You Have No Idea: A Famous Daughter, Her No-Nonsense Mother, and How They Survived Pageants, Hollywood, Love, Loss (24 page)

That year, 1996, Christmas seemed so quiet without my kids, who were in Los Angeles with Ramon’s family for our first Christmas as separate parents. I stared at the decorated tree at our rental on Paulding Drive (the home renovations weren’t complete yet). As
hard as I tried to stay positive, I couldn’t help but feel a bit depressed. I thought about our rituals—Christmas Eve mass at five fifteen, followed by a big homemade lasagna dinner back at my house. Afterward, the kids would run over to the tree, where they were allowed to open one of their presents.

At the time I had a new love—a handsome and talented writer-director who I’d met on location in Turkey while filming
The Odyssey
. We went to mass together, but I couldn’t stop thinking about my children and wondering what they were doing in Los Angeles with their dad. We watched the Christmas Eve pageant and I missed my children even more as I listened to the voices of their classmates singing Christmas carols with the choir.

I started writing in a journal. I have stacks of journals—from high school until now. When I was younger, I wrote everything in them all the time. But as I got older, I’d only write when I was distressed. It is my way to check in on my emotions. It helps with grieving. It helps with forgiving. Sometimes when I write down my thoughts, I can feel the stress, the anger, and the resentment leave my body and settle on the pages where they stay.

My mother understood what a difficult time this was for me in a way I didn’t expect. She and my dad had such a strong marriage that I didn’t think she could relate to the pain I was experiencing. But I realized that because she had such a lonely childhood, she knew what it was like to feel alone and abandoned.

She also understood me better than I realized. She knew how much I hated failing, and I felt like I’d failed in my marriage. One day before I had gotten divorced, Mom handed me a book called
The Value in the Valley
by Iyanla Vanzant, an inspirational speaker, an ordained minister, and a frequent guest on
Oprah.
The book’s message is that life is not just a series of peaks or mountaintop experiences but often a difficult journey through dark valleys. I devoured it and reread it during the difficult times.

I definitely felt that I was in a dark valley, but I would get out of it by focusing on my family and my career. I also knew that I would get beyond my resentment. That’s how I’m different from my mom. I process things quickly, whereas Mom will stay angry for a while. She’ll hold on to everything and remember any little insult—that’s why once you’re on her “List” you can never come off. I can’t live like that.

Through all this marital upheaval, I was also in the midst of renovating my Chappaqua home, a project Ramon and I had started together in the fall of 1995. When we’d bought the house, I’d fallen in love with the 1905 stone-and-glass contemporary, the renovated carriage house as well as the five acres of property, especially the duck pond in front. But we wanted to double the size of the house to eight thousand square feet. We wanted to add two bedrooms so the girls could have their own rooms. We wanted to build a big master bathroom and a formal dining room. I wanted to create an atmosphere that would have the feel of a relaxed, airy seaside cottage—the type of home you see straddling the shoreline in Nantucket or Martha’s Vineyard.

In my Filofax (back in the day when people kept information on pages instead of on BlackBerrys and iPhones), I wrote a list of all the things I wanted in my dream home: a long driveway perched on a hill, lots of stone and glass, plenty of sunlight, a few fireplaces, a pond, a pool, a tennis court.

But this home-renovations project had turned into a money pit. What we had thought would take a year was now nearing two years with no end in sight. The renovations were supposed to cost $700,000 in total, but I’d already gone well over the million-dollar mark. I fired the architect and the contractor took over. I’d set up a timetable with the contractor—but every change pushed the end date. My savings were being depleted. I was always writing a check for one thing or another. At times I felt like I was being bamboozled
and not being heard. I was rolling with the big boys in terms of contracting, and I didn’t know what I was doing.

The children and I moved from one rental home to the next. We had even lived at my parents’ house, where I slept in my brother’s bunk bed! Wasn’t I a star of the stage, screen, and radio? And here I was, huddled in Chris’s room with New York Yankees and Georgetown Hoyas memorabilia pinned to the walls.

I couldn’t oversee the project every day because I had to work to pay for the project. I was starring in back-to-back-to-back-
to-back
movies—
Hoodlum, Soul Food, Dance with Me,
and
The Odyssey
. I’d be gone for weeks and return home to be disappointed with the progress. The house was in shambles. I had a specific vision—I wanted a home that felt open and spacious with high-beamed ceilings and a lot of angles.

“I don’t want curved walls.” Another redo.

“I don’t want a stone wall that looks like a fortress.” More money.

I was not in control of the project and I needed help.

The contractor would insist that everything be done in the proper way. There was always an answer and an explanation. This was my first time doing a home renovation and I was all alone.

So I asked my dad to step in and be the checks-and-balances guy. It seemed like a perfect idea since he loved construction. He knew a lot about building, so I could count on him to supervise and get these guys back on track.

Dad being Dad—the most likeable person I know—quickly became friends with the Croatian construction crew. They had already moved into my home and were sleeping downstairs in the playroom. The contractor even turned the living room into his makeshift office, complete with a desk filled with all his plans and diagrams. It was so homey that one warm day the crew threw a big lamb roast in the family-room addition to give us a taste of Croatian tradition. Everyone was getting along great.

But I still had no home to move into!

More time passed. I was in Chicago shooting
Hoodlum
, a period gangster movie starring Laurence Fishburne. Everything was on schedule, the contractor assured me.

When I returned from Chicago, I drove to the house and was shocked.

There was stone everywhere! Obviously I hadn’t read the plans correctly. I wanted relaxed and elegant, but my grounds looked like a medieval fortress! The contractor was so proud of his work. It was beautifully done, but the contractor’s aesthetic was so different from mine. I wanted light, airy, and rustic, and I was getting solid, massive, and medieval. And that was the outside. I had already gone through two interior designers, each not seeing my vision of relaxed, substantial “California country.”

On my next visit to Los Angeles, I checked into my favorite hotel, Shutters on the Beach in Santa Monica, and it hit me: This is the feeling I want! It had that open, airy, beach-cottage vibe I wanted for my home. As I checked in, I asked the concierge, “Who designed this place?”

Mark Enos and his firm, they told me.

Finally! I didn’t have to explain anymore!

I called Mark.

“Listen, my home is in shambles. I want what you did to Shutters. I want the floors, the ceilings, the fireplace. I want the entire look. Basically, I want Shutters to be my home.”

I flew him and his designer/partner, Lynne Miyake, to Chappaqua. They walked around the house, took some notes, and said, “We get it.”

Mark and his team worked with the contractor and started making a lot of changes. But the contractor was still not meeting deadlines. I was spending more and more money. The situation felt as stressful as the divorce I had just gone through.

I had to make another tough decision. I needed a new contractor to implement Mark and Lynne’s vision. So right before Thanksgiving 1997, after two years of not living in my home, I fired Joe, the contractor, and his team.

My father was livid. These were great men and talented craftsmen. He felt they deserved to finish the project. But I had already spent more than $1.8 million and my house was unlivable.

Dad knew I was frustrated and tired of not having a home. But he was overseeing the project and I hadn’t consulted him. In Dad’s eyes, I had betrayed him. In Dad’s eyes, I didn’t need him anymore.

Dad was so disappointed in my decision that he stopped talking to me. As it turned out, I had to spend another $800,000 tearing down the work to restore my vision—changing stone to wood and curved walls to straight ones. Basically we had to start from scratch. Dad would have to understand that I was going to end up with everything I wanted. I was not going to compromise.

At Thanksgiving that year we had dinner at Gaga’s and Papa’s (my folks) in Millwood. When I was a kid, we’d head to my grandmother’s in Buffalo. Now, we alternate—sometimes Mom hosts it, sometimes I do. If it’s at Mom’s, she’ll cook the turkey and the candied sweet potatoes. Dad would always make mashed potatoes and a delicious cranberry relish with liquor and nuts. Dad was the baker in the family and he’d make wonderful breads and muffins. I’d bring over some sides like macaroni and cheese (with Gouda instead of cheddar).

MOM’S MOST DELICIOUS MEALS

(ACCORDING TO VANESSA)

• Roast chicken

• Baked beans with sausage

• Apple pie (from scratch)

• Tomato sandwiches on toast (fresh from our garden outside)

VANESSA’S MOST DELICIOUS MEALS

(ACCORDING TO HELEN)

• Lemon squares

• Yogurt berry pie

• Thanksgiving turkey (She’s taken over the tradition in recent years and she makes a delicious turkey. She soaks it in brine and stuffs the cavity with oranges and lemons. Of course, she only buys organic. I, on the other hand, used to buy whatever the A&P had on sale.)

I thought my father and I could get past our disagreement and enjoy the holiday, but when I walked into the house I could tell that wouldn’t be the case. Usually Dad greeted me with a great big bear hug and a “Happy Thanksgiving, Ness!” But he didn’t come to the door. When I walked in the house, he ignored me. He didn’t speak during the meal, except to ask someone to pass the turkey. He didn’t address me at all. It was unbearable. I knew my father was upset, but that Thanksgiving it became clear how enraged he was.

At the beginning of the Thanksgiving meal, we have a family tradition. We go around the table and each person has to say something he or she is thankful for. My dad would usually lead it. He
would be thankful for everything—his wife, his children, his grandchildren.

When it was his turn to speak, Dad looked down at the table and said, “Pass.”

What? My father was too furious to be thankful!

After an extremely tense dinner, I went into the kitchen to clean the dishes and slammed them against the counter, thinking I’d get some sort of reaction from Dad. He’d get angry, we’d have a confrontation, and then we’d get over it. But Dad just ignored me—and if you really want to drive me crazy, that’s how to do it. I hate being ignored. Doesn’t everyone?

I went back home to my latest rental and I didn’t feel very thankful, either. My dad has always been my hero, my confidant, the person I called for advice or just to vent. Now he was disappointed with me again. It killed me. He stopped coming over to the house to give the kids music lessons. He stopped dropping off firewood.

My mom became the go-between, which was a new position for her. I don’t hold grudges. Family comes first. Perhaps after a few days, we’d all calm down. He’d be back to teach the kids piano, or he’d answer my call when I asked for some type of advice. Either way, we’d be back in each other’s lives soon, as if nothing had ever happened.

I didn’t know on that Thanksgiving evening that my dad and I wouldn’t talk again for more than a year, or that our disagreement would never truly be resolved. Instead of confronting the issues as we’d done during the family meetings of my childhood, we left it to simmer.

I finally moved to my home the following June of 1998. My father didn’t come to see the finished project for months and months. When he finally took the tour, he said nothing, even though I was so proud to have the house I always wanted.

HELEN ON THANKSGIVING

When Milton found out that Vanessa had fired the crew, he was livid. I hadn’t seen him that angry in a long, long time—since the Bruce days. Milton had such strong feelings about other people’s feelings. He couldn’t wrap his head around Vanessa’s firing the crew. He thought they were such nice, talented guys. He appreciated anyone who was creative and took pride in their work. His projects were always done to perfection. He would settle for nothing less and he admired this trait in others. But what I think really upset him was the manner in which Vanessa fired the crew: Marshals came to escort them off the property. I’m not sure who advised her to take that action, but in her father’s eyes it was bad advice and was unacceptable behavior on Vanessa’s part. I could understand that Vanessa wasn’t happy with the results and needed to do something about it, but Milton didn’t see it that way. For him to say “Pass” on Thanksgiving was a huge deal. I knew he was just so upset that he could barely speak. He was too upset to talk about it with me. Vanessa was crushed. I was in the middle of it and feeling very stressed. More turkey, anyone?

The next time I touched my dad was on September 26, 1999, when I slipped my arm under his as he walked me down the aisle of the Church of the Holy Trinity to marry Rick Fox. At the reception, we danced to the Jackson 5’s
ABC
with big smiles on our faces, surrounded by a gang of elegantly dressed kids.

There was no distinct olive branch offered or conversation to
address the issue. Dad started teaching Devin the sax and came over to the new house to give lessons, bring firewood for my pile, and help with advice on oil burners, AC units, and additional projects.