Over the years, I also had fun memories of both the beach club and hanging with the year-round local community. I remember being welcomed by the polarized world and not really even noticing the differences.
For many years, I was too young to understand social barriers. I had been taught very strict manners by my mother. Other mothers would comment on how polite and well-behaved I was, and I was always invited for playdates. On one particular playdate I brought my plate to the kitchen sink at the conclusion of the meal. I was quickly reprimanded by the mother and informed that I needn’t do such a thing.
“But my mommy said I should always bring my plate to the sink.”
When I returned home, my mother got a phone call from this particular woman, who said, “Please tell your daughter that we have people working for us who clear the table. When she visits, she does not have to bring her plate to the kitchen sink.”
“Well, we don’t have people who do that for us, and you need not worry about her doing it again in your home, because my daughter will not be returning there again for a playdate. Good-bye.”
Mom laughed when she told the story later, loving that a woman from Newark had taught her daughter better manners than people who had more money than we would ever have.
• • •
When I was five years old, Dad married Didi Auchincloss. It was on May 1, 1970, in Manhattan. Didi was from a prominent New York family and had been traditionally educated. She had been married previously but was divorced from Tom Auchincloss, who was Jackie Kennedy’s stepbrother.
I don’t remember them meeting or dating, just that one day I was told Dad was getting married. Because I had never experienced my mother and father as a married couple living together and as a bonded couple, I felt no jealousy toward my dad’s new bride. In fact, I thought she was very pretty and that everything in her house was always so neat. She was petite and reserved and kept her life in strict order. She was a brunette, well-bred, and well-educated debutante who reminded me of Jackie Onassis. Dad had chosen the antithesis of my mother. This, without a doubt, must have killed Mom. There is a beautiful photo of a smiling Dad and Didi coming out of an Upper East Side church and crossing the street. Dad is in tails and Didi has flowers in her hair. To me, it all seemed beautiful and perfect. I used to stare at every detail of this photo when I visited their Eighty-Sixth Street apartment. It all just looked so classic and beautiful.
Didi had two children from her first marriage. Her daughter, Diana, was six years old, and her son, Tommy, was nine. I suddenly had an instant family, and I was excited by the future. It wasn’t long before another baby was on the horizon. My stepsister, Diana, and I were very lucky that our parents married, and even though we did not know it at the time, we were to become partners, allies, confidants, and lifelong sisters.
Didi gave birth to my first half sister, Marina, when Diana and I were seven and six, respectively. Imagine the joy of knowing I was an older sister and that there was now a baby to play with! I had wished that my mom would have another baby, but it was not possible. I vaguely remember her going into a hospital and having a “female operation.” I suggested we adopt: “Just get one from the foundling home.” I didn’t want her with a man, but I did want a baby sibling. Now I had one, and Mom was off the hook.
Over the years, Diana and I began spending more and more time together and unabashedly laughing the whole time. Diana even became quite attached to my mother, and Mom often introduced us as her daughters. Talk about unconventional! Didi seemed to have no qualms about her firstborn daughter being in the company of her husband’s ex-wife. She allowed Diana to spend time—a great deal of time—in our company and in our small-by-comparison apartment on Seventy-Third Street. Later, she even traveled with my mom and me all over the world. Diana and I became extremely close, and my mom loved us both. All parties involved seemed to support our being together. The three of us became a real team and we all benefited. Diana confided in my mother, who authentically loved her. I now had a partner with whom to commiserate. During the times Diana stayed with my mother and me, it seemed like we were always having fun and laughing.
Soon Dad and Didi moved out to the North Shore of Long Island. They bought a beautiful house in an area called Meadowspring. The house was huge and the backyard ample. I shared a room with Diana during my visits, and Tom and Marina had their own rooms.
Over the next seven years, little girls would be born into this growing brood. Cristiana next and Olympia “the baby.”
Sometimes Diana would stay in the city with my mom and me. The three of us would drive around in our silver convertible, with the top down, eating cherries or peaches from the fruit stand. We would park outside Dad’s office with the radio blaring, eating our fruit and awaiting my father, who would drive Diana back out to Long Island. It was slightly reminiscent of when Mom used to wait to surprise-attack my father outside his old office building. This time it was slightly more intended to create a stir. Picture an old silver convertible, its top down, loud music and laughter blaring from it, parked in front of a Park Avenue office building filled with investment bankers and CEOs.
Sometimes Dad picked us both up and sometimes just Diana. I spent many weekends out on Long Island with Dad’s family and accompanied them on spring breaks in the Bahamas. I had two totally different lives and seemed to go in and out of each with ease. At my dad’s there was routine and a schedule we strictly adhered to. There were three meals each day, served at roughly the same times. Kids washed up for meals and often ate with the nanny. During dinner parties, the adults ate in the dining room while the kids stayed in the big kitchen. On days that Dad came back late from work in Manhattan, Didi or the nanny would create a plate for him that he just had to heat up. There was very little in terms of surprise. At the end of the day you could always find my dad sitting in his study watching the boob tube. Bedtimes were set in stone, and only late-night whispering delayed actual sleep.
By stark contrast, Mom had no set mealtimes. We often ate out at various Chinese or Italian restaurants later than conventional mealtimes for children. We rarely cooked breakfast but instead went to the corner deli for a buttered roll with coffee and copies of the Daily News and the Post. We’d read each other our horoscopes and enjoyed the taste of the sweet butter on a hard roll. There was always the perfect amount of crunch on the outside and soft on the inside. My coffee was mostly milk and sugar but I loved being able to order “The regular, please.”
That was our routine and we craved it. With Mom I never had a nanny and only rarely a sitter. Mom and I went to see movies and off-Broadway shows. We’d stay up late and didn’t always get up on time for school.
But by the time visits to my dad’s rolled around, I welcomed the change of pace. I loved having the option of varied and contrasting lifestyles. The structure that my dad’s world provided was a tremendous relief from the adventurous and more Bohemian existence I lived with my mother. In the same way, the lack of routine and spontaneity with Mom served as a welcome reprieve after living under my stepmother’s roof.
This duality, however, would create confusion later. Not clearly adopting any one side would later prove to be perplexing. Where did I really belong? It was as if I were living two parallel lives. The environment my father provided was the antithesis of that in which I lived with my single mom.
However, I was so enmeshed with my own mother that even though I looked forward to the order I felt in my father’s house and knew how included I was as a family member, I was not open to my stepmother as a symbol of anything maternal. I once put ice down our English nanny’s shirt and ran from her only to fall and split open my knee. I was rushed to the hospital and definitely needed stitches. Didi came in with me as I lay down on the bed to be sewn up for the first time in my life. She warmly tried to hold my hand while the doctor stitched me up, but I refused. Gripping the side of the bed with one hand and holding a clump of the ha
ir on the back of my head with the other, I defiantly stated, “No, thank you. You are not my mother.”
I did not dislike my stepmother—not in the least—or that my dad had a new wife. But I was simply not attached. I made it clear that nobody in the universe could fill my mother’s shoes. And with all due respect, Didi never tried. My stepmom was the antithesis of my mother. She was tiny, systematic, and never prone to drama. She believed in protocol and lists. She was fastidious and was even known to alphabetize her spices. I used to do anything I could to unsettle her. I loved screaming and having her run into the kitchen, worried I had been hurt again, only to greet her with “Ahhh! Does the cayenne pepper go with C or P?”
She always smelled good and maintained her own nails. I’d often smell the enamel from down the hall and knew the color she picked would be a subtle one. I made sure to paint my nails black whenever I visited. Didi always wore an array of yellow-gold bangles and bracelets. To this day, if I hear a jingling of bracelets, she comes to mind.
By contrast, my mom was larger than life, disorganized, and often incited chaos. She was frequently boisterous, she drank and cursed like a construction worker, and she wore red lipstick and fire engine–red nail polish. She was clean but often disheveled. Mom’s idea of order was writing important phone numbers on tiny scraps of paper and losing them and tying up her credit cards with one of the thousands of rubber bands she had saved from delivered newspapers.
My mother never seemed outwardly resentful about the other life that I had at my father’s, but there were signs that she wasn’t fully accepting of all it represented. She tried to control it. For instance, at the beginning of every summer, Dad took me to get my annual pair of Top-Siders and a few Lacoste short-sleeve shirts. I loved these outings and couldn’t wait to wear what I knew the other kids would be wearing. Mom shopped for me only at thrift stores and would never buy me brand labels. In fact, every time I came home with a Lacoste shirt, Mom would painstakingly cut out the little signature alligator. This was not an easy task because the thread was a sturdy plastic, and a hole would inevitably be left. Mom would then sew up the hole with the same color of thread as the shirt, and even though they were brand-new, they looked secondhand. Only then was I allowed to wear the now no-name item. It amazes me how much she coveted the world of privilege yet thwarted its symbols. It was a confusing time for me, but I knew I was loved by both sides. They were each protecting me and caring for me in their individual ways and from their unique perspectives.
Overall, there was a good relationship between the two families. I have always been pleasantly surprised and deeply relieved that neither my mother, nor my father, nor my stepmother ever spoke ill of one another. Nor did they try to pit me against the other family or try to prove their superiority. I went back and forth frequently and never felt like a traitor.
One thing that never changed was my devotion to my mother and the feeling that our lives would be forever intertwined. The brakes on our new black Jeep once went out while we were traveling across the George Washington Bridge heading out to New Jersey.
Mom screamed for me to get in the backseat and strap in because we had no way of stopping. I refused. I remember feeling strangely proud and looking straight ahead and saying, “No! If you die, I die.” I was steadfast.
We veered off the bridge, onto the Palisades Parkway, and up an incline, eventually slowing to safety. We shut off the engine and were fine, but that Jeep model and year was soon after recalled. I am sure I remember the event so vividly because Mom herself loved telling the story of how her daughter would rather die than be without her. She got to hear me pledge my undaunted love for her. What more could she ever want?
• • •
I continued modeling throughout my childhood. I was getting a few more commercials and did one for Tuesday Taylor, a Barbie-like doll whose ponytail grew when you pushed a button. This one was fun because I got to keep one of the dolls while the other girl got to take home Piper, her sister. I also did a Susie Q’s spot, which was not nearly as fun because I had to eat Susie Q’s all day and got supersick. It was a commercial with Mason Reese, and I remember thinking his mom was a real character.
When I was nine years old, I was cast in my first film, then titled Communion, which was later changed to Alice, Sweet Alice. The film was a horror story in which my character gets tortured by her older sister and is eventually murdered. It mostly takes place inside a church and during the young sister’s first Holy Communion. The casting process was an odd one, and the story of my audition became an anecdote my mother loved to repeat to anybody who’d listen. As usual, I went into the room by myself while Mom waited outside. I was then asked how I would pretend I was being strangled. Funnily enough, I was at the age when my friends and I did this crazy thing with our breath that always made me laugh. We’d push all the air out of our mouths and then do this deep, guttural, crazy machine-gun laugh until our faces got completely red and puffy and we became hysterical. Because our faces were so red and our eyes filled with tears, it looked kind of disgusting and scary. So I was very ready to pretend to be strangled.
I was told that in the pivotal death scene, my character was to get strangled with a candle, stuffed in a deacon’s bench, and set on fire. A deacon’s bench most commonly found in churches and chapels is where the deacon or priest sits during the Mass. It’s usually wooden, with a spindled back and arms. During the audition, in a room full of people, I proceeded to do the demonstration of my suffocating red face. I held my breath, bore down, and let out a huge fart. I was incredibly embarrassed and quickly mentioned that during the actual filming I would not do that.
Later that same day, after having gotten the part, I showed up for rehearsal. A group of actors were discussing astrological signs and asked me when I was born. I said I was a Gemini, and one lady said, “Oh, that’s an air sign.”
“We know!” added the director, laughing. My face got really red, and not intentionally this time. Mom thought this was incredibly funny, and we would laugh about it for years, saying that maybe I should fart in auditions more often and I’d get more movie roles. Needless to say, the movie (later retitled again and rereleased as Holy Terror) was not a box-office hit but went on to become a bit of a cult classic.
Soon after filming Alice, Sweet Alice, I was brought in and cast by Woody Allen, to appear in a new movie he was directing that was titled Annie Hall. I was going to play the focus of the young Alvy’s obsession. In one of the scenes I was a sexy pilgrim in a flashback of a Thanksgiving-themed school play. I filmed for only two days, and although singled out briefly, I was one of many kids in the scene. I did stand out because I was dressed all in white with flowing hair while the others had mismatched clothing and seemed uncomfortable. Woody had chosen every odd-looking child he was able to find in New York City. The scene was filmed in a gymnasium and we were all given box lunches. During this time my mother and I had adopted a husky puppy, and Mom had brought the dog to visit me for lunch. I didn’t wish to finish my box lunch and asked Mom where I should put it. She said, “Give it to funny face.”
I went to a little boy who was very short for his age, had black greasy hair flattened down on his head, and wore Coke bottle–thick glasses. I handed him my lunch. Mom blurted out, “I meant the dog!”
I felt so bad for having thought the kid was “Funny Face” and prayed his mother didn’t hear the conversation. Thankfully, neither the kid nor the mom heard a thing. But, embarrassingly, Mom and I did laugh pretty hard about it later that day.
The strangest part about doing Annie Hall was that Woody Allen asked my mother out on a date and she went. I think it was only the one night and it was just dinner. Mom left the apartment, and our close friend Alice from across the street came to babysit. Alice was young and blond and like a big sister to me. While Mom was out, Alice and I made crazy-funny signs that said things like “Oooooh, how was your date?” Or “Did Woody get smoochy smo
ochy?” Or “Hope you had fun, Mom.”
We stuck them all over the hallway on the seventh floor. When Mom got off the elevator, she was faced with all these funny signs leading to our apartment door at the far end of the hall. It turned out the date was uneventful. She explained that Woody was too neurotic and was in too much therapy for her liking. It is fitting that that was her take on the situation: a woman who would never fully be able to examine herself honestly, criticizing a man who appeared desperate to examine his neurosis. I get the phobic piece being unattractive in any person, but self-reflection, in my mind, is never a bad thing.
In the final cut of the movie, the flashback of the school play was edited out. My sexy pilgrim ended up on the cutting-room floor. I am pretty certain this had nothing to do with the date, but it was fun teasing my mom and accusing her of doing something that made Woody cut me from the film.
Mom and I were the closest when we were laughing. Our comedy and innate sense of timing created our deepest bond. We had the same sense of humor and it would carry us through many a difficult period. Mom kept her wit basically until the end.
Even though things didn’t work out with Woody, Mom did have two other notable relationships at the time. The first was a man named Bob, whom she began dating on and off when I was about three. I don’t think Mom was ever really attracted to him or was in love with him, but he was a very generous man who loved us very much and he embraced me fully. He worked in oil rigs and shared with us substantially. I think Mom accepted him as a temporary provider but never wanted to remarry. He was around—and a very strong source of support for me—for many of the more tumultuous years, when Mom’s drinking escalated to disruptive heights.
There Was a Little Girl: The Real Story of My Mother and Me Page 7