You Have No Idea: A Famous Daughter, Her No-Nonsense Mother, and How They Survived Pageants, Hollywood, Love, Loss (11 page)

She’d grab my hand and show me how to shake it firmly while
looking directly into the person’s eyes. “People judge you on these things,” she’d explain. “You want to always make a good first impression.”

HELEN’S REASONS FOR WHY CHILDREN SHOULD PLAY AN INSTRUMENT

• Children develop a sense of stick-to-it-iveness in order to master an instrument.

• Children learn a skill they will have for the rest of their lives.

• Children understand how to work with a group in a way that’s different from all other activities. They are a piece of a puzzle, all working toward a common goal.

• Children who play instruments tend to do better academically because they’re better organized.

After dinner we’d load the dishwasher. Then music would fill the house all over again. Chris and I would have to practice our instruments. While I played French horn, Chris played piano. When we were finished, I would take over the piano and Chris would pick up his oboe. Dad taught us the instruments, but as we improved, Mom picked up the piano lessons because she was an excellent pianist and organist.

Sometimes, however, I just wanted to head into the living room and watch TV—
The Brady Bunch, I Dream of Jeannie, Bewitched, Good Times
, and
Sanford and Son
were some of my favorites. But since the fourth grade, I’ve had to play two instruments. No questions. It was a Williams family rule that sometimes drove me crazy.

Once, I ran away from home to escape practicing the piano. I’d
had enough. I took a few of my stuffed animals and my sleeping bag and announced that I was leaving for good.

“That’s fine. Just don’t cross the street,” Mom had said. I hid in the woods behind the house until it started getting dark and I began hearing strange animal sounds. Then I ran back home, deciding it was easier to practice than to escape.

While the weekdays were filled with music, the weekends had a much different sound—the whir of a cement mixer, the high pitch of a drill, the banging of a hammer, the buzzing of a saw. Dad was constantly building, fixing, renovating, plowing, creating. My dad was a Renaissance man, an inventor—he even built me a car seat before there were such things as car seats. He sawed off the legs of an old high chair and strapped the contraption in between the driver’s and passenger’s seats of our blue Ford Econoline van. Then we’d head off on road trips—to our cabin (that he built) in the Poconos, or to visit relatives in Buffalo or Baltimore.

My mom loved nice things for her home and my dad would love to build them for her. My childhood home was a brick-and-mortar love letter to my mother. If my mom casually mentioned, “Oh, I’d love a bigger deck,” my dad would say, “Okay,” and he’d start planning that day. He’d write up the plans and draw sketches. He had a bunch of how-to books on the bookshelf (which he built, of course), and he would figure everything out and do it himself. For a while he and a teaching buddy had a deck-building company called Dexterity, but he preferred home projects. He loved being home and around his family. In the summertime, when he was off from school, he was always working around the house on some project.

When I was a toddler, my mom said, “Wouldn’t it be nice to have a pool?” The next day, Dad bought a book on how to build a pool. He spent the winter months devouring every aspect of pool
construction. When the earth thawed in the spring, he began excavating. By summer the Williams family had a beautiful vinyl-lined inground swimming pool—the only one in the neighborhood. My dad did everything. He never stopped working.

My mom would call the house I grew up in “your dad’s house,” because the house we moved into and the house it became were two different places. Dad blew out the back and added a den. He extended the upstairs porch. He poured concrete and put in a driveway. He built the deck. He built ramps and retaining walls. The house became my dad’s artistic vision.

Our garage was the stuff of legends—at least in our small town. We lived right on Route 100, which is a major connecting street, and people all over town would idle their cars when they passed to take a look inside dad’s garage. It was stacked floor to ceiling with Dad’s tools, supplies, and equipment. There was no room to park a car.

While my mom, Chris, and I saw complete chaos, my dad saw methodical organization. He could find whatever he needed. He was the guy all the neighbors went to for tools, advice, and help. When I got older and had a home of my own, I never ever had to call a handyman. I’d just call Dad with my problems—a noisy furnace, a leak, an air conditioner that wouldn’t work. He’d be right over and he’d fix it.

If you asked my mom to describe Dad, she’d say he was a “very serious man.” It’s funny because I never thought of him as serious at all. He’s the man who lit up a room when he walked in and always laughed louder and longer than anyone else. But my mom had such a different take on him.

The other day, I was driving along Mulholland in Los Angeles and I saw pant legs sticking out from underneath a car. I got a lump in my throat because it reminded me so much of my dad. If Dad wasn’t building or gardening, he was repairing a car. He had the brain of an engineer, mechanic, and nutty professor. People would
marvel at his mechanical skills. He could take an engine apart, spread it out on the sidewalk, and put it back together.

One time he bought an old red Fiat 128. It wasn’t unique enough, so he bought a compressor and then turned the garage into an auto body shop. He transformed the Fiat into a silver sports machine with a groovy racing stripe down the side. I learned how to drive in that car (stick shift on the dirt road behind a big pond at Gedney Park).

When I picture my dad, he’s always wearing work boots, work pants, and a T-shirt. He’s always sweaty. He always has a handkerchief in his pocket, and he takes it out and wipes his brow. He had calloused hands that he’d wash the dirt from in the utility sink next to the washer and dryer. On top of the sink he always had a tin with grease remover. He would scrub his hands until he’d clean off all the oil from the cars, or the dirt from the garden that was wedged underneath his fingernails. The smells of paint or freshly sawed wood are the smells of my father.

If my dad and mom were working, so were Chris and I. We couldn’t just plop down in front of the television and watch cartoons all day. (Although sometimes I wished I could!) When we were little, we’d hand our dad tools—wrenches, screws, hammers—while he worked. As we got older, we’d paint, mow the lawn, pull weeds from the garden, dig, plant. We had our regular chores (I’d clean the bathrooms; Chris vacuumed) as well as washing clothes, sewing, ironing, but we were also expected to help out with the bigger family projects. And there always seemed to be big family projects.

(This sense of work ethic and responsibility is probably the reason why I hate being “handled.” I absolutely hate it. People hovering around me and speaking for me irks me. I’d rather do it myself than be disappointed by someone else doing it. Just give me my space, let me take care of it, and I’m happy.)

•   •   •

My dad loved gardening. He grew up in Oyster Bay on Long Island, New York, which was a very rural farming community. My dad talked about his childhood as being very free, full of exploring the woods as well as the mansions along the Gold Coast. As a child, he spent his free time gardening, picking beans, and irrigating crops.

At Oyster Bay High School on Long Island, he was very conflicted. Should he be a musician or a farmer? He played the alto saxophone and was part of the marching band. Mr. Luckenbill, his teacher, told him, “Be a musician. You’re really talented. Go to SUNY Fredonia and study music.”

But part of Dad always remained a farmer. He built a greenhouse that was lined with clay pots of all sizes. He’d plant seeds. Then he’d transfer the shoots to the huge garden where he had two-foot-by-two-foot patches fenced off for his fruits and vegetables. Dad grew everything—lettuce, corn, beans, beets, potatoes, squash, tomatoes, pumpkins, zucchini. He never used pesticides. Dad was eco-friendly before anyone knew the phrase. He was really ahead of his time.

During the summer, I’d pick tomatoes from the garden, slice them up, shake on some salt and pepper, toast some bread, and make the most delicious sandwiches. At the end of the summer, I’d set up a vegetable stand in front of the house where I’d sell zucchini and tomatoes for five cents each. Then I’d ride my bike to Elmer’s and spend my money on rock candy, Bazooka bubble gum, and my all-time favorite, Atomic FireBalls.

I was always trying to make money, whether it was selling vegetables, babysitting, or hawking Avon cosmetics door-to-door as a junior sales rep. I loved to spend my money on clothes. We might be working on a family project on a Saturday, but Mom and I would escape for a few hours to shop. That was our special time together. My mom loves to shop for bargains, and even today I like to get good deals.

We shopped at all the discount stores—Caldor, Korvette’s, Alexander’s, and Master’s. I always got the discount version of whatever was hot. One year, everybody had navy peacoats. I got my Master’s version—I have no idea who the designer was. I didn’t care that it wasn’t the “real” thing. I had it and rocked it. Who knew the difference? I bought my painter’s pants and overalls there, too. Everyone wore Frye boots, but I had my knockoffs.

Then there was my childhood lunchbox. All of my friends had cute little lunchboxes with images of the Partridge Family or the Monkees. Dad bought me a big metal construction worker’s–style lunchbox. Horrible, I thought. Dad caught me sulking and handed me a bag of big daisy stickers.

“Ness, make it your own. Dare to be different,” he said.

If I wanted something extra, I had to buy it. When I was in about seventh grade, I saved up money to buy a purple ten-speed Fuji Special Tourer bike.

My dad said, “I’ll pay for half of it and then you can pay me back when you make the money doing chores and babysitting.” My dad loved contracts. He’d have me sign a piece of paper promising to pay back however much I owed him. There were always charts on the refrigerator, detailing how much I had paid and how much I still owed.

Until I was twelve, Dad read to me every night. My childhood home was crammed with books. Dad would read anything and everything and then he’d read them to me. When I was little, it was the typical stuff—fairy tales, Dr. Seuss, nursery rhymes. My dad was always a great storyteller. He’d read a story and act it out with different voices—Donald Duck, Porky Pig, whoever. He’d make everything come alive. He’d sing and change expressions and make you feel like you were living the story. He was like the Danny Kaye of Millwood. If I had friends over, he’d be in the corner with a book surrounded by kids. He’d say, “Let me tell you the story of
the Ugly Duckling”—and then all these characters would emerge from him.

As I got older, Dad would read me psychology books such as
I’m OK-You’re OK,
Psycho-Cybernetics,
and
What Do You Say After You Say Hello?: The Psychology of Human Destiny
. My father was fascinated with psychology. The bookshelf over my parents’ bed was filled with psychology books. He devoured them all. I remember noticing a book called something like
The Frigid Woman
, and I thought,
Hint, hint, MOM!

After he’d read to me, we’d pray together. When I was a toddler, my dad taught me how to pray and I still recite the same prayer every night before I go to bed: “Now I lay me down to sleep …” But Dad didn’t say, “If I die before I wake.” He had a different version:

“
Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. May love guard me through the night and wake me with the morning light. Help me do the things we should, to be to others kind and good. In all we do and all we say, to grow more loving every day.”

I could talk to Dad about anything—school, friends, feelings. When I got older and was away at school or living on my own, I’d call the house and be like, “Hi, Mom, how are you? Is Dad home? Can I speak to Dad?” He was always the easier person to talk to. I felt I had a really strong connection with him. I’m sure Mom felt a little bit left out because we were so close. But when I look back, I think,
Wow, what a great father-daughter relationship I had.

One night when I was little, Dad finished reading a fairy tale to me and I turned to him and asked, “Daddy, why doesn’t Mommy love me? Why doesn’t she hug me?”

He looked at me and smiled. Then he spoke softly and slowly. “Well, Mommy had a really hard time growing up. The people who raised her really treated her badly. They gave her beatings. It’s hard for her to show love, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t love you. She loves you very much.”

Sometimes I wasn’t sure my mother loved me, but my dad explained my mother’s behavior in such a loving way that I could understand why she had problems showing affection. There were times I couldn’t stand my mother, but I learned early on that my mother had—I don’t want to say issues—but yes, she had issues! And even though it took a lot of work, my father was probably the only person who understood my mom—and he tried to help me understand her.

My dad had a lot of patience. He could spend countless hours teaching, explaining, and showing. I marvel at the patience he had. I can’t remember him snapping at us, ever.

My mom told me that when I was little, my dad spanked me once. For what? No one remembers. I have no recollection of this at all. I cried really hard and it just ripped him. He said he would never do it again—and he never did. He was such a caring, sensitive man.

One time I came home from my friend’s house, and I just blurted out, “Charlotte’s mom made the best hamburgers in the world! They were fried in butter and just fabulous.”

My dad took me aside and said, “You know, your mom’s burgers are really good, too—so I would definitely mention that to her.” We had a very sensitive household, but my mom was extremely sensitive, and my dad definitely took care of her feelings, her moods. He knew that she’d interpret my comment as an insult to her cooking, even though I didn’t mean it that way. I was just a kid who’d eaten a really good burger.