Unfortunately, my mother had terrible asthma, an affliction I later acquired as well. While on these mules, inching our way along narrow paths that peered back down into steep canyons, my mother’s asthma kicked in. They had placed her somehow at the end of the line of pack animals, and between the mule dander and sweat and the dust being kicked up by mules ahead of her, she had a full-blown asthma attack. In moments, she was unable to breath and had reached that frightening point when the attack switches from slight tightness in the chest to a debilitating blockage of the airway. She may or may not have had her puffer, but by then it would have been useless. She needed to be airlifted out of the canyon. We stopped and radioed for a helicopter evacuation, and Mom was loaded up and taken to a hospital.
I remember being worried, then embarrassed, then angry. I thought it interesting that it was my mother and not me who created the reason for the upheaval. I knew she did not do it for attention, for as much as she loved being dramatic, Mom did not truly enjoy or feel worthy of the attention. It was designed more to steer people away from her real self. But I remember a flicker of a thought—it seemed like my mother always managed to create a fuss of some sort. Maybe that is why I never did feel the freedom to upset any situation. Deep inside I knew my mom would do it for us. Mom was never too unruly in public if the press was around, but she’d get sloppy. At the birthday bashes she’d throw me, she’d hang on people and dance provocatively. She loved being the wild one and it made me even more reserved.
• • •
I was offered a ride on the helicopter to fly out with her, but I chose to remain on my mule. We never spoke about it again and I wonder if she was hurt that I did not choose to go with her. But I wanted to ride out with the team. It was fun and an adventure, and once Mom was safe, I was free to enjoy.
I was always worrying about Mom’s safety. I never wanted anything to happen to her and I felt I always had to protect her. When she was asked to leave the Southampton home after pulling the little girl’s hair, I thought something bad would happen to her if she were left alone. I would have died for her, as I showed I was willing to do when the Jeep’s brakes went out on the George Washington Bridge. In the case with the mule, I relaxed once I knew she was in safe hands.
In a way my refusing the copter ride was one of the first times I chose not to follow my mom anywhere she was headed. This was the first time I can remember choosing myself over her. It is also true that I was able to relax more in this case because I knew my mother was in a professional’s care. I knew she wouldn’t come to any harm because she was not alone and she was going to be in a hospital. Basically, I found peace in knowing she was accounted for. This was a theme that would run throughout my life and up until the end of hers. As long as I knew my mother was OK, I felt freedom to relax and be present in my life.
Wanda Nevada felt like a camping trip. Because there was nowhere to go but the hotel or the desert, I worried less about my mom. She was drinking as much as always, but I knew where she was and knew she couldn’t really get hurt. There wasn’t even anywhere to drive, so I felt relaxed. Everybody looked after me and I was, once again, like a mascot. Even my godmother, Lila, who was born in Arizona, was able to meet up with us later in Prescott and stay for a lot of the filming. Mom made no enemies on this set that I can remember. In fact, we made some long-lasting friends. Peter Fonda gave me a chestnut two-year-old filly as a gift and we still speak to this day.
• • •
The movie wrapped in mid-September and Mom and I left immediately for Los Angeles. I had been offered a movie with one of my all-time favorite comedians, George Burns.
This movie was called Just You and Me, Kid and starred George Burns and a cast of funny and legendary old-time comedians. In the film I play a young runaway who is being chased by the mob. George’s character takes me in and we form an unlikely friendship. The movie was shot entirely in Los Angeles and mostly on the Warner Bros. lot. I got my school syllabus and was assigned a tutor; once again Mom’s old rule of not missing school had been pushed aside. I loved my tutor, though. She had a great sense of humor and made learning fun. We sent my work back weekly and I continued to do well. In the same way that filming movies gave me refuge from my mom’s drinking, time in “school” gave me refuge from shooting. In a very unconventional way, there was a balance to it all. I had no reason to rebel against any of it because each provided a respite from the other and oddly enough gave me a very well-rounded existence.
I was on a roll now and was excited about moviemaking. To me movies represented new, fun, and safe experiences where my mother’s drinking would take less of a toll on our lives. There was a safety in having to be responsible to my job and accountable to an outside obligation. It became easier and easier to avoid confronting Mom’s drinking and go to a set. I had the excuse of having to work, and it became my ultimate escape. Mom may have been embarrassing or obviously tipsy on set, but there were always other adults, who felt like a sort of extended family, to take me away. They buffered me from my mother’s drunkenness and served as witnesses to her behavior. I felt less alone. At home in our apartment I often shrunk from fear and felt isolated. But within the context of moviemaking, there was always somewhere to go and someone with whom to be. Movies felt, at least temporarily, bigger than her addiction. As long as there was a call sheet that outlined the day, I could avoid dealing with Mom’s problem for a while longer.
• • •
George Burns loved my mom and treated me like a favored grandchild. He refused to light up his famous cigar when around me because he knew I did not like smoking, and we had ongoing inside jokes throughout the filming. Once again, I was treated like a favorite pet.
Filming on an actual movie lot was thrilling to me. The studios looked as if they did in the movies, and it was such a luxury to have a trailer and eat at a commissary or across the street at an old Hollywood restaurant. The SmokeHouse was George’s favorite place to eat and he had a regular table. He always invited my mom and me to join him. There he would have fried fish fingers with a side of ketchup and never any alcohol to drink. I always ordered what he had and I wasn’t even a fan of fish sticks. I remember Mom ordering her regular drink at the time, which was a martini straight up with a twist, and thinking I was so glad we had only an hour for our lunch break because she wouldn’t have time to drink more than about two cocktails.
Mom and I rented a house in Bel Air. It sounds fancy, but it was a run-down ranch-style house with a cracked pool and rats that ate the kiwis we had in a bowl on the kitchen table. I thought it was a mansion and was very excited to live in such a posh neighborhood. Mom and I had fun, and although she was still drinking every night, her days seemed somewhat tempered. If she did drink during the days, I still did not have to get behind the wheel with her because teamsters drove me to and from the set.
It was a happy time. We were working in sunny California and Mom seemed untroubled. My stepsister, Diana, came to stay with my mom and me in our rented house, and, as usual, we all laughed a lot and enjoyed beautiful Malibu and going to Fiorucci or Heaven in Beverly Hills for our Candie’s shoes and colored jeans. Looking back now, this seems like it was a bit of a golden era for all of us.
• • •
I realize now that I did an incredible amount of work at this time. Five movies in two years! But it made sense for many reasons. I was popular and directors and producers wanted me. But on a personal level, it was just the easiest and happiest way to live with my mother. I still felt incredibly connected to her, but her drinking had become scarier and more difficult.
Mom would not stop drinking for me. I could only believe I wasn’t doing enough to make her stop. It took me about thirty years to realize that nothing I did could make her stop if, in fact, she did not want to or could not fight it herself.
But at the time, I still thought I could control things. That I could fix things. And as 1978 ended and I returned
to New York, I thought I had finally discovered a way to fix her, this time for good.
Chapter Seven
Are You Finished?
The first thirteen years of my life were unconventional in every way. I lived two entirely different existences between being raised by a single mother and working in the entertainment business and spending time with my father’s more conventional (but also more affluent) family. I was a star, but also a normal kid going to regular schools. I was the source of great controversy, yet a darling, an incredibly innocent bystander. The press both praised me and devoured me. Mom was the wild and needy one whereas I was the caretaker and adult. I went in and out of so many different environments and found my comfort zone in all of them. My world was ever changing and diverse, but I had no trouble adapting. Strangely the versatility did not unsettle me but instead fortified me. I grew to know that I could find my place anywhere. At times I did struggle with the question as to who I was because so many others seemed to be living in just one environment and could be defined as such. But I started to have pride in being able to put on a different hat and be a different person, each time learning and loving an undiscovered side of myself.
The circumstances of my daily life were definitely unique, but that was never the reason for my sadness or insecurity. There are clichéd ways of blaming the industry and the press and the public for somebody’s demise emotionally, but I cannot ascribe my own troubles to them. I had enough love, good people around me, and a strong-enough innate sense of character to carve a path for myself and admit my own fears or insecurities without placing blame on the world or how unfair things were. I don’t know why this was. Even if I had to keep changing directions, I just kept moving. Regretfully, however, I do have to acknowledge that the most damaging element in my life was loving and being loved by an alcoholic mother.
And the problem of my mother’s drinking just got worse and worse over the next few months. It’s ironic, but I believe that if it were not for the entertainment industry, I would have been a train wreck. I would have crumbled if I did not have a place to hide. I had to be professional because it was my job and I was getting paid. I couldn’t fall to pieces.
My dad also provided safety and consistency and a conventional family. I appreciated it and him. I visited often, and even though it felt a bit too restricted and aristocratic at times, the knowledge that his home existed for me came to be a great relief. I found solace in knowing that he was a phone call away. But he was only one part of my life. Most of my time revolved around my mother and what she created.
At work, I was always the good girl, the polite one. I got a good reputation early on because I was so easy to work with. I loved the responsibility because people liking me was the only real reward I sought. The pride I derived from my job stemmed primarily from being liked and accepted. People praised me for being so well-behaved and I was fueled to continue being so.
With regard to my mother, it felt like it was never enough. Nothing I said or did seemed correct or could make her stop getting drunk or feel deeper happiness. I felt helpless. Why wasn’t I enough to help her stop drinking? I felt much better about myself when I worked, so I began to crave my jobs. I knew what to expect there. Come the end of my workday, however, I never knew what to expect. It did not seem abusive as much as it did claustrophobic, sad, and helplessly codependent.
In addition, the press wanted me to admit my mother and I had a Mommie Dearest type of relationship, but that was simply not the case. She also wasn’t Mama Rose, the stereotypical stage mother. I didn’t ever have the feeling that she was the one who wanted to be a star. Yes, as a young woman she wanted it all, but with me she was getting it without the risk of falling short herself. She never said, “I could have been . . .” Our relationship and my stardom satisfied all her needs in one. Except she would never feel fully proud of or satisfied with herself. My mother thought she had the most beautiful child in the world. She felt the attention I received was justified. I think she believed in my talent but she never focused on it. She saw people wanting me and that meant success to her. Buying homes and having possessions or traveling meant we were successful.
Looking back at these years I realize that our relationship was so scrutinized because it was so public. But ironically, it was also this public scrutiny that kept me somehow accountable.
I often thought of the private hell that many mothers and daughters were enduring, and I actually felt lucky. I justified my mother’s behavior by saying I was lucky I wasn’t like the kids out there who were beaten or had relatives who abused them. I just thought my mother was colorful and unconventional. Up until this point, it didn’t occur to me that maybe it was unhealthy to live with a mom who drank as much as my mother did and was verbally and emotionally abusive. I believe I also saw how easy it was to focus on people in the public eye when there were so many private sufferers in the world. But I thought that because I was not physically abused or battered, my situation did not merit complaining about or even really fighting.
I knew that although the world thought I was living a crazy life, there were many others whose lives were more tragic. It was this type of empathy that kept me imprisoned by my mother’s alcoholism. People assume that if somebody is in the entertainment industry, doom is inevitable. But then I believed those without a public platform were worse off.
The struggles I had never came from the entertainment industry. Stardom, and the fame or money associated with it, was not my issue. The business was my buffer. Stardom was a by-product. It was never the catalyst for my unhappiness. My unhappiness was rooted in my mother’s inability to stop drinking. My sense of worthlessness stemmed from feeling insecure as to who I was and inadequate in getting my mother to stop drinking. I had lower self-esteem, not because I was a model but because I was a daughter. The movie business kept me afloat and sane. My mother’s drinking superseded my stardom. I was a child of an alcoholic way before I was a star. I craved opportunity and I craved my mother’s sobriety. I never understood the connection between the two.
In the end, I never got caught up in my growing fame or my public persona. My focus was always on what was going on at home. My mother’s alcoholism tempered the positive and negative ramifications of fame and of being a “star.” Between living in New York City, attending nonprofessional children’s school, and navigating an alcoholic parent, there was little room for me to fuck up. Fame was easy in comparison. Fame was fake and fickle, but my mom’s drinking was real and consistent.
• • •
I believed for a long time that I could affect my mother’s drinking. Like many children of alcoholics, I thought if I asked a certain way, or made some type of deal with my mother where I promised something, it would be compelling enough to make her stop.
As I grew older, I started to notice the deeper change in her behavior and began to intensely feel the consequences of the booze. Once, when drunk, she got so angry with me for some little thing that she tipped over a full room-service table. Food went everywhere and one plate bruised the outer part of my eye. I wished it had cut it so I could show her the next day and make her feel bad. Another time we were driving somewhere in the car with Bob and she screamed for him to stop the car. She stumbled out and walked along the highway at night. Bob dropped me off with somebody and spent hours trying to find her. It was especially when I was not working that I felt increasingly unsettled by her drinking.
For years, I didn’t know what alcoholism was or that my mother had it. I knew only the effects and I thought I could change them. But at the end of 1978, once we were away from the safety net of the films I had been shooting and back in New York, I was getting scared, both for her and of her. Her drinking seemed to be incessant and her mood swings acute. She had gotten sloppy. I had begged her so many times to quit but to no avail. I knew it was still up to me to do something. I had taken care of her in various ways my entire life and this was just another task.
I think I must have complained to my godmother, Auntie Lila; to Bob; and to my dad. It was probably Lila who introduced me to the concept of alcoholism and how there were people who could help. It is strange how hard it is for me to remember the details and the exact timing, but I distinctly remember walking Mom through the nondescript door of the Freedom Institute, a treatment center in New York that was founded just a few years earlier, in 1976.
It had been only a few weeks prior that I met with a counselor, also at the Freedom Institute, who had described to me what it was to be an alcoholic. She made it clear that Mom had a disease and needed treatment. The counselor explained that I had in no way failed by not being able to get my mother to quit. She clarified that while it was absolutely normal that I wasn’t able to get my mother to stop drinking, I was very much needed to help get her into treatment. This lovely woman exuded kindness and compassion as she took me through the necessary steps in getting my mother help. I listened intently and was resolved to do whatever it took. She kept saying it would be tough and I had to be strong and I was the only one to whom my mother might listen.
I knew I was important because I had been the one navigating my mother’s behavior the most intimately and constantly for most of my life. I was the one who had run up the street to Piccolo Mondo in search of Mom and peered in the window at Finnegans Wake pub after school to see if I recognized the back of her head. I was the one who had pleaded with her to not drink on my birthday and made excuses for her when she was on a tear. I was the one who learned that there was no Santa because she was passed out on the couch on Christmas Eve. Of course it would be me who was the important piece in this whole thing.
My mom loved me more than any other human being on the planet. I could fix this—I knew it. Responsibility was a familiar feeling. I absorbed the information and the plan was set. We would stage an intervention and confront my mother. I knew it was a delicate situation and it could go horribly awry. But intervention was my only hope.
There Was a Little Girl: The Real Story of My Mother and Me Page 12
