When the service was over, we left in a limousine. I remember looking out of the car window as paparazzi snapped picture after picture. Even then I knew people were taking my photo so it could be printed on slick paper and neatly wedged between a gossip column and an advertisement, to make money.
After the funeral, everyone descended on our house. Frank Sinatra, Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, and who knows how many other movie stars were there. Elizabeth Taylor, heavily made up and fresh from her performance of The Little Foxes at the Ahmanson Theatre. She brought Anthony Geary from General Hospital; I was starstruck. I remember Shirley MacLaine going to see my dad in his room. She was wearing a gauzy, flowing dress and beaded necklaces, reminding me of Agnes Moorehead as the character Endora in Bewitched. I was most impressed with the appearance of Joyce DeWitt, the actress who played Janet on the sitcom Three’s Company. Liz Taylor I didn’t care about, but meeting Joyce DeWitt I thought, Wow, your mom dies and Janet from Three’s Company shows up in your home.
I don’t remember interacting with Baba at the funeral or the wake, but my godfather Mart recalls Baba coming up to him that day. “If you had been on that boat, my daughter would still be alive,” she told him, as if it were all Mart’s fault. Baba may have been lashing out at Mart, but I wonder if she actually intended the remark as a compliment. But who knows what was going through her mind? She and Mart and everyone close to my mom were beside themselves.
Hundreds of cards, letters, and Western Union telegrams were delivered in bundles all day, every day, for weeks. I remember Liz Applegate sitting at my mom’s desk going through all the condolence letters—sorting them, wrapping them with rubber bands, putting certain ones aside for my dad. Heartfelt words of sympathy arrived at our doorstep from people my parents knew—David Niven, Blake Edwards and Julie Andrews, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart—and people I didn’t know that my parents had ever met: Luciano Pavarotti, Maria Shriver, John Travolta, Brooke Shields, Anthony Hopkins, Lana Turner, Mickey Rooney, and so many others. Queen Elizabeth and members of the British royal family sent wires from England. Condolences arrived from the US Coast Guard, the Los Angeles District Attorney, the governor of North Carolina, the owners of all my parents’ favorite hotels and restaurants, and the clowns from Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, which my parents had taken us to every year. The staff at the Beverly Hills Western Union office even sent their own telegram—my mother’s death had certainly kept them busy. So much sincere appreciation of my mom and dad; so much love and empathy and heartbreak—no judgments or criticisms or accusations. That would only start much later.
No one in my world questioned my dad’s love for my mom or his utter despair at her loss. Everyone in our lives wrapped their arms around him. R.J. had loved Natalie “more than love.” When it came time to choose the inscription on her gravestone, my dad made sure to add those three words, the same phrase my parents had always used to describe their love for each other. He asked if Courtney and I wanted it to say anything else. We told him we liked it just the way it was.
Mart later told me that in the days and weeks after my mom died, R.J. tried over and over again to make sense of what happened that terrible night, to figure out exactly how she got into the water. He kept asking if there was anything he could have done differently. They had all been drinking. At a certain point, my mom had simply gone off to bed. After that, what had happened? He had been right there on the boat that night, but he’d had no idea my mom had left to go down to the dinghy. Did she go down to the deck to move the dinghy? Did she somehow fall into the water at that point? Or had she gone out to the deck because the sound of the dinghy knocking against the boat was bothering her and she wanted to tie it up more securely? Did she slip and fall as she bent down to tie up the boat? Finally, the only thing he could come up with was that my mother must have tried to secure the dinghy to starboard.
In the week after the funeral, he barely left his room. One evening, I remember he came downstairs to take a phone call. I was in the next room, and I heard him talking in the den, then hanging up the receiver. He came out and announced, “I just got off the phone with the president of the United States, Ronald Reagan. He called to give his condolences for your mom.” I couldn’t tell by my dad’s voice if he was impressed or bewildered. I remember thinking, Is a call from President Reagan supposed to make me feel better? Could that make my pain go away? No. A friend of my mother’s would show up with presents. Could that make my pain go away? No. Liz wanted to take me to get ice cream. Could that make my pain go away? No, that didn’t do it either. I couldn’t even use my happy memories of my mother to make me feel better because the good times were too painful to relive. So I shut out the past and began eking out a life that hinged on merely surviving from day to day.
Some of our favorite moments as a family had been spent on the boat at Catalina. My dad donated the Splendour to the Sea Scouts and none of us has ever been back to Catalina Island.
Chapter 9
Courtney and Natasha, early 1980s.
After the funeral, Daddy Gregson and Julia went back to England. The troops of mourners, flowers, and telegrams that had been filling our house dwindled. Soon the paparazzi outside the front gates were the only ones left. The press clearly had no intention of leaving us alone.
Before long, most of my mom’s rules were put back in place—except for some reason the TV was allowed to remain in my room. I felt a sharp pang of guilt every time I turned it on. Things were supposed to return to normal. But how could we go back to normal when normal no longer existed? It was like living in a house that had been struck by a meteor, and we were expected to walk past the gaping hole in the ceiling and step around the smoking boulder on the floor as if they were part of the decor.
At least my dad was finally out of bed. Nine days after my mom died, he went back to work. He was needed on the set of Hart to Hart. Two weeks prior to my mom’s death, Stefanie Powers’s significant other, the actor William Holden, had died in his home after drinking too much and falling, injuring his head. I remember the seriousness in my dad’s tone when he told us that Stefanie’s boyfriend, Bill, had died. Stefanie was still in the throes of her early mourning when my dad lost my mom. They were already close, but their shared grief deepened their friendship.
The same Monday morning my dad returned to work, I went back to school. My best friends Jessica, Tracey, and Caprice formed a protective force field around me, taking it upon themselves to make sure I was okay. My teachers were very kind to me—the expressions on their faces a mixture of pity and sympathy—but I was embarrassed that so much of the focus was on me.
Before my return to fifth grade, the Curtis School held some kind of assembly to break the news to my fellow students and to encourage them to be respectful. Even so, there were stares and whispers as I moved through the halls and classrooms. Some kids made bad jokes. “What kind of wood doesn’t float?” was a popular one, the punch line, of course, being my mother’s name. I had avoided hearing about her drowning from the TV news as much as possible, but I couldn’t avoid the murmuring behind my back. I assumed it was happening because my parents were famous and my mom had drowned at night. I wasn’t old enough to understand why people gossiped. I just knew that everyone was interested in my life and I hated that feeling. I pretended I was fine, smiled a lot, and pushed the intense feeling of longing for my mother aside until nightfall, when I would cry for her in my bed, my stuffed animals absorbing my tears.
Nothing was right. Mommie had been our wizard and fairy godmother. She was our everything. Without her, all the color and sunshine seemed to have gone out of our home. The curtains stayed open, and yet it was as if they were pulled closed, leaving the house in shadow. The house was quiet in a way it had never been in the past. It had become a place where people cried and spoke in whispers.
On December 12, once the autopsy was complete, the coroner, Thomas Noguchi, and the lead Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department detective, Duane Rasure, co
ncluded that my mother’s death had been an accident, without any evidence of foul play. They surmised that she had gone down to the dinghy and then likely missed a step, slipping and falling into the water, and that the bruises on her face and body were consistent with this sequence of events. The case was officially closed.
We all knew my mother often got annoyed if the dinghy wasn’t tied down tightly. If the wind picked up and the sea became rough, it would bang right up against where her head rested in her bed. She was a light sleeper and she hated noises. She was also a feisty woman—our trusty first mate—who didn’t need a man to do things for her. It was so like her to get up in her nightgown and socks to go tie down the dinghy herself. At home she often ran downstairs in her nightie to investigate if she heard anything that disturbed her, not wanting to wake up my dad if he was asleep.
The swim step that led to the dinghy was wet and slippery, and she had had too much to drink. If she lost her footing and fell into the water, how could anyone have heard her struggling? They were all inside the boat. She was wearing a heavy down coat that absorbed the seawater and would have quickly dragged her under before she could hoist herself out. She was not a strong swimmer. It was November, and the water that night would have been cold.
But we could only guess at these details. No one knew for certain. My mother had been alone that night. For my part, I didn’t want to think about the details of her death at all. It was too painful. I didn’t care how she died. I just cared that she died. I put up a wall against analyzing or discussing it with anyone. It was too devastating, too horrific for me to picture her drowning alone at night in the dark, cold water. I didn’t see the point in dwelling on those thoughts. After all, she was gone, and that was all that mattered.
* * *
My mom dying confirmed all my worst fears. I had been in therapy for more than a year to overcome my terror that she was going to die. Now I should have been able to put all my ridiculous good-luck rituals to rest. Instead, what happened only confirmed that I had been right to be terrified. I should have performed even more rituals, not fewer. Obviously, I hadn’t done enough and this was why she had died. What if, like my grandmother, I really did have some sort of sixth sense about things? Was this why I had obsessed over the thought that my mom was going to die? If I foresaw it, did that mean it was partly my fault for not preventing it? In my grief-stricken, eleven-year-old mind, I managed to convince myself that my mother’s death had somehow been my fault.
I became more frightened, anxious to the point of hypervigilance, on high alert for the slightest bad omen. I doubled down on my nightly rituals, lining up my stuffed toys with newfound meticulousness. I had gotten my hair cut on Saturday morning, November 28. I was never getting my hair cut on a Saturday again. Anything I did that weekend, I never wanted to do again, including waking up to the sound of the radio. To this day, I do not fall asleep with a TV or radio on. I can’t trust them.
I wanted to find a way to stay in touch with my mother. My grandmother, firmly believing herself to be psychic, was happy to help me. We began holding séances in my parents’ linen closet, with Courtney also in attendance. The closet was warm and dark, with just enough room for the three of us to sit comfortably on the floor, the neatly folded linens and towels lined up on shelves all around us. Baba lit a candle, then we closed our eyes and held hands as she tried to reach our mom and Deda. The bottom shelves in the closet were covered in a soft white plastic, and I remember picking nervously at the material in the dark, as Baba commanded the spirits in hushed, dramatic tones. My dad and Kilky obviously didn’t know these séances were happening or they would have been furious. This couldn’t have been a healthy way for children to handle a parent’s death. But Baba was always a mystic.
I began to wonder if I was a mystic too. Each night, I lay in bed and asked my mother to show a sign that she could hear me. One school night, a week or two after she died, Jessica was sleeping over and Liz was telling us one of her made-up stories about Billy Mouse and Morris Gerbil. She was just about to turn out the lights when I asked my mom out loud if she could send me a sign. Suddenly all the lights outside flashed on and off. Jessica, Liz, and I held our breath and then I started to cry.
“It’s okay, lovey,” Liz told me, trying to comfort me. “That means Mummy heard you. She is with you all the time.”
I was stunned and a little scared that my request had so much power, but at the same time, it devastated me because it made her death feel all the more final. Another time, I held a séance on my own in the closet with my bird Smokey. I turned the lights out and asked my mom to make Smokey chirp if she heard me. He did. Again, I wasn’t comforted. Instead, I was terrified of this new world without my mom in it.
We had been a famous family that everybody admired and now the worst thing imaginable had befallen us and everyone knew it. I’d be carrying my books across the school grounds or shopping at the mall, and people would point their fingers in my direction and mutter, “That’s Natasha Gregson Wagner,” adding, “Natalie Wood’s daughter.” I had never been pitied before. I had always been so proud to be my mother’s daughter, but now the association filled me with embarrassment and regret. In public, I wished to be anyone but Natalie Wood’s daughter. If only I could just be some anonymous girl—normal, safe, and unremarkable. In private, I felt small and lonely.
Sometimes after school Courtney and I would go with Kilky to our neighborhood market, Food King. Kilky was friendly with all the baggers and checkout people but I felt embarrassed when they looked at Courtney and me—seeing the pity in their eyes. Then just as I would look down or away in shame and dismay, there next to the checkout counter would be the National Enquirer. Inevitably, my mom and my dad would be on the cover, with a headline about her death, some new “revelation”: that my mom was drunk that night, that she was allegedly having an affair with Chris Walken, that my parents had been fighting. I’d grown up with celebrity parents—I understood not to believe a single word printed on the cover of a tabloid. But it still hurt. In the checkout line, I tried to turn away, to block out the words and the images, but I was getting the message that there was no safe place for me these days. Home was filled with memories of my mom, and the outside world was filled with people pitying us or judging us with accusing headlines.
I spoke more and more quietly, hoping to disappear. In school I never raised my hand or volunteered to answer questions. I participated as little as possible. I think I was afraid that if I opened my mouth to talk, the tears would overwhelm me. I tried to learn, but I couldn’t really concentrate on my studies because my heart hurt too much. I failed algebra and geometry and had to take them again in summer school.
Without my mother as my mirror, I started to see myself in a new light. I had been so assured of my mother’s approval that I could be a bit of a bossy girl. Katie had called me a spoiled brat, and maybe she was right. I was a pampered little princess who grew up believing I was fragile. But now the worst possible catastrophe had happened. Did that mean I was cursed? Not a princess anymore? I felt more like a paper princess torn apart and pasted back together—a sham.
I played our last moments together over and over in my head. I could hear my mother’s voice telling me there was nothing to worry about. I remember how she said my nickname in her special way, “Natooshie.” My mom promised she would come back and I had believed her. She didn’t lie to me, and yet and yet…
That one last gardenia-scented hug with her, in her soft angora sweater. I’d had no way of knowing it would be our last moment.
* * *
I was so worried Daddy Wagner would be next. I begged him not to go out for dinner. I called him on the set of Hart to Hart to make sure he was safe. I burst into tears whenever he left me. When I said my nightly prayers I pleaded with God to let me keep my dad. Maybe if I prayed hard enough, He wouldn’t punish me as He had done when He had taken away my mom.
Like many men of his generation, my dad had been raised to stifle
his feelings and so he handled his grief by throwing himself into his work. He couldn’t sit still. Maybe one day a week, he came home early from work. He hugged me and I smelled his familiar smell. I sat next to him or on his lap. His blue eyes were always ringed with pale red those days and his face looked just as sad as mine. For those moments, we were partners in grief. But it was short-lived. The phone rang, a friend arrived, a dinner date was waiting, and despite my protests, off he went. While our dad could leave our house of pain, Courtney and I were stuck there. He could hug us and tell us he loved us, buy us presents, but he was not capable of filling our mom’s shoes.
This is where Katie stepped in. As our dad’s first child, she had the most experience dealing with him. After we lost our mother, Katie served as the bridge for me and Courtney with our dad. If I had a problem I felt he wasn’t listening to or couldn’t deal with, I went to Katie and she would work it out with him. With her steadfastness, her maturity, and her dependability, Katie morphed from a stepsister to something of a substitute mother for me.
My relationship with Courtney also began to shift. Suddenly Courtney and I were no longer vying for our mother’s attention. My sister was just as devastated and, because she was younger, even more confused than I was. One day shortly after the accident, Courtney was looking at some jewelry my dad had bought my mom recently that was still in its box. Liz said, “Oh, lovey, don’t touch that. That’s going back,” and Courtney said, “Is Mommie coming back to get it?” She couldn’t really comprehend that our mother was gone forever.
Though we bore only a faint resemblance to each other, we both looked like our mother in different ways. Just looking at my sister’s face could be healing for me; she was a living, breathing reminder of Mommie. One Sunday morning, I remember Courtney came into my room. She pushed the door open and saw me playing with my Barbies. She sat next to me. I flinched slightly. Was she about to wreck my things? But she didn’t. She watched and listened. “Toosh, can I play too?” she asked sweetly. For the first time, I said “yes.”
More Than Love: An Intimate Portrait of My Mother, Natalie Wood Page 13