There Was a Little Girl: The Real Story of My Mother and Me (9 page)

Eileen was initially against it because she did not want to represent children. She turned my mom down. I am sure my mother did not appreciate being told no and would never admit it happened that
way. Mom instead intimated that it was on that fateful day that she changed my future and helped make Ford a success. Ford did eventually begin a children’s division that remains today. I was
not
the first child model to join, as I had been led to believe. Mom always claimed credit for being the woman who convinced Eileen Ford to start the Ford children’s division. But did she at least plant the seed?

•   •   •

Somehow, as time went on, I began thinking there was something wrong with my mom’s drinking. We were so busy that it was easy to overlook, but looking back, I see that although I would not have had the vocabulary to articulate it at the time, I realized that Mom was a highly functioning alcoholic.

She kept it hidden for years, but the signs were there, even if I was too young to see them. I recently met a man at a funeral who said that when I was two or three he lived in an apartment on East Seventy-Ninth Street and Mom lived temporarily on a floor above him. He had met her with my father and they had become friends. He told me that Mom would sometimes knock on his door in the evenings and say, “I’m going out for a drink. Here, just take her for a bit.”

She would leave me there and we would hang out. It would be 10:00 or 11:00
P.M
. He and I would just climb into bed and fall asleep. He said he never knew what time it would be, but Mom would eventually return and take me back upstairs. It is a bit sad to think that Mom just dropped me off so she could go drink, but at least she wasn’t keeping me out all night.

Still, Mom was the world to me, both at home and when I was working, and we had wonderful times together, but they were increasingly tempered by alcohol. She managed to keep our lives going for years before it would become a more obvious and debilitating problem; the negative effects becoming undeniable. In addition, it’s
equally surprising to see how humorous the results of her drinking actually were early on.

Mom went to church every Sunday, no matter where she was. I was raised Catholic and completed catechism to receive my first Holy Communion and was also later confirmed. Every Sunday I accompanied her to this little church on Seventy-First Street and Second Avenue. It was there that I sang my first song on stage, for the Saint Patrick’s Day concert. I sang “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” and was so nervous I twisted the bottom of my green velvet dress into such a balled-up knot that I showed my white big-girl pants to the entire congregation. I won first prize but will never be sure if it was for the song or my early attempts at striptease.

Mom and I were once at Mass and I was not aware that she was hungover. I was still rather naïve about such a thing as a hangover and she must have done a lot of her drinking alone or while I slept. Mom dozed off during the sermon and I did not even realize it until the moment when the congregation stood up. We all stood up, as did my mom, except she began to start vigorously clapping. She must have thought she was at the theatre and tried to cover it up by pretending she was brushing dust or lint off various articles of her clothing. It was a scene worthy of a Lucille Ball sketch and we would retell it for decades. It just seemed funny then.

But at some point, her drinking stopped being funny. One day when I was in third grade my mom and I were walking to school and chatting. I remember thinking that I wished I knew my mother only in the mornings. She was never drunk before school. She may have been hungover but I never knew it. I realized she never drank before school, but, come 3:00, I knew I’d find her in an altered state. It became inevitable that when school was out and she came to pick me up, she’d have the look in her now slightly glassy eyes. I needed only to see the dryness of her lips to know she had been drinking.

Once at night, soon after detecting her pattern, I blurted out how I felt. I don’t remember her response, but even when I declared in anger how I wished I knew her only in the mornings, her behavior had not altered. I can’t imagine having an addiction so powerful that a comment like this from a child would leave me unchanged.

If Mom wasn’t at home for some reason and I had been at a friend’s apartment, I knew where to find her. There was a bar at Seventy-Third and First Avenue on the northwest side of the street called Finnegans Wake. I could either locate her there or farther down Third Avenue at an Italian restaurant called Piccolo Mondo. It was always such a physical relief to see her that I began overlooking the fact that she was on her way to being drunk, if not already there. Usually either I convinced her to come home or we sometimes had some food and then returned home to watch some TV. Mom was rarely violent, and it
would probably have been easier for me to admit to her disease if I was ever physically abused.

My particular abuse was much more subtle and created a longer-lasting impact. Because every time Mom drank, she left me. I was not able to articulate this until years later and only after a great deal of soul-searching and therapy. I felt abandoned by her when she drank, but as long as I wasn’t hurt and she was accounted for and alive, I could justify that everything was all right. Never really knowing what I was going to come home to established a constant underlying sense of anxiety in my gut. I remained unrealistically optimistic that every day would be different. Mom would keep her promise and not get drunk at that birthday or that particular function.

More and more, I began to understand the blueprint of my mother’s drinking on a deeper level. I remember not knowing how to complain to her about it. I always felt taken care of and deeply loved and she had not yet become as verbally abusive as she would in years to come. I tried to find ways to show her that her drinking was becoming an issue. It started off subtly: I would suggest Mom just drink ginger ale with me at dinner, for example, or I’d say, “Hey, Mama, maybe you don’t have to drink tonight. And we can watch a movie.” She assured me it was all fine and then simply did as she pleased. Sometimes she was smart enough to curb it for a while, and then when I had seemingly relaxed a bit, she’d resume more heavily.

Mom was never one to enjoy decorating the Christmas tree. One particular Christmas Eve, after going to midnight Mass and a local diner that served alcohol, we came home. I needed to finish decorating, and while I was focused on the tree, Mom must have fallen asleep. When I turned to ask her what she thought, she responded only by snoring. She basically passed out on the couch, and at that moment I immediately saw a way to show her she had a problem. I chose not to awaken her. It was a risk I had to take. It all had to do with trying to catch her in some way, so that I could legitimately blame her
drinking for my unhappiness. In earlier years I would have just awakened her and pretended, both that the guy with the red suit was real and that her drinking was not a problem.

If Mom woke up on her own and dealt with Christmas presents under the tree, then it was proof, I told myself, that Santa existed and her alcohol consumption was, in fact, not that bad. If she stayed asleep and could not rally to play Santa, I could accuse her of passing out and ruining Christmas. I could say, “See, there is
no
Santa and because you were drunk, I now know and I am crushed. I hate you and I hate your drinking.” This was the year reality hit me, and the blow was threefold. Mom was a drunk, there was no Santa, and Mom’s drinking ruined Christmas. And, in a way, everything.

Chapter Four

If You Die, I Die

T
hroughout both the closeness and turmoil of living with my mother, I always had something else, which was my relationship with my father and his family. I spent quite a lot of time with him in the Hamptons, where my Pop-Pop, the former tennis champion, was something of a legend at the Meadow Club of Southampton. Mom and I would spend the summers out there, visiting with my dad and enjoying the beach club where my father was a member. We didn’t have a house of our own, but Mom wanted me to know my dad and be a part of the privileged existence that was available via his upbringing.

We at first stayed at friends’ houses or with relatives of my father’s, but we also rented a room above Herrick Hardware in the town of Southampton. I attended day camp and spent my days at the beach club, where I learned how to swim in the large, rectangular, seemingly Olympic-size pool. There are many pictures of me and my little friends eating hot dogs or ice cream, wearing our little Lilly Pulitzer floral bathing-suit bottoms and no tops.

When I was a baby, Mom took me to the Meadow Club when
invited, and as I got older she would drop me off at the club midmorning and I’d be watched by various mothers and families who welcomed me as their own. I am not sure what my mom did during the times I was at the beach club, but I don’t remember her being with me there all the time. She would have had to have been specifically invited, because she was not a member. Mom managed to stay busy. She befriended a bartender at a place called Shippy’s. It was in town and a popular joint for food and drink. It basically became Mom’s go-to watering hole. She had her haunts in every town we inhabited. I imagine Mom spent many hours at that particular establishment sidled up to the dark wood bar.

There is something tragic in the thought of my being introduced to and accepted by a part of society in which my own mother existed solely on the periphery. She never let on if she felt like an outsider or if she coveted a closer membership to this more rarified world.
Looking back, it seems that once again she enjoyed straddling the fence that separated the Waspy culture from her Newark roots. She enjoyed knowing the locals as well as the wealthier set.

At the end of the beach day, when all the other kids returned to their big houses by the sea, I was either picked up or returned to the small rented walk-up room over Herrick’s. It was a very modest space. The tub stood in the kitchen and was covered by a long wooden lid. In order to bathe, one would lift the wooden countertop and fill the tub. My father stayed with various friends and relatives who had stunning properties a short distance from the ocean with rolling lawns, pools, and guesthouses. I was happy anywhere and bounced between the mansions and our single room. I have to believe I welcomed the proximity of my mom in this tiny space. I felt uneasy, sometimes, in the vastness of these other homes and felt safe in our insulated shell. I was also still so young that I didn’t recognize the disparity in socioeconomic status evident in the varied living arrangements.

•   •   •

One night when I was a bit older, maybe five or six, Mom and I were with my friend Lyda at a dinner party at a friend’s house way out in the potato fields. My mother and Lyda’s mother had been pregnant at the same time and were both single mothers. They had a special bond, and in turn, “Lydes” and I became the closest of friends. Her grandmother had a house out in Southampton and much of our summer was spent with them.

On this particular night Mom had been drinking pretty heavily throughout the evening. The adults were all sitting around in the living room after dinner, and the kids were playing on the floor. Mom commented on one little girl’s beautiful head of hair. She then reached out to touch it and, in doing so, lost her balance. Mom always wore many rings, sometimes on all her fingers except the thumb. One of
Mom’s rings got caught in the little girl’s hair and she got yanked down with Mom’s hand. The girl’s mother got very angry and accused my mom of purposely pulling her child’s hair. She said she wanted her to stay away from her daughter.