This was an emphatic lesson that came out of the actual moving process, which involved, as always, painstakingly wrapping every single one of my earthly belongings to be shipped from New York to my new address on Dwight Street in Boston. I choreographed and coordinated my travel to make sure I was there before the moving truck arrived. But after waiting for hours on the stoop—no truck in sight—with panic and sorrow welling, I was sure that almost everything had been lost for good.
Finally the truck showed. Relieved beyond words, I presented a check.
MOVER: Sorry, lady, we don’t take checks, cash only!
Not missing a beat, he got back into the truck and readied to drive off.
ME: Where are you taking my belongings?
MOVER: The nearest Dumpster I can find.
I anguished over the sight of the movers driving away, my belongings routed for demolition. I begged them to come back, screaming in the middle of Dwight Street, throwing my coffee mug after them. They had everything tangible that mattered to me: the collection of rocks once loved by Robert Armstead Sr., used pairs of pointe shoes and ballet slippers, my hat collection, photos, my two scrapbooks, correspondence from all of my mothers, linen and lace, my priceless book and doll collections, a set of mismatched dishes found in New York City trash. I stood there wailing for God and the whole world to see. They kept driving farther and farther away with my life.
Suddenly, a sharp pain shot through my chest that sent me to the ground, something that had happened throughout my childhood whenever I was extremely traumatized. I took shallow breaths to ease the discomfort. When a hand reached down to pull me to my feet, I looked up to see the kindly, weathered face of Mr. C., as I would call him, a neighbor I’d just met who lived in an apartment above mine. He listened as I told him what had happened. Without giving me any advice, his calm worldly manner helped me think about what resources I had for retrieving my things.
Both Uncle Richie and Uncle Roger Armstead were there for me when I reached out. What exactly they said or did, I never knew, except that their influence was brought to bear on the moving company to return everything to me at once. Without too much of a delay, all of my belongings were soon delivered and to my amazement everything was intact.
During the rest of the time that I lived on Dwight Street, Mr. C. continued to be a positive, grounding force. He never judged or told on me even when he knew that I was tapping the building’s electricity source in the basement through a series of extension cords I’d set up. This was when the utilities company had cut me off for nonpayment, after my fuel assistance application had been denied. As a ballet teacher on a tight budget, I frequently lacked for money. Mr. C. must have known that I wasn’t eating much and fed me on more than one occasion, sometimes in the company of his friend, a retired prostitute who was going blind. As we ate, Mr. C. kept me spellbound with his stories as he took deep drags from his filterless cigarettes.
At what turned out to be our last visit, it dawned on me that all these stories he had been sharing with me each entailed some aspect of surviving the hardest knocks. They were being told for my benefit. Toward the end of my visit, he, the soothsayer, turned to his friend, Miss Penny, the blind oracle, and then back at me.
“Vicki,” he said, “you’re gonna have twelve lives, you know?”
“That’s right; better listen to him,” Miss Penny murmured in agreement.
“Each is gonna be real different from the next.” Mr. C. added, “You don’t have to worry. You just gotta be prepared.”
“Preparation’s for free, baby girl,” said Miss Penny.
This was definitely food for thought. After I left that day, I wanted to visit again to hear and learn more, but the next time I ran into Mr. C., he informed me that he was moving out. He gave no reason other than he was “Going to where work is.”
Not knowing that his mantra was an oar I would use more and more in years to come, I did feel myself torn between the reasons that I’d come to Boston—to fulfill a dream by teaching ballet in the inner city and to be close to Agatha in this hard time of her life—and where the work increasingly was going to be for me: New York.
With all the challenges of this period, not everything had been disastrous since I’d arrived. One irony—there it was again—was that the minute I left New York for Boston, I was called back for auditions. It probably did wonders for Agatha to witness the turn that my road was starting to take toward acting, knowing how many doors that dance had opened for me. She had always been very specific in advising me not to say that I wanted to be a dancer. That was because, she said, “They won’t know what kind of dancer you mean.” Instead, she told me, I should say that I wanted to be on the stage, to perform. The idea that I had something to offer by way of entertaining and inspiring was never, in her teaching, strictly limited to ballet.
This was all apparent in early 1983 when I received a call in Boston that I was wanted in New York to audition for Francis Ford Coppola’s The Cotton Club. There was a small catch: I had to sing for the audition. Agatha, ailing though she was, insisted on playing piano and coaching me for the audition. Somehow she got it into her head that I should sing “Amazing Grace.”
To help defray the costs of traveling to New York and staying there, I contacted benefactors such as Mr. Bernard Frank, an executive investment broker for Smith Barney at the time, and his wife, Bossie. Mr. Frank was more than generous, securing a place for me to stay. I promised that I would allow him to invest my money once I started making some. And though that was a long way off, that’s exactly what I did.
I arrived at the address that had been provided for me. It was a real palace. The Helmsley Palace, to be exact. Wow! Gilded this and marbled that. Pure luxury. Mr. and Mrs. Frank really outdid themselves and room service to boot. There was no question now—I had better book the job to make good on our arrangement.
As it was Agatha’s philosophy that a woman ought to always dress to the nines when traveling, I arrived in style—in black lace-up shoes with black tights, gray-striped lederhosen, my 1940s Persian lamb coat, and, to complete the look, an oversized vintage black beret with copper sequins. You couldn’t tell me I didn’t belong. I was prepared, not only with my appearance, but when I checked in and presented my well-traveled passport and my Social Security card.
The next day I headed off to Astoria Studios wearing two pair of gloves. With a treatment for hyperhidosis that I had begun, this was necessary. The undergarment gloves were plastic, lined with aluminum chloride, while the outer gloves were fashionable, concealing my private chemistry kit. It seemed like a lifetime ago that I first stepped onto these stages for Hair, but here I was again for another round. Nearly running into tap greats Henry LeTange and Frank Hatchett, I made my way to a makeshift dressing room to change and waited for my name to be called. Then a door opened and in I went. Sitting behind a table was none other than dancer extraordinaire Gregory Hines. He beckoned me to come in with a wave of his long graceful arm and a smile. The accompanist asked what I would be singing and in what key.
I replied, “‘Amazing Grace’ in C.”
There was an exchange of looks as the intro began to play. Once that interminable torture was over for us all, I was asked to prepare for my dance number. I quickly changed my shoes and gave my taped music selection to an assistant. I performed a tarantella. Spinning, leaping, beats, tour jeté after tour jeté I finished to the knee!
There was no applause. In fact, they all were in complete disbelief.
GREGORY HINES: “Nice dancer, but can you tap?”
ME: “Ah, no.”
Feeling completely dejected, I returned to the Helmsley Palace and decided to treat myself to a beer. The bartender looked at me and said, “I know what you’re up to; not in here.” At first, I had no idea what he meant. I assured him I was staying at the hotel and presented my room key. He still refused me. To this day I wonder what lady of the evening would be wearing lederhosen and a 1940s Persian lamb coat. He was reprim
anded and gave a me a backhanded apology. I proceeded to write Leona Helmsley a letter describing the incident. To my surprise, she responded with an invitation to me to stay at any of her fine establishments. I carried her letter with me like it was a passport. At a later date, I took Leona up on her offer and when leaving the hotel and I was presented with a bill, I whipped out her letter.
The manager sniffed and explained, “Mrs. Helmsley meant you were welcome to stay at her hotel any time, not comp your expenses.”
These were politely called “incidentals.” The devil was in the details. Of course, that was the way of the world. Nothing was to be taken just literally. Soon enough, I would learn to read between the lines and even what was not on the page.
Looking back, it’s easy to see that the disappointments and mistakes were fantastic forms of preparation. They were funny, too. There was the time in Boston in this period when I took a day off from teaching ballet to attend my first antique auction—at the De-Cordova Museum in Lexington, Massachusetts. I was completely overdressed in full Edwardian regalia, accented with velvet leg-o’-mutton sleeves, a hoopskirt, and a Victorian hat to top it off. Nearly passing out from the heat, I used my paddle to fan myself and inadvertently won the bid. All of this, including the chair, would have to fit back into my friend Barry Savenor’s Subaru I arrived in. I would be paying for that nineteenth-century chair by teaching at three different ballet schools throughout Massachusetts for some time. I still have the chair.
In these years, I often thought of that handful of visits that Agatha had arranged for me to see my mother when I was growing up. That image of the two of them standing arm in arm outside the Howard Johnson’s near the Trailways station and waving at me when I was fifteen years old had come to haunt me. At twenty-four, while I didn’t have Dorothy’s records as I later would, I knew enough to recognize her valor in the face of so many obstacles to make sure that I was happy and loved. Those were the words that she wrote to me in letters that were surprisingly coherent, thoughtfully written, very cheerful, and loving.
Whereas in my youth it had been too unbearable to contemplate what her suffering had really been, I now felt the need to know, and I began my own painful, extended process of gathering the facts. What I eventually established from her records was that for short periods of time, she could be disarmingly lucid and high functioning, but after her six children were born, starting in the mid-1960s, she was being institutionalized for intervals of between four and six months a year, and in the 1970s for yearlong stays. Dorothy’s diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia was the one constant amid the ever-changing regimen of medications that she would inevitably stop taking whenever she was released to her own care. Her reasons, she told doctors, were that the pills blurred her vision, and that they didn’t help. I was sure that they blurred her heart, too, and her ability to recall happy memories.
Toward the late 1970s, Dorothy had been supporting herself with Social Security and food stamps, living in a rooming house in Bath. But she was not feeling safe, she explained to her psychiatrist at the Augusta Mental Health Institute. It was true that something was trying to kill her, but it was in the cancerous cells that were working their way through her insides.
This same something was also spreading through Agatha, and I became increasingly aware that her condition was worsening.
My solace and structure came from being at the ballet barre, in a new capacity. I discovered that I loved teaching ballet with a passion and loved teaching children. Working for the Elma Lewis School of the Arts was an honor. Elma was in her eighties, the grande dame of the arts whose school in Roxbury had set standards for inner-city programs all over the country. She was also a much admired costumer, seamstress, and character. She wore a large gray oversized bun atop her head, a wig, anchored with a few bobby pins, and she had the habit of looking over her thick bifocals in such a way that she always seemed skeptical, even though she was quite the opposite in temperament.
There was also something both tough and motherly about Elma that was just what I needed when both of my mothers were ailing. Work helped take the edge off my sense of powerlessness to stop the natural cycles of life that include death.
In retrospect, my disdain for Peter helped me cope after Agatha died in the winter of 1982. When she was in the hospital, Peter told me that I should move out because it wasn’t proper for a young girl to be living in the house, especially after Agatha was no longer there.
Peter Cassell and Raymond Armstead could never accept the relationship Agatha and I had—neither of them understanding the love for music and dance that she and I shared, both of them resenting our bond that transcended biology and legal standing. Directly after the funeral, Raymond paid me a visit at the parlor floor apartment in the South End that I shared with a few mice.
I heard the knock at the door, and looked through the frosted glass to see Raymond’s pitbull frame standing next to his wife, Francine. Still in a state of shock, I opened the door and Raymond brushed past me and went straight to my mantel, removing the one thing on it. It was the one keepsake that Agatha had given to me when she was alive—a photo of her at around the age of eighteen, similar almost to a daguerreotype, framed in faded red velvet with gold trim and folded into a leather black box with a single latch. Needless to say, it was my most beloved treasure because it held Ma’s energy and intentions and was meant to stay with me.
Clutching it in his hands, Raymond looked dead at me and said, “This belongs with blood.” With that, he turned and left, Francine following behind him. We never spoke again.
Several years before, much to my despair, Agatha had sold Forest Edge to Raymond for next to nothing. Shortly after that the house was burned to the ground, the cause of which was never proven. Still, I knew it would help to heal my heart to get on a bus and stand in awe, not of the charred remains of what was once my home but to come to the understanding that home was from within. Once I arrived, I closed my eyes and could see and breathe in the edge of heaven. I could hear Agatha saying, “Just received the lilacs. They came in a carton taller than me. I will plant them as soon as I get to Maine.” She still existed right there with me. I realized that Ma had created a universe of memories that would sustain me forever.
Between the fire that destroyed the Cambridge School of Ballet and the one that burned down the two-hundred-year-old farmhouse at Forest Edge, even with the shock and loss, I had learned that it was possible to emerge out of the ashes, and I would again.
I took solace in the loving condolence cards from many in my inner circle, like the card from Colleen Atwood that was a reproduction of Ballet Rehearsal by Edgar Degas, a painting from the collection of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Colleen wrote:
The news of your mother’s death made me very sad; but we know that the pain she was going through must have been so terrible—It is good you were close by and a comfort to her.
Your life and beauty must go on and she will always be with you—Please don’t hesitate to call me and don’t worry about things—You know by now that you are loved by God and your friends, so be comforted.
Of course, there were other family members of Ma’s, as well as my sisters, who were grieving themselves, yet were considerate and comforting to me, many of them who had paid tribute in life to Agatha by helping to foster me.
Uncle Richie and I were brought even closer in the loss of his mother. In later years, after he and Aunt Laura divorced, following his retirement, he returned to Forest Edge to his trailer on the two acres that Ma had bequeathed to him.
We would talk about her greatest gift of all for cultivating everything—how she taught the most seasoned local farmers her secrets for the perfect potato harvest and how to grow melons, squash, even peanuts and other produce not always suited to the weather in New England.
Decades later, Richie would confess that he could still see Ma all the time, long after she was gone, always up on the hill, hoeing her garden. No one was more grateful for being Agatha’
s last child than I was. I was in the very early stages of grief over Ma when I received a letter from Dorothy, as though she was tied to me by that invisible cord mothers have to their children, and knew that I needed some cheering. Dated February 1, 1983, she wrote:
Dear Vicki,
Wasn’t sure whether your address was Dwight Street or Dwighnt Street, write and tell me for sure. Tell me about Agatha’s (Catherine’s) funeral service. Has Sheree gone back to Germany and how’s Lori and baby? Write soon. Is your apartment warm? Time for the mailman.
Love,
Mama xxxooo
Tell the girls to write me—
Bye with love & lots of it—
Give me Sheree & Lori’s addresses.
Dorothy’s letter reminded me of something that had happened in Roxbury when my sisters and I were living with Agatha that first year I attended the Cambridge School of Ballet. In what was an aberrational act on my part one afternoon when Agatha was out, I went to have a look in the rear of her closet—knowing that was where she kept her oversized black pocketbook, a makeshift briefcase. Still hearing the music of Dark Shadows that we had been watching, I expected lightning to strike at any moment for going into the other room in the first place. Drawn curtains that partitioned her room from the rest of the apartment were to be considered locked doors. But I had a certainty there was something in her pocketbook that I was meant to see, whatever the consequence.
In the midst of files, papers, letters, and old bills, I found a letter from Dorothy. I read it, frenzied, following her handwriting that took up the front and the back and the entire border of the page. Every space was used. It was dizzying. Then, I froze, reading what she said was my father’s name. My validation, that two people, each of whom had names, had created me, a father and a mother, was there in black and white, literally. After folding the letter, exactly as I found it, I returned it to its dark vault and never touched it again.
The Women Who Raised Me Page 25