At other times, our relationship wasn’t so easy. Mrs. Malin suggested that my dad occasionally join me in our therapy sessions. She encouraged me to be honest with my dad and express my true feelings. So I did. I shared with him that I felt he was going out to dinner too many nights. I was confused about his relationship with Jill. Now that he was dating her, did that mean he didn’t miss Mommie anymore? Where did all his love for my mom go? Did it evaporate into thin air? Why couldn’t he be more like other dads who came home after work and stayed home? Why did he travel so much? My dad sat there in Mrs. Malin’s office, shifting uncomfortably in his chair. He couldn’t deal with my questions, my poking and prodding about his private life with Jill. After about ten minutes or so he would simply get up and walk out of the session, down the creaky wooden steps, and out to his car, where he would drive away. Mrs. Malin and I would sit there trying to make sense of what had gone wrong. She would explain to me that my dad was not able to “hear” me because his grief was overwhelming him. I felt guilty and ashamed. Terrified my feelings would somehow cause his death. Frightened that he would send me back to Wales to live with Daddy Gregson. Ashamed that my questions were more than he could bear. On those afternoons Mrs. Malin had to drive me home.
The message from Liz and Kilky was clear: “Don’t upset your dad with your sadness and suffering. He has his own and they are bigger than yours.” The last thing I wanted to do was cause my dad more trouble.
Daddy Wagner continued to work and travel. Instead of resting when he was on hiatus from Hart to Hart, he took on other movie roles. Daddy Gregson used to call long-distance from England to check on me. “I don’t understand why he’s working all the time,” he’d say to me. “He’s got enough money. He should be spending time with you.”
* * *
In the spring of 1982, not long after my dad started seeing Jill, my best friend Tracey and I flew to visit him in the South of France, where he was filming Curse of the Pink Panther with his buddy Niv. This time we visited Niv at his house on the Cap Ferrat, overflowing with food, drink, and laughter, a lot like our own home in the old days. Niv was tanned, with a gold ID bracelet around his wrist. He was so kind to us children, giving us handmade Easter baskets filled with chocolates. I was mostly quiet to the point of silence, but he was garrulous and as hilarious as ever. The elegant French model and actress Capucine was their costar and another good friend of my dad’s. Beautiful and kind, she seemed to truly enjoy spending time with Tracey and me. One day, she and my dad took us to a bustling outdoor market, the kind you find all over the South of France. Capucine bought a bag of reddish oranges. She peeled the burnt-orange skin and handed Tracey and me the reddest sliver of orange I had ever seen. “These are blood oranges, the sweetest you will taste,” she said. To this day, every time I eat a blood orange I think of Capucine.
During our visit, my dad made a huge effort to be present, to take Tracey and me out and show us the town. He taught us to play endless rounds of gin. He drove us to the Loews Hotel Monte-Carlo in Monaco to celebrate Tracey’s thirteenth birthday. We saw showgirls dance in a chorus line, and the waiters brought out a chocolate birthday cake and a glass of champagne for each of us. I felt so close to my dad that week, his attention firmly centered on me. When it was time to say goodbye and fly home without him, I fell apart. I was crying so hard in the back seat of the car as Tracey and I rode to the airport that the driver actually turned around and asked if I was okay. “Est-ce que ça va?” Did I want him to stop the car? Stop and do what? I thought.
“There’s nothing anyone can do,” I replied.
I just couldn’t stand to be separated from my dad.
A few months after the trip, David Niven died of Lou Gehrig’s disease. An understanding, supportive friend was gone. Seven years later, Capucine would jump to her death from her eighth-floor apartment in Switzerland.
Soon after Niv died, I learned that Howard Jeffrey—Aitchey—my parents’ close friend and a crucial part of our family, was sick with a strange illness known then as GRID, later identified as AIDS. Howard was sick for a number of years and died in 1988. My mom’s death seemed to have set off a chain reaction of loss.
* * *
As a child, I was always told how much I looked like my mother. But puberty was changing my looks. At thirteen, my body began sprouting painful, hard lumps where my breasts would be. My light-colored eyebrows grew dark and bushy, like two furry caterpillars perched contentedly on my forehead. My nose was too big for my small face, and my skin, which had always been clear, now felt greasy and two-toned. Tiny little pimples popped up everywhere. As a teenager, my mother had flawless skin and iconic looks. In 1956, Life magazine had even named her the Most Beautiful Teenager in the World. My adolescence was so very different. It was as if when my mom died she took with her any beauty that I may have had. I felt embarrassed for people to know I was her daughter. She was beautiful Natalie and I was the little ugly duckling Natasha.
In addition to weekly visits to my therapist, I now paid weekly visits to the Beverly Hills office of Dr. Sutnick, dermatologist. He’d inject my blemishes with a small needle, and then close up the wound with what appeared to be magical mystery smoke. “Lorraine, get me the dry ice,” he’d bellow to his nurse after popping my pimples. “Now you gotta look great,” he would say when examining my face, “because Ted Sutnick’s here, and he’s not lookin’ at you through rose-colored glasses!”
One day after school, Daddy Wagner and I were in the backyard. “Why do you think your skin’s so broken out?” he asked. “How should I know?” I wanted to respond. Does any teen know why their skin breaks out? But I didn’t have the confidence or self-awareness to answer him truthfully. I quietly replied, “I don’t know,” and tried to play it off like I wasn’t bothered by his criticism.
Right around that time Katie, Courtney, and I decided to get our hair chopped off. There was a trend in the early eighties for girls to have close-cropped, feathered hairdos, and so on a trip to London, we went to the Vidal Sassoon Salon and proceeded to get the worst haircuts of our lives. Mine was layered, helmetlike, and profoundly unflattering to a face stricken by puberty. Immediately after we walked out of the salon I knew the haircuts were bad. Not just bad, but truly awful. When my dad saw Courtney and me in the lobby of our hotel he paused to take a breath. I knew right away he did not approve. The new haircut only cemented my feeling that all my childhood beauty died with my mom.
Now that I was no longer in the bubble of her unconditional acceptance, I felt constantly lost and ashamed. If I could no longer see myself reflected in my mother’s eyes, who was I? I clung tightly to my best friend Jessica. If she was okay, then I was okay. Though she was my age, she became my strength and my protector. Jessica was beautiful. She too was sprouting little breasts, but her face remained smooth and clear. The thought of being separated from Jessica terrified me so much that I followed her to a small private school in Studio City for a year, even though Kilky had to haul me more than twenty miles to and fro every day.
I built a composite mother from parts of Liz, Kilky, Katie, Mrs. Malin, and Tracey’s mom, Janis. I looked to each of them for different things. Liz reassured me that nothing bad was going to happen to my dad. Kilky gave me the familiar consistency of the life I had before my mom died. Katie was magnetic and beautiful and took me under her wing. Mrs. Malin made me feel safe. And Janis was the freewheeling, fun mom that I wished my mom had resembled a little more before she died.
And of course there was Julia. The year I turned thirteen, Daddy Gregson called to say that Julia was pregnant and I was going to have a new sibling in November. I was thrilled. I adored Julia. The more the merrier as far as I was concerned. Their dog Daisy was pregnant during Julia’s pregnancy. They told me they were going to keep one of Daisy’s puppies. There were two names on the table. Apple and Poppy. The puppy would have one of the names and the baby would have the other. Daisy gave birth to nine fluffy, golden-haired puppies. The puppy they kep
t was named Apple. My sister they called Poppy.
* * *
Despite my discomfort with my body and my looks, I was a teenager now. I knew I was supposed to start thinking about clothes and parties and boys—and maybe looking outside myself for answers that would help distract me from my grief. One evening, Jessica and Tracey invited me to a taping of the TV series Silver Spoons, a sitcom starring a young blond actor who most girls my age—including Jessica and Tracey—had a crush on, Ricky Schroder. I did not have a crush on Ricky, nor was I a fan of the show, but I went along for the ride.
As it turned out, Ricky’s agent, Flo Allen, was a friend of my dad’s and she recognized me. “Would you and your friends like to come backstage and meet Ricky?” Of course we would! Jessica and Tracey were over the moon with excitement but trying to play it cool. Before we left, Ricky asked in a quiet voice, “Can I have your number?” Naturally, I assumed he was talking to Jessica, the beautiful one, so I said nothing. Ricky looked right at me and reiterated, “Natasha, can I have your number?” Wow, I thought, somebody special noticed me for the first time since my mom died. Clearly, my terrible haircut had grown out.
The next day Ricky sent me a hundred red roses. I was shocked and thrilled. Was I dreaming? Soon I was going to Universal Studios every Friday night and watching as he taped his weekly Silver Spoons episode. Ricky had been a child star—like my mother—and was coming into his own in Hollywood at that time. Until now I had experienced the industry only via my parents. Now I was experiencing it with Ricky.
Ours was a very innocent romance. Ricky and I would sit in the back seat of his town car and hold hands. I especially liked spending time with his sister, Dawn, who was dating Miguel from the boy band Menudo. I also loved Ricky’s mom, Diane, a no-nonsense woman who managed his career, and spending time with Ricky and his family at their house in Calabasas. Soon I was joining them on their family vacations, being immersed in that comfort and stability. More than a boyfriend, what I longed for was a mother.
We dated for about a year. At some point, a photo of Ricky and me appeared on the cover of a tabloid magazine under a headline that said something like, “Puppy Love for Natalie Wood’s Daughter.” Diane sat Ricky and me down for a serious talk.
“Natasha, we’ve had a decline in Ricky’s fan mail since the magazine story,” she said. “From now on, you both need to tell the press that you’re just friends.”
Ricky was appalled. I was compliant. I felt like such an imposter. When my mom was my age, she was on the covers of many magazines, practically on a weekly basis. She always looked stunning and proud. She was an actress; she had a reason to be on display. It was the opposite for me. I hadn’t known I would be on the cover, I didn’t like the picture, and the only reason they had bothered to put me there was because I was the daughter of Natalie Wood and the “girlfriend” of Ricky Schroder. I was thirteen.
Ricky and I were still dating around my fourteenth birthday, but we were so young I think we both realized it wasn’t going to last. The year was 1984, and my big sister Katie had started hanging out with the Brat Pack actors that were currently taking Hollywood by storm. When I walked into my birthday party that year, Katie had arranged to surprise me by inviting Rob Lowe and Judd Nelson, one of the stars of The Breakfast Club movie, which I loved. “Happy birthday, Natasha,” Rob said, and gave me a kiss on the cheek. Rob’s girlfriend Melissa Gilbert was there too. They seemed to enjoy the excitement on my face and on all of my friends’ faces as we realized they were there to celebrate with us.
My close friends like Jessica and Tracey appreciated Ricky, but my wider circle of school friends were more impressed by Rob, Judd, and Melissa. They let me know that it was time to send Ricky on his merry way. I was so insecure that I succumbed to peer pressure and broke up with him. I let him down gently by parroting things I had heard adults say on television: “I feel like this relationship isn’t working out. We need to take some space, some time off from each other.” Ricky was a good and sweet boy, with no dark or rebellious side that I was aware of. I was starting to be drawn to guys with more of an edge. Broken boys that I could mend.
I knew I had made the right choice, even if it was for the wrong reasons. Would it have been different if my mom had been there to help me find my way? There were so many moments where I missed her, longed for her guidance, her complete and unconditional love.
Later that same year, I got my period. I noticed the brownish-red streaks in my underwear and immediately told Jessica. I was the last one in my group to get it, and so I understood what was happening.
My mother had always been open with me about her body and what would happen to mine when I grew up. I remember one time, standing in her bathroom as she prepped for a night out and glancing in the toilet to see a ruby-stained piece of puffed white cotton floating there, a tiny string trailing behind.
“What is that?” I asked, perplexed.
She looked at me and smiled.
“Oh, that is my tampon, Natasha. I have my period. You remember what I told you about when ladies have their periods, right?”
I sort of did and I sort of didn’t.
The next day a large box arrived with a plastic body inside it complete with all the organs and body parts. My mom sat me down at the round wicker table in our playroom and gave me a lesson on all the various body parts and what their functions were.
Later that evening, after Courtney went to bed, my mom told me the story of the first time she got her period. Baba had not told her anything about it. One day she was on a movie set and she started bleeding. My mother thought she was dying. She ended up confiding in another adult on the set and they explained to her that she had just gotten her first period. She truly had no idea. When she became a mother herself, she wanted to make sure that I understood my body and that I was prepared for puberty. She wanted me to feel safe and empowered.
Even though she was gone, her lessons had stuck with me, and getting my period didn’t worry me at all. The next morning at breakfast I told my dad. He looked at me long and hard. His eyes got a little teary. “Well, Natasha, you are on your way to becoming a woman,” he said. That afternoon when I came home from school there was a present on my bed. He had bought me a navy leather purse. A sign of becoming a woman, I guessed.
Chapter 11
Natasha and Courtney at the house on Old Oak Road, mid-1980s.
During these years, crying felt as natural and automatic as breathing to me. Many mornings, I would arrive at school with the puffiest of eyes. One day my friend Shingo asked me why I looked like a salamander. He wasn’t being mean; he just didn’t understand why my eyes were always so swollen.
Time was passing but my feelings about my mother had only grown stronger, threatening to overwhelm me. Whenever I left the house, I put on a brave face, desperate to blend into the background, to convince everyone I was okay. I could cry alone in the shower or on my pillow, but to the outside world I played the game that I was fine. It was exhausting. I have my act together. I am not sad or upset or lonely or missing my mother. It’s all in the past and I never even think about it. I had too much pride to let people see my ugly feelings, and yet they must have been fairly obvious: they were written all over my face. It was as if the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle had spilled from the box and scattered across the floor, but because I wasn’t yet mature enough to figure out where each piece fit, I just jammed them together and hastily bound them with Scotch tape. “It’s all fine” was the message I tried to convey. “Just don’t look too closely.” I kept my crying jags private even from Courtney, who was becoming my closest friend.
To leave the house was to constantly risk exposure to other people, their pointing fingers, the looks of pity on their faces and whispers behind our backs. Before my mother died, our parents’ fans never seemed scary to me. Now they felt different—looming, overly emotional, locking me in with their eyes and their body language. One time I remember Courtney and I went with our dad to a charity benefi
t. Courtney and I dreaded these events, as it meant we would be surrounded by a lot of strangers. At this particular benefit, I remember my dad was shepherded away from us and we were left alone in a banquet room, where guests were filling their plates with food from a buffet. As soon as people realized who we were, they swooped. Suddenly we were surrounded by older women with made-up faces telling us how much they loved our mom. How sorry they were that she died. How much we looked just like her.
“Oh my God, we’re so sorry for your loss, we loved your mom,” they lamented.
It was like being trapped in a scene from a Fellini or Buñuel film.
“Oh my God, look at you, Natalie’s daughters!” one woman said between bites from the buffet. She was wearing a sequined blouse and had food stuck in her teeth. Then she shouted to her husband across the room, “Natalie Wood’s daughters!” before turning back to us. “Oh my God, what a terrible tragedy! Your mother was so beautiful. Your father is gorgeous. Look, I can see the sadness in their faces!”
More Than Love: An Intimate Portrait of My Mother, Natalie Wood Page 15