The Women Who Raised Me

by Victoria Rowell

  When we got back to Sarah’s carriage house, she filled her bathtub a quarter of the way with tepid water and after clipping the ends of the stems she gently placed the Candelabra roses into the bath. I’d never seen anything like this before. Such care and tenderness for cheap roses bought on a street corner.

  I asked Sarah, “Why all the ceremony?”

  She answered, “Just watch.”

  Very slowly, the revived blooms began to gain strength. I was in awe at what a simple act of kindness could produce, even for a flower, even for me. The two dozen roses sat in a place of honor in front of her leaded-glass window. Continuing in the holiday spirit, we hung her infamous Texan chili pepper Christmas lights, setting fresh pine saplings purchased from the Union Square farmer’s market throughout the carriage house. Listening to Ella Fitzgerald, we reminisced about our friend David Cuevas, a painfully beautiful American Ballet Theater dancer who had succumbed to AIDS. By the late 1980s so many of our cherished friends had fallen or were about to. A natural moment of silence followed with just Ella’s voice echoing what was in our souls.

  Flowers typically adorned the interior of Sarah’s home, which was chock-full of heirlooms, furniture, silver, books, and deer hide fur throws—vestiges of the family wealth and privilege that she had inherited from her father’s tremendous success as a tract housing developer after World War II. Jack Neece built houses from San Diego to Los Angeles until the 1950s. When Sarah was eight, her mother suddenly died, and she was soon sent to boarding school. Eight years later, Sarah’s father died, leaving her and her brother orphans.

  Describing her boarding-school experiences, she once told me, “I was raised by cocker spaniels, ‘get home by dark,’ and just enough toast.” After graduating from Sarah Lawrence College, she went to work as an apprentice at LaJolla Playhouse in San Diego during the summer of 1963, starting out as a dresser to the stars. I was enraptured by the stories Sarah told of her life outside of ballet; before this stay, I’d only known her as my benevolent ballet mistress. More and more I understood that when a body stands before you, that’s not all there is to it.

  She had worked for everyone from Ginger Rogers to Howard Duff when she was asked to interview for none other than Paramount Studio’s London import, by way of Alabama, Tallulah Bankhead. I remember how transfixed I was as a child when I saw her in Hitchcock’s Lifeboat. That voice, that hair, that sensuality. After Sarah’s interview with Ms. Bankhead, there was a poignant silence before she was informed that the job was hers. The two hit it off instantaneously.

  At 6:30 Tallulah would arrive at the theater and was quite talkative, but once the clock struck 7:00, she uttered not one more word and you better not ask her a question that required an answer. They worked in complete silence, only communicating with their eyes. Not a hair on Tallulah’s head was ever out of place and for good reason. On the eve of opening night for Milk Train, Tallulah asked Sarah—whom she renamed “Sally”—to wash her hair. Sarah, eager to do well, said, “Sure,” then she realized the shampoo wasn’t shampoo at all, it was Energine lighter fluid. Tallulah explained that when she saturated her hair with the flammable liquid, before it evaporated, she could style her tresses into her signature page boy wave to perfection.

  At the vanity, Sarah held a candle snuffer over a flame and melted the wax. Tallulah would dip her orange stick and expertly stroke each lash, giving it a bead at the end. Every night Sarah would stand in the wings and watch with amazement at what she called “zinger moments.”

  It was no secret that Tallulah was a smoker; in fact, she smoked right down to her fingertips, often burning the flesh so badly, she couldn’t use her fingers at all. It was little known that each evening, backstage, Sarah placed a glove in her beloved Tallulah’s mouth to muffle her cries from the acute pain she felt while rings were removed during costume changes.

  “That’s where the real learning began, on the road,” Sarah recalled. On tour, she met the likes of Tennessee Williams, David Merrick, Tab Hunter, Bobby Dean Hooks, Conrad Rooks, Marion Fields, director Tom Richardson, and composer Rodion Shchedrin. Sarah, once wanting to be an actress, thought twice about the profession and decided, “If this could happen to Tallulah, as strong as I knew she was…what would become of me?” So Sarah pursued a career in classical ballet. I don’t know if that was an easier road, but it was her choice to try.

  It occurred to me that we each were finishing in the profession the other began.

  Propped up on her hand-carved daybed, I watched one of her Burmese cats, Ditty-Boo, scamper and play with the cascading ribbons of her pointe shoes drying on the radiator. A service tray sat on my lap at a distance with my ever-growing stomach preceding it. Sarah served her signature pork chops and spinach soufflé, then fed a movie of old Hollywood vintage into her VCR, a film I inevitably fell asleep watching.

  My sleep was a deep sleep, the kind of sleep that when my head hit the pillow it was the very last thing I could have done for the day. Sarah provided that safe zone where it was okay to fall asleep, in which I didn’t have to be or do anything other than rest. In the morning, she would tell me what I missed as we both set off for work—me to Wall Street and her to the ballet studio.

  The best gift she endowed to me was the certainty that I would survive this passage. After all, she reminded me, “Nothing is more intimidating than doing a double pirouette onstage at the Met!” Sarah was right about that. I had nothing but respect and admiration for this Texan, who intrepidly changed the course of her life and saved mine.

  Sarah Neece was transformational in allowing me to grow, to nurture myself while preparing to bring a new life into the world, and to save enough money to rent my own apartment. Just as it was time to fly the coop, Tom resurfaced, wanting to make up for lost time, determined to prove himself.

  I was ambivalent. I had already begun to think about moving to California, where the signs were starting to point, and had nearly reconciled myself to single parenthood. Tom’s mother wrote me a persuasive letter, insisting:

  Living in California is not necessary, if you want to stay in New York. Surely, if you love each other, you can work it out. I, if anyone, know how Tom can be, but I know he loves you and if it’s possible he will do what he has to do to keep you.

  So, with Harriet’s encouragement, at nine months pregnant, I put my hand in Tom’s and took the train with him to city hall. I wore a floral muumuu; my feet were too swollen for anything but white Keds. The train screeched its way toward the justice of the peace, carrying a would-be bride and groom and an unsuspecting Iranian couple who would be our witnesses. We returned the favor.

  My relationship with Tom’s mother deepened after I gave birth to my daughter, Maya, in 1989 at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. While recuperating, I contracted staphylococcus, causing such extreme illness that I was written up in a medical journal. For nearly one month I remained in the hospital while my infant daughter went home with Tom and her grandmother. I was devastated by the turn of events as there was not a second during my pregnancy that I didn’t enjoy motherhood. There was an enormous opportunity waiting in the balance for me to break the cycle of abandonment once and for all. Oddly enough there was a parallel, a reenactment of what had happened to me and Dorothy. Who could explain an anomaly recurring in two generations? No one. My breasts fully engorged with mother’s milk, desperately wanting to feed my baby, I had to come to terms of the seriousness of my condition and that it would prevent me from nursing completely. The silver lining was that this circumstance allowed father and daughter to bond at such a primal level that no matter what ups and downs Tom and I would have in the future, their father-daughter relationship was forever secure.

  Blankly staring out of the hospital window at a brick wall, pumping my milk, I knew a nurse would collect and discard, I decided to take a sip of my own elixir. I was utterly shocked by its sweet taste and more so by its effect. I became the baby. At thirty years of age, I tasted my own mother’s milk and in that process
finished what Dorothy would have done if she could have. There was never a second during my pregnancy that I experienced fear about becoming a mother. The women who had raised me gave the best possible preparation for being handed the torch. I realized Tom came into my life for the purpose of giving me life through motherhood.

  Under a doctor’s strict supervision I was finally discharged from the hospital and allowed to return to our studio apartment, more cramped than ever with six-foot-two Tom, a newborn, baby accoutrements, a mother-in-law, and a hospice refrigerator stocked with antibiotics. Still on portable intravenous fluids and atrophied, I bonded with Maya. I was able to nurture her as well as myself with Harriet’s maternal guidance. Parenthood anchored me.

  Accepting that life was never perfect and rarely manifested according to my own or other people’s preconceptions, I felt happier than anyone could understand to finally be a part of a family, to be a Mrs. Somebody. That happiness was multiplied exponentially by Maya, who was, according to everyone (in addition to me), the most gorgeous baby girl in the world. Born under the water sign Cancer, gentle and nurturing, Maya, was an old soul. Only one other time would I feel this kind of love and that would be with the arrival six years later of my son, Jasper. My children would teach me and raise me and later share their childhoods, supplanting the one I had lost.

  Even emerging from natal waters, Maya had the features of my mother’s English lineage with what I saw as ancient African wisdom rooted in her by her maternal grandfather. Looking into her mystic blue eyes, I tried to fathom who this miraculous soul was. I would very often recall the words of an otherwise innocuous woman who approached me on the street when I was pregnant and said, “The child on the way will bring you good luck.”

  With Maya asleep in one arm, I reach for the phone with the other. It’s Spencer & Kearney. Irene says, “There’s an audition for The Cosby Show. Oh, by the way, how’s motherhood?”

  This of course meant, Was I ready to work and had I trimmed down from the one hundred and sixty plus pounds I had weighed? The request had come from Bill Cosby himself, who hadn’t forgotten my situation.

  After booking the job, there I was, on my way to rehearsal at Astoria Studios in Queens, where the show was produced—the very same location where a decade earlier I had shot that surreal dream sequence as a dancer in my ill-fated film debut in Hair and my even less successful audition for The Cotton Club. Not for the first time in my life, I experienced the truth of the adage “You can run a hundred miles and end up at your front door.” No matter what had happened in the interim, that first intoxicating glimpse behind the scenes of moviemaking had never left me. I was excited about the coincidence, otherwise calm and confident, though there was a vague gnawing in the back of my mind that I had forgotten something in the flurry of getting ready that morning.

  All went seamlessly for most of the rehearsal until Mr. Cosby said that he had a note to give me, before asking for my hand as he reached out his toward me.

  That’s when I remembered what it was. Oh my God. My gloves—I had forgotten them. I had no gloves. The dreaded moment had come. During my pregnancy, I had to let go of the entire hyperhidrosis ritual. As I had done so many times before, I did the inappropriate but face-saving substitution for a handshake, offering a hug. Anything to avoid hand-to-hand contact. My arms were swung out wide in hug preparation for Mr. Cosby.

  “No, no,” Mr. Cosby said, “your hand.” He extended his hand to me a second time.

  This time, I put my hand in his. I had developed a special way of cupping my hand, hollowing out the palm so as to diminish its grotesque nature.

  As he held it for the duration of his note, I could not hear anything he said. My senses could only register the sight of his lips moving and then the cool air that came between his hand and mine—revealing my long-held secret.

  He looked at me, clearly puzzled, then said out loud as he wiped his hand against the marble table, “Snails…she has snails for hands.”

  There was nothing I could do to cover as I shrank into myself and bowed my head in shame. Trying to be constructive, Bill advised me to take more acting lessons if I was that nervous, to which I could only nod and mutter a thank you.

  That dreaded moment had come and gone. Though I survived, I prayed that I could one day explain my circumstances to Mr. Cosby. My consolation was the fact that my work on the show was part of the catapult that would bring me and my family out to Los Angeles, where a stable acting career would begin. But I couldn’t bear the thought of ever going through anything like that again.

  I had to do something.

  Before saying good-bye to the Big Apple, Tom and I drove to Maine with Maya for her first visit with her paternal great-grandmother, Millicent Hruska Worley. Millie, as everyone lovingly called her, had a thiry-acre estate. One thing was for sure: Millie had worked hard for everything she had, including Millie’s, her popular bar in upscale Rumson, New Jersey. The well-attended bar was a popular watering hole for a wide range of customers, well-to-do New Yorkers, politicians, and even a few cads.

  One particular evening, when an inebriated customer got familiar with Millie, she looked him dead in the eye and said, “Do that again, and I’ll cut your balls off and shove them down your throat.” She was no shrinking violet. I loved the dichotomy of Millie: Annie Oakley one moment, Emily Post the next.

  Loving everything that had to do with a Rolls-Royce, diamonds, furs, art, and strong influential men, the thrice-divorced Millie married an Exxon executive. This platinum blonde was irrefutably a grande dame who loved theater in every sense. Even her country kitchen was fitted with an imposing crystal chandelier. A gal after my own heart, she and I got along famously. Millie doted on Maya and could not get over the remarkable resemblance her great-granddaughter and her daughter Harriet shared. Millie had an attic space filled to the gills with truly remarkable costumes. Buried beneath the elaborate evening gowns, fur stoles, shoes, purses, capes, and, of course, jewelry was a box of photographs she found. Inside it was a picture of Harriet as a baby that bore such a striking resemblance to Maya that whenever people saw it they inquired, “Is that Maya?” The only thing that gave the photograph away was its age.

  Millie was thrilled that I appreciated all her knickknacks and keepsakes. She gave me permission to decorate and rearrange whenever I came to visit. Though she wanted Maya to have some of her history, that wouldn’t come to pass until after her death some years later when we had moved to Los Angeles.

  As families can be mysterious in their actions, at that point I made a simple inquiry about Millie’s estate and asked if Maya might have some remembrance of her great-grandmother. My reply was an inheritance of six Tiffany demitasse spoons. Upon further investigation, I learned there would be a little-known public auction.

  After some intense sleuthing, I rose early on a Saturday morning to make my first bid by phone on a short list of Millie’s antiques that, for some unknown reason, Harriet put up for auction without notifying anyone, not even her family. It meant everything to me to salvage these few heirlooms that held Millie’s legacy for my daughter. As I had been denied any tangible fragment of my mother’s history, Maya would not suffer this fate. It was unconscionable that Millie’s prized nineteenth-century candelabra, silver-engraved trumpet vase, inlaid trays, and ubiquitous flask would be lost to strangers forever. Not on my watch, if I could help it. The auction began. My heart pounding, I bid fiercely, completely at the mercy of the liaison on the other end of the phone. I could hear the volley of counterbids in the background. Putting no limit on my determination to secure Maya’s keepsakes, I won everything I bid on. The last and most important item of Millie’s lot were her candelabra. A hush fell over the room as the auctioneer described their exquisite beauty. I transported myself back to Millie’s dining room, filled with china, crystal, and silver, and accented with a Japanese garden scene. I carefully set the candelabra on an ebony credenza, admiring their fragile grace.

  On the other end of th
e receiver I heard, “Ms. Rowell, I need your opening bid.” The flurry of activity was over as quickly as it started. I not only won back the candelabra but also was victorious at breaking another cycle. If I could show up for my mother at her private funeral, then surely I could show up for my daughter and what was inherently her birthright.

  New in Hollywood and living in a motel with a newborn, I waited for Tom to truck across country in a U-Haul with everything we owned. Upon his arrival, as he downed a beer, I asked, “Where are my antiques, my desk and dresser?” He replied, “You didn’t want that old junk. I left it in New York.” Drama! We gave drama a whole new meaning. A gig in daytime drama would be a cinch.

  Landing a series regular role on The Young and the Restless was a stroke of lasting fortune. The truth of the matter was, having a day job gave me structure and a consistent income. It also gave me the security of medical and dental insurance for my family and me. When I received my first Young and Restless/SONY/Bell Television check, I smiled. I knew, just as energy could beget energy, that work itself was a magnet, begetting more opportunities. My first spring in California was full of fertile promise, set against the backdrop of palm trees with no water towers to destruct my view. There were endless days without rain, none with snow. New sights and smells were everywhere, from the tropical mix of greenery to the rich fragrance of a canopy of violet blossoms I found myself under one afternoon. But as to my ultimate success or failure in Hollywood, I knew that it was going to be determined by whether or not I could overcome one major stumbling block. Out of all the lessons I learned from Spencer & Kearney, there was one thing they couldn’t teach me to do that was an absolute necessity in Los Angeles: drive.

  I was thirty-one years old and had avoided learning how to drive all this time because of the fact that Agatha had been forbidden to drive by her husband, Robert. I had to get a grip and realize that the ban had been on her driving, not mine, and that had been a half century ago in Maine, not 1990 in the tropical climate of Hollywood.