During these years my modeling career really began to take off. Mom was my manager, but she was hardly the typical “stage mother” one would have expected. She’d ask if I wanted to go in for a job and then simply let me do my thing. She never grilled me on how it went inside the rooms and instead waited for me to volunteer information. I am sure she would have loved getting feedback, but I don’t remember her ever pressing me. When I did not get the job, she would just brush it off and we’d discuss what we should do with that free time. There were many times we’d hear parents through the elevator door screaming at their kids or even slapping them. We often heard the sound of crying getting fainter as the elevator descended to the first floor. I never understood why moms promised their kids things like bicycles if the kids agreed to go in on a “go see.”
If the kid didn’t want to model, I thought he shouldn’t have to. My mother never bribed me or forced me to audition or work on things or on days I didn’t feel like it. Granted, I was quite young and hardly ever stood up to my mom, but I don’t recollect feeling pressured, like I was being forced to do something I didn’t want to do. Mom made me feel that it was all my choice. She’d say I could stop anytime I wanted to. I, of course, wanted nothing more than to please her, so I rarely refused to do anything. On any particular day, if I ever expressed not wanting to go in for a job, Mom would unplug the phone or we would escape the house and go to Central Park.
This infuriated clients and agencies, but it ironically made me more sought after. No is a powerful word.
Strangely enough, I got only a few jobs in commercials. I was cast in a Johnson and Johnson Band-Aid ad and a Holly Hobbie doll commercial, but it quickly seemed that my looks were not considered all-American enough, and I was often turned down and labeled “too European.” Whenever I did get a job, I knew I’d have fun no matter what, and my mom would feel happy. It was a win-win situation.
I learned early on that the sweeter I was to the adults, the nicer they treated me. It was all just for fun during those years, or at least it seemed that way to me.
I stayed at my grade school in Manhattan while working and rarely missed a day to model. On some of the bigger trips, I might miss a Friday. Even as I got older, Mom maintained this rule. If the agency phoned to say I had a shoot for 10:00 A.M. on a Thursday, Mom would respond by saying that was great and we would see them all at 3:00. If they pushed, she’d claim that if they didn’t want me, it was fine to choose another child, but I would not be available until after school let out at 2:40. Basically, while other kids were involved in after-school sports or playdates, I was shooting for various catalogues. I can’t say I minded not playing sports or being forced to spend any time separated from my mother.
I have a lot of great memories from these early years. I was once cast as Jean Shrimpton’s daughter in an ad. Mom always said that I looked more like her than any other model or actress. Mom thought she was beautiful and had a face with perfect symmetry.
Over the next few years I modeled in ads and catalogues for Macy’s, Sears and Roebuck, Bloomingdale’s, Alexander’s, McCall’s, and Butterick. Whenever I had a “go see,” Mom remained in the background. On set, Mom was not one of the moms who made her presence imposing. She never hovered over the creative team or offered unsolicited direction to me. She saw everything and had her opinions about everybody, but during these days, she was more subtle and did not share her judgments with me.
Our life was active and fun. We basically each had a full-blown career. I modeled and Mom managed.
By the time I was ten, it became obvious that I was in need of larger and more credible representation. Mom looked around at the various available children’s agencies for models and was evidently dissatisfied with what she found. Even then, she had high aspirations and was not content settling for anything she deemed commonplace or plebeian.
Because she frequented many photographers’ studios and artists’ lofts socially and had friends who worked at cosmetic and hair care–oriented companies, she knew the best in the business. The models she loved all seemed to be represented by the Ford Modeling Agency and she knew the top ad agencies looked to them for their talent. Ford was an agency with such prestige and power that Mom decided it was the only suitable place for her baby girl.
In 1974, Ford Models did not have a children’s department and had no plans of incorporating one into their already thriving business. But we had an in. Eileen and Jerry Ford, who had started Ford Models, knew my father from various social circles and from supplying models for Revlon ads, and my dad was now working for Revlon as a sales executive.
I remember that my mother had met Eileen and Jerry many times. They had all remained friendly, so Mom decided to approach Eileen personally. She loved to tell the story about how one day she opened the door and marched up the three flights to Eileen Ford’s spacious and bright office. Mom said she stood in front of Eileen’s desk with her hands on her hips and explained to Eileen, “This agency doesn’t have a children’s division, and it should. Brooke will be your first child model.”
Eileen was initially against it because she did not want to represent children. She turned my mom down. I am sure my mother did not appreciate being told no and would never admit it happened that way. Mom instead intimated that it was on that fateful day that she changed my future and helped make Ford a success. Ford did eventually begin a children’s division that remains today. I was not the first child model to join, as I had been led to believe. Mom always claimed credit for being the woman who convinced Eileen Ford to start the Ford children’s division. But did she at least plant the seed?
• • •
Somehow, as time went on, I began thinking there was something wrong with my mom’s drinking. We were so busy that it was easy to overlook, but looking back, I see that although I would not have had the vocabulary to articulate it at the time, I realized that Mom was a highly functioning alcoholic.
She kept it hidden for years, but the signs were there, even if I was too young to see them. I recently met a man at a funeral who said that when I was two or three he lived in an apartment on East Seventy-Ninth Street and Mom lived temporarily on a floor above him. He had met her with my father and they had become friends. He told me that Mom would sometimes knock on his door in the evenings and say, “I’m going out for a drink. Here, just take her for a bit.”
She would leave me there and we would hang out. It would be 10:00 or 11:00 P.M. He and I would just climb into bed and fall asleep. He said he never knew what time it would be, but Mom would eventually return and take me back upstairs. It is a bit sad to think that Mom just dropped me off so she could go drink, but at least she wasn’t keeping me out all night.
Still, Mom was the world to me, both at home and when I was working, and we had wonderful times together, but they were increasingly tempered by alcohol. She managed to keep our lives going for years before it would become a more obvious and debilitating problem; the negative effects becoming undeniable. In addition, it’s equally surprising to see how humorous the results of her drinking actually were early on.
Mom went to church every Sunday, no matter where she was. I was raised Catholic and completed catechism to receive my first Holy Communion and was also later confirmed. Every Sunday I accompanied her to this little church on Seventy-First Street and Second Avenue. It was there that I sang my first song on stage, for the Saint Patrick’s Day concert. I sang “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” and was so nervous I twisted the bottom of my green velvet dress into such a balled-up knot that I showed my white big-girl pants to the entire congregation. I won first prize but will never be sure if it was for the song or my early attempts at striptease.
Mom and I were once at Mass and I was not aware that she was hungover. I was still rather naïve about such a thing as a hangover and she must have done a lot of her drinking alone or while I slept. Mom dozed off during the sermon and I did not even realize it
until the moment when the congregation stood up. We all stood up, as did my mom, except she began to start vigorously clapping. She must have thought she was at the theatre and tried to cover it up by pretending she was brushing dust or lint off various articles of her clothing. It was a scene worthy of a Lucille Ball sketch and we would retell it for decades. It just seemed funny then.
But at some point, her drinking stopped being funny. One day when I was in third grade my mom and I were walking to school and chatting. I remember thinking that I wished I knew my mother only in the mornings. She was never drunk before school. She may have been hungover but I never knew it. I realized she never drank before school, but, come 3:00, I knew I’d find her in an altered state. It became inevitable that when school was out and she came to pick me up, she’d have the look in her now slightly glassy eyes. I needed only to see the dryness of her lips to know she had been drinking.
Once at night, soon after detecting her pattern, I blurted out how I felt. I don’t remember her response, but even when I declared in anger how I wished I knew her only in the mornings, her behavior had not altered. I can’t imagine having an addiction so powerful that a comment like this from a child would leave me unchanged.
If Mom wasn’t at home for some reason and I had been at a friend’s apartment, I knew where to find her. There was a bar at Seventy-Third and First Avenue on the northwest side of the street called Finnegans Wake. I could either locate her there or farther down Third Avenue at an Italian restaurant called Piccolo Mondo. It was always such a physical relief to see her that I began overlooking the fact that she was on her way to being drunk, if not already there. Usually either I convinced her to come home or we sometimes had some food and then returned home to watch some TV. Mom was rarely violent, and it would probably have been easier for me to admit to her disease if I was ever physically abused.
My particular abuse was much more subtle and created a longer-lasting impact. Because every time Mom drank, she left me. I was not able to articulate this until years later and only after a great deal of soul-searching and therapy. I felt abandoned by her when she drank, but as long as I wasn’t hurt and she was accounted for and alive, I could justify that everything was all right. Never really knowing what I was going to come home to established a constant underlying sense of anxiety in my gut. I remained unrealistically optimistic that every day would be different. Mom would keep her promise and not get drunk at that birthday or that particular function.
More and more, I began to understand the blueprint of my mother’s drinking on a deeper level. I remember not knowing how to complain to her about it. I always felt taken care of and deeply loved and she had not yet become as verbally abusive as she would in years to come. I tried to find ways to show her that her drinking was becoming an issue. It started off subtly: I would suggest Mom just drink ginger ale with me at dinner, for example, or I’d say, “Hey, Mama, maybe you don’t have to drink tonight. And we can watch a movie.” She assured me it was all fine and then simply did as she pleased. Sometimes she was smart enough to curb it for a while, and then when I had seemingly relaxed a bit, she’d resume more heavily.
Mom was never one to enjoy decorating the Christmas tree. One particular Christmas Eve, after going to midnight Mass and a local diner that served alcohol, we came home. I needed to finish decorating, and while I was focused on the tree, Mom must have fallen asleep. When I turned to ask her what she thought, she responded only by snoring. She basically passed out on the couch, and at that moment I immediately saw a way to show her she had a problem. I chose not to awaken her. It was a risk I had to take. It all had to do with trying to catch her in some way, so that I could legitimately blame her drinking for my unhappiness. In earlier years I would have just awakened her and pretended, both that the guy with the red suit was real and that her drinking was not a problem.
If Mom woke up on her own and dealt with Christmas presents under the tree, then it was proof, I told myself, that Santa existed and her alcohol consumption was, in fact, not that bad. If she stayed asleep and could not rally to play Santa, I could accuse her of passing out and ruining Christmas. I could say, “See, there is no Santa and because you were drunk, I now know and I am crushed. I hate you and I hate your drinking.” This was the year reality hit me, and the blow was threefold. Mom was a drunk, there was no Santa, and Mom’s drinking ruined Christmas. And, in a way, everything.
Chapter Four
If You Die, I Die
Throughout both the closeness and turmoil of living with my mother, I always had something else, which was my relationship with my father and his family. I spent quite a lot of time with him in the Hamptons, where my Pop-Pop, the former tennis champion, was something of a legend at the Meadow Club of Southampton. Mom and I would spend the summers out there, visiting with my dad and enjoying the beach club where my father was a member. We didn’t have a house of our own, but Mom wanted me to know my dad and be a part of the privileged existence that was available via his upbringing.
We at first stayed at friends’ houses or with relatives of my father’s, but we also rented a room above Herrick Hardware in the town of Southampton. I attended day camp and spent my days at the beach club, where I learned how to swim in the large, rectangular, seemingly Olympic-size pool. There are many pictures of me and my little friends eating hot dogs or ice cream, wearing our little Lilly Pulitzer floral bathing-suit bottoms and no tops.
When I was a baby, Mom took me to the Meadow Club when invited, and as I got older she would drop me off at the club midmorning and I’d be watched by various mothers and families who welcomed me as their own. I am not sure what my mom did during the times I was at the beach club, but I don’t remember her being with me there all the time. She would have had to have been specifically invited, because she was not a member. Mom managed to stay busy. She befriended a bartender at a place called Shippy’s. It was in town and a popular joint for food and drink. It basically became Mom’s go-to watering hole. She had her haunts in every town we inhabited. I imagine Mom spent many hours at that particular establishment sidled up to the dark wood bar.
There is something tragic in the thought of my being introduced to and accepted by a part of society in which my own mother existed solely on the periphery. She never let on if she felt like an outsider or if she coveted a closer membership to this more rarified world. Looking back, it seems that once again she enjoyed straddling the fence that separated the Waspy culture from her Newark roots. She enjoyed knowing the locals as well as the wealthier set.
At the end of the beach day, when all the other kids returned to their big houses by the sea, I was either picked up or returned to the small rented walk-up room over Herrick’s. It was a very modest space. The tub stood in the kitchen and was covered by a long wooden lid. In order to bathe, one would lift the wooden countertop and fill the tub. My father stayed with various friends and relatives who had stunning properties a short distance from the ocean with rolling lawns, pools, and guesthouses. I was happy anywhere and bounced between the mansions and our single room. I have to believe I welcomed the proximity of my mom in this tiny space. I felt uneasy, sometimes, in the vastness of these other homes and felt safe in our insulated shell. I was also still so young that I didn’t recognize the disparity in socioeconomic status evident in the varied living arrangements.
• • •
One night when I was a bit older, maybe five or six, Mom and I were with my friend Lyda at a dinner party at a friend’s house way out in the potato fields. My mother and Lyda’s mother had been pregnant at the same time and were both single mothers. They had a special bond, and in turn, “Lydes” and I became the closest of friends. Her grandmother had a house out in Southampton and much of our summer was spent with them.
On this particular night Mom had been drinking pretty heavily throughout the evening. The adults were all sitting around in the living room after dinner, and the kids were playing on th
e floor. Mom commented on one little girl’s beautiful head of hair. She then reached out to touch it and, in doing so, lost her balance. Mom always wore many rings, sometimes on all her fingers except the thumb. One of Mom’s rings got caught in the little girl’s hair and she got yanked down with Mom’s hand. The girl’s mother got very angry and accused my mom of purposely pulling her child’s hair. She said she wanted her to stay away from her daughter.
Mom, uncharacteristically, did not put up a fight. The plan had been for all of us to spend the night, but the ring incident shook us all up. Lyda called her grandmother, who soon arrived. Lyda said to me, “You know, Brookie, you can come to my grandmother’s if you want.”
I explained that I had to stay with my mom. I needed to make sure she was OK.
Even then, I realized something wasn’t quite right. “You’re so lucky, Lyda, that you have someplace to go,” I added.
I was a young child, but I was more worried for my mom’s safety than for my own. Sure, I would have preferred the warmth and comfort and safety of the cozy and beautifully decorated guest room in a drama-free home, but I had a deeply embedded sense of loyalty and obligation to my mom and her well-being. I could never abandon my mother by choosing to stay with my friend over her. I was the only one around to take care of my mom and I was constantly worried that something would happen to her. I had made an unspoken promise to continue to be by her side and protect her from harm, and I wasn’t going to let this episode change that.
I am pretty sure we never socialized with that particular family again, and I imagine that this incident fueled gossip about my mother’s drinking and her conduct. I never understood why Mom did not convince others of her innocence. It had begun as a warm gesture toward this little blond girl. Also, why would a grown woman purposely yank a little kid’s hair? It all seemed kind of unfair to me, and I felt embarrassed and sad for my mom.
There Was a Little Girl: The Real Story of My Mother and Me Page 6