by Jane Fonda
Mother was home for a while and if I leaned forward ever so slightly, I could look out my “door” down the length of the porch, to where she sat at an oilcloth-covered table on which stood a Mason jar. A butterfly would be beating its wings frantically against the glass walls of the jar, and I could see my mother pick up a cotton ball with tweezers, dip it into a bottle of ether, unscrew the top of the jar, and carefully drop in the ether-soaked ball. After a minute, I could see the butterfly’s wings begin to slow their mad fluttering, until gradually they would stop moving altogether. Peace. A whiff of ether drifted down to where I sat, making me think of the dentist. I knew just what the butterfly felt, because whenever I went to have my braces tightened, the nurse would put a mask over my nose and tell me to breathe deeply. In no time the edges of my body would begin to disappear. Sound would come to me from far away and I would feel a wonderful, cosmic abandon as I fell backward down a dark hole, like Alice to Wonderland. Oh, I wished that I could make that sensation last forever. I didn’t feel sorry at all for the butterfly.
After a while, mother would unscrew the lid; gently remove the butterfly with the long tweezers; carefully, lovingly, pierce its body with a pin; and mount it on a white board on the wall above the table. There were at least a dozen of them up there, different kinds of swallowtails, a southern dogface, a red admiral, a clouded sulphur, and a monarch. I never could decide which one was my favorite.
Once she took me with her to a meadow full of wildflowers and tall grasses where she went to catch her butterflies. There was still an abundance of wild places—swamps, unexplored forests, and meadows—in Greenwich, Connecticut, in the 1940s. I watched as she moved through the grass—her blond, sun-blushed hair blowing in the wind—swooping down with her green net, then flipping the net quickly to close off the butterfly’s escape route. I would help her get it safely into a jar and quickly screw the top on.
It puzzled me a little why Mother had decided to take up butterfly collecting. I don’t remember her ever doing this when we lived in California. I was the one fascinated with butterflies. I was always painting pictures of them. When I was ten, right before we’d moved from California, I gave my father a drawing for his birthday. “Butterflies by Jane Fonda” was written up in the right-hand corner, and then two rows of them with their names written underneath in my tight, straight-up-and-down-careful-not-to-reveal-anything handwriting. My letter said:
May 19, 1948.
Dear Dad,
I did not trace these drawings of butterflies. I hope you had a happy birthday. I heard you on the Bing Crosby program. Every two days I will send you another picture of butterflies.
Love, Jane.
By the time Mother took up the butterfly hobby, I had turned eleven, Peter was nine, and we were living in our second rented house in Connecticut. It was a rambling two-story wood house perched atop a steep hill overlooking a tollgate on the Merritt Parkway. I could look out my bedroom window and count the cars. Prior to the move east, we’d grown up in California’s Santa Monica Mountains and, instead of a tollgate, we looked out onto the vast, shimmering Pacific Ocean. Maybe that is why my childhood fantasies of conquering all the enemies of the world were so expansive. Had I grown up overlooking the tollgate, I might have seen myself as an accountant.
This new house was on a large piece of property bordered to the west by an immense hardwood forest that, in the winter, became a leafless gray fortress. Then in the spring, dogwood would bloom, hopeful and white through the layered forest gray, and redbud would add slashes of magenta. By May, an array of greens would transform the woods once again. For someone who had spent the first ten years of her life seasonless in California, this ever-changing palette seemed miraculous.
The house had an uncomfortable Charles Addams–y quality about it, always too dark and chilly, and it had far more rooms than there were people living there, which added a sense of impermanence and awkwardness to its hilltop perch. There was Grandma Seymour (Mother’s mother), Peter, me, and a Japanese-American maid named Katie. Peter says Katie’s familiar presence with us after three years was comforting to him. I, on the other hand, barely remember her. But then Peter got more attached to people than I did. I was the Lone Ranger.
Mother wasn’t with us much anymore, though I didn’t know why. It was during one of the periods when she was back from wherever it was she went that the butterfly collection was started. Maybe someone had suggested that she get herself a hobby. Peter and I had stopped paying much attention to her being away, or at least I had. It had simply become a fact of our lives: Mother would be there, and then she wouldn’t. When she wasn’t there, and even when she was, Grandma Seymour would be in charge of us. Grandma was a strong woman, a constant presence in our early lives. But though I loved her, I don’t remember ever running joyfully into her arms the way my own grandchildren do with me. I don’t remember her ever imparting grandmotherly wisdom or even being fun to be with. She was a more formal, stalwart presence. But she was always there to meet our external needs.
Around the house there’d be an occasional murmured mention of a hospital or of an illness, and right after we’d moved to Greenwich, Mother had been in Johns Hopkins Hospital for a long time, for an operation on a dropped kidney. Grandma took Peter and me to visit her there once, and I remember Mother telling me they’d almost cut her in half. But she’d been “ill” and in hospitals so much that it had lost any real meaning. Hospitals were supposed to make you well so you could come home and stay.
Ever since we had moved to Greenwich I had spent a lot of time in hospitals myself—me, the healthy one. I’d developed blood poisoning, then chronic ear infections; then I started breaking bones. My arm was broken the first time during a wrestling match with a boy, Teddy Wahl, the son of the man who ran the nearby Round Hill Stables and Riding Club. Teddy threw me against a stall door. It hurt, but I walked home and didn’t say anything—between Peter and Mother, we had enough hypochondriacs in the house. I was not going to complain. Instead, I sat in front of the black-and-white TV to watch The Howdy Doody Show, my favorite because it regularly included a short Lone Ranger film.
I sat carefully on my hands, as I always did when Dad was home, because I was scared he would see that I was still biting my fingernails. As we sat down to eat, Dad asked me if I’d washed my hands, and when I told him I hadn’t, he exploded in anger, pulled me out of my seat and into the bathroom, turned on the faucet, took the broken arm (which I’d been holding limply by my side), and thrust it under the water. I passed out. He’d no idea that I was hurt and was very apologetic as he rushed me to the hospital, where my arm was X-rayed and put into a cast. The worst part was that all this happened right before school started, my first year at the all-girls Greenwich Academy—just at the time when everybody would be checking out who was cool (we called it “neat” back then), who was good at field hockey, and whom they wanted to be friends with, I had to show up with my arm in a cast.
At the time, Dad was starring in the Broadway smash hit Mister Roberts. I now realize that I must have sensed that something was very wrong between my parents. Palpable tension was in the air: Dad’s anger and black moods; Mother’s increasing absences. Even if I had had the words to express what I “knew,” I’d already learned that no one would listen to words that spoke about feelings. So instead, my body was sending out distress signals.
There’s a set of photos of us taken around that time. Just after we left California, Harper’s Bazaar had come out to interview Dad and take pictures of the family “picnicking”—one of those setup jobs that make the children of movie stars feel like props. The pictures show us sitting on the lawn: Dad, Mother, Peter, me, and Pan (my half sister, the one with the saddle), who at sixteen was beautiful and remarkably voluptuous.
There is one photograph in particular that says it all. I discovered it in a scrapbook many years of therapy later, when I was able to see it with more perception and compassion. Dad is in the foreground leaning back on his elbo
ws, looking as if he’s got something really good going on in his head that has nothing to do with all of us. I am kneeling next to him, looking intently at him, as I often did in our family pictures, showing clearly whose side I was on. Behind me Peter is playing with the cat, and Pan is lounging glamorously. And then, in the background, almost like an outsider, there’s Mother, leaning forward toward us with an expression of pain and anxiety on her face. I feel so sad when I look at that face, which I’ve done often with a magnifying glass.
Why couldn’t I have known? Why wasn’t I nicer? I was ten years old.
Dad had come out of the navy at the end of World War II and (what felt like) the very next day had gone off to New York to start rehearsals for Mister Roberts while we stayed in California. When it became clear that the play was in for a long run, Mother decided to put our home up for sale and move east. She settled on Greenwich, thinking that the thirty-five-minute train or car ride from New York City would make weekend commutes easy for Dad. Plus, in that well-heeled Connecticut enclave, there would be homes to rent on large enough pieces of property so that Peter and I could continue our habit of roaming the outdoors. My parents were at least right about that part.
I don’t remember Dad being around much after we moved to Greenwich. When he was there, I could almost feel his energy pulling him back toward New York, though I didn’t really know why. I supposed it was just that Mother, Peter, and I weren’t all that interesting. When he’d visit us I could sense that he didn’t really want to be there. But Dad had been an Eagle Scout, and the commitment to doing one’s duty was embedded in his DNA. I wish the Scouts had taught him how to make it seem less like a duty.
A faux family picnic in Greenwich for Harper’s Bazaar magazine. That’s Mother in the background.
(Genevieve Naylor/Corbis)
Sometimes Dad would come out on a Sunday and take Peter and me fishing for flounder in nearby Long Island Sound. Dad was usually in a bad mood, which meant these excursions weren’t exactly “fun times,” but I enjoyed them anyway—all of us together in the little rented motorboat, the salty smells mixed with engine fumes, the anticipation as we’d pull out of the harbor, round the buoy, and head to sea. Because flounder are bottom feeders, we’d never go out very far before Dad would turn off the motor and tell us to bait our hooks. This was always the moment of reckoning.
Baiting the hook meant reaching into a bucket filled with reddish brown kelp, among which writhed long reddish brown bloodworms with what appeared to be claws in their heads. Peter didn’t like them at all. Peter, in fact, would refuse to touch them—which in itself took guts. Dad wouldn’t even try to disguise the disgust he felt about Peter’s squeamishness, and his moods would get blacker and blacker. Whereupon I, the Lone Ranger, would ride to the rescue and be man enough for both of us. I’d pick up that worm and stick the hook right through its squirmy head without even a shudder. I didn’t do this to make Peter look bad. I loved my brother. I just wanted to prove my toughness to Dad and make the tension go away.
Peter was who he was. When he was scared he showed it; if he was sick, he’d complain about it—damn the consequences. I often wished he’d pretend like I did, just to make things easier. But, no, Peter was himself. And I, well, I’d gotten into the habit of leaving myself behind someplace in order to win Dad’s approval. Make things better. I know I can make things better.
Once, Dad had us come into the city and took us to the circus. A New York columnist, Radie Harris, who knew our family, was also there and was quoted as saying:
I remember sitting in a box at the circus a few months after Mister Roberts opened. Hank sat just to my right. With him were Jane and Peter, and not once during the entire performance did he say a word to either child. And either the children knew enough to say nothing, or they might have been too intimidated to speak. He didn’t buy them hot dogs, cotton candy, or treat them to souvenirs. When the circus was over, they simply stood up and walked out. I felt sorry for all three of them.
Then one day, when I’d just finished breakfast and was heading out the door to school, I saw that Mother was standing at the entrance to the living room. She motioned me to come to her. “Jane,” she said, “if anyone tells you that your father and I are getting divorced, tell them you already know.”
That was it. And off to school I went.
I had realized the year before that parents getting divorced didn’t mean that you, the child, would fall through a crack in the floor and no one would ever look for you again. Some of my friends had divorced parents and seemed to have survived just fine. I do remember that day at school feeling a little out of body, as if I’d had some of the dentist’s ether, but I also felt oddly important and deserving of special attention. Divorces were fairly uncommon in those days.
A few days after “divorce” had been uttered (only to me, not to Peter) I was lying on Mother’s bed with her and she asked if I wanted to see her scar from her recent kidney operation. I didn’t really want to. But since she’d asked, I felt she needed to show it to me and that I shouldn’t say no. She pulled up her satin pajama top and lowered the pants and there . . . oh, horror—that’s why they were getting divorced! Who would want to live with someone who’d been cut in half and had a thick, wide pink scar that ran all around her waist? It was terrifying.
“I’ve lost all my stomach muscle,” she said sadly. “Doesn’t that look awful?” What did she want me to say, that it wasn’t bad? Or did she want me to agree with her?
“And look at this,” she said, showing me one of her breasts. The nipple was all distorted. I felt so bad for her—it must have hurt so much—but I also didn’t want to be her daughter. I wanted to wake up and discover I was adopted. I wanted a mother who looked healthy and beautiful, at whom a father would want to look when she had no clothes on. Maybe then he’d want to stay at home. This was all her fault.
I think it was around that time, maybe right there on that bed, that I vowed I would do whatever it took to be perfect so that a man would love me. Fifty-three years later, Pan told me that Mother had had a botched breast implant. I guess Mother had tried to be perfect, too. I will return to the sad topic of breast implants in act two.
Howard Teichmann, who wrote my father’s authorized biography, My Life, wrote that when Dad told my mother he wanted a divorce, she said, “Well, all right, Hank. Good luck, Hank.”
In retrospect, Fonda says, “I’ve got to tell you she was absolutely wonderful. . . . She accepted it. She was sympathetic. She couldn’t have been more understanding.”
Yeah, sure. Mother was acting by the rules. If she could love the right way—selflessly, with understanding and no anger—perhaps Dad would come back to her. In private, though, she was disintegrating. She hacked off her hair with nail scissors and, while staying in a friend’s New York apartment, walked the neighborhood in her nightgown.
In those days, I too walked in my nightgown, but in my sleep, always propelled by the same nightmare: I was in the wrong room and desperately needed to get out, get back to where I was supposed to be. It was dark and cold and I never could find the door. In my sleep I would actually move large pieces of furniture around my bedroom trying to find the way out, and then, because it was futile, I would give up and get back in bed. The next morning the furniture would have to be moved back into place. It was a nightmare that stayed with me—albeit with variations on where I was trying to get to—until I married Ted Turner, when I was fifty-four.
One of my most vivid memories of that time was sitting in silence at the dinner table in that spooky house on the hill—Peter, Grandma, Mother, and me. Through the window I could see the gray March landscape. Mother, at the head of the table, was crying silently into her food. It was spinach and Spam. We ate a lot of canned food in those days, as though the war and food rationing were still going on. I used to wonder about this, but now I know that Mother was terrified of running out of money and not receiving anything from Dad in the divorce.
No one said
anything about the fact that Mother was crying. Maybe we feared that if one of us put words to what we saw and heard, life would implode into an unfathomable sadness so heavy the air wouldn’t bear it. Not even after we left the table was anything said. Grandma never took us aside to explain what was happening. Perhaps if “it” was not named, “it” would not exist. Peter and I went to our rooms as always, to do our homework. The dinner scene got buried in a graveyard somewhere next door to my heart, and the habit of not dealing with feelings became embedded in another generation.
But life goes on, as life does—until it doesn’t, especially when you’re in the discovery mode of an eleven-year-old. That year I managed to take a horse over a four-foot jump for the first time and became obsessed with the card game canasta. And Brooke Hayward and I began a successful writing partnership that won us “Best Short Story” awards at Greenwich Academy.
Within walking distance of the house was a riding stable—not the big one where Teddy Wahl broke my arm, but a small one with only an outdoor riding ring, where I often took jumping lessons on a borrowed white horse named Silver. My best friend, Diana Dunn, took lessons there, too. We both adored the teacher, a cozy Irishman named Mike Carroll. Next to being inside my cardboard “home” with my sister’s saddle, this was where I most liked to be. Horses were my passion, my escape.
Grandma told me many years later that it was around this time that Mother had been moved, on the advice of her doctors, from the Austen Riggs Center, a more open residence for the affluent “mentally afflicted” in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, to the Craig House sanitarium in Beacon, New York. The doctors said that her emotional deterioration and suicidal tendencies required she be under constant guard. Grandma was with her for the move and told me that Mother was in a straitjacket and didn’t recognize her. I can’t manage to wrap my mind around that image of Mother in a straitjacket, or what Grandma’s anguish must have been.