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

by Sachi Parker

  I joined Miki and Yuki at the front of the room, to represent the family. Mom wasn’t there: she hadn’t been invited, which was fine, because she hadn’t wanted to go.

  Something very odd was going on at that memorial. Everyone was coming up to Miki and Yuki to offer condolences, but no one was coming up to me. I was being shunned. Most of Dad’s friends from Tokyo wouldn’t give me the time of day.

  I couldn’t understand it. What had I done? Everyone was staring daggers at me, giving me dirty looks. When it was my turn to speak at the service, all I could see was a frieze of angry, hostile faces. These people hated me.

  Yuki told me later that she’d heard of Miki spreading stories about me: what an awful daughter I was, how disloyal I had been to my dad, how I had vilely betrayed him.

  To give Miki her due, she was only reacting to the skewed version of events that my dad had artfully presented to her. She knew nothing about the clone story. She thought the reason Mom divorced Dad and cut him off (thereby dramatically altering Miki’s own affluent lifestyle) was because I had turned against Dad and told vicious lies about him. Yuki recalled that over the years Dad would lament that he missed me desperately, and tried to get in touch with me, but that I refused to answer his calls. In truth, the very opposite was the case; he was the one who cut me adrift. But Miki had never heard my side of the story, so she believed Dad, and consequently told everyone else that I had coldly abandoned my father and broken his heart.

  I’ll say this for Dad, he was consistent. Whether it was me or Mom or Miki, he didn’t discriminate in deceiving the people who loved him.

  • • •

  THE next day, we had breakfast at the hotel before flying home. Frank and the kids went for a walk around the grounds, and I sat by myself, staring out at the ocean, in a sad, reflective mood.

  Suddenly Miki was sitting next to me. I was startled. I assumed she had come to console me.

  Not quite. “Sachi, your father always said that he wanted me to have the Nasu property in Japan, but he forgot to put it in the will. You don’t want it; you don’t even live there anymore. So would you please sign the property over to me?”

  Her audacity amazed me. I couldn’t discuss this now; I was still in an emotional place, and I couldn’t switch gears. “I don’t know, Miki. I have to think about it.”

  Miki didn’t want me to think about it. She miraculously pulled out a contract and a pen. “All you have to do is sign right here.”

  Tackiness aside, she made a good point. I probably wouldn’t be back in Japan again, and she obviously wanted the property more than me. Plus, I had the chalet in Italy. I might as well let her have the Japan property.

  Then, suddenly, I gathered my wits about me. The Nasu property was a spectacular piece of real estate in northern Japan, surrounded by golf courses and ski resorts. It was, as Dad said, worth millions. I couldn’t just give it away on a whim. “No, I can’t sign anything right now. Later.”

  Miki wouldn’t give up. She kept asking, and I kept saying no. Finally she grabbed the contract and stalked off in a huff. She refused to talk to me after that, not if I wasn’t going to sign.

  • • •

  BACK in Connecticut, we waited patiently for the settlement of the will. After several months, when there was still no word, I asked Frank to check with the lawyers in Honolulu. He discovered that there was nothing coming. There were no provisions for me in the will.

  Only the Nasu property was mine. Under Japanese law, the property had to go to a direct descendant. That’s why she wanted me to sign it over to her.

  • • •

  STILL, per another part of Japanese law, I had a year to claim my inheritance. After that, it would revert to the spouse or nearest relative. I didn’t bother to put in a claim. I allowed the year to expire.

  Chapter 16

  The Lord and the Ring

  It was 2002, my children were in school now, and I was getting restless. I wanted to act again.

  I had joined the Theatre Artists Workshop of Westport back in the 1990s, and when we moved back from Houston, I was eager to get back into the swing of things. The workshop had been founded by a group of theater professionals who lived in the area as a safe place for actors and writers to flex their muscles and try out new stuff. Many stage and film luminaries—Keir Dullea, Lee Richardson, Theodore Bikel, Morton DaCosta, Phoebe Brand, Ring Lardner Jr., James Noble, Brett Somers—would show up at the weekly Monday night meeting to view the work and give feedback.

  I loved the supportive, nurturing atmosphere there. It inspired me to take lots of new chances. I acted in all kinds of classic plays: The Seagull, The Three Sisters, A Doll’s House, Anna Christie, The Beauty Queen of Lenane, The Glass Menagerie—parts I’d always wanted to play, when I was just at the age where I could still pull them off. I never went topless, though; those glory days were over.

  My favorite was A Moon for the Misbegotten. Josie Hogan was such a departure for me. She was an earthy, ballsy character, with a thick, wide peasant body, where I was slight and unassuming. It took me a long time to find her, and once she took possession of me, I couldn’t get rid of her. I would walk around the house burly and heavy-footed, and sit with my legs splayed wide. My kids would notice and tease me all the time. “Uh-oh, Josie’s making dinner tonight!”

  It felt great to be working regularly as an actress again, and my confidence was growing exponentially with each performance—so much so that, in the fall of 2005, when I was appearing in the workshop’s annual one-act festival, I made the supremely courageous gesture of inviting Mom. She was visiting the East Coast at the time, and I persuaded her to come see the last Sunday matinee performance.

  I was nervous about performing in front of her. Over the past ten years, our relationship had downshifted from a roller-coaster ride of highs and lows to a pleasant cruise on a neutral plane. I was no longer active in the entertainment world, and that removed the edge of competitiveness that had always charged the air between us. In her eyes, I was now the settled suburban mom, and she was the grandmother, “Ganny,” who would drop in from time to time to bring gifts and offer homely advice. She didn’t see me as an actress anymore.

  Just a year earlier, she’d brought me to a party in New York at some important person’s duplex apartment, and there were all these celebrities there: Mike Nichols, Diane Sawyer, Jane Seymour, and Nora Ephron. I thought, Nora Ephron! I loved her and had been dying to meet her.

  Now, it’s not all that easy to strike up a chat at one of these high-powered cocktail parties, because anyone you might want to talk to is usually busy trying to find someone else more important to talk to. So the whole night, I waited for the serendipitous moment when I could just happen to run into Nora and start a witty conversation. Finally, that moment arrived: here she was, right next to me! Before I could say a word, though, Mom popped up at my side like a malevolent genie.

  “Nora, I want you to meet my daughter, Sachi.” Hooray, she had given me just the introduction I needed. She could have left it at that, but no, she had to add, in a patronizing voice, “Sachi wants to be an actress. She just started taking acting classes. Isn’t that great?”

  Nora smiled indulgently, offered a few words of encouragement, and moved on. I’d been effectively torpedoed. Mom knew damn well that I’d been a professional actor for thirty years, but now, in front of this elegant, sophisticated icon, she’d made it sound as if I were some bored suburban housewife with a few spare hours on her hands.

  In fact, this is probably how Mom saw me. I’d removed myself from the arena; I was no longer a gladiator. She hadn’t seen me onstage in more than ten years, and when she showed up at the workshop, I don’t think she was expecting me to be anything more than community-theater adequate.

  So we were both caught by pleasant surprise when she wound up loving the show. She was laughing her head off in the audience, letting loose with her familiar full-throated cackle. A little too loudly, of course—I could tell she was
enjoying the sound of her own voice—but I didn’t care. Those laughs were for me.

  Afterward, as we drove back to the house, she was gushing with superlatives: “You know, Sach, you owned that stage. You were wonderful. What can I say? You’re a great actress. You really are.”

  I listened warily, waiting for the other shoe to drop, the deflating “But” that would send my spirits into free fall. It never came. She was actually sincere. It was a mirror of that moment at Denny’s after The Lulu Plays, when I felt I’d finally broken through to her as a fellow artist. Was she confirming that earlier appraisal, the one that had left me sky-high with hope, or was this another false start? I wanted to believe her; I wanted to be exhilarated by the possibilities of rebooting my career with her firmly in my corner. So I did.

  This developed into a golden period for us as mother and daughter. We stayed in close touch; we talked on the phone all the time. We were even going to spend Christmas together. A family Christmas with Mom! What could be better?

  Well, it got better. A week before Christmas, she called me up all excited: “Honey, I have the best Christmas present for you! This is perfect! Perfect!”

  Now I was excited. My mom was getting me the perfect Christmas present! What could it be? In the back of my mind I thought, A script! She has a screenplay with parts for both of us. We’re going to act together!

  No, I couldn’t think about that. It was probably a beautiful piece of jewelry, or a first edition of a book, or something like that. Whatever it was, I would absolutely love it.

  On Christmas Day, Mom was at our doorstep—and with her was a tall, thin gentleman with a goatee. “Sachi, this is Casper DeVries.”

  The gentleman nodded. “Hello,” he said in a vaguely European voice.

  “He’s your Christmas present,” Mom said, bursting with glee. “Merry Christmas!” She gave me a big hug.

  “Merry Christmas,” I replied with a little bit of confusion, then lowered my voice to ask, “He’s my present?”

  Mom nodded eagerly. “He’s going to read you!”

  I didn’t get it. “What do you mean?”

  A trace of exasperation flitted across her face. “Casper DeVries. The world-famous psychic. He has a TV show.”

  Mr. DeVries leaned in. “I have several TV shows.”

  This was quite true. Casper DeVries had a cable show called Reaching Out, where he reconnected people with their dead relatives, and he’d done a couple of miniseries about life on the Other Side. He was also a consultant on a network show about psychic mediums. Mom couldn’t have found a more perfect soul mate if she’d robbed a grave.

  I still didn’t get it. I took Mom aside. “So this is the big present? He’s going to read me?”

  “He’s going to tell you everything.”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to be told everything, especially on Christmas Day, but when I thought about it, I decided it was the perfect present, coming from Mom. It was certainly personal.

  We had time before dinner, so we all repaired to the living room—me, Frank, Mom, the kids—and sat in a semicircle. Mr. DeVries was in a chair with his back to the fire, which imparted to him a mystical orange aura. He started going into a trance.

  His eyes were closed, his hands gripped the arms of the chair, and he made odd guttural sounds, as if speaking in tongues.

  “Aghhh…Ooo…Ogggh…Uuuu…”

  We waited patiently for a spirit to grab him. Eventually he threw his head back and began channeling someone. His voice dropped a few octaves.

  “Uggh…Aaaagghh…”

  “Who are you?” Mom asked boldly.

  “Obadiah,” he answered. Or somebody answered.

  Ah. Mom nodded with familiarity. Obadiah was the spirit of a former slave; he had visited her many times before, with the help of various channelers.

  I remember one time encountering Obadiah myself. Kevin Ryerson, another well-known psychic, used to channel him a lot. Ryerson was big on trance-channeling, and he was apparently the one who first informed Mom about her past life in Atlantis and so forth. The scene is re-created by the two of them in the movie version of Out on a Limb.

  That episode goes back to when I was still with David. We were over at the Malibu house with Ryerson and my mom, and they were having a channeling session. Ryerson went into a trance, and “Obadiah” started speaking through him. I don’t remember what came out during the channeling, but I recall that Mom had lost her gold watch with a diamond-encrusted rim and she mentioned it during the session. She had searched all over the house and just couldn’t find it. She kept rubbing her wrist throughout the session, lamenting her loss.

  “That’s too bad,” Obadiah said. “We’ll have to do something about that.” I remember thinking it funny that somebody who’d suffered through the horrors of slavery would give a hoot in hell about a missing gold watch.

  After the session was over, I was in the kitchen making dinner; David was with me. Mom was out taking a walk on the beach.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Kevin Ryerson step into the kitchen and hover by the doorway. He reached into his pocket and very discreetly (but not discreetly enough) took out the diamond-encrusted gold watch, put it on the kitchen counter, and then stealthily withdrew before anyone could see him.

  I saw him, though, and David saw him.

  We both gathered over the watch and stared at it. What should we do? Should we bust Ryerson? Tell Mom the truth? Would she believe us? Probably not. She was so invested in her beliefs, and they made her so happy, that we made an agreement not to say a word. Why dash her dreams?

  When Mom came back and walked into the kitchen, she screamed, “Oh my God! There it is! My watch! He found it for me! Thank you, Obadiah!”

  All I could think was, Oh, Mom. You’re such a little kid sometimes.

  I was not as susceptible. I had seen the man behind the curtain too many times, and that’s why I greeted Obadiah’s emergence now in my living room with a healthy degree of skepticism.

  DeVries was now completely in the grip of his visiting spirit. Mom, an old hand at these channeling sessions, took the reins. “Who’s with you, Obadiah?”

  “Steve is here…”

  Mom looked at me, and mouthed “your father,” which I’d already deduced. Who else but Dad would be showing up in my living room?

  “Does he have a message for us?”

  “He wants you to know that he loves you, and he apologizes.”

  “Anything else?”

  “He wants to thank you for hanging his picture in the bedroom…”

  I was startled by that one. It was true—a photo of Dad was hanging in an upstairs bedroom. How could DeVries or Obadiah have known that? I looked over at Mom, who nodded sagely.

  Mom started asking the spirit some searching questions about the nature of the universe, and her place in it:

  “What is the path for me?” she asked with deep earnestness.

  “You are an explorer…You are a star voyager…Many will scorn you, but you must be strong and follow your vision wheresoever it may lead.”

  Dad’s language had taken on a very biblical syntax. Or maybe it wasn’t Dad anymore. Obadiah indicated that someone else was present, an elderly woman. “It must be your grandmother,” Mom said.

  Whoever it was, I was getting antsy. This was supposed to be my present. “Can I ask something, please?” Mom shrugged and, with a roll of her eyes, sat back. By this time I had completely bought in to the Other Side, and I was itching to ask my big question.

  “What’s going to happen with my career? Will I ever make it as an actress?”

  DeVries rocked back and forth, and started shaking, as he received the message. “Mmm…Ahhhmmm…Mustn’t ride on mother’s coattails, must we?”

  “Huh?”

  “Mmmm…Ahhhh.…Acting classes are in order…”

  Acting classes? I looked over at my mother. Now she was slumped in the corner of the couch, watching like a spider, and emanating evil energy.


  But back to DeVries: he was trembling, getting excited. A great vision was coming to him: “Yes, I see…Sharp objects…Knives! Pots! Copper pots!…Cooking! A COOKING SHOW!”

  A cooking show. I should be doing a cooking show. That was the message that Grandma was sending from the dead.

  I couldn’t look at Mom now, or anyone. I felt something very hot spreading in the pit of my stomach, then rising very quickly through my various internal organs, up, up, until it was scorching my cheeks. It was as if my head had been dipped in acid.

  I was so pissed off. I realized that Mom had set this whole phony business up. Why? Maybe because she was afraid I would start acting again, and she was going to dissuade me through any means, normal or paranormal.

  I also realized that if I didn’t leave the room immediately, my head was going to explode. I rushed into the kitchen and promptly dissolved into a hysterical mess.

  They could hear me sobbing from the living room. Frank suggested to Mom that maybe she should go in and see how I was.

  Mom waved him off. “Ahh, she’ll be fine.”

  Instead, Mr. DeVries, who had emerged from his “trance,” came into the kitchen to comfort me. A mistake on his part.

  “You lying son-of-a-bitch!” I screamed at him. “You know not a word of that was true! Cooking show, my ass! You’re nothing but a fucking phony!”

  “Sachi, listen to me, please,” he said, trying to quiet me. “I really am a psychic—”

  “Ha!”

  “—and I know that you’re a fine actress.”

  “Right.”

  “In fact, I see you winning an Academy Award someday.”

  “Really?” He was starting to win me back.

  “But your mother made me tell that story.”