Back in The Dark Ages (just after my father was killed in a plane crash) I was fat little Maggie Duggy from Nyack, New York, complete with pimples and an inferiority complex. (It didn’t help matters that Mama remarried eight months later.) Now I’m Sabra and Mama is Madam St. Amour, and we live in the famous Dakota apartment building on Central Park West in New York City.
For the month of August we were vacationing in Seaville, in the Hamptons, a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Manhattan. Mama likes to make the trip in my new little white Mercedes, with the top down, a tape of Frank Sinatra singing “My Way” playing, and Mama passing every car on the road, calling out, “Okay, you other mothers, clear the way! We’re coming through!”
Mama enjoys success.
I was watching the ocean through our picture window, wishing I could smoke, pretending I was interested in my performance. Since I wasn’t going to be doing the soap much longer, I wasn’t that fascinated, but I didn’t like to hurt Mama’s feelings. She was sitting in the Eames chair with her feet up, taking notes while she watched, the way she always did.
Mama looks a lot like the actress Shelley Winters. Back in The Dark Ages when my stepfather, Sam, Sam, Superman was alive, he used to tell her she was another Marilyn Monroe. (That didn’t stop him from plucking her out of the limelight into the two-bedroom Cape on a wooded half acre, complete with washer/dryer/dishwasher/self-cleaning oven and automatic garbage disposal.) Mama’s plumper now, very blond with light blue eyes and a whole mouthful of perfectly capped teeth. She has a very kind face, the sort that makes it hard to turn her down, and she’s always surprising me with something. That morning when I walked out onto our deck for breakfast, there was this large, gold cuff bracelet resting on top of my napkin.
“What’s this for?” I asked her.
“It’s for you, sweetheart. Do I have to have a reason to give my own kid a present?”
“It’s beautiful!” I said. “Mama, it must have cost a fortune!”
“Read the inscription inside,” she said.
It was engraved in very tiny letters:
FOR ALL I KNOW YOU’RE ROME
AND PARIS, TOO, I’M HOME
WITH DREAMS AND YOU—THAT’S ALL I NEED;
YOU CUT YOURSELF, I BLEED.
“Oh, Mama!” I said. “That’s sad.”
“The hell it is,” she answered. “That’s motherhood.” She laughed, reached for a pack of More cigarettes, changed her mind because of me and the fact I’m not supposed to smoke anymore.
“You can have one,” I told her. “There’s nothing wrong with your health.”
“I’m going to give them up, too, baby,” she said, “and until I do, I’m not going to smoke in front of you.”
I said, “I wish you would,” but I knew she wouldn’t. For five years, ever since I got my first part in a Broadway show at age thirteen, Mama has lived for me. That isn’t as awful as it sounds, because before she lived for me, she was living for Sam, Sam, Superman, who was lucky if he could afford to take her out once a month for the $2.40 special at Howard Johnson’s.
Near the end of the show, just when the crawl was starting with the credits, there was a shot of me and the poster Mama had bought me once for my dressing-room wall. The producer of Hometown, Fedora Foxe, had seen the poster during a visit to me, and immediately had a writer put it into the show. Fedora was always having things written into the scripts that the cast did or said; she liked to say no fiction in the world could match the drama of real life.
“Accept me as I am,” I was saying on the television screen, “so I may learn what I can become.”
“There should have been a long pause there,” said Mama.
The theme music swelled up and there was a fadeout on my face with this superthoughtful expression.
“Did you hear what I said, honey?” Mama said.
“You said there should have been a long pause there.”
“Do you know what I mean?”
“Sort of.”
“I mean between ‘Accept me as I am,’ and ‘so I may learn what I can become.’ Right after ‘am,’ you should have looked up wistfully, beat, beat, another beat, and then, as though you were getting it all together in your head, into ‘so I may learn what I can become.’ See what I mean, sweetheart?”
“I see.”
“Three beats, and then finish.”
“Okay,” I said, “I see.”
“It was peachy the way it was—don’t get me wrong, but it could have been just a little better.”
I sighed, unintentionally, and Mama looked across at me with this concerned expression. “Why the sigh?”
“Oh Mama, it just seems silly now to worry about it.”
“Who’s worried about it? I said it was peachy.”
“I know you did.”
“I’m just your silly mother, The Perfectionist, don’t pay any attention to me.”
“Mama,” I said, “have you told Fedora what Dr. Baird said?”
“I wrote her a long letter, honey. I don’t want you to worry about anything. From now on we concentrate on getting you better.”
“If that’s possible,” I said. “Sam, Sam, Superman’s ulcers never did get better.”
“You know, sweetheart,” Mama said, “I wish you wouldn’t call your stepfather that.”
“You called him that.”
“But that was different,” Mama said. “I meant it affectionately.”
“You must have felt a lot of affection for him while you were loading up the dishwasher every morning, knowing you could have been in front of a camera instead.”
“It was my own idea to give up my career,” Mama said. “Sam never asked me to give up my career. Your stepfather was a wonderful man, honey.”
“Except he gambled away every cent we ever had,” I said. “May he rest in peace.”
“He didn’t always have good judgment,” said Mama, “but Sam would give you the shirt off his back.”
“To iron for him,” I said.
“Oh, honey, don’t be bitter,” said Mama. “We came out okay. Look at us!” Mama said, waving her hands around the room. “This isn’t exactly chopped liver, baby!”
I saw her starting to reach for her pack of Mores again, then stopping herself. She’d gone half an hour already without a cigarette. I’d gone a week, with a few sneak smokes when I was out of her sight, which wasn’t often. Mama and I did everything together, went everywhere together. When we were separated, we were on the phone together. It was as much my doing as hers—I have to be honest about that. I felt right with Mama close, unsure of myself when she wasn’t around.
Mama said, “Maggie, sweetheart”—she always called me Maggie when she was being her most sincere self—“this is your vacation. Stop worrying. Ulcers heal. There’ll be other roles, better ones. You just toast yourself in the sun, run on the beach and forget your troubles.”
I stood up and turned off the set. I was going to take a walk on the beach so we could both sneak a smoke. “Mama,” I said, “won’t you miss doing the show?”
“You did the show, Tootsie Roll, I didn’t.”
“You know