The Book of Joan: Tales of Mirth, Mischief, and Manipulation

by Melissa Rivers

  She wouldn’t let Cooper out of her grip; he was with her at all times, like her new favorite accessory. He was with her when she visited the hospital linen closet to find some crisp sheets she could shove in her bag and take home. He was by her side when she decided to have a cocktail party on the geriatric floor. (“You never know, Melissa, where you might meet somebody!”) He was even in tow when she made a surprise visit to the dean of the hospital’s medical school to inquire about her genius grandson’s early application.

  Once we got home, John and I began our journey as parents. We were amazed at the beautiful little creature we had produced. And my mother was amazed at all the new stuff she could buy for her new favorite family member.

  Things had changed in Babyland since the fateful day when my mother popped me out between lunch and cocktails, and she wasn’t so thrilled with some of the advances. For example, she had never used disposable diapers and had never seen a Diaper Genie, which she actually found fascinating. For those of you not in the Mommy Mafia, a Diaper Genie is a disposable diaper system that turns dirty diapers into what look like link sausages and keeps the smell to a minimum. The Genie’s design is a white plastic countertop device. When she first saw it, my mother mistook it for a large coffee grinder. Needless to say, the decaf that day was a tad strong.

  She’d never used car seats. (To be fair, when she was a baby they didn’t have cars.) She told me once, “Missy, they didn’t have car seats when you were born, and you survived just fine. I used to lay you on the floor of the passenger side. I would have held you on my lap, but I didn’t want to wrinkle my blouse.”

  My mother was horrified when she first saw a baby monitor. She said, “Melissa, I do not like that thing. It’s cold, it’s impersonal, and it’s unfeeling. It reminds me of your father. God, I miss him. Besides, what am I supposed to tell the woman I hired to sleep on the floor of Cooper’s room, who has been instructed to alert us should he make a sound or a peep? Am I supposed to kick her out and give her a one-way ticket back on the raft to Cuba? Missy, I don’t want to put this woman out of work. This baby monitor thing is killing the economy!”

  In all honesty, from the moment my mother wrestled Cooper from my arms—I’m grateful she held a beat; it could have been worse; she could have wrestled him from my vagina—she adored him. No matter where she was in the world, not a day went by where she didn’t call, e-mail, or text to check in on him and send him some love. I can truly say that, with all due respect to my father, all the men my mother dated, all the men she fantasized about dating, and Al Roker (don’t ask), Cooper was the love of her life.

  Murder and Mayhem

  In one of her last interviews, my mother was asked, “Who is your favorite character in literature?” She said, “Ted Bundy.” I understand many of you may think that odd and assume she would have picked Joan of Arc or Jane Eyre or maybe even Hester Prynne (because she was slutty yet proud), but it seems perfectly normal to me. My mother loved murder. Not committing it of course, just knowing about it. She liked “being in the loop.” In fact, reading books and watching TV shows about murder and mayhem was one of our strongest mother-daughter bonds. Tightly bound victims of horrific (and frequently senseless) crimes brought us closer the way I imagine porcelain dolls helped turn Marie Osmond and her mom into best gal pals. Lest you think I’m kidding, how many of you spent the night before your college graduation in deep discussion with your mother on whether it is possible to truly rid a crime scene of all DNA evidence?

  How many of you reading this, when asked by your mother, “Who’s your favorite serial killer?” would have not only an appropriate answer but also one chosen from a wide and diverse field of candidates, of which both you and your mother had a working knowledge? I could, and did. I’ll let you try to figure out which maniac is the apple of my eye and will reveal my answer at the end of this essay.

  (And no cheating! The price to be paid for peeking might be delightfully gruesome. Here’s a clue: he doesn’t look like a maniac. Which takes Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker, and Adolf Hitler out of the running. Richard Ramirez looked so terrifying that he had to be a serial killer; the moment he was born, the doctor looked at his mother and said, “Congratulations! It’s a maniac!” And Hitler definitely looked like a madman.)

  Reading true crime was a tradition in our home, like hosting Passover Seders or trying to figure out why midwesterners found Lawrence Welk so entertaining. My mother brought true crime to me when I was a child. In my really early years (pre-K) she’d read me traditional bedtime books like The Cat in the Hat and Fun with Dick and Jane. (Of course, she editorialized and said that Jane’s emotional neediness drove Dick away and that Sally was the baby Jane had to try to save their marriage.) But once I was out of my footie pajamas, she let the games begin. I think I was in fourth grade the first time she tucked me in at night and sent me into dreamland by reading aloud from In Cold Blood. I think her intentions were twofold. On the one hand, she was introducing me to the great writer Truman Capote; how bad could that be? On the other hand, when I got a little older and became a tad rebellious, anytime I complained about how rotten my home life was, my mother could scream, “Really? What’s so terrible? Would you rather be part of the Clutter family?”

  My mother often said, both publicly and privately, that I’d made a huge mistake not snapping up one of the Menendez brothers when they were available. “Missy, they’re great husband material! They’re handsome, they’re rich, and you’ll never have to worry about getting along with your in-laws! It’s a win-win-win!”

  Interestingly, for someone who loved true crime, my mom was not interested in blood, guts, and violence; in fact, it sickened her, as it would most human beings, with the possible exception of the murderers themselves and maybe John Waters. I think it’s the intrigue of true crime that appealed to her, the psychological chess match played between the perpetrators, victims, and the police. Or, maybe she just wanted to see what people were wearing when they died. I’m not really sure.

  FYI, here’s the actual list of the shows she had on her DVR in her home in New York City:

  Wives with Knives

  Scorned

  Forensic Files

  Lockup

  Lockup Raw

  And, of course, episodes of Law & Order. All of them. (She used to say, “Melissa, the only thing better than finding a diamond ring in a box of Chinese takeout is a Sunday Law & Order marathon.”)

  And here’s an actual list of the reading material she had on her nightstand:

  Hemingway

  Tolstoy

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Ann Rule

  Joseph Wambaugh

  Vincent Bugliosi

  The audio version of Chicken Soup for the Soul

  These are strange reading and viewing habits for a woman who was afraid of everything and slept with all the lights on. When she was on the road, she’d booby-trap the front door of her hotel suite because she was afraid someone would break in, yet she would go to sleep happily reading about the Zodiac killer. Go figure. As a matter of fact, she loved sharing her true crime books. Last year, she gave the entire cast of Fashion Police copies of the new Charles Manson biography because it was “such fascinating reading, I couldn’t put it down.” (Note: since I just mentioned the Zodiac Killer, he’s clearly not my fave; I would never tip my hand. Here’s another clue: He was like a used car salesman; he worked on volume, volume, volume.)

  Speaking of Charles Manson, one of my biggest regrets is that my mother didn’t live long enough to see Charles Manson come thisclose to getting married recently.1 She not only would have tried to pull strings to get invited to the nuptials, but she would have been green (hint!) with envy of those who got to attend, and would have made sure that Charlie and his blushing (or possibly bleeding) bride were registered at Hoffritz.

  REVEAL:

  And now, mes amis, the moment you’ve all been breathlessly waiting for—my favorite serial killer! (And when I say “favo
rite,” I don’t mean “Hey, I love your work,” I mean “Hey, I love reading about your work.”) Just like a Miss America Pageant without the swimsuit event, the competition was fierce. Do I pick Son of Sam, the postal worker who killed young lovers because his neighbor’s dog told him to? Or do I go with Jeffrey Dahmer, the bland blond who let an eating disorder get way out of hand? I was leaning toward Gary Gilmore, the crackpot whom Norman Mailer wrote about in The Executioner’s Song. The white trash factor was deeply engaging.

  But, ultimately, my choice is Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer—not just because of the sheer volume of his work, but because he met most of his victims in shopping center parking lots. This ties into many aspects of my psyche. It involves crime, shopping, and fashion, and it reminds me of one of my mother’s parenting mantras: “Quantity is as important as quality.”

  1 I think she would have enjoyed even more the reason Charlie’s wedding was called off: turns out the bride only wanted to marry him for his corpse—which she planned on displaying (for money) after he croaked! Ahh, young love …

  Parenting a Parent

  As I write this, my son, Cooper, is fourteen years old. If you think raising a teenage boy is a challenge, try raising an eighty-year-old woman.

  My mother had always been a bit of a handful, to put it nicely. Huge pain in the ass would be less genteel, but it would be slightly more accurate—and I say that in only the most sweet, loving, because-of-you-I’m-on-Xanax kind of way.

  There comes a point when an adult child has to start parenting her parents. I’m not talking diapers and sponge baths. I’m talking about dealing with parents doing what they want, when they want, with no regard for repercussions and giving you attitude/exasperated eye rolls when you tell them you think what they’re doing is a bad idea. I reached that point in my life when my mother reached the point in her life when her answer to everything became “Yeah? I’m old. What are they going to do to me that they haven’t already done to me? I’ve been up, I’ve been down, I’ve been loved, I’ve been vilified. Who cares what anyone thinks? I’m gonna do and say what I want.”

  For example, in 2008 my mother was doing a one-woman show, A Work in Progress by a Life in Progress, at the famed Geffen Playhouse, in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. Rather than staying at my house in Malibu for the run of the play, she opted to rent an apartment in Westwood. At first she said this was because she was an “artist” and wanted to be near the theater, so she could “stay in character” all the time. When I pointed out that she wrote the play and that it was autobiographical—she was the character—she said, “Oh, okay fine. I rented an apartment so Cooper and I could have some time together without you hovering over us like a helicopter, supervising me like you don’t trust me to be alone with him. Besides, as a boy grows up, he needs his privacy.” FYI, the boy was seven. Turns out the real motivation behind her wanting her own place was that, just like any other teenager—did I say that? What I meant was “slightly past-middle-age Jewish widow”—she didn’t want to be under anyone’s (my) watchful eye.

  One night after a performance of her play, she met me at a local Chinese restaurant near my house. We ordered a bottle of wine and some dim sum and had a really nice dinner. At the end of the meal, I took home the leftover food and she took home the bottle of wine. We said our good-byes and went off into the night.

  The next day, I get up in the morning and start with my usual routine: make sure Cooper is awake and getting ready for school, let the dogs out, put on coffee, and turn on the TV. But one thing that morning wasn’t routine: my mother was in the news. Apparently, somewhere between the Chinese restaurant and her artist’s garret, she had an adventure and didn’t think to call me and tell me about it. For those of you who don’t live in Los Angeles (and contrary to what many of the narcissists out here believe, most people don’t), freeway traffic can be unmanageable, as it was on this night. So my mother was forced to drive on side streets. On the one hand, given my mother’s driving “skills,” that was a good thing; there are fewer targets on side streets than the freeway. On the other hand, side streets are closer to storefronts, light poles, and small dogs tied to parking meters.

  Westwood is a GPS nightmare. The streets merge, they crisscross, and at times they go in irregular, circular patterns. At about nine o’clock my mother found herself in a crazy intersection in the far right lane when she needed to make a left turn. So she stuck her hand out to signal (not to request, to advise) that she was going to make a left turn—which she did … from the far right lane.

  After an indeterminate amount of time or distance (three minutes? four blocks?), she happened to look in the rearview mirror and saw red, white, and blue flashing lights, which was odd, since it wasn’t the Fourth of July. She realized it was the cops and they were pulling her over. To this day, no one knows how long the police car had been following her when she finally noticed the flashing lights, and since she liked to drive with the radio blasting at jet engine volume, I doubt she heard the siren, either. (FYI, this was during her Patsy Cline phase, so I imagine when the cops asked her to roll down the window, all they heard was “Crazy”—which is also what they saw.) When they asked her for her license and registration, they noticed the bottle of wine seat-belted into the passenger side—“Of course I strapped it in; it was open and I didn’t want it to spill all over the floor”—and they assumed she was drunk by the way she’d been driving (not a big stretch).

  The police made her take a field sobriety test—which, surprisingly, she passed. (Later, when recounting the story, she always made a big point of the fact that she passed the test—which she should have, as she was sober—in heels. Apparently she refused to take off her Jimmy Choos and ruin a good pair of Wolford stockings walking on the filthy street.)

  After passing the test, she became Lady Magnanimous, thanking the officers for doing their job so well. One of them handed her a piece of paper. She thought she was about to sign an autograph. Turns out she was being cited for having an open container. Suddenly, Lady Magnanimous transformed into the Prisoner of Zenda. She said, “It’s not open; the cork’s in it!” They said, “That’s not how the law works.” She said, “Can you please define ‘open’?” They said, “It’s considered open if it is not sealed.” She continued this argument for twenty minutes—actually, she continued it for years and always maintained her innocence, despite evidence to the contrary: i.e., strapping the bottle in so it wouldn’t roll around and spill—until, eventually, she wore them down and they let her go.

  On the way home my mother called our assistant, Sabrina, to tell her what had happened and, even more important, to make her swear not to tell me. Well, after I saw it on TV, I called my mother immediately to find out what the hell had happened and why she hadn’t called me. She immediately went on the defensive, seizing the opportunity to flip my reason for being angry on its head. “Melissa, I am an adult. I don’t have to tell you everything.” I said, “I know, but wouldn’t it be awesome if I’d known ahead of CNN!?” Realizing her argument was flimsy at best, she managed to manipulate the facts to suggest that the entire incident was my fault.

  “You know, Missy, if you hadn’t selfishly taken the leftover food home for your child, I could have taken it and you could have taken the wine and none of this would have happened because you live only three blocks from the restaurant.” Then she launched into attempted flattery. “We all know you’re a much better driver than I am, Melissa. What are the odds you’ll get pulled over by the cops around the corner from your house?” I told her none of this would have happened if she had simply left the quarter bottle of wine at the restaurant. She said, “Are you crazy? Waste not, want not, Melissa. There are poor children in Korea going to bed sober tonight.”

  Then there was the hitchhiking incident.

  When my mother landed at LAX each week, a car service would pick her up and bring her to my house. One time, in 2013, I believe, after a long flight, she was hungry and asked the dri
ver to stop at the local supermarket so she could pick up a quick salad. She dashed in, got her food, and came out. Simple enough, right?

  Wrong.

  When my mother came out of the market she couldn’t find the car, which the driver had simply pulled into a space twelve feet in front of her, rather than blocking traffic and waiting for her directly in front of the door.

  God forbid she did what most normal people would have done: (a) look around; (b) pick up a phone and call the car service and have them call the driver; or (c) call my house and have someone come get her. But no, she chose (d) walk to the very busy corner of Sunset Boulevard and Pacific Coast Highway and stick out her thumb.

  Meanwhile, the driver was hysterical, calling Sabrina because somehow he’d lost my mother. Sabrina was frantically calling my mother’s cell phone, but she wasn’t answering. Turns out the phone, as usual, was buried in the bottom of the abyss that was her purse. There was no chance of her ever feeling it vibrating, let alone hearing it ring. (The only time she ever actually answered her phone was if she happened to be holding it when you called.)

  By this time, thirty minutes had passed and we couldn’t reach her—we were all panicked. Suddenly, the doorbell rang and—voilà! There she was with her half-consumed salad. (I told you she was hungry!) She told us all about the Good Samaritan who gave her a ride to the house. I asked her how it could have taken her so long to get here, as my street is literally 150 yards from the market. She said, “I was distracted eating and chatting, and we missed the turn for your street.” Then she marched into Sabrina’s office and gave her the Good Samaritan’s phone number, asking her to make sure he had two tickets for the upcoming taping of Fashion Police. I’m standing there with my mouth hanging open, and she’s acting as if this were a perfectly normal ride home from the airport. I was furious at her—not only for scaring the hell out of everyone, but for getting in a car with a total stranger. I was so angry I yelled, “What’s the matter with you? What were you thinking? You could have gotten in the car with a maniac or a murderer or a psychopath! You would have killed me if I’d ever hitchhiked.” Without batting an eye, she said, “Well, if either you or Cooper had come to pick me up at the airport, none of this would have happened.” I said, “What do you want from me? I was at work. Cooper was at school. He doesn’t drive. He’s only twelve!” And she said, “Whose fault is that? You should have gotten married earlier.”