Me and My Shadows: A Family Memoir (33 page)

One day I got so frustrated that I decided to pad my chest and hips before I went out so I would look more “womanly.” I can still remember my father’s face when I walked out with my new curves stuffed into place. Far from being impressed, he looked at me incredulously and said, “Are you kidding?” I, of course, burst into tears and went running back to my room. No one understood me. No one ever does understand you when you’re sixteen.

Worst of all, of course, I missed my mother. Sometimes I missed her so much I could hardly stand it, and the fact that I couldn’t let my feelings show made everything that much worse. At school everyone stared at me for weeks after her death, and I felt like some kind of freak. They would point and whisper everywhere I went. I used to think, “They stared at me when she was alive, and now they stare at me because she’s dead. Isn’t it ever going to stop?” I couldn’t cry at home because it would upset my
brother. Besides, I didn’t want to upset Dad, who looked as sad as I felt most of the time.

When I went out in public, strangers would come up to me almost daily, fall on my shoulders crying, and say things like, “We know how you feel. We loved her, too.” And a lot of times, it would make me sad. I’d think, “You don’t know how I feel. You have no idea how I feel. You didn’t lose
your
mother. You didn’t even know her.” But then I would feel guilty and think, “What are you thinking? God, you’re such a bitch,” and I would try to make them feel better.

After months of that kind of thing, though, I got to the point where I could hardly stand it, and I just sort of shut down. I wouldn’t talk about it, to anyone; I didn’t want to even think about it. I was like that Simon and Garfunkel lyric, “I am a rock; I am an island.” When someone tried to talk to me about my mother’s death, I would turn stone cold. Sometimes I’d even walk away. I can imagine what people must have thought of me: “Strange girl. Hard as a rock. Doesn’t even care about her own mother’s death.” But it was the only way I could survive. I was a kid, and emotionally I was on overload.

I relived some of that pain recently with the passing of my dear friends Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed. Prince William and Prince Harry are almost the same ages Joe and I were when our mother died, and the sight of their solemn little faces brought it all back—my mother’s death, the flowers, the processions, the international television coverage. My mother’s death wasn’t as public as their mother’s, but the similarities are striking. I understand their pain, for everywhere they look, they see their mother’s image; everywhere they go, someone is watching for their reaction. It is an endless, agonizing process. It is even harder to bear when you’re never left alone to grieve.

I could never get away from my mother’s passing. For months afterward, every time I walked into a drugstore, I would see Mama’s face staring back at me from a magazine cover. When I
went home and turned on the TV for escape, one of her movies would be playing. In the months following her death, every station in L.A. ran her movies as a tribute, everything from the Andy Hardy series to
Judgment at Nuremberg.
For a long time it seemed as though
The Million Dollar Movie
on TV was always running one of my mom’s films. It was endless. I soon came to dread the sight of her on television, to cringe at the sound of her voice on tape. It was years before I could listen to her sing again without pain. I just wanted to be left alone to heal.

The only time I had any sense of privacy was at night. Out of sight of staring strangers and the sympathetic but often intrusive gaze of my new stepmother, I could crawl under the covers and be a little girl again. For weeks after the funeral I cried myself to sleep at night. I missed my mother’s touch, I missed the laughter and the insanely funny stories she used to tell, and most of all I missed the fact that I couldn’t just pick up a phone and hear her voice on the other end. At the same time I was still shell-shocked from my years of combat duty at my mother’s side. I didn’t sleep well, especially in the early hours of the morning, and when the phone rang unexpectedly, I still jumped as though I’d been shot, expecting to hear her screaming at me from the receiver because I’d let her down again. That reaction went on for years. I used to wonder if I’d ever hear the phone ring without twitching. It was all very painful.

Sometimes, though, I would feel her presence with me when I was alone at night, and in those moments she was never screaming at me. She was just loving me, holding me close to comfort me the way she had when I was small. Those were the precious moments. I hung onto them with all my might.

Inevitably, the target of all my pent-up frustration and resentment was Patti Hemingway. Poor Patti. My dad had started seeing her nearly three years before my mom died. She was a model and an aspiring actress that my father halfheartedly tried to make a star, but her career never really got off the ground. For one thing, my dad had still been too caught up in my mom’s career (not to
mention her personal life) to have much energy left over for anyone else. Patti was a good soul, kindhearted and loyal to my father in spite of the fact that he would have dropped her in a second if he and my mother had gotten back together.

She was good to all three of us from the beginning, and after my mother’s death she heroically launched into the task of taking care of my dad and two very confused stepchildren. Naturally, I didn’t appreciate any of her good qualities at the time; I just wanted her to go away so I could have my father all to myself. (Remember what happened to baby Joey? I was never very good at sharing my parents!) As far as I was concerned, I had just lost my mother, and now Patti was trying to take away my dad. I was bound and determined to drive her out of the house, and it’s a miracle I didn’t. For a long time my every waking moment was devoted to driving her crazy. If something annoyed her, I made sure to do it. She didn’t like me to wear her clothes, especially without asking, so every time she left the house, I put on something of hers. When she’d ask me about it, I’d look her in the face and say, “So what? It was hanging in the closet. It’s not
like you
were wearing it.” If she said to me, “Please put that away,” I’d throw it on the floor, point at it, and say, “What, this?” In those days I’d have set my hair on fire just to irritate her. I never did anything really drastic, although I thought about it. I was more like dripping water with attitude, twenty-four hours a day.

One evening I intentionally baited her until she completely lost her temper, purposely staging the scene for my father’s benefit. I went flying at her, and by the time my father walked through the kitchen door, Patti had me pinned to the floor, trying to subdue me. It was a real picture for my father, just as I’d intended. I used it as a photo op to say, “See, Dad? She’s so mean to me. You have to make her go away!” (I hadn’t watched my mother stage scenes all those years for nothing!) One night at dinner Patti and I screamed at each other until my father burst out in exasperation, “I can’t stand any more of this! One of you has to go!” And Patti and
I both yelled in unison, “It’s not going to be me!” We were equally stubborn.

Luckily for all of us, Patti never tried to take my mother’s place with me and Joe. For one thing, she was too young, and for another, she knew better. The truly absurd part of the situation was that throughout those early months of living together, my dad tried to keep up the pretense that he and Patti were “just friends.” He even made up a bed for himself on the couch when she spent the night and pretended that they slept separately. When I’d get up early and see Patti coming out of his room, I’d think, “Oh, right, Dad, just friends. Give me a break!” I thought the whole charade was ridiculous, but my dad was still the old-fashioned father who didn’t want his little girl to know he was sleeping with someone he wasn’t married to. After all that time, and everything we’d been through, there was a part of him that still wanted to shelter me.

I spent every waking moment fantasizing about leaving California and going back to New York, to my friends, to the clubs, to my sister, to the lifestyle I’d grown accustomed to. I thought my schoolmates in California were so out of it, so “unhip.” I wanted to be back in the Village with the cool people. I wanted to be anywhere but in school.

Ironically, though, it turned out to be school that eventually got me out of L.A. for good. Patti was tired of the long drive twice daily from Los Angeles to my school in Pacific Palisades (when I didn’t play hooky and refuse to go), so my dad decided to transfer me to the local school, University High in West Los Angeles. The new school was slightly more interesting than Pali High—a little less white bread, a little more ethnic and hip—but more important, it had an excellent music program. By that time I hadn’t sung in a long while, not since my days performing in my mom’s show, but at Uni High I started singing again. The music teacher there was named Mr. McGruder, and he got me started singing with the band. I would come in a couple of hours a day and practice with the band, and it was fun. I liked it, and I started learning more about
music and working on my performing skills. Somebody heard me singing with the band, and this led to an offer to sing on the
Merv Griffin Show,
which was taped in L.A. at the time. Mr. McGruder did some arrangements for me and helped me rehearse, and my dad took me to Beverly Hills and got me a pink-and-burgundy velvet pants outfit, and I got to sing on TV. Now, this was more like it. For the first time in a long while, I was starting to enjoy myself again.

The
Merv Griffin Show
turned out to be only the beginning. Michael Butler, who was producing the road company of
Hair,
called and asked me to audition for the show. Auditions were being held in L.A. for the San Francisco production, so I went down to the Aquarius Theater on Hollywood and Vine and tried out, along with several hundred other girls. Some of the girls were really good, especially one girl named Delores, but I was happy with my own audition, too. I sang well, and I had a great time. Afterward I went back to school and pretty much forgot about the whole thing. I wasn’t expecting to get the role, and I had another TV singing appearance lined up, so I felt fine about the way things were going. What I didn’t know until many years later was that I had, in fact, gotten the part in
Hair,
but my dad hadn’t told me. Sid eventually told me that the producers had called to tell him I had the part, but he hadn’t told me because he didn’t want me leaving home at sixteen to perform, especially in a show that required me to do nude scenes onstage. I wasn’t mad at him; I wouldn’t have wanted to do the nude scenes, either, but I did wish he’d told me. It would have been a real boost to my self-confidence just to know that I’d gotten the role.

It was only six months later, during the beginning of senior year at Uni High, that I got what seemed like my big break. I was asked to audition for
Lolita, My Love,
a new Broadway musical based on the novel by Vladimir Nabokov. The show, produced by Norman Twain, featured a score by Alan Jay Lerner and John Barry. Tito Capobianco, a crazy opera director, staged it. I
auditioned in L.A. for the part of Lolita’s best friend (I was a skinny brunette, not the buxom little blonde they needed for the title role). When they called to tell me I’d gotten the part, I was so excited I could hardly contain myself. I couldn’t believe it—Broadway! My dream come true.

My dad agreed to let me take the part, booked me into the Barbizon Hotel for Women in New York, and helped me make all the arrangements. My big break had finally come. I was escaping Los Angeles and the prison of school and homework, and I was leaving for New York and the lights of Broadway. Like the two generations before me, I was packing my bags and heading across a continent to find my destiny in show business. I wasn’t afraid. After all, what could go wrong?

I don’t know what was in my father’s mind as he drove me to the L.A. airport for my flight to New York. He was happy for me; this was my dream, and he knew it. But looking back, I know it must also have been very hard for him. His little girl was leaving home alone, facing all the challenges of the toughest of businesses in the toughest of cities, and somewhere in the back of his mind, he must have been remembering all the things my mother had gone through walking down this same path.

With the ignorant optimism of youth, though, I was blissfully confident, certain I wouldn’t be repeating my parents’ mistakes, exhilarated by the prospect of what lay before me. My family and friends saw me off at the airport terminal, and I boarded the plane clutching my rehearsal schedule and counting the minutes until I landed in the city of my dreams. When the plane touched down in New York, I was eighteen, not much older than my mom had been when she went there with Mickey Rooney on her first publicity tour. It was the most exciting day of my life.

Norman Twain, the producer, was waiting to greet me at the terminal and took me over to baggage claim to wait for my luggage. As we waited, he chatted about the show and then casually mentioned that one of the
Lolita
cast members had been fired
earlier that day. He said it offhandedly, as if it was just another bit of gossip. For the first time a tiny warning bell rang in the back of my mind, and I said anxiously, “But that couldn’t happen to me, could it?”

He replied, “Oh, no. I mean, I don’t think so. Why would it?” Temporarily reassured, I claimed my luggage, and he saw me safely to the hotel. The next morning I was up bright and early, taking a cab to the first rehearsal of my Broadway career.

At first everything was fine. I met John Barry, Alan Jay Lerner, the great John Neville, Leonard Frey, and the rest of the creative team. The musical director spent a lot of time with me teaching me my numbers, and everything went great. The next day I worked awhile with the director, whom we’d nicknamed the crazy Ukrainian, and that went great, too. Then the third day something rather odd happened, though I didn’t register it at the time. A rather unattractive girl showed up at rehearsal. No one introduced her to me, but it seemed as if everywhere I went, she was right behind me. I thought she must be a production assistant and didn’t think too much about it. Every day for two weeks it was the same routine—show up and work with the cast and directors while this girl hung around me for no apparent reason.