Mommie Dearest

by Christina Crawford

  Mother had been helpful in the ways she could during this time, but she did not offer me a place to stay. I had to have complete bed rest during the next two weeks and she thought I should have a nurse, but I couldn’t afford one so the subject was dropped.

  The producers of Secret Storm did something that was way beyond anything required of them. They paid me for the 10 shows I’d been scheduled to do before my operation. I broke down and wept at their kindness when the check arrived in the mail.

  It was a long way back for me. I went to work before I really should have. Gloria, my director, knew that the show was all I had left to hold onto, all I had to look forward to. I found an apartment through the efforts of some friends and my manager who took it upon themselves to do all the work for me while I was in the hospital. I moved into my new building about two weeks after my release from the hospital. Mother was helpful, sending one of the women who worked with her over to my hotel with food and some other essentials as I was unable to go out and do any shopping.

  Everyone on the show was wonderful to me upon my return. They treated me with such kindness, such love and such care that I was overwhelmed. I had lost a lot of weight which was immediately obvious the minute they saw me. Clothes had to be hurriedly altered and I had to have somewhere to rest in between scenes. For someone who had been such a workhorse, this was very difficult for me to handle. I felt as though I wasn’t properly doing my job. But no one ever made me feel as though I were anything but welcome and loved. Not one person mentioned mother being on the show.

  Months later, I finally got the nerve to ask someone I trusted implicitly what had happened in my absence. The woman looked very uncomfortable and didn’t want to say anything. But I told her I realized that mother had been drunk during the taping and the barriers of silence were broken. What she told me was only a confirmation of what I already knew. It was the same thing I heard later from others, but only when I asked a direct question. No one ever volunteered any comment, they all preferred to behave as though it was best forgotten.

  Mother had arrived at the studio with her own entourage, her Pepsi coolers filled with her own vodka and food, every inch the “star”! She also had the California secretary with her who was downright rude to many of the people on the show. They didn’t like that secretary at all, about that point everyone agreed. She was doing the show for union scale minimum, which according to her own words quoted in the papers, paid only for her hairdresser and make-up man. She had never worked with three cameras and her difficulties only started there. The scenes had to be taped many times before they got one they could use. Part of the problem was that they were taping on the weekend and only had two days allotted. They couldn’t work very late because of union overtime, availability of equipment and because mother couldn’t work past a certain point. Apparently she was drinking the entire time she was at the studio. From what I gathered, it was not a pleasant experience for anyone involved. No one said: “It was great to work with your mother.” A few people privately told me they were very sorry about the entire situation. I could see, once again, that old look of pity in their eyes. How I detested that look.

  It is very hard to try and behave gratefully when you are really in a state of rage. It is very hard to hold your head up and be proud when all you really feel is shame and humiliation. But that is what I did. There was no use in pretending with the people on the show because they knew the truth. By unspoken mutual agreement, we all went on with our relationships and our show as though nothing had ever happened.

  The only thing that changed was what I’d privately predicted. I started doing fewer shows. The producers had to pay my guarantee, but I never did the specified number of segments after my illness. In fact it was only through the efforts of my director and producer that I wasn’t phased out immediately. The single most important thing a daytime show has is credibility, audience identification with the characters and their problems. Once that is lost, the whole show suffers. There was just no credibility left to my part. When CBS bought out the original producers of Secret Storm and took over the show, it was simply a matter of a few months until I was out. I was grateful to Roy Windsor and Tony Converse that they didn’t let me go sooner.

  CHAPTER 27

  Mother was moving into her new apartment. She wanted me to come over and see it immediately, which I did. It was very nice and just as sterile as the last one, but smaller. All the furniture was covered with plastic, which still stuck to you in the summertime. The air-conditioning was kept just as high as before, so everyone except mother had to wear sweaters. She still wore her cotton shifts and thong sandals, winter or summer. This apartment also had lovely hardwood floors and she’d ordered a beautiful custom designed rug for the living room. I was there the day it was delivered and it was really spectacular, lush and soft. Two weeks later it was rolled up and put into Manhattan Storage. When I asked where the rug had suddenly gone, mother said it would just get dirty and the bare floors were easier to keep clean. I shook my head and sighed. She’d rather live with bare, cold floors than have a rug get dirty. She’d rather have no rug at all. How it was going to get so dirty was beyond me because no one was allowed to wear their shoes in this apartment either. Finally, when there were no rugs left at all, people could wear their shoes if they really insisted.

  Mother gave me some lovely things for my new apartment. Since she was moving into a smaller apartment and already had four floors at Manhattan Storage that were filled with possessions she wasn’t able to use, she gave me a few pieces of furniture. It was a shame that she didn’t have any use for all the beautiful things she owned. She gave me a couple of much needed chairs, a small glass coffee table and an area rug. She also gave me odds and ends of dishes that were not full sets. I asked her for some of the kitchenware she wasn’t using and she gave me that also. Since I didn’t have any of these things and what she gave me was beautiful, I was genuinely grateful. Every spare dime I could get my hands on was going to pay off my hospital and medical expenses. The bills had stacked up unrelentingly during my illness and I was having a tough time paying all of them.

  After I was well enough to resume some sort of normal activity, she gave me tickets to see shows she’d been invited to attend, she asked me to stand in for her and accept numerous small awards she was given for business and charitable activities she’d lent her name to and then requested that I attend many of the other events she used to attend.

  I knew she thought all this exposure would help my career and most of the time I was more than glad to do it. Sometimes she’d ask me at the very last minute, saying she didn’t feel well enough and to make her apologies. Sometimes that was embarrassing, but people were glad to have anyone to fill an empty space at the table, so it usually worked out all right. I didn’t like giving the little speeches very much, but I thought it was all good training for me.

  I became so involved with mother again that I’d drop whatever I was doing that wasn’t directly connected with my own work to be with her whenever she asked or to join her for lunch, cocktails or dinner. I’d break dates and rearrange my own plans, never saying anything to her. I’d cancel whatever I had going and run over to her apartment. She even asked me to do some traveling with her on company business. I went on junkets to Virginia and Pennsylvania on the chartered Lear jets, attended the dinners and went to the bottling plants. There was some company inquiry as to whether I might be useful in a capacity similar to mother’s, for the younger generation since I was not quite 30 years old and she was in her sixties. But every time the subject was tentatively broached by someone connected with the company, she acted as though she hadn’t heard it. I never received one cent for the things I did with her on company business.

  However, on my thirtieth birthday she gave me a check for $500 and on Christmas she bought me some beautiful clothes which actually fit. I’d finally been very specific with her about what size I wore. I had a talk with her, telling her that I was very grateful for ever
ything, but it was a terrible waste of time and money if the clothes weren’t the right size. She finally got the message and everything fit after that. She also gave me a lovely “fun fur” coat for the winter and some attractive jewelry.

  The clothes were almost a necessity since I practically had to have two complete wardrobes. One set of clothes I bought for myself and my own private, normal working life. The other set was for those constant occasions when I either stood in for her at some public event or when I was invited to join her and her friends for dinner at one of the expensive restaurants in the city or travel with her on company business. The requirements were quite different, so the clothes were different also.

  During this time, her drinking seemed to get worse. It was so serious that sometimes she’d have a new set of bruises in between the time I left her on one afternoon and saw her the following day. She was never totally alone in the apartment, but she was taking bad falls again on the slippery, polished, rugless floors. She hurt herself rather seriously more than once.

  One day, a doctor that she liked and trusted was visiting her, partly to check her ankle and partly to just see how she was feeling generally. When he was ready to leave, I had to leave too and I walked him to the elevator. I asked if we could talk and he offered to drive me home in his car.

  When I felt it was safe and no one would overhear us, I started telling him how worried I was about mother’s general health and particularly her drinking. I begged him not to tell anyone I’d talked to him, because I knew mother would be furious if she thought I was going behind her back, even in her own best interest. I told the doctor that something had to be done, someone had to help her, even if it meant substituting something harmless for all the pills she took. I told him that these falls and bruises usually happened in the evening after I’d left, or in the middle of the night after she’d been drinking and then took the sleeping pills.

  He listened quietly, keeping his eyes on the traffic ahead of us. I literally begged him to find a way to either talk to her directly about the problem with her drinking or at least to check with her other doctors to see if something couldn’t be done about all the pills.

  He looked rather sad. I knew mother trusted him. I knew I couldn’t say anything more than I already had, which was precious little. The couple of times I tried to suggest that mother not have any more to drink, she became angry with me and didn’t talk to me for days afterwards. Even when she was briefly in the hospital for plastic surgery and the doctors forbid her to drink, she still had the Pepsi coolers filled with vodka. I tried to have them removed, but again she became angry and told me to mind my own business. Then, afterwards, she’d make a big deal out of having me taste the ‘glass of water’ she was drinking. When I tried to refuse, she insisted … even if there were other people in the room. That would last a few days and then the bruises would reappear and the stories about the falls would start.

  The problem was no longer an entirely private matter. She’d appeared on several talk shows drunk, blaming it on nerves or her favorite scapegoat: antibiotics. She’d also appeared at public functions drunk, even when she knew she had been invited to sit on the dais and to make a short speech. Several of her close friends in the business who were responsible for these charitable or professional events were really beginning to come down hard on her. They told her in no uncertain terms that if she didn’t get her drinking under control, at least in public, that they’d never invite her to another of their events again. They were no longer going to be publicly embarrassed by her behavior.

  The two men I know personally who gave her this ultimatum had been friends with mother for more than forty years. They loved her, admired her as a great lady and were deeply saddened at being forced into the position of confronting her in this way. But their own reputations were now at stake and they were not about to risk their own lifetimes of hard work, nor their own professional standing in the community because of her drinking.

  Needless to say, mother took it very badly. Instead of trying to face the situation or trying to do anything constructive with her problem, she became furious with her friends. She blamed the messengers for the bad news. She became particularly critical of her friends. She said spiteful things about these people who really loved her and were only trying to help her. She used what she considered an unwarranted insult, an unfair attack on her as just another excuse to drink.

  Even now she would sometimes go an entire month without leaving the apartment except to go out to an occasional dinner from which she insisted upon returning home by nine o’clock. Most of the world she dealt with would come to her apartment for meetings or social drinks in the afternoon. She rarely, if ever, had anyone over for dinner except me or the people who worked for her.

  She never allowed herself to be totally alone. That year when the maid went to visit her daughter for two weeks over Christmas, I stayed with mother every night. I’d have breakfast in the morning and go back to my own apartment after the secretary arrived. A woman would come in the afternoon just before the secretary left and stay until I arrived in the early evening. The cleaning man who also helped with major packing jobs, came every Saturday and the rest of us cleaned up during the week. Food was ordered by telephone and delivered to the back door. One of the women who normally stayed with her over the weekend did most of the rest of mother’s shopping for her.

  I used to try to get mother interested in going out for a while, even for a drive around Central Park in the car with the windows open just for some fresh air and a change of scenery. I didn’t know how she could stand being cooped up in that apartment all the time, looking at the same walls and the same people day in and day out. I even tried to talk her into taking a vacation somewhere quiet and private, but she refused. She said she traveled enough for the company.

  There were a number of people around her these days that I didn’t like at all. They were what I rather uncharitably and crudely called the “star-fuckers.” The people who went mad over celebrities. The people who would go to any lengths to have their own names associated with anyone famous. These people were not just fans, they had professions and usually had something expensive to sell. They had no scruples about what they did if it got them close to a celebrity. Some of them only wanted to be able to name-drop with their own circle of friends. Others more commonly had something they were hustling. It didn’t even appear that they were selling something at first. At first they were just fond admirers, fawning over mother and telling her how wonderful she was. Mother just ate that shit up. She didn’t seem to have one bit of common sense when it came to people fawning over her, especially if they did it with a little class. She loved every minute of it, and in fact, I often thought that was really the behavior she preferred. Any person with one shred of intelligence could see where all this pandering was headed, but mother seemed oblivious. These people would never dare pull their sales deal in front of me, and I tried in vain time after time to tell mother that all they wanted was a quick sale at outrageous prices. She looked at me as though I’d stabbed her in the heart. She’d explain to me how attentive and loving these people were toward her, how good they’d been to her. Didn’t they call her almost every other day, just to see how she was feeling? Didn’t they invite her to dinner? Of course, she was usually “too busy” to ever accept any of their kind gestures, but it was the thought that counted. I just knew that the minute I was away for a few days, the minute I turned my back, some new dreadful, ugly painting would arrive or some contribution to a new cause would be made, or she’d lend her name to another activity she’d never participate in, or she’d pay an exorbitant fee for some personal service. Nine times out of ten I was absolutely right. I had to stand by in total helplessness and smile politely while some creep duped her out of something (usually money) just because they said they loved and admired her so tremendously. She repaid them and showed her gratitude for their fawning bullshit most generously. It made me so mad and I felt so helpless to stop it that I g
ave up talking to her about the entire situation.

  I could never get used to the fact that a woman who prided herself on having such strong will power, who was publicly known as such a strong-minded person, whose favorite pastime was giving orders, could so predictably and easily be swayed by these jerks who only had to lay on the sweet talk and wrap her around their fingers. God forbid that you should tell her the truth. She’d fly into a rage and banish you forever. But sweet talk her … say “yes” every time she opened her mouth, be at her beck and call, fall all over her with praise and admiration … she’d give you the whole goddamned world! I could never understand how she could possibly not see through this garbage. The conclusion I came to was that she wanted it just this way.

  I couldn’t do that, I couldn’t be that way. So I had to keep my mouth shut many times rather than tell her a lie, but my silence only emphasized the fact that I didn’t agree with her. Now we had a truce about that part of my personality which had given her such a fit all my growing-up years. I tried to be what she wanted as much as I could without compromising my own personal self respect or sense of dignity. I would not be her servant and I was not a fan. She only trusted and respected me to the extent that I did not allow myself to fall into those two categories, though she never ceased trying to push me into one of them whenever she felt my guard weakening. I would not make the trade-off with her and she knew it by now. If we were to have any relationship at all that had any real meaning, I had to be my own person. Otherwise, I had nothing to bring to that relationship. She had no respect for the people who simply bowed to her wishes, even if that’s what she demanded of them. She treated them with contempt and talked to them in a tone of voice I could never bear to hear. The people in the apartment who served her, did so with love and loyalty despite her bad temper and eccentric ways. But I was not one of them and I just couldn’t put up with that any more. She understood and accepted our truce in return for a very real friendship.