What falls away : a memoir

by Farrow, Mia, 1945-

  kept his stuff in the little refrigerator in our room. Once I left the grape jelly out, and within twenty minutes insects were marching in an organized line from the window across the floor up the refrigerator and swarming the sealed jelly jar. Bathroom bugs came in three varieties: little black burners, laid-back centipedes, and huge, disgusting, fleshy ones, possibly of the water bug family. Whenever I went into the bathroom, I would first make a lot of noise, clapping hands, stamping feet, or singing loudly to send them scurrying. There weren't enough analysts in the world to have gotten Woody through this trip. But Satchel could not have been more thrilled; Td go so far as to say that the bugs made the whole adventure for him, and I thought of how Moses would have loved it there.

  As I shampooed lice off the little boy's head, I saw that his back was humped, and his limbs were quite shriveled; he could not move his legs. Although I had been told that he'd had polio, I'd seen enough of that disease to doubt it. Nor did it seem to be cerebral palsy, since his muscles were flaccid, not contracted. And even given the incalculable deprivations of his circumstances, this six-year-old boy did not appear to be functioning normally. I brought my concerns to the head of the Hanoi-based American adoption agency, and told her we needed to have the child evaluated before I went further.

  On the forms she'd originally sent to me there were lists with boxes to check: acceptable, not acceptable, and willing to discuss. In the not acceptable category, I had made only two checks: profound retardation and degenerative illnesses. While considering the adoption of a child with special needs, I had concluded, out of fairness to my existing family, that any child who joined us should one day be able to live independently. It didn't seem right that a decision of

  mine should knowingly present a burden to the other children.

  In Hanoi, the head of the agency admitted that the boy had never been exammed by any medical person, and said that I wouldn't find competent doctors there. She recommended I take him to Bangkok. We did that, and in the hospital, English-speaking doctors confirmed that it was not polio, but some other thing that had caused his condition; the possibilities included degenerative muscular diseases. Further diagnosis would take weeks.

  Worried, exhausted, and in a quandary, Casey and I called Woody from the hotel in Bangkok to explain the situation. He advised us to bring the boy back and have him thoroughly tested in the United States. The agency agreed. They said that if the problems turned out to be more complex than I felt we could handle, they already knew of an excellent family in the United States who couldn't afford to travel or to pay the fees, but who were looking for just such a child.

  When we got him home, testing revealed that the boy was afflicted with a rare type of cerebral palsy, and that he was functioning at the level of a sixteen-month-old. He screamed through much of the day and night. In family conversations that included Woody, we decided that the boy's retardation would present overwhelming and ongoing problems for the younger children particularly. So after only five traumatic, heartbreaking days in our home, he left to join his forever-family.

  In the quiet, after his departure, the children and I talked about how he would be with good people where his needs would be weU met: things don't always turn out the way we hope, God has His own plans, but our role in the boy's life had been an important one: we had helped him along the journey to his permanent home.

  Meanwhile, we were told that Tam would join us at Christmastime.

  I had scarcely recovered from that experience when we began shooting Husbands and Wives, WAFP 1991, my thirteenth film with Woody. He was already busy firing a young actress when I began to iocxis on the film and learn my lines. He sent me to a noon showing of Cape Fear to see whether I thought Juliette Lewis could play his college-girl flirtation. I returned raving about Ms. Lewis and she got the job. Sydney Pollack and Judy Davis were also in the movie, and Liam Neeson, who became my friend.

  Woody now seemed preoccupied and cold, and he was still tired all the time. When I tried to discuss what could be wrong, he talked about Lyme disease, and chronic fatigue syndrome, and how he had to get tested for HIV.

  "How could you possibly have that?" I asked. "We've been together for nearly a dozen years." He answered that there was a long incubation period for HIV.

  "Then get the test," I urged. "You've spent a whole year worrying. This is no way to live. You don't have it. You'll be so relieved when you get that news it'll be like a new life. Please do it." He was tested around the time of his fifty-sixth birthday, and the results came back negative.

  Then news of another kind increased his happiness: the surrogate's court had agreed to let him adopt my children Dylan and Moses.

  Although Woody's behavior with Dylan was not yet on course, I believed he would continue to work on it in good faith. In addition to the therapist we had originally consulted, there was now a second psychologist for Dylan whom Woody had employed at the urging of the first, to address Dylan's fearfulness and inability to communicate with him—and of course presumably there was his own psychiatrist. I felt the matter was in responsible hands and indeed I had observed positive changes. I wanted to trust that all would be well.

  Still, on that day of December 17, 1991, I was concerned enough that before I would agree to accompany Woody to court for Dylan's and Moses's adoption, I made him promise that he would never try to take Dylan for overnight visits without me, and that if, God forbid, our relationship should ever falter, that he would never seek custody. This he promised me. He gave me his word. We were sitting in the camper and he put his arm around me and said, "I would not even wa«r the kids to live with me. I don't want kids around all the time, you know that. C'mon now, what kind of thoughts are you having?"

  I expected to spend the rest of my life with Woody Allen and was willing to do whatever was necessary for our relationship to continue in a good way. I had never refused him anything. Now I feared that if I denied him the adoptions, it would end our relationship. He had already suggested that I might find it difficult in the real world to work and support the children.

  How many times have I wished that I could go back to that day in the chambers of Judge Roth. Dylan, whom I held in my lap, was whispering in my ear, "I want to go home." Moses sat across the table, radiant, next to his soon-to-be "dad."

  The judge was radiant too, when suddenly she blurted to Moses, "Do you know who I am?"

  "No . . . ," Moses said.

  "You don't know who I am?" she went on.

  "No," Moses repeated uncomfortably.

  The judge looked slightly crestfallen. Then she jumped up, ran over to the closet, and whisked out her long black robe; holding it up to her chin, she sashayed toward him and asked again, "iVow do you know?"

  In a tmy, miserable voice, Moses said no. He was mystified—he thought she wanted him to say her actual name. Now he wanted the floor to open up and swallow him.

  It was a relief when finally the judge returned her robe to

  the closet and her attention to Woody. Once I interrupted to say, "I'm not giving anything up, am I?" Which must have seemed such a non sequitur that she looked at me for the first and only time that day. "No, of course not," she answered. Then I signed the papers.

  Afterward we returned to the set of Husbands and Wives, and the kids went back to their schools, and things went on the same as always, except that Moses was walking on air.

  Two days later, on December 19, we celebrated Satchel's fourth birthday, and then it was Christmas. Because we were scheduled to work right through the holidays, I had to be in the city, but the kids and I went to Frog Hollow for the weekend. Soon-Yi, however, asked to stay in New York to shop. When she arrived at Frog Hollow just days before Christmas without having bought any presents, I took her shopping. "Do you think Woody would like this?" she asked, examining a small, delicately engraved antique letter-opener. "Sure he would," I said. "It's beautiful."

  On Christmas morning, in the city, after opening the presents, the nine kids and
I filled a pew at Mass and then returned to a veritable feast. Our table was decorated with a tiny Christmas tree and holly and a Swedish centerpiece with candles and carved angels, and there were two turkeys (many kids want a leg). Mavis had made her special stuffing; and there were mashed potatoes, gravy, orange squash, cranberry sauce, and bowls of fresh-fruit punch and eggnog.

  We were in the middle of our meal when Woody walked in. He disliked Christmas and did not celebrate it himself (except for one year, when he put up a bare tree for us in his apartment with a black bat at the top). Nonetheless, he showed up just like every other day. He presented the older kids each with an envelope containing a check for fifty dollars. There was an extra chair but he chose to stand, behind Dylan. I told him how beautiful the carols had been and

  what a fine voice Matthew has, and he said, "Pardon me while I puke." Then he went over and turned on the juicer, which to my knowledge he had never noticed before. It was deafening, so we all stopped talking and waited for him to finish. He shouted out, "Anybody want juice?"

  We shook our heads because it was the middle of Christmas dinner and besides, as anyone could see, we had these two enormous bowls of eggnog and punch right on the table. But he went on, "Somebody get me some apples." Lark jumped up and got apples out of the refrigerator. "Would you cut them up?" he shouted over the noise. Lark cut them up and returned to her seat. We all sat and waited, it was useless to talk. Finally he turned off the machine and held up a large glass of apple juice. "Nobody wants this?" he asked us. Again we shook our heads, and he poured the juice into the sink. Then he took Dylan out of her chair and went to another room.

  We continued filming Husbands and Wives, waiting eagerly for Tam's delayed arrival in New York. All the kids were home from school. I brought the youngest ones to work with me, and I tried to spend time with the older ones. On New Year's Eve Woody and I got dressed up to have dinner at an expensive restaurant. Another night we took Fletcher, Moses, Daisy, and Dylan to the Russian Tea Room. We took Soon-Yi out to Sparks, a steak house we'd told her about.

  On the evening of January 12 the whole family had Chinese take-out in the kitchen, the same as every Sunday. While I cleaned the kitchen Woody drifted into the living room with Dylan. When I joined them, Fletcher and Soon-Yi were there too. Woody brought up the idea of us all moving to Paris. That was always fun to talk about. As usual we got carried away: Woody told Fletcher about the French film industry, because Fletcher was showing an in-

  terest in making films, and now that Soon-Yi was switching her major from psychology to art, I said it would be great for her to spend time in Paris,

  I wasn't working the next day, so I accompanied one of the children to a therapy session at Woody's apartment. I let us in with the key Woody kept under the umbrella stand 4 and sat down with Isaiah Berlin's The Crooked Timber of Humanity in the corner room where I usually waited. Knowing I'd be there. Woody phoned from work. We chatted lightly as we always did several times during the day, then I hung up the phone, and as I turned toward the center of the room, on the mantel, there was a stack of pornographic Polaroid pictures: a naked woman with her legs spread wide apart. It took me a moment to realize it was Soon-Yi.

  I couldn't stop shaking. I called his office and said it was an emergency. Minutes later he called me back.

  "I found the pictures," I said. "Get away from us."

  I hung up the phone. I put the pictures in my bag. I put a coat on the child and we went home. I passed Mavis and the baby-sitter in the kitchen.

  Sascha was in the hallway. I said, ''Woody's been fucking Soon-Yi. Call Andre." I went into Soon-Yi's room and showed her the pictures. "What have you done?" I shouted.

  I went into my bedroom and closed the door and tried to call Andre with no success. It was hard to breathe. I wanted to take a bath.

  Suddenly Woody was opening my door. Sobbing, I tried with all my strength to push him out.

  "I'm in love with Soon-Yi," he said. "I would marry her."

  It took me a moment to respond. "Then take her," I finally said, "and get out."

  "No, no," he recanted immediately. "That's just some-

  thing I thought of to say in the car coming over here. It's not what I feel. I don't want that."

  "Get out," I said, crying hard. "What am I supposed to tell the kids? That their father wants to marry their sister?" But he wouldn't leave. I washed my face. I wanted a bath.

  For the next four hours he was in my room talking, talking.

  "What have you done to her?" I said.

  "I think it was good for Soon-Yi. I think it gave her a little confidence."

  "Confidence in "what?" I exploded. "You made her betray everything she had, and everyone. And you say it's good for her?"

  "I love you," he kept saying. "Let's use this as a springboard into a deeper relationship."

  "What about Soon-Yi and me? What happens to our relationship? What happens to our whole family?"

  "We have to try to put all of it behind us," he said soothingly.

  "How do we do that? She's my daughter. She's the sister of your children."

  "I'm sorry," he said, "I lost control. It will never happen again. I can only say I'm sorry."

  "How long?" I asked. "How long has this been going on?

  "I don't know," he said, "several months."

  "How long is several?"

  "I don't know," he repeated. "Look, it was just a tepid little affair that probably wouldn't have lasted more than a few weeks longer anyway. I told Soon-Yi she shouldn't expect anything. I encouraged her to go ahead and sleep with other guys." Vjo away.

  "Let's turn this thing around right now. It was nothing. Just an aberration."

  I was crying the whole time. "I trusted you, we all

  trusted you. You're supposed to do the right thing. Youn not supposed to fuck the kids.*'

  Just then Sascha knocked at the door. "IVe got Andre on the phone/' he called.

  "No, no!" Woody pleaded desperately, doubling over. "Don't tell Andre. Don't tell Andre. Don't tell him."

  I picked up the phone and told Andre. "Woody's been fucking Soon-Yi."

  "Oh, this is so humiliating." Woody was on the floor, groaning. "Oh, my stomach. Ohh, ohhh."

  "What's that?" Andre asked.

  "That's Woody, rolling on the floor," I said.

  "Get him out of there right now!" ordered Andre, from California.

  "I'm trying, but he won't go. What do I do? What do I do with Soon-Yi? Will you take her till the holidays are over? Till she can go back to school? She's your daughter too. I need help, Andre."

  But Andre didn't know what to do. He was shocked and furious, horrified and disgusted. He wouldn't talk to Soon-Yi and he sure as hell didn't want her at his house in New York.

  However I begged him. Woody wouldn't go. He talked m circles. He talked nonstop. He said everything I had ever wanted to hear during our dozen years. "It's conceivable that somewhere down the line we might even get married," he said to me. But I just kept saying, "I don't know, I don't know."

  "I feel terrible," he said, "but we have to move on from here. I love you. I'm asking you to trust me. You can trust me. I will prove it to you over time. As horrible as this has been, it has shown me something, and right now you couldn't find a more trustworthy man on this planet."

  "I don't know," I kept saying. "I have to take a bath."

  When I went into my bathroom, I discovered little

  Satchel crouching under the sink; he must have heard everything. I took him out to the baby-sitter.

  Woody went in to talk to Soon-Yi: to tell her, he said, that he was wrong to have started a relationship with her and that it would not continue. My bath was drawn when he came back into my room.

  "Please go away now," I said. "I'm going to take a bath. Please just go."

  But he talked and talked and wouldn't stop talking until I gave up. I lay down on my bed exhausted. All those hours in that room—it was an existence unto itself. There were
times when I expressed my rage and disbelief and horror, and there were times when he became again the man I loved and wanted and needed with all my being. At one point he kissed me and I, still crying hard, kissed him back. "Trust me," he said, "I love you." He was rocking me as if I were a little baby. "I know I did a bad thing," he said. "Shhhh. I can only promise you nothing like this will ever happen again. I will devote myself to making you happy. You'll see.

  Finally I got him to go by leaving the room myself. He followed me, still talking, to the front door and out into the hallway, and he was talking when I pushed the button for the elevator, and while we waited, and even as the elevator doors closed.

  I had a bath. I telephoned Matthew at Yale and told him there'd been a catastrophe.

  Less than an hour later the kids were sitting at the dinner table. Sascha had told the older ones what had happened—but not Dylan, of course. Satchel knew what he knew. It was a stunned, silent meal. Woody walked right in and sat down next to Dylan at the table as if nothing had happened. He said hi to everybody and started chatting to the two little ones. One by one Lark, Daisy, Fletcher, Sascha, and Moses took their plates and went to their rooms, closing their doors.