Chapter One

Gregor Mendel was right about people as well as peas. To be convinced of that, all I've ever had to do is to look in the mirror. I inherited tallness-and-thinness genes. The tactful way to describe me as a kid would have been to say: "She looks exactly like you." That could have been directed with equal accuracy to either of my parents. Mom-Hanna-was twenty-three when I was born, five feet ten inches, rail-thin, and flat-chested. My father-Hillel-was twenty-five, six feet two inches, and, as my grandmother once told me, "shaped pretty much like the blade of a Swiss Army knife."

Shortly before I was born, my folks moved from the East Coast to Southern California. They found an apartment atop the bluff overlooking the highway along the beach in Santa Monica, west of Los Angeles. My dad brought with him a screenplay that he wrote in film school. With help from one of his professors, he'd succeeded in selling it to one of the studios. He was already working on a second script.

After New York City, with its cold winters and humid summers, Mom and Daddy loved being in the outdoors year-round. It was just a short distance downhill from our apartment to the beach. Alongside the beach is a paved path stretching many miles to the south for walking, biking, and roller-skating. Bike riding was their favorite pastime. Even when I was an infant, they took me along on weekend bike rides, strapped into a low-slung trailer that hung off the frame of Mom's bike. During the week, Mom liked to go running in the cool of morning, pushing me ahead of her i