Mom was like that, always punning. Once, when my slip was showing years later, Mom said, “You’re slipping, dear.” Slips—no one even knows what they are today! But Mom was from a proper Dallas family, and she always wore a slip, even with her blue jean skirts. I once told her that she was completely defeating the purpose of a blue jean skirt by wearing a slip with it. She didn’t seem to mind. She just smiled her demure smile, laughing somewhat at herself, and kept on wearing it.
I recently found a faded, rose-colored, silk half-slip as I was cleaning out my mom’s dresser, bringing some clothing to her, editing other skirts and shirts that she can no longer fit into. The pale pink slip seemed to whisper to me of other times, times long forgotten and delicate. Times when ladies wore pearls even in the day, when families gathered to sing at the piano, times when silver was polished for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and the good china was brought out. Times that sound like my mother’s voice, sweet, birdlike, demure. Slower times, before-computer times, before instant-gratification times. Elegant times, when elegance was as much an attitude and a way of life as it was a piece of antique furniture. I feel much more rugged than her good china, my jeans torn by design. I wear Spanx, not a slip, and motorcycle boots. I am always busy, my china is thick ceramic white restaurant dishware from Bed Bath & Beyond, my daughter has a pierced nose and tattoos. We seem worlds apart, my mom and me. I wonder what she thinks as she peers across this chasm of time at our practical and bold lives. I wonder if she knows that we do uphold her values despite our surface differences, if she knows that the chocolate pot and the candelabra will be used and cherished, if she knows that we are grateful that she saved them and labeled them with little stick-on tabs saying WEDDING GIFT TO GREAT-GRANDMOTHER PAULINE STODDARD, 1832. As I watch her sharply cut crystal sit on a china cabinet shelf and collect dust, I’m saddened that we don’t still lay out elaborate dinners on special occasion days. I’m saddened at the impatient rush and pace at which our lives are led. I wonder how to give my mom what she longs for. And then I wonder: Does she even long for it anymore?
Mom often visited me in New York before, during, and after I attended NYU acting school, and she would arrive with her blue Samsonite carefully packed with slips, flannel nighties, and occasionally a precious piece of her mother’s silver that she had been planning to bestow upon me. A silver spoon with a note that said “from grandmother Mammy Riddler,” or antique ice prongs with a tag that said “Courtney Bushfield, 1920’s.” Each night before we bedded down in my dorm room, or women’s residence hall, or tiny fifth-floor walk-up, she would open her small blue suitcase and carefully unpack her wardrobe for the next day’s adventure: corduroy maroon skirt that fell three inches below her knees, maroon cashmere sweater set, gold necklace with gold stud earrings for her newly pierced ears, stockings and of course a slip, and finally, her soft-soled walking loafers.
My schedule was always full of school or work or theater or filming, and we were always in a hurry, always walking fast and weaving through crowds to get where we needed to be, on time! Her steps were smaller than mine, protected, almost mincing, and I would help her through the tourists that were crammed into Times Square, guiding her with an arm around her shoulder down the street. Usually we enjoyed the city in tandem, stopping to take pictures and read the guidebooks, but on the heavily scheduled days I was sometimes impatient. I would be frustrated that I could walk the block in half the time as my mom, me with my long arrogant steps, so I would encourage her to take longer steps, too, to open up a bit, to stride. We would battle down the Midtown sidewalks or the angled streets of the West Village, and when it was time to cross the street, five hundred other New Yorkers and I had already edged off the curb into the street before the light flashed WALK. We Manhattanites thought nothing of crowding the turning cabs as we surged off the sidewalk in preparation to get where we were going! It was second nature, New York nature, and I loved it. Then I would turn and see my mom still stiffly standing on the curb, with her purse clutched hard into her hip, waiting for the light to change. My heart would lurch with a combination of love and impatience. I could see in her darting eyes that she was feeling it was far too dangerous to be in the street by even a foot or two. It was far too dangerous to break the rules. It was far too dangerous to stand in front of a turning cab. It was far too dangerous to move so fast. She wasn’t necessarily wrong, but I took it personally. It was far too dangerous to be with me. So I would roll my eyes as if to say, “Come on, Mom . . . This is how the New Yorkers do it!” I was so proud to be ahead of the crowd, so unconscious of the constant hurry. I liked the fast pace, the espresso energy. Later in the day we would race to another destination, and if I were to insist on jaywalking, I would practically have to grab Mom by the hand with a loud “COME ONNNN, MOOMM.” My not-so-subtle subtext: “KEEP UP!”
She desperately wanted to keep up. She loved being in New York! She loved the feeling of being on a mission from the second the alarm clock went off at six in the morning, she loved the constant excitement! She had conquered her fear of being attacked by New Yorkers—I think all people who have never visited but only know of New York from the movies have this fear; that they will be attacked and targeted at random by gangsters of various ethnicities. She had conquered this fear years earlier when I was still at grad school at NYU. She had conquered it with an ice-cream cone clutched in her hand so that she would blend into the crowd. But by now, she was a seasoned New York visitor, and she knew she needed not to just blend in, but to keep up with the crowd. Slowly but surely, her stride opened up a bit. Her shoulders squared off. She would often say “I’ll meet you there Marcia,” or “I can find it on my own Marcia,” and she would arrive at whatever location we had determined to meet with a slight smile on her face, patting down her thinning hair, and giving me an “I told you so!” look. We would meet at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and gape at Monet’s Water Lilies, or meet at the Harlem Fairway where we would don jackets hanging by the freezer room as we shopped for cheese and meat. Sometimes we took a subway to the Promenade theater on upper Broadway where we would usher together in exchange for getting to see the play for free. It was a bit dark for her to see the seat numbers on her own, and once she almost fell down the steep steps as she was trying to show a customer to their seat, so we devised a system. She would greet the theatergoer at the door, smile, and welcome them, and say “Right this way,” directing them to me, as I was running back down the stairs from seating someone else. I had to work extra fast, because I was doing all the walking for two people, but I didn’t mind, because there she was, trying so hard to be a part of it all. And succeeding! Stepping outside her comfort zone, and proving to herself she could do it. She loved ushering. She loved seeing the plays. Over the years, she came to love the scurry, or so she said, priding herself on hailing a cab by herself, or getting to my Harlem brownstone from the airport when she came to visit from Texas. Usually I would send a car to meet her, with the driver waiting in baggage claim holding a white board with BEVERLY HARDEN printed boldly in black. One day, however, she insisted on arriving the New York way. “No reason for you to spend the money, Marcia Gay. I can get a cab myself!” I hated thinking of her lifting her blue Samsonite suitcase off the baggage claim roundabout by herself, then rolling it behind her, with the flower books in a little bag weighing down her shoulder. I hated picturing her looking for the yellow taxi sign while holding her skirt from blowing in the breeze, the wind cold on her ankles as she joined hundreds of other New Yorkers in the taxi line at JFK, all impatient to get into the city. I hated thinking that someone might push her out of the way, and I could still sense her inbred timidity and delicacy when she would raise her hand—inviting the cab to stop, rather than demanding her ride. But I had to let her do it. She wanted to do it. She needed to do it. She rolled her suitcase to the taxi line, she got into the cab and gave her driver firm directions. “I do NOT want to be taken on a joy ride!” she said to him. “I know JUST where I am going!” And she
read out the directions that I had faxed to her the day before. She stared out the window and gasped in awe when the beautiful steel and glass city loomed into view as she crossed the bridge from Astoria to Randall’s Island, and she chatted with the cabbie about the “bumpah to bumpah” traffic. When she was still several blocks away from our brownstone in the heart of Harlem, she carefully tapped out my number on her cell phone. “I’m almost here, Marcia Gay! We came across 125th Street just like you said,” she exclaimed, “and all the Christmas lights were on and all the activity looked so lovely!” Once out of the cab and climbing up my Harlem stoop, she patted her hair and I saw the familiar “I told you so!” look shot in my direction, and as she entered the warmth of our home, the kids hugged her hard. We all climbed the stairs three flights up to put her blue suitcase in the guest room, dogs and cats and three kids and me and Thad all trooping after her, then crowding onto her white bed while she brushed her teeth and exchanged loafers for slippers, and all of us following her back down the stairs as if she were the Pied Piper. She admired my ikebana arrangement of poinsettia and pine that I had set on the buffet to greet her. Masterfully she plucked away a lower leaf that was blurring the line, gently she bent the red of the poinsettia a speck of an inch downward, and suddenly my arrangement was perfect. We settled her with a glass of white wine in front of the fire, dogs and cats at her heels, and my throat clenched up with a mixture of pride and shame. I had to turn away so she wouldn’t see the sudden tears burning my eyes.
I could sense that my not-so-gentle insistence on pace had made her feel, in the past, a burden. She needed to not be a burden. Of course in those moments, on the sidewalks hurrying to class or auditions or the theater, I had often been sorry, but it was always with a “but . . .” “Sorry we have to hurry, Mom . . . but class starts at two.” “Sorry we can’t stop for a coffee, Mom . . . but I have to be backstage by seven thirty at the latest.” And when I had pushed her too far too fast, of course I had been quickly apologetic, awash with shame. I hadn’t been unaware exactly, just righteous. As if this was the way it was supposed to be if you wanted to be a New Yorker, damnit! You HONK your horn! You WEAVE when you walk and also when you drive! You NEVER stop abruptly on the sidewalks of Times Square to consult your map or anything else! You keep moving in the stream and sea of people or you will get mowed down! Watching her at that moment in my Harlem brownstone, sipping her wine and thumbing through her flower books as the kids performed somersaults for her amusement, I felt the hot red of embarrassment sliding down my face, into my heart, where it bounced around for a minute, and then melted into a heart-pounding pride. I felt so damn proud of her. Proud that she had set her mind to the task of immersion in New York City, just as she had accomplished immersion in Japan, Greece, Texas, and Maryland, and in any other place to which she had traveled or explored. Proud that she was proud of herself. Proud that she had shown me up and arrived in a taxi, New York–style, and as always, she had risen to each occasion with characteristic grace and humility. She was meant for tea parlors, for paper dolls, for sewing. She was meant for flowers. She was meant for gardenias and tuberoses and paper-thin azaleas. And now she was meant for Harlem as well.
I wear the pink half-slip to bed in lieu of a nightie. Another relic of the past, the nightie. Mom is aghast that most of her grandkids wear oversize T-shirts and bikini underwear to bed. But I wear this pink half-slip and feel it smoothly settle on my thighs as I read in bed at night, or swish past the toaster as I make breakfast for the kids in the morning, cool and silky and creamy. There is some clothing you just can’t hurry in, and a pink half-slip is one of them.
Mom was also meant for pampering, and I loved for her to travel to fancy events with me: film junkets, charity invitationals, galas, and premieres. These events became like our adult “special occasion days,” and just as they had done for us when we were kids, they would break up the sameness of whatever we were doing in our lives, providing a brightly lit balloon marker along the calendar’s march through the year. It was a moment of luxury and first-class travel, champagne and massages, and I loved to share it all with her.
Packing Spanx and bras and half-slips, packing jewelry and gowns and purses, Mom and I prepared to travel again. This time we were heading to Banff Springs, Canada, to partake in a celebrity ski event and raise money for Waterkeeper Alliance, the environmental charity that was passionately headed up by Bobby Kennedy Jr. The morning began serenely enough—Mom made breakfast for my three kids while Thaddaeus and I loaded all of our seven suitcases into the car, with my skis precariously sitting on top of the blue samsonite. We finally pulled away from the curb our typical twenty minutes behind schedule, and right on cue Mom said, “Off like a herd of turtles.” At the airport we were met by the celebrity invitational representatives, so we quickly made it through the security lines and passport control, and happily settled into the first-class lounge to enjoy another cup of black coffee. Mom was on point, helpful with the kids and pleasantly chatting with Thaddaeus and me throughout the hour wait. Everything was going smoothly. Soon we were called to board the plane, and we showed our passports to the flight attendant, found our seats, dug from our carry-ons our extra socks and cashmere wraps for the long flight, and buckled up. Mom put her passport in her purse and sat back. Just minutes later, she went to double-check where it was, and couldn’t find it. This happened again several times before the plane took off; she would put her passport away, and then she would panic, and look for it, not remembering where she had just put it. “I’m telling you something is wrong, Marcia! I shouldn’t keep forgetting this!”
“Well, just let me hold onto it for you, Mom. No problem.”
“No. I have traveled all over the world, Marcia Gay! I know how to carry a passport! I’ve been doing it my entire life! Stop trying to control everything!”
I really didn’t think much of it; it seemed as common as misplacing the keys, but I was surprised at the vehemence with which she insisted on carrying her own passport, and surprised that she was angry that I had offered to hold onto it for her. I ignored the small prick of warning that was going off in my brain—I was just irritated that everything suddenly seemed so tense, so fraught. The rest of our trip went off without a hitch; I skied in the race for Waterkeepers and made it off the mountain alive, the kids and Thaddaeus skied and boarded with professional guides, Mom rode the gondola and then relaxed and had a massage. We all went on a blanketed sleigh ride through the freezing cold snow, and I soon forgot all about the passport incident.
That is, until our trip in 2007 to attend the premiere and press junket of The Hoax, a movie I had recently starred in with Richard Gere and Alfred Molina. Mom especially loved the junkets, where the actors’ and director’s task was to educate the press about the particular film they were hawking. Mom would watch with concentration as the cast talked to the press, or, if it was a closed room, she would explore the local museum while I did film conferences, then hurry back and meet me for lunch. In the evening, we would walk the red carpet together in our gorgeous gowns and expensive high heels.
Mom had been visiting me in New York and we were now headed to Los Angeles, just the two of us, for a lovely week of press, glam, and pampering. Soon after we settled into our first-class seats on the airplane bound for LA (boy, did I love it when the studio paid), the same passport scenario was repeated several times. Again and again she misplaced her passport, found it, and immediately “lost” it again and, just as she had done several months before, she was insistent that I not help. Again I blotted out the warning light that was now blinking in my brain, and excused Mom’s forgetting with the reminder that we were all a bit stressed when we travel. Now I understand that she was trying to solve the puzzle, to prove to herself that she was okay, to test herself again and again, waiting for the string of moments to slide together where she didn’t forget anything. We arrived in Los Angeles where we would attend press night, and then the following night walk the red carpet at the cinema for
the LA premiere of The Hoax.
One of Mom’s favorite forms of pampering was when a stylist would pick out clothing for her as well as me, and so our bags were packed with gorgeous dresses reminiscent of the taffetas and silks, crinolines, and velvets that she had worn in college. We had heels and evening bags and diamond jewelry and stoles. We had separate and gorgeous rooms at the Four Seasons Hotel, and our dresses were hung on cushioned hangers in our closets, with notes attached, charting which dress was for each specific event.
To my delight, we also had Richard Marin and Collier Strong, old friends by now and the most expert team of hair and makeup a girl could wish for. Richard and Collier had been my good luck Oscar charms in 2001, and we had quickly become friends as we shared our bawdy, loud, and FAAAABULOUS humor during our hair and makeup session. They had made up Mom, too, for the 2001 Oscars and many other events over the years, and now, as we prepared to open The Hoax, it was like “old family reunion time” at the Four Seasons. We were all looking forward to a few laughs and catching up as we were getting makeup applied and hair coiffed in my room while preparing for the press event.
I poured the champagne and called Mom’s room. “Come on down, Mom, and bring your yellow dress for press night!”
Mom walked down the hall to my room in a white robe, her curly brown hair still wet from the shower, carrying two dresses. A yellow dress, and a black long gown. When she arrived, she explained that she was wondering which she was to wear on this particular evening. I explained (again) that tonight was the more casual “press night,” and so the long yellow dress had been the choice, and that the fancy black long dress was the choice for tomorrow night, the premiere. She had her schedule in her hand, a very detailed itinerary that my assistant had made for her with the events and clothing choices highlighted in fluorescent yellow marker. She looked blank for a minute, then said, “Okay, I will come back dressed in the yellow.”
The Seasons of My Mother Page 15