There Was a Little Girl: The Real Story of My Mother and Me (17 page)

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I was offered a ride on the helicopter to fly out with her, but I chose to remain on my mule. We never spoke about it again and I wonder if she was hurt that I did not choose to go with her. But I wanted to ride out with the team. It was fun and an adventure, and once Mom was safe, I was free to enjoy.

I was always worrying about Mom’s safety. I never wanted anything to happen to her and I felt I always had to protect her. When she
was asked to leave the Southampton home after pulling the little girl’s hair, I thought something bad would happen to her if she were left alone. I would have died for her, as I showed I was willing to do when the Jeep’s brakes went out on the George Washington Bridge. In the case with the mule, I relaxed once I knew she was in safe hands.

In a way my refusing the copter ride was one of the first times I chose not to follow my mom anywhere she was headed. This was the first time I can remember choosing myself over her. It is also true that I was able to relax more in this case because I knew my mother was in a professional’s care. I knew she wouldn’t come to any harm because she was not alone and she was going to be in a hospital. Basically, I found peace in knowing she was accounted for. This was a theme that would run throughout my life and up until the end of hers. As long as I knew my mother was OK, I felt freedom to relax and be present in my life.

Wanda Nevada
felt like a camping trip. Because there was nowhere to go but the hotel or the desert, I worried less about my mom. She was drinking as much as always, but I knew where she was and knew she couldn’t really get hurt. There wasn’t even anywhere to drive, so I felt relaxed. Everybody looked after me and I was, once again, like a mascot. Even my godmother, Lila, who was born in Arizona, was able to meet up with us later in Prescott and stay for a lot of the filming. Mom made no enemies on this set that I can remember. In fact, we made some long-lasting friends. Peter Fonda gave me a chestnut two-year-old filly as a gift and we still speak to this day.

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The movie wrapped in mid-September and Mom and I left immediately for Los Angeles. I had been offered a movie with one of my all-time favorite comedians, George Burns.

This movie was called
Just You and Me, Kid
and starred George Burns and a cast of funny and legendary old-time comedians. In the
film I play a young runaway who is being chased by the mob. George’s character takes me in and we form an unlikely friendship. The movie was shot entirely in Los Angeles and mostly on the Warner Bros. lot. I got my school syllabus and was assigned a tutor; once again Mom’s old rule of not missing school had been pushed aside. I loved my tutor, though. She had a great sense of humor and made learning fun. We sent my work back weekly and I continued to do well. In the same way that filming movies gave me refuge from my mom’s drinking, time in “school” gave me refuge from shooting. In a very unconventional way, there was a balance to it all. I had no reason to rebel against any of it because each provided a respite from the other and oddly enough gave me a very well-rounded existence.

I was on a roll now and was excited about moviemaking. To me movies represented new, fun, and safe experiences where my mother’s drinking would take less of a toll on our lives. There was a safety in having to be responsible to my job and accountable to an outside obligation. It became easier and easier to avoid confronting Mom’s drinking and go to a set. I had the excuse of having to work, and it became my ultimate escape. Mom may have been embarrassing or obviously tipsy on set, but there were always other adults, who felt like a sort of extended family, to take me away. They buffered me from my mother’s drunkenness and served as witnesses to her behavior. I felt less alone. At home in our apartment I often shrunk from fear and felt isolated. But within the context of moviemaking, there was always somewhere to go and someone with whom to be. Movies felt, at least temporarily, bigger than her addiction. As long as there was a call sheet that outlined the day, I could avoid dealing with Mom’s problem for a while longer.

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George Burns loved my mom and treated me like a favored grandchild. He refused to light up his famous cigar when around me because he
knew I did not like smoking, and we had ongoing inside jokes throughout the filming. Once again, I was treated like a favorite pet.

Filming on an actual movie lot was thrilling to me. The studios looked as if they did in the movies, and it was such a luxury to have a trailer and eat at a commissary or across the street at an old Hollywood restaurant. The SmokeHouse was George’s favorite place to eat and he had a regular table. He always invited my mom and me to join him. There he would have fried fish fingers with a side of ketchup and never any alcohol to drink. I always ordered what he had and I wasn’t even a fan of fish sticks. I remember Mom ordering her regular drink at the time, which was a martini straight up with a twist, and thinking I was so glad we had only an hour for our lunch break because she wouldn’t have time to drink more than about two cocktails.

Mom and I rented a house in Bel Air. It sounds fancy, but it was a run-down ranch-style house with a cracked pool and rats that ate the kiwis we had in a bowl on the kitchen table. I thought it was a mansion and was very excited to live in such a posh neighborhood. Mom and I had fun, and although she was still drinking every night, her days seemed somewhat tempered. If she did drink during the days, I still did not have to get behind the wheel with her because teamsters drove me to and from the set.

It was a happy time. We were working in sunny California and Mom seemed untroubled. My stepsister, Diana, came to stay with my mom and me in our rented house, and, as usual, we all laughed a lot and enjoyed beautiful Malibu and going to Fiorucci or Heaven in Beverly Hills for our Candie’s shoes and colored jeans. Looking back now, this seems like it was a bit of a golden era for all of us.

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I realize now that I did an incredible amount of work at this time. Five movies in two years! But it made sense for many reasons. I was popular and directors and producers wanted me. But on a personal
level, it was just the easiest and happiest way to live with my mother. I still felt incredibly connected to her, but her drinking had become scarier and more difficult.

Mom would not stop drinking for me. I could only believe I wasn’t doing enough to make her stop. It took me about thirty years to realize that nothing I did could make her stop if, in fact, she did not want to or could not fight it herself.

But at the time, I still thought I could control things. That I could fix things. And as 1978 ended and I returned to New York, I thought I had finally discovered a way to fix her, this time for good.

Chapter Seven

Are You Finished?

T
he first thirteen years of my life were unconventional in every way. I lived two entirely different existences between being raised by a single mother and working in the entertainment business and spending time with my father’s more conventional (but also more affluent) family. I was a star, but also a normal kid going to regular schools. I was the source of great controversy, yet a darling, an incredibly innocent bystander. The press both praised me and devoured me. Mom was the wild and needy one whereas I was the caretaker and adult. I went in and out of so many different environments and found my comfort zone in all of them. My world was ever changing and diverse, but I had no trouble adapting. Strangely the versatility did not unsettle me but instead fortified me. I grew to know that I could find my place anywhere. At times I did struggle with the question as to who I was because so many others seemed to be living in just one environment and could be defined as such. But I started to have pride in being able to put on a different hat and be a different person, each time learning and loving an undiscovered side of myself.

The circumstances of my daily life were definitely unique, but that
was never the reason for my sadness or insecurity. There are clichéd ways of blaming the industry and the press and the public for somebody’s demise emotionally, but I cannot ascribe my own troubles to them. I had enough love, good people around me, and a strong-enough innate sense of character to carve a path for myself and admit my own fears or insecurities without placing blame on the world or how unfair things were. I don’t know why this was. Even if I had to keep changing directions, I just kept moving. Regretfully, however, I do have to acknowledge that the most damaging element in my life was loving and being loved by an alcoholic mother.

And the problem of my mother’s drinking just got worse and worse over the next few months. It’s ironic, but I believe that if it were not for the entertainment industry, I would have been a train wreck. I would have crumbled if I did not have a place to hide. I had to be professional because it was my job and I was getting paid. I couldn’t fall to pieces.

My dad also provided safety and consistency and a conventional family. I appreciated it and him. I visited often, and even though it felt a bit too restricted and aristocratic at times, the knowledge that his home existed for me came to be a great relief. I found solace in knowing that he was a phone call away. But he was only one part of my life. Most of my time revolved around my mother and what she created.

At work, I was always the good girl, the polite one. I got a good reputation early on because I was so easy to work with. I loved the responsibility because people liking me was the only real reward I sought. The pride I derived from my job stemmed primarily from being liked and accepted. People praised me for being so well-behaved and I was fueled to continue being so.

With regard to my mother, it felt like it was never enough. Nothing I said or did seemed correct or could make her stop getting drunk or feel deeper happiness. I felt helpless. Why wasn’t I enough to help her stop drinking? I felt much better about myself when I worked, so
I began to crave my jobs. I knew what to expect there. Come the end of my workday, however, I never knew what to expect. It did not seem abusive as much as it did claustrophobic, sad, and helplessly codependent.

In addition, the press wanted me to admit my mother and I had a
Mommie Dearest
type of relationship, but that was simply not the case. She also wasn’t Mama Rose, the stereotypical stage mother. I didn’t ever have the feeling that she was the one who wanted to be a star. Yes, as a young woman she wanted it all, but with me she was getting it without the risk of falling short herself. She never said, “I could have been . . .” Our relationship and my stardom satisfied all her needs in one. Except she would never feel fully proud of or satisfied with herself. My mother thought she had the most beautiful child in the world. She felt the attention I received was justified. I think she believed in my talent but she never focused on it. She saw people wanting me and that meant success to her. Buying homes and having possessions or traveling meant we were successful.

Looking back at these years I realize that our relationship was so scrutinized because it was so public. But ironically, it was also this public scrutiny that kept me somehow accountable.

I often thought of the private hell that many mothers and daughters were enduring, and I actually felt lucky. I justified my mother’s behavior by saying I was lucky I wasn’t like the kids out there who were beaten or had relatives who abused them. I just thought my mother was colorful and unconventional. Up until this point, it didn’t occur to me that maybe it was unhealthy to live with a mom who drank as much as my mother did and was verbally and emotionally abusive. I believe I also saw how easy it was to focus on people in the public eye when there were so many private sufferers in the world. But I thought that because I was not physically abused or battered, my situation did not merit complaining about or even really fighting.

I knew that although the world thought I was living a crazy life,
there were many others whose lives were more tragic. It was this type of empathy that kept me imprisoned by my mother’s alcoholism. People assume that if somebody is in the entertainment industry, doom is inevitable. But then I believed those without a public platform were worse off.

The struggles I had never came from the entertainment industry. Stardom, and the fame or money associated with it, was not my issue. The business was my buffer. Stardom was a by-product. It was never the catalyst for my unhappiness. My unhappiness was rooted in my mother’s inability to stop drinking. My sense of worthlessness stemmed from feeling insecure as to who I was and inadequate in getting my mother to stop drinking. I had lower self-esteem, not because I was a model but because I was a daughter. The movie business kept me afloat and sane. My mother’s drinking superseded my stardom. I was a child of an alcoholic way before I was a star. I craved opportunity and I craved my mother’s sobriety. I never understood the connection between the two.

In the end, I never got caught up in my growing fame or my public persona. My focus was always on what was going on at home. My mother’s alcoholism tempered the positive and negative ramifications of fame and of being a “star.” Between living in New York City, attending nonprofessional children’s school, and navigating an alcoholic parent, there was little room for me to fuck up. Fame was easy in comparison. Fame was fake and fickle, but my mom’s drinking was real and consistent.