The Legs Are the Last to Go

by Diahann Carroll

  “I don’t have a brother,” she’d have to tell them.

  When Suzanne was ten or so, she became very quiet and withdrew into herself. One night when she was invited to sleep over with friends, I could hear her begging not to be sent home to me. I knew she was justified. She probably felt more loved and tended to by the mother of her friend than she did around me. But if I acknowledged what I was hearing from my daughter, it would have meant I’d have to change my life dramatically and I could not deal with that. I’d seen my mother leaving her husband and younger child behind in order to follow me, and I knew it was negligent. Yet I also knew it was different for me because it was essential that I travel for work. Work made me rich both financially and emotionally.

  I chose to leave Suzanne home the summer of 1972, when David Frost and I were invited to join Aristotle and Jackie Onassis in Greece. Suzanne had been invited. Other children were going to be there with their nannies and they were all Suzanne’s age. But I was wary. I had no idea how children were treated in a family such as the Onassises, and I did not know what the daily routine was on that island and yacht. Perhaps I was wrong, but I simply did not trust that it would work for my twelve-year-old daughter.

  We flew over on Ari’s airline, Olympic, and the service was superb. Jackie met us when we arrived by boat on the island of Skorpios. She looked adorable in a short little skirt, scarf, and big sunglasses resting on her head. She was wearing no makeup or jewelry, and it told me her defenses were down for a casual and intimate visit.

  I, of course, arrived with full makeup and a mountain of luggage. Why not? My host was a man who’d been a longtime lover of Maria Callas. My hostess was a style icon who brought culture, taste, and Oleg Cassini to the White House. I was not going to show up without a full wardrobe. Even when I’m dressing casual, each detail is always excruciatingly considered.

  The Onassis compound was stunning. It sat on a verdant hillside looking out over the crystalline Aegean Sea, which is dotted with rocky islands. One of the rooms in the mansion was reserved for Winston Churchill’s use. I asked a butler to open it for me one day and remember seeing impressive photographs and his cigars. The terrace where we dined had the feel of a magnificent magical cave, lit with candles and with comfortable big sofas all around. It overlooked the sea, of course, which you could see rippling below until the last light of sunset. Then the stars came out, shining as bright as any I’d ever seen.

  We dined in caftans and little silver slippers—all vaguely Middle Eastern, as I recall—or whatever the look would have been in 1970 of jet-set Greek-island chic. Lee Radziwell, Jacqueline Onassis’ younger sister, was there. But I don’t remember any conversations. I was exhausted from the flight, which followed an engagement I had had that required my doing two shows a night. I do remember observing the children, sun-kissed and gorgeous, and I kept thinking about whether their routine would have suited Suzanne. They were with staff most of the day, except when there was an outing, sail, or game of tennis. Then, before dinner, the children were brought in to join the adults having cocktails. They were already fed, and after spending about an hour with the adults, playing games and making conversation, they were whisked away to bed by staff, while their mothers did not move.

  There was simply no room for the children to have their own preferences. And I thought to myself that it would not have worked for Suzanne, who was used to asserting herself when we were together.

  Even I was having a difficult time asserting my own preferences. I remember it caused David some discomfort when I asked after one evening that I be left alone in the morning to sleep in. I woke up on the yacht and everyone had gone off in a launch boat. I went up to the top deck, where my breakfast was waiting, and I sat under a big, beautiful umbrella in a big, beautiful sun hat. The boat was rocking only the slightest bit and the most perfect breeze was cooling the air. I looked out at all the islands rising out of the sea and it was just magnificent. I was at the peak of my career and in love with a fabulous man who seemed to constantly take me to wonderful places to meet wonderful people. I remember thinking, “This is fantastic. This view, this breakfast, this yacht, these people who are so charming, and this gentleman who cares for me so deeply. I have such a wonderful life.” I felt as if I had climbed to the top of the world that morning. Yet something was missing. I wasn’t sure I was really in love with David. But the other part of it was that I had gone away on a vacation to this enchanted place without my daughter.

  My reasons for doing so might have been appropriate. But I still felt guilty.

  I missed her. And I imagined that despite our issues, she was missing me.

  You’d think that with all my distractions from mothering, I’d be less controlling than your average mom. That was not the case. When Suzanne was ready for high school, again, as my way of giving her the best education she could possibly have, I put her in boarding school, first in Northern California, then in Switzerland. It was what people of means did with their children. She always invited me to visit her in these schools, and I was pleased to know she wanted me around. When she graduated, I took her to Paris for a shopping spree. She agreed to the trip. But shopping was my way to celebrate, not hers. It just shows you how little I was in touch with my own daughter’s priorities.

  When she didn’t apply to Harvard, I was beyond disappointed and far too dramatic in letting her know it. One of the great dreams of her mother and her grandparents was now being deferred, not quite like a “raisin in the sun,” but perhaps a very expensive sun-dried tomato. My whole life I’d regretted not getting my college degree. My parents did as well. Even a degree from New York University instead of their dream school, Howard University, would have satisfied their hunger for the status of having a daughter with a college degree.

  “Why didn’t you apply to Harvard?” I asked Suzanne one summer day at home.

  “It’s too big and too conservative,” she said, making points that any other parent would have accepted and understood. “I really want to go to Wesleyan.”

  “Wesleyan,” I gasped. “Where is it?”

  We would soon find out. Because that fall, we found ourselves in one of the classic adolescent rites of passage, the East Coast college tour. Only ours wasn’t quite as classic as Suzanne had wanted it to be. You see, her oh-so-fabulous mother could not leave well enough alone. Instead of taking campus tours like normal civilians, I had contacted each college in advance to let them know we were coming. I was insensitive enough as a mother to think that was the best way to go about things. So we’d arrive (without police escort, but with my sense of importance lending an air of grandiosity to the proceedings) and be greeted by a college president or special envoy. And I’d be in a fur coat, with my hair done just so, and in my finest fall ensembles, marching around shaking hands like something between a presidential candidate and the director of a cotillion.

  “Hello there,” I’d say. “How do you do!” Suzanne had every right to be thinking, “I wish this woman would just leave me alone.” But she never said a word.

  When we were asked to special VIP luncheons at the faculty club with all the muckety-mucks, frequently including the college president, questions would be addressed to me, not her. I wasn’t even aware enough to see how much this hurt her. It was my “Diahann Carroll Road Show,” not hers, and when I’d detect even an ounce of discontent, I’d be shocked. I’d say to her, “Maybe it’s a challenge having a mother in show business, but if I had not been in show business, then I would never have met your father, who has been so wonderful to you and has been able to offer you so much!”

  She’d say, “You don’t understand.” And then we’d drive to another college.

  Wesleyan, it turned out, was a prestigious small school in Connecticut, known for its liberal and creative student body and excellent courses in the humanities. If Suzanne had to face issues there that had to do with being my daughter, I never witnessed them. She did tell me that when she was moving in freshman year, some girls
came into her dorm room and told her that Diahann Carroll’s daughter was in the class.

  “Oh yeah?” Suzanne replied coolly.

  “Her last name isn’t Carroll, but we think it’s the name on that pile of Louis Vuitton luggage over there,” one of them said about some suitcases that did not belong to Suzanne. “Uh-huh,” is all she said in response.

  Later, someone saw a family photo in Suzanne’s room and figured out who she was.

  “Is that your mother?” she was asked.

  “Yes,” she replied. “And now I know who my friends will be around here.”

  She handled that episode well, but I was sorry it had to happen. She wanted to be seen for who she was, not as the child of someone people knew from television. Not that every child of a celebrity finds the privilege associated with a famous parent a burden. Some are more than happy to use their connections. But Suzanne, always a top student with her own taste and strong ideas, preferred to find her own identity. And she did so impressively. After Wesleyan, she was accepted at the Columbia School of Journalism, a rigorous and highly selective program. She did well there and went about getting jobs after graduate school, one as an intern for the MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour on PBS and then at CNN in Atlanta, where she wrote the news. She was an editor at Essence and an anchor, along with Greg Kinnear, in the early days of E!

  Without any string pulling from me or her father, Suzanne had become an in-demand young talent in Los Angeles. The agents for Connie Chung and Diane Sawyer flew to Los Angeles to meet with her to suggest she sign with them and move to New York for the grooming that takes an anchor from one step to the next. She turned them down. She didn’t want to devote herself to a career that would take over her life and make her spend hours a day in wardrobe and makeup. Lost is not a strong enough word to explain my disappointment. I knew she “had it,” as they say. She was beautiful on camera, charming beyond belief, and funny as hell. Still, she walked with no regrets, and never looked back. I should have applauded such a decision. But I was too stuck on the idea that fame and fortune were all that mattered. My daughter was emotionally mature and confident enough to know that the good life being offered to her was not in a world she craved. I could not see it. So I created yet another mother-daughter impasse. But let me be clear—we always loved each other.

  Well, I was never anything like a “Mommie Dearest.”

  I had, however, become Norma Desmond in Toronto. And in 1997, Suzanne flew up to see me with a very specific purpose. She wanted me to meet her intended. I have to laugh when I think of his first glimpse of me onstage, playing a conniving, demented, facial-obsessed diva preying on a younger man. He was lovely, but I had never met him before. The problem was Suzanne just sprang the news of their marriage plans on me at dinner without warning. My shock was apparent. Why couldn’t she have waited a while? If I knew then what I know now—from the golden throne of my golden years—I would have calmly listened to her and approved. Young people interested in getting married aren’t really open to anyone else’s opinions, just blessings and congratulations. What did I do instead? I ran into the ladies’ room and broke into tears. Why couldn’t I just get over myself and show my daughter I supported her?

  Not long after that, a letter came to me in Toronto. It was beautiful and poignant, not angry or spiteful, explaining she was now married. I didn’t take it like a mature sixty-two-year-old woman. Why should I? In the kind of melodramatic style one associates with starlets with entitlement issues, I fell to my dressing-room floor and started crawling around on my hands and knees. Eventually my assistant suggested I stop making a scene. I had just had my nightly meltdown onstage, and that was enough strain on my vocal cords for one evening.

  The thing is, Suzanne knew exactly what she was doing. She had figured out how to have a simple wedding that removed the need for family and family drama, keeping me and my scene-stealing ways and wardrobe out of it. When I look back on it now, I was a fool for not trusting Suzanne’s instincts for building a great new life.

  It was wonderful to watch her hold my little grandson for the first time. She took to mothering with such devotion. Suddenly she had a chance to do everything right that I did wrong, and I was overjoyed to see her sense of purpose and focus. And it changed the way I saw her, too. In fact, the healing effect it had on our relationship was huge. Someone had finally come along who was going to be a bigger star in the family than I was: this sweet little baby.

  But, oh, did it hurt when she moved her family overseas in 2003, and then had her second child, a daughter. I went to visit several times, and as impressive as her surroundings were, more impressive was how delightful it was to walk around with her family through markets and gardens and along the beaches, and not have anyone interfere in our private moments.

  Once again, Suzanne knew what she wanted. She had been so inspired by their surroundings that she and her husband wrote and directed their first film about the culture. It had its American premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival, and the event brought Sidney Poitier, his two daughters, and me together. It was a wonderful night to be in Suzanne’s shadow as I watched her with Sidney’s two daughters, all of them so composed, articulate, and beautiful. They were three successful, self-assured, and statuesque women, doing what they wanted to do with their lives. And despite their tumultuous upbringings, with show-business parents who didn’t know what to do with themselves or their overwrought love affair, they had grown up and come through beautifully. Everything had worked out for them just fine.

  “We must have done something right,” I told Sidney later.

  Now Suzanne and her family live in Europe. Of course I long for them to live closer. But if I know anything now, it’s that when things can’t be perfect, good can be plenty good enough. Suzanne knows I enjoy our holidays together immensely. And having grandchildren has given me a whole new lease on life. One of the first things I learned from these two little ones is that it’s important for people to actually be able to touch and hug you. So I now own play clothes that are expressly for my visits with them. They’re made of these wonderful fabrics that you can just throw into the washing machine. Isn’t that remarkable? When they get dirty, they don’t have to go to the dry cleaners! Imagine!

  To play with children properly, you have to be able to get right down on the floor with them. And that’s what I do. We play with trains and dollhouses and Suzanne cannot believe what she is seeing. I observe the look on her face when she sees Diahann Carroll letting two little children climb all over her. She must be thinking, “Who is this woman playing on the floor with my children?” She is a stunning mother who understands full well how important it is to give yourself over to your children. Yet she manages to find time to work on her film projects. The other day I had to laugh because when I called her, she was much too busy writing a screenplay to talk to me. I hung up the phone and remembered all the years I hardly had a moment for her because of work, and I thought, “My how the tables have turned! Good for her!”

  These days, I am more preoccupied with the lives of my grandchildren than with my own. It’s shocking to me, but there it is. One of the nicest moments as a grandmother came not long ago, when Suzanne let her children have their first sleepover in my home. Bath time is absolute heaven with those two. My grandson can be very commanding. “I need some toys in here, Nana,” he has told me. “But no ducks please. I really don’t want any ducks!” There is nothing better than the rhythmic sound of two little ones breathing softly as they sleep in your bed.

  Last Christmas I went to visit them in Europe with my suitcases so full of presents I couldn’t get them up the stairs. Immediately after dinner, my granddaughter excused herself from the table and reappeared moments later in a completely different outfit. She said, “Nana, Mommy told me you sent this for me.” Then a few minutes later, she went and changed into something else I’d brought her. She must have changed outfits five times. I had been shopping for her all year, sending clothes from New York and Los A
ngeles, and although Suzanne had originally requested nothing that had to be dry-cleaned, it wasn’t long before I was realizing that wash-and-wear clothes, even for children, just don’t have the look I love. I love those little pleated kilts and wool overcoats of the John John and Caroline school of dressing. I like starched-collar dresses on girls and blazers on little boys. Darling, and totally impractical! As my granddaughter kept changing into one high-maintenance ensemble after the next (my favorite was a navy-blue taffeta number suitable for a debutante ball) Suzanne and I exchanged loving looks. Then we laughed at each other. Nothing had to be said. In her adult years, she has come to accept that Diahann Carroll is Diahann Carroll. None of these clothes were going into the washing machine. And if her little girl was becoming a clotheshorse under my tutelage, why fight the force of human nature?

  “God is punishing you, Suzanne,” I said. “This time with the reincarnation of me. It won’t be long before she’s wearing couture.”

  We played with games, made drawings, and measured one another’s height, back-to-back. “Look how big you are,” I told my grandson. “Yes,” he said with all seriousness. “I’m a very big boy.” When we were going over to see some of their friends for lunch one day and it started to drizzle, I didn’t balk when Suzanne suggested we hop onto a crowded old bus. The last time I was on a bus, I can’t even remember. High school, maybe? I sat down next to a woman who clearly was not in her right mind. She was holding a little dog to her chest that had fur quite similar to that of my sable coat. Suzanne looked anxious that I would be put off and annoyed. But I just patted the dog’s head and said, “Nice doggy,” and left it at that. Later, Suzanne wrote to friends and family that on a bus, in the rain, and wherever we went that holiday week, “Mom was a trouper.” I have spent my life charming big audiences of strangers. This was the best review I could ever hope to receive.