The Rainbow Comes and Goes: A Mother and Son On Life, Love, and Loss (11 page)

Her behavior with Kitty confirmed that the testimony during the custody trial about her being a lesbian was true. This shocked me. I once again panicked that I was going to grow up and be like “that,” too.

My mother would go to Kitty’s house, disappearing for days. They called me from there once, waking me up in the middle of the night, both drunk, each taking turns grabbing the phone from the other, saying they had heard I was “smoking marijuana.” I didn’t even know what that was.

I hung up and lay alone in the darkness of my room, scared to death.

Aunt Thelma, who spent days locked in her room with Edmund Lowe, was at her wit’s end and asked me, “What am I going to do about your mother?”

I had no answer. My mother and I had no beginning together, no previous history of intimacy to bond us. Maybe she was as scared of me as I was of her?

Living with her and Thelma in that house was like staying at a hotel with strangers doing their best to avoid each other. I came and went as I pleased. My mother had no interest in what I was up to.

It’s only now that I realize she was trying to lure me away from Auntie Ger by permitting me to do anything I wanted. And it worked. In my confused mind, Auntie Ger became the Wicked Witch waiting to steal my newfound freedom even though I was not equipped to handle it and was scared to death of it, too.

I was like a bird let out of a cage, but soon after the first rush of freedom came the realization that there was no nest to return to. Each direction I flew toward drew me deeper into a dark land of confusion. And my two-week visit was turning into months. Auntie Ger was expecting me back in New York, where the chaperone, Constance, was waiting; my senior year in high school would start in September, but the thought of going back was inconceivable. The girl I had been in New York no longer existed.

Then, suddenly, Kitty was out of the picture, and my mother and Thelma never mentioned her name again. What had happened? I didn’t ask. After that, my mother was around a little more, though I still saw her rarely.

When I did catch a glimpse of her on my way here or there, she would call out from the sofa in the living room, drinking a scotch and soda, “Have a good time, Pooks.”

The one time I tried connecting with her was a failure. She slept in an oversize bed, and one night I asked if I could sleep in her room with her. She consented, and I lay at the
edge of one side of the bed, while she lay on the edge of the other.

I couldn’t think of anything to say; nor could she apparently. Silently we lay on opposite sides, on our backs, facing the dark ceiling.

“Goodnight, Mummy,” I finally said.

“Goodnight, darling,” she answered, rigid in the dark.

A surge of passionate love shot through me. I longed to pull her toward me, merge with her. I started to turn and reach out my arms, but as I did, I heard a soft sound coming from the little radio on the night table by her bed.

Unnoticed by me, she must have switched it on. A commercial jingled merrily,

By the light from the radio, I could tell she was already asleep.

Y
ou said you felt like a bird let out of a cage that summer. What were you doing with all that freedom?

Every night, I went
out on dates with movie stars. To attract my attention, they had to be famous and much older: Errol Flynn, George Montgomery, Ray Milland, Van Heflin, Bruce Cabot, Edward Ashley. It was thrilling at first, but these men were the wolves of Hollywood, and it quickly became harmful.

E
rrol Flynn? You dated Robin Hood when you were seventeen?

I remember, when I was a kid, we’d watch old movies together and I’d sometimes ask you if you knew one of the actors in it.

“Oh, yes . . . ,” you’d say, and though you never went into details, the silence that followed was always loaded with meaning.

I can see why it would have been exciting, but I can’t believe your mother didn’t try to stop you or at least urge you to be careful. As you said, these guys were wolves, and after being so sheltered, there is no way you could have been ready to take care of yourself around them.

It was totally inappropriate
, not to mention dangerous. Every Saturday night I went out to Mocambo or Ciro’s. Wannsie would throw a huge fistful of Elizabeth Arden bubble bath into my tub and turn the water on full force, so that the bubbles leaped up into billows of scented, fluffy, white snow.

Photo by Horst P. Horst/Conde Nast.

“And what will you be wearing tonight, Miss Gloria?” she would ask.

“The new Howard Greer, the one with the sequins that just arrived. The one like Rita Hayworth was wearing. Greer copied it for me, well, sort of . . .”

Wannsie would open my closet and spread the dress out on the bed as I sank into the warm bubbles. She would bring me one of my father’s monogramed silver cocktail goblets, visibly frosted from the iced Dry Sack Sherry in it. Shivering, I would lean into the bubbles for the first sip. Did my mother know I was drinking alcohol? I wonder now. Had it ever occurred to her that I was seventeen and not of legal drinking age?

“Wannsie, put ‘Elmer’s Tune’ on the phonograph, please.” As the Andrews Sisters’ voices filled the room, I sang along,

Rising from the bubbles, I’d ring for Wannsie to please bring me another sherry, and she’d place it on my dressing
table to sip as I gazed in the mirror deciding what makeup to apply for the evening ahead.

I’d sprinkle handfuls of Schiaparelli’s perfume over my body. It was called Shocking de Schiaparelli and came in a bottle shaped like a female torso. It had become my signature scent because of the name. Yes, shocking, that is what I wanted to be. Not a silly seventeen-year-old who didn’t have a clue which road to take.

These Saturday night rituals took hours, but the results rarely met my expectations. I never lost hope that my mother would be around so she would see me all dressed up and I’d get her approval. Maybe she’d even say I was pretty, but she never did, because she was never there.

“Welcome home,” the smiling doorman would say, ushering me into Mocambo. Heads would turn as I entered with one movie star or another and the maître d’ escorted us to a front-row table, the band blasting swingy tunes as couples danced cheek to cheek. How gorgeous they were! Could I pass muster with any of the stars seated at the tables around the dance floor? Fat chance! I didn’t really belong, but I was there, wasn’t I? At the time, I thought that counted for something.

It is hard for me to believe that my mother condoned such behavior. I certainly would never have let a child of mine run wild as I did that summer of 1941.

I
keep seeing parallels between us that I never knew existed: similar impulses and ways of dealing with things.

I have a Polaroid of you and me that I keep on my desk at work. It was taken in 1985, when I was seventeen, on the day I was leaving home for Africa for six months. Eager for adventure, and wanting to get away, I had decided to leave high school in the middle of my senior year and ride across sub-Saharan Africa in a truck.

It’s obviously not the same as running wild in Hollywood and dating movie stars, but the desire to be grown-up and on my own was similar. I was more focused than you at that age, more responsible. I had applied to college already, but didn’t see any point in spending the last semester of high school at home in New York. I convinced my school it would be an educational experience to travel from South Africa to the Central African Republic, camping out every night along the way. It certainly was a learning experience, but I am surprised my school agreed. It never occurred to me that you might not let me go.

You were nervous and sad about my decision, but in the photo, you are standing next to me smiling.

You handed me a note and told me to read it on my way to the airport. I still have it today.

Though you never tried to talk me out of leaving, it must have been difficult for you to let me go so far away for so long. Daddy had died seven years before, and Carter was already at college, so I was leaving you all alone.

I suppose you knew Africa was a place I had been reading about since I was a child and had developed a passionate interest in. When we lived near the United Nations for several years, I became fascinated by all the different flags that flew outside the General Assembly building. I was particularly interested in the flag of Zaire. It was light green with a large yellow circle in the center and a man’s fist clutching a burning torch. The fist was said to belong to the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. I had read a lot about Zaire and the brutal rule of Mobutu, and the idea of actually being able to go there seemed like an amazing opportunity.

Had I not gone on that trip, my life would have taken a very different path. Spending those months in Africa gave me confidence, and when I later decided to start going to war zones to shoot stories, I knew I could return to Africa and manage on my own.

In the years since, you’ve had to say good-bye to me an awful lot. I can’t even remember how many times I’ve called you on the way to the airport trying to figure out the best way to tell you I’m flying to some dangerous place.

“Hey, Mom, I’m sorry to call you last minute, but I’m heading to Afghanistan for a little bit.”

“Oh, you are? . . . Okay,” you’ll say.

I can hear the fear and concern in your voice, but you never ask me not to go.

“Just please be careful” is all you say.

I wrote you that note
so you would not worry about me. The truth is, I was terrified that you were going, but it was important to you. Although you were very young, I knew you were smart and could take care of yourself, so I trusted you would be okay.

When I was seventeen, though, I really had no idea what I was doing. I plunged forward, desperate to reinvent myself overnight from an insecure teenager into a glamorous grown-up, but I had no compass and wandered down each
new path only to find myself more bewildered and lost than I was before.

You had been preparing yourself for years to be on your own and had always been so independent. At some point you have to let your children go, make choices on their own, and be themselves.

Had you been running around with movie stars and staying out all night, I would have responded differently, but I never worried about you as a teenager, so I didn’t feel like I had to watch over you.

On the other hand, I desperately needed someone to watch over me at seventeen. That was the summer I made one of the biggest mistakes of my life.

While I was having lunch at the Beverly Hills Hotel with a friend, I met a man named Pat DeCicco. He just came up and introduced himself. He sort of worked for Howard Hughes, but as far as I could make out, he was mostly a gambler and lived off the money he made playing gin rummy. Years later I came across a newspaper article describing him as an agent and a movie producer, as well as an alleged mobster working with Charles “Lucky” Luciano. Yikes!

When we met, I didn’t know he was violent, and by the time I found out, it was too late. He fascinated me, as did the rumors surrounding him. He’d been married to the actress Thelma Todd, and after they divorced, she was found dead in her car
in a garage. She had seen Pat the night before, at a party, and they had argued. There were rumors that maybe he killed her, though her death was determined to be either an accident or a suicide. The story captured my imagination, like something out of a novel.

W
ait a minute. You started dating a guy who was a gambler and rumored to have killed someone? That’s usually not the kind of information people put in their Tinder bio to attract dates. Didn’t you think that was someone you should probably stay away from? Did you love him?

It had nothing
to do with love. I was mesmerized, as if under a spell. I hadn’t a clue about what I was doing, and no one ever took me aside and warned me. But you are right to be surprised.

Why would a seventeen-year-old girl, with so many other options and things to look forward to, not only become fascinated by, but quickly marry, Pat DeCicco, a thirty-three-year-old gambler with a dangerous reputation?

It has taken years to find the answer, but I go back to that quote by Mary Gordon: “Being fatherless leaves a woman with a taste for the fanatical . . . a fatherless girl can be satisfied only with the heroic, the desperate, the extreme.”