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

by Sachi Parker

  I sat on the sofa, and we had a drink and exchanged pleasantries. They were both distracted, though, and so was I.

  My mind was racing. I had found myself in a unique situation: I knew something about my dad, and he didn’t know that I knew it. I actually had the advantage over him. Plus, unlike before, when I would tactfully withdraw from any confrontation, I was eager this time to get some answers. He had tantalizingly cracked open the door to his reality, and I wanted to push through before it closed again.

  So I waited for the right moment, waited until everyone was relaxed, before I said, “Dad, can I ask you something?”

  “Sure, honey,” he said, sitting back in his chair with his scotch, legs crossed.

  So I asked: “What do you do for a living?”

  It was the essential question, the key to every mystery surrounding my dad, and I had calculated that this was the perfect time to ask it, when his defenses were down, when he was hurting and vulnerable, and ready to face the truth.

  I was wrong.

  All the civility drained from his face in an instant, and the lights seemed to get dimmer, as if the energy were being sucked out of the room. He gave me the dirtiest look I’d ever seen. I heard Miki gasp in surprise, but I didn’t look at her: my eyes were fixed on Dad, as were his on me.

  “What?” he finally asked, in angry disbelief, his voice as cold as ice.

  I could see I had made a colossal mistake—it hadn’t been the right time to broach the subject at all, and it would probably be in my best interests to backpedal as fast as possible.

  Yet I couldn’t. I wasn’t a kid anymore; I was twenty-five years old, and I wanted answers. I looked around at this luxury suite and I asked myself, How can he afford all this? And the yacht, and the island, and the trips around the world? How?

  So I repeated the question, with a little less confidence: “I was just wondering, Dad, what do you do for a living? Because I really don’t know.”

  The room grew darker. Dad held himself quite still, but I heard the ice cubes clinking in his glass as his hand trembled with contained fury. The tension in his body radiated outward and gripped the whole room.

  I’d crossed the line now, big-time, and I knew it. I’d been raised to respect, to accept, and not to question—but now I’d questioned, I’d cast doubt, and (most unpardonably) I’d compounded the shame: I’d done it in front of Miki.

  Really, I just wanted to know what his job was. What was wrong with that? I knew he had produced a couple of movies and Broadway shows, but that wouldn’t have supported the lifestyle he and Miki had been living for all these years.

  Dad said nothing. He let his dark silence speak for itself. That was his favored strategy. He would let his unsaid displeasure settle over me, and work its insidious magic.

  This time, however, I wasn’t cowed by his glare. I wasn’t going to backtrack and start apologizing and asking forgiveness. The old routine wasn’t working, and he could see it.

  So he glanced significantly over at Miki—his enforcer—and she knew what that meant. Take care of this, he was telling her. Go for the kill.

  She rose from her chair and advanced on me. “How dare you?” she said, sputtering with outrage. “How dare you ask such a rude question of your father? Who do you think you are?” (Ah, that was the question.) “You have no right to ask such a thing! A daughter does not speak like this to her father. It is disgraceful! You are a disgraceful child! You should be ashamed! Ashamed!”

  All of this was spoken in Japanese. She wanted to denounce me in the language of my childhood, for maximum effect. Since my father, despite his many years in Japan, didn’t speak the language, he had no idea what she was saying, but he could probably guess the basic thrust from the fury in her voice and the violence of her gestures, and he seemed quite content with the performance.

  “You want to know what he does?” she went on, almost choking on her bile. “Look around you! He is a success, that’s what he does! What do you do? Where do you live? Your father treats you like a princess, which you don’t deserve, and this is how you thank him? You are lucky he lets you in the door! I wouldn’t! You think you are special? You are not special! You are nothing! You disgust me, you ungrateful little…bitch!” She spat out the last word with special relish. Miki was getting meaner and nastier, because she knew Dad couldn’t understand her. She was going for the kill, all right, hoping to finish me off.

  I should have leapt up at this point and thrown it back in her face: Look, I know what’s going on! I heard my father crying, I heard him wondering who he was, wondering how he could keep up all this pretending. Pretending what? What’s real around here and what’s bullshit? And who are you to lecture me? You’re not my mother! You’re my father’s mistress, a teahouse servant—and, by the way, I know you were sleeping with my fiancé! So who’s the bitch now?

  That’s what I should have said. It would have been a great scene in a movie.

  Of course, I said nothing. For all my defiance, I was still bound to the culture I was raised in. Miki had pushed all the time-tested buttons of guilt and shame, and I responded accordingly.

  When she finished her tirade, I got up quietly from the sofa, gave Dad a hug, walked past Miki, and left the hotel room. I didn’t say a word. Neither did they. They never made a move to stop me.

  I walked slowly down the stairs, measuring each plush, cushioned step, as the staircase spiraled down and down. When I came out of the hotel, it was still raining, and I walked home in the rain.

  For all that, he never did answer my question.

  Chapter 10

  The Good Doctor

  I wanted to get my breasts done.

  Not that there was anything wrong with them. They looked fine—a bit smallish perhaps, but firm and proportionate. And none of my boyfriends complained. As Luke would charmingly have put it, “Anything more than a mouthful is a waste, anyway.”

  I was self-conscious just the same. Dad had always teased me about my “fried eggs,” and I guess I always felt inferior in that regard. Any boost in my self-esteem would be welcome about now.

  I got a recommendation for a plastic surgeon from Anastasia Gratsos, a close friend of Miki’s, and the wife of Constantine Gratsos, known as “Costas.” Costas was involved in the shipping business, and he was also the right-hand man of Aristotle Onassis. We’re talking connected.

  So when Anastasia called with the name of a plastic surgeon, I knew I was getting top-of-the-line. Dr. Jeffrey Dietrich had an office in Illinois, just outside Chicago. He handled models, actresses, the rich and the super-rich.

  I was none of these, but Anastasia told me to come over to the States to meet the doctor, and I could figure out how to pay for it later. I saved up my money and took a cheap flight from Belgium to New York. I stayed with Anastasia for a few days, and then took the train to Chicago.

  Dr. Dietrich’s clinic was actually outside Chicago, a fancy modern building in the woods. Dr. Dietrich was a handsome, assured man in his late forties, commandingly in charge but with great personal warmth—just the kind of doctor you might see on television. Since the vast majority of his patients were women, he knew how to charm them and put them at their ease—and being the susceptible romantic that I was, I happily allowed myself to be charmed.

  “What seems to be the problem, Miss Parker?” he asked as we sat in his consultation room. His eyes were sky blue and penetrating.

  “Well, I’d like my breasts to be a little bigger. Not a lot. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with them the way they are, but I think they could be a little more, you know, full. Round. Whatever.” His steady gaze made me nervous, and I couldn’t stop babbling. “But I’m no expert. What do you think, Dr. Dietrich?”

  He smiled. “Call me Jeffrey.”

  I was ready to swoon right there. “Okay, call me Sachi!”

  We went into his office, and I took off my shirt and showed him what I had. He could not have been more solicitous and gentlemanly, handling me with grea
t care and observing all professional boundaries. Still, I was topless in front of a very attractive, wealthy single man, and it was giving me ideas.

  After our meeting, I had to get back to the city and catch a morning train back to New York. “What’s the rush?” said Dr. Jeffrey. “You didn’t come all the way out here just for an hour meeting?” He offered to show me around the area, and I agreed.

  We drove through the country roads, and he took me to a gunpowder-making plant, which was surprisingly interesting. Then he insisted on taking me to dinner—his treat. Did he give all his prospective clients this treatment, or was I something special? At the restaurant, he ordered me clams on the half shell, with horseradish sauce—my favorite. How did he know? We had some very expensive wine, and he ordered dinner for both of us. He was taking charge, and I knew it, and liked it.

  The consultation had turned into a first date. We talked and talked, on into the night. He was naturally interested in my family, but he wasn’t starstruck—having dealt with many celebrities himself, he took all that fame nonsense with a grain of salt, which I found appealing.

  Jeffrey wouldn’t hear of my heading back to Chicago that night. He brought me to a picturesque country inn, and insisted on paying for my room. Given the circumstances, I felt obliged to invite him up, but he stayed only a few minutes. He kissed me on the cheek and wished me good night. “I’ll see you for breakfast.”

  Alone, I sat on the bed and tried to figure out what was happening. I’d come to Chicago for a boob job, and suddenly I was in the middle of a Harlequin romance: the dashing country doctor, the clams on the half shell, the four-poster bed, all the ingredients for a hot, steamy bodice ripper. I crawled into bed, my head swimming, intoxicated with the possibilities. What would tomorrow bring?

  I didn’t have to wait that long. At about two in the morning, I heard the key turn in the lock, and suddenly the door was opening. There was a man in the doorway.

  I sat up, instantly terrified. “Hello…?” I said groggily, trying to get my bearings, fighting through the fog of too much wine.

  “Shhh…,” the man said gently. He shut the door behind him and locked it. My heart was pounding in my chest. Who was he? How did he get in? What did he want?

  I got the answer to the third question first. Without a word, the man lifted the sheets at the bottom of the bed and slipped underneath them. I watched as his head bobbed under the sheets, moving slowly and steadily north until it nestled between my legs. Then I felt his fingers prying my thighs apart, and his tongue lapping at the fringes of my vulva.

  It was Jeffrey, of course. He had taken another room in the inn, let himself into my room with his own key, and now was putting his compendious knowledge of female anatomy to work. We had gone way past Harlequin: this was like every Penthouse magazine–My Secret Garden–Erica Jong fantasy come true.

  The good doctor knew what he was doing down there. This was a man with professional chops in every sense. He carefully peeled back the various folds of my vagina, opening it up like a flower—much as Eguchi-san would skillfully summon forth the blossom of a clementine—and probing gently, gently, with his erudite tongue, like a hummingbird searching for nectar.

  I should have stopped him right away. The man had broken into my room, he was taking enormous liberties, he needed to account for his outrageous behavior—but it felt so good, I wanted it to go on…No, I should stop him…Well, I could always stop him in a few minutes…No, this is wrong, wrong…

  Then the first orgasm washed over me, and that settled the debate. In for a penny, in for a pound. The orgasms kept coming, one after the other, and I just lay back and kept riding the waves. If this was a dream, it ranked right up there in my top five.

  Then it was over. His appetite sated, he slowly withdrew from the bed and, without a word, left the room.

  In the morning, Jeffrey was waiting for me downstairs. “Sleep well?” he asked, betraying not a hint of what had happened the night before. Had it been a dream then, after all? No, there’d been too many orgasms; I would have woken up by the third one.

  Over breakfast, Jeffrey excitedly discussed his plans for my breasts. He definitely saw room for improvement, and he was eager to get his hands on them. He knew I was pressed for cash at the moment, but we could definitely work something out.

  This put me off a little. I know I’d gone to Dr. Dietrich specifically to have my breasts done, but after yesterday, and especially after last night, I assumed he would want to preserve my assets just as they were. He was obviously attracted to me, so why should he want me to change?

  He also mentioned that it would be beneficial for me to get implants in my buttocks, too, just to plump them up a bit. Right now they were a little on the flat side.

  Oh really? Now there was something wrong with my ass, too? It was good enough for the boys at the noodle shop!

  This sudden insensitivity, coupled with the nocturnal visit, made me back off from making any rash decisions. “Let me go home and think about it,” I said—and by “home,” I meant Paris.

  Back in my tiny studio on the Left Bank, I tried to forget Dr. Jeffrey, but it wasn’t easy. Within a week, I got a letter from him. I was afraid it might be a bill for the consultation, but no, it was a love letter. A very courteous, discreet love letter, but a love letter nonetheless. He missed me; we had such a great time together; when would he see me again?

  I was thrilled. I realized that I missed him, too. I still had those misgivings, though, so I wrote back a friendly, noncommittal reply.

  That was the beginning of a six-month correspondence. It began politely, with respectful expressions of admiration and regard, but very quickly blossomed into a full-blown epistolary affaire d’amour. He wrote about his passion for me, his ardent love, his desire to be with me always and forever. I told him how I spent my days walking along the Seine, or wandering the Louvre or the Tuileries, and thinking only of him, him, him. (Not entirely true, but I was trying to be as romantic as possible.) We didn’t get steamy and sexual in our letters, but we didn’t have to: we both knew what had happened back at that country inn, and that there was plenty more where that came from.

  Pretty soon I had convinced myself that I was hopelessly in love with him. I built him up in my mind as the ideal lover: wise, experienced, mature, adventurous. Together with me, the impulsive, impetuous naïf, we made the perfect match.

  Anastasia Gratsos thought so, too; she was constantly trying to push us together. She called me every now and then—“Do you like him? Do you think there’s something there? When are you coming back to the States?” she kept asking.

  Frankly, I was just waiting for a good excuse, and finally Jeffrey gave me one: he was building a huge mansion for himself on his property near San Diego, and he wanted me to see it. That was good enough for me.

  Jeffrey was waiting when I landed in Los Angeles. He looked even more handsome than I remembered him. We drove down to San Diego and checked into a motel near the construction site. It was going to be a fun weekend.

  Things immediately turned strange.

  As soon as we got to the motel room, Jeffrey wanted to make love—right away. Yet I needed just a few minutes to unwind; I was hoping to freshen up a little and maybe unpack first…

  No! He wanted me now. Now! He threw me on the bed, and before I knew it, he was on top of me, pulling off my clothes and pushing my legs apart, foreplay be damned! He was going to have me, goddamn it!

  It was fast, frenetic, exciting, and exhausting. I had never made love with anyone who was so aggressive and unstoppable. I hardly had time to gasp between thrusts. When he was finished, I was so out of breath I couldn’t talk.

  “That was fantastic!” I managed to get out.

  “Okay,” Jeffrey said. “Roll over.”

  Roll over? I looked down and saw that he was ready for action again. Already?

  I guess I didn’t move fast enough for him, because he grabbed me and spun me over, and we were off again—and again,
and again.

  I don’t know how to explain it, but in the space of a two-hour ride down the 405, Jeffrey had morphed from a courtly, polished doctor into a voracious sex machine. He was putting me in all kinds of positions: against the wall, over the vanity, upside down…coming at me in every direction. I was spinning around like a pinwheel.

  There was no emotion behind it, though. None. Not a trace of that ardent, caring lover I’d read so much about in his letters. It was all about sex, nothing more—and his sex, not mine. Whether I was getting any pleasure out of it didn’t seem to matter at all to him. I was just a rag doll he was throwing around the room.

  I guess one often fantasizes about being swept away in a riot of sexual ecstasy, but this wasn’t ecstatic at all. It was cold and animalistic. The sex was almost brutal in its forcefulness—and relentless. He never got fatigued. I couldn’t understand what kept him going. This was long before Viagra, but since he was a doctor, maybe he had access to medicines that mere mortals didn’t.

  When he did take a break, it was to perform oral sex on me—which was thoughtful, I guess, but it came with a little quirk: he asked me if I had any perfume. I didn’t; I never used perfume. So he took out his own perfume—curious that he would be carrying women’s perfume around with him, but that was the least of his oddities—and insisted I spritz it around my crotch. He refused to go down on me unless I had a sweet-smelling vagina. (He was no Pierre.)

  I should have told him to go to hell, but I really needed the rest, so I dabbed the perfume on my inner thighs, and when I was sufficiently fragrant, he went to work. I tried to enjoy it, but I was too exhausted.

  Then back to the grind. This went on for hours, all through the night. I think we may have stopped for dinner, but it was only the briefest of respites. Finally I begged him to stop. I was too sore; I couldn’t take it anymore.

  Jeffrey shrugged, and rolled over in bed. “Tomorrow I’ll show you the mansion,” he said, and fell asleep.