-1/2/59-1/29/59. Henry goes out to Santa Clara to meet Fred and Jane as he investigates Paul’s connection with them. Robin keeps trying to push Mark and Meta together but Mark’s thoughts are with Ruth. Fred goes to Los Angeles to track down Marian and gets her to confess that Paul is their son. Henry goes to Chicago and gets the information he needs to convince Anne that Paul is a fraud. He tells Anne that Paul’s mother is Marian Winters and that his father is marked as “unknown” on his birth certificate. He gleefully tells Anne she can get an annulment because Fletcher isn’t Paul’s legal name but Anne doesn’t care. Anne faints and is rushed to the hospital where it is discovered that she’s pregnant but she quickly miscarries. Fred proposes marriage to Marian so that Paul can rightfully have the name Fletcher and try to take away the shame he feels about his illegitimacy.
-2/2/59-2/27/59. Fred sees Judith at the hospital. She accuses him of wanting to marry Marian just to have a son to replace the one he lost in Korea. She tells him he needs to leave Marian alone because he’s already caused enough damage. Helen also comes to the hospital from San Francisco, sees Marian, and understandingly lets her know she knows all about her and Paul. Helene is angry at Henry for trying to break up Paul and Anne’s marriage. Anne tells both Paul and Marian that she knows the truth and it doesn’t change the way she feels about either of them. Paul worries that Anne’s heart ailment is recurring as he also resolves to let go of the shame he’s been living with his whole life based on the way he came into the world. Marie and Dick continue to grow further apart as he gets more obsessed with work and she starts wanting to adopt a baby more. Fred tells Jane that Paul is her half-brother. John asks Marian out on a date. Meta becomes determined to get Mark.
-3/2/59-3/31/59. Bert warns Meta not to lead Robin on that there’s a future for Mark and Meta when there very possibly won’t be. Paul goes to Santa Clara when Fred is rushed to the hospital with a heart attack. Father and son meet for the first time and Paul lets him know that he has forgiven everything but there’s no need for Fred to marry Marian for Paul’s sake. It’s too late. Mark and Ruth admit they are in love with each other and Ruth worries about what it will do to Robin whose hopes are all in Mark and Meta getting married. John and Marian get married. Mark tells Robin that he’s in love with Ruth and Robin throws a fit. Alice helps Mark see that Robin looks at Mark marrying Ruth as another personal loss for her whereas marrying Meta is not a threat to her security. Mark starts to finally understand Robin’s obsession. Meta starts to get manipulative in her desperation for Mark and tries to make Ruth feel guilty about Robin’s unhappiness.
-4/1/59-4/30/59. While painting out at the park, Marie meets a fellow artist, Joe Turino, who also teaches classes at the Bowden Art Gallery. Joe offers Marie a job teaching at the gallery. Papa is worried that Meta is regressing back to her selfish early ways. Mark tells Meta that he and Ruth are in love with each other and a bitter Meta tells Mark he’s going to hurt Robin. Paul tries to reason with Robin and assures her that Mark would be happier with Ruth because he’s in love with her, not Meta. Robin is dubious and asks Paul if it would ever be possible for him to love another woman if Anne died, in a bit of (perhaps unintentional) foreshadowing. A bit creepy as Robin is 15 at this time. Robin tells Mark she’ll move out if he marries Ruth. When Mark tells Robin that she has to have dinner with him and Ruth when she starts to feel better, Robin stands out in the rain to make her cold worse. She develops pneumonia. Ruth doesn’t think she can put her and Mark’s happiness before Robin’s and says she’s taking a job in Chicago.
-5/1/59-5/29/59. Mark is getting fed up with Robin and demands that Ruth not move to Chicago but stay and marry him. Dick talks Marie into getting a final word with a gynecologist in San Francisco before he agrees to adopting a child. Mike asks Robin to the prom. Marie invites Joe over for dinner and he and Dick take an immediate dislike to each other. Nora Gibbs comes to the Bowden Art Gallery looking for work as a model and her mysterious circumstances piques the interest of Marie. Anne is pregnant again. Mark and Ruth get married in San Francisco. Meta suspects Mark and Ruth are getting married in San Francisco and Bert worries that she will tell Robin. While Robin gets ready for the Prom, Meta encourages Robin to call Mark at the hotel. The front desk says that Mr. Holden isn’t in but Mrs. Holden is. Robin is stunned.
-6/1/59-6/30/59. Robin runs away while Meta, Bert and Mike are waiting for her to get ready for the Prom. Marie gets definitive news from the gynecologist that she can never get pregnant. Robin heads to the Greyhound bus station and buys a ticket. Mark receives a ransom note for Robin. A guilt-ridden and afraid Meta confesses to Papa that she purposely got Robin to call Mark in San Francisco and put him on the spot to spitefully hurt Mark, not thinking about what it would do to Robin. The police find out that a bus ticket to NYC was sold to a young girl. On the 3-day trip to NYC, the bus stops in Pennsylvania for a lunch break. In the bus station cafeteria, Robin overhears a state trooper asking questions about Robin to the bus driver on the Los Angeles-NYC bus. Robin quickly ducks out and later gets on a different bus. She shows up at her grandmother Allen’s doorstep in NYC. It’s revealed that Nora has been abandoned by her husband and is pregnant. She wants Marie to adopt her baby. Mark takes the new, faster jet plane out to NYC to get Robin.
-7/1/59-7/31/59. When Dick and Marie start the adoption process, Nora tells Marie that she’s pregnant and wants her to adopt her baby. A guilt-ridden Meta flies to NYC to try to convince Robin to go back to Los Angeles. She confesses to Trudy that she used Robin’s insecurities for her own selfish end of not being rejected by Mark for a second time. Trudy warns Meta to stay out of it all. Meta ignores the advice and goes over to Helen’s to talk to Robin where she runs into an angry Mark who lays into her and tells her to go away. Meta later tells Robin that she knew Robin was afraid of losing Mark’s love and wanted Mark with Meta instead of Ruth because she knew he didn’t love Meta like he did Ruth. Meta also confesses that she used Robin’s insecurities to try to get Mark to marry her. This confession crushes an already disillusioned and bitter Robin and she says it was a mistake for her to be born in the first place since nobody has ever wanted her, including her own mother. Robin leaves Meta and joins her grandmother Allen on a long trip to Europe and Zena Bethune leaves the role with the parting words “I’m through, Meta. I’m through with all of it”. Trudy gets Bruce to come see Meta and Meta confesses to him that it was more her pride and vanity, than love, that made her want Mark to ask her to marry him. Meta is worried how Robin’s faith in everything and everybody has been destroyed and says, “I’m afraid we’ll never see the same Robin again”. Dick meets Nora and doesn’t like her. Mark and Ruth head for Switzerland to get her teenage son, Karl. The adoption agency turns down Marie’s request to adopt after they talk with Dick and ascertain that he didn’t really want to adopt and was just doing it for Marie.
-8/3/59-8/31/59. Marie’s disappointment causes her to be angry at Dick and then Paul and Anne when she learns Paul confirmed Dick’s reluctance to adopt a child to the case worker when she interviewed him. Marie turns on Laura as well because she knows Laura didn’t think they should adopt and probably influenced Dick. Bert tries to lift Marie out of her depression but it’s too severe. Bill is in NYC from Boston and visits Meta. He tells her that he’s being transferred back to Los Angeles. Bruce reminds Meta that he’s still there for and wants to marry her. He also reminds her that they’re not getting any younger. Nora continues to try to get Marie to take her baby but Marie thinks Nora will regret giving it away and tries to convince her to keep it. Nora gives birth to a baby girl. Mark and Ruth come back to NYC with Ruth’s son, Karl. Nora names her baby Marie. Marie wants Nora and her baby to come stay with her for a while to take care of them and everybody thinks Marie is trying to live vicariously through Nora and her baby and it will end in more heartache when Nora leaves. Helen and Robin come back from Europe and Karl goes over to meet Robin and try to reason with her about going back with them to Los Angeles.
-9/1/59-9/30/59. Bert, Papa, Mike and Ed fly out to NYC to meet Bill so they can drive across the country back to Los Angeles together. The Bauers have a picnic in Central Park. Bill, Bert and Mike meet Karl. Karl and Mike discuss Robin. Karl opines that she’s beautiful but Mike hasn’t noticed. The Bauers invited Karl to join them on their cross-country drive. Mike tries to reason with Robin and lets her know her bitterness about the past is going to destroy her future. Robin coldly dismisses Mike’s advice. Mark forgives Meta. Robin says she’ll only go back to Los Angeles if she can live with Meta. Nora gets a call from her husband Al who invites her out to Las Vegas where he’s living. She rushes out there, leaving her baby with Marie. Meta tells Bruce she wants to marry him but she must first go back to California since Robin wants to live with her and she feels responsible for her. Dick comes back from his medical conference in Switzerland and is very upset when he learns that Marie is taking care of Nora’s baby and Nora has run off to Las Vegas to be with her husband. As Meta gets ready to return to Los Angeles with Robin, Helen warns her that even though Kathy failed to give Robin the discipline she needed, life will eventually discipline Robin. Mike and Karl bond on their road trip back to Los Angeles and when they arrive home, Karl gets accepted to UCLA and will be entering as a Freshman along with Mike. Karl tells Mike he feels sorry for Robin and Mike warns him that Robin doesn’t want any help and enjoys feeling sorry for herself and he’ll be sorry if he tries to help her.
-10/1/59-10/30/59. Alice has transferred to Cornell. Robin wants to become an actress. A detective hunts down Marie and tells her that Al and Nora were in a car that drove off a bridge in a rain storm. They’ve found Al’s body but not Nora’s. They assume she’s dead too. Marie remembers Nora’s pleas for Marie to take care of her baby if anything ever happens to her. Marie lies to the police and tells them Nora was her sister so she can keep the baby. Still angry at Mike for telling her she’s acting like a spoiled child, Robin goes out with Karl to avoid a family dinner with the Bauers. Robin thinks Mark only adopted her because of Kathy and doesn’t think he really loves her. Not wanting to live with Mark and Ruth and thinking that Meta will marry Bruce, an alienated Robin looks for a place of her own. She wants Karl to keep it a secret that they are dating but people are starting to catch on. Papa goes in for gall stone surgery.
-11/2/59-11/30/59. Robin is feeling more and more unwanted. Mark is getting tired of Robin’s selfishness. Mike warns Karl that if he gets involved with Robin that he’ll regret it for the rest of his life. Marie’s hopes are restored when she and Dick meet with a lawyer who thinks they will be able to adopt Nora’s baby. This is immediately called into question when Nora’s parents, who Nora said were dead, show up looking for Nora. Robin argues with Meta that Mark isn’t really her father. She says Bob Lang is her father even though he died before she was born. Meta is shocked to find out Robin’s going by Robin Lang, not Robin Holden, as her acting name. Mark thinks Robin is using Karl to get back at Mark and Ruth and that Karl will be hurt.
-12/1/59-12/31/59. Meta thinks Robin’s new passion for acting is because she’s trying to escape herself. She warns Robin that no matter how great the part is she’s playing, the curtain always comes down. Dick is kicking himself for not trusting his instincts about Nora and not forbidding Marie to have anything to do with her. Bill, Bert and Meta go over to Paul and Anne’s to celebrate Christmas Eve and are happy to see Bruce when he arrives there from NYC. Papa, Meta, Bruce, Bill, Bert, Mike, Ed and Robin celebrate Christmas Day. Bruce gives Meta an engagement ring which she accepts. Laura crashes Marie’s meeting with Nora’s parents and sticks her nose into everything. Joe goes over to see Nora’s parents to try to persuade them to let Marie adopt the baby. Having not met Dick but having met Laura and hating her, Nora’s mother, Ruby, doesn’t want Dick to have the baby if he’s as snobby as his mother is. Dick reaches his breaking point with Marie and her obsession with the baby. Johnny Fletcher is born to Paul and Anne on New Year’s Eve as we say goodbye to the 50s and hello to the 60s.
By
Reverend Ruthledge ·
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