Me and My Shadows: A Family Memoir (46 page)

I cried with joy and pain as they put the baby in my arms. My son peered back at me through swollen eyes. He’d had as bad a day as I had. Black-and-blue from head to toe, he looked more like a prizefighter than an infant. The nurses joked that he looked as if he’d been boxing all the other babies in the nursery. But he was healthy, and he was mine, and I didn’t care if he did look like a little Joe Louis. He was my son. Jake was beside himself with excitement.

Meanwhile, the hospital corridor outside the operating room was rapidly turning into a circus. Liza had arrived a few minutes before Jesse’s birth, complete with her entourage, insisting that she be let in. What a sight they made—Liza, still made up from her performance in
The Rink
that night; Joe Pesci; Liza’s bodyguard, a former Hell’s Angel; and Gail, Liza’s limo driver. When the nurses told Liza that she and the others couldn’t come in, Liza pulled out eight-by-ten glossies of herself and began offering to autograph them as bribes for the hospital staff! One thing about my sister; she knows how to make an entrance. When Jesse finally did arrive,
Jake came out and took Liza and the whole bunch back to my room. We opened a huge bottle of champagne that Liza and Jack Haley had given Jake and I years before for our wedding, and everyone drank a toast to me and Jesse.

By that time, I was in a haze. Afterward the staff kicked everyone out, gave me a blast of painkillers, and left me to fall into an exhausted sleep. The next morning I awoke to a room overflowing with flowers, so many flowers that I didn’t know if I’d had a baby or died. There were flowers from Dad, Joe, Liza, my godparents, a whole host of friends. The most remarkable arrangement was from Al Pacino—a huge swan figure with white flowers actually growing on it. I drifted in and out of consciousness all day, overpowered by medication and the fragrance of all those flowers.

My pleasant daydream came to an abrupt end the night after the delivery. I decided I wanted to keep Jesse in the room with me all night, so I could nurse him and be close by. What a mistake that was. I had full responsibility for the baby that night, for the first time, and I just wasn’t ready. Jesse was fussy, but when I got up to feed him, he couldn’t really nurse, so I would change his diaper and try to get him back to sleep. Every time I sat up or got out of bed to pick him up, it was pure agony. Between my broken tailbone and the stitches where I’d ripped, I could hardly bear to move.

The low point of that endless night came when I went to the small refrigerator across the room, leaned on it as I tried to open the door, and the refrigerator fell over on me, knocking me to the floor. Al Pacino’s beautiful flower swan, balanced on the refrigerator’s top, landed on me, too. I just lay there for a while, felt sorry for myself, and cried, as Jesse cried with me. The next morning, when the nurse came to take Jesse to the nursery, she asked me when I wanted her to bring him back again. “When he’s in college,” I moaned, and she chuckled on her way out the door.

I hoped things would get better when they let me take the baby home a few days later. They didn’t. Like most new mothers,
I had rosy visions of a cozy nest and an adorable infant. Jesse was adorable all right, but life wasn’t perfectly rosy. To begin with, I felt terrible. The difficult birth had taken its toll on my body, and I didn’t recover overnight. I had a tailbone to knit, stitches to heal, and a whole lot of weight to lose. Worse, I discovered I’d hired the baby nurse from hell.

Jake and I had hired someone to help with Jesse during my first weeks home, since I didn’t have a mother or aunt to do it. She was an older woman with a thick European accent who turned out to have a serious attitude problem. I nicknamed her Eva Braun. She was about as flexible as the average Nazi, which meant she immediately put Jesse on a rigid schedule and wouldn’t let me interfere. She loved the baby but considered me an unfortunate inconvenience.

Nothing I did was right in her eyes; if I picked up Jesse and he cried, she would tell me it was because he didn’t like me to hold him. I was anxious to learn the right way to care for my son, but instead of teaching me, “Eva” would hardly let me touch my own son. On the other hand, she expected me to meet her needs. By the time she’d been there a few days, I was cooking her meals and going to the kitchen to bring her juice while she rocked my baby.

I was sunk in postpartum depression, in tears all the time. I begged Jake to fire her. I should have done it myself, but I was too demoralized. The woman scared me to death. Jake finally gave her notice, but it seemed like forever before we got her out of the house.

The problem then was that I was still exhausted, hurting, and overwhelmed by taking care of Jesse. Jake was wonderful with the baby, playing with him and admiring him for hours on end, but when it came to taking care of Jesse, I was on my own. I did all the feeding, diapering, and getting up several times a night. Furthermore, though Jake was never unkind to me, he wasn’t much of a support, either. He expected me to be my old self within days
after Jesse’s birth. He couldn’t understand my continual exhaustion and was frustrated when I didn’t want to go out on the town during my first weeks home from the hospital. Bored, he would open a bottle of wine the minute I put Jesse down each evening, and for the rest of the night, he sat and drank while I was dying for companionship.

My friends weren’t much better. They’d arrive at our house and head straight for the baby, as though I were invisible. One of the things they don’t warn you about is the way you disappear once the baby is born. During the pregnancy everyone makes a fuss over you and pats your stomach, but once the baby arrives, everyone loses interest in the mother. I was lonely and dying for attention and affection, and to make it worse, I was guilty and ashamed of being envious of my own baby. I adored Jesse, but sometimes I wished people would notice me, too. It was like my little brother Joey coming home from the hospital all over again; I would think, “But what about me?” And of course, the minute the thought crossed my mind, I’d guiltily tell myself not to be so selfish.

Sid and Joe flew out and stayed for a few days, which was wonderful, but they soon returned to California, and Liza never came by during those early weeks. When I recovered from the birth, I’d take Jesse over to her place, but she’d say, “He’s so cute—gotta go!” and be out of there in no time. I’m sure she didn’t mean to neglect me; I think being with Jesse was just too painful for her right then. She’d lost a baby herself four years before, a little girl born prematurely at six and a half months, and had no children of her own. I think the reality of my new baby was just too much for her.

The worst of it was the postpartum depression. No one had prepared me for that, either. My body was going through hormone hell, and the result was a deep depression that overwhelmed me with sadness and guilt. After all, here I had this
beautiful baby son, and I was sad and lonely.
What was wrong with me?
I wondered.

And most of all, I missed my mother. I missed her so much during those first weeks that I could hardly stand it. For the first time in years, I was overwhelmed again with grief and anger over her loss. Where was she when I needed her? I had this wonderful child, her only grandchild, and I wanted desperately to show him to her, but she wasn’t there. All of the pain I’d felt during the first years after her death came back again. “Goddamnit,” I’d think, “why aren’t you here? Why can’t I pick up the phone and talk to you? Why aren’t you ever here when I need you?” I had a million questions I needed to ask her about Jesse, about what I was going through, and I couldn’t ask her. I needed a woman to talk to, to share the joy and anxiety and confusion with, and to make sense out of what was happening to me. I needed my mother and she wasn’t there.

Eventually, of course, things did get better. Jesse got cuter with every day that passed. Once the bruises and the swelling went away, he turned into a handsome little replica of his father. He was a good baby, too; and within three weeks of his birth, he was actually sleeping through the night most of the time. My body gradually recovered, too. The pain went away as the birth damage healed, and as I began regaining my strength, I ate better and my weight started going down.

A month after Jesse’s birth, in fact, was the best day of my entire adult life—my first Mother’s Day. For fifteen years, ever since my mother had died, I’d hated Mother’s Day. Each year as it approached, I would get terribly depressed because my mother was gone. But the year Jesse was born, everything changed. As I held my infant son that first Mother’s Day, I was flooded with joy. Jesse’s birth redeemed the holiday for me. Ever since then, Mother’s Day has been my favorite day of the year, better even than my birthday. It is the day I count my blessings. When my daughter
was born seven years later, she only confirmed the sense of blessedness I’d already learned from my son.

A
s important as my son was to me, though, being a full-time mother was out of the question. I had to work again, as soon as possible. As the saying goes, baby needs new shoes, and I was the wage earner in the family. Jake was managing Rick Derringer, too, but as Rick’s manager he got only a small percentage of Rick’s fees. As my husband, he got all of mine, so most of our income came from me. That meant I needed to go back to work as soon as I recovered. Jake had been supportive of the pregnancy, but he was also very anxious for me to get back to work.

Work had come first in our relationship for a long time by then. Even when I’d had the miscarriage three years earlier, I’d been back singing and dancing in a club two days later. Jake insisted I keep the engagement. The Lazares actually sat in the front row holding smelling salts in case I fainted onstage because I was still anemic from the loss of blood.

By the time Jesse was six weeks old, I was back performing again, with my sweet Jamaican housekeeper to take care of him while I did.

I
was coming to another major crossroads. I knew I needed someone else to manage my career if my marriage was going to survive, so I signed with a successful management firm run by a man named Bob Lemond. Bob suggested Jake and I leave New York and move to California permanently. He thought I’d gone about as far as I could go right then in New York theater, and I would be better off living in L.A. and doing movies and television. Bob told me a move to Los Angeles would mean less traveling, more job security, and a better environment for Jesse.

I was ready for a change. When Bob Lemond suggested I shake the dust of New York from my feet, it sounded pretty good.
Jake and I talked it over and agreed that the move to California would be a good thing, both for my career and for our family. We began making arrangements to lease our apartment. If things went well in California, Jake would return to New York and put it up for sale.

© Phil Stern

Liza and me in our backyard on Mapleton Drive, 1956.

E
ver since I walked onstage in my first professional part, people have been comparing me to my sister. They compare our height, our hair color, our voices, everything. Reviewers debate about which one of us is a better dancer or singer, and which one of us sings more like our mother. Columnists invariably refer to Liza as “Judy’s Daughter” and to me as “Judy’s Other Daughter,” as though I were somehow less related to my mother than my older sister is. Show business gurus analyze our relative success and speculate about our relationship. Implicit in all of this is the assumption that Liza and I are in competition with each other, consumed by sibling rivalry that originated at home and spilled over onto the stage. Also implicit in the comments is the belief that Liza was in competition with my mother onstage. Neither belief could be further from the truth.

The ironic thing about all of these rumors is that two people who have never shared this public obsession are me and my sister. Liza and I have never felt that we were in competition. I was fiercely proud of my sister when she first achieved professional recognition; my whole family was. Mama and Joey and I were always in the front row cheering, the same way the Gumm Sisters had cheered for each other all those years ago. After my mother
was gone, I continued to catch Liza’s act whenever I could; I was proud to know that the phenomenon on that stage was my sister. I was thrilled by her work in
Cabaret
and bragged about her to anyone who would listen. I never tried to compare myself to my sister professionally; as far as I was concerned, Liza was in a league of her own. Liza has always been equally supportive of me. When I was first trying to launch a career, Liza was there in the front row cheering for me. We’ve never felt that each other’s success did anything but enhance both of us. From the time Joe and I first began taking refuge in Liza and Peter Allen’s apartment during those late-night crises, Liza and I have been not only sisters but friends.