One of my British dad’s biggest fears was that I would somehow be spoiled growing up in a “lotus-eating la-la land,” as he called it. He wanted me to be self-reliant. He wanted me to be the one mucking out the horse stables, putting the saddles and bridles away, using the farrier rasp to clean the horses’ hooves. This directly clashed with my mother’s desire to insulate me from the harsher aspects of life. My mom would have preferred me to just ride the horse and let the stable staff do the rest. It wasn’t so much that she thought I was above doing those kinds of things; it was that those types of things posed a risk to my safety. What if the horse accidentally kicked or stepped on me?
My British dad wanted me to enjoy the kind of freedom and responsibility afforded most kids my age. When he came to visit, he’d ask me questions like, “Did you walk around the block today?” and I’d say, “I’m not allowed to walk around the block.” Then he’d confront my mom. “Natalie, Natasha is ten years old. She should be able to leave her house and walk around her own block.” She would say, “Are you crazy? Absolutely not! She can walk around the block if somebody’s with her, but not by herself.”
Our problems were not insurmountable, but they were real. My mother had made me into a princess locked in a comfortable Beverly Hills tower and herself into an obstinate palace guard. I wanted to unfurl my long, tangled locks of hair to the street below, like Rapunzel in my favorite fairy tale. But at the same time, I was afraid of what might happen if I did.
Chapter 7
Natasha and Natalie in Newport, California, 1981.
As my grandparents approached their seventies, their health took a turn for the worse. Deda had always suffered from heart problems; now he had to have bypass surgery. I remember him in his hospital bed, a scar across his heart and little white stickers on his chest. He never fully recovered. He still had his gentle and kind smile, his warm eyes, and his soft, accented voice, but each time we saw my grandfather he was increasingly frail.
Not only was my mother dealing with her father’s failing health, she was also all too aware that when the time came—and Deda passed away—Baba was going to fall apart and would need a lot of caretaking. My grandmother suffered from fainting spells and now she had arthritis in her hands, her fingers curling at the joints. Her blood pressure had begun to rise and she needed to take pills to lower it. I remember hearing my parents’ clipped conversations about how best to deal with Baba when Deda died. My mother told the nurses to call her first so she could let Baba know. It was clear to me that my mom was parenting her parents and not the other way around.
Deda passed away in November 1980. He was the first person in my family who had died, but because he had been sick for some time, I don’t remember feeling sad. Instead I felt curious about my mother’s reaction to his death. I took my cues from her, calibrating my emotions to hers. My mom threw herself into organizing the funeral. She was the one to let her mother and sisters know Deda had died, she planned the services and arranged for the priest; she did it all.
At Deda’s funeral, I watched my mom closely. She was going to be the one to read his eulogy. I remember her standing at a podium at the front of the church, delivering her tribute to her father, surrounded by flowers and candles. Courtney and I were seated next to our dad and Baba. As my mom said the words that she had carefully written to honor her father, her voice caught. The emotion of the moment was too much for her, and she paused to swallow and reset herself. That moment is imprinted on me, so rarely did I see her lose control: my beautiful, self-composed mother, taking a beat and then righting herself so she could carry on with her tribute.
Many years later I found in her datebook a pencil sketch my mother made of the profile of my grandfather’s face on the day he died. It was as if she were trying to hold on to him, to stamp his features in her memory before he left her forever. Their relationship had been complicated by my grandmother’s ways, by my mother’s need and desire to break free from her parents’ control, by my grandfather’s bouts with alcohol dependency and melancholy, yet there was always love between them.
No one could have ever guessed or predicted that almost exactly a year later, we would be attending another funeral, this time for my mother.
* * *
In the months after Deda’s death, my parents’ lives continued in high gear. My mom’s datebooks list the directors she wanted to collaborate with—“Alan Parker, John Schlesinger, Scorsese, Fosse, Milos Forman, Sidney Lumet, Sydney Pollack”—right alongside her reminders to take me and Courtney to ballet, piano lessons, gym class, math tutoring, and social events (“Natasha to Tracey’s overnight”), Katie’s class trip to Europe, doctor appointments, black tie affairs (“Dinner at 20th Century-Fox for king and queen of Spain”), and on and on.
My mother felt a pull to try live theater, which she had never done, and was planning to star in a stage version of Anastasia at the Ahmanson Theatre. The play was based on the true story of Anna Anderson, a young woman who insisted she was the only surviving member of the Romanov family, having escaped execution by the Bolsheviks in 1918. My mother felt connected to the story for obvious reasons, and she was hoping her old friend Laurence Olivier might direct her in the play (in the end, the timing wasn’t right for him). Live theater was going to be the ultimate challenge for her, the biggest moment of her career since Splendor in the Grass in terms of stretching herself as an actor. She always said that her voice was her Achilles’ heel—she worried it wasn’t loud or deep enough to project to the back of a theater. As much as she was scared to try acting in a play, she was also electrified by the possibility.
She had lots of plans. In August, she signed a contract to executive produce and star in a suspense thriller called Mother Love. She hoped to play Zelda Fitzgerald, the wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald, in a biopic. When that fell through, she accepted a role in a sci-fi feature called Brainstorm, costarring Christopher Walken, who had recently won an Academy Award for his role in The Deer Hunter.
I could tell my mother was readying herself for the camera in the late summer and early fall of 1981, because she was eating light and trying out different weight-loss tactics like the Scarsdale Diet. Sometimes she let me observe her Pilates sessions, or even sit on her lap, “if you sit quiet as a mouse,” she said. I would follow her to the pool house and watch with fascination as her instructor taught her to use the machine. She also got regular massages, which, in those days, were thought to help people lose weight. (It was another time.…)
In early September my mother told me she would need to go to North Carolina for a few weeks in September and November to shoot some scenes for her new film project Brainstorm. My dad was also going to be shooting Hart to Hart in Hawaii in November. This was the first time both of my parents would be away from us for work simultaneously.
I knew my dad wasn’t too happy about the situation. Although he always supported my mom’s career, he also understood the realities of having three children. Someone needed to be our anchor at home, keeping things grounded and in place. My dad was working long hours on a TV show. He couldn’t be that person. But now my mom seemed to be just as busy as he was. I think even my mom knew it was getting to be too much. She had started talking to him about relocating us to New York, away from the Hollywood circus.
One of the hardest parts of her being in North Carolina was that she was going to miss my birthday at the end of September. In our home, birthdays were celebrated to the max. All our friends came over to our house. We opened a towering pile of presents. Each year the cake was a slightly different theme, but it was always something extravagantly girlie: a princess, pink roses, butterflies, rainbows. Last birthday I had turned ten—double digits!—and my parents had taken six of my girlfriends and me for a weekend on our boat in Catalina.
My mom sat down with me to break the news that she was going to be away for my big day. “Now, Natasha, you know I have to go to North Carolina in November to work,” she explained, “but I will also have to be gone for
a week or so in late September.” Pause. “I am going to miss your birthday, my darling, but I will be able to fly home for the weekend so we can have your party, and then you and Daddy are going to go on a special date on your actual birthday to the Bistro. How does that sound?”
I was sad and scared to be without her, but I remember trying to be brave because I was turning eleven, which I knew was a grown-up age. I tried to make her feel better by reassuring her. I told her that not only was I going to be okay without her on my true birthday but also I was excited to have my dad all to myself.
After she left for North Carolina, she and I mailed letters back and forth to each other. They were just simple notes. “Dear Mommie, I hope you’re having fun, I miss you,” I wrote in one. I illustrated the bottom of the page with a little drawing of a tear. In case she missed the symbolism, I wrote “tear” next to it. In late October, Courtney and I joined our dad in Hawaii, where he was shooting, and when we got back in early November, the house was empty without her.
I called her at her hotel. “When are you coming back home?”
“Soon,” she said. “I miss you and Courtney so much, Natooshie.”
Earlier, in September, when my birthday had come around, she’d flown in the weekend before, just as she had promised she would, for my party. We had a piñata and lots of candy. All my girlfriends came and Courtney was there too. I was having so much fun I didn’t even mind that my mom would be heading back to North Carolina that night. On my actual birthday, I went out to dinner with Daddy Wagner, me in my fancy new Pierre Deux dress that my godmother Ruth had given me, Daddy looking dapper in one of his Hart to Hart suits. The waiter brought a cream-colored rotary phone over to the table. It had a long cord. My mom was on the other end wishing me a happy birthday. I was happy; I felt loved.
* * *
When my mother finally came home right before the Thanksgiving holiday, I showered her with kisses and gave her one of my strangulation hugs. How could I ever think of this beautiful, warm, radiant soul as an overprotective nuisance? She was my mom. I wanted to hug her forever, to never let go. My Mommie, my love, my everything.
Thanksgiving was right around the corner. Just like birthdays, any holiday at Canon Drive was a big deal. My parents threw New Year’s Eve parties, Easter lunches, Christmas dinners with friends and relatives over, presents, and plenty of food. Thanksgiving was no exception. Helen and Gene, the married couple who cooked for us, arrived the day before with bags filled with groceries, then came back early the next morning to start the cooking. Smells of turkey roasting in the oven, candied pecans frying in a pan, oranges being hulled out to make room for the mashed sweet potatoes filled the house. My friend Tracey came home with me after school on Wednesday and would be staying over Wednesday and Thursday and then I was going to spend the weekend at her house. On Thursday morning Courtney, Tracey, and I woke up early, excited for the day ahead. My mom was also early to rise, returning calls, picking daisies and chrysanthemums in the garden and arranging them in vases, calling out to my dad with questions and requests.
We kids knew we needed to bathe early. My hair was diligently washed and combed, prepped, and ready for curlers. I could never dream of arguing about my tangles on Thanksgiving morning. After we finished washing, Kilky helped Courtney and I put on our pretty, newly purchased just-for-the-occasion dresses, brown and forest-green velvet with little white lace collars. Then we went to find my mom in her bathroom. She was in her robe, curlers in her hair, eye makeup already applied. Brushing her teeth with the Macleans toothpaste she always used, spritzing herself with her Jungle Gardenia. A second set of hot rollers was waiting for us on the side, so that she could fix the rollers in our hair with a pin before we went off to play.
Soon enough our guests arrived: Baba; my dad’s mother Chattie; my godfather Mart; Katie and her brother Josh Donen, who was living in our guesthouse at the time; and Delphine Mann. We all went downstairs to greet them. My dad behind the bar in the den, my mom welcoming everyone. Nuts in shiny dishes, cocktail napkins perched on coffee tables, fresh wooden matches with their forest-green tips in silver match strikers throughout the house, just as they always were for a party. In the dining room, the food was served buffet-style. We gathered our plates and sat in the living room or den. On sofas, in chairs, on the carpet. Everyone dressed up yet nobody minding if they wound up on the floor. Over the course of the evening the piano was played, toasts were made, jokes and stories told. Then a confection of desserts appeared: pumpkin, pecan, and apple pies; ice cream; and pumpkin pie cheesecake (my favorite).
If there was any pall or sadness—even a frisson—between my parents that night, either I didn’t notice or I don’t recall. In my memory, our last Thanksgiving together was just as it had always been: full of food, warmth, good friends, and happiness.
But we were about to be separated again. That weekend, my mom and dad were planning a boat trip to Catalina with Christopher Walken, the lead actor in my mom’s new film project. Mommie asked Courtney, Katie, and me to go on the boat too, just like we often did, all of us together. I didn’t want to go on the boat—I wanted to spend the weekend with Tracey. As usual Courtney wanted to do whatever I did, so decided not to go either. Katie was a teenager and had her own plans. My mom invited Delphine Mann and a couple of other friends, but no one could make it. And so she was going to go alone with my dad and Christopher.
My internal conflict never raged harder than on that Friday in November. I wanted to be independent—I knew I had to stop clinging to Mommie and be my own person, to make my own plans like Katie—but at the same time, I wanted to be with my mom. I had to fight hard against my desire to prevent her from going or to go along with her so she would be within my sights and I would know she was safe.
I ended up asking her to stay home.
“Don’t worry, Natooshie,” she said. “Everything will be okay.”
I knew she must be right. Everything would be okay. We would spend the weekend apart—she was going on the boat; I was going to Tracey’s house—and we would see each other on Sunday night when she returned.
It had stormed Thursday night, and that Friday dawned dark, cold, and drizzly. My mom, my dad, and Christopher were sitting and talking at the bar in the den before the trip. The weather and the mood felt dangerous to me, and after she went upstairs to finish getting ready, my old anxious feelings started up again. Suddenly I was crying; my heart was pounding; I could barely breathe.
Maybe it was because we had already been separated for several weeks, and my mom had only just come back home. Maybe it was because of the rainstorm the night before. Maybe because I didn’t know Christopher Walken. Maybe because it was a holiday weekend.… I don’t know, I just knew I wanted her to cancel the trip and stay home.
I went to find her upstairs in her bathroom.
“Mommie, I don’t want you to go,” I told her.
“Natooshie, we’ll be fine,” she said. I could tell by her sweet smile and the way she brushed my long hair out of my face that she wasn’t taking me seriously. I often told her I didn’t want her going away. For my mom, this was just a reenactment of so many familiar scenes from our past.
She probably just assumed I would have a great time with Tracey that weekend, that I would enjoy the haircut she had booked for me that Saturday morning at the proper grown-up salon she had just started going to. In hindsight, I imagine she thought that as soon as she was back from the weekend and Brainstorm wrapped we would reconnect, take a long look at our separation issues, maybe hire a new therapist, and start planning for Christmas.
To my mom, this was all business as usual. To me, it was something more.
My dad came to find us. “Daddy, I’m scared,” I told him. “I don’t want you guys to go.”
He reassured me. “Oh, Natooshie, what do you think is going to happen?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I knew I sounded whiney, like a little child. I was eleven now—not a clinging baby anymore. But I c
ouldn’t shake this feeling. Why won’t they listen to me?
Once more, in a small voice, I asked my mother to stay. With a sweet, understanding but firm tone of voice, she made it clear that she would be going. That was final.
My mother was wearing a soft, fuzzy, light-colored angora sweater with pastel appliqués on it that day. I twisted the soft strands in my fingers. Finally she knelt down to give me a long hug goodbye. Her eyes locked with mine.
“I know you don’t want me to go,” she said. “But I promise you I am going to be okay.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
Usually when we had a heart-to-heart conversation and I looked deep into her eyes, I would be comforted for the rest of the day. But not this time. About an hour after they left, Mommie called to check on me when they stopped off in Marina del Rey to get a bite to eat before boarding the boat. Once again I broke into tears and pleaded with her not to go. Once again she reassured me. That Friday night, while I was staying at Tracey’s house, my mom called from a hotel on Catalina Island, explaining to me that she had come ashore for the night because the sea was too rough and she was getting queasy. She asked me how I was feeling and if I was still worried about her. I told her that I had calmed down a little and was enjoying myself. That was the last time I ever spoke to her.
PART 2
Without
Chapter 8
Natasha, circa 1981–82.
After Kilky came to get me from Tracey’s house that terrible Sunday morning, after my dad came home and confirmed it was true—that my mother was gone and not coming home ever again—the sensation I most vividly remember is pure terror. Did the one thing I’ve been most scared of my whole life actually just happen? Was I cursed with a sixth sense? Did I foresee it? I was always so afraid of losing my mom—unnaturally afraid. And now I had lost her. Forever. Why did this happen? Why did it happen to me? In my traumatized eleven-year-old mind the answer was obvious: it happened because my mom was so famous and beautiful and everybody knew that we were so close. I had been blessed with this gift of an extra-special mother. So this must be some kind of punishment. The Lord had given, and the Lord was now taking away. Perhaps I was being punished for striving for independence when she died, for not appreciating her as much as I used to. Is that what had caused her death?
More Than Love: An Intimate Portrait of My Mother, Natalie Wood Page 11