What falls away : a memoir

by Farrow, Mia, 1945-

  Back in New York he finished filming Scenes from a Mall at Astoria Studios. The 1990 season of Knicks games began with Soon-Yi eagerly attendmg. Woody even got her a job as an extra on the movie, and as he had with Fletcher, he offered to take her to and from work.

  On the job she met a new friend, a woman she described only as "older," and "in her late twenties." On weekend mornings Soon-Yi left the apartment to visit her new friend, not m her customary jeans, sneakers, and flannel shirt, but wearing miniskirts, makeup, and cute hats.

  Soon-Yi had always been completely reliable and responsible, so at first I wasn't worried. But as the weeks went by I began to be concerned: she was young and trusting, who was this older woman, and why did she never come to our home like all the other friends of the children? When I asked to meet the woman, Soon-Yi resented my intrusion and angrily declared she would not see her again. Still, she continued to leave the house early on weekend mornings, to shop at Bloomingdale's or to visit school friends, dressed in the new way.

  But it was more than Soon-Yi's clothes that were changing. My eldest daughter seemed to be going through a "difficult phase." She had become uncommunicative, which is not unusual for a teenager, but now she was cold, and so openly contemptuous of me and of my opinions that I remember saying to Woody (and this for me was an unimaginable thought) that I was beginning to actually welcome the time when she would go away to college. "Maybe it will be good for both of us," I said.

  It was wonderful for me that Casey lived, as I did, in New York and in Connecticut. She had three small children the same ages as Dylan and Satchel. One afternoon when Casey and I were minding our kids in a playground in Central Park, Woody appeared unexpectedly and out of breath. With barely a nod to us and without a glance at Satchel or Moses, he spotted Dylan and ran after her. In his hat and glasses and army jacket, he ran up and down the hill, chasing Dylan through swarms of tiny kids, crawling after her through tunnels and jungle gyms, along the walkways, up and down the slides.

  Casey turned to me and said, "I hope this is a great thing."

  We didn't spend our weekends at Woody's apartment at this time: the teenagers m the family refused to go there, and Satchel was still nocturnal. So it was difficult. But we went out to dinner most evenings, and Woody spent about an hour with us at my apartment in the mornings and evenings. When we went to Frog Hollow for the weekends, he came to stay overnight. Otherwise any moments of intimacy had to be stolen from our busy schedules.

  His behavior with Dylan was getting worse. "Obsessed" was the word most frequently used by my family and friends. He whispered her awake, he caressed her, and entwined his body around her as she watched television, as she played on the floor, as she ate, as she slept. He brought her into bed when he was wearing only his underpants. Twice I made him take his thumb out of her mouth.

  But more even than any of these specifics, there was a wooing quality to his approaches: a neediness, an aggressive intensity that was relentless and overpowering. Now, at the sound of the doorbell and the slam of the front door, Dylan fled from the kitchen to closets, bathrooms, under beds and desks. "Hide me . . . Hide me!" she would scream to her older brothers and sisters. It was not a game.

  Please don't hunt her down like that, I said for the umpteenth time. If you'd just let her come to you she wouldn't be so scared, it's too much. But he wouldn't listen.

  Most of the time Dylan was a bright, chatty little girl, brimming with opinions and observations. But in his presence she withdrew, her talk became sketchy and hard to follow, and instead of answering his questions, she looked around the room. When he became more insistent, she hummed, talked like a baby, barked like a dog, sang, did anything to deflect his attentions; and this only made him more insistent. When she wouldn't say good night, when she wouldn't even look at him, he pinned her shoulders to the bed and demanded a response while her head thrashed back and forth.

  "C'mon, just kiss her good night and leave it at that," I begged, tugging him off her. I found myself policmg his behavior, which made him angry.

  If there was a problem he insisted that it lay with me, in my misinterpretations of his very normal paternal affection. I was accustomed to thinking he was right about everything; he had to be right about this, I couldn't accept any other explanation.

  "Spoilsport/' he exploded angrily when I pulled Dylan out of the bed where he had been wrapped around her like a python in Jockey underpants.

  *'What sport?" I asked him. "J^^t what sport am I spoil-ing?

  A psychologist who was already helping another child in the family (Woody believed everyone would benefit from therapy) witnessed only one brief greeting between Woody and Dylan, but it was enough for her to mention it to me, and express her concern that Woody's attitude was "inappropriately intense, because it excluded everybody else; and it placed a demand on a child for a kind of acknowledgment that I felt should not be placed on a child."

  "That was nothing." I told the therapist, and the years of fear, disbelief, silence, and denial welled into words. I told her all of it, and I prayed she would be able to help.

  To my great relief, the therapist began to work with Woody, to help him to understand that his behavior with Dylan was "inappropriate" and had to be modified. Now many of the things that had so disturbed me seemed to improve. She made him stop putting his hands under Dylan's covers, stop putting his face m her lap, stop the constant caressing, stop hunting Dylan down, stop having her suck on his thumb.

  Although the therapist addressed the specifics, she was unable to modify the overall wooing quality of Woody's

  approaches, his own neediness expressing itself to Dylan. And if I left a room with Woody and Dylan m it, when I returned, I was still likely to find him doing those same things again.

  At least now, when he got mad at me, he was more likely to come around later and say, "Look, I'm really sorry. You're right to tell me when this kind of thing happens. Just tell me. It's okay."

  So we had come a long way, I had articulated my concerns, he had acknowleged there was a problem, and a therapist was in place addressing the issue with him. He was making an effort. I had to believe that everything would be all right. I had to.

  My mother and my youngest sister, Tisa, who is a nurse working and living with her family in Vermont, came to Frog Hollow with her daughter Bridget during Dylan's fifth summer. "It was a typical Edward Albee family get-together," Tisa recalled. "Mom and I were sitting down by the water's edge. Bridget was about two. Both our little girls were naked. It was buggy and sunny. Woody started rubbing some sunscreen on Dylan's shoulders. Then he got to her bottom, and there he took his time. It was a momentary thing, but it was so glaringly inappropriate. Just not something a grown man does to a child. If someone did something like that to my child I'd haul off and whack him. You know how you teach your child about 'good touching' and 'bad touching'? This was such a classic example of 'bad touching.' I didn't know anything about him and Dylan then. Mom and I talked about it later. She had noticed it and she was disturbed too." We needed help.

  Gh apt er i e

  n

  Why did I stay with Woody Allen when so much was wrong? How can I explain it to my children, when even to me it is incomprehensible and unforgivable? Was he only an illusion I loved all along? What was missing in me that compelled me to hold it all in place? When did the illusion become a lie? Why did I expose my children to his disregard for so long, and place them at risk? Why did I allow therapists to override my maternal instincts and doubt my own eyes? Wasn't it my own appalling denial of the facts that permitted him to inflict his damage on those I love most?

  I could protest that I didn't know—how could I have known—what he was capable of. How could I believe it. I could argue that the world I had occupied with him for a quarter of my life was so utterly removed from any other that it was impossible for me to envision a life for myself beyond it. Every aspect of my existence was interwoven with his.

  I could tell my children all t
his, but no expla-

  nation seems adequate. In the end all I can do is accept my share of responsibility, and hope they can find it in their hearts to forgive me.

  "What's this movie about?" asked John Cusack good-naturedlv.

  The entire soundstage at Astoria, the huge one where a gleaming maU had bustled for Scenes from a Mall, was now a drab Kafkaesque town with twisting cobbled streets and crumbling buildings with slanty roofs. Inside one of these houses, the other actors and I sat around a brightly lit table waiting for last-minute camera adjustments before we plunged into a long scene. Around the table Jodie Foster, Lily Tomlm, and Kathy Bates, all dressed as prostitutes, were smiling at the audacity of John's question: they had no idea what Shadows and Fog was about because of course they hadn't been given the script.

  "Well, it's, I guess it's sort of ... an existential comedy." I squirmed apologetically. They all laughed and were too gracious to pursue it.

  It was the fall of 1990. Since that summer Woody had been without energy, exhausted all the time. Throughout the workday, at every opportunity, he lay down. His doctors thought he might have Lyme disease, or chronic fatigue syndrome; there was talk about Epstein-Barr. Unless he was in front of the camera as an actor, he went days without shaving or washing his hair.

  Most of my scenes were with John Malkovich. Some weeks into the movie Woody said, "You can laugh and flirt with John Malkovich all you want, but just don't tell him anything about the movie."

  I stared at him, too shocked and horrified to respond with more than a weak nod, John was delightful company and a wonderful actor, but there had been no flirting between us. I hadn't flirted with another man in more than

  eleven years. On the other hand, if I had been flirting, why would it be okay?

  One morning, after awakening Dylan, who slept m the bed next to Satchel's, Woody stood staring at his three-year-old son. As usual Satchel yelled at him to go away, but on this morning Woody grabbed him by the leg and started twisting It. "I'm gomg to break your fucking leg," he said, and I really thought he would. Satchel screamed in pain. Dylan screamed. I flew over to the bed and pulled Woody off him.

  In vain I had tried to promote a better relationship between Woody and Satchel. When Woody took Dylan off into other rooms, I would mime, "Take Satchel too." When he brought Dylan a present, I asked that he bring one for Satchel, and for Moses too. I pointed out Satchel's many accomplishments and interests, and I suggested ways that Woody might become involved with him. But eventually I realized that he was not withholding his affection: it simply did not exist for Satchel, or Moses, or any of the other children. Lightning would not strike twice in our family: Woody would love one child onlv, and his love for her was an unusual kind.

  In the spring of 1991 I was told about an orphaned six-year-old boy in Vietnam. He was unable to walk because of polio, they said, and had been in an orphanage all his life. It seemed an omen to me: a post-polio child who needed a home. Woody was far less opposed to the idea of adopting this child than he had been to the adoption of Dylan. In fact, when pictures of the boy arrived that May, we looked at them together and noted that in four of the five snapshots a girl was standing next to the boy, a girl of about ten or twelve who was obviously blind. Woody commented on how pretty she was and said, "If it's not a big deal, why don't you see if you can get the girl too?"

  You could have knocked me down with a feather. I hugged him tight. "Really?" was all I could say. "Really?"

  "You might as well," he said, hugging me back. "I'm not a bad guy."

  It turned out that the little girl had been in the Vietnamese orphanage for six years. Her name was Tarn. I began the paperwork for both children.

  That June, Lark and Soon-Yi graduated from their high schools. Woody surprised all of us by showing up at Soon-Yi's graduation. Both young women had been accepted at the colleges of their choice, Lark at New York University and Soon-Yi at Drew University. They were beautiful, and polar opposites. Lark, all passion, generosity, love, and laughter, had always been in so many ways the heart of the family. Even the parrot Edna would call, "Lark, Lark." I doubt i{ in her life she has gone through a single waking hour of any day without trymg to do something for somebody else.

  Soon-Yi was quiet, reserved, and cautious. Dr. Audrey Sieger, whose doctorate is in learning and reading disabilities, had tutored her from the sixth grade through the twelfth. "She's a very typical learning-disabled kid, very socially inappropriate, very, very naive," said Dr. Sieger. "She has trouble understanding language on an mferential level. She's very literal and flat in how she interprets what she sees and how she interprets things socially. She misinterprets situations . . . During those last six months of high school there was a definite change."

  In the summer of 1991, Woody and I took the whole family—minus Matthew, Sascha, and Soon-Yi, who had jobs in New York—and we drove around the west of Ireland for a couple of weeks. I'd always told Woody he'd like it there, and he did. After the trip the kids and I returned to Frog Hollow while, in the city, Woody prepared Husbands and Wives for the WAFP 1991.

  The younger children and I missed the older kids, who

  were home less and less, but everybody came up to Frog Hollow with Woody on the weekends. I was proud of the young adults they had become and I loved their company. The twins were twenty-one, and had both been doing well at top colleges; that summer Sascha was managing a city store, while Matthew was working for the ACLU. Both boys had wonderful partners of long-standing who by then were practically family members, and they were looking out for Soon-Yi, who had a job at Bergdorf Goodman.

  In August Woody again brought up the subject of adopting Dylan. He and his lawyers had a new idea, one they hoped would be effective: if he were to adopt Moses, the only other child in the family who had no father, his petition would be much stronger. At thirteen, Moses could be articulate in his wish for a father. Moses would "piggyback Dylan's adoption," Woody said.

  He had now been trying to adopt Dylan for about three years. I doubted it would ever happen, but ever since Moses had been a tiny child, he had wished for Woody to be his father. It was his dream. Even if it never got to court, it would mean the world to him that Woody had tried.

  We called Moses into the living room and asked if he would like Woody to be his father. Moses just lit up. He smiled and smiled for days.

  Later that same September I traveled to Vietnam to bring home the two new children. My friend Casey, her husband Jack Pascal, and three-and-a-half-year-old Satchel accompanied me on the eleven-day journey. Woody was adamant that Dylan, now six, should not be taken out of school. But he was very supportive about the trip and about the new kids. He even tried to coax a film studio to provide a jet for the trip, and when that fell through, he offered to help me pay for it. I worried about leaving Dylan, but Lark and Sascha would be staying at the apartment to baby-sit, along

  with Fletcher and Daisy, who were seventeen. Soon-Yi promised to come from college in nearby New Jersey every weekend. I also had a baby-sitter I trusted, the therapist was in place, and over and over Woody promised he would remember not to let things get "too much."

  In the rice paddies near Ba Vi, the midday heat pressed heavily on the countryside. An old woman looked up from her work to stare at the time travelers as we streaked rudely past.

  I lifted the little boy out of a crib, which he shared with another child of roughly the same size, whose wrist was tied with a knotted rag to the rusted bars. There was no mattress; the children sat on sagging wooden slats without blankets or sheets. The walls were pitted and stained, and the windows had no glass.

  I opened a suitcase full of toys from the Danbury Mall and passed out the little cars, rocket ships and airplanes. Power Rangers, crayons, pads of colored paper, bubbles, and dolls to the thin, ragged children, their eyes alight. Almost immediately a woman moved quietly behind them taking their toys, putting them into her upturned straw hat. Forget it, I was told: she will take the toys home to her own kids.


  I asked for the little girl, Nguyen Thi Tam, but was told that she had been moved to an institution for the blind. Her papers were not complete, so she wouldn't be able to leave with me after all.

  It seemed that people there, three hours outside of Hanoi, had not seen too many blue-eyed, white-haired three-year-olds. Satchel was an attraction and everybody wanted to touch his hair.

  Later, in Hanoi, a ragged boy of about nine ran along the sidewalk bare-legged with a small child wearing a newspaper hat tied to his chest, asleep against his shoulder. The

  streets were a wild jumble of bicycles, pedal-rickshaws, and people on their haunches in clusters cooking, eating, and talking. A mirror nailed to a tree served as a barbershop, houses left by the French crumbled elegantly in bleached colors under the hot sun, and laundry hung from windows. A sheet of canvas or plastic supported by poles was roof enough for a shop, a restaurant, or a home. These ticky-tacky appendages added a lively look.

  I was taken to see Nguyen Thi Tam, who recoiled from the stuffed bear I had brought for her. The workers explained that she thought the bear was real. When she was taken away after less than ten minutes, I wondered if I would ever see her again.

  By chance Mother Teresa was also havmg breakfast one morning in the dining room of the Hanoi Government Guest House, unruffled by the giant rats that zigzagged across the room and under the tables. I all but genuflected when she said, "God bless you," just as she had in New York in the early eighties, when I had brought the kids to the United Nations to see a documentary on her life, and to meet her. She was the embodiment of everything I had tried to teach them about true success and what one person with conviction and courage can accomplish. As we spoke in Hanoi, I recalled how Matthew, Sascha, Soon-Yi, Lark, Fletcher, Daisy, and I had stood in line for our chance to meet her, and then I had run around to the end of the line to do it again. Michael Douglas and his lovely wife were standing next to Mother Teresa, so I met them twice too. My initial policy in Hanoi was to eat whatever was served if it didn't have a fly on it at the moment I saw it, and if I could identify it generically; but I loosened up on both points. I gave Satchel only the food we had brought with us in cans, jars, bottles, and packages, because who knew, and because he had his own rigid food policies. We