My Mother Was Nuts (23 page)

It turned out I was right.

Penny as a baby with Marjorie in the Bronx, 1943
Marshall personal collection

O
NE DAY WHEN I WAS
in high school, I found three envelopes in my mother’s desk. They were addressed to Garry, Ronny, and me, and each one said, “In the Event of My Death.” I opened the one for me, of course, and found a typewritten letter from my mother saying that she knew I stole her laundry quarters and used them to go to the movies with Marsha.

I had forgotten about those letters until one day in late December 1983. My brother was in Hawaii. I was in New York for the holiday with Artie and Carrie. Only Ronny was in L.A. She got the call from my parents’ housekeeper, who was crying hysterically, “You’ve got to come! Right now. Hurry.”

My mother had passed away. When Ronny got to their house, she saw our mother lying in bed, lifeless. She stood a few feet inside the room not knowing what to do or what to feel, sadness or relief. Dealing with my mother’s Alzheimer’s had been a challenge. We were fortunate to have the means to do it on our terms. We had moved my parents to a comfortable house in Toluca Lake so my father could be near his country club and my mother near her doctors. When she required specialized care, we put her in a facility. When that made her anxious, we brought her home and got round-the-clock care.

They had a Polish housekeeper who took wonderful care of her. My mother watched television a lot, and as long as she could laugh we felt like she was in a good place. She continued to hate my father until she faded further into the dementia. Then she thought he was her father, and she liked him.

She was aware that we were building a dance theater in her honor at Garry’s and my sister’s alma mater, Northwestern University. Garry had started the ball rolling in 1980, and we had shown my mother the architect’s drawings. Construction took two years, though, and in that time her condition went steadily downhill. Like my brother and sister, I would sit by her bed and talk, reminisce, and give her progress reports on this very nice tribute to her.

Finally, in 1982, the Marjorie Ward Marshall Dance Center was completed. All of us went back for the dedication. We smiled, reminisced, and cried through the whole ceremony, wishing she could have been there with us. In a way, she was.

By then, however, she was in a coma and we knew time was running short. She lingered through the holidays, and that’s when Ronny got the call. We had never talked about death or dying when we were growing up. As my mother would have said, it was an unhappy subject. Poor Ronny didn’t know what she was supposed to do next. Since I wasn’t there, I’ll let her describe what happened:

RONNY
: We don’t know shit. But I find a letter saying she has left her body to researchers at USC. I call the number on the thing. Well, it’s the holiday, so nobody’s there. What do I do with the body? I don’t know. Meanwhile, Garry’s housekeeper Maria is crying hysterically. She called her sister Lupe to come over. They cover the mirrors and are both wailing. I had my kids come over. And Tracy. Then my daughter and Tracy go in the bedroom and fight over my mother’s necklace, which I think is a diamond.

I still don’t know what to do with her body. I keep calling the number at USC. Someone finally answers, but they transfer me, and then I get another person, a lady whose name was Mrs. De-Witt. I said, “I don’t know what to do. She died and left her body to
science, but apparently science is closed for the holiday. What do I do?”

She put me in touch with her son who ran a mortuary. Soon two guys came in a station wagon, put her in the back, and off they went. I didn’t get a name or a number. Then a few days later Garry and his family returned from Hawaii and he asked, “Where’s Mom?” I didn’t know. “Did you get a receipt?” No. “A name of who took her?” No.

Eventually someone called and said USC was open and they had taken her there. I thought that was that, they’d keep her. But a few months later they wrote a letter and said, All right, we’re finished with her. Where do you want the remains sent? I had no idea. Now we were back to the same question as before: What do we do with her?

My sister left out a tiny part of the story. Mrs. DeWitt’s son ran the Clinton Mortuary. Ronny heard DeWitt and Clinton together and thought it was a good omen since my brother had gone to DeWitt Clinton High School. I don’t know. People make strange connections under stress.

We had my mother cremated and hosted a small service for family and friends. My brother scattered some of her ashes at the Marjorie Ward Marshall Dance Center at Northwestern, which was nice, and my father put some of her ashes in their front yard among the roses, which, as he knew, my mother hated.

That left one last request. Many years before she had let us know that she wanted her ashes thrown out over Broadway. I volunteered. I flew to New York with Tracy and my brother sent a candy tin to Artie’s containing the ashes in a Ziploc baggie. Then Tracy and I went up to Lorne Michaels’ seventeenth-floor office overlooking Broadway. I opened the window and removed the tin from my purse.

It was a chilly day out, as I recall. I felt a slight but steady wind as I stuck my hand out to gauge the direction my mother was going to blow. What did I know? I didn’t want her blowing back at me or into
Lorne’s office. And how was I supposed to do this? All at once? Little by little?

I grew sentimental about her life and the life she had given all of us, including me, the accident, the bad seed. I thought about the letter she had written me way back when, the one addressed “In the Event of My Death.” She had known about the quarters I stole. I’m sure she had known much more than that about me. She was nuts. But she was also something else.

After a deep breath, I shook the baggie in the open air and watched as the ashes swirled in the sky over Broadway. It struck me that, once again, she was dancing. I turned to Tracy, then back toward the sky, and all of a sudden I felt the need to say something. I wanted to say good-bye to this quirky woman whose creativity and passion had brought joy to so many lives, including mine. But what was there to say?

She had wanted to entertain and she had been very entertaining. Then the ashes were gone. The dance was done. And you know what? At that moment the words came to me. My mother had written a song that we sang at the end of every recital, and this was the end of her show. So there in Lorne’s office, as I dumped her ashes into the sky over Broadway, I sang the song again:

Remember the fun we had friends
Remember the singers sweet
Remember the dainty dancers
And don’t forget though we’ll never meet
That we like to entertain you
And now that we are through
We hope you’ll remember us, friends
As we will remember you
.

—
MARJORIE MARSHALL’S DANCE REVIEW

Art Garfunkel and Penny on vacation in Barbados
Carrie Fisher / Tracy Reiner

I
T HAD BEEN ONE
of those years. Tracy had dropped out of Bennington, fallen in love with Francis Ford Coppola’s son, Gio, and run off to Europe with him. (Francis sent books, I sent money.) I finally bought a house of my own, a probate in the Hollywood Hills that Jim Belushi and Tracy’s ex–musician boyfriend, Jonathan Melvoin, lived in while the wallpaper was taken off, new floors put in, and other work done.

I spent a week or so in London visiting director Miloš Forman, who was prepping his movie
Amadeus
. We had sat next to each other at an event in New York for dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov and choreographer Twyla Tharp. I thought he was funny, and he’d never heard of
Laverne & Shirley
. Once in London, I decided to quit smoking. It didn’t make me the greatest houseguest. Miloš said, “Why don’t you visit someone you hate?”

Well, I joined Artie on the Simon and Garfunkel tour in Australia and New Zealand. Jimmy and Jonathan sent me a postcard there: “Roses are red, violets are blue, wish you were here, glad you are not!” I dropped ecstasy in St. Bart’s, rented a house for the summer in the Hamptons, drifted away from Artie, enjoyed a lovely relationship with
Saturday Night Live
bandleader Howard Shore (he bought me a
bike and suggested I get healthy), and then I sort of got back together with Artie (but not really).

Paul and Carrie also got married, and I sailed up the Nile in Egypt with them on their honeymoon. And that was all before my mother died. Then, after saying good-bye to her, I stayed in New York, where my plans to do absolutely nothing for a while were interrupted by Lorne. He asked me to be on his new comedy series,
The New Show
. He asked everyone: Steve Martin, Gilda, Carrie, Buck Henry, John Candy. All of us said yes. No one refused Lorne.

Booked on the third show, I appeared in skits with Raul Julia and Randy Newman, who was also the musical guest. I also danced with the Dynamic Breakers, a group of street dancers, and surprised people with some unexpectedly slick moves, including kick-throughs, the Worm, and a head spin. At forty-one years old, I still had a lot of kid inside me.

I went home to L.A. where I still had a ton of work yet to do on my new house. Tracy helped me unpack the boxes that had been in storage since we had moved out of Encino. I puttered around. I loved the views that stretched from downtown L.A. to the ocean. But as I put down roots, I found myself asking an unfamiliar question: “Now what?”

Randy Newman, knowing I was best when I was busy, pushed me to work with John Ritter in the TV movie
Love Thy Neighbor
. “You should do
something
,” he said. “John is funny.” Suddenly Randy was my guidance counselor. As things turned out, though, I needed more advice than he could provide.

In March, producer Larry Gordon called and asked me to go to the Academy Awards with him. He had produced
Terms of Endearment
with Jim, and he needed a date for Hollywood’s biggest night. I accepted. I had visited Jim on the set of
Terms
. Even though I can’t think of anything more boring than being on someone else’s set, I was interested in watching Jim work. It was his first movie, and he was on his game. I knew that I’d learn something.

At night we went to Jack Nicholson’s, and Debra Winger was there.
Jack was always entertaining. After a few hours, some cheerleaders for the Houston Rockets basketball team came over, which pissed off Debra, who in turn pissed off Jack, and it ended as one of those nights.

Terms of Endearment
dominated the Academy Awards, winning five Oscars, including Jack for Best Actor, Shirley for Best Actress, and Jim for Best Director, Best Picture, and Best Adapted Screenplay. It was extraordinary and well deserved, especially for Jim. Later, following the Governor’s Ball, I went to a party at On the Rox, the private club above the Roxy on Sunset, and I saw Debra there. She had been nominated for Best Supporting Actress but didn’t win. Others from
Terms
had also been nominated and not won, including John Lithgow and Polly Platt. But you’re only human, you know?

I sat down with Debra, knowing she must have felt like shit, and we talked and smoked for what seemed like the rest of the night. She told me about the next movie she was going to make, a romance called
Peggy Sue Got Married
. Somehow I had already read the script about this woman who goes back in time and falls in love with her husband again. I liked movies with themes that gave them universal appeal like
Peggy Sue’
s main question: “If only I could go back in time, would I do the same things?” People could easily identify with those kind of stories.

“Why don’t you direct it?” Debra said.

Her question surprised me.

“I don’t direct,” I said.

“Well, maybe you will,” she said.

Debra went to Ray Stark, whose company was producing the movie, and said she wanted me to direct. They were a group of hard-nosed movie veterans with their own definite views, but because they wanted Debra, they agreed to let me direct. But make no mistake about it, they never wanted me. Unfortunately I was too unsophisticated about the business to know that.