Lucky Me: My Life With--and Without--My Mom, Shirley MacLaine

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Lucky Me: My Life With--and Without--My Mom, Shirley MacLaine Page 3

by Sachi Parker


  He obviously had little respect for my intellect. He would never let me read. I didn’t know why; I assumed he just thought it was a waste of time. If he saw me pick up a book, he’d scoff and take it away. My mind wasn’t meant for profundity. Everything needed to be kept simple and stupid. I never questioned him.

  By now you may have deduced that my dad was a hard man to figure: loving one minute, distant and aloof the next two weeks. I never seemed to be on his radar.

  For example, every summer, I’d visit Mom in America and she’d take me on a shopping spree, buying me all kinds of clothes for the school year. I’d look great in September.

  By February, I’d grow out of everything, and nothing would fit anymore—my skirts, my shoes, nothing. I desperately needed new clothes, but Dad wouldn’t buy me any. “I can’t afford it,” he’d say. He could afford anything for Miki—fur coats, evening gowns, expensive jewelry—but my needs would have to wait till next summer. It was almost as if he didn’t see me.

  Yet…

  There were times when he made me his whole world. Dad loved to cook, and he would keep me at his side in the kitchen while he threw together an improvised gourmet meal. He loved to celebrate the sensory aspect of cooking. He had a little herb garden by the window, and he would take a sprig of thyme or tarragon and crush it between his thick fingers, and he would say, “Smell! Smell!” I would smell, and I would smell some more, until it infringed on his sacred cooking schedule. “It’s time to throw it in the pot! Now! Now!” I’d toss in the herbs, and feel as though I’d made an important contribution.

  After the food had been cooking awhile, he’d hold out a ladle to me: “Sach, taste this. What does it need?” I had no idea, but I was thrilled that he seemed to value my opinion. I would make some kind of guess—“Rosemary?”—and he’d say, “Let’s try it!” And it usually worked.

  When dinner was ready, we’d sit on the floor, Japanese-style, and he’d savor his glass of hundred-year-old wine—Dad always insisted on having the best—and all would be very right with the world.…

  My father and I would make a fishing trip a few times a year, just the two of us. This made it very special to me; these are some of my favorite memories with him. I seldom had Dad to myself without Miki glowering over his shoulder, like a demon in a Japanese woodcut, but here it would be just us, the fish, and the wilderness.

  The train ride into the Japan Alps would take about eight hours. We would head way up north, near Hokkaido. It was an endless but exciting journey. About three-quarters of the way up, after riding through miles and miles of ordinary countryside, we would enter a tunnel—a magic tunnel, I always thought—which seemed to go on forever, and after chugging through it for maybe half an hour, we would suddenly emerge into a different world: a spectacular ice-covered fantasyland, with ten-foot-tall drifts and little fairy-tale houses half-buried in snow. And silence. A silence so pure and complete you couldn’t even hear the train engine anymore. It was as if the snow were swallowing the sound. I took that journey through the magic tunnel many times, and every time, the stunning moment of emergence took my breath away.

  It was usually dark by the time we got to the mountains, and sometimes we’d stay at the Kanaya Hotel, which was an ultra-first-class hotel, old and venerable (meaning creaky), with huge ballrooms and winding staircases. Here the royalty and visiting heads of state would take their leisure, and the cream of Japanese high society would gather in their Western tuxedoes and floor-length gowns to fox-trot and tango the night away.

  Other times, Dad would just start up the Jeep and we’d head off into the mountains in the dark. We’d go up as far as we could, and when the roads became impassable, we’d strap on snowshoes and backpacks and continue on foot, navigating by moonlight until we reached the frozen crater lake at the top of the mountain. We’d pitch a tent on the side of the mountain, on the most level ground we could find, and camp out there for two or three nights. It was absolutely freezing, sleeping on top of the snow, but we wore thick woolen sweaters suffused with natural lanolin oil; they had a powerfully rancid stench to them, but they kept us warm. Exhausted, I would fall right to sleep, albeit slightly terrified that we might slide off the mountain in the middle of the night.

  Dad would wake me up at 4:00 A.M., and we’d hustle out onto the frozen lake. The first order of business was to cut a hole in the foot-thick ice. Using a long ice pick, Dad would chip away at the ice with methodical ferocity. In the meantime, I’d go into the nearby woods to gather sticks and logs for a fire. When I got back, he’d still be chipping away, until finally a circle of ice dropped with a satisfying splash into the water.

  Next, Dad would build a fire on the ice. Once the wood was blazing, he’d scoop water out of the ice hole with a small coffeepot. He’d boil the water, simmer it, toss coffee grounds into the pot, stir it up, let the grounds settle, and then drink straight from the pot. He called it cowboy coffee. It was especially good, he said, when sweetened with a dollop of whiskey from his hip flask.

  Time to catch breakfast! Dad would grab his fishing pole and squat alongside the ice hole. The morning was the best time to catch trout, when the fish were hungry. And he would catch them—fish after fish after fish. His delight would grow with each catch. This, I think, was when he was happiest, when he was truly in his element. In his heart of hearts, he probably wanted to be Hemingway.

  Laying his pole aside, he’d pick out one lucky fish for breakfast and slap it down by the fire. I’d watch, horrified and yet fascinated, as the trout flopped around on the ice, gasping and thrashing. I was so relieved when it finally died.

  Dad would scale the trout with a Swiss army knife and then rub rock salt into the skin of the fish. He’d always use gourmet rock salt from France—nothing but the best. The salted fish would go directly on the fire, and cook through. “Hot, hot,” Dad would say, gingerly peeling the meat from the trout and handing it to me, having carefully picked out the bones first. And we’d eat, and it would be delicious.

  Then we would go back to the tent and sit. For the most part, we wouldn’t speak to each other. Dad would read a book. I wouldn’t, since Dad didn’t like it when I read books. So I just sat.

  Then he might put the book down and start telling a story of his adventures. He would tell me about his travels in Cambodia, and the ancient village of Angkor Wat, and his friend Prince Sihanouk. Then he would drift off, and there would follow maybe three hours of silence, and then he’d start up again, reminiscing about Turkey or maybe a trip he took to Siberia. Vivid, fantastic stories.

  That was how it went for the rest of the day, until darkness fell. Little bursts of talk, long silences the rule. I found myself mostly bored, eager for him to put down his book and start another tale. The days were alternately fascinating and excruciating.

  Those mornings, though—those frozen mornings of icy mountain air and coffee smells and salty fish—they were quite wonderful.

  On New Year’s Eve, Dad, Miki, and I went up there and stayed at the Kanaya Hotel together. There was an old shrine, a relic from the Tokugawa era, at the top of the mountain, and it was a tradition to climb up through the snow at midnight to ring in the new year. Paths were cut through the five-foot drifts, and I would have to make my way up the steep snow wearing my special New Year’s outfit, made of layers of thin silk and sashes and topped with a thick silk kimono with a beautiful flower print, an obi (a wide band around the waist woven with strands of gold), and the ceremonial shoes (called geta) with ornate thongs and three-inch bamboo clog soles.

  At the top there would be an open-air market, and the vendors, batting their sides with their mittened hands for warmth in the subzero temperatures, would sell barbecued burnt corn, barbecued octopus, and oden, a special soup made with marinated fish cakes, potatoes, and seaweed.

  You would buy a wish for the new year, in the form of a ribbon, from the shrine priest, and then tie the ribbon to a tree branch, and the wish would always come true. At midnight, they would ring
the massive ten-foot-wide bronze bell, and it would peal out for miles. I would clap my hands over my ears to keep my brain from vibrating. The next morning, we’d have a classic New Year’s Day breakfast at the hotel: raw octopus, cinnamon toast, and English tea.

  It would be nice to claim that these were moments of life-shaking import for me, moments for epiphanies that elevated my relationship with my dad to a new level of intimacy—but they weren’t. Mere isolated glimpses of warmth and affection, they were far outnumbered by days and weeks of neglect, when Miki held a far more important place in my father’s heart.

  The word they use now is disconnect. Nothing seemed to add up with my dad. He could be overly controlling, and yet profoundly indifferent. Sometimes he valued my opinion; more often he branded me an idiot. He had a particular brilliance for keeping me off-balance. I never knew where I stood. My tent was pitched on the side of a mountain.

  So why? Still that big confounding question. Why was I in Japan? Why did my father bring me halfway across the world just to ignore me? What was the point?

  Well, Dad was a very clever man—you might call him an operator—and there was always a point. But it was very well hidden, and it took me a long time to find it.

  Chapter 2

  Of Mockingbirds and Fox Gods

  On those few occasions when they stayed at home, Dad and Miki had an amusing little game they liked to play. If the phone would ring from America, they would react in mock horror:

  “The Dragon Lady is calling!”—the Dragon Lady being my mom—“It’s the Dragon Lady again!”

  I could tell they were doing this partially for my benefit, and I wasn’t exactly sure why, but since they were feeding me and tending to my general well-being, my sense of self-preservation advised me to join in the conspiracy. “Oh, no, it’s the Dragon Lady!” I’d shriek, shrinking from the phone in dismay.

  Clearly I was meant to regard Mom with a mixture of terror and amused condescension. She was this comical gargoyle across the sea, fearsome and terrible but safely tucked in some subterranean cave far away.

  Still, I loved her, and whenever I visited her, Mom didn’t seem so bad. In fact, she was a lot of fun.

  It started at the airport in Los Angeles, always a big production number, with Mom rushing up to me at the gate and giving me a big, all-encompassing hug. “Oooh, I missed you so much! Look how you’ve grown!” We’d walk through the airport holding hands, swinging them back and forth joyously. Once we got into the car, she’d say, “Okay, let’s have some fun!”

  And we did.

  She loved taking me shopping for my school clothes. Or going to the movies. Or walking along the beach.

  I remember wandering the Malibu beach for hours with her, staring at tide pools. She would pick out a little sea urchin and poke it with her finger, and it would curl around her finger, and she would shriek every time. It always surprised her.

  After a long walk on the beach, we would stop on the way home at Wil Wright’s ice-cream shop in Encino. We’d go there practically every day—Mom was a real ice-cream junkie—and she would take a tactile joy in gulping down a hot fudge sundae. You know how kids can mysteriously manage to smear chocolate all over their faces when they eat, almost in defiance of the laws of physics? That was Mom. She’d look up and smile at me with a naughty glee, her teeth a dark, gooey mess.

  Sometimes we’d head down to the local Piggly Wiggly and eat free cookies from the bakery section. They weren’t supposed to be free, mind you, but Mom had no qualms about stepping around the counter and grabbing a cookie from the tray. If she really liked it, she might buy a bag to take home, but otherwise, she’d eat her fill and move on. No one stopped her; she was a celebrity, after all.

  There were also times we would just hang around her Encino home and play games and eat popcorn and other goodies. She used to make the best open-face peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the world. She’d take two slices of white Wonder bread—we didn’t have Wonder bread in Japan; we didn’t have bread in Japan—and spread Skippy chunky peanut butter on top. Then she would make little craters in the peanut butter with a spoon and fill them with pools of jelly. Absolute heaven.

  Whenever there was a thunderstorm at night, Mom would let me climb into her king-size bed. Then she’d sweep open the blue velvet curtains on her full-length windows, revealing a spectacular view of the San Fernando Valley. Having set the scene, she’d scamper back to the bed and jump under the covers, and we’d huddle together and watch the storm march across the valley.

  She would tell me the tale of the Lightning Princess. I don’t know where this story came from—I think she made it up—but she would tell it with such verve and wonder, calling upon all her acting talents, that it would spring to life in front of me. I think that’s where I first began to understand the magic of storytelling:

  Once upon a time, she’d begin, with such relish that you could see just how much she had missed the joy of telling her only daughter a bedtime story every night, of recounting the wondrous tales of Jack and the Beanstalk and Little Red Riding Hood and Hansel and Gretel:

  Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess, who lived on top of the tallest mountain in the world. And she was known as Princess Lightning. Because when she was happy she would laugh a merry laugh, and a great flash of lightning would flood the sky!

  But when she was mad, a dark scowl would come over her face, and then the lightning would come screaming out of the sky in a jagged bolt of terror. Zap!

  Now, whenever a storm came across the valley, the mighty Princes of Thunder, who were all in love with the princess, would call her name from the dark clouds, and they would ask her for a kiss, because she was so beautiful. “Kiss me, please, O Princess Lightning!” they would plead.

  But she never would. Sometimes she would laugh, and blind them with a joyous flash of lightning, and sometimes she would screw her face up with fury and just chase them off with a crackling bolt! Zap zap zap! So when you hear the thunder rumble after the lightning, that’s the princes rolling away in fear. For no one could ever capture the heart of the feisty, independent princess. (Even then, my mom was grooming me for the feminist revolution.)

  Then a burst of lightning would brighten the sky, and Mom would squeal with delight. “Look, she’s laughing! She’s laughing!” And we would both cover our ears to protect them from the princes’ doleful thunder. And I would feel so safe with her.

  • • •

  IN the early 1960s, my mother was sitting on top of the show business world: she was a major actress, a knockout entertainer, and an international celebrity. In short, a star. While she’d had her first successes in the late 1950s, it was The Apartment that put her on the map and made her a force to be reckoned with. She was nominated for an Academy Award for the second time, and she deserved to win.

  “I would have, too,” she insisted, “if Elizabeth Taylor hadn’t had a tracheotomy.”

  Liz Taylor had made a splash that year by playing a call girl in Butterfield 8, an okay but not great film. Her performance was worthy of a nomination, but she wasn’t really expected to win—until she came down with a serious case of pneumonia that required emergency surgery. The wave of industry sympathy that followed pushed her over the top, and she went home with the Oscar instead of Mom.

  This may have been a blessing in disguise. Mom managed to avoid the dreaded Oscar jinx and go on to a career of memorable films. Elizabeth Taylor, by contrast, became a full-time celebrity, and never really approached the level of creativity she enjoyed before Butterfield 8. (She did have a great Oscar-winning success with Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, of course, but that movie is a lonely giant among turkeys such as Cleopatra, The V.I.P.s, Boom!, and so on.)

  Mom, on the other hand, kept moving from peak to peak, because she stayed hungry. Without that ultimate industry recognition, she had something to shoot for, and she kept shooting. Maybe, with her ferocious inner drive, it wouldn’t have made any difference; or maybe, having w
on the top award, she might have slowed down a little and spent more time with her family. Who knows?

  The short-term benefit for me was that I got to hang out on her movie sets, and that was like heaven. For a young child, wandering through that make-believe world filled with music and lights and odd but endearing characters, it was as close to being in Fantasyland as you could get.

  “Hellooo, Sachi!” everyone on the crew would cry; they made the biggest fuss over me, because I was so damned cute, and also because I was the star’s daughter. The makeup artists would put all kinds of makeup on me, the costumers would dress me in little doll outfits…I was the Little Princess, and the movie set was my kingdom. It was like being in a cocoon; a safe, comforting, warm place where nothing bad could ever happen.

  A lot of good was happening on the set of Two for the Seesaw for Mom. Along with nabbing a juicy part as a Greenwich Village kook and working with Oscar-winning director Robert Wise, she was carrying on a pretty steamy romance with her costar, Robert Mitchum. Nobody knew it at the time, of course, and I certainly didn’t pick up on it on my brief visits to the set. I would see Mr. Mitchum shambling about during the shoot, and to me he was just a big guy with sleepy eyes and a gruff, gravelly voice. The possibility that there were any personal sparks between him and my mother never crossed my mind, but then again, why would it? I was just a kid. According to her, however, their relationship was deep and intense, lasted a good three years, and featured sexual assignations all over the world. The image of the languid Mr. Mitchum hopping on a plane to meet my mother in a hotel in East Africa for some hanky-panky seems a little odd, but she says it happened.

  Mom has publicly stated that she and Dad had an open marriage; both were free to pursue outside relationships, without disturbing the essential and all-important love between them. I was never quite sure how this worked, at least in the early days, because Mom always kept her affairs pretty quiet. (In those days, there was such a thing as bad publicity.) She claims that she told Dad about the Mitchum affair, in the spirit of openness, but I don’t know how true that is. I do know that Dad kept his very serious relationship with Miki a secret from Mom for some thirty years. I guess he was allowed to see other women as long as there wasn’t One Other Woman.

 

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