitt. His clothing tended toward preppy—a typical outfit included Hash bellbottom jeans, a striped Izod rugby shirt, and Nike athletic sneakers. He dressed like every other twelve-year-old, though he was slightly short and small for his age.

  As one of the more popular kids in school, he was selected to be profiled in the October 26, 1979, edition of the mimeographed student newspaper, the Puppy Press. The article ran under the heading “Meatball of the Month” and read:

  Kurt is a seventh grader at our school. He has blonde hair and blue eyes. He thinks school is alright. Kurt’s favorite class is band and his favorite teacher is Mr. Hepp. His favorite food and drink are pizza and coke. His favorite saying is “excuse you.” His favorite song is “Don’t Bring Me Down,” by E.L.O. and his favorite rock group is Meatloaf. His favorite TV show is “Taxi” and his favorite actor is Burt Reynolds.

  The “excuse you” saying was Kurt’s twist on Steve Martin’s “excuse me.” This was consistent with his wry, sarcastic sense of humor, which involved transposing phrases or asking absurd rhetorical questions— imagine an adolescent Andy Rooney. Typical of these jokes was when he shouted out at a bonfire, “How can you ruin a perfectly good fire by making smoke?” Being a small boy his method of surviving within the adolescent male culture was to joke his way out of conflicts and belittle any tormenters with his superior intellect.