Chanel Bonfire

by Wendy Lawless

  “Yeah, I thought it would be fun. Wanna go to the tryouts together?”

  “Sure.” We ran down the hall to sign up for a time slot. The show was Bye Bye Birdie, a zany 1960s show about an Elvis-type crooner who’s drafted into the army. I was too afraid to sing at the audition but got cast in a nonsinging role as a kooky old lady, Mrs. Peterson, in a pillbox hat with my hair sprayed gray. Tracy played one of the cute bobby-soxers, in a ponytail, saddle shoes, and a poodle skirt.

  Being onstage, even in a small part, was an amazing experience. I recognized that wonderful smell and breathed it in deeply—it took me back to the days at the Guthrie, and North Carolina, and of course my father. Acting became a way to be with him, to bring his faint memory back. The performing part was new and a bit difficult at first. I was always a little nervous before stepping onto the stage, but once I got out there, I found it exhilarating. I felt right at home, and my nerves vanished. I absolutely adored it and decided I would keep doing it, no matter what part I’d have to take.

  A couple of shows later, I had a bigger part and acted with Lauren Bacall in the audience. We were doing Inside a Kid’s Head, and her son Sam Robards played my boyfriend.

  Mother came to see me for the first time and brought Yul, the polo player. When they came backstage afterward, Mother was in a low-cut, sexy Givenchy black dress and Yul wore his dirty jodhpurs and riding boots fresh off his horse, looking like an ad for a men’s cologne. Even Lauren Bacall was staring at them and wondering if the glamorous couple were special “somebodies.” Through the years I would gradually become accustomed to being upstaged by Mother, but it was Lauren Bacall who made me first realize Mother hadn’t come to the play just to see me—she had come to be seen. And everybody looked.

  Even though she experienced excitement and adventure partying all over Europe, Mother still craved more attention. The flame that was kindled at the trailer park, back when she was a small-town celeb in the local paper, still burned.

  Encouraged by her singer friend, Marian Montgomery, Mother began to dabble with writing again—songs this time. Working together, they composed a song that Marian sang on the BBC. Mother was thrilled when we watched Marian on the telly, in a long, white, fluffy dress, and a picture hat, sitting in a swing, singing their song “Summerhouse.”

  Through Marian, Mother met the film director Silvio Narizzano and his lover, Win Wells, who was an actor, writer, and Silvio’s muse. Mother instantly bonded with Win because he was from Kansas City. He was very flamboyant, dressed in tight, pastel-colored trousers and flowered shirts, unbuttoned to the navel. Silvio was more refined and classy, in jeans and a tweed coat. Win and Silvio wore wedding rings and would sometimes have horrible fights at our flat. Robbie and I would hear them screaming at one another in the living room—a crazy blizzard of curses and epithets.

  “Bastard! What are you? Some kind of sadist!” Win would scream at the top of his lungs. Robbie and I would give each other the “uh-oh” look and settle in for the storm.

  “Calm down, darling!” Silvio would shout.

  “Calm down! I never want to see you again!”

  “Boys! Please!” Mother would yell. “I can’t hear myself think!”

  At some point Win or Silvio would throw his wedding ring across the room or out the window. When, inevitably, they made up, Robbie and I would be called upon to hunt for the ring underneath furniture or out in the street.

  Silvio’s most well-known movie was Georgy Girl, but when Mother hooked up with him, he and Win were collaborating on a movie script, to be shot at their house in Andalusia. They wanted Mother and Marian to write some songs for it. Dennis Hopper was starring, along with Carroll Baker, Richard Todd, and Win in a small part.

  In the script, there was a scene in which a bullfighter dies by being anally impaled by a bull in the ring. In another scene, a nun was devoured by cats. Carroll Baker’s character, a faded movie queen named Treasure, was to sing Mother’s song as she drowned in a fountain during a wild party. These peculiarities didn’t faze Mother; her talents were in demand.

  “I’ll be back in a few weeks, girls. Don’t forget to brush your teeth, and do your homework,” she said as she climbed into a hired car Silvio had sent for her. She flew to Spain, scribbling away en route, and we were left to fend for ourselves, which at fourteen and fifteen we’d already been doing for quite some time. Mother called to check on us periodically from the set—which sounded to us like a dozen orgies all going on at the same time.

  “What’s that noise, Mother?” Robbie and I held the phone between us, trying to hear her over the din.

  “Oh, that’s Dennis overturning the drinks cart—he has the most violent temper!” Mother exclaimed.

  Dennis Hopper was out of his gourd on an array of pharmaceuticals for most of the shoot, which led to numerous violent outbursts, and an erratic, often glazed acting performance. It wouldn’t matter in the end because all the film stock was seized by the Spanish censors and banned for being obscene. Originally called Las Flores del Vicio, it found its way to drive-ins and video in the late seventies under the title Bloodbath and feels like a loopy cross between Buñuel and Hammer horror.

  Soon after Mother’s return to London, bombs started going off again all over the city courtesy of Fergus’s old pals, the IRA. It was the third year of their campaign, but Mother was riding high off the hype surrounding the movie and not paying that much attention to anything but her lunch dates at San Lorenzo, or her latest fling. She had never taken the bombing seriously, so neither did we. Robin and I treated it like a game: we’d hear a bomb go off, run down to the local fish-and-chip shop for sustenance, and hop on the bus or into a taxi to look for the blast site.

  This all seemed perfectly normal to me and good fun. It was like an episode of Mission: Impossible where I was Barbara Bain sitting in the back of the car twisting the window handles, pretending it was a safe that I had to open before we reached the target, and Robbie was Lesley Ann Warren secretly talking to headquarters through her Bonne Bell Lip Smacker.

  When two separate bomb scares were phoned in to my school, the building had to be evacuated, but I didn’t worry—none of us did. For a bunch of American kids who’d been carted from Cambodia to Syria to Venezuela, it was kind of like a snow day. We just went to the pub.

  One morning we were sitting at breakfast with Mother in our little kitchen, which looked out on a lovely rose garden, the back wall of which abutted our tube station, Sloane Square. She was perusing a map of Devon and drinking tea.

  “Tristan wants to take us down to Torquay this weekend.” Tristan was her current squeeze—a real toff Englishman who was so upper class Robin and I couldn’t understand a word he said. He’d open his mouth and what came out sounded like “Faw faw faw faw.” He wore a bowler and carried an umbrella and seemed fairly harmless. Mother was also seeing a married TV actor ten years her junior named Terrence, but, understandably, only part-time.

  “Are we staying in a hotel?” asked Robbie as she bit savagely into her sausage.

  “Mmmm. It’s called the English Riviera, Torquay.”

  “The beach. That sounds fun.”

  I eyed Robbie for talking with her mouth full.

  “Isn’t it time for you girls to go to school?” Mother was tracing the map with her finger. Suddenly we heard this incredibly loud sound—like a gigantic tin can bursting from the pressure inside. We turned to look out the window. From behind the back wall of our garden a huge fountain of orange flame shot up into the air. It vanished almost instantly, and black smoke started churning up into the sky. I heard loud shouts and a woman screamed. Robbie’s sausage-filled mouth hung open, and Mother’s teacup clattered onto its saucer. As we watched pieces of rock and shards of twisted metal fall into the garden and land on the grass in steaming lumps, Mother lit up a Dunhill. Her hands were shaking.

  “Perhaps I should drive you two to school today,” she said softly.

  That September a bomb went off in the lobby of
the London Hilton, where Mother’s chum Mary Broomfield worked. Poor Mary was blown across the room, but the tourist she had been talking to was killed, and all that was left of her desk was a small briquette of charred wood. The explosion caused Mary to go deaf for a few days, and Mother put her in our guest room while she recovered. We brought her cups of tea and industrial-size scotches, both of which she lapped up happily. Even after her horrible ordeal, she remained cheerful, exhibiting true British pluck.

  At Christmas, the IRA set off a bomb in Oxford Circus, shattering the windows of Selfridges department store. I had got my ears pierced there on the ground floor just six months before on my fifteenth birthday. Now there were gaping holes where the holiday windows had been and the street was covered in broken glass. The whole neighborhood was empty at a time when everyone was usually bustling about, doing their shopping at Marks & Spencer and the other stores. It cast an eerie pall on the season. Even as the bombs seemed to be getting closer, they didn’t stop Mother from enjoying the holidays. We barely saw her on Christmas and only once or twice during the week. On New Year’s Eve, Mother was going to a party in Holland Park. She headed out the door, reeking of Fracas, fishing in her bag for her car keys.

  “I’m off. Be good. I’ll be home late.”

  The door shut and she was gone. What were we going to do? The only thing on telly was The Bridge on the River Kwai, and the shops were closed, so we sat in front of the electric fire and moped.

  Then Robin sat up. “Hey, what about having our own party?” she suggested slyly. “I mean, everyone’s folks are out getting blasted, right?”

  “You’re a genius,” I said. We grabbed the phone and made some calls. Within half an hour, kids filled the house while T. Rex blasted from the stereo. The Cassidy girls showed up with a pack of people. Graham Becker, who was a senior, took up a collection and ran down to the off-license to buy beer. And soon, Tracy arrived with her coterie of hangers-on and admirers.

  “Wow, great party, Wendy and Robin. Thanks for inviting us,” Tracy said in her customary twang. All the boys’ heads whipped around as she strode coltishly into the room. Someone turned out the lights and there were screams and cheers. While kids were dancing in the front room, I went outside to the garden, where people were smoking.

  “It’s bloody freezing,” said Graham Becker, who had returned from the off-license with the goods.

  “Let’s make a fire,” I suggested. “Everyone collect sticks and stuff, okay?” Soon we had a flimsy pile of twigs, leaves, and bits of wood from the tube station bombing in the center of the garden. Graham used his Zippo to light it. It mostly smoked.

  “Hey,” Graham said, “what else you got around here to burn?”

  “I found something!” Lynn dragged a busted wooden chair out of a shed in the back of the garden. It was then that I realized she was wearing my mother’s black Pucci cocktail dress with the tasseled belt and her leopard hat. T. Rex continued to blare through the back windows. Lynn tossed the chair on the fire, and it finally caught. The flames shot up into the evening sky and everyone whirled around them to the pulsating music.

  I raced up the stairs and discovered Robbie had thrown open Mother’s closets to the party, and half-naked girls were stripping off to try on her stuff. A few boys stood on the landing watching and laughing. Lynn’s sister, Diane, was in a turquoise Moroccan caftan, draped in red Berber bead jewelry. Tracy was putting on a black wool jumpsuit that tucked into her boots and made her look like Emma Peel. Robin was wearing a Gucci leather gaucho outfit with an Hermès scarf wrapped around her head Gypsy-style, and most of Mother’s jewelry. She saw me and handed me my favorite—a black Chanel toreador jacket with a matching flat hat. I grabbed a fox-fur coat, too, and headed out to the fire, followed by the other dress-ups. The fire needed more fuel, so I found some slats from a bed frame and a few dresser drawers in the shed to chuck on the burning pile. Dancing flamenco-style around the fire, clapping and whooping, banging our beer cans together, we looked like refugees from some fabulous swinging-London fashion-runway pub crawl. The air throbbed with David Bowie singing “Rebel Rebel,” and we all sang along with him, our breath making clouds in the night air above us: “You’ve torn your dress, your face is a mess . . . we like dancing and we look divine.”

  As everyone strutted like hot tramps, I saw the flash of a lamp going on in the window upstairs. I looked up and saw Mother’s face in the window. My blood turned to ice in my veins. She wasn’t supposed to be there, in the window; she was supposed to be at a party and home late. But there she was, looking at us from behind the glass, her face frozen like that of Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca when Manderley is burning.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Robbie in mid-cavort suddenly stop and look up at Mother, her eyes bugging out in terror. “Holy crap!” she said.

  “Quick, get the hose.” I grabbed Graham Becker. “Put out the fire.” He nodded his head, like it was no big deal, as if I’d asked him to put out his cigarette.

  When I got to the living room, Tristan, the toff, was sitting in an armchair nursing a large brandy, and Mother’s younger actor boyfriend, Terrence, was standing in the doorway surveying the scene. Mary Broomfield was also there, looking dazed in the dim light. I raced up to Mother, who was at the drinks tray, helping herself and Mary to hefty gins. Mother didn’t turn to look at me as she spoke.

  “I don’t want to embarrass you in front of your friends, so I’ll give you fifteen minutes to clear this lot out of here.”

  “I’m sorry, we should have asked if—”

  “Asked if you could invite half the school here, if you could wear my best clothes, if you could drink alcohol?” Mother handed Mary her gin.

  “My! Wendy! Don’t you look smart!” Mary shouted, her hearing still affected by the London Hilton bomb. She drained her gin. “I’ll have another, Georgie! Thank you!” She handed her tumbler to Mother. “Remember, no ice, dear!”

  “What happened at your party?” I asked Mother.

  “It was boring and the boys wanted to leave.”

  Tristan got up and helped himself to another drink.

  “This is entertaining, Georgann. Fun to watch the young people.”

  Mother gave him a hostess smile, but I thought I could see a little steam coming from her ears.

  Then, Terrence, who was a bit famous from being on the BBC and devilishly handsome, joined the sway of the party and drifted into a dance with Tracy. Tracy, a siren at fifteen, would later date Roman Polanski and become a B-movie star. She twisted her arms up in the air and smiled at him, doing her best Diana Rigg. He smiled back and took her in his arms, dipping her back until she screamed with laughter. The room was dimly lit and filled with bodies, and Mother’s boyfriend was dancing with my girlfriend.

  Tristan raised his glass and said, “May I wish everyone a very happy 1976!” Then he grabbed my hand and led me out onto the floor. “I say, may I have this dance?”

  I smiled. He really wasn’t so bad, I thought.

  “I’m afraid not, Tristan,” Mother said. “It’s time for everyone to go home.”

  She went to the light switch and snapped it on. There was a collective groan. People began picking up their coats and handbags. Girls stripteased up the stairs, undoing the zippers and buttons on Mother’s dresses and jackets on their way.

  And there, in the too-bright light, I saw Mother looking at me as if she didn’t recognize me, as if I were a stranger Tristan had brought with him and she were seeing me for the first time. She had turned her head away for what seemed like an instant—and Robbie and I had grown up and now we were women. And, I could see in her eyes, something even worse than that—we were competition.

  It was then that Mother decided that the time had come for us to return to America.

  chapter seven

  BACK IN THE USA

  Our return to the States was complicated by the news that my grandfather was dying of lung cancer. We hadn’t been in New York a day when Mother announced we w
ere going to Kansas City. It wasn’t sentiment that drove her, it was money. We were broke. Mother had burned through her divorce settlement, paying off her giant credit-card tab, and all we had to live on was alimony. She needed to put in an appearance before the old man corked off.

  Grandfather considered his daughter to be a fiscally irresponsible bubble brain who had married not one but two men who didn’t have real jobs. If my mother had considered marrying my wealthy stepfather as an investment strategy, my grandfather was not impressed. Grandfather was a self-made man who had built a bank in Kansas City from the ground up. To him, my stepfather was a ne’er-do-well whose only understanding of money was how to spend it.

  Thirty-six hours after walking out of our town house in South Kensington, Robbie and I sat on a plastic-covered couch in the large house in Kansas City, drinking Lipton instant iced tea and watching reruns of To Tell the Truth while Grandfather wheezed and grumbled from his La-Z-Boy recliner and his housekeeper, Louella, fussed over him. Mother sat on one of the antique carved wooden chairs Grandfather had brought back from China before World War II, chain-smoking Dunhills and chain-drinking California Chablis.

  “Now, Mr. McAdams, let’s try a little of this applesauce.” Louella held the spoon up to Grandfather’s lips, but he waved it away.

  “Godammit, get that crap away from me. You’re making me miss my favorite show.”

  Grandfather was usually in a foul mood, but dying made him really cranky. He seemed to hate all people, and Robin and I were terrified of him.

  “Oh, Georgann, I just wish I could get some food into him,” Louella mewed to my mother.

  But Mother wasn’t listening. I could see her eyes darting about, taking mental inventory of all my grandfather’s more valuable possessions. There were some expensive rugs, paintings, and lacquered screens from China, as well as some big silver serving pieces and pretty cloisonné boxes. She popped a few of these into her handbag when she thought no one was looking, as if they were ashtrays from the Ritz.