You Have No Idea: A Famous Daughter, Her No-Nonsense Mother, and How They Survived Pageants, Hollywood, Love, Loss (16 page)

“You’re ruining your life. You’re not going to graduate,” she screamed. What was she talking about? Of course I’d graduate!

I tried to stay calm. She’s so tiny next to me—just over five feet. So I walked out of the room. But that infuriated her, so she followed me. I kept moving. She followed. She chased me around the living room coffee table and then back into my room. Mom had become this other person I didn’t know—she was consumed with rage and fear. She got right in my face and grabbed me. I pushed her off me. She stumbled into a lamp that hit the wall and landed on the floor.

Getting physical was not something that we did in our family. My dad spanked me once and then never again. This time was different. What was going on?

When Dad and Chris returned home, we didn’t say a word.

Mom was disgusted that her anger had reached the boiling point. She was also very, very sad. I think she felt she’d lost me.

My father was just as upset with me, but he would keep it inside,
trying to understand, trying to be patient. I’m sure he’d headed to his psychology books and struggled to figure me out.

But the anger was bubbling in him as well. And then one day it just exploded.

Bruce and I had been apart since I had traveled to the Bahamas on an orchestra trip. We needed to see each other—desperately. The plan was to fake going to school. I pretended to wait for my ride on another street. Bruce parked his maroon Camaro on the next street over. I waited until the house was empty and then headed back inside. Mom and Dad were teaching all day, and Chris was at school—no one would be home for hours.

I made breakfast. Then we headed downstairs to the pullout sofa in Dad’s den and turned on the stereo full blast. We started kissing, undressing, making love, and then …

The music went off.

Uh oh.

If the music clicked off, that could only mean one thing!

“VANESSA!”

Mom was standing over us, horrified.

Performing “Love Me” as Silvia in
THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA
at Saw Mill Summer Theatre, 1979

My first lead as the Madwoman of Chaillot in
DEAR WORLD
at Horace Greeley High School

Mother Hare in
THE GOLDEN APPLE
,
Syracuse University

Posing in the Robert E. Bell Middle School gym doors with Gail, Christy, and Liz

CHAPTER

10

I
left school to deposit money in the bank at lunchtime. Then I decided to do something I never do—eat lunch at home. As I approached my home, I saw what I thought was Bruce’s car down the street, but it just never dawned on me that he’d be in the house. It was a weekday—Vanessa was supposed to be at school!

I walked into the house and was greeted by the smell of bacon and the sound of blasting music. I was completely baffled for a moment.

Who cooked bacon and why was there music on?

And then it hit me.

Vanessa!

Why would Vanessa be home when she should be at school?

Bruce!

What were they doing here?

OH MY GOD!

I stormed downstairs to the stereo and switched it off. Then I tried to gain some composure as I headed into the den.

There they were. On
my
pullout sofa.

AGHHHH!

I don’t know what I said, if I said anything. I stood there completely horrified as they quickly covered themselves up.

I was furious. I can’t remember when I ever felt that angry before or since. I was enraged and I was scared of what I’d do. I just knew I had to take a step back. I was afraid that I might hurt somebody if I stayed in that room.

I slowly walked out and tried to control myself from doing bodily damage to somebody because I was so upset, so frustrated.

I picked up the phone and very calmly spoke to Milton.

“I’m here at the house with Vanessa and Bruce. I think you should come home.”

That’s all I said. That’s all I had to say. Milton understood.

Normally it took about twenty minutes for Milton to get home from his school, but he was there in ten. He walked in the house and he was furious. And to make matters worse, Vanessa and Bruce were sitting together, all cuddly, in the same small chair. I think they were even holding hands. They weren’t at all embarrassed. They didn’t apologize. Their attitude was “Oh, we got caught—what’s the big deal?”

And this just made Milton even more furious.

He walked up to Bruce and punched him in the face.

WHAT?

Who is this person?

You have to understand my husband. He’s the calmest person I’ve ever known. I’d been married to him for twenty years then, and I’d never seen him like this. He never hit anyone. It’s just not in his nature. If he was angry, he believed in talking it out, not hitting. But I’d never seen him angry like this before.

This was about so much more than just walking in on Bruce and Vanessa. Although what parent ever wants to see that? This was about months and months of being treated with disrespect by them. This was about months and months of being ignored. Bruce didn’t respect us as Vanessa’s parents. He’d use any chance he could to show us that he had a certain amount of influence over Vanessa that we no longer had. He seemed to enjoy making us aware of this.

And to make matters worse, even though I’d walked in on them like that, they didn’t seem to care. If they had acted a little bit sorry for what they did, I feel like Milton would have been upset but not so furious. But Bruce sat there as if nothing was wrong. Milton wanted both of them to understand that something was
very
wrong. For the first time in his life, Milton knew that he couldn’t get through to them with words.

Bruce’s lip was bleeding. We told him to leave the house.

A few minutes later, a policeman came to the door. He’d seen Bruce out front with a bloody lip and wanted to make sure everything was okay.

“Everything’s fine,” I said, trying to sound as calm as possible—even though nothing was fine at all.

Milton went back to work.

I drove Vanessa to school.

I didn’t speak. What could I say? There were no words she’d listen to, no punishment she’d take seriously.

We felt lost. We felt like we were in the middle of a crisis. Vanessa seemed gone to us. We had no idea what to do or where to go from here.

It was a hard, hard time.

A hard, hard time.

PART THREE

THE
SWEETEST DAYS

CHAPTER

11

I
was sixteen and a freshman at State University of New York at Fredonia when I heard the rumors of a cute, popular, black senior. Then one day, as I was walking to music class with a friend, I spotted him. It wasn’t too difficult—there weren’t that many black students at Fredonia.

My version is that I saw him and thought,
Hmmm, he’s cute
. Milton’s version is that I saw him and excitedly exclaimed: “That’s him! That’s him!”

Now does that really sound like me? I’m much more subtle. Milton was very handsome—he was tall, with the most beautiful smile. Okay, he might have caught me staring a bit. Our eyes met and we continued along our separate ways.

Our friends thought we’d be perfect for each other, so they arranged for us to meet in the school snack bar, where Milton worked. He asked me to the movies and I said yes.

I don’t remember what movie we saw, but I do remember the bats in the balcony that kept flying in front of the screen. Afterward, I thought,
He’s interesting
. He was this very accomplished musician who could really play the tenor saxophone. We had a lot in common. We were the first members of our families to go to college. We also were music education majors. We wanted to go on to graduate school and then teach music.

But where I felt unloved and mistreated, Milton was the golden boy of a family that was just full of love and affection for one another. Milton Augustine Jr. was named for his father and was the middle child of five kids—three boys and two girls. His family called him Billy, and in their eyes, he was perfect.

We had another thing in common—neither of us knew our mothers. His mom was twenty-eight years old when she died of preeclampsia and a heart attack shortly after giving birth to her fifth child, Arthur, who weighed a watermelon-size 13.5 pounds. Milton was only three and didn’t have many memories of her. Years later, my son, Chris, told a story about asking his dad what he remembered about his mother. After a long pause, Milton smiled wistfully. “The smell of hamburgers and beer on her breath. That is what I remember,” he said.

So even though we had very different childhoods, we had some shared experiences. I was so impressed with Milton’s thirst for knowledge. He was quite brilliant and he wanted to learn everything there was to know about music, gardening, science, and engineering. You could ask him a question about anything—history, psychology, auto repair—and he’d almost always know the answer. If he didn’t, he’d find out. He loved to do research; he was very scholarly. He was the guy people went to for help and answers. He also had an incredible work ethic. If there was a job on campus, he had it. He worked in the cafeteria, he worked in the library, and he mowed the college’s lawns. He even had a job off campus at Welch’s grape factory.