The Rainbow Comes and Goes: A Mother and Son On Life, Love, and Loss (19 page)

But nothing lasts forever, and the “never, never again leave me” that I secretly vowed to myself when I was reunited with her was shattered when I fled from Leopold with Stan and Chris and began a new life, with new loves and a growing belief in myself.

I began to see her less and less, and when I met your father, I think he disapproved of her, feeling that she had helped
turn me against my mother. We included her in our life only now and then, but Dodo was thrilled with the happiness I had found when I married him. As a wedding gift, she presented me with a dozen crystal goblets in forms of various deities. “Because you are Wyatt’s goddess,” she lovingly declared as I unwrapped the package.

I wanted to explain to your father what Dodo meant to me, that she was my real mother, but it was so scrambled in my mind, so complicated, that I could never articulate it in a way that would make him understand.

By 1973, she was far from my mind, and I am saddened to admit, I had let her slip from my life.

We were living in the house on Sixty-Seventh Street when a letter came from Catholic Charities. I opened the envelope and read part of the first handwritten line: “I am writing regarding Emily Prescott . . .”

The name jumped out and hit me in the face. Unable to breathe, I tore up the letter without reading any further. I put it in the fireplace and lit a match to it, then ran up the stairs to my bedroom and lay on the bed, silently shaking with dread. I told no one.

I
don’t understand. She had been closer to you than your own mother, the most important person in your life. Why didn’t you read the letter?

This haunts me
to this day. Why had months and then years passed by without our seeing each other and rarely being in touch? Perhaps it had something to do with my real mother’s re-entry into my life, which was around the time I started distancing myself from Dodo. My mother and I had so many conflicting, unresolved issues that were very difficult to deal with, and I felt the pressure of trying to get pregnant after having had a miscarriage.

All those years later, when I saw the name “Emily Prescott” in the letter, I knew something must be wrong, terribly wrong. I was consumed with confusion and guilt over my betrayal of my beloved Dodo, but I couldn’t face it. The only way to deal with it was to behave as a hysterical child would, pretending that this letter, which made my heart pound with terror, simply didn’t exist. All it took was a match.

A week later another letter from Catholic Charities arrived. This time it was typewritten, signed by Marjorie Lewisohn, a childhood friend’s oldest sister, who was a doctor and had operated on Dodo a few years before, when she needed a mastectomy. Your father and I visited Dodo at Lenox Hill Hospital after the operation, and I brought her a box of her favorite Godiva chocolates. Throughout the visit, your father was polite, but I could tell he was there only
because he knew it meant something to me. He clearly disapproved of her.

The letter was brief, informing me that Emily Prescott had died “peacefully in her sleep” at Catholic Charities. There was no mention of the note sent the week before, which I realized must have been from an aide passing on Dodo’s dying wish: to see me one last time to say good-bye.

Her death hit hard. I sobbed and sobbed, my grief almost pulling me over the edge.

“All the king’s horses and all the king’s men / Couldn’t put Humpty together again,” or so it’s said.

But here I am, once more put back together again. That I was not by Dodo’s side to see her through to death, as she had been by my side to see me through in life, is one of my greatest sorrows and haunts me to this day.

I now know the cemetery where Dodo is buried under the name Emily Prescott. I plan on visiting her grave soon. Perhaps on the same day I will visit another not-so-distant grave, that of my Naney Morgan. I have never seen either grave, and I wonder what epitaph is etched on each. Will such a visit answer questions I still puzzle over? Do I really want to know the answers? Am I strong enough to?

Growing up, I knew about Dodo mostly through my mother’s artwork. She would often paint images of herself as a little girl holding Dodo’s hand. I think of my mother first and foremost as an artist. She’s had numerous solo shows and continues to paint in her studio every day. But to many Americans my mother is best known for the line of designer jeans she launched in 1979. They were the first hugely successful designer jeans and led to her involvement with other clothing lines and fragrances. Though she had little interest in business, she appeared in commercials and print ads and traveled throughout the country promoting her brands.

My brother and I were in our early teens when she started the jeans business, and we used to play a game counting how many women we saw on the street with our mom’s name on their rear pockets. It wasn’t the first time I realized she was well known, but it was a level of fame I wasn’t used to. There are still clothes produced with my mom’s name on them, but she no longer has any involvement in the business.

A series of unexpected
events led me to become a designer. I had my first solo show of paintings in 1948, when I was twenty-four, but in 1967, after a show at the Hammer Galleries in New York, I was invited to appear on Johnny Carson’s show with some of my artwork.

Watching Carson that night was Lewis Bloom, president of Bloomcraft, a company that manufactured high-quality decorative fabrics. He thought my artwork would translate well into fabric designs and called me the next day to propose going into business together.

I was the first designer to go on tour, introducing the collection in stores throughout the United States. With the success of the fabrics, I began to design other home furnishing products: sheets, towels, shower curtains, bathroom accessories, kitchenware, plates and glasses, flatware, and so on. I then began designing scarves based on my paintings, and then later, blouses for a company called Murjani. Warren Hirsch, Murjani’s CEO, was a merchandising genius, and we came up with the idea of adding designer jeans to the collection. The jeans were released in 1979, and Warren launched a gigantic promotion to support them. I appeared in television and print ads, and it was fun. Although
my acting career was behind me, I enjoyed selling the jeans. It was as if I were onstage once again, in a production I’d created and believed in.

The jeans were a success seemingly overnight. Young and old were wearing them everywhere, which surprised everyone, me included. I’d be walking down the street, and women would stop to talk to me about the difference the jeans made in their fashion life. I liked the feeling that I had interpreted a classic item of clothing in a way that gave a woman a positive boost, making her stand tall and be happy about the way she looked, as good fashion always does.

They were a superior product, and I was proud of the success, but it was bittersweet. Your father had died the year before the jeans hit the market, and without him by my side, I often felt very much alone, and I didn’t know whom to trust.

An avalanche of money was suddenly pouring in. Warren Hirsch looked me straight in the eye and said, “You’re making more money than Commodore Vanderbilt!”

Not quite, but it was nice to see my hard work pay off. I am an artist, though, not a businessperson, and was ill-equipped to manage this money. I found myself surrounded by strangers itching to offer their “help.”

I should have kept working with Pearl Bedell, my former business manager, but instead, insecure and shaken, I was influenced
by those who wanted Pearl out of the picture, and I fired her. I’ve always regretted that.

Remember, whenever money is involved it brings out horrific things in people. It has the power not only to split families apart but to destroy the foundation of one’s life. Never lose sight of this. Take time and be certain you place your trust in those whose interests and goals mirror your own.

To cope with the pressures of business and single motherhood, my mom began seeing a psychiatrist named Christ L. Zois, who recommended his best friend, Thomas A. Andrews, as an attorney to handle all her business dealings.

Zois became my mother’s closest confidant. My brother and I became friends with his son, and our families used to vacation together. I thought it odd that a psychiatrist would see one of his patients socially, but I was young and didn’t give it too much thought.

In the late 1980s, my mother discovered that she was being defrauded by Andrews and Zois. Not only had they acquired some of the rights to her name, but Andrews had not paid her taxes for years. It was a betrayal that left her reeling emotionally and in debt to the IRS. Eventually Zois lost his medical license in New York State, and Andrews was disbarred.

How could this happen?
It happened because I trusted them completely. I even recommended Zois to Oona Chaplin, whom he was also accused of swindling.

Had I been a suspicious person, I would likely have seen the warning signs in Zois’s relationship with Andrews, but if you can’t trust your doctor and your lawyer, whom can you trust?

I lost millions and part of my business, and spent years paying back taxes, but I believe that what goes around comes around. Andrews is dead, and Zois has been disgraced. Still, I never recovered the money the court ordered them to pay me.

I wrote to you before about never wanting to become hard, about always wanting to be open and trusting. The downside of being open is that you can easily be hurt, and I have been many times. The betrayal by two people I trusted completely was a hard blow to recover from. It exploded the core of my being, and made me wary of ever trusting a psychiatrist or attorney again.

I believe in forgiveness, because without it, your spirit is not free, but this betrayal took time, courage, and a lot of faith to overcome. I have swept these two men from my mind and into a garbage heap in the Great Beyond, where they will be very much at home.

There were times when I was facing financial ruin that I
considered marrying for security, but it was not something I could actually bring myself to do. Zois and Andrews robbed me of financial independence, but they did not take my emotional freedom.