Born with Teeth: A Memoir (27 page)

My friend Nancy Addison was going to die, but we didn’t know that then. We knew only that she had been diagnosed with a malignancy in her adrenal glands, that she would need to undergo chemotherapy, and that she was going to fight like hell.

“In fact,” she said, “we’re going to have a party!”

“A party, Nanny? Are you sure?” I asked, calling long distance from my trailer at Paramount.

“Of course, a party. In honor of my charity and, evidently, in honor of me. I would like you to cohost it and to present me with a lifetime achievement award. Do you think you can do that with a straight face?”

“I don’t know, darling, who’s writing the material?”

“Rosie O’Donnell! Isn’t that terrific? You two can riff on
Ryan’s Hope
all night long, for all I care—just give me that statuette!”

The Copacabana had never looked so good. With her intuitive sense of whimsy, Nancy and her committee had transformed the ballroom into something unexpected. A huge silver-and-red motorcycle sat directly in the middle of the room, red balloons rising from its handlebars. Elegant silver and white streamers hung from the ceiling, loveseats in black and white were scattered throughout the room, pots of white and pink roses adorned every available surface, champagne was passed on silver trays, and everyone was in black tie, according to his or her unique code of formality. The crowd that had assembled in the main room consisted of doctors, philanthropists, actors, politicians, and priests. It was an eclectic and lively mix. When I presented Nancy with the Lifetime Achievement Award for her accomplishments not only as an actress but also for the tireless work she’d done on behalf of the Incarnation Children’s Center in Harlem, I could not keep my emotions in check. Tears were streaming down my cheeks when Nancy stepped onto the stage to deliver her eloquent and very moving acceptance speech, in which she referred to me as her soul mate, then added, “And you’re very lucky if you find one in this life.”

Rosie O’Donnell came up, embraced Nancy, then turned to the crowd and said, “Okay, time for deep pockets, ladles and germs! Who wants to buy a 1998 Red Hot custom Harley Davidson Sportster and send that check
directly
to Incarnation Children’s Center? Do I have a bid?” Laughter. “With you driving at breakneck speed and Kate Mulgrew wrapped around your six-pack,
Do I have a bid?!”

The place erupted into cheers and, in the midst of this mayhem, I made my escape to the dining room, where the food and drinks were being served.

A young woman in a dark suit approached me as I stood waiting for a glass of wine at the bar and said, “Miss Mulgrew, there’s someone here who would like a word with you. Please come with me.” I followed her to an enclosed area at the back of the room, concealed by a dark wood-paneled screen. A figure emerged from the shadows and stood looking at me. Tall, erect, hair cut short but still more black than gray, and eyes that I would recognize anywhere, in shadow or in light. Eyes trained to withhold mercy, eyes that knew how to cut away at the first sign of tears, eyes that betrayed nothing. And there was the silver cross, her sole adornment, hanging simply and yet prominently around her neck. The jewel of her status. She stepped forward and smiled.

“Kate,” said Sister Una McCormack, “what a surprise to see you here.” The executive director of the Catholic Home Bureau, lieutenant to Terence Cardinal Cooke, and holder of the sacred keys of the kingdom of adoption extended her hand, and I took it.

“I was so pleased to hear of your support of Incarnation Children’s Center,” the nun continued, “and of your friendship with Nancy.”

Sister Una’s hand still rested in mine, and now I grasped it tightly and pulled the woman toward me, just a little, not so as to frighten her but to bring her closer. I wanted no strain, no confusion, and no possibility of escape.

“Sister,” I began, “over the years I have reached out to you, and you have always had an excuse as to why I could have no information regarding my daughter. Not a document, not a photograph.”

Sister Una was silent, her eyes on mine.

“I found out through a private investigator that my daughter had been moved out of state and adopted by a family in Watertown, Massachusetts, because Cardinal Cooke had a relative
who knew someone that wanted a baby. At the last minute, the couple I had chosen was told not to bother coming into the city. There had been a mistake, there would be no baby, after all. Then you told me there had been a fire and all of my files had been destroyed, so there could be no possible way of communicating with my daughter. All of this may or may not have been true, but what I do know is that you were a woman doing her job, that Catholic Charities had you on a very tight leash, and that I am no longer afraid.”

I paused, gauging her response. Her gaze was steady, unflinching.

“My daughter is now twenty years old,” I continued, “and I know that you have the power, and the means, to reach her. I am not going to beg you. That’s over. I’ve done the best I could with what I’ve been given, which is next to nothing, and now I want more. I want you to tell my daughter that I am looking for her and that, if she chooses, I would like to write a letter to her or, perhaps, even speak to her. I wrote a letter to her when she was born—did you give it to her adoptive mother?”

I then perceived the first chink in the armor, as Sister Una withdrew her hand and said, “I gave it to her adoptive mother, but there can be no guarantee that she gave it to your daughter.”

“I understand very well that there are no guarantees of any kind,” I said, “but this time I want you to promise that you will let my daughter know that I am looking for her, and how to find me if she chooses to do so.”

A silence between us, a pause, and then a shift occurred. The professional woman, bearing the burden of years of secrets, suddenly stepped across the divide and did what she knew might jeopardize her position, as well as her reputation. She didn’t seem to care. Her expression was clear and open. She had made up her mind.

“Go back to your hotel,” Sister Una said quietly, “and in the morning I will send you documents from the International Soundex Reunion Registry. Fill them out and put them in the mail. I will have the same documents sent to your daughter. I cannot promise that she will respond, but I can promise that she will receive them. More than this, I simply cannot do.”

So it was true, then. My instincts had been right all along. Sister Una knew where my daughter was. She had always known.

Still, there was to be no verdict. Pontius Pilate had spoken. Not good, not bad. She had washed her hands, certain that her own God would determine the best outcome.

“What time will the documents arrive at the hotel?” I wanted to know.

“Long before you’re awake,” Sister Una replied, with authority.

But Sister Una was wrong. I was dressed and waiting at the front desk of the Mark Hotel when the first post arrived, at five thirty in the morning.

Nancy’s party at the Copacabana kicked off the beginning of
Voyager’
s fifth season hiatus, which was our annual four-week break from shooting. Robert had decided to take the boys on a fishing trip, and I, unwilling to let even a day of the precious holiday go by unobserved, called my mother and said, “Hold on to your hat and pack your bag. I’m taking you to Istanbul to visit the Blue Mosque and to stand on a spot overlooking the Bosporus where you can see three continents at once, after which we will slowly sail up the Aegean Sea on a vessel famous for its ostentation, with ports of call at silk-producing factories where young girls slowly go blind in the daily extraction of the silk thread from the reluctant worm, and, finally, we will fly to London to visit your youngest daughter, who is presently with child and wandering around Kensington unchaperoned while her money-mad husband spends his days converting yen into gold bullion. What do you say?”

No pause.

“I say, Kitten Kat girl,” Mother sang into the phone, “that
now
you are speaking my lingo!”

And so it was that we found ourselves ensconced in a deluxe cabin aboard the Seabourne Cruise liner, elegant and sleek and chock-full of people with little to do but hurl money at the map. Rich people. Strangely, the cabin had only one bed, but it was so large, so satin sheeted, tasseled, and fringed, that it was borderline vulgar.

“For a sultan?” I asked my mother.

“A sheikh,” she responded perfunctorily, “and one of his harem. Maybe his entire harem.”

We considered this in silence.

“But this I do know, Kitten,” Mother continued, “I do not sleep in beds with my daughters, nor do I walk three abreast, so let’s get the world’s most expensive rollaway in here and I will sleep on it.”

“Absolutely not, Mother,” I countered. “You are my mother and you shall have the bed.”

“Au contraire,” Mother protested. “
You
are the big shot and
you
are paying all the bills, so
you
will sleep in what has to be the most boorish Moorish bed I have ever seen.”

That night, we were invited to dine at the captain’s table, a tantalizing prospect because Mother and I assumed that the table would be populated with interesting and extremely sophisticated people, some of whom would inevitably end up inviting us to their villa in the south of France and that, despite severe time constraints, we would be compelled out of politeness to accept.

Before we left the cabin, we had a cocktail on the small deck overlooking the Aegean Sea. Two fingers of Jameson with one cube of ice, each. Staring at the Turkish moon, which hung in the sky like a vast and astonishingly beautiful Japanese lantern, Mother and I slowly sipped our drinks.

Suddenly, eyes heavenward, Mother said, “Do you want to know how special you are? You can see the moon, but the moon can’t see you.”

Then, quite unexpectedly, she asked, “Kitten, what has been the greatest sorrow in your life? Aside from the baby.”

I took my time. I deliberated. I understood that she wanted me to go deep, and not to present her with the obvious. She wanted a mysterious response, something that would surprise and perhaps shock her. Something unrelated to the misfortunes that had befallen me, misfortunes that she had witnessed with her own eyes, misfortunes with which she was altogether too familiar.

“Well, you should know, since you alone are responsible for it,” I said at last. “Tim Hagan. The only man I ever truly loved. I found him, and then he disappeared, and it’s all your doing. If you hadn’t set up the meeting in Ireland, I never would have known the difference between great love and mediocre love, and now I have to live with it for the rest of my life.”

I watched her, then tipped the rest of my glass into the sea and said, “Tim Hagan is my greatest sorrow. “

Mother looked at me.

“Really?” she asked. “Is that true?”

“As true as the moon that can’t see me,” I replied, and opened the cabin door to escort my mother to the dining room.

At the captain’s table, we were surrounded by a group of very well-dressed, very polished people. I was seated next to the captain, and Mother had been strategically placed at the opposite end of the table, where she immediately engaged the man to her right by telling him about a visit she and Jean Smith had once made to a sheikh’s elaborate Bedouin tent and that inside they had been served a silver tureen of raw sheep’s eyes, which were considered a great delicacy and therefore could not be rejected by the guest.

“And so, following Jean’s example, I just popped one in and downed my tea, and you know what? It wasn’t bad!”

Her voice rose to a high pitch and carried across the long table, so that the captain was forced to clink his glass in an effort to draw everyone’s attention and make his welcoming toast. This he did with a gracious if slightly resigned manner, whereupon I made the mistake of asking him how he’d begun his nautical career, what had inspired him to go to sea, and what experience would he single out as his most death defying. His face lit up as if I’d suggested a midnight skinny-dip in the ship’s pool, and he launched into the story of his early life as a Scandinavian ne’er-do-well with a penchant for uncharted waters and high seas.

About ten minutes into his dissertation, I heard someone yawn so loudly that it almost masqueraded as a guffaw, an unspeakable gaffe at such a time, and at such a table. I looked up sharply, my eyes rapidly traveling the length of the table until they fell, with horror, upon the image of my own mother, sitting back in her chair, wineglass in hand, mouth wide open, yawning not only with sound effects, but with evident abandon. She caught my eye and I mouthed “Mother!” and quickly shook my head, trying all the while not to draw attention to this exchange. Mother stared at me down the long, linen-covered, crystal-appointed, candlelit table and declared, with perfect clarity, “But he’s so
boring!
”

To his credit, and that of his dinner companions, the captain pretended to ignore what my mother had said and, turning to the infatuated middle-aged woman on his left, continued his story without a hitch. Meanwhile, my mother had risen from her seat and excused herself from the table and was now skipping hastily through the dining room. I watched in disbelief as she sped through the room, and then, in an instant, I understood the cause of her agitation. As she tripped along, a stream
of urine flowed from the hem of her black silk evening pants and trailed onto the polished parquet floor, as vivid as blood. I leaped up from my chair and ran after her, all the way through the labyrinthine corridors of the ship, until we had found the way to our cabin, where I pulled open the door and led Mother inside, saying, “My God, Mother, what happened to you? You’ve wet your pants! Here, let me help you off with these things. Are you all right?” As I forced my mother to sit and began to take off her pants, I noticed, with a chill, that she was humming to herself.

When I looked up, I saw that my mother was half smiling as she hummed, and when she caught my eye, she patted my head and said, dismissively, “Oh, Kitten, leave me alone, it’s nothing! Let’s go and see the moon and bring some you-know-what.”

With that, my mother pulled open the doors to the deck and stood there, her hands on the rail, looking at the sky. She was wearing only her bra, the Mikimoto strand of pearls my father had given her, and her urine-saturated underpants. She appeared to be entirely unconcerned with both her modesty and her discomfort and showed not a hint of embarrassment. I stood and observed her for a long time, until she turned abruptly and called out, “Kitten Kat! The moon needs a nightcap!”

In London, my little sister greeted us with an extravagant display of emotion. Jenny was eight months pregnant with her first child, living in a foreign land with a husband who worked in finance, and no one near to call her own. She threw her arms around me and cried, “You need to stay and
live
here! London is better than New York! In fact, New York sucks, and all hugely pregnant ex-pats know it.”

I kissed her on both cheeks and asked, “What about Mother?”

From across the lobby of the Kensington Royal Garden Hotel, Mother called out, “Fine with me! Call your father! But don’t call him collect!”

We did all things English. The Victoria and Albert Museum, high tea at Claridge’s, the National Portrait Gallery, fish and chips at Jenny’s local, the Churchill Arms, and a play in the West End, which nobody could understand. Mother collected every feather she could find and tucked them in the sleeve of her cashmere cardigan, to be placed on her drawing table when she got home and used as articles in the shadow boxes she loved to make. Strolling toward our hotel one afternoon, Jenny suggested we take the more scenic route through Kensington Park.

“Why would I want to walk through a park? I
live
in a park!” Mother exclaimed.

Two days before we were to leave, I woke early in my hotel room and looked at the clock. Six thirty a.m. Mother and I had adjoining suites, designed like a small apartment. My room was long and elegant and contained a queen-size bed, with steps leading down to Mother’s room, which was equally long and rather narrow, with two twin beds against one wall and an armchair, table, and ottoman against the other. She preferred a twin bed, she had said, looking at me sideways. “I went to a convent school,” she stated, by way of clarification.

In the gray morning light, I stood on the landing that preceded the steps that led to Mother’s room, and from this vantage point I could see everything. Mother was sitting straight-backed on the edge of her bed, fully dressed in her traveling costume, wearing her Burberry raincoat, holding her purse on her lap, and her passport in her right hand. Her suitcase rested on the floor in front of her, packed, zipped, and brightly beribboned. She was humming. I watched as she sat there, looking for all the world like a very young, very well-mannered schoolgirl. Something in her posture broke my heart. She lightly drummed her fingers on her handbag and continued to hum, as if she were simply biding her time.

I walked very quietly down the stairs, and when she acknowledged me, I asked, “Mother, why are you up so early?”

Mother looked at me with big eyes through her magnifying glasses. She blinked.

“Well, we’re leaving, and I’m waiting for my daughter to come and say good-bye.”

I sat next to her on the small bed.

“Which daughter?” I asked, taking her hand.

Mother smiled and, tapping my forehead with her fingers, said, “You don’t fool me. You know the one.”

She couldn’t find the name; she didn’t know the day. The room crystalized into a tiny space with just the two of us in it, barely able to breathe.

“But Mums, we’re not leaving today, and Jenny won’t be over until later.”

I waited then, for the moment of recognition, for the sliding out of one place into another, for a sudden, clear illumination, but instead my mother dropped her hands to her lap and said, a little sadly, “Hmmm. She’s a funny one.”

“Well, the good news is, we have another three days in London, so let’s unpack this suitcase and order breakfast—what do you think, Mums?”

My mother looked at me curiously, as if perhaps I might be teasing her or saying something I didn’t mean. She cocked her head, unsmiling, and smoothed the duvet on the bed. I sensed that she was trying to work something out, a new and difficult puzzle, as yet still hidden. I took her hand and lifted it to my lips. “Really, Mummy, we’re going to have a wonderful time. I promise.”

She looked directly into my eyes. I saw there something I had never seen before, and it unnerved me. My mother was bewildered and terrified. For the first time in our relationship,
the earth shifted, and I understood that a chasm, however incipient, had begun to form between us. I somehow understood, looking at her as the day beckoned through the window, that this would be our last adventure. There would still be time to catch my mother’s eye, to tease her into confidences, to share the long, family dinners that inevitably ended in wild, irreverent laughter, to watch her hands as they brought life to the piano, the casserole, the canvas. The feather. There would still be time but, as it turned out, not nearly enough.